Relaunching the System: Bees, Covid-19 and Tunisia

May 12, 2020

Habib Ayeb writes how the global pandemic is a direct result of the neoliberal model of production, which is based on the assumption of the superiority of human beings over nature. The consequences are tragically diverse – from the extinction of bees, one of the most important links in the ecological chain – to the emergence of deadly new viruses. Assessing the public health response to Covid-19 in Tunisia, Ayeb argues that we must seek an alternative to capitalism before the system attempts to relaunch the processes of accumulation.

By Habib Ayeb

To start with, we must be clear, the Covid-19 pandemic does not correspond to a natural disaster such as an earthquake, a strong storm or a tsunami. These cases, all necessarily localized, can only affect the populations who live or frequent the place of the event. Of course, victims can sometimes number in the hundreds of thousands, but the direct impact on the rest of the world remains small. These events, at times dramatic, are the product of extremely complex mechanisms, underlying the functioning of the planet – the wind, tectonic plates, the tide – which scientists are able to explain but which are impossible to prevent.

Seen through this lens, the Covid-19 pandemic is not caused by an event that came from nowhere. The pandemic, which has gripped the entire planet, and of which the human cost will be enormous, is a direct result of the neoliberal, extractive and intensive model of production, which is based on the false assertion of the superiority of human beings over nature.

The most well-known example of the short-sightedness and the criminality of this dominant economic model is the catastrophic global disappearance of bees. A collective irresponsibility lies in believing that the ‘world’ can live without bees and that nature can continue as usual despite the extinction of one of the most important links in the ecological chain. Indispensable for the pollination of flowers, the bee is an essential link in the ecological and food chain and in the balance of ecosystems. It contributes to the survival of many plant and animal species. Their disappearance disrupts ecosystems, impoverishes biodiversity and thus promotes the emergence or displacement of certain viruses and other microbes previously isolated. This is clear for everyone to see because bees are visible. It is easy to notice if bees are there or not, to count them with some precision, and even to multiply them by creating the conditions for their conservation and reproduction.

The problem with a virus is that it is totally invisible to the human eye. That it is infinitely minuscule makes it both worrying and intriguing. The big difference between bees and Covid-19, is that the latter remains totally unknown. We only know what experts want to tell us, which is not the case with bees.

Not knowing an ‘enemy’ – whether real or imaginary – is a source of considerable anxiety; not knowing how to protect yourself can lead to occasional and uncontrollable panic. The solution may lie in denial or repression. If you can’t see it, it doesn’t exist. The disappearance of the bee, however, is a reality, whilst the presence of the virus remains in the realm of the abstract, the unimaginable.

The destruction of nature by human activity has brought bees to the brink of extinction.

But when the same destruction of nature creates the necessary conditions for the ‘birth’ of a virus, no one realizes this instantaneously. The virus only becomes visible even to specialists by causing more or less distinct events, which attract the attention of experts and scientists, and corporations and finance capital that can try and benefit from it.

Thus, it is not surprising that people always ask the same questions: where did the virus come from? Why now? Why isn’t there a vaccine or a cure? Why are we not able to stop the spread despite all the human, scientific, economic and political means that we have at our disposal?

We have heard these questions for weeks, without receiving any accurate or convincing responses. In reality, the proper response to such questions requires taking a step back.

Nature never gives way, it reproduces itself

All around us, we witness nature’s capacity to reclaim itself at given times and places. The blades of grass that appear as if by miracle through asphalt and concrete, the greenery that reappears in ‘abandoned’ landscapes after years and years of absence due to chemical treatment (pesticides or fertilizers); the animals that return to regions that they had deserted years earlier; the ancient olive tree, believed dead but which regenerates itself and gives life to a small verdant bud… are these not clear demonstrations of the invincibility of nature and its unlimited capacity for resilience?

The intensive use of chemical goods in agriculture, such as pesticides, the phytosanitary products, the chemical fertilizers and antibiotics, widely used for intensive animal rearing, destroy the living conditions for bees. Over decades, we have become blinded from seeing the links between intensive capitalist agriculture and the disappearance of bees, and of many other animal and plant species. How many examples do we need to see the connection between the rapid extinction of species of animals and insects and the appearance of new uncontrollable pandemics on an unheard-of scale?

What the coronavirus reveals

In reality, Covid-19 reveals nothing that we didn’t already know. But this pandemic has the ‘benefit’ of obliging us to interrogate our lifestyles, our methods of production, consumption habits, our place in nature, and the role of the individual in relation to the collective, to the group, the community. It has taken the pandemic for us to start asking these questions. A few people have reacted individually or collectively to demand and imagine ‘another world’ but without any real impact on the way the world actually works. Covid-19 reminds us today, at great cost, that we cannot continue to live as before.

But what does Covid-19 tell us about the insufficiencies, injustices, and deconstructive processes in our world? What does Covid-19 tell us about institutions and their roles, about our health systems, and of social exclusion and marginalisation in society? More generally, Covid-19 lays bare our incapacity – on an individual, collective and institutional level – to deal with such a catastrophe the result of which are frighteningly accelerated levels of inequality, injustice and irresponsibility of the world’s one percent.

Health for the rich, sickness and death for the poor

The Global North has a monopoly over medical research and industry, which guarantees both monopoly rents and the immediate profit from scientific discoveries that allows almost exclusive control over the global market. Since the beginning of the pandemic, France and Germany came to an agreement to limit the export of medical equipment, thus preventing other countries from acquiring vital materials. Testing kits, ventilators, intensive care equipment are indispensable but the problem for countries in the Global South (with the exception of a few, such as China, Cuba, India, Brazil and South Korea) is that they have neither the skills nor the technologies, and least of all the financial means, to produce equipment of the required quality themselves. These countries remain incapable of acting against the virus while waiting for help from ‘friends’ in the North, who are too busy with their own problems to bother.

However, northern states, believing themselves to be ‘naturally’ protected by their economic and military power, were also taken by surprise and quickly deluged by the Covid-19 crisis. In just a few days, Italy had the most cases of the virus in the world, overtaking China, while France still has not acquired the necessary masks for their medical professionals, let alone the population in general.

On the national level in Tunisia and elsewhere, Covid-19 reveals a stratified system where healthcare is a privilege of the well-off, even in cases when there is a more or less well-functioning social security system. Tunisia’s public hospitals – with the exception of a few, notably located in the well-off neighborhoods and regions – lack equipment and medical staff. They offer a mediocre level of care and are constrained by draconian austerity measures. Generally, only poor patients – and especially those without ‘connections’- rely on these hospitals, without much hope of recovery. A large number of the specialist doctors who work in the public sector also work in private clinics, to which they direct their own patients. Some of them continue to work in public hospitals where they identify and direct patients towards the private sector, with the promise of better and quicker treatment in return for a fee.

As such, the Tunisian patient is generally confronted with a system of marketized healthcare, summarized simply: the more you can pay, the better chances you have of receiving an acceptable level of care. Thanks to Covid-19, we discover that there are many more intensive care units (ICU) -indispensable for those taken ill with the virus – in private hospitals than in the public sector. We already knew that this was the case with regards to scans, MRI or laboratory tests, yet for intensive care equipment we had assumed that this would be sufficiently provided for by the public medical structures. With a pandemic that requires an immediate provision of skill sets, certain indispensable materials, and the hospitalization of an unusually high number of people, such inequalities are brought sharply to light.

Moreover, it is not just the privilege of certain social groups who can access better care in private hospitals, in the map below, another injustice in the fight against Covid-19 is revealed: there are 331 ICU beds in Tunisia, across 7 coastal regions between Bizerte and Sfax; Tunis has 184, more than half of the national total. It is difficult to imagine a more flagrant socio-spatial inequality.

This map was published by Otjm Young Doctors Monastir. The regions which were equipped with intensive care units before the pandemic are marked in green.

When the pandemic is over, it will be necessary to think of radically reforming the healthcare system, which must be organized around a solid and competent public service, well-provisioned with material and human resources. The Cuban model is certainly the best adapted to our local reality of a dependent country without many resources. Without such essential preemptive measures, built around a strong system of public health, the consequence of a new pandemic could be even more catastrophic than the one we are currently living through.

Contempt and stigmatization

The absence of precise and detailed information on the scale, progression and consequences – recorded or real, which are not necessarily the same – of Covid-19 aggravate the yawning gap that already existed between a large part of the population and the state and its representatives. A lack of confidence, the proliferation of rumors and conspiracy theories about the pandemic and its origins are signs of just such a gap. So, the population grudgingly resign themselves to respect the rules and measures put in place by the government to avoid being sanctioned. The necessity for sanctions demonstrates a lack of trust in the people and shows the extent to which the elite are disconnected from the governed.

To explain the necessity of a curfew in peacetime – which was initially in place in Tunisia from 6pm to 6am, and was only later changed to start at 8pm – the authorities detailed the risks of overwhelming the capacity of the health system and the impossibility of hospitalizing such a huge number of patients at once. Though coherent, people naturally asked why hadn’t the government increased the capacity of the public hospitals, even if this required requisitioning the equipment from private hospitals? There is a mutual lack of trust between the state and the people and this goes back a long way, worsening with the amateurism of the new political class that have led the country since 2011, and exacerbated by the panic that has taken hold of the country.

When the pandemic ends

For years we have watched extraordinary ‘natural’ events occur one after the other, at an increasingly frequent rate, in close connection with global processes of climatic imbalance: destructive floods, droughts, storms, flu pandemics and currently, the coronavirus. At each of these ‘events’, we find a direct link back to capitalism and the process of accumulation.

The current pandemic has had an explosive effect on the world in record time. The scale is unprecedented – it may be the first time in recent history that a pandemic touched almost all of the world’s population, generating a global panic that is sure to produce consequences that are more serious than the impact of the virus on our physical health.

The rapid spread of the virus has been made possible by the extraordinary development of global travel and transportation. At the same time, the increased, almost ubiquitous, use of the internet and social media around the world has contributed to the development and amplification of rumors – bordering on international psychosis – that surrounds the pandemic. The accumulation of these two processes is the basis for the widespread panic animating our individual and collective behaviour.

When the pandemic ends, as it will, it will be necessary to push with more force than ever before for radical political change that calls into question the dominant development models. Now that nature has reminded us of its resilience and its capacity to react in an extremely violent manner, it would be suicidal to think that we can go back to business as usual, as if the pandemic was just an unfortunate natural catastrophe like an earthquake or a tsunami. It would be criminal to restart as if nothing happened.

The capitalist system, which is currently trying to limit the damage, will try to take everything back, by integrating current ‘losses’ as accidental costs, and to relaunch the processes of accumulation. This is what we need to prevent by drawing on the example of Covid-19 to argue and mobilize in favor of a revolutionary new model of global development based a new green alternative – one that is radical, social, ecological and feminist. Covid-19 has sounded a deafening alarm.

The devastating near extinction of the bee has not mobilized the world to change, but the appearance of a new coronavirus, this invisible and unknown enemy, should impose a total change on our lifestyle and push us to act with, not against, nature. In two or three months, a ‘simple’ virus has created one of the biggest crises of capitalism threatening its very foundations. Billions of dollars have been mobilized by countries around the world to save the prevailing capitalist system. But this will only succeed if tomorrow, everyone will have forgotten that the system being saved is one that created the crisis.

Habib Ayeb is a Geographer and filmmaker. He is president and founder of the Observatory for Food Sovereignty and the Environment (OSAE) and a contributor to ROAPE.

Featured Photograph: The Tunisian Minister of the Interior visiting the Special Division of the National Guard in Bir Bouregba (9 April 2020).

A version of this blogpost was published in French on 26 March is available at OSAE website here (translated from French by Layli Foroudi).

Poetic Injustice: The Senghor Myth and Senegal’s Independence

ROAPE

May 5, 2020

The mythification of ‘poet-president’ Léopold Sédar Senghor has blurred our understanding of his real legacy. Recalling that he was both a poet and a president is a fact, but associating both, while refusing to recognize the authoritarianism he displayed, Florian Bobin argues, creates a dangerous historical myth.

Read about the Senghor myth in French here.

By Florian Bobin

On 4 April, 2020, Radio France Internationale published literature professor and critic Boniface Mongo Mboussa’s portrait of Léopold Sédar Senghor, the first president of Senegal (1960-1980). For the country’s 60^th anniversary of independence, the message was clear: ‘Senghor ruled his country as a teacher, with method and organizational spirit. During the school season, he was president in Senegal; in summer, he was a poet in Normandy’. In short, Mboussa explains that Senghor’s policy and poetry were inseparable because, ‘poet-president, [he] was not one without the other’.

This narrative is dangerous because it implicitly praises ‘he whose pen mattered more than his sword’. Although Senegal did not experience the same political crises as its neighbours, the mythification of ‘poet-president’ Senghor has blurred our understanding of his political action. Under the single-party rule of the Senegalese Progressive Union (UPS), authorities resorted to brutal methods; intimidating, arresting, imprisoning, torturing, and killing dissidents.[1] Recalling he was both a poet and a president is a matter of fact but associating both, while refusing to recognize the authoritarianism he displayed, is historical nonsense. This blogpost is an attempt to set the record straight.

