Ruth First’s visit to Ibadan and its aftermath, 1968

July 9, 2020

This post is a chapter from a joint memoir that is being written by Selina Molteno and Robin Cohen about their period in Nigeria, September 1967–September 1969, which was framed by the Nigerian Civil War. The chapter tells a personal story and also provides some more general insight into those tumultuous years. They were both working at the University of Ibadan, Selina in African Studies, and Robin in Political Science and describe the visit that Ruth First made to Nigeria, and the friendship that developed.

By Selina Molteno and Robin Cohen

Ruth First was the most extraordinary person we have ever met, and we are far from alone in that view. The bald facts about her are easily-established. She was born in Johannesburg in 1925 and assassinated in 1982 in Maputo, Mozambique, by means of a parcel bomb sent by an agent of the apartheid regime. The regime wanted and needed to kill her as she was one of the most effective opponents of apartheid, ranking alongside giants like Nelson Mandela and Oliver Tambo. Simply put, she was a heroine, perhaps the heroine, of the anti-apartheid struggle. When we heard the news of her death it was if the rotation of the earth had stopped. We looked at each other in bewilderment and shock and struggled to catch our breaths.

The particular reason for our distress, is that she had entered our lives unexpectedly and intimately, staying at our home in Ibadan for about 7-8 weeks in early 1968. Selina had known her when she came intermittently into the Anti-Apartheid Movement office in London, where Selina worked prior to our trip to Nigeria. However, Selina did not know her well, so she was surprised when she burst unheralded into her office at the Institute of African Studies, Ibadan, and asked, ‘Can I stay with you?’ In Ruth language that meant ‘I’ll be staying with you.’ Annoyed at the effects of the damp Ibadan heat on her munificent black hair, she complained, ‘This is no place for a white woman!’ Ruth’s parents were the founders of the South African Communist Party and they, and many others in the party, followed the norm of always dressing simply with no concessions to fashion, make-up or hair styling. However, Ruth defied the common stereotype of the austere Communist – she was always elegantly coiffured and fashionably turned out.

We like the politics of this wall painting of Ruth by the British artist, Ben Slow. It was painted 30 years after her assassination on a modest house in Nomzamo Park informal settlement in Orlando East, Soweto. Beauty Mlakalaka, the owner of the house on which the painting appears said, ‘I think it is beautiful. Also, people must know who this person was and what she did.’ This Photo is by Shafiur Rahman.

While our modest home in Gbenro Ogunbiye Close offered little in the way of comfort, let alone chic comfort, we were friendly faces with compatible political views, even though neither of us had ever been remotely tempted either by the theory or practice of orthodox communism.[1] This was of no consequence to Ruth, who was friendly with whom she chose. For example, one of her closest friends was Ronald Segal, who contributed greatly to the public critique of apartheid through his journal Africa South and Africa South in Exile, but who had married into the Marks and Spencer family and lived with some panache in a manor house in Guildford, Surrey. Again, Ruth insisted on Selina arranging a get-together in London with one of Selina’s cousins, Deneys Williamson, a conservative Justice of the South African Supreme Court, who, she declared, was ‘charming’. (Ruth’s husband, Joe Slovo, also a leading member of the South African Communist Party, and Deneys were fellow lawyers at the Johannesburg bar.)

Ruth’s trip to Nigeria was to research her major book on coups in Africa, titled The Barrel of a Gun (1970). The title was a reference to Mao Zedong’s famous adage that power grows from the barrel of a gun, but perhaps the maxim was unfamiliar in the USA where the book was published in the same year as Power in Africa. Not only was Ruth a powerful political actor, she was an accomplished investigative journalist who later made the difficult transition to becoming a respected academic in the UK, first in Manchester, then in Durham.[2] Of course, colleagues and students had little doubt where her political sympathies lay, but she had a fierce commitment to unearthing the deeper story behind the headlines and an extraordinary capacity to let the motives of social actors emerge from their own lips. This helped her students engage with subjective interpretations as well as theoretical exegesis. Ruth had an unrivalled capacity to drill down to the essence of the matter by asking questions that combined charm with incisiveness.

We watched at close quarters how she pulled off this double act. All Ruth’s contacts and our colleagues and acquaintances on the campus were drawn one by one into her enticing spider’s net and before they knew what had happened to them, they had spilled the beans to their captivating and merciless interrogator. She rapidly trolled through the campus academics, then stretched her net wider and wider in pursuit of more and more information on the military in Nigeria – first to Lagos and then to the north. On one of her fieldtrips to the north, she managed on the slimmest of introductions to talk her way into a meeting of ‘The Interim Council for the Northern states’. The title of this body was deliberately obscure, but, in effect, it was a regional cabinet meeting of senior military officers and administrators that made the crucial administrative decisions on the prosecution of the war and the distribution of resources and revenue. After the meeting she attended, the intelligence services belatedly ran a check on Ruth, finding out that not only was she a leading member of the South Africa Communist Party, but also that at one critical point in 1963 she had made the key decisions about how military and political struggles against the apartheid state should be waged.[3] This triggered alarm bells in Lagos. What exactly was her agenda? When the authorities conducted a retrospective search on who she had met in Nigeria, we got drawn into their investigations, as we describe below. Ruth, needless to say, had long gone.

Our visit to Oshogbo

Ruth was dedicated to researching her book, but we managed to persuade her to join us on a day trip to Oshogbo, about 100 kms away on bouncy roads. We knew a little about the town from Shola and Margaret Adenle, two doctors at the University. Shola was the son of one of the town’s illustrious kings (called Ataojas), Oba Samuel Adeleye Adenle I (in office 1944–1976). It was he who had welcomed to the town a remarkable Austrian artist and sculptress, Susanne Wenger (1915–2009). Susanne threw herself into the life of the community and, in particular, helped to preserve and develop one of the town’s principal religious sites, the Oshun Grove, which later became a UNESCO world heritage site. She had met her husband, the linguist Ulli Beier, in Paris and (rather like us) had married him to secure the spousal visas allowing Ulli to take up a post at the University of Ibadan. Though he left Ibadan a few years later and the marriage did not endure, they remained on good terms for most of their lives and Ulli collaborated on various joint endeavours, including a retrospective celebrating her achievements at Oshogbo, Thirty Years of Oshogbo Art (1991).

To summarize an eventful career, Susanne found her spiritual home in the Yoruba religion and her physical home in Oshogbo. She became a priestess, married the Ataoja’s chief drummer and inspired or helped to create hundreds of sculptures and carvings in the town, some resembling women’s genitalia (this is pretty obvious in the photo of Selina and Ruth). Susanne invited us to lunch, a memorable occasion when two remarkable women, both of whom profoundly identified with Africa, traded their wildly different views on what this meant. We chipped in for the brief moments when we could. The meal, served on a large open-air upstairs balcony mainly comprised little portions of fruit, which we had to snatch quickly, before some pet monkeys (actually not very tame) grabbed them off our plates.

**Selina and Ruth in front of one of Susanne Wenger sculptures in Oshogbo**

As we left, Susanne suddenly stopped us, insisting that we take a little roan antelope with us back to the Ibadan zoo as someone in her household intended to ‘chop it’. This was a bizarre and inconvenient request and Selina suffered the consequence. Robin took the steering wheel as he could not easily squeeze into the back of our Ford Anglia, Ruth was given the front passenger seat as our guest, while poor Selina was consigned to the back seat with the antelope, which smelled disgusting and quivered in terror. Despite Susanne’s certainty that the zoo would be delighted to receive a new inmate, it was a hard sell and it was only our threat to dump the antelope anywhere that finally persuaded the zookeeper to accept her gift.

Aftermath

As we mentioned, there was a strange and somewhat amusing aftermath to Ruth’s visit. A few days after she left, a messenger arrived in Robin’s office on the campus summonsing him to a meeting with the Head of Security at the campus. He turned out to be a bluff, cheerful ex-copper from Lagos, who had opted for what he assumed would be an easy life on campus. This was not what he found. Students are a lively bunch anywhere and the Ibadan students got up to their fair share of mischief. The caterers at the halls of residence were periodically accused of stealing chickens and selling them at the market, while the houses on campus were a favourite target for thieves. He took this all in his stride but was definitely thrown by the questionnaire about Robin he was asked to complete by the Special Branch (the security agency) in Lagos. The long list of questions included ‘Is he black or white?’, ‘Is his wife black or white?’, ‘Who does he meet with?’ and, amazingly, a question straight out of the McCarthyite copybook, ‘Is he, or has he ever been, a member of a communist party?’ It was striking that the agency was, like in South Africa, then called ‘the Special Branch’ and the gendered and naïve questions could have been framed in Pretoria as easily as in Lagos. The long reach of the colonial inheritance, no doubt. The Head of Security struggled with the answers so, opting for pragmatism, he took the easiest course and called Robin in to help. They shook hands afterwards, thinking it was all over.

Not so. One day, three guys, dressed as workmen, arrived at our home claiming the phone was not working properly and they needed to fix the line. ‘No need’, we said, ‘we don’t have a phone’. The back-up story got a bit confused and there was brief mention of the electricity supply, before they settled on the story that they loved the look of our house and wanted to measure it because they wanted to build one just like it. As it was a bog-standard house using plans easily available at the housing estate office, this was particularly implausible. Anyway, we knew what they were up to – planting bugs – and it seemed pointless to try to stop them. Most of what they subsequently heard was us enjoying our food, but we also had some fun, talking about obscure subjects at length with friends. Mike Sweeney, an American linguist at the university who worked at the library, was a trained glottochronologist and kept the conversation going about the sequences, duration and variations in Indo-European languages, featuring the case of the Mongolian steppes quite frequently.

A Poisonous Flying Dog in a Red Village by Twins Seven Seven. (Pen, ink and colouring on brown sugar paper, mounted.) This was a gift from Ruth bought during our visit to Oshogbo and remains one of our most treasured possessions.

The bugs were not very sophisticated, and the listeners had to be reasonably close by in the surrounding area. At one farcical moment, the listeners got tangled up with a platoon of watchers, also in the neighbourhood. This had nothing to do with us. A certain military officer was having an affair with a neighbour and had assigned his platoon to various street corners to look out for the husband, in case he unexpectantly returned home. The representatives of the army and the Special Branch got into a turf war and the army won. Of course, the listeners already knew from our bullshit talk that we were on to them, but they had to wait until Lagos ordered them to desist. A day or so later, the house measurers had to measure the house again and the bugs disappeared.

**Selina and Ruth in Oshogbo, with bashful Nigerian. Cafés, filling stations, roundabouts and shopfronts all were adorned with carvings and sculptures.**

Letters from Ruth

A few of Ruth’s letters have survived. They need a little explanation. In the first letter she is referring to a car accident in which Robin and Chris Beer [a graduate student at Ibadan] were involved. In pursuit of Robin’s fieldwork, they had been driven to the north by the university’s driver, who was somewhat reckless. However, Ruth’s hair, she was pleased to note, had straightened out with the increased altitude! One letter arrived from Freetown, Sierra Leone, in the midst of a coup, which made Ruth exultant, rather than apprehensive. The final letter was written long after we all were back in the UK, and after the birth of Miranda and our son, Jason. However, as it refers to the book Ruth was researching in Nigeria (The Barrel of a Gun), we have decided to include it here.

From Ruth First
Ahmadu Bello University
Zaria
8 February 1968

Dear Selina and Robin,

Have been worried about how Robin got back to Ibadan, and any sequels to that horrible accident. Looking at the car was unnerving enough and being in it must have been a fearful shock. Hope the worst is long over? Ironically, Essien saved me all that – but that doesn’t make it any easier for Robin and Chris [Beer].

Our mini arrived a half hour before midnight – exhausting progress along shocking roads – but safely. Got a bed in the women’s hostel and have remained here. It’s central, and cheap, though the Nigerian food in the student eating place is a bit much three times a day.

Have a lift to Kano tomorrow and will be back Thursday, after which will try Kaduna. Transport difficult, so have not seen more than the university.

If for any chance you want to contact me the best bet would the Assistant Registrar Mr Abashiya at extension 2 (University no. is Zaria 2624) because he knows me (as Ruth First) and lives next door to the hostel. But this only in case of some emergency, or if you want me to do anything for you. Will Robin come North again? Not immediately, I don’t suppose.

Am missing the Cohen ménage but not the Ibadan climate. It’s highveld here, and wonderful, and my hair is straight! Bright, dry (too dusty) but bracing, and just chilly enough at dusk and after.

See you some time and hope all goes well, accident notwithstanding.

Yours Ruth.