Born in Joal in 1906, Senghor left Senegal for the first time at the age of 22. While in Paris in the late 1920s, he started frequenting Black literary circles. In the columns of the journal L’Étudiant Noir, alongside writers like Aimé Césaire and Léon-Gontran Damas, he expressed his desire to carry ‘a cultural movement whose goal is the Black man, whose research instruments are Western reason and the Negro soul; because it takes reason and intuition.’ [2] Senghor continued his studies as the Négritude movement developed, becoming professor of classical studies in 1935. According to his former collaborator Roland Colin, his own négritude was more of an ideal than a reality. Senghor’s identity had been confiscated from an early age at mission school, and he sought, for the remainder of his life, to reclaim it. ‘From the age of seven until the end of his life, Senghor was a man struggling with contradictions, with intimate sensitivities which led him to projects that he could not afford to implement in his personal life’, Colin explains.[3]

At the end of the Second World War, Senghor joined the Monnerville commission, responsible for ensuring the representation in the French Constituent Assembly of territories under colonial occupation. The following year, he joined the ranks of the French Section of the Workers’ International sitting, alongside Lamine Guèye, as representative of Senegal and Mauritania. In 1948, with Mamadou Dia and Ibrahima Seydou N’daw, Senghor participated in the creation of the Senegalese Democratic Bloc, the precursor of the UPS.

However, Senghor never fully positioned himself outside of the colonial framework. Aimé Césaire said of him that he ‘knew the French would leave one day; he just took his time. At heart, he loved them.’ [4] Honouring the hundreds of innocent African soldiers killed by the French army at the Thiaroye military camp on 1 December, 1944, Senghor expresses his regret of a France ‘forgetful of its mission of yesterday’ in his poem ‘Tyaroye.’ African literature professor and literary critic Lilyan Kesteloot argues that, through these lines, he ‘admits that [France] still represents for him an ideal of justice, honour, and loyalty to its commitment.’[5] In that same poetry collection Hosties Noires (1948), Senghor indeed reaffirms his attachment to the French Republic by passionately praising Charles de Gaulle and Félix Éboué, two figures who helped lead resistance to German occupation.

When de Gaulle became France’s president, Senghor was torn. The new institutional framework he advocated for was set to implement relative autonomy to colonies in Africa while maintaining them under French rule in community or union. Seeking a common position, several African political platforms met in Cotonou in July 1958. The UPS sent a delegation and agreed on voting ‘no’ to the upcoming referendum on maintaining French rule. It was a matter of time, however, before Senghor expressed his reservations, after a promise he had made to the French government. ‘Yes, independence, of course, nobody can give that up, but let’s take some time’, he argued. ‘How long?’ his comrade Dia asked, surprised at his sudden change of position. ‘Twenty years!’ Senghor retorted before the two agreed on a four-year timeline.[6]

The agreements for the ‘transfer of powers’ from France to the Mali Federation were signed on 4 April, 1960, and implemented on 20 June. Two months in, internal divisions shattered the union. Senegal established a two-headed parliamentary system. While Senghor enjoyed the prestige of being the first President of the newly independent Republic, Dia presided over the Council of Ministers and was responsible for implementing national policies. Quickly, tension grew between the two.

Since independence, Dia had been calling for decentralizing public administration and empowering peasant communities. A faction within the UPS composed of sympathizers to Senghor decided to table a vote of no confidence against Dia’s government, whose policy was deemed too radical. Provided that it was the only recognized political authority at the time, every decision went through the ruling party. Dia, therefore, opposed a motion he considered illegitimate. Senghor accused him of ‘attempting a coup’ and ordered his arrest alongside ministers Valdiodio N’diaye, Ibrahima Sarr, Alioune Tall and Joseph Mbaye.[7] Just two weeks after the events, Senghor argued that ‘in an underdeveloped country, it is best to have, if not a single party, at least a unified party, a dominant party, where reality’s contradictions are confronted within the dominant party, given that the party decides.’ Dia gave into Senghor’s arguments and revoked a vote of no confidence which members of the UPS had brought forward without giving room for any internal discussions. Though Dia no longer had Senghor’s support, who repealed Dia’s post of President of the Council the following year.

Discontent towards Senghor’s administration escalated quickly. In 1968, anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist movements threatened governments around the world and the University of Dakar concentrated frustration in Senegal. Their country was a ‘neo-colony’, students argued, and Senghor a ‘valet of French imperialism’. Army raids on the campus resulted in at least one death and hundreds of wounded.[8]Alongside trade unionists, many students were arrested and deported to military camps. Not only did Senghor call on French troops for support in crushing the rebellion, he also regularly corresponded with the French ambassador to Senegal on the situation’s developments.[9] At the height of the crisis, the president even suggested that General Jean-Alfred Diallo take power if he wished.[10]

By February 1971, Senghor’s embrace of France seemed to reach its peak with the state visit of French President Georges Pompidou, a close friend and former classmate. Upon his arrival, Senghor declared: ‘The Senegalese people feel particularly honored to receive the President of the French Republic. […] Because the French-Senegalese friendship dates back to nearly three centuries. […] I am pleased to host in my country an old classmate from high school, and a friend.’[11] A few weeks prior, a group of young radical activists set fire to the French cultural centre in Dakar. For them, Senegal’s reception of the French President was an open provocation, emblematic of the enduring remnants of colonialism. During the visit, they attempted to charge the presidential motorcade but were arrested.

Upon learning about his brothers’ involvement in the failed attack, Senegalese activist and artist Omar Blondin Diop embarked on military training. Months of travelling led him to Syria, Algeria, and Guinea before authorities in Mali arrested him in November 1971. Imprisoned on Gorée island for ‘being a threat to national security’, Blondin Diop was reported dead on 11 May , 1973, aged 26. The state of Senegal claimed he committed suicide, but several testimonies, including that of the case’s investigating judge, attest to a cover-up. Then interior minister Jean Collin, who vigorously maintained the myth of political prisoners’ ‘humane conditions of detention’, was the president’s nephew-in-law.[12] Senghor’s poem ‘Il est cinq heures’, published in Lettres d’hivernage (1973), seems to recount the tragedy: ‘There is Gorée, where bleeds my heart my hearts / […] the Estrées fort / Color of blood clotted with anguish’. Two years later, activists from the anti-imperialist front And Jëf were arrested and severely tortured – hung upside down their skin burned and electric shocks applied to their genitals.

President Senghor announced his resignation on 31 December, 1980. After reinstating the post of Prime Minister (formerly President of the Council) in 1970, he amended Senegal’s Constitution in 1976 to ensure his heir apparent Abdou Diouf could take over after his resignation. ‘I told you that I wanted to make you my successor and that is why there is this article 35’, Senghor told Diouf in 1977. ‘I will be standing for election in February 1978 and, if I am elected, I intend to leave […]. At that moment, you will continue, assert yourself and be elected afterwards’. Shortly after, Senghor left Senegal to settle in France, where he spent the rest of his life. The transition of his chosen heir was seamless.

By the end of his presidency, the time had long past when, in his poem ‘Prière de Paix’ (1948), Senghor praised the masses ‘who face […] the powerful and the torturers’. He was now the embodiment of the powerful, whose rule was the source of Senegal’s neo-colonial governance. While Senghor claimed in 1963 that ‘opposition is a necessity, […] the dialectic of life, of history’, political parties were only legalized in Senegal in 1981, after a period of limited multi-partyism. Until then, they were either dissolved or absorbed by the ruling party.

Senegal’s independence sixty years ago is neither a coincidence of history nor a generous gift granted by France. It is an ideal for which successive generations have fought for, from Lamine Arfang Senghor to Valdiodio N’diaye. Independence for many meant the full emancipation from the conquest of profit through lands, bodies, and spirits, which does not dwindle with time. If indeed, as Boniface Mongo Mboussa indicates, ‘rigor and dignity’ are the values that best characterize Léopold Sédar Senghor, then we must refuse complacency in how we remember his time in power. We must continue to uncover the buried secrets and explore the repression culture of Senegal’s real history, as it continues to labour under the gaze of Western ‘partners.’ The hand that wrote poetry to empower was responsible for acts of great injustice.

Florian Bobin’s research focuses on post-colonial liberation struggles from the 1960s and 1970s in Senegal. He is the author of Omar Blondin Diop: Seeking Revolution in Senegal, published on roape.net.

Featured Photograph: In 1978 Léopold Sédar Senghor received a degree from the University of Salamanca.

References

[1] Research on revolutionary politics and political repression in Senegal under Léopold Sédar Senghor’s presidency is still underway. Over the past decade, a significant number of works have deepened our understanding of the period. Among major ones: Pascal Bianchini, ‘The 1968 years: revolutionary politics in Senegal’ (Review of African Political Economy, 2019); Ibrahima Wane, Chanson populaire et conscience politique au Sénégal. L’art de penser la nation (Université Cheikh Anta Diop de Dakar, 2013); Roland Colin, Sénégal notre pirogue : au soleil de la liberté (Présence Africaine, 2007); Roland Alassane Diagne, Momsarew ou le pari de l’indépendance (2014); Sadio Camara, L’épopée du Parti Africain de l’Indépendance au Sénégal (1957-1980) (L’Harmattan, 2013); Moctar Fofana Niang, Trajectoire et documents du Parti Africain de l’Indépendance (P.A.I.) au Sénégal (Les Éditions de la Brousse, 2015); Pascal Bianchini, ‘Les paradoxes du Parti africain de l’indépendance (PAI) au Sénégal autour de la décennie 1960’ (2016); Ousmane William Mbaye, Président Dia (2012); Omar Gueye, Mai 1968 au Sénégal, Senghor face au mouvement syndical (Éditions Karthala, 2017); Abdoulaye Bathily, Mai 68 à Dakar ou la révolte universitaire et la démocratie. Le Sénégal cinquante ans après (L’Harmattan, 2018); Françoise Blum, Révolutions africaines : Congo, Sénégal, Madagascar, années 1960-1970 (Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2014); Françoise Blum, ‘Sénégal 1968 : révolte étudiante et grève générale’ (Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine, 2012); Bocar Niang and Pascal Scallon-Chouinard, ‘‘Mai 68’ au Sénégal et les médias : une mémoire en questions’ (Le Temps des médias, 2016); Yannek Simalla, Sénégal contestataire (2017-2020); Amadou Kah, De la lutte des classes à la bataille des places : le destin tragique de la gauche sénégalaise (L’Harmattan, 2016).

[2] See: Léopold Sédar Senghor, ‘L’humanisme et nous : René Maran ’, L’Étudiant Noir 1, no. 1 (March 1935): 4

[3] Roland Colin declared this in an interview with Étienne Smith and Thomas Perrot for Afrique contemporaine (2010, p. 120). After being Senghor’s student at the National School of Overseas France in the late 1940s, they reconnected in 1955 when Colin settled in Senegal. Following the 1956 Defferre Reform Act, Colin joined Senegal’s first government in 1957, answering Senghor’s request.

[4] See: Jean-Michel Djian, Léopold Sédar Senghor: genèse d’un imaginaire francophone (Paris: Gallimard, 2005), 223-224.

[5] See: Lilyan Kesteloot, Comprendre les poèmes de Léopold Sédar Senghor (Issy les Moulineaux: Les Classiques africains, 1986), 40.

[6] Roland Colin, Mamadou Dia’s chief of staff at the time (1957-1962), described this encounter in an interview with Étienne Smith and Thomas Perrot for Afrique contemporaine (2010, pp. 117-118): ‘A group of young intellectuals was in favour of the ‘no’, reinforced in this [position] by the ruling party’s (Senegalese Progressive Union) rallying to it at the federalists’ congress in Cotonou in July. The party’s position was, however, jeopardized by Senghor’s reservations, who did not want to derogate from an unacknowledged promise he had made to the French government – in fact to Pompidou [de Gaulle’s chief of staff] and Debré [justice minister] – to remain in the Community. Mamadou Dia was informed of this only during an interview between him and Senghor in Normandy, at Gonneville-sur-Mer. There, Dia was in an extremely delicate position: either he broke with Senghor, and it would be a disaster for Senegal or he aligned himself with his positions and would be cantilevered with a whole current of his party and with his convictions. […] Dia told me about their dialogue, hitherto kept secret, many years later, when he was released from prison. Senghor said to him at first: ‘Yes, independence, of course, nobody can give that up, but let’s take some time’. And Mamadou Dia replied: ‘How long?’ And Senghor: ‘Twenty years!’ And Dia: ‘This is not possible!’ He later reported this to me: ‘We had an extremely tight discussion, and he said twenty years first, and then, finally, we got to four’. At the end of this historic compromise, we had to rebound, which was not easy at all facing party officials. The majority agreed on a conditional ‘yes’, but there were nevertheless worrying consequences’.

[7] Mansour Bouna Ndiaye (a young official within the ruling party in 1962) and Roland Colin (Mamadou Dia’s chief of staff, 1957-1962) offer two thorough first-hand accounts of the ‘December 1962 crisis’ in their memoirs Panorama politique du Sénégal ou Les mémoires d’un enfant du siècle (Les Nouvelles Éditions Africaines, 1986, pp. 136-154) and Sénégal notre pirogue : au soleil de la liberté (Présence africaine, 2007, pp. 253-293). Colin also testified in Archives d’Afrique (Radio France Internationale, 2019).