From Ruth First
c/o Mrs M. Obosi
Standard Bank of West Africa
Marina, Lagos
No date (probably around early March 1968)

Dear Selina and Robin,

You were right, the Killams are choice, hospitable people. Cooking à la Français too, and a really pleasant weekend. Eventually landed 4 university appointments (gawd – sounds like jobs, no just meetings!) between the Friday and yesterday, Tuesday, not all conclusive but one at least interesting as far as it went (political sociologist Babatunde Williams who is a Lagosian and fascinating on that elite breed because he is such a feeling representative) and two others that might promise more: A-G Elias and J.P. Clarke, the playwright. Lagos not quite as bad as I had feared, because even if getting to Nigerians is not as easy as in Kaduna, it’s not as difficult as Ibadan, and there are Brits and Yanks and others to have lunch with in air-conditioned places, and when you are stomping the humid sweaty streets you can take every few blocks off to nip into Leventis or Kingsway or a hotel to pinch some air-conditioning. Too soon to tell how it will all go.

Bumped today into an Ibadanite of all people, Professor Ogunsheye of Faculty of Education, the man I was trying to evade the day Robin picked me up in the car between the library and Institute. It made Nigeria feel smaller at least. He’s here for the Commonwealth Education Congress.

Douglas Killam is thinking of coming down to Ibadan on Monday 11^th. If so, I’ll probably come with if you can stand me for another night?

I’m to ring him in a day or two to confirm his dates, and will then probably write Sam. He’ll make an appointment or two for me, I think, like Hendrickse, and I can pick up my mail. Unless some water-tight arrangement drops in don’t therefore worry about letters being brought in. If they’ve already gone care the Killams I’ll get them somehow – oh I forgot to tell you why I’m no longer with the Killams after that weekend. It’s just that they live near the University and the University is so far from everywhere else; am living now in Ikoyi with Margaret Obosi, who travels into work each day and is back for lunch and in again.

So, to revert to letters, unless something works almost naturally and the carrier is SURE to leave them chez Killam, don’t strain, and hang on to letters for me to fetch. Unless I have to change all that again.

Mrs Adekoya does come into Lagos, or her husband to Ibadan every weekend and I had talked to her about bringing letters to this end-week but next, but if I’m coming on 11^th even that will not be necessary. So, unless everything already en route, don’t worry about post much. I tried phoning Sam the other day, but we were cut off after first sentence.

Is Selina still having contractions? Hope all well, really well.

Don’t think I ever thanked you enough for roof and friendship and all else. How [does one] thank adequately?

Love Ruth

From Ruth First
Lagos
Nigeria
18 March 1968

Dear Selina and Robin,

How are you? I’m back on the Lagos grindstone.

Robin: I had to go through a pile of papers belonging to a journalist now out of the country, and came across a few trade union memos, which I snitched for you, and have posted. There may be something or other useful – didn’t read them.

Selina: there’s a journalist here who shares your taste for the bizarre in crime, lust and sadism, and who wants to write an article on some of the weird pieces in the press. Could you jot down for him the papers, dates, and headlines of the items in your prize collection file? Like the woman who gave birth to a bird, and the digger digged out, and that stuff?

He is Mr Bruce Oudes, L311, Ikoyi Hotel, Ikoyi, Lagos.

How’s that baby coming along?

Love to you both, Ruth

From Ruth First
Lagos
Nigeria
24 March 1968

Dear Robin,

The trade-union articles in West Africa are written by Kaye Whiteman of the West Africa London staff who flies in here periodically, and who spent a fortnight interviewing trade-union people here.

Hope it puts your mind at rest: he is a professional journalist, no academic.

Letter enclosed for the Killams if you can possibly manage to get it to them some time. There was a bit of a mix-up about ten quid I’d lent Douglas which we forgot to sort out, so I’m asking him to pay it to you so that I shall deposit £10 less in your London account. Which, according to my reckoning, will make it £60?

Did I give you my London address: 13 Lyme Street, NW1, phone 485-1294? Have been getting diminishing returns here and have booked an Accra flight day after tomorrow. Will drop you a postcard.

How’s Selina? And the Cohen baby? Looking forward to some news.

Much love, Ruth

P.S. Let me know when you get the £10.

From Ruth First
Freetown
Sierra Leone
Wednesday, 24 April 1968

Dear Selina and Robin,

Walked slap-bang into a C-O-U-P four hours after I got here. Was held up by soldiers’ machine guns: coup just off the ground.

Confused, still. A pay strike of the ranks and/or return to power of some dark horses like Genda with or without connection elsewhere? Don’t yet know. Nor does Sierra Leone. En route homewards.

Do write about that baby and yourselves.

Love, Ruth

From Ruth First,
13 Lyme Street,
London NW1
5 January 1971

Dear Robin and Selina,

I’ve not written since June and have heard from you twice since. Sorry but everything Robin wrote earnestly read and appreciated. Comments on the book: I wrote about how bucked I was by your general approval (hell, can’t you offer to review it for, say, Journal of Modern African Studies or something? Publication date 29 October). I live in fear and trembling of the reviews especially as, as you noticed, some will go out of their way to draw the wrong conclusions about some delicate aspects). Detailed points for proofing came rather late though I managed most; and ideas for final peroration demanded by us publisher likewise, but I came around to thinking the book was as finished as I could really make it this round.

As for your comments on the ARG Nigeria piece, first-rate. Exactly what I should have tried to do and wasn’t competent enough to. I gather they’ve had few serious reactions and they’ll be glad of this one and should find it pertinent and invaluable.

The reader I was trying to get Penguins to do. They’ve decided they’re not that keen on Readers. I think the principal reason is that they wrapped up in a mammoth volume edited by Andre Gunder Frank and being done between them and Cambridge University Press. It’s three volumes, and more a shelf of books than one. Includes Marx and Adam Smith to Lenin and Che and Rosa Luxemburg, and also takes in some of the pieces I earmarked like Samir Amin and Verhaegen and encompasses the whole of the Third World plus all the development theory and economic history. I’ve not given up; and am still working on the project. We’ll see.

Met your friend [Peter]Waterman eventually when he came to see about a job. He’s critical of doctrinaire positions with which criticism I mostly agree, but in a doctrinaire, daunting fashion. Hope you don’t leave your correspondence and my rude remarks around.

London is rather grim in August. Decent people are away, and tourists flood the streets. How’s Birmingham? Saw Ledda from time to time at the Rome Conference on Port Territories but no academic there, only behind the scenes grind though he waved over the top of it from time to time.

Love to Selina and you and to Miranda and Jason.

Come to London some time.

Ruth

Post-scriptum

Ruth remained a special person to us for the rest of her life. She was warm and supportive to Selina when she was ill in London and in her mumsy concern showed yet another side of her complex character. After our return to the UK, Ruth and Robin became close colleagues and were two of the dozen or so founders of the Review of African Political Economy, first published in 1973 and still going strong. Unusually for an academic journal committed as the self-description proclaims, to ‘high quality research’, it explicitly shows its political colours, paying ‘particular attention to the political economy of inequality, exploitation, oppression, and to struggles against them, whether driven by global forces or local ones such as class, race, community and gender.’ We missed her when she decided to leave London and base herself at the Eduardo Mondlane University in Maputo in Mozambique, but we understood that she needed to be much closer to the scene of action as the progressive forces she had nourished all her life were at last making headway against the decaying apartheid regime. Though it is not very materialist, we think of the Xhosa goodbye to the dead, hamba kahle (go well), dear Ruth.

Selina Molteno has been a professional ballet dancer and an anti-apartheid activist. She has travelled widely and lived in Nigeria (1967–9), Trinidad (1977–9) and returned to her native country, South Africa, after the end of apartheid (2001–4). She now lives in Oxford in the UK where she founded a publishing service. With over 35 years’ experience in publishing she has piloted many books and articles from manuscript to successful publication. Her letters home during her period as a dancer based in Paris were published as Letters from an intrepid ballet dancer (2015).

Robin Cohen is an established scholar in development studies and sociology, known best for his writings on migration, diasporas and globalization. He has taught at seven universities in Europe, Africa, the Caribbean and North America. He is now professor emeritus at the University of Oxford. His books include Labour and politics in Nigeria (1972), Global diasporas: An introduction (1997, rev. 2008), Global sociology (co-author, 2000, rev. 2007, 2013), Migration: Human movement from prehistory to the present (2019) and Refugia: Radical solutions to mass displacement (co-author, 2020).

Featured Photograph: Photo by Shafiur Rahman of the Ruth First mural in Soweto by the British artist, Ben Slow.

Notes

[1] This is not the place to get into a critique of the tenets of the South African Communist Party, which struggled to square South African realities with the orthodoxies of the Soviet Union, with which it was aligned and on which it was dependent for financial support and military training. Ruth, though married to Joe Slovo, who often enforced the ideological line, managed the almost impossible feat of navigating between party loyalty and critical distance.

[2] Peter Worsley was important in helping her to secure a fellowship at Manchester, while Gavin Williams, who also conducted his research in Ibadan after we had left, was a good friend and colleague to Ruth at Durham.

[3] See Paul S. Landau (2019) ‘Gendered silences in Nelson Mandela’s and Ruth First’s struggle auto/biographies’, African Studies, 78 (2), 290306, DOI: 10.1080/00020184.2019.1569437

In Senegal and France, Faidherbe Must Fall

ROAPE

July 7, 2020

Louis Faidherbe, one of the leading figures of the French colonial conquest of West Africa, still has statues celebrating him in Senegal and France. The Faidherbe Must Fall campaign is fighting for them to be removed. In this interview with Florian Bobin, Khadim Ndiaye and Salian Sylla argue for the emancipation of public spaces from the glorification of a hideous past.

Read the full interview in French here. Listen to it here.

Khadim Ndiaye, in your recent article ‘The disturbing presence of the statue of Faidherbe in Saint-Louis [Senegal’s northern city],’ you write: ‘Faidherbe laid the ideological foundations for the French occupation of Senegal and West Africa. He was the great actor in this colonial enterprise that ushered in an era of oppression and subjugation.’ What was Louis Faidherbe’s role in the French colonization of Africa?

Faidherbe was a French colonial soldier sent to Guadeloupe and then to Algeria, where Marshal Thomas Bugeaud committed the worst atrocities, burning entire villages and killing resistance fighters, in defiance of all humanitarian rules. It was in Algeria that Faidherbe was introduced to violent repressive methods. He arrived in Senegal, where he was appointed battalion commander and then governor of the colony at the end of 1854. One of Faidherbe’s first actions was to put erudition at the service of colonial conquest. Knowledge of the men and the country was necessary to succeed in his mission. Faidherbe is also considered to be the ‘true founder of the French Africanist school.’ History, ethnology, anthropology, linguistics, topography, were the instruments at the service of hegemony. This mass of knowledge also conveyed the worst racist ideas maintained at the time by the ‘scholars’ of the Paris School of Anthropology, of which Faidherbe was a correspondent. This is what President Senghor did not understand when he said that Faidherbe was a friend of the Senegalese because he had got to know them and made himself Senegalese with the Senegalese. Of course, Faidherbe did not want to get to know them just to know them; he wanted to understand their living environment, habits, and customs to better subjugate the people.

Faidherbe organized the military conquest of the territory and established the principle of cultural assimilation. It was he who created the famous Hostage School in Saint-Louis where the sons of village chiefs and notables, brought back from tours in the interior of the country, were forcibly enrolled and ‘civilized’ to the core. He created the corps of ‘Senegalese tirailleurs’ in 1857, motivated mainly by racist ideas. Blacks make good soldiers, he said in 1859, ‘because they don’t appreciate danger and have very poorly developed nervous systems.’ Faidherbe advocated union with indigenous women. Such a union, made without priests and with its share of illegitimate children, also served the colonial cause by re-motivating the soldiers who had come from the metropole and were threatened by loneliness and depression. Faidherbe made young Diokounda Sidibé, a 15-year-old girl, his ‘country wife.’ Pinet-Laprade, his right-hand man, took Marie Peulh, whom he presented in France as his maid.

For Faidherbe and his collaborators, any action must serve the colonial cause. Nothing was done to please the people. And it was by the force of bayonets and gunboats that ‘pacification’ was carried out by Faidherbe and his successors. Thousands of people were killed, and dozens of villages burned down. Faidherbe himself took part in several military expeditions. This ‘pacification’ is a ‘tranquillity’ and a ‘peace’ obtained at the price of a ferocious military conquest. It was the condition for the establishment of the trading economy, forced labour, colonial education, cultural assimilation and the placing of the colony in dependence.

Until the end of the 1970s, a statue of Faidherbe still stood in Dakar’s presidential palace. His statue in Saint-Louis stands on a square that still bears his name, where French President Emmanuel Macron chose to deliver his speech during his official visit to Senegal in 2018. Already in 1978, director Sembene Ousmane wrote to President Senghor: ‘Is it not a provocation, an offence, an attack on the moral dignity of our national history to sing the Lat Joor anthem under the pedestal of Faidherbe’s statue? Why, since we have been independent for years in Saint-Louis, Kaolack, Thiès, Ziguinchor, Rufisque, Dakar, etc., do our streets, our arteries, our boulevards, our avenues, our squares still bear the names of old and new colonialists?’ After heavy rains in September 2017, Faidherbe’s statue in Saint-Louis fell, but the authorities quickly put it back up. What explains, to this day, this deep attachment to Faidherbe’s figure in Senegal?