[8] The tragedy of political repression is that it erases its victims’ names and stories. We do know of some, though. Historian Omar Gueye describes the 29 May armed repression in his doctoral thesis Mai 1968 au Sénégal, Senghor face au mouvement syndical (University of Amsterdam, 2014, pp. 20 & 216): ‘If we can note a difference in the number of injured, contradictory sources agree on the figure of 1 death in the 29 May campus repression: Lebanese student Hanna Salomon Khoury. The latter, found lifeless in Pavilion A, was accidentally ‘killed by the explosion of a Molotov cocktail with which he was armed and which he did not know how to handle’, according to the official version, immediately denied by the camp opposite. […] Trade unions announced four students killed while British sources also spoke of four young people killed during the urban riots’. Add to this, historian Françoise Blum details 31 May Medina events in her article ‘Sénégal 1968 : révolte étudiante et grève générale’ (Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine, 2012, pp. 170-171): ‘On the morning of the 31st, tension was very high in the Medina where obstacles blocked certain streets and where streams of pedestrians converged on the Labor Exchange. At 9 a.m., crowds were high and the red flag fluttered. It was then that security forces surrounded and blocked the Labor Exchange district, entrances coming from the Medina, and outlying districts. After some clashes, soldiers charged the Labor Exchange and arrested around 200 people, including all the union leaders. […] It seems that the charge against the demonstrators left two dead and hundreds injured. Tear gas canisters were allegedly dropped from helicopters. As for the arrests, there were around 900’. Moreover, Omar Gueye relates (p. 39) the death of Moumar Sy in Pikine: ‘In the morning [of 14 June, 1968], students from secondary classes in Pikine had tried to close some of the neighbourhood’s primary schools. As he intervened to restore order, a peacekeeper shot the young people who were fleeing, fatally injuring one of them, Moumar Sy, aka Mandiaye, aged 17’.

[9] See Bocar Niang, Pascal Scallon-Chouinard, ‘‘Mai 68’ au Sénégal et les médias : une mémoire en question’, Le Temps des médias 26, no. 1 (2016): 166.

[10] See Omar Gueye, Mai 1968 au Sénégal, Senghor face au mouvement syndical (Paris: Éditions Karthala, 2017), 81.

[11] Léopold Sédar Senghor and Georges Pompidou met in 1928 at the prestigious Louis-le-Grand secondary school. Maintaining a strong friendship throughout the years, they later collaborated politically, practically non-stop, between 1962 and 1974; while Senghor was Senegal’s President (1960-1980), Pompidou became France’s Prime Minister (1962-1968) and President (1969-1974).

[12] See: Roland Colin, Thomas Perrot, Étienne Smith, ‘Alors, tu ne m’embrasses plus Léopold ? Mamadou Dia et Léopold S. Senghor’, Afrique Contemporaine 233, no. 1 (2010): 123.

Profit Before People: Destabilized ecosystems, Africa and Covid-19

ROAPE

May 5, 2020

For years ROAPE has examined Africa’s evolving political economy, including food production and the activity of multinational corporations, land grabs, mining and the displacement of communities, class struggles and elite accumulation.

For years these elements of our analysis have pointed clearly to the devastation of capital accumulation across the planet, and in Africa specifically, that lies at the heart of the Covid-19 outbreak. ROAPE has analysed how capital is directing land grabs into major forests and smallholder land across the continent. Such land grabbing drives both deforestation (and ‘development’) which leads to disease expansion. Once ‘contained’ viruses are now seeping into livestock and human populations.

In an interview with roape.net, Ian Angus argues that new viruses, bacteria and pathogens spread from wildlife to humans because capital is bulldozing primary forests, replacing them with profitable monocultures. As Angus explains:

Three years ago, the World Health Organization urged public health agencies to prepare for what they called ‘Disease X’ — the probable emergence of a new pathogen that would cause a global epidemic. None of the rich countries responded, they just continued their neoliberal austerity policies, slashing investments in medical research and health care. Even now, when Disease X has arrived, governments are spending more to rescue banks and oil companies than on saving lives.

New zoonotic diseases — viruses, bacteria and parasites that spread from wildlife to domestic animals and humans — are emerging around the world, because capital is bulldozing primary forests, replacing them with profitable monocultures. In the destabilized ecosystems that result, there are ever more opportunities for diseases like Ebola, Zika, Swine Fever, new influenzas, and now Covid-19 to infect nearby communities.

Global warming makes it worse, by allowing (or forcing) pathogens to leave isolated areas where they may have existed, unnoticed, for centuries or longer. Climate change also weakens the immune systems of people and animals, making them more vulnerable to diseases and more likely to experience extreme complications.

In short, capitalism puts profit before people, and that is killing us.

ROAPE has been looking at the Covid-19 outbreak, its underlying causes and the impact on the continent and readers can access these posts here.

Featured Photograph: Woman in quarantine for 21 days after a person living in the house was infected by Ebola virus in Sierra Leone, 2014 (11 January 2015).

Never make peace with the enemy: remembering Kevin French

ROAPE

May 1, 2020

On International Workers’ Day, ROAPE celebrates the life of activist and publisher Kevin French who died almost a year ago in South Africa. His life spanned decades of involvement in political struggles and reflected at its centre an activist who displayed immense integrity, commitment to working class politics and the relentless ability to think critically and independently.

By Vuyo Lufele, Ashley Fataar, Shaheed Mahomed, Shaheen Khan, Mzimkhulu Ngubeni

Kevin’s entry into activism in the late 1970s started at the University of Natal, when he was exposed to Marxism as a liberatory philosophy of the working class. As a young student activist in the Congress Movement, he was initially recruited by the South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU) to do research into the mining industry. Later while studying for a degree in Industrial Sociology at the University of the Witwatersrand, he wrote his dissertation on ‘South African capital restructuring: crisis and tendencies in the seventies’. For his postgraduate research he wrote a seminal thesis on James Mpanza and the Sofasonke Party in the development of local politics in Soweto.

Throughout his university days Kevin was continuously involved in numerous struggles, for example the Wilson Rowntree boycott in 1982 and the Mine Workers strike support committee in 1987. He and those around him would throw themselves into acquiring the skills to silk-screen posters and T-shirts to support worker struggles. In the early 1980s the apartheid security police began to focus on Kevin’s ‘suspicious’ activities. He was able to avoid arrest by disappearing for six months, hiding in various places throughout South Africa. Exile was not an option for him, as he always felt strongly that the struggle against the apartheid state should be fought within the country.

While at university, he developed skills in publishing. He was an enthusiastic and dedicated member of the Africa Perspective Collective. Africa Perspective, a journal published by the Students’ Representative Council of the University of the Witwatersrand, was a vehicle for the publication of original student work in the field of African studies. The journal went on to publish relevant student dissertations coming out of a variety of faculties in the early 1980s.

In the mid-1980s Kevin left university and became a full-time editor at Ravan Press, a bravely critical voice in the publishing landscape of the 1970s and 1980s. In the face of state repression and censorship coming from the apartheid regime, Ravan published challenging books in a wide range of areas, including fiction, poetry, politics, labour and academic studies, and popular history. It provided an outlet for countless writers whose work reshaped our understanding of South African society and its history. Kevin’s focus at Ravan was on the development of the Ravan Worker Series, a series of books produced in conjunction with the Federation of South African Trade Unions (FOSATU). The first two books in the series were The Sun Shall Rise for the Workers by Mandlenkosi Makhoba and My Life Struggle by Petrus Tom. Tom’s book was a rich political and cultural history of his experiences as a member of SACTU during the 1960s who went on to join the Metal and Allied Worker’ Union, a FOSATU affiliate, in the wake of the 1973 strikes.

Later on, Kevin became the editor who worked with the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) to bring out the immensely popular Workers’ Diary in 1986 and 1987. His passion for workers’ writing led to a workers’ poetry competition being initiated in Staffrider, the literary magazine published by Ravan Press. Kevin worked tirelessly at Ravan as an active member of the Press’s collective, devoting many weekends along with his colleagues to selling books to workers at trade union meetings; he was always enthused by the hunger exhibited by workers for literature. After leaving Ravan, in 1987 Kevin went on to start his own publishing house, Viva Books, together with his partner, Linde Woolley. They focused on making literature accessible to all South Africans, in particular by producing books suitable for newly literate adults.

Kevin’s political activism continued throughout this period. In 1986 he visited London, where he was recruited by the Socialist Workers Party (SWP-UK) to form an International Socialist Tendency (IST) branch in South Africa. As a committed socialist he seized this opportunity with both hands, but later split with the SWP. In 1988 he met with individuals who were involved in legal and illegal struggles in the ANC, Azanian People’s Organisation (AZAPO) and Pan Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC) structures. He was involved in trade union and strike support activities throughout the 1980s. Together with some of these comrades, Kevin formed a group called the International Socialist Movement of South Africa (ISM), whose aim was to contribute to developing a working class movement that would be independent of bourgeois nationalist forces and also, in the short term, be organisationally independent of international political tendencies.

The ISM’s activities in the 1980s and early 1990s were primarily based in the East Rand, in particular KwaThema and Daveyton. The ISM held regular meetings focusing on socialist education, publishing a newspaper, Revolutionary Socialist, which became a central organising tool for drawing socialists into ongoing political discussions. Kevin led the ISM’s participation in the Conference for a Democratic Future convened by the United Democratic Front (UDF) and AZAPO in 1989. He later led the organisation’s involvement in the Conference of the Left called by the South African Communist Party (SACP) and COSATU in Crown Mines, Johannesburg in 1995. It was at this conference that he met Terry Bell, the leading member of the International Socialist (IS) group in Cape Town and a well-known writer for the first time. Discussions began around the merging of the two groups, the ISM in Gauteng and the IS in Cape Town, under the banner of the International Socialist Movement of South Africa (ISM). Kevin was instrumental in influencing the ISM to participate in the Workers List Party jointly with the Workers Organisation for Socialist Action (WOSA), led by the late Neville Alexander, which was the product of talks between left groups in South Africa who decided to participate in the first democratic national elections in 1994.

Writing and publishing materials on political themes were important aspects of Kevin’s political activism. In 1989, he contributed to the international publication The Memory of May Day, in which he wrote the ‘Workers’ Day in South Africa’ section, outlining the long history of celebrating Workers’ Day or May Day in South Africa spanning the period from 1904, when class-conscious immigrant workers held a procession and meeting in Market Square, Johannesburg, to May Day celebrations in the 1930s and 1950s as well as in the late 1980s. Kevin also worked as the distributor of Searchlight South Africa, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, a journal that aimed to recover the radical and communist history of South Africa.

Kevin chose to start a family late in life, in 1994, as he and his partner, Linde, had wanted to devote themselves solely to the struggle. But Kevin became a father with the same energy, love and commitment he had shown politically. He was a youthful, energetic and incredibly engaging father.

As a committed socialist, Kevin believed in the capacity of the working class to bring about fundamental change in society. This was shown in his activities during this period. South Africa activist Salim Vally recalls:

Kevin was very supportive of the struggles of workers in our union CCAWUSA (the Commercial Catering and Allied Workers Union) in the late 1980s and early 1990s. At that time CCAWUSA was the third-biggest union in the country and known for its militancy and for being adamant about working class control, accountability and class independence. When this union was attacked by state repression, the bosses and undemocratic elements in the union, we could rely on Kevin’s unstinting material and political support to defend CCAWUSA. As I was the education officer of the union, Kevin assisted greatly in various ways including donating the wonderful and accessible books he and his partner Linde produced. Kevin’s political organisation worked closely with WOSA to form the Workers List Party in 1993.

Through Kevin’s input and tactical advice, the ISM became involved in two new formations in 2012, the Democratic Left Front (DLF) and the United Front. The DLF was an attempt to build a serious and credible alternative to political parties. Its aim was to argue for politics from below, in order to unite the struggles of the working class. It was there that he met comrades in other socialist organisations. By that time, he had moved together with his family to live in Cape Town.

Working in the trade union and political education committees of the DLF, alongside Ashley Fataar, Kevin demonstrated his lack of political sectarianism. However, the DLF’s resources came under the control of NGOs, and both Kevin and Ashley felt that their political energy was being stifled. It was in the United Front that Kevin met a wider group of comrades who he felt were genuine about building a real alternative. The United Front had been initiated by the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA). This was part of the realignment of socialist politics that took place after the Marikana massacre of 2012.

In 2015, Kevin was arrested along with Markus Trengrove, Nathan Taylor, Chumani Maxwele, Kgotisi Chikane and Lindsay Maasdorp during the Fees Must Fall uprising that had been initiated by students at universities across South Africa. These activists had separately forced their way into the parliamentary precinct in Cape Town. They were detained overnight in Bellville, a suburb of Cape Town, and were interrogated by the Hawks (a police investigative unit), then charged with high treason. These charges were later withdrawn. The ‘Bellville Six’, as they became known, were part of a wider group of 29 students who were arrested that day.

In 2018 Vuyo Lufele, the Western Cape NUMSA Regional Secretary, invited Kevin along with others to join a provincial steering committee to begin setting up the Socialist Revolutionary Workers Party (SRWP) in the Western Cape. Kevin participated in this initiative with great enthusiasm, coming up with the idea of establishing a provincial working group which would co-ordinate work among all the provincial steering committee meetings. This idea made it easier to establish branches in the Western Cape.

Kevin called for the establishment of an education unit in the party in order to empower the branches. He felt that education should be done in small groups as he wanted comrades to participate more fully in the education programmes. He always valued everyone’s contribution during political education. Disseminating socialist literature, and at times rewriting texts to make them more accessible to working class comrades, was always a priority for him. Kevin, along with other comrades, was the first to pilot political education for the SRWP in Philippi which was later rolled out to other branches. He led the drive to produce badges, T-shirts and banners which assisted in giving branches a presence within their communities.

Kevin argued that Khayelitsha, a huge informal housing settlement in Cape Town, was the home of the working class in the Western Cape, and so it was there that socialists should organise. He galvanised an informal grouping of socialists in the area and held discussions with them; out of this the first branches in the area were set up. At branch inductions and launches, he spoke passionately and clearly on why the working poor needed a working-class party. Khayelitsha led the way in setting up branches, and as a result formed the province’s first sub-district. Kevin also travelled to Saldanha Bay, George and Plettenberg Bay to assist in setting up branches there. He became the first head of a provincial political education unit of the SRWP and helped to draw up theoretical topics and produce reading material for political education classes in all provincial districts where the SRWP set up branches, carrying out political education passionately.

Shaheen Khan recalls that ‘Kevin remained true to his principles and beliefs until the very end. While many persons who consider themselves as freedom fighters fell by the wayside through fatigue, faintheartedness, or plain desertion − in his famous words, “made peace with the ruling class” − Kevin never lost faith in the struggle for freedom, justice and an equitable distribution of wealth in society and in the Socialist future.’

Kevin spent his life in protests and socialist politics. Though he was never satisfied with protests alone, he attempted – for many decades – to build movements and develop continuity between different struggles. He knew that the only way to sustain the gains won in struggle was in transforming society fundamentally. Kevin was a revolutionary socialist to his last day.

Vuyo Lufele has been a Regional Secretary of NUMSA since 2009. Vuyo is also the interim provincial facilitator of the SRWP in the Western Cape province. Vuyo has been a trade unionist for more than a decade. He has also been a provincial leader of the United Front.

Ashley Fataar has been active as a socialist since 1989 in Zimbabwe. He now lives in Cape Town and is also a member of the International Socialist Movement.

Shaheed Mahomed is a member of the SRWP Western Cape interim Provincial Steering Committee. He is also a member of Workers International and has been a trade unionist and an organiser of unemployed workers. Whilst a University lecturer, Shaheed helped students in the Fees Must Fall protests and was dismissed for this. He is a well-known workers rights and community activist in Cape Town.

Shaheen Khan is a member of the Central Committee of the SRWP and serves on the interim Provincial Steering Committee in the North-West Province. Shaheen was a member of the national co-ordinating structure of the United Front and he was also the co-ordinator of the UF in the North-West Province. He has been active in left-wing politics for the past 40 years or so; serving as a legal advisor to the trade union movement, participating in various political parties and organizations, part of the leadership structure of the Reform Puk #feesmustfall movement at Potchefstroom University etc. He lives in Potchefstroom and is active in the local struggles there.

Mzimkhulu Ngubeni’s political background is the Black Consciousness movement. He was a member of Azasm and Azapo in the early 1980s and became a member of ISM 1989 after he was recruited by Kevin. He is presently a member of the SRWP, deputy chairperson of Ekurhuleni District and also Regional Chairperson of Ekurhuleni United Front.

Featured Image: a portrait of Kevin French by his daughter Lara.

Running while others walked: Remembering Thandika Mkandawire

ROAPE

April 27, 2020

Always running while others walked: Remembering Thandika Mkandawire (1940-2020)

ROAPE’s Rama Salla Dieng interviews Adebayo Olukoshi on the life and work of Thandika Mkandawire. Olukoshi shares memories of how Thandika helped to shape development thinking in Africa and beyond.

On 9 April 2020, I had the privilege to have a conversation with Professor Adebayo Olukoshi, Director of Africa and West Asia of the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA International) on his friendship and comradeship with Thandika Mkandawire. The interview was also a ‘reunion’ with my former boss, as I worked with Professor Olukoshi when he was the Director of IDEP (the African Institute for Economic Development and Planning) and he contributed to my intellectual development between 2010 and 2015.

Rama Salla Dieng: How, when and where did you first meet Thandika Mkandawire?

Adebayo Olukoshi: In 1983, CODESRIA (the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa) organised a conference on the economic crisis then facing African countries at my alma mater: Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria, Nigeria. That was the first time I heard about Thandika Mkandawire. Cadman Atta Mills who led the CODESRIA delegation mentioned his name during the debates. CODESRIA was one of the leading research institutions of social sciences on the continent, and inevitably, I connected with them. The conference was a reflection on the structural nature of the economic crisis in African countries following austerity measures recommended by International Financial institutions (IFIs), and how they could diversify their economies. The questions being asked then were whether the crisis was a temporary hitch due to the neoliberal onslaught or a longer-term crisis.

After my doctorate at Leeds and subsequent return to Nigeria, I was invited to be part of a network set-up by CODESRIA, first on a project on social movements in Africa coordinated by Mahmood Mamdani, Ernest Wamba Dia Wamba and Jacques Depelchin. Later, CODESRIA organised a Pan-African conference at NOVOTEL in Dakar on Structural Adjustment in Africa. For me, there were two striking insights from Thandika Mkandawire’s presentation on Structural Adjustment Policies (SAPs) in Africa, and their role in the broader neoliberal agenda. Firstly, his introduction was illuminating and far from being just protocol and ceremonials as was the case of such presentations especially in Nigeria. Thandika offered very substantive comments in his welcoming remarks about why we needed to mobilise African thinking on the question of SAPs and how we could interrogate current trajectories and influence future policy directions. He spoke to the heart of the matter and was not immersed in ceremonials. Secondly, despite being the then Executive Secretary of CODESRIA, he stayed with all the invited participants throughout the conference and presented his own paper [Thandika was Executive Secretary from 1985 to 1996]. He highlighted that the thinking on SAPs was a battlefield of policy and power. Therefore, it was empowering and inspiring that he asked for comments from us after his presentation. I presented a paper at that conference after Thandika’s.

Back in Lagos, I received a phone call from him as he followed up on the conference and asked me to set-up an internal peer-review committee in order to help publish the conference papers. This will later become our edited book on The Politics of Structural Adjustment in Africa: Between Liberalisation and Oppression, published in 1995 by CODESRIA. That was the beginning of our intellectual association and friendship.

**From left to right: Thandika Mkandawire, Zenebework Tadesse, Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, Abdallah Bujra and Adebayo Olukoshi (30th anniversary of CODESRIA, 2003)**

How would you describe Thandika as a person?

Thandika was versatile, multi-talented, and had a broad knowledge of wide topics. There were hardly any subject, academic or not, on which Thandika did not have insights to offer. He read extensively about varied themes happening in different parts of the world. He had the ability to capture information from different sources and bring a unique interpretative and analytic perspective on issues pertaining to economic development around the world.

Thandika could not be beaten as a serious scholar, but neither could he be beaten at being a social and sociable comrade. There was a joke at CODESRIA that you needed to have a cut-off point at which you could escape if you planned to spend an evening with Thandika because he was so engaging. He discussed a wide-range of topics including music (from Kora to Youssou Ndour or Baaba Maal), history, agriculture and the arts. I remember going to bed at 5 or 6 am after having dinner with him, only to remember that I had to present a paper a few hours after. At CODESRIA, we used to ask him how he could manage all his responsibilities and always be on time.

What do you think are the three most important intellectual contributions of Thandika to development thinking in and on Africa?

First, Thandika was of the opinion that a multidisciplinary lens was necessary in understanding the development trajectory of the African continent. Yet, he also reminded us that we needed to be strong in our own discipline and know it inside out, before going beyond that terrain with our knowledge of other disciplines. Multidisciplinary was not a shortcut for avoiding rigour in analysis, but involved drawing insights in order to confront narrowed interpretations of African realities.

Secondly, Thandika insisted that African scholars must not leave the theorization of the development of the continent to anybody. This was something he was simply not ready to accept. Therefore, he always insisted that we invested in the building of theory without being dogmatic so we could bring unique perspectives to the development of the African continent. This was to be done without stigmatising and denigrating the continent. This is something that was replete in the neopatrimonialism, corruption or the crisis of development literature, which he took issues with. This was eye-opening for us. In addition, he recommended refraining from just observing social and economic events on the surface but to try to understand the logic of the factors at play that produce such outcomes.

Thirdly, he always highlighted the importance of historicising development and he always tried to analyse development phenomena with a historical perspective, and that’s what he did in his own work. For instance, the 1960s and 1970s were described by the World Bank and the IMF as the lost decades for development in Africa in mainstream development thinking. Thandika showed, with growth figures, that structural adjustment decades were in fact Africa’s lost decades, a diversion from development. Just after independence, most African states were faring very well because the leaders, notwithstanding their ideologies, were invested in the theory and practice of development. Yet with SAPs, the majority of them abdicated to the experimentations of the IFIs which they later contested. That was his entry point in joining the debate on developmental states in Africa. He never succumbed to the idea of the impossibility of developmental states in Africa, therefore, the question was never really about their feasibility neither was it about the false dichotomy between developmental and democratic states (as was the case in most South-East Asian states). Authoritarianism was never a viable path, and as a matter of fact, Africa was ‘condemned to democracy, in every sense’ as he used to say.

To what extent do you think his thought influenced development policy in Africa?

Thandika influenced economic policy direction on the continent directly and indirectly. In the first case, he was personally invited to be part of many policy brainstorming sessions for example by Thabo Mbeki in South Africa, Meles Zenawi in Ethiopia. And indirectly, he had a huge intellectual following, and many such leaders convinced by his theoretical thinking tried to apply it while designing key government policies all over Africa.

After some 16 years at CODESRIA, he joined the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD) and revolutionised its policy research agenda. He shifted the focus from macroeconomic indicators to bring the social back in as a central focus of policymaking (especially through development planning), drawing from comparative insights from many parts of the world, including the salutary examples of Scandinavian countries. Learning from the many economic and financial crises including in South America in 1978-79, East Asia in the 1990s, and the great recession, his own unique contribution is that having sound social policy was not incompatible with good economic performance, in fact it aided it.

Is there a particular lesson you learned from Thandika?

‘Whatever you do, do it with energy, commitment and conviction.’ Thandika never came across as off-putting. Though he was hard-working, he was never too serious, he was very approachable, gave his time to people and was always smiling. He never turned people away, and engaged with their ideas and thoughts. He made everything he did look so simple and effortless that if you did not know the amount of work involved, you could be mistaken to believe he existed in an atmosphere of pure enjoyment!

As Executive Secretary of CODESRIA, he built a formidable reputation for the institute without ever giving the impression of being overwhelmed at any point in time. I had the good fortune of being the Executive Secretary after him, and I asked him how he managed as everyday seemed to involve crisis management. He said: ‘Yes, yes that comes with the job. When I asked: ‘How did you managed to keep such a calm, friendly and inviting demeanour throughout your tenure? Nobody could have assumed you were dealing with so many challenges.’ He answered: ‘You have to also understand that as Executive Secretary, you are called on to offer leadership and that requires being able to master challenges in a way that encourages people rather than discourage them.’ Thandika was a true leader.

What is your favourite memory of Thandika?

I have so many memories of him in different settings. Often scholarly and serious, in many other times. Presiding over international events. Memories of him as a researcher in Denmark when I was a researcher at the Nordic Africa Institute (NAI) in Uppsala. I also have a specific memory of a dinner we had together in Dakar at the beginning of my association with him at CODESRIA. We were then working on editing the book on Between Liberalisation and Oppression: The Politics of Structural Adjustment in Africa. He was very relaxed and I discovered another facet of the man. He was a slow eater who ate intermittently and when his favourite song was being played, he got up in the middle of the dinner and started dancing. I became very shy as I could not have imagined this side of him, and at the end of the song, he sat down and finished his dinner.

During his time at LSE and at the University of Cape Town (Nelson Mandela School of Public Governance), I never saw him humbled by any challenge in the course of his life.

How did Thandika impact your life?

Meeting Thandika, at the time I did, allowed me to grow an additional sense of self-confidence. I have been fortunate to have come out of the radical Zaria political economy school which included the likes of Tunde Zack-Williams, Yusuf Bangura, the late Yusuf Bala Usman, younger scholars such as the late Abdul Raufu Mustapha, Jibrin Ibrahim gave me a strong foundation as this radical thinking was comparable in many ways to the Dar es Salaam School. I also had the privilege of doing my PhD at Leeds which was the home of ROAPE. There I met Lionel Cliffe, Ray Bush who was one of his mentees and friends, Morris Szeftel, then at the Leeds School of Economic and Social Affairs, and at CODESRIA I met Thandika, Archie Mafeje, Shahida Elbaz, Mahmood Mamdani, Issa Shivji, etc. who we used to call the ‘Grandies of CODESRIA.’