There is an attachment to Faidherbe because he was presented by colonial propaganda as a saviour. For example, in Jaunet and Barry’s 1949 history textbook for schoolchildren in French West-Africa, Faidherbe is portrayed as an honest and upright man who loved to protect the weak, the poor, and who punished the oppressors. There are also, among the Senegalese authorities, some who presented him as a ‘friend.’ For example, Senghor used to say: ‘If I speak of Faidherbe, it is with the highest esteem, even friendship, because he got to know us.’ In an interview in 1981 with French diplomat Pierre Boisdeffre, who was passing through Senegal, Senghor insisted on the conqueror’s sympathy: ‘Faidherbe became a Negro with the Negroes, as Father Liberman would later recommend. He thus became Senegalese with the Senegalese by studying the languages and civilizations of Senegal.’

The statue of Faidherbe, the bridge of Ndar and the streets that bear his name, reflect a certain ‘Faidherbe myth’ that has long existed in Senegal. Some even place him in their lineage. One speaks of ‘Maam Faidherbe’ (the Faidherbe Ancestor). They have made him a kind of tutelary genius that must be commended at every entrance or exit of the city of Saint-Louis. But this myth is now shattered. Thanks to excellent awareness-raising work on social media, young people are aware of the negative impact of his action. And they can’t believe it when they discover that the native of Lille has hands stained with the blood of their ancestors.

In the letter cited above, Sembene Ousmane goes on to ask: ‘Has our country not given women and men who deserve the honour of occupying the seats of our high schools, colleges, theatres, universities, streets and avenues, etc.?’ In fact, the Faidherbe High School of Saint-Louis was renamed Cheikh Omar Foutiyou Tall High School in 1984. You explain that ‘Faidherbe’s statue in Saint-Louis means, for all of Senegal’s students, the torturer honoured and glorified. Toppling such a statue is, therefore, to free oneself from the coloniality of the being and space.’ Many cities in Senegal, and more broadly in Africa, still bear the marks of glorification of the former colonizer. These street names, schools, avenues or statues generally bear no clear inscription of the role of such characters in the history of the country. To ‘free ourselves from the coloniality of the being and space,’ who should be celebrated in the public space in Senegal, in place of figures like Faidherbe?

Sembene Ousmane is right, in my opinion. I think it’s important to celebrate the memory of the resistance. That was Algeria’s option after independence. The people of that country were terrified of someone whom Faidherbe considered to be his master. This is the opinion of the historian Roger Pasquier who studied Faidherbe’s Algerian influence on the conquest of Senegal. Bugeaud killed thousands of Algerians and burned many villages. He is the initiator of the burning of Algerian resistance fighters. His statue, like that of Faidherbe in Senegal, was erected in Algiers by the colonizers to immortalize the memory of the conquest. After independence, the Algerians removed the statue and, instead, installed a statue of Emir Abdel Kader with the sword raised as a sign of resistance. The Algerians give their point of view on history with this demonstration which serves to inculcate the memory of the resistance.

In Senegal, we cannot continue to give the point of view of the oppressors. Moreover, the Gorée City Council, in response to citizen demand, understood what was at stake when deciding to rename the ‘Europe Square’ as the ‘Liberty and Human Dignity Square.’ It is important to respect the memory of the oppressed.

The colonizers did not erect the statue of Faidherbe in 1887 by chance. It was when the power of the gunboats defeated all the resistance fighters that Faidherbe’s statue was erected in the middle of Saint-Louis as a sign of rejoicing. Lat Dior [who organised resistance to French occupation in the late 19^th century] was assassinated in 1886, and the statue was inaugurated on March 20, 1887, to celebrate the victory over the resistance fighters; to show the greatness of the metropole. This colonial statue is therefore a symbol. It is an attribute of domination. It is the consecration of a murderous ideology based on supremacy. For someone whose ancestors lived through the misdeeds of military conquest and the torments of the Code of the Indigenate, it is good to honour historical figures who reinvigorate lost pride and esteem. It is important to make decisive choices that give meaning to the present and the future when the time comes to celebrate historical figures in a former colony.

At the call of the Faidherbe Must Fall collective, 200 people mobilized on 20 June in front of the Faidherbe monument in Lille to demand its removal. Salian Sylla, what does the figure of Louis Faidherbe represent to you?

At the time, in 2018, when this campaign was launched, it was to draw attention to the fact that Faidherbe occupied a special place in the public space in Lille. The city of Lille, which is twinned with the city of Saint-Louis, is a city where the figure of Faidherbe can be found in many places. There is a high school that bears his name, a very large avenue that goes to the very heart of the city, the Gunnery Museum where you have a number of figures, usually military men, who are on display and where Faidherbe occupies a central place. In Lille, you also have a site which is quite central, Place de la République – which is not an ordinary place in the collective memory in France – and in front of this place, a huge equestrian statue of Faidherbe. You can’t come to Lille without being confronted with this character.

At the time, there were many French personalities who distinguished themselves for their support to French colonialism. Jules Ferry, who marked the history of France having established compulsory schooling, notably declared that ‘colonization was a daughter of the industrial revolution’ and that ‘the superior races had the duty to civilize the inferior races.’ It was indeed a commercial project put forward to annex other territories and convert them to their way of life and economic system. It represents a whole aggregation of illustrated, documented, written thoughts throughout the years, which was very decisive in the perception that the French had of Africans at the time. There was also Joseph Gallieni, who distinguished himself in the massacres in Madagascar; Hubert Lyautey, who was also Gallieni’s discipline.

Thomas Bugeaud, the invader of Algeria, declared that ‘the aim is not to run after the Arabs, which is useless; it is to prevent the Arabs from sowing, harvesting, grazing, enjoying their fields. Go every year and burn their crops, or exterminate every last one of them.’ Detached in Algeria under his leadership at the beginning of his career in 1844, Faidherbe was a great admirer of Bugeaud. Having fought in Algeria, Faidherbe came to Senegal in the 1850s and did much of the same. ‘You see a war of extermination, and unfortunately, it is impossible to do otherwise,’ he said when he was in Algeria, ‘we are reduced to saying: one Arab killed is two fewer Frenchmen killed.’ So, there is a historical continuity in the work of these generals, which later earned them the tributes and honours of France, in defiance of all the massacres they committed in Africa.

Why the Faidherbe Must Fall campaign? There are several events that have taken place over the years. In 2015, in cities like Pretoria and Johannesburg, people continued to celebrate figures like Cecil Rhodes, the father of British colonization in South Africa, and the Rhodes Must Fall campaign decided to put an end to that and make sure his statues were removed in the country. Leopold II, also considered a great character who did many things in terms of infrastructure in Belgium, has his dark, violent side; he was a bloodthirsty king. The massacres in Congo constitute one of the greatest genocides in Africa: we are talking about ten million people who lost their lives. It was in 2017 that statues of Leopold II were dismantled and toppled in Belgium. Also, in 2017, we have Charlottesville, where there was a demonstration by right-wing extremists who refused to allow the statue of General Robert Lee, who led the Confederate troops during the Civil War, to be toppled by the town council. There was a counter-demonstration led by antifascists, which resulted in the tragic death of a lady, crushed by a far-right extremist who ran into the crowd.

It was during this period that in 2018 the municipality of Berlin decided to rename a series of streets that bore the names of several personalities who distinguished themselves during German colonization in Africa. Namibia, in particular, resisted German colonization between 1904 and 1908, which led to what has been named ‘the first genocide of the 20th century,’ i.e. the extermination of the Hereros. This Berlin municipality decided to give these streets the names of African resistance fighters, such as Rudolf Manga Bell and Anna Mungunda. It was the first time that, symbolically, a city decided not to give the names of those who massacred African populations but of those who resisted.

We get to 2020, with the assassination of George Floyd in the United States, which sparked chain reactions all over the world. This is what has revived Faidherbe Must Fall. Today, what we are told when we talk about Faidherbe is that: ‘He is someone who defended Lille when the Prussians invaded us in 1870. While the whole of France was on its knees, he managed to stand up to them.’ That may be true. Except that Faidherbe’s resistance during this period lasted only three months, whereas what I’m telling you about him is a whole career during which he massacred without remorse, killed, exterminated, pillaged, imposed an economic system through groundnut cultivation, central to the colonizing project. In Africa, the specialization of the colonies (Senegal with groundnuts, what would become Ivory Coast with cocoa) and the gradual disappearance of food crops still pose a problem today because we have an economic system based on a model that was oriented towards the metropole. We still have the consequences of this phenomenon, i.e. an extraverted economy geared towards outside needs rather than self-sufficiency to meet local demand.

On several occasions already, the Faidherbe Must Fall collective has questioned the authorities about the Faidherbe statue in Lille. For the bicentenary of his birth, the city council decided to restore the monument erected in his memory. In an open letter to Mayor Martine Aubry in 2018, you called for ‘the removal of the statue of Louis Faidherbe and all symbols glorifying colonialism from public spaces in Lille.’ Elsewhere in France, avenues, streets, subway stations still celebrate him. In your opinion, what explains this reluctance to discuss the permanence of symbols honouring slave traders and colonialists in the public space, both in Lille and in the rest of France?

We had, at the time, written an open letter to Martine Aubry. We had asked for a reflection on the presence in Lille of figures who represent a racist and xenophobic vision of the world. Unfortunately, we did not find any interlocutor. That goes to show the ambiguity that part of the left in France has with regard to colonialism. And it’s a shame because if we are still, in 2020, talking about this subject, it’s because in 2018 we weren’t heard. We are still in a situation where the left, which has always been, at least in its principles, on the side of the dominated, has not lived up to its historical role.

It is difficult to establish a dialogue in France in 2020 on certain issues because, as soon as we start talking about colonization, we will immediately come to be the ‘people who are enemies of France.’ We are perceived that way. When we were in the street demonstrating to demand that the local authorities remove the equestrian statue of Faidherbe, who was there against us? Right-wing demonstrators, protected by the police. That’s what the debate in France is all about; when you talk about certain subjects, they caricature you and throw stones at you.

Many people have been fighting for a while, particularly against police violence, against unequal policies, for social justice, and all these people have become, overnight, ‘identitarians.’ They are the ones who have become the racists in the end! That’s the irony in France. As long as you’re talking about George Floyd, Michael Brown, police violence taking place in the United States; of course, everyone agrees in France; of course, this phenomenon exists in the United States; of course, the American system is deeply, systemically racist! But as soon as we start saying: ‘Well, now, let’s sit down and look at things in France, what’s happening today,’ when we talk about Adama Traoré, and we start listing, we are told: ‘Ah no no no, the French police is not racist!’

It is a matter of questioning a system that allows people to die. The colonial issue has not been settled. People have been taught to construct a whole imaginary, a whole bunch of representations about the descendants of those from the former colonies in Africa. As long as historical issues are not settled, as long as they are denied, as long as we keep avoiding them, it’s not going to solve the problem. You can’t bring the temperature down just by breaking the thermometer. That is the dynamic we are in today. As soon as questions are raised, people try to caricature, to discredit by using certain words: separatism, communitarianism, anti-white racism.

This Republic has always toppled, named, unnamed, baptized, debaptized; it has always been done. The proof is that one of Lille’s main arteries was called, a few years ago, Paris Road and now Pierre Mauroy Road, the city’s former socialist mayor. To say that we can’t get rid of Faidherbe’s statue is a lie. Because, until 1976, we had the statue of Napoleon III in the heart of the city; this statue was removed and is now in the Museum of Fine Arts. In 1945, the statue of General Oscar de Négrier, another colonizer, was taken down and mysteriously disappeared from the public space. And these are not the only examples.

On 22 June, the Faidherbe Must Fall collective sent an open letter to the candidates of the Lille municipal election held on 28 June. Recalling that ‘the debate on the celebration of figures related to slavery, colonialism or segregationism has resurfaced in many countries,’ you write, ‘for many demonstrators, including us, the racism (and particularly negrophobia) that runs through Western nations has its origins in the criminal history of the slave trade and colonial domination.’ According to you, who should be celebrated in the public space in France, in place of figures like Faidherbe?

This year, I learned from my daughter, who is in middle school, that the city of Lille is organizing a civic week which consists of sending children to visit some historical sites that are part of its heritage to help them discover its history and ‘heroes.’ And these ‘heroes’ are, very often, soldiers. You have a guide who explains that Faidherbe was a great man, who built Senegal, built roads, built hospitals, dug a deep-water port, modernized Senegal and that all Senegalese children are grateful to him today. She reacted by telling one of her friends that she thought it was false. You can imagine; a 9-year-old girl questioning the words of an adult supposed to be a fine connoisseur of Faidherbe’s history. It was all the more shocking because I had been in the Faidherbe Must Fall campaign in 2018, and at the end of 2019, it came back to me through my daughter of Faidherbe as a benefactor to Senegal. It was unbearable for me.

So, we programmed a visit to this Gunnery Museum. Even with the presence of a Black man, this guide reiterated the same words, saying that Faidherbe was a heroic figure, that he had built Senegal through roads and hospitals. We gave him our position, even if we found it difficult to get him to agree to hear us out. He’s in this same narrative; for years, he’s been doing just that, nobody has ever questioned his version of history.

That’s what we’re still presenting in France in 2020 to children who will certainly never, like my daughter, have the opportunity to have someone else say ‘no, it’s not true,’ to have someone who is involved in a campaign to make such a sinister figure disappear from the public space, to have another perception of a part of France’s history in relation to its former colonies. Can you imagine the number of children who have gone through this, who have listened, who have drunk in the words of this gentleman, who have considered that Faidherbe was someone who really did good for the history of Lille, and left the museum enraptured by the fact that they heard he was a hero?

That’s why, measures like ‘we’re going to sort it out, put up an explanatory plaque’ are minor for me. It is better to take our responsibility to entrust a problematic statue to museums that can take care of it, and, with historians, anchor it in a broader history to allow museum visitors to better understand its ins and outs. It is better to place it in a context where people will be able to analyze it and put it into context. As long as I see this equestrian statue, celebrating the power of a heroized man, Martine Aubry will be able to say whatever she wants. Still, for me, she will always be at odds with the principles she claims to defend.

A city that decides to give someone’s name to a street, an avenue, a statue is simply a political act. And only a political act can deal with it. This is what we have been working on for the past few years through this unprecedented mobilization to ensure that the darkest part of Faidherbe’s legacy, which remains unknown, is accessible to everyone.

Khadim Ndiaye is a researcher in history and member of the Senegalese collective against the celebration of Faidherbe. Salian Sylla is an activist at Survie and the Faidherbe Must Fall collective and a scholar.

This interview was conducted by Elimu Podcast which is an aspiring Pan-African podcast, hosted by ROAPE contributor Florian Bobin.

Featured Photography: Faidherbe’s statue in Saint-Louis after heavy rains in September 2017, courtesy of the Senegalese collective against the celebration of Faidherbe.

Unpicking Sudan’s Revolutionary Upheavals

ROAPE

July 2, 2020

On 22 June ROAPE hosted a webinar on Sudan’s revolutionary upheavals. There was a wide-ranging discussion on the revolutionary struggles in the country, and the current efforts of the transitional government. The full video of the e-meeting is now available.

Just over one year ago, Sudan’s revolutionary movement silenced its nay-sayers and successfully brought down the 30-year regime of Omar-al-Bashir. Sudan’s revolution matters to people all over the world. Its movement overcame intense state repression and defied all expectations from outside. And it seemed to succeed, offering inspiration to a whole generation of young people frustrated by the direction global politics was blowing across the world.

The new transitional government, led by Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok, was immediately confronted with high expectations and immense challenges. It needed to somehow resolve ongoing conflicts and bring justice to the many victims of state violence, and to restructure its economy in ways that would deliver real economic change to its people. These challenges have only been compounded by the current global health and economic crisis, which has de-prioritised Sudan’s political transition within the eyes of some of its most important external relations.

Since last year the transitional government has maintained the same approach that Bashir had pursued with such brutal indifference, yet with a new language. So, the transitional authority has repackaged the ancien regimes prescriptions into the language of international development. We have seen food staples like bread and fuel having their subsidies slowly phased out while means-tested cash-transfers for poor families advocated by the World Food Programme (WFP) are being implemented in the second half of this year.

Though demonstrations and protest continue to face a crackdown. Protests on 30 June were called by the Sudanese Professionals’ Association, and the Resistance Committees, both organisations that were active in the movement against al-Bashir and the generals who imposed themselves on Sudanese society after Bashir had been deposed. The demonstrations were called to demand a ‘speeding up’ of the reforms, and to urge further and more radical action (including open trials of al-Bashir and his cronies). Banners on the protest repeated the slogan of the revolution against Bashir: ‘Freedom, Peace and Justice.’ Still urgent needs of the renewed struggle.

For the webinar, we had four speakers:

Salma Abdalla is a political scientist whose research focuses on the relationship between religion, politics and violence. She is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Norwegian University of Life Sciences working on research project examining ideological and religious motivations that lead youth to join violent extremism.

Magdi el Gizouli is a researcher and fellow of the Rift Valley Institute who writes regularly on Sudanese affairs, often on his blog StillSUDAN and for roape.net.

Kholood Khair is a British-Sudanese political commentator and managing partner of Insight Strategy Partners, a think-and-do tank based in Khartoum. Through her current work, she has been working on supporting state and nation-building efforts through the transition period.

Zuhair Bashar (PhD) is a freelance researcher and consultant with extensive experience in conflict resolution and reconciliation at the grassroots level and regional initiatives.

Featured Photograph: Despite the lockdown tens of thousands protest for a deeper and more thorough-going move towards democracy in Sudan (Mohamed Nureldin Abdallah, 30 June 2020).

Digitisation and Population Surveillance after Covid-19

ROAPE

July 1, 2020

ROAPE is hosting a webinar which is being jointly organised with Third World Network-Africa on the long-term implications of increasing digitisation and population surveillance in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The panel is part of a series that ROAPE and TWN have been organising, aimed at bringing more radical analysis to the long-term consequences of the pandemic on social, economic and political life in African countries.

This panel will focus on the long-term consequences of increasing levels of digitised cash transfers, digitised cash payment systems and digital health tracking. We are asking several interrelated questions about what kinds of new ‘visibility’ are being created in this moment of crisis. Are poorer members of society likely to become more visible? How is risk being understood and addressed? Do these new infrastructures better equip societies to address systematic forms of health and economic vulnerability and exclusion? How is the push for digital solutions injecting new actors into existing social policy and industrial policy debates? And what does this moment of crisis reveal about the relationship between ‘disintermediated’ tech solutions and state power?

Our panellist will be:

Anita Gurumurthy is a founding member and executive director of IT for Change, where she leads research collaborations and projects in relation to the network society, with a focus on democracy and gender justice.

Nanjira Sambuli is a researcher, policy analyst and advocacy strategist working on understanding the unfolding impacts of ICT adoption and how those impact power, media and culture, with a keen focus on gender implications.

Jìmí O. Adésínà is Professor and Chair in Social Policy at the University of South Africa. He has published widely on labour, development studies and social theory and is a member of ROAPE.

The webinar will be chaired by Yao Graham of TWN and take place on 15 July at 1 pm Ghana, 3 pm South Africa, 4 pm Kenya and 6:30 pm India (and 2 pm London). If you would like to attend please email website.editor@roape.net from Monday 13 July for the log-in details.

Resistance in Africa: a workshop for activist-scholars

ROAPE

June 30, 2020

In an introduction to a special issue in ROAPE (free to access – see link below), based on our workshop in Johannesburg, Peter Dwyer argues that a radical academic journal must provide activists with a platform to get their stories and experience to a much wider audience. In the context of the economic crisis triggered by Covid-19, and an emerging global movement, this is more urgent than ever.

By Peter Dwyer

In the editorial below, written in late November 2019, I tried to emphasise several points. Firstly, that the role of activists and the organisations and networks in which they are embedded are still much under-researched and under-valued in African studies. This journal is no exception. What activists do or do not do matters fundamentally to their lives, the lives of those amongst whom they live and work and those that rule over them. Secondly, when the shit next hits the fan, it will be these types of people we met in the workshops who will be the first to respond. Or they will be connected to others who will be ‘doing something about it’. Thirdly, a radical academic journal must, at a minimum, help activists use it and roape.net to provide a platform for them to get their stories and experience to a much wider audience.

Tragically all of which has been underscored by the public health and economic crisis created by the emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic resulting in the global ‘great lockdown’ from mid-March 2020. As the ruling classes of the world, particularly in China, Europe and North America, put capitalism into a self-induced coma, the fall out for everyone, but particularly the popular classes in the majority countries of the world continue to be unparalleled and immense. The immediate consequences of, what the Nigerian activist Femi Aborisade referred to as ‘the copy and paste’ lockdown, have been captured by several of the activists in the ROAPE webinar Africa and the Pandemic: Clampdown, Survival and Resistance. It is not surprising that the epicentres of the pandemic mirror the key networks and centres for capitalist exploitation in Africa: Nigeria and South Africa. We also know that women will be disproportionately affected and will face a triple whammy: less access to health care, pushed out of the informal sector where they make up the bulk of the labour force and exposed to an even greater risk of gender based violence.

As the crises continues to unravel, we must never forget that it does so across a continent that has experienced the highest number of ‘cut and paste’ structural adjustment programmes in the world that have so damaged the continent, and particularly its public health systems, over the last 35 years. Despite steady economic growth in the early part of this century, since the last global economic crisis in 2008, the recovery has been fitful and highly uneven as the continent struggles to reach the pre-crisis levels of economic growth with all its gendered dynamics. As we reach the second half of 2020, it is still too early to tell what the exact fall out and the longer-term impacts of the crises will be. But at a general level the sudden and dramatic drop in commodity prices, capital flight, falls in remittances and the disruption to global supply chains do not bode well. Neither does the looming, monumental, North American and European fiscal and debt crisis that will blow freezing cold economic headwinds across the continent. As African governments begin to grapple with the drop-in income and fiscal uncertainty this will inevitably create, they will be tempted to pass the costs on to those who can least afford it most, the African popular classes.

What we do know is that activists and independent organisations of the people we met have been the first to offer support and solidarity and resist the worst excesses of the great lockdown. From nurses protesting at the lack of protective equipment in Kenya to strikes by miners in Congo for more danger money . In all the countries from which the activists to this workshop came from, with the exception of Egypt, the trade unions, community organisations, HIV-AIDS groups, student and other activist circles they are involved with, have all stepped in to support, defend and organise others. The least we can do is to show them solidarity through continuing to provide a space for them at roape.net and we plan to follow this up with a series of reports from the front-line where they are active.

CONNECTIONS 3: ROAPE WORKSHOP IN JOHANNESBURG, 26–27 November 2018

EDITORIAL: Reflecting on resistance and transformation in Africa: a workshop for movements and activist-scholars

Introduction

Our decision to launch the Connections initiative in 2016 was based largely on a strongly held belief by some of the editorial working group (EWG) that the journal had in some sense ‘lost its way’ and needed to reconnect with comrades and make new connections. We were under no illusions that this would be an easy, but if the journal were to stay true to a key part of its historic mission, it was essential we tried.

South Africa was the third of the interconnected workshops (see here and here and here). We worked with local partners who have a history of working with activists and focusing their research on labour and other grassroots organisations. South Africa was also important because it was home to one of the biggest and greatest mass-based liberation movements of the twentieth century, a movement that gave the world some of the most famous moments and activists in political history. The ‘new South Africa’ was the last major African country to be formally liberated from colonialism: its peoples and the movements they had created carried the dreams of hundreds of millions of Africans and the hopes of pan-Africanism and socialism, both of which had been the lifeblood of many African liberation movements. As was evident in all the workshops, these are ideas that still inspire African activists and movements today.

Workshop format

Using the feedback from previous workshops, a lot of time was spent agreeing the structure, content and participants. Approximately 85% of participants and speakers were from Africa and each panel attempted to have a majority of activist speakers (see the programme of the workshop here). The South African planning committee was very aware of the importance of race and gender, and they shared a commitment with ROAPE to use the workshop as a platform for younger activists and activist-scholars. The presence and contributions of younger activists from organisations and networks in Burkina Faso and South Africa, together with some of the inspiring new generation of East African activists that we met in Dar, were testament to this.

It may seem obvious to some to state that people matter. Activists matter. Yet the trials and tribulations of the lives and struggles of activists and organisations and the communities where they live and work, are still largely absent from most Africanist journals and media. It is important to recognise their role as the permanent persuaders trying to bring about social and political change. This is why we centred the workshop around them. To listen to them. Something most academics are not very good at.

The themes discussed in the workshop were in line with the remit of the journal – radical political economy, the actions of the state, global corporates or large landowners. The ruling class and the actions of the popular classes are affected by and affect the types of people who attended. It is near impossible to genuinely reflect the vibrancy of such a workshop: the solidarity, the spirit and yes the sadness and bitter frustrations expressed by activists. This is why we also recorded them and conducted short video interviews. Janet Bujra captures the essence of the three workshops in her introduction to the brief film about them by Robert Coren and Leo Zeilig.