In addition, I had the privilege of not only being a co-editor with him, but also following in his footsteps at CODESRIA to maintain this institution as a shining star of social science research; in the process this meant I learned quite a lot from him. Learning not to be doctrinaire, learning to marshal an argument properly, and learning to listen to others and hearing where they are coming from in terms of theoretical influences.

When I became CODESRIA’s Executive Secretary, Thandika came out of his way to spend a couple of days with me in Dakar to reminisce about the CODESRIA journey, the CODESRIA story. You could not have a better mentoring than that. I was intellectually more self-assured after that as I benefitted from his wisdom and stayed in touch with him and sought his advice. He never hesitated to give me his feedback. We are so much poorer now that he has left us. He handled responsibilities in an exemplary fashion. He was an institution builder.

**From left to right: unknown, Adebayo Olukoshi, Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, Thandika Mkandawire and Amina Mama (30th anniversary of CODESRIA, 2003)**

How can we honour his memory?

We need to ensure that this tradition of critical and engaged scholarship that Thandika represented throughout his life is kept alive in the work that we do and we need that now more than ever. Some of the challenges we have encountered in different contexts require a new generation of scholars who are able to address them, borrowing from his confidence, knowledge, work ethics, and sense of diligence and purpose. His generation, who built CODESRIA, understood what their mission was, now your generation needs to discover yours and fulfil it. We all need to ask what should CODESRIA mean to all of us today? What type of theorising, organising and institution building do we want? CODESRIA needs to be preserved, as well as all of Thandika’s writings. CODESRIA has exhaustively compiled his bibliography and is also surveying his writing that is not in the public domain. I know there are many scholars in my generation, including Jimi Adesina, and others, who are working towards a proper memorialisation of his work. He left an immense intellectual scholarship, that needs to be preserved.

Thanks, so much Prof for taking the time to have this conversation with me and ROAPE followers. We are grateful.

See the video of Thandika Mkandawire’s inaugural lecture, ‘Running while others walk: The challenge of African Development’ and read the lecture here.

Rama Salla Dieng is a Senegalese writer, academic and activist. She is currently a Lecturer in African and International Development at the Centre of African Studies, University of Edinburgh. Rama is the editor of the Talking Back series on roape.net and a member of ROAPE’s editorial working group.

Adebayo Olukoshi is the former director of the United Nations African Institute for Economic Development and Planning (IDEP), and the current director of the Africa and West Asia office of the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance. He is also a member of ROAPE’s International Advisory Board.

North Africa Confronts Covid-19

ROAPE

April 24, 2020

David Seddon looks in detail at the reported impact of Covid-19 in North Africa. The region has currently experienced some of the largest numbers of reported cases and the greatest number of deaths on the continent. Seddon also asks how we can understand the response of international and national financial institutions to the outbreak on the continent.

By David Seddon

Recent contributions to the roape.net discussion of the coronavirus epidemic in Africa have drawn attention to the pattern of the spread of the disease, the responses by governments and the opportunities this crisis might offer for a widespread and effective refusal to return to ‘business as usual’, and even for a radical transformation of contemporary capitalist economy and society, but with particular reference to sub-Saharan Africa.

The rapidly spreading epidemic is expected to push Africa into recession in 2020 for the first time in 25 years. ‘The Covid-19 pandemic is testing the limits of societies and economies across the world, and African countries are likely to be hit particularly hard,’ according to the World Bank’s Africa’s Pulse report. Real gross domestic product growth is projected to fall sharply, particularly in the region’s three largest economies – Nigeria, Angola, and South Africa. Oil exporting-countries will be hard-hit as oil and gas prices reach rock bottom.

At the beginning of April, Africa already had some 11,000 confirmed cases of the coronavirus (covid-19), with 562 deaths and 1,149 recoveries, according to government statements and WHO data. Although the epidemic was late to start in Africa as compared with many other parts of the world, it now has a foothold in almost every African country and looks set to spread rapidly. On 20 April, the total number of confirmed cases of Covid-19 across the continent was 22,625, with 1,136 deaths and 5,724 recoveries. Africa is clearly at an early stage of the pandemic; but the eventual impact is likely to be huge.

The coronavirus has led to the suspension of international passenger travel in many countries on the continent and hit sectors such as tourism hard. Most African governments have announced lockdowns or curfews in response to the virus, which was slow to reach many African countries but is now growing exponentially, according to the WHO.

The Bank considers that the measures adopted by governments and local populations in response to the epidemic have the potential to precipitate a food security crisis on the continent, with agricultural production forecast to contract some 3 % and up to 7% in the event of trade blockages. ‘Food imports would decline substantially (between 13% and 25%) due to a combination of higher transaction costs and reduced domestic demand,’ according to the World Bank.

The World Bank and International Monetary Fund are proposing to provide emergency funds both to combat the virus and also to mitigate the impact of sweeping shutdowns aimed at curbing its spread. They have also called on China, the United States and other bilateral creditors to suspend debt payments by the poorest countries so they can use the money to halt the spread of the disease and mitigate its financial impact.

In the meanwhile, the Bank has recommended that African policymakers focus on saving lives and protecting livelihoods by spending money to strengthen health systems and taking quick actions to minimise disruptions in food supply chains. It has also recommended social protection programmes, including cash transfers, food distribution and fee waivers, to support citizens, especially those working in the informal sector.

This blogpost is concerned with the countries of North Africa, which at the present time (23 April) have experienced some of the largest numbers of reported cases and the largest number of deaths on the continent. In North Africa, as elsewhere in Africa, the epidemic has been relatively slow to materialise, and governments there have had the advantage of a time-lag in the spread of the virus. The pattern of the epidemic initially depended greatly on the degree of integration into the global political economy and the scale of the movement of goods, and even more of persons, between continents.

North Africa

On 8 April 2020, when this note was first drafted, Egypt had recorded 1,322 cases of persons infected with the virus and 85 deaths; some 260 persons had recovered. Ten days later, the total number of cases was 3,000; by 23 April the number had reached 3,659 – the largest number in any single African country, including South Africa (3,635), with 276 deaths. In Morocco, the number of registered cases on 8 April was 1,141 with 83 deaths, and 83 people recovered. Ten days later the total number of cases was 2,670, with 137 deaths; by 23 April, the total had reached 3,446, with 149 deaths and 417 recoveries, making it the country with the third most cases in Africa.

In Algeria, the figure for cases of infection on 8 April was 1,423, the highest of all the north African countries at that point, with 173 deaths and 90 recovered; by 23 April, the number of cases had reached 2,910, the fourth highest in Africa. Its death toll, at 402, was the largest of any African country. Tunisia, with a much smaller population, had recorded 596 cases by 8 April, with 22 recorded deaths and five people who had recovered; by 23 April the total number of cases had reached 909, with only 38 deaths. Libya, with a population of only 7 million, had registered only 19 cases so far, by 8 April, with one death and one person recovered; it now has 59 cases but still only one reported death.

Algeria was clearly the most seriously affected of all the north African countries at the beginning of April, but it seemed likely even then that Egypt would rapidly overtake Algeria in the number of cases; and by 19 April it had done so, by a large measure. But still Algeria has suffered more deaths than any other country in Africa, Egypt included. The reasons for this are not yet clear. Libya, which remains embroiled in conflict and chaos, and is almost entirely without functioning public health services, is also likely to see a dramatic increase from its present low base.

Algeria

Algeria confirmed its first case of Covid-19 on 25 February – an Italian man who had arrived a week earlier; three days later, he was deported on a special flight back to Italy, where he was subject to quarantine. On the morning of 2 March, Algeria confirmed two new cases. By 4 March, the total number of cases had reached 12. The government acted relatively swiftly. Recognising that the threat came essentially from abroad, within two weeks (by 19 March), all international flights to and from Algeria were suspended. All land borders were closed, and ferry services were suspended.

Inside the country, a partial lockdown from dusk to dawn in those wilayas (provinces) most likely to be affected was ordered; across the country, schools, nurseries, universities and mosques have closed; sporting events have been cancelled and many public amenities and public spaces have been shut to the public. On 5 April, the lockdown was extended both in time (with a curfew from 15:00 to 07:00) and in space (all wilaiyas).

On 8 April, given that Algeria did not have the means to carry out mass testing by biological laboratory analysis, the Minister of Health, Abderrahmane Benbouzid, instructed the heads of the country’s health establishments – both public and private – to use thoracic (chest) scanners as a means of screening. Several scientists and health policy analysts have reported the effectiveness of this technique compared to that of biological analysis. It was recognised by the authorities as well as the health professionals that detecting the disease at an early stage and then isolating the infected patient was crucial in the fight against the virus.

It is too early to draw any conclusions as to what sections of the population are being or will be most affected by the epidemic in Algeria, but there must be concern that, as in other countries, people living in areas that are crowded, where physical distancing is difficult if not impossible, are most likely to be infected; this means that the poor and unemployed living in slums and shanty towns in and around the major cities are most at risk.

As to the response ‘from below’, Algerian protestors have called off their weekly anti-government demonstrations for the first time in more than a year to reduce the spread of the virus. For the moment, it would seem, and only for the moment, Algeria is experiencing the calm before the storm. In the meanwhile, however, there are signs that the regime is battening down the hatches, as the presidency postpones the distribution of copies of proposed constitutional amendments to prominent individuals, politicians and NGOs.

Egypt

Given the size of its population, it is likely that Egypt will suffer the greatest number of cases of infection, and most deaths. Also, despite the centralisation of government – and the fact that Egypt is today more a dictatorship than a democracy – the response has been less prompt than it might have been. All flights from China to Egypt were banned from 26 January onwards; but this was not enough to prevent the first case in the country, on 14 February. Ironically, this involved a Chinese national. The Egyptian authorities notified the WHO and the patient was placed in quarantine.

Incoming flights continued to arrive from abroad. An increasing number of cases was reported in the second half of February, including cases from the United States, Canada, Taiwan and Tunisia. The two Tunisians identified as positive were among 1,000 football supporters who had visited Egypt from Tunis from 27 February to 1 March. All of these were quarantined.

On 28 February, the Egyptian cabinet officially denied rumours that there had been a cover up of the real number of cases. Egypt Watch had reported that Egypt already had at least 20 lab-confirmed cases. Those testing positive for the virus were being held, it was claimed, in military hospitals, inaccessible to the Egyptian Ministry of Health and not recorded in the official health statistics reported to WHO. Confirmed cases allegedly absent from official statistics included a family in Tanta Military Hospital and four people in Qasr El Eyni Hospital.

On 9 March, after the first reported death (a German tourist), the WHO reported that there were now 56 confirmed cases in Egypt, while the Egyptian Minister of Tourism said they had discovered three additional cases, all of whom were hotel workers. On 12 March, the Ministry of Health announced the second death from the virus and that the total number of cases stood at 80. The next day, it was announced that one person had recovered and that 13 more had tested positive, bringing the total cases to 93.

In the meanwhile, a Tunisian returning from Egypt had tested positive for the virus and Tunisia now officially added Egypt to a list of outbreak areas, closing its borders and imposing a quarantine to anyone coming from that country. In the meanwhile, both Qatar and Kuwait had refused to allow anyone coming from Egypt into the country. All international flights into Egypt were now also suspended. At this point, President El-Sisi instructed the government to allocate EGP100 billion to finance a ‘comprehensive plan’ to stop the spread of the virus.

He instructed the governor of the Central Bank of Egypt (CBE), Tarek Amer, to take ‘all necessary measures’ to maintain economic and monetary stability, and to supply the necessary resources to support the social protection system, taking into consideration the neediest groups. He also discussed with Prime Minister, Mostafa Madbouly, the measures to be taken by the government to cope with the economic repercussions, especially the financial needs of different state bodies to deal with the ongoing developments.

The CBE announced a number of measures to support the national economy, including raising daily transaction limits on credit cards as well as cancelling fees and commissions applied at points of sale and on withdrawals from ATMs for six months. It also instructed banks to postpone credit dues for individual debts, including real estate loans and loans for consumer purposes for six months with no fines or deposits in case of late payment.

On 18 March, police detained four activists after they protested in front of the cabinet headquarters calling for the release of political prisoners to protect them from the spread of coronavirus. The next day, the Ministry of Health announced a new death and 46 new cases, bringing the total number of infected to 256 cases (three times as many as the week before), including 7 deaths and 28 now recovering.

All restaurants, cafes, nightclubs and public places were now closed throughout the country from seven in the evening until six in the morning, at least until the end of the month. The decision excluded places that sold food, as well as pharmacies and home delivery services. The decision to close all airports and suspend all domestic flights came into effect from 19 March, to last until 31 March at least.

By 20 March, the total of cases was 285 cases, including 39 who had recovered and had been discharged from hospital, and 8 deaths. The next day, prayers in all of Egypt’s mosques were suspended for an initial period of two weeks. The Coptic Orthodox Church also announced the closure of all churches and the suspension of ritual services, masses, etc.