Emergent themes, issues and debates

These people want change now, as do the new, young, global organisations and movements such as Extinction Rebellion, the school climate strikes and now the extraordinary Black Lives Matter movement. We learned in the workshops that African and other histories tell us that things don’t always change so quickly. Yet the environmental and social catastrophe that a new generation of young, global activists urge us to prioritise tells us we don’t have much time. In this way, all these activists are part of an ongoing grand historical struggle over control of what they see as their rightful lands, their own individual and collective labour, and all our futures and the very existence of people and planet. But time is no longer on our side. While individuals come and go these activists are a living legacy of struggles and movements that continue to defend gains and press for more. Even if some of the ideas and movements have changed, they re-form and focus on new issues. In this way, although the workshops were in English, everyone shared a vocabulary of struggle that transcended our language differences: ‘comrade’, ‘sisters’ and ‘brothers’, ‘workers’ and ‘our community’, ‘farmers’ and ‘shack-dwellers’. This is a common language of struggle and activism to which everyone nods respectfully or raises a wary eyebrow as they listen to each other speak. Although this differentiates these activists from some of those with whom they struggle or represent (who some referred to as ‘the masses’), we are also interested in such activists because we can all learn from them, their lives, stories and places.

This suggests that we all know ‘who we are’ and that we can rely on each other through the shared language, commitment and politics of liberation, socialism, pan-Africanism etc. However, the role and reliability of intellectuals and other activist-scholars has been a theme that has emerged at every workshop, most notably in Dar es Salaam and Johannesburg. No surprise then that in the final session, a key activist from Kenya urged others not to trust academics because while they may document the lives of activists, they do not advance their cause as a result.

In a workshop dedicated to resistance, perhaps it was not surprising that the question of organisation became one of the key debates. This debate is not imposed from ‘outside’ the movement by academics or ‘ideologues’ but emerges organically as a tactical and strategic question for activists and movements. Dinga Sikwebu sparked much debate about organisations and resistance and questioning what he argued was the obsession with what he called ‘party-ism’ in South Africa and, based on his observations at the workshop, other parts of Africa (see interviews with activists at the workshop here). His key question was whether it is still useful to see political parties as a vehicle for genuine emancipation. After all, political parties are a Western concept that emerged at a particular time in Europe, and when thinking about what form is best suited to build and support resistance, African activists should not ignore how these parties evolved and the different forms they have taken and continue to take. Tafadzwa Choto drew on her experiences in Zimbabwe and southern Africa to argue that it is not the party form as such that is the problem, but the way in which parties are built, often from the top down by a bureaucratic leadership and not controlled from below by ordinary members. This results in a form of bourgeois politics (both left and right versions) that ends up, as in Zambia, Zimbabwe and South Africa, in implementing capitalist and neoliberal policies. As such she welcomed the recent setting up of a workers’ party in South Africa (for the videos of each session in the workshop click here).

Lessons

There are too many lessons to mention, too difficult to capture, because some have no place or seem out of place in an academic journal. Some are simply too short-lived, and social science and rigorous research often like to work on facts and data, precise terminology and polite language.

Activists stories reveal ongoing personal and collective change: be that the notable increase in confidence since the 2011 uprisings of many women in Egypt, who now publicly scorn or scoff at unwarranted attention; or the lessons from starting a new union in Senegal or South Africa. Of course, some learning is very painful, and physically and psychologically damaging, as was made very clear by activists talking about the real consequences of defeat in Egypt or Burkina Faso, and Zimbabwe, or in South Africa, at Marikana.

What also came out clearly from all of the panels and contributions, and in the interviews with activists, is the importance of grounding ideas and debates in local struggles. But also, that activists must always be open to listening and engaging, even if disagreeing with others from across the continent and beyond. That is, we should always seek, even if it is not possible at times, to go beyond the smallness of our own struggles, be it a rural land occupation or a protest against nationwide cuts in fuel or food subsidies. This is also important because, as we have noted elsewhere in previous issues, this journal has never uncritically bought into the hype and bluster of ‘Africa rising’. African countries have been a huge experimental playground for structural rupture for decades. We, and the participants, see no reason to believe that those who attempt to manage and promote capitalism, in whatever form, have cured the recurring historical challenges of booms and slumps or crises of overproduction and profitability. Africa, with its growing and youthful population, its abundant natural resources and ‘market potentials’, will always be susceptible, if unevenly, to further plunder, land grabs, extractivism and exploitation of lands and peoples.

Consequently, when the disrupters from Washington, central government or the mining corporations come their way, as they have and they will, it is clear and reassuring to know that ‘the people’ will ‘know someone who knows someone’ who can help – someone who will encourage them to ‘give it a go’, call that meeting or just say no! An older revolutionary perhaps, a retired trade unionist, or the mother of a student? That person will probably be someone linked to communities, like Napoleon in Marikana, networks of women like Fatou and Koradji in Senegal and Chad, the friends of youth in Burkina Faso, or the sisters of a fish-seller in Morocco. Nobody knows, and they won’t know until after that step has been taken, after that stand has been made – and that’s when we in academia might find out what is going on.

What’s next?

In April 2019, participants from previous workshops have since organised several other meetings one of which was a dialogue for activists and researchers in East and Southern Africa. In October 2019, another brought together existing activists and activist-scholars and key people from an earlier generation of activism to critically evaluate the lessons of success and failure of previous movements, largely in West Africa (in January 2020 another similar workshop took place in Tunisia). As some activists made very clear across all the workshops, what an academic journal based in the UK can do very practically ‘on the ground’ for these activists and movements is severely limited. Although we are aware of that, we did not make that clear enough or soon enough to some participants, especially those who had never heard of ROAPE. Managing expectations is important.

Secondly, we still think it is very important to provide spaces like roape.net for activists to write their stories, and, if needed, to help them write their stories, letting them know they are not alone. A common point in all workshops was the value of an activist’s contribution and of hearing more from other activists who are like them. They want people like them to be given more time to speak and less given to scholar-activists, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and others. Is this something than that can be facilitated at any future workshops? Or should we be more modest, and provide space for activists in the form of short articles, blogs and vlogs at roape.net? Yet challenges remain. We were sternly reminded that if we ask someone to write a blog, will we pay their bus fare to the nearest library?

No matter what concepts, words or slogans we and others use when writing and analysing what seem like endless and momentous challenges that face the popular classes across the continent, someone somewhere has to do something about those challenges. That people continue to do so can be seen in the magnificent revolts that are sweeping the world as we write (see some of the coverage roape.net has provided in recent years). There is hope.

It is very likely that it is people like the ones we met in this and the other workshops who are the making of the current revolts. It is they who constantly stand out from the crowd. It is they who call that meeting, send that text, and write that pamphlet. It is they who try to motivate others to attend, to gather and to strike. It is they who do the endless, thankless, and sometimes very dangerous work of bringing others together. The humdrum, bread-and-butter work of activism is not often exciting or glorious, but without it we are all, literally, finished. Nothing else matters. The urgency of the global climate crisis that is upon us testifies to this. The urgency of the need to act now was captured at this workshop by Tina Mafanga, a young activist from Tanzania:

This is our time to be fully committed within the struggle, so I would just like to tell them, especially the young comrades, that we are not the future, we are the current, it’s now that we have to really, really engage with the struggle, it’s now that we need to really work towards the change that we want to see within our societies. We need to drive this revolutionary agenda and walk the talk of the revolution by really practising it within the ground. We do not need to wait for the future for us to start engaging because we are the current. (Interview, Roape.net 2019)

We are delighted to introduce the special issue in the journal (available until the end of August) which includes contributions from some the participants and activists at the workshop in Johannesburg. Grasian Mkodzongi discusses struggles over land in post-apartheid Africa; Beesan Kasaab writes about the lessons from Egypt’s great revolution in 2011; Didier Kiendrebeogo and Mohamed Traore describe their activism in the Organisation Démocratique de la Jeunesse of Burkina Faso, while labour struggles in Zimbabwe are discussed by Naome Chakanya and a powerful account of the meeting is provided by Njuki Githethwa.

Please access all of the content of the special issue here.

Each live presentation and the panel presentations and discussions were livestreamed on Facebook and can be found here.

Peter Dwyer is a member of ROAPE’s Editorial Working Group and works in the department of Global Sustainable Development at the School for Cross-Faculty Studies, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK.

Featured Photograph: French troops used submachine guns, grenades and armoured cars to crush an uprising in Djibouti as protestors fought against continued colonial rule (23 March 1967).

Exposing Africa’s Stark Inequities of Private Health Care

ROAPE

June 25, 2020

The Covid-19 pandemic has laid bare the inadequacy of mainstream arguments concerning the role of the African state in addressing existing health inequalities. In this blogpost, Joan Nimarkoh highlights the potential reawakening of progressive models for health delivery centred on the needs of poor as the pandemic exposes the stark inequities of privatised health systems.

By Joan Nimarkoh

Pushing the boundaries of possibility is nothing new for African governments and people are used to turning the region’s energy and ingenuity to overcome adversity. This is very evident in Africa’s response to the worst global pandemic in over a century. Figures on the impact on the coronavirus pandemic in Africa were predictably bleak. Western government and development agencies braced themselves for an avalanche of virus cases, high death rates and a vast humanitarian aid bill amounting to billions of dollars.

In a familiar pattern of Afropessimism the global media reported looming humanitarian and economic crises with estimates of over 190,000 deaths.

Against the odds a different narrative of Africa emerged, as the region effectively stemmed the spread of the virus and avoided the mushrooming death rates suffered elsewhere. Some African governments worked quickly to inject emergency funding for the procurement of equipment and resources while rapidly establishing systems for national tracking and diagnostics.

Yet empowered by the state, security agencies across the region were guilty of a series of civil rights abuses in order to implement severe lockdowns targeting urban poor communities. In the name of fighting the pandemic numerous African governments put aside human rights protections, highlighting the dangers of side-lining grassroots organisations in delivering key public health interventions.

Nevertheless, the notable scope of state centred interventions implemented across the region to beat the virus raises the prospects for future health sector reform while highlighting the shortcomings of declining public investment in fragile and overstretched health services. Importantly, promoting health rights is paramount in widening access for vulnerable groups and in particular the informal poor who carry the burden of high healthcare costs and poor public health provision.

Africa’s health deficit

Currently Africa’s health sector faces numerous challenges which disproportionately impact on the poorest most marginalised groups. Inadequate public investment in health infrastructure and human resources have been worsened by widespread privatisation. As a result, access to affordable healthcare sharply declined as the number of health workers plummeted. In 2018, there were only 3.8 doctors per 10 000 people in Nigeria and less than 1 in Ethiopia and Senegal – well below international averages.

Critically Africa’s relatively successful coronavirus response was largely down to preventative measures. Limited capacity across regional health systems meant that few countries could have coped with widespread virus transmission. Where deaths have occurred, access to Intensive Care Unit centres and effective treatments remained a missing factor, alongside an acute patient- health worker ratio. This pattern worsens in remote rural areas compounded by lower availability of test and trace services.

Government action on disease control and prevention has lacked weight, neglecting the impact on the poorest households struggling with recurrent costs of treatment and limited access to local health services. Progress on malaria which kills 400,000 Africans yearly has in some countries been reversed. The UN report that there were 3.5 million more cases in 2017 in the 10 most affected African countries than in previous years.

Large health inequalities exist between social groups who have uneven access to life saving treatments particularly for women and children.

Amnesty International, reporting on Sierra Leone, revealed growing demand for greater rights protection for women in need of maternal health services. ‘Women walk miles and miles to access these free medical programmes and sometimes they don’t get there in time. We need an outreach programme that provides greater accessibility,’ says Edward Badasenjoh, University Hospital, Njala in Sierra Leone.

Moreover, vast class disparities in health outcomes have outlined the extent to which health policy has been framed around urban-centred more affluent households at the expense of the informal rural poor. Lack of public commitment over affordable public health provision is commonplace across the continent despite modest public health subsidy schemes designed to meet basic coverage such as the National Health Insurance Scheme in Ghana, and similar initiatives in Uganda and Kenya.

Prospects for reform

More than two decades of liberalisation reforms have gutted Africa’s health sector, depriving it of billions of dollars of state financing while policies promoting the privatisation of health have offered lucrative market access to global health insurance companies providing access to services based on income rather than need. As a consequence, a large proportion of African society remains locked out of basic health coverage.

Progressive healthcare reform in Africa must be founded on principles of universal health access embedded in sector nationalisation. State financing of public health resources should also be aligned to the redistribution of tax revenue from private institutions which fail to widen access to less privileged vulnerable groups. Raising national levels of state funding to health could be achieved by honouring the Abuja declaration commitment of a 15 percent share of GDP to be allocated to health expenditure.

Redistribution of resources alone will not address poor capacity of health institutions away from urban centres. A massive effort is needed to recruit, train and deploy thousands of health workers to address local disparities between rural and urban areas and ensure better availability of local services.

Civil society actors can play a fundamental role in establishing bottom up mechanisms for health frameworks by ensuring state agencies maintain agreed standards for improved health outcomes by monitoring critical areas such as treatment and drug costs and availability of targeted care and outreach networks for vulnerable groups.

Some health organisations have long campaigned for a reorientation the region’s health sector which places deprived communities at the heart of government strategies through up-scaling of public health programmes for vulnerable groups alongside efforts towards national health coverage.

The People’s Health Movement, a campaign group, calls for African governments to promote health financing that protects the poorest from crippling treatment costs. Its statement on Universal Health Coverage highlights the need for a policy shift, pushing for ‘financing systems that eliminate out-of-pocket expenditure by strengthening prepayment mechanisms that pool resources, for instance financing from general or targeted tax revenue without charging users.’

Calls for change have gathered momentum as the benefits of community-based bottom up approaches to Africa’s unique context for equitable health delivery become evident. Pressure is likely to grow even further as demand builds for universal protection from the possible threat of a second wave of the pandemic later this year.

Conclusion

Following the global outbreak of the Covid-19, large injections of public funding and broad-based development state interventions are no longer a fantasy, thus alternative routes to fast track pro-poor development pathways look promising and possible.

Africa’s response to the coronavirus has pushed forward the notion of widening state intervention in the health care sector, by demonstrating the potential for positive change where political commitment is sustained.

Reversing the role of the private sector in health care delivery will require de-emphasising the prominence of market-based ideologies in determining equitable and accountable health systems that cater to the needs of those marginalised from existing private health provision.

Guaranteeing health care rights for all through massive public investment in Africa’s health system is paramount for improving health service coverage by establishing a new social contract on health centred on the poorest most vulnerable communities.

Achieving such a policy shift is by no means inevitable but will rely upon the success of grassroots movements and activists pushing for radical health care reform as Africa moves into a post-pandemic future.

Joan Nimarkoh is a writer and freelance journalist specialising in African affairs. Her interests include democracy, radical development frameworks and gender equality.

Featured Photograph: Health workers in the DRC put on gloves on before checking patients at the hospital (Vincent Tremeau).

Libya at a Turning Point

ROAPE

June 24, 2020

The situation is moving quickly in Libya with serious implications for the region as a whole. David Seddon argues that the forces of General Haftar have now been effectively defeated. However, the country remains a battle ground between competing imperialist forces seeking control of Libya’s resources and its location as a gateway to the continent.

By David Seddon

In my blogpost on the early stages of the Covid-19 epidemic in North Africa, I wrote that: ‘Libya is a special case, as fighting has continued there ever since the overthrow of President Ghaddafi in 2011. The country is divided between the forces loyal to the Tripoli-based UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA) and those of Khalifa Haftar, the military commander who backs a rival administration in east -the Libyan National Army (LNA)’. The background to the conflict was discussed by Gary Littlejohn in earlier roape.net blogposts (see here and here)

Recent Developments

Despite calls in mid-March for a humanitarian pause in the fighting made by the UN and several countries, in order to address the threat of an epidemic, the fighting continued over the next three months. In the last few weeks, however, the forces of the GNA have managed, with assistance from forces sent by Turkey, to achieve significant progress.

They took Tripoli International Airport on Wednesday 3 June and the LNA base of Tarhuuna, some 60 kms to the south east of Tripoli on Friday 5 June. The next day, the Supreme Council of Libyan Sheikhs and Elders in the city of Zintan (170 kilometres southwest of Tripoli) welcomed the victories of the forces of the Government of National Accord (GNA) against Haftar’s militias, and the liberation of the entire western region.

The Council commented, in a statement issued on 6 June, that it ‘Blesses and congratulates the Libyan people and army for the victories in the legendary battles they fought against the enemy, and the liberation of the entire western region’. The statement concluded that ‘The vicious plans of the forces of evil represented by some Arab regimes supporting the return of dictatorship, tyranny and military rule, have been defeated’.

The Council stressed the need to end the presence of Haftar’s forces in the country and hold them accountable for the crimes they have committed, while reiterating its refusal to negotiate with the ‘war criminal’ or to recognise him as a partner in the peace process. It also demanded that Haftar ‘be brought to justice’. In the meanwhile, Haftar left the country to seek support from Egypt. His meeting with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, however, failed to result in the commitment to provide military support that he was looking for. Instead, Egypt proposed an initiative which included a ceasefire that might pave the way for a new political process in Libya.

A senior official in the LNA fighting under Haftar’s command was reported in the Egyptian media as saying that ‘Haftar will not be fully pushed out of the picture immediately but will remain in Cairo indefinitely under close monitoring.’ In the meanwhile, Russia and Egypt are working to formulate a plan for the east of Libya.

In the meanwhile, the Supreme Council has called for a strategy on the part of the GNA for the post-conflict phase, focusing on rebuilding the army and ‘crushing foreign agendas aimed at destabilising Libya.’ By this they meant the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, France and Russia, all of which have been supporting Haftar and the LNA in recent years, against the UN officially recognised GNA and those supporting it.

Russian Involvement

It looks as though the forces of General Haftar, which first launched an assault on Tripoli, a GNA stronghold, in 2017, when roape.net carried a piece by Gary Littlejohn to which I added a commentary and update, have now been effectively defeated and that it is end-game for strongman Haftar himself and for the LNA. But this raises questions about the future of Russia, which has played a major role in support of Haftar and of an alternative government for Libya.

In 2011, as the West prepared to intervene militarily in the North African country, it needed a United Nations (UN) Security Council resolution. It was expected that Moscow would vote this down. Its ambassador to Tripoli had already urged the Russian president, Dimitri Medvedev, to intervene. Instead, he was fired, and Russia abstained, allowing Resolution 1973 authorising the use of forces against Libya to pass.

It was never likely that Russia would simply stand by and watch the armed forces of the West and key Gulf States engineer the overthrow of President Gadhafi and his regime. But, already heavily involved in Syria in support of Bashir al-Assad, it was slow to react.

During 2011, Moscow went along with the UN-sponsored efforts to mediate the conflict. It even voted for UN Resolution 2259, establishing the Government of National Accord (GNA) in Tripoli and recognising it as the only legitimate authority in Libya. As it began to look as though the Assad regime was secure and General Khalifa Haftar appeared on the Libyan scene, Russian diplomacy actively sought to reactivate its links to Libya.

But the Russian anger and feelings of being tricked by the West in Libya never went away. Vladimir Putin, after returning to the presidency in 2012, accused the West in repeated angry outbursts, of destroying Libya, murdering Ghaddafi and exceeding the mandate of UN Resolution 1973, which called for the protection of civilians, not a change of regime.

Moscow’s doors were opened to all Libyan factions. It hosted GNA leaders, tribal dignitaries and even representatives of Saif Al-Islam Ghaddafi, the son of the former president, while deciding on which horse to back in the conflict. General Haftar, in particular, with the support of Egypt’s Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, reached out to Moscow for assistance, despite his old connection to Washington. He belonged to the old Libyan military cadres who were no strangers to Moscow, he was familiar with its weapons, and once was Ghaddafi’s man, before falling out over the 1980s Chad war.

Moscow never accepted that the ‘Arab Spring’ of 2011 was a spontaneous eruption against tyrants in the Arab world. Instead, it coined its own term for it, describing what happened as ‘coloured revolutions’, encouraged and even planned by the West. These ‘coloured revolutions’ included that of the Ukraine and other ‘near abroad’ countries, to use the Russian terminology. The overthrow of Ghaddafi and his regime by the West was yet another of these ‘coloured revolutions’.

Ghaddafi had also been, like Assad in Syria, a potential Russian client and regional lynchpin. After all, Putin himself had visited Libya in 2008 and signed lucrative hydrocarbon deals, infrastructure contracts worth billions of dollars and, as a gesture of good will, wrote-off about $5 billion of Soviet-era Libyan debts.

From 2015 onwards, Russia had provided assistance to General Haftar’s Libyan National Army (LNA), while publicly denying it. Haftar, in return, promised Russia more lucrative deals and a bigger chunk of the post-war reconstruction that would follow on from his military success for Russian companies.

As the conflict began to turn against the LNA in the spring of 2020, Moscow’s immediate goal became to shield the LNA from total defeat – arguably as it has done in Syria. But now, it will have to re-assess its strategy for the medium and longer term.

Long-term strategic Russian objectives are several. Libya’s long Mediterranean coastline, its location as a gate to Africa and its oil and gas make the country highly attractive economically to Russia. However, its military concerns are NATO’s bases and Turkey’s ambitions in the region. A strong Russian presence in Libya would help hold Turkish ambitions in check. Turkey not only supports the GNA but wants to terminate any future role for Haftar.

Turkish Involvement

Forces sent by Turkey to support the GNA, were arguably decisive in achieving the military breakthrough of the last few weeks. The recent developments in Libya were significantly affected by Turkey’s decision at the start of the year to send troops in support of the GNA, despite the reluctance of the main opposition party. Significantly, Turkish support on the ground has largely come in the form of up to 10,000 Syrian mercenaries brought in from Idlib. Yet it has been the use of armed drones that has been fundamental to the strategic gains made by the GNA, as they were able to successfully destroy many of the UAE-supplied Russian Pantsir S-1 systems. This game-changing element of modern warfare, which is now being increasingly used in such conflicts, has also served Turkey with some degree of tactical success in Syria’s Idlib province.

Ankara’s involvement in the Libyan war was a gamble which appears to have paid off. It serves to justify the so-called Blue Homeland policy, which is aimed at establishing Turkish hegemony in the eastern Mediterranean through exploiting the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) agreed between Ankara and Tripoli. What role Turkey will now play in future developments in Libya remains to be seen. Whatever happens will have wider implications for the geo-politics of the Eastern Mediterranean, particularly with regard to relations between Russia and Turkey, given their respective involvement in Syria.

Libya is at risk of becoming the site of a protracted proxy war, like Syria, as a patchwork of powers have lined up to back the United Nations-recognized GNA based in Tripoli, and others have backed Haftar’s LNA, which still controls the east. As in Syria, Russia and Turkey have emerged as the most consequential players, backing opposite sides of the conflict.

There are also possible implications for the future of Yemen and the Horn of Africa, given Turkey’s influence in Yemen and geo-strategic interests in the Red Sea and Bab Al-Mandeb Strait. After all, Turkey has its largest overseas military base located in the Somali capital of Mogadishu, as well as its largest embassy.

Given the on-going US involvement in Somalia, through the US Africa Command (AFRICOM), as part of its ‘war against terror’ in the form of Al-Shabab, the potential for ‘a conflict of interests’ there between the US and Turkey is considerable. It was after all only in February this year that the AFRICOM commander, General Stephen Townsend visited Kenya and Somalia to discuss security and other issues.

A New Phase

On 7 June, it was reported that Russia had announced its support for the cease-fire in Libya proposed by Egyptian President Sisi. ‘We read the content of the Egyptian President’s offer, of course, we support all kinds of offers to stop the conflicts in Libya as soon as possible,’ said Mikhail Bogdanov, special representative of Russia to the Middle East and African countries, according to the Ria News Agency.

Haftar and his allies had gathered in the Egyptian capital on 6 June to sign the new ‘Cairo Declaration’. This called for a cease-fire in Libya and the establishment of a new organisation to form a House of Representatives and Presidential Council. Appearing at a news conference in Cairo alongside Sisi, Haftar agreed to this proposal even though it would inevitably reduce his power in his eastern home territory and probably reflects the growing impatience of his foreign backers.

The GNA seemed poised to reject Egypt’s proposals but its war with Haftar’s LNA in the east still seems far from over. Both sides’ foreign backers may be unwilling to curtail efforts to expand their regional ambitions. The LNA still controls the east as well as most of Libya’s oil fields in the south.

Libya remains divided, but if a ceasefire is agreed – which seems possible – then there will have to be negotiations between the two sides, with the ‘Western’ allies looking now far stronger than their opposition. A Syrian-style intervention by Russia in Libya now looks less likely, although on 18 June, AFRICOM released new evidence of Russian fighter jets being flown in Libya by state-backed Russian private military contractors. Moscow needs to decide what kind of compromises, if any, it is prepared to make with the other Western and Middle Eastern players supporting the GNA, which at the moment are triumphant.

Generally, the Trump administration has been retreating from the Middle East, while Putin has been advancing. But the situation in Libya now may change this. The alarm was sounded recently by General Stephen Townsend, the commander of AFRICOM, who only recently (on 29 May) accused Moscow of trying to extend their involvement in northern Africa, saying: ‘Like I saw them [the Russians] in Syria, they are expanding their footprint in Africa.’

On 15 June, it was reported that the Interior Minister of the GNA, Fathi Bashagha, said that any initiatives to end the political crisis and unify the Libyan state institutions are welcome. He stressed, however, that ‘these initiatives should include the civil authority that governs the will of the people and the submission of the army to civilian authority, as there is no place for war criminals who aspire to seize power by force’, in apparent reference to Haftar.

On 15 June, Reuters reported that Turkey is in talks with the GNA to use naval and air bases in Libya, although no final agreements have been reached. This would give Ankara considerable leverage over the other players on the GNA side. A high-level Turkish delegation that included the country’s Foreign Minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, its finance minister, and its intelligence chief arrived in Libya later in the week for talks about the latest developments in the crisis and the military cooperation agreement signed between the two governments last November.