The same day it was reported that the president had chaired a high-level meeting to discuss the overall performance of the Egyptian economy and the CBE’s monetary policy in light of the recent international developments concerning the novel coronavirus. The governor of the CBE also provided an update on the decisions and initiatives taken by the bank to contain the impacts of the fast-spreading virus and to stimulate the economy, including financing small-sized projects and supporting a number of sectors such as industry and services.

It was reported also that the president had specifically directed the government to support the neediest in the country and those with irregular employment. On 22 March, it was announced that the total number of cases registered had now reached 327 cases, including 56 who had recovered, and 14 of whom had died. The infection had reached 24 out of the 27 Egyptian governorates.

By 4 April, the total number of cases had exceeded 1000, and, as previously reported, the reported total of cases on 8 April was 1,322 cases of persons infected with the virus and 85 deaths. Some 260 persons had recovered. On 8 April, Egypt extended its nation-wide night-time curfew until 23 April. By 19 April, the total number of reported cases was just over 3,000 and by 23 April, 3,659 with 276 deaths. There is every indication that the number of new cases, and of deaths, will now rise rapidly despite the measures taken.

In the face of this, there are indications that Sisi’s dictatorship will be further strengthened following the Egyptian parliament’s Legislative and Constitutional Affairs Committee meeting on 18 April to approve new amendments to the law that regulates the state of emergency that has been in force for most of the last 40 years. Committee head, Bahaaeddin Abu Shoka, said it was ‘a miracle’ that the opportunity to do so had arisen at this time. He pointed out that the amendments giving the President new powers were proposed many years ago, but the current crisis is appropriate for them to be agreed because they are related to the health of the country.

Morocco

In Morocco, the first reported case was not until the morning of 2 March. This was a Moroccan expatriate residing in Italy, who had flown in on 27 February. A second case was confirmed by the end of the day. This time it was an 89-year-old woman Moroccan also residing in Italy, who had returned to Morocco on 25 February from Bologna. A third case was confirmed on 10 March, a French tourist who arrived in Marrakesh. On the same day, one of the two first cases, a woman aged 89, died.

On 13 March, the Government of Morocco announced they had come to an agreement to suspend all passenger flights and ferry crossings to and from Spain, Algeria and France until future notice. The next day, the suspension of flights was expanded to include a further 25 countries. On 15 March, this suspension was extended to cover all international flights.

On 14 March, ten cases were confirmed, including a government minister Abdelkader Aamara, bringing the total to 18. The government now decided to shut down all schools, with effect from 16 March until further notice. King Mohamed VI announced the creation of an emergency fund of 10 billion dirhams (US$1 billion) in order to upgrade health infrastructure and support the worst affected economic sectors. On 19 March, a state of medical emergency was declared, to take effect the next day at 6:00 pm local time and to remain in effect until 20 April, with the possibility of a further extension.

The authorization of local state officials was now required for citizens to leave their homes, while making exceptions for workers at supermarkets, pharmacies, banks, gas stations, medical clinics, telecommunications companies, and essential freelance jobs. A direct 24-hour hotline was set up to ‘reinforce direct communication and urge vigilance to fight the impact of the coronavirus pandemic and safeguard the health of citizens.’

By the end of March, the total number of cases had reached 534, with 41 deaths. As of 7 April 2020, confirmed cases totalled 1,141, with 88 recoveries 88, and 83 deaths. Less than a fortnight later on 19 April, the total number of cases was 2,670, with 137 deaths; by 21 April there were 3,046 cases – not far short of the numbers suffered in Egypt – and 143 deaths. The lockdown has been extended to 20 May. The government has pardoned 5,654 prisoners and put forward procedures to protect inmates from the Covid-19 outbreak.

The government of Morocco acted rapidly and decisively. As in other north African countries, however, the peak of the epidemic is still a good way off. We shall have to see how the epidemic develops before we can really analyse the social and economic effects in distributional terms, that is, in terms of which sections of the population suffer most, but, as elsewhere, it is likely to be the less well-off in crowded urban areas who are the most vulnerable to the virus and the working classes and the poor whose livelihoods are most hard hit.

The statistics available so far suggest that most of the cases identified have been in the provinces with major urban conglomerations and the highest densities of population (eg 353 in Casablanca-Settat, 204 in Marrakech-Safi, 186 in Rabat-Salé-Kenitra and 160 in Fes-Meknès) with lower levels of incidence in more rural and remote regions in the north, east and south of the country.

Tunisia

In Tunisia, the first case reported (as in Morocco) on 2 March, was a 40-year-old Tunisian man from Gafsa in the interior, returning from Italy. Over the next week the number climbed to reach 13 confirmed cases by 12 March. Reaching 29 on 17 March, 60 by 20 March, 114 by 23 March and 173 by 24 March. By the end of the month it was 423, but later, although the numbers have continued to rise, the rate of growth has declined. As of 8 April, the total number of cases had reached just under 600, with 23 deaths and 23 recoveries. By 21 April the number of cases was 884, with 148 recovered and 48 deaths.

At the end of February, the government allocated 2.5 billion dinars (US$850 million) to combat the economic and social effects of the coronavirus health crisis. Among new measures, it was proposed to delay tax debts, postpone taxes on small- and medium-sized businesses, delay repayment of low-income employee loans and provide financial assistance to poor families. The Tunisian government also took swift action to halt international travel and ordered a lockdown of the entire country on 17 March, with a curfew and the army patrolling the streets (there is even a robot patrol operating in Tunis).

Mosques have been closed, as have most businesses, including cafés and markets. On 19 April, the curfew was extended to 4 May. Seventy-four suspected cases in Gafsa (an area of high labour migration) were placed under home confinement; two of them violated the confinement measures, and the local health directorate is taking legal action against them.

The impact on the economy has already been brutal. On 18 March, there was a 14.2% drop in the stock market index, and on 21 March, the flagship index of the Tunis Stock Exchange ended by falling by 7.3%. But it is the smaller businesses and their employees who will feel the effects of the lockdown as demand falls and incomes decline or even cease. It is not clear what measures the Tunisian government has put in place to support the economy and protect the most vulnerable.

Libya

Libya is a special case, as fighting has continued there ever since the overthrow of President Qadhafi 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. A fragile truce between the two parties to the conflict went into force on 12 January, but fighting continued, with each side blaming the other for starting it.

In mid-March, the GNA and Haftar’s forces both welcomed calls for a humanitarian pause in the fighting made by the UN and several countries, although the GNA said it reserved ‘the right to respond to daily assaults targeting civilians and public facilities’.

On 22 March, it was reported that, even before any cases had been recorded, the GNA had declared a night-time curfew and closure of public spaces starting on Sunday to keep the virus out of areas it controls. It also ordered the closure of restaurants, cafes and party halls and banned funeral and wedding ceremonies. The Haftar ‘regime’ has also imposed their own night-time curfew in areas under their control. Local residents under both ‘regimes’ are gearing up for shortages, while prices have been rising rapidly, particularly for essential items.

On 6 April, the crisis and emergency committee of the Municipality of Tajoura decided to form a scientific advisory committee consisting of specialized doctors in combating pandemics. It was reported also that the National Oil Corporation (NOC) had received a second shipment of medical equipment to help combat the novel coronavirus. The company hoped that the equipment would help doctors and nurses overcome the challenge posed by Covid-19. Another large consignment of other medical equipment is expected, to be distributed to areas in eastern, western, and southern Libya.

On 5 April, the UNHCR office in Libya expressed concern about the escalation in fighting in light of the spread of the Covid-19 epidemic. On Monday 6 April, Libya had recorded only 19 cases, including one death and two recoveries, according to the National Center for Disease Control. By 23 April, however, the number of cases had reached 59, with still only one reported death. The spread of Covid-19 in Libya remains relatively low for the time being; this may well change, however, in the coming weeks, for there is no single government, public health services are in disarray and there seems no end to the conflict.

Conclusion

One may well be sceptical about the role of the Bretton Woods institutions given their key role in the promotion of ‘globalization’ and of capitalism in Africa. Yet their responses, indicated at the start of this blogpost, are in line with the almost universal re-orientation – even in the USA and the UK – away from ‘neo-liberalism’ towards what might be termed ‘neo-Keynesianism’. This has seen a orientation to a much greater intervention by governments and by international and national financial institutions to bail out faltering private banks and corporations, to support businesses of all kinds, and even to provide some assistance to workers and the self-employed.

As in many countries around the world struggling to respond effectively to the immediate health needs of those affected by the epidemic, while at the same time safeguarding the key areas of their economies, there are deep contradictions in this ‘re-orientation’ – which may well prove only a temporary phenomenon before ‘business as usual’ is resumed. It is also the case that the response by the World Bank and the IMF, and any other countries sufficiently robust to allocate substantial resources to Africa at a time when they are struggling themselves, is likely to be ‘too little, too late’.

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

Featured Photograph: A woman in an informal Syrian refugee camp in the village of Ketermaya, Lebanon (Ali Hashisho, 21 April, 2020)

The Agricultural Model Killing the World

ROAPE

April 23, 2020

The agricultural model killing the world: an interview with Habib Ayeb and Ray Bush

In a wide-ranging interview, Ray Bush and Habib Ayeb discuss their new book, Food Insecurity and Revolution in the Middle East and North Africa. They argue that the question of our relationship with nature is now finally revealed in its starkest and most dramatic way as a climate emergency. Intensive, capitalist and extractivist agriculture has also generated the processes that have created the current pandemic.

Can you please tell us how the idea of your recent book Food Insecurity and Revolution in the Middle East and North Africa: Agrarian Questions in Egypt and Tunisia, arose?

We have been working together, on similar issues and often in collaboration for 20 years. Most of the research and critical engagement with activists and academics on agrarian issues and economic reform was grounded in our experiences in Egypt but our engagement with political struggles goes beyond this to many different countries in the Near East, especially Tunisia and Morocco and also to many cases in sub Saharan Africa. Egypt is a such a significant actor in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) for so many reasons – geostrategic position, size, dictatorship, working class and peasant activism. We wanted to bring together our work on economic reform and peasant activism – remember structural adjustment in Egypt began in the countryside in 1987, four years before the 1991 Economic Reform and Structural Adjustment Programme. But the upheavals and militant responses that were engendered by a counter-revolution that began in the mid-80s to reverse Nasser’s agrarian reforms of the 1950s and 1960s were extraordinary and mostly unreported. After the 2010 uprisings in Tunisia and 2011 in Egypt we were determined to locate the role of family farmers and small agrarian producers in the political economy of each country and in a broader global transformation of the international food system or regime.

Why is a focus on small farmers important? Can you talk about their incorporation into the world system?

Our book makes two crucial contributions: we promote an understanding of the role of rural struggles and agrarian transformation as the context within which the Egyptian and Tunisian uprisings take place and in so doing we draw on new research regarding how small farmers responded to regime change. In doing this we also contribute to the debate about food security and food sovereignty. In Tunisia family or small farmers constitute about 54% of all farmers and they farm just 11% of the agricultural area. In Egypt 91% of farmers share 50% of the total agricultural area with farms averaging less than five acres or about 1.25 feddan (one feddan is 1.038 of an acre or 0.42 hectares).

Our argument is that the local food system is a product of and also influences broad processes of local and national political economy as well as being structured by the global food regime. Egypt, for example, is second only to Indonesia in its dependency upon imported wheat and securing those imports have led to political contortions and complicity by the Egyptian state with US imperialism, subordination to Israel’s occupation in Palestine and dependence on US military assistance of at least $3 billion each year.

We think one of the strengths of the book, although something we could certainly have developed further, is the world historical account we provide of small farmer uneven incorporation into the global food system. Our broad historical analysis is very much informed by the work of the late Samir Amin. We explore how small farmers, and the agricultural sectors of Egypt and Tunisia more generally, are historically incorporated with a periodisation that approximates to the period of colonialism 1830-1956; redistributive development 1952-1970; state guided capitalism 1970-1991; neoliberalism 1985-2010 and the most recent patterns of de-development after 2000. The period of colonial transformation and imperialist intervention destroyed local patterns of food production for consumption and replaced them with the emphasis on the production of high value, and low nutritious food stuffs for export. The country’s history is in many ways a history of attempts to control the fellahin (small farmers and rural landless) and the land on which they work, since the commodification of land and labour imposed taxation on self-provisioning households and opened agricultural trade to the vagaries of international markets and unequal exchange. This happened in Egypt especially after Napoleon’s invasion in 1798 and in Tunisia after 1815 as a series of European states imposed conditions and the control of trade.

After the financial crash of 2007/2008 there was a dramatic and violent increase in food prices. Can you explain this process to us? What was its impact across the MENA region?

There has been an upward trend in global food commodity prices since 2000 but the increase was far more acute after 2007. The price of wheat rose by 130% and rice doubled in price in the first three months of 2008. Food prices were higher than at any time since the food price index was established in 1845. Prices have continued to fluctuate, and uncertainty and insecurity led to a dramatic increase in food riots 2007-2008 and MENA was no exception. Deaths in bread queues in Cairo at that time might have been understood by the Mubarak dictatorship that something needed to be done about prices and access to basic foodstuffs, however, a blind eye was turned. It is unsurprising that the revolutionary slogans in Egypt in 2011 became ‘Bread, Freedom, Social Justice’ and in Tunisia demonstrators chanted ‘Bread, Water, No Ben Ali’.

The trend in prices was attributed to increased demand from India and China as incomes grew and populations expanded and that there was an increased integration of energy and food prices. However, a couple of things need to be clarified. The price of food in MENA is in direct relation to the underdevelopment and underinvestment in smallholder agriculture. This did not just happen in 2008. It was foregrounded by decades of impoverishment of small-scale farmers and increased state and private capital invested instead, in large scale US-type farm model schemes of capital and water intensive export crops especially horticultural. Gross investment in agriculture fell across MENA 1980-1992. In Algeria it fell from 37% to 28% in Egypt from 31% to 23% and in Morocco from 23% to 22%. The celebrated years of economic opening and reform – infitah – were marked by years of agricultural neglect. The end of cheap food globally has particularly impacted economies that are less able to defend and advance small farmer livelihoods and this is something our book exposes. Food producers (and near landless farmers) are the first to suffer from hunger.

Your book places rural struggles at the heart of the Egyptian and Tunisian revolution – many authors have argued that in fact it was the urban poor who led the uprisings in both countries. Why are they wrong?

It is not that authors who emphasise the leading role of the urban poor in the uprisings are wrong, it is that most commentary on the Egyptian and Tunisian uprisings have ignored rural producers and near landless. It is as if the countryside had absolutely no role in the uprisings at all. This is not only factually incorrect, but it is also to misunderstand the historical background to the uprisings. It also reflects a laziness among commentators who are either orientalist – they imagine its simply impossible for Arabs and North African’s to desire democracy, or it was just too inconvenient to travel beyond the city of Cairo, and why bother anyway when it’s only the working class that can lead an uprising against repression?

We argue the importance of documenting rural conflicts and political protest and not to see the struggles that took place as a snapshot of a riot or demonstration, albeit one that lasted many weeks. We argue the need to have a historical account of protest in Egypt and Tunisia over the last 35 years which alone allows for a sense of class formation and class struggles, and the spatial dimension to them that explains the roles played by family farmers and the transformation of the agrarian sector that has so immiserated small-holders and landless.

The ousting of Mubarak and Ben Ali can only be explained by the failure of the political economies of each country and the failures of the agricultural sectors within them. That failure, the persistence of rural underdevelopment, poverty and immense social and economic deprivation generated political protests that challenged both regimes.

Consider a formative, earlier period, for example: a few years before the bread riot in Tunisia in 1984, after an unprecedented rise of bread and food prices, Egypt had food riots of its own in 1977. President Sadat was forced to rescind bread price rises and while President Mubarak was mindful of not repeating those riots in the 1990s he put in place a draconian land reform that removed rights to land in perpetuity for one million tenants (add six million if you include an estimate of affected family members). We called this a counter-revolution as Law 96 of 1992, which had a five-year transition period, led to immense conflict between owners and tenants. The countryside became militarised as protests to the lack of tenure, increase in rents, lack of security of access to land which had been farmed for generations, combined with broader economic reforms of an end to credit, co-operatives and markets. More than a hundred deaths, 900 injuries and 1,500 arrests helped keep the lid on rural protest throughout the country between 1998 and 2000. During this time there was also a dramatic increase in the number of farms of less than one acre as a concentration and centralisation of land holdings accelerated and with it rural poverty.

We argue that this background is essential to understand and comprehend how farmers after 2010 occupied land, as in areas close to Alexandria on the northern coast and in Dakhalia This was land that had been taken by historical landlords, state bureaucrats and the military and which farmers reclaimed. Such occupations became short-lived, but they were part of the essential ‘revolutionary’ spontaneity of the uprisings.

The book openly uses a Marxist approach to analyse the region. How does this approach help us understand agrarian changes in Egypt and Tunisia?

Our approach is grounded in historical materialism and in understanding the importance of exploitative class relations that generates wealth for some and impoverishment for others. In doing so we employ the importance of the longue durée. This explores long-term historical processes and structures, rather than a focus only on events despite how momentous they may be. We trace the political and economic structures that have emerged in the MENA and our two country cases that have influenced rural livelihoods of peasants. Our approach is global allowing (national) case studies to reveal how changes in the international food regimes have impacted peasant producers, exploitative relations of production in capitalism and how conditions for resistance (class struggle) emerge and change to topple repressive regimes of Mubarak and Ben Ali.

We offer a contribution to the development of the ways in which world food systems theory and dependency theory continue to offer the most appropriate analytical frame to locate the class dynamics that shape food politics in Egypt and Tunisia. Food system analysis explains the spread and deepening concentration and centralisation of agri-capital and how food regimes change over time. It is an analytical frame that helps explain the role of commercial agriculture in state formation and transformation. And our use of world food regime or systems analysis helps us explore how and why food as a commodity determines peoples uneven access to the means of life and how this changes over time. The food regime is an analytical frame that is rooted in an historical analysis of commercial agriculture that has been inextricably linked to state formation in Europe and the US, to colonialism and imperialism but the commercialisation of agriculture has also promoted forms of resistance that we document.

Our analysis, as mentioned earlier, is influenced by Samir Amin as he provided a model to explain both the persistence of underdevelopment in the Third World and what an alternative to late capitalism might look like. Our Marxism highlights the contrast between patterns of capital accumulation in the North or centre and that in the periphery or Third World. We document how and why a system of ‘self-centred’ capital accumulation in the imperial triad of the US, EU and Japan is not replicated in the MENA. The history of the triad has been the pattern of capital accumulation that had produced capital goods and consumer goods and it has managed to do so premised on colonial expansion from the 14^th century. In contrast the Third World produces export crops and commodities for the purchase of luxury goods by a small and influential bourgeoisie that exploits and impoverishes small farmers and workers.

The book also details the impact of imperialism on the region – in the wars and dispossessions. Can you speak about the impact of this imperialism in your case-studies?

It must always be remembered that the MENA region has experienced the highest number of international wars and civil conflict in any region of the world. MENA accounts for 40% of total global battle related deaths since 1946 and 60% of all casualties since 2000. Much of that conflict is the result of direct US and NATO military intervention and indirectly by the arms trade and Western funding of local reactionary surrogate forces. In Tunisia French imperialism has clearly been felt through unwavering support and until the very last moment, to the Ben Ali regime, considered to be the only one capable of limiting migration and the supposed terrorist risks towards the northern shores of the Mediterranean.

In Egypt, the imperial triad considers the brutal dictator General Sisi an ally to be funded with military hardware used for violent repression of any local dissent and as a regional policeman at ease with defending Israeli settler colonialism and occupation in Palestine. US imperial outreach has also been pervasive and less overt with the role play by USAID in Egypt’s economic reform programme. For many years in the 1990s, USAID occupied several floors in the Ministry of Agriculture and Land Reclamation advancing and promoting private sector growth for either local elites or foreign investors. USAID financed the Egyptian Agricultural Production and Credit Project 1986-1999 to the tune of $775 million and still failed to sustain export growth and poverty reduction.

You speak of the need for an alternative to food security built through capital intensive export-oriented agriculture. Can you talk about this alternative – what would it look like?

Our work is a direct critique of a trade-based theory of food security which remains a dominant trope. Instead, we argue for a strategy that develops and delivers an agenda of food sovereignty. There is no single definition of this, and neither should there be given different historical circumstances and possibilities. However, we do argue that food sovereignty offers a comprehensive peasant path to social control and decision making over food related issues and with them a democratic transition to the socialisation of the means of production. We argue that food sovereignty creates the necessary conditions for what Amin called national sovereign projects and in this we argue for the need for an agenda of radical transformation: a re-appropriation of what is private. This, of course, is dependent upon a political constituency to deliver it and at the moment, while we highlight glimpses of this in our two cases, we are a long way from deepening class alliances against landlords and with urban-based workers to resist entrenched neo-liberal agendas and class forces.

Food sovereignty is an alternative to the corporate food regime where communities shape decision making agendas instead of ubiquitous corporations. That transition is not straightforward but in many ways, it is in motion with all the setback that might be expected and some that might not. This is the subject of another book perhaps, but we might argue that the struggles that we document, and which are documented by others elsewhere on the planet indicate a transition to a 4^th food regime. This is a regime where the unrivalled corporate control of food production, distribution and exchange is regularly challenged, where food protests and riots are more systemic highlighting anger at and the need for substitutes for global pricing, inequality driven by global trade, expansion of land grabbing, dispossession and depeasantisation and a greater recognition of links between rural and urban class struggles to counter corporate controls and power of local elites.

These struggles will help promote sovereign national projects that promote degrees (moments) of delinking from deleterious international markets, consolidation of peasant and worker demands for access to food at affordable prices and agendas for ‘sovereign’ states to work with other states in solidarity as an incremental strategy for socialism.

Linked to this is the vital – indeed, perhaps the central question of our time – the relationship between people and planet. You employ Marx’s notion of the metabolic rift. Please describe the term and why it is important for our struggle to rebuild our world today?

In a modest way we advance the recent important arguments that Marx and Marxism examines on how human activity impacts on a natural world. The natural world cannot be envisaged or understood without analysing how patterns of capital accumulation are systemically entwined with ‘nature’. Nature is not separate from people and people are not separate from nature – capitalism creates and transforms a particular type of environment. For Marx, capitalist development disturbed a metabolic ‘interaction between man and the earth’ and in so doing added to the range of more overt class conditions that create the conditions for the downfall of capitalism.

The question of our relationship with nature is now, finally for many, revealed in its starkest and most dramatic way as a climate emergency. We have indicated how capitalism in general and in its particular form in Egypt and Tunisia through the world food system have created conditions for the emergency. We highlight accelerating rates of rural poverty in MENA and the links and drivers of that from the global, national and local food systems. We have highlighted how intensive, capitalist and extractivist agriculture generates the processes that have created the current pandemic for which there are already tragically heavy human losses.

We argue that there is the need to reread the agrarian question, both in its dynamic relationships with the social and economic rights of small peasantry and their places in production relationships, and in its relationship, from cause to effect, with climate change. It is this careful reading of the different (interconnected) links between agrarian questions and ecological questions, considered in their various dimensions, that we tried to explore in the two case studies of Tunisia and Egypt. However, these questions deserve more space. Maybe a new book.

Many people are drawing the link between the climate crisis, capitalism and Covid-19 outbreak. Could you describe how, in your opinion, these issues are intimately linked and how it connects to some of the arguments in your work?

We have known for some time and thanks to numerous works and publications including those of Rob Wallace (Big Farms Make Big Flu, Monthly Review Press 2016) that the intensive, industrial and extractivist agricultural model, and the feedback loops of social and economic injustice that the model draws on and intensifies, has incontestably created an irreversible rupture of the ecological chain, whose consequences turn out to be absolutely dramatic.

It is now indisputable that the multiplication of viruses, including Covid-19 at the origin of the terrible current pandemic, is explained, among other things, by the extraordinary development of intensive and industrial farming, the considerable reduction in natural prairies and grazing, mono-forestry and the excessive use of pesticides, antibiotics and other phytosanitary products. Thus, the link between intensive agriculture, upstream of the mechanisms of accumulation by dispossession, the exclusion of peasantry and local knowledge and the destruction of biodiversity, on the one hand, and the appearance of pandemics with viral origins is now well established. In short, the agricultural model that is intended to feed the world is now killing it. The space between wild species and human settlements has been so reduced that microbes that may live in animals have crossed to people, and their living spaces, transforming what have been ‘benign animal microbes into deadly pathogens’. This is succinctly explained by Sonia Shah (‘The microbes, the animals and us’ Le Monde Diplomatique March 2020).

Of course viruses do not choose their victims, but the ability of people and communities to protect themselves depends mainly on the means they can mobilize and the conditions of their access to the various resources and services, including public health and medical resources and services. In these kinds of extreme situations, impoverished, marginalized and dispossessed peasants, deprived of their resources and their own food ‘security’, are particularly exposed to the risks of the pandemic.

Food sovereignty we argue, based on small scale farming and food oriented agriculture is the only way to achieve the vital and urgent necessities: feeding people – at affordable prices, protecting natural resources, enriching biodiversity, limiting or reducing climate change processes to secure the livelihoods for the next generation. Focus on industrial and export-oriented agriculture does not do that.

Finally, do you remain hopeful about the struggles in MENA and elsewhere, to refigure global political economy in the interests of the rural and urban poor?

There is always optimism that capitalism can be transformed by the social classes that have generated the wealth for capitalists. The contemporary balance of class forces in Tunisia is more favourable to social democratic reform and improved rural livelihoods than in Egypt where repression is greater than at any time in its history. There is much hope for progressive transformation in Algeria, at least while initiatives continue to be made from the street. However, the word of caution now is the same as it was after 2011. This is the problem of transforming street protest into a seizure and transformation of state power, nowhere is there a programme to do this but it is precisely that absence that made the uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia so powerful and effective in removing heads of state, but not in removing, and transforming, these bestial peripheral capitalist regimes.

Habib Ayeb is a writer, filmmaker and activist. He is professor of geography at Université Paris 8 and a contributor to roape.net. Ray Bush is a member of the Leeds University Centre for African Studies (LUCAS) advisory board and member of the Review of African Political Economy’s Editorial Working Group. Their book, Food Insecurity and Revolution in the Middle East and North Africa, can be purchased here.