Turkey’s intervention in the conflict has prompted a rift with its NATO ally France, which has supported Haftar’s forces. On 17 June, the French ministry of defence accused the Turkish navy of behaving in an ‘extremely aggressive’ manner, harassing a French warship in the eastern Mediterranean as it tried to inspect a cargo vessel suspected of carrying weapons to Libya in violation of a UN embargo. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said the next day that NATO was investigating the incident.

In the meanwhile, Algeria has offered to act as a mediator between the two sides and Egypt has called for an emergency meeting of the Arab League to discuss recent developments in Libya’s civil war.

David Seddon is a researcher and political activist who has written extensively on social movements, class struggles and political transitions across the developing world.

Sisi’s Bestial Regime: Egypt under military rule

ROAPE

June 23, 2020

Introducing a collection of papers in ROAPE that explore the dimensions of land grabbing in North Africa, Elisa Greco and Ray Bush discuss Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s bestial regime in Egypt, and land reforms in the country. They welcome a special issue that offers a class analysis of the processes of primitive accumulation and land dispossession in Egypt and Tunisia – now available to access for free until the end of August.

By Elisa Greco and Ray Bush

Thousands of mainly young Egyptians took to the streets of Cairo and Egypt’s provincial centres on 20 September 2019. They protested against the repressive regime of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and the corruption that is its hallmark. The protest was met with some surprise. Sisi’s repressive regime has clamped down on all dissent since it came to power following a military coup in 2013. Extensive and systematic torture of anyone deemed to oppose the government has become a feature of Egyptian politics and the regime has received support from among others, erstwhile UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, and ex International Monetary Fund (IMF) chief, now head of the European Central Bank, Christine Lagarde. The message seems clear from Washington and Europe: stability at all costs for the imperial triad irrespective, at least for the moment, of torturous treatment of Egyptians as long as law and (dis)order is maintained and there is no threat from Islamists or challenge to Israel. Continued US military support underpins Sisi’s bestial regime that draws on Egypt’s strategic rent to buttress repression. The heady days of the previous 30-year dictator Hosni Mubarak and his regime of a ‘democracy of newspapers’ where criticism could be voiced, as long as it did not involve the ‘royal’ Mubarak family, may now be lamented.

Street protest and demonstrations in autumn 2019 followed social media posting by a former construction engineer accusing Sisi and his close aides of corruption (El-Hamalawy 2019). The plethora of house building, hotels and palaces, at a time when the government stressed the country’s poverty and advanced IMF-backed austerity, jarred with the country’s youth. Young Egyptians not involved in the 2011 uprising and, it seems, unconnected to any political affiliation took to the streets with rage. They were greeted with repression. More than 4000 protesters and perceived sympathisers were arrested, including at least 111 children; places of protest, squares, avenues and corniches were militarised and the state used bribes to incentivise counter-demonstrations in support of dictatorship (Amnesty International 2019).

The blanket arrests were indiscriminate, including academics, lawyers and broadcasters who may even have worked for state-controlled media. At least 16 lawyers were arrested while seeking to defend their clients. The director of Adalah Center for Rights and Freedoms, Mohamed el-Baqer was arrested as he visited the Supreme State Security Prosecution to defend detained activist Alaa Abd El Fattah. He was charged with the same ‘offence’ as his client: ‘membership of a banned group’ and ‘spreading false information’. Perhaps one of the most unjust and certainly unlawful moves by the state has been the re-arresting of former prisoners.

The well-known activist from the 2011 uprisings Alaa Abd El Fattah was arrested on 29 September as he served probation in Dokki police station. He had already been imprisoned for a five-year term for peaceful protest in 2013 and part of his probation was to spend 12 hours a night at a police station for five years. He too was now accused of the infamous crime of spreading false news and being a member of a banned organisation, it seems while he was still incarcerated. There is now a vigil at Tora Prison in Cairo to secure Alaa’s right to have communication with his family who are denied all access to him. His mother Laila, and others have been beaten and brutalised by police and by thugs hired by the state to intimidate them to stop their peaceful protest.

One outcome of the September 2019 protests was that Sisi reinstated a food subsidy programme to 1.8 million Egyptians who had been removed from the food staples programme. Sisi’s direct intervention was revealed as an act of kindness to the poor – the benevolent dictator did indeed understand the poor’s impoverishment. It is more likely that his advisors remembered that a previous cut to bread subsidies in 1977 had led to deadly countrywide protests, and deaths in bread lines preceded the 2011 uprising against Hosni Mubarak (see Bush and Ayeb’s interview on their new book here).

What is less discussed is why Egypt needs a programme that subsidises goods to more than 60 million from a population of almost 100 million? Why are so many Egyptians poor and frankly have little chance of ever becoming less impoverished in an economic system that has become more unequal since 2013? There are many reasons for this, but two issues are significant.

The first is the consequence of the November 2016 three-year IMF agreement for a US $12 billion loan; the second is the way in which the military has further enriched itself as an institution of capital accumulation.

The IMF agreement, which did not include additional bilateral funding from China and Saudi Arabia, was a traditional and time-weary policy of reducing public expenditure, including subsidies, introducing VAT and liberalising the exchange rate (el-Badrawi and Corkery 2017). There were also swingeing cuts to worker rights and the introduction of draconian working practices and the destruction of meaningful trade union organisation. The inflationary impact has been enormous, costs of imports have mushroomed, and living standards have plummeted as unemployment expanded and repression increased. Early protest after the IMF loan was initially discussed in 2012 have been pushed aside as Sisi refused to consider any alternative platform of reform that could harness a large pool of labour to produce goods for local consumption by workers and peasants who could afford to buy them.

The role of the military in benefiting from Sisi’s compliance with the IMF and drawing on Egypt’s geostrategic rent is crucial in understanding repression and capital accumulation in an economy that has been structurally rooted in three main revenue streams from rent, not productive activities – rent from passages through the Suez canal; oil and gas; and foreign assistance (see Alexander and Bassiouny 2014). The historically important rent from labour migration remittances has long ceased to be a safety valve after imperialist interventions in Iraq and Libya destroyed, among other things, the regional labour market.

Although the Egyptian military is secretive, and parliament is never allowed to see its financial accounts, there is evidence that military-affiliated institutions have gained control of ‘previously state-administered enterprises’. The Egyptian military has extended and deepened its reach into areas of health, education and energy production, fish farming and restoration of historical sites. In agriculture the Ministry of Military Production has linked with ministries of planning, communication, agriculture and finance to manage and monitor farmer tenure cards and it has sold state land in, among other areas, Kafr al-Sheikh to investors creating a so-called investment hub.

‘Land, politics and dynamics of agrarian change and resistance in North Africa’

The recent uprising in Egypt is consistent with Christian Henderson’s argument that the inequality inherent to the corporate food regime in Egypt can feed the rebellion against the dominant class relations and that Egyptian small farmers and their demand for land and water access were crucial to the 2011 revolution. The issue hosts a Forum that explores the domestic dimensions of land grabbing in Northern Africa, offering a class analysis of processes of primitive accumulation and land dispossession in Egypt and Tunisia. These themes are introduced in the Forum Editorial by Mathilde Fautras and Giulio Iocco who revisit the land question in North Africa – and especially in Egypt and the Maghreb – to contribute to bringing into dialogue two streams of critical research on land grabbing, carried out within the field of critical agrarian studies, and research on land in North Africa, by experts of the region – that have so far often proceeded separately from each other.

The forum explores the domestic dimensions of land grabs in North Africa, showing the heterogeneity of the domestic grabbers. The paper by Saker El Nour analyses ‘land grabbing from below’ by the squatters – members of the local elites, setting out the ongoing conflicts between different fractions of the elites and/or of capital. El Nour also raises the role of the Upper Egypt urban petty bourgeoisie collectively reclaiming land, and the involvement of rural local elites and medium farmers who have accumulated capital through Gulf work emigration. Their aim is to formalize individual property rather than developing agriculture, in order to gain social prestige or economic capital through selling the land after legalization. The main actors in contemporary struggles over land in Wadi al-Nukra are anything but small farmers. Their content thus has the cumulative effect of marginalising small farmers and local land users – even when some of these farmers are among the beneficiaries of land distribution projects.

Yasmine Moataz Ahmed explores the social life of grapes and wheat in a context where the Egyptian former Minister’s family has invested in large-scale commercial grape farming for export, by taking over the land of small-scale farmers. Ahmed’s article explores the social and symbolic dimensions of land grabs and offers a historical understanding of class formation in the Fayyum region, based on primitive accumulation, as tenants were evicted from the land to make way for domestic land grabs by Egyptian oligarchs.

Francesco De Lellis looks at domestic land grabbing in Egypt through the lens of farmers’ mobilisations in the aftermath of the Egyptian revolution, documenting forms of direct action by farmers – such as land occupations – and a drive towards unionisation, expressed through the emergence of a network of independent peasants’ unions.

The centrality of the land question to the national question and broadly to sovereignty is also at the centre of Marie Widengård’s article on how a land grab by a Chinese company was initially discussed by the Zambian government, to then be rejected after a change in government following the 2011 elections.

Elisa Greco teaches at Lille Catholic University. She is a member of the Editorial Working Group of the Review of African Political Economy. Ray Bush teaches at the University of Leeds where he is also a member of the Centre for African Studies (LUCAS) advisory board. He is a member of the Review of African Political Economy’s Editorial Working Group. His book, co-authored with Habib Ayeb, Food Insecurity and Revolution in the Middle East and North Africa, can be purchased here.

Featured Photograph: Protests against Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on September 24, 2019 (Shannon Stapleton).

Creative Energy Unleashed: Black Lives Matter and Decolonisation

ROAPE

June 19, 2020

Heike Becker reflects on the Black Lives Matter movement on the continent, the development of radical art and how institutionalized racism and its root – capitalism – continue to kneel on all our necks.

By Heike Becker

The current protests against anti-black racism around the world have been nothing short of amazing. In July last year I was in a ‘Black Lives Matter’ demo in Berlin with a few hundred, mostly black, mostly young protestors who raised concerns about racism and police brutality in Germany. Being middle-aged, white and, mostly, based in South Africa, I felt somewhat out of place. But then, it also had the distinct feeling of being ‘at home’, and I was trying to learn by listening to black Germans who for once were the majority in the rally. The march snaked its way from the centre of the German capital to its main rallying point at Oranienplatz in Kreuzberg where a range of speakers reminded the crowd of some of the well-known and lesser-known deaths in police custody in Germany. Young people spoke about their experiences of being black German at university and on the sports fields. Sensing the energy of the march was fun but my sense was that shoppers and pedestrians hurrying back from work seemed rather astonished about the concerns and demands; onlookers seemed to consider them rather outlandish, partly perhaps because chants, placards and speeches were predominantly in English.

Less than a year has passed since this overcast Northern summer’s day, and, in the aftermath of the death of George Floyd the world is on fire. From the initial anger about the anti-black racist police brutality in the United States, across the world the crowds of BLM protests have grown exponentially in number and so has their anger. So also have the ever more radical demands. There seems to be a growing sense, in the midst of the pandemic, that ‘this time around’ the world may change for better and that there won’t a return to the ‘old normal’.

Particularly astonishing, and in my reading most radical, have been the tremendous connections made between memory, colonialism and racism across Europe, and including the United Kingdom. From Bristol to Antwerp, colonial monuments have come under attack and been sunk, some quite literally. Amidst the violence and the pain there is also a great deal of creative hope. The young black boy standing atop the plinth where the statue of 17^th century slave trader Edward Colston had stood, and triumphantly raising his fist, surrounded by the plethora of BLM placards, symbolizes ‘the future’.

In Oxford, the BLM protests have re-invigorated the English university town’s #RhodesMustFall movement. Formed in 2015 after the example of Cape Town’s successful movement to have a statue of British colonialist Cecil John Rhodes removed from the campus of the University of Cape Town (UCT), Oxford students took the cue from their South African students and campaigned for the removal of a statue from Oxford’s Oriel College. Unlike the South African campaign, their Oxford followers didn’t succeed at the time. Now the global BLM protests have inspired the Oxford campaign to renew their efforts to send Rhodes off and down the drain, along with Colston and the Belgian colonial King Leopold. On Tuesday 9 June a protest march brought 4,000 out in Oxford. Standing in front of a placard that read ‘Decolonise Oxford Uni’, Simukai Chigudu, in 2015 a doctoral student and a prominent voice of #RhodesMustFall Oxford, now an academic at the university, reminded the protestors powerfully that RhodesMustFall was started in 2015 in Oxford because of the students in South Africa who were tired of colonial iconography and white supremacy.

A great deal has changed within South African universities since the 2015-16 protests took place. On the surface, certainly, South African universities have been quiet over the past few years. But it is also true – significant and important – that the movements in South Africa were a source of inspiration for innovative artistic activity, creativity that has become the most sustained radical force, over and above orthodox forms of mass protest.

The most obvious example is a theatre performance, which gained widespread international recognition, and that was developed by young black artists who drew upon their experience of the protests. The Fall, which features a clever play on words in its tagline (‘All Rhodes Lead to Decolonisation’), premiered in October 2016 at the Baxter Theatre in Cape Town. The actors were eight graduates of the University of Cape Town’s Centre for Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies. They wrote the piece together and directed the performance themselves. Based on the actors’ real-life experiences, the piece offers a self-critical reflection on the hopes and fears of the 2015-16 student protest movements. But The Fall is by no means a typical agitprop production. In dialogue, interior monologues and songs, the actors deliver a nuanced exploration of the spontaneity and idealism, as well as the traumas that accompanied their political campaigns. This extraordinary workshop theatre production won the ensemble theatrical awards both at home and abroad (reviewed by Colin Fancy on roape.net).

‘The Fall’ was performed to considerable acclaim internationally. However, it was not the only remarkable theatre production that came out of the ‘Fallist’ movements. In March 2018, for instance, a play by the young theatre maker Nwabisa Plaatjie went on stage at the Baxter Theatre in Cape Town. Plaatjie’s multilingual play, ‘23 Years, a Month and 7 days’ was performed in English, Afrikaans and IsiXhosa, the three official languages of the Western Cape province. The play revolves around the experience of a young woman who escapes the abject poverty and hopelessness of her rural home to become a first-year university student in Cape Town in 2015. Drawing on the repertoire of movement theatre and extensive storytelling, Plaatjie deals, from a profound psychological perspective, with the young black female protagonist’s traumatic experiences. The focus is on the manifold forms of structural and everyday violence of impoverished black life in South Africa; she does not shy away from presenting the problematic violent moments of the protests, which became particularly poignant during the later phases of the movements in 2016.

The sophisticated theatre productions emerged in the aftermath of the 2015-16 heightened mobilisation. It is important to note though that the movements gave rise to tremendous creative potential right from the very beginning. This was partially expressed in semi-professional formats, such as Sethembile Msezane’s powerful performance that accompanied the removal of the statue of Cecil John Rhodes statue from the UCT campus on 9 April 2015. Elsewhere too, the young activists re-appropriated older expressions of struggle creativity. New forms of astonishingly nuanced protest poetry played a vital role, as evidenced by the pieces that appeared in the young protest movements’ first publications, such as the collection guest-edited by #RMF for the Johannesburg Workshop of Theory and Criticism in 2015. At Wits University in Johannesburg young performance artists took part in a live performance outside the university’s main lecture hall in October 2015, where they critically expressed their experiences at the ‘colonial’ post-apartheid university.

These are just a few examples of the multifaceted forms of artistic expression: some built on more established forms of protest theatre, but others also found innovative ways to express the new, different experiences of the generation leading the 2015-16 protests.

At this moment, only small protests have taken to the streets of South Africa in the outpouring of global BLM protest. Yet there certainly is creative insurgency. Much of the current protest in the country, which has just been hit hard by the spikes of a slightly delayed surge of the Covid-19 pandemic, has taken place on social media platforms rather than in the streets. Started by a few Cape Town high school students, instagram has become a key platform for anti-racist demands. A brilliant radical anti-racist memorandum has been circulated by the matrics (final year students) of Bishops, the city’s most exclusive private boys school. At the forefront of BLM South Africa in 2020 are the younger sisters and brothers of the ‘Fallists’. Those are teenagers, mostly black kids studying in private and public, former ‘White’ schools, who voice forcefully and eloquently that ‘Black Lives Matter at Home Too…’

Thus screamed graffiti on the walls of the swimming pool in my Cape Town neighbourhood for about a week in an insightful commentary on the global BLM protests. Then it was painted over last Saturday morning, reportedly by a fast-acting City of Cape Town. This did not only showcase the selective efficiency of the municipality, which does not act swiftly when called upon to solve problems such as water pipe bursts even in this long-established once white-designated neighbourhood. The slogan duly embraced South Africa’s histories of past and present. Observatory, Cape Town is one of the city’s oldest built-up areas, and the very site of the wall that called for attention to BLM in South Africa was connected to the earliest settlers and the history of slavery in the Cape, as commentators on the suburb’s Community Action Network WhatsApp pointed out.

With the eye on contemporary history, the slogan was equally poignant, raising concerns about the deaths of more than ten residents of impoverished black neighbourhoods at the hands of law enforcement and soldiers during the current Covid-19 lockdown. This happened in the Western Cape, governed by the centre-right national opposition DA (Democratic Alliance); in most cases it happened elsewhere in the country; Collins Khosa, a resident of Alexandra township near Johannesburg died after being tortured by soldiers in his own yard.

In South Africa, as elsewhere, race and class connect a history of slavery, racist oppression, and the consequences of the pandemic. No wonder, the City of Cape Town did not appreciate the slogan – ‘Black Lives Matter at Home Too…’!

I have written these notes as preliminary observations and thoughts about the global trajectories of the politics that powerfully counter the memory-colonialism-racism nexus as I am embarking on the major research phase of a project, long in the making, on memory activism and anti-racist politics in Germany and the UK. This follows on my long-term activist-research on memory politics and social movements in southern Africa.

Heike Becker focuses on the politics of memory, popular culture, digital media and social movements of resistance in southern Africa (South Africa and Namibia). Heike is a regular contributor to roape.net.

Black Lives Matter – views from Africa

ROAPE

June 18, 2020

The murder of George Floyd has triggered giant protests around the world. Demonstrations in Africa have been much smaller, with tens or at best hundreds of protesters on the streets. Baba Aye, Lai Brown, Heike Becker and Sabatho Nyamsenda reflect on the Black Lives Matter movement on the continent, the development of radical art and how institutionalized racism and its root – capitalism – continue to kneel on all our necks.

Black Lives Matter! Revolution now!

By Baba Aye and Lai Brown

George Floyd was killed on 25 May, which symbolically is a day set aside as African Liberation Day since 1963. This served as ignition for a global anti-racist revolt. By the second week of June, there had been protests in over 70 countries across every inhabited continent. These have been in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter uprising in the United States. But they have also challenged racism and police brutality in these countries.

Mammoth-sized demonstrations have been organised in several countries in Europe and Australia, with tens of thousands of protesters rallying in Australia, Britain, France, Germany and New Zealand amongst others. The demonstrations in Africa have been much smaller, with tens or at best hundreds of protesters on the streets.

In Nigeria, the first of two series of protests were organised by a group which describes itself as the ‘Black Lives Matter Movement in Nigeria (BLMMN).’ On 2 June, a small group under the organisation’s banner marched to the United States embassy and Consulate in Abuja (the federal capital territory) and Lagos (the largest metropolis) respectively.

In Abuja, embassy staff, outnumbering the protesters, joined them to take a knee. The embassy also issued a statement expressing its outrage and joined the United States secretary of state in finding the killing of George Floyd abhorrent, whilst declaring the time ‘for healing, for compassion, greater communication, and increased understanding.’

However, there were criticisms of these George Floyd protests in the country on several grounds. It was considered strange that the protesters did not have a word to say against police brutality and the rise of femicide even though Nigeria is witnessing a rising spate of rape cases, police violence and killings. The fact that nothing had ever been heard in activist circles about the BLMMN before it joined the global protests also seemed suspicious.

It was also noted that the leader of the BLMMN march to the USA embassy in Abuja was the same person who attacked #RevolutionNow supporters in front of a federal high court in December, beating up one of these supporters. One person suffered severe injuries and was in the hospital for several weeks.

A second series of protests was organised on 12 June with activists, including members of the Socialist Workers and Youth League (SWL), who marched in Lagos and Ogun states as well as Abuja. While these were larger than the BLMMN’s demonstrations, they were still comprised mostly of activists. But they established the connections between police brutality and institutionalised violence in the country and globally. They also protested the rising incidence of femicide.

Their banners and slogans included #JusticeForGeorgeFloyd but also #JusticeForAlexOgbu a journalist and member of the SWL who was killed by the police in January while covering a protest of the Shiite Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN). They also demanded #JusticeForTinaEzekwe a 16-year old high school student also shot dead by the police in May.

And speaking out against sexual violence and femicide, they equally demanded #JusticeForVeraUwaila and #JusticeForBarakatBello they were 21-year old and 18-year old respectively. They were both tertiary school students and they both suffered the same cruel fate; raped and brutally killed.

The need to deepen struggle against racism and police brutality cannot be overemphasized. Anti-racism struggle is an integral element of anti-capitalist struggle. The Black Lives Matter struggle is significant to working-class people struggles across the world and in Nigeria. The Black Lives Matter revolt is significant for working-class people’s struggles across the world, as evident in how rapidly the struggle spread to over 70 countries around the world in solidarity. That holds true for challenges and struggle in Nigeria too.

Now, more than ever, we have to make the connections between racism, police brutality, sexual violence and class exploitation. Our mobilisation to end oppression in all its forms calls for the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism, the very structure of these dehumanising practices.

Protesters at the 12 June demonstration in Lagos captured the spirit of the struggle with their slogans; ‘I can’t breathe… Revolution now!’ To breathe and live, the revolutionary movement of working-class people and youth must bring a new world to birth, from the furnace of this moment, ‘by any means necessary.’

Baba Aye is a Co-convener of the Coalition for Revolution (CORE) and author of Era of Crises & Revolts, Perspectives for Workers and Youth. Lai Brown is a trade unionist and National Secretary of the Socialist Workers and Youth League (SWL).

***

Creative energy unleashed: Black Lives Matter, decolonisation and anti-racist protest

By Heike Becker

In Oxford, the BLM protests have re-invigorated the English university town’s #RhodesMustFall movement. Formed in 2015 after the example of Cape Town’s successful movement to have a statue of British colonialist Cecil John Rhodes removed from the campus of the University of Cape Town (UCT), Oxford students took the cue from their South African students and campaigned for the removal of a statue from Oxford’s Oriel College. Unlike the South African campaign, their Oxford followers didn’t succeed at the time. Now the global BLM protests have inspired the Oxford campaign to renew their efforts to send Rhodes off and down the drain, along with Colston and the Belgian colonial King Leopold. On Tuesday 9 June a protest march brought 4,000 out in Oxford. Standing in front of a placard that read ‘Decolonise Oxford Uni’, Simukai Chigudu, in 2015 a doctoral student and a prominent voice of #RhodesMustFall Oxford, now an academic at the university, reminded the protestors powerfully that RhodesMustFall was started in 2015 in Oxford because of the students in South Africa who were tired of colonial iconography and white supremacy.

At this moment, only small protests have taken to the streets of South Africa in the outpouring of global BLM protest. Yet there certainly is creative insurgency. Much of the current protest in the country, which has just been hit hard by the spikes of a slightly delayed surge of the Covid-19 pandemic, has taken place on social media platforms rather than in the streets. Started by a few Cape Town high school students, instagram has become a key platform for anti-racist demands. A brilliant radical anti-racist memorandum has been circulated by the matrics (final year students) of Bishops, the city’s most exclusive private boys school. At the forefront of BLM South Africa in 2020 are the younger sisters and brothers of the ‘Fallists’. Those are teenagers, mostly black kids studying in private and public, former ‘White’ schools, who voice forcefully and eloquently that ‘Black Lives Matter at Home Too…’

***

Our Right to Breathe

By Sabatho Nyamsenda

George Floyd’s murder has spiked anger across the world. This is a modern day of lynching, reminding us that racism is intrinsic in the political and economic institutions of the US and many other countries. Racism is a socially engineered project intended to save the interest of capitalist accumulation. ‘Capital’, wrote Karl Marx ‘comes dripping from head to toe, from every pore, with blood and dirt.’ Racism was used to justify the hunting, killing, abusing, raping and enslavement of black people. Their labour built America and Europe. It justified the colonization and plunder of the African continent, with its people dehumanized, exploited and exterminated in a centuries-long holocaust. Even after the abolition of slavery and the adoption of civil rights in the USA, and the granting of independence in Africa, institutionalized racism and its root – capitalism – continue to kneel on our necks.

Enraged, as we should be, by the acts of the Trumps, let’s not be deceived by the tears of the Obamas. For the Obamas and the Trumps are bedfellows competing to salvage the decaying oppressive system, only that they differ in tactics. When the Obamas smile, as they did when they were in power, they send drones and rain bombs in Africa and condone poverty and police brutality against black people in the US. It was under Obama that Eric Garner, Fred Gray and countless other black people shouted ‘I can’t breathe’ but the first black president in the White House did nothing to protect them. The same has continued under Trump, with George Floyd repeating the same words.

As demonstrations led by pauperized black people continue to shake the racist capitalist empire, let’s continue to push for systemic change. A true change that will demolish the military-industrial complex – in the service of which institutionalized racism functions – and transfer power and resources from the White House and Wall Street to the poor neighbourhoods across the US and beyond. Our right to breathe can only be guaranteed in a different system – free of capitalism and racism.

Sabatho Nyamsenda is a socialist activist and lecturer at the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

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