Our Barbaric Age – verses on the crisis

ROAPE

April 22, 2020

In three poems, Issa bin Mariam (Issa Shivji’s pen name) reflects on the unique crisis we face, and on life, meaning and struggle. He writes that in this ‘barbaric age, the one-percent stole and continue to steal the ninety-percent’s freedom.’

***

little things I miss

I miss laughter.
I miss meeting and greeting people in the street.
I miss my friends at Kijiweni.
I miss the incessant chatter of baraza and utani between Yanga and Simba.
And the argument among wazee of who is older than whom.
I miss children in their uniforms walking to school.
I miss agonising over small kids disembarking from school buses and darting to school gates oblivious of oncoming traffic.
I miss the stinking smell of the garbage truck as it passes by me on my morning walk.
I miss the elderly couple of the retired army officer who never fail to wave their both hands at me with unforgettable warmth and charm you never want to miss.
I miss the rising sun on the horizon as I sit on the cement bench doing my breathing exercises.
I miss the expatriate Indian couple, the fair lady never missing to give me a smile as she mutters under her breath ‘good morning’ while the dark man walking beside her tries to force one without much success.
I miss going to office at the School of Law as Emeritus Professor, the joy of which was rudely interrupted by carnivorous corona.

I grieve at the sight of coffins on the screen as they are lowered into mass graves.
My heart bleeds as I hear the cries and agony of so many friends and relatives who are unable to pay their last respects to their loved ones and bury them with dignity.

I ask of myself many questions:
Is it a ritual or emotional as I send messages of solidarity and hope to friends and acquaintances with some of whom I have not corresponded for years?
Are those messages an expression of my solitude or a declaration of solidarity with them?
Why did I not remember them before corona and remember them now?
Do I relish memory so much?

I ask myself: I talk of humanity, solidarity, togetherness, love, hugs and much other chatter and platitude, yet I sit here doing nothing except: eat and wash dishes, wash dishes and eat; sit on the couch and sweep the floor, sweep the floor and sit on the couch; wash my hands and sanitize them, sanitize my hands and wash them. Why? To survive? (and help others close to me survive? Perhaps).

Survive and do what? See my forthcoming book in print, caress and kiss it and swim in the stream of accolades that routinely follow? Lecture on class struggle and pontificate on the plight of the poor? Condemn the privilege of the rich while enjoying goodies of the bourgeois world?

And, yes, I read – in the washroom. And, yes, I write little pieces of crap like this – in the washroom.

I marvel at the birds flying freely and singing soothingly which I never cared for before.
I marvel at the clear blue sky without dark clouds of smoke and pollution, which I never noticed before.
I marvel at the doctors and nurses as they save lives, which I never appreciated before.
I cry with the nurses as they pour out their grief and emotions at lack of PPE and life-saving ventilators.
I curse and abuse those who have trillions to massacre and maim millions but can’t spare a billion for ventilators.

I marvel at clean streets without cars and trucks gorging life-giving oxygen while exhaling life-threatening carbon monoxide. I swear at climate-change deniers.

As I write this, I hear on the news bulletin – three people were swept away as they tried to cross the river, the bridge over which had vanished the night before in torrential rains.

I remember some biblical saying: to the one who has, more will be given, and from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. Hallelujah!

Why do I write this?
To lift the boredom bothering me?
To assuage the ghost of searing solitude?
To placate my conscience?
Or solace my soul?

14-04-2020
9.30 pm

***

As I raise my head from this little screen fixed in which are tantalum and tungsten mined in Congo tarnished red with the blood and sweat of humanity at the exploited, unseen, uncared for end of the world, I see Dawn breaking, dancing and smiling, tantalising, arousing sensuality never sensed before. My soul tells my ego – not just another every day dawn. A New Dawn. I see my granddaughter Zoya smiling, exuding warmth and hope, raising both her little fingers, ‘Up with Humanity’. I see her hands clasping in a Salute of Solidarity, of ‘lal salam’, of ‘red salute’ of ‘red star’, of ‘nyota nyekundu’.

‘A New Civilisation’, says my Soul
‘Old wine in new bottles’ retorts Ego in its sinking hoarse voice.

The academist in me crawls back, the cynic covers its face, the intellectual is shaken out of slumber: the rational embraces the moral.

May Soul prevail over Ego.
(I don’t know if this is a prayer or a prognosis.)

15-04-2020
6.09 am

***

Today is a new day. Not quite of the New Dawn. The old lingers on. Depressing news of deaths keep streaming in. I clean-shaved. I stole time from washing dishes and mopping the floor to read Oklo on “Achebe’s reformist agenda and Ngugi’s Marxist aesthetics”. That is dishonest. You never steal time. You always steal someone else’s labour-time to make time for yourself. I stole my partner’s.

Oklo joins the long line of musings since Rosa Luxemburg on reform and revolution. Humankind’s search for freedom and struggle against necessity is age-old. Since the stone age. In the barbaric age, the one-percent stole and continue to steal the ninety-percent’s freedom – out of necessity, they say. Out of avarice, I say.

I can see twenty-year old Zoya gently waving a red flag over the sea of humans surging forward in unison. Inscribed on it in black bold letters:

Freedom for All. Down with necessity.

When the Home of Humankind meets the Future of Humanity red stars will twinkle all over the black African sky.

15-04-2020
9.10 pm

***

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

We Shall Fight, We Shall Live!

ROAPE

April 21, 2020

We Shall Fight, We Shall Live – the frontline in Nigeria and South Africa

Reporting on the struggle for food and survival in Nigeria, trade unionist Gbenga Komolafe states that the repression and starvation of the poor must end. While in South Africa, Ashley Fataar argues for a wealth tax on the rich to feed workers and the poor.

‘No Palliatives, no lockdown’

By Gbenga Komolafe

Distributing food items as ‘palliatives’ has been a huge scam. My members from all over the country reported extremely vexatious levels of nepotism and elite capture. In Lagos, ridiculous quantities of food was parcelled to vulnerable groups through the ruling APC party structures (the All-Progressives Congress). These extremely clientelist structures cornered most of the food and sent whatever they deemed fit to the so-called Community Development Associations which are nothing more than APC patronage machines. At the end of the day, these food parcels became objects of ridicule even by the poorest members of the communities.

The government also lately distributes food parcels in bagco [a Nigerian Bag Manufacturing Company] bags to people they invited through the Lagos State Residents Registration Agency at the Ministry of Agriculture Office. Again, the quality and quantity dispensed cannot reasonably feed a family of five for a day, according to one of my members who was able to get it.

Ogun state reported an even more badly managed food distribution system. Osun distributed expired rice. Ekiti targeted only ‘vulnerable’ groups. We hear of cash disbursement in some northern states, but I’ve only heard complaints from my members in the North.

This takes me to the last issue I would like to raise. In distributing ‘palliatives’, what criteria has government used to measure who the ‘poor’ is? Disability, gender, age? That would be grossly inadequate. How do you define carpenters, plumbers, masons, barbers, hair dressers, mechanics, welders, cobblers, photographers, drivers, bus conductors etc, most of whom have not been able to earn a dime and yet have to feed families? With little or no savings, no social safety net of any type, how do they survive the so-called lockdown?

In January this year, private developers, using the Nigerian Navy and Lagos State government as a front, destroyed 24 communities and rendered 55000 people homeless. That’s a trend that has impacted a million people since 1999 spurning a huge number of homeless people.

And just yesterday, April 18, Lagos State government destroyed even more communities! So, what is the programme for the homeless and those rendered homeless? I know in other climes they are housed in empty buildings and even hotels. What’s happening here? Why are we not raising hell about this?

At the level, of my organization, FIWON (Federation of Informal Workers’ Organizations of Nigeria), we have gradually reached a consensus that government talk of lockdown is a lot of nonsense because they cannot really keep people at home. Goggle mapping has actually shown that there is an increased movement of people in the neighbourhoods than before.

It can’t be otherwise in a situation where seven people live in a room and 75 people share a toilet and bathroom and people are forced to literally live on the streets, and that’s not even the technically homeless ones. What we have had therefore is a mere ‘lock up’ of people’s livelihoods. But the middle class seem unconcerned because they are insulated from this reality and their income is not really terminated as is the case with those in the informal sector. In this scenario, only God knows how we can determine the thousands of people killed so far under this lockdown by hunger and hunger induced illnesses.

The only logical demand would be to radically scale down this lockdown while urgent steps are taken to provide means for people to maintain basic health protocol for Covid-19 prevention. Improvised water drums in the communities to encourage constant hand-washing, provision of face masks and training on how to use this effectively, urgent revamp of healthcare facilities, free universal healthcare services (health insurance doesn’t work with the poor), an urgent revamp of public schools with water and hygiene provision as most public schools are overcrowded, construction of more classrooms, and employment of more teachers, a real stimulus package for the informal sector to get people back to work and stimulate local economies through cooperatives and independent organizations of the working poor.

The recent Central Bank of Nigeria stimulus has nothing to do with the informal sector and micro-businesses as the conditions are wholly unsuitable for this sector. Lastly there should be one off Bank Verification Number (BVN) transfers of not less that N20k to the urban poor. Those without BVN can be rapidly assisted with special arrangements with banks and appropriate physical distancing. It won’t be worse than people currently using ATM and it will help to boost financial inclusion.

The lockdown should be rolled back immediately while there should be demonstrable commitment to implement programs that will indeed enable our people to cope with Covid-19. It is not going away soon, and we cannot starve our people any further!

Gbenga Komolafe is General Secretary of the Federation of Informal Workers’ Organizations of Nigeria (FIWON)

Repression and Hunger for the Poor

By Ashley Fataar

14 April was the day that simmering discontent boiled over in South Africa because of the government’s handling of the lockdown in the country.

When the President announced a nation-wide lockdown, only those working in hospitals and super-markets were allowed to work. All other workplaces were closed. For those working it meant an income.

However, in some instances super-market owners did not inform their workers about the arrangements. Several simply left the urban area they lived in and hastily travelled to their rural homes. At least there they could try to grow crops to feed themselves.

But in addition to this, many workers saw it as an excuse by bosses to retrench workers. Towards the end of 2019 many workplaces warned of looming job cuts in the new year, even before Covid-19 became an issue.

For the majority of those employed it simply meant no income. Before the lockdown, the government stated that some relief would come in the form of Unemployed Insurance Fund (UIF) payments to those not at work due to the lockdown.

The lockdown was announced on the evening of Monday 23 March and was to start in the early hours of Friday 27 March. The country had just three days to prepare.

But in the days leading up to 27 March it became clear that the government was completely unprepared (please see the posts by Heike Becker). The day before the lockdown a government minister stated that UIF payments would only be processed after the lockdown. Workers would not be paid for at least a month.

Two weeks into the lockdown an extension of two was announced. This further delayed UIF payments by at least two weeks. Subsequently the application criteria changed making it more cumbersome to apply.

In order for workers to claim UIF, bosses have to be up-to-date with UIF insurance payments. Unfortunately, South African employers have a history of paying late or not at all. So not all workers would even receive UIF payments.

Disastrous handling

In the Alexandra township of Johannesburg residents gathered outside a school on Easter Saturday to receive parcels of food. Three hundred did not receive anything. They were told to return the following Monday.

When they did so, they were told to return on Tuesday. Whilst walking back to their shacks they stopped in groups to discuss the dire situation that they were in. Police then pounced on the groups and opened fire with rubber bullets.

It was a similar story in the village of Hhoyi in Mpumalanga. Health officials turned up to conduct screening and tests for Covid-19. The villagers told them that they needed water and hand sanitisers, not testing. They then stoned the officials and set dogs on them.

In the Mitchells Plain township of Cape Town a group of residents turned up for food parcels. When the parcels did not arrive they refused to leave the streets and fought the police. In other areas of Cape Town youths began looting shops.

On the same day in Port Elizabeth, dozens of patients turned up at a medical clinic in one of the northern townships. They were turned away because the clinic had run out of clean water. Decaying council water pipes had ruptured.

The next day Gauteng provincial premier David Makhura admitted that 20 percent of the population of the province was food insecure in normal times. During the lock down that figure had doubled.

In the Western Cape province, the provincial government put out telephone numbers to call for food parcels but it turned out that the government was only going to distribute food to registered Non-Profit Organisations (NPOs) or charity organisations. These NPOs would only distribute to those people on their databases.

Local municipal councillors were also given food parcels to hand out, yet the history of councillors in South Africa is riddled with corruption. Frequently, they only attend to their political supporters. If you are not a supporter of the local councillor it can mean no food for you.

The day before the lockdown was extended by two weeks hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people got into mini-bus taxis in the Western Cape and attempted to travel to their rural homes in the Eastern Cape. As soon as the mini-bus taxis drove into the Eastern Cape they were stopped and prevented from going further. They were later ordered to return.

Violence

This has all happened despite the violence that has been meted out to workers.

In most townships space is a luxury that no workers have. Houses empty out onto pavements. Shacks are erected right next to each other with a narrow passage to walk between. The lack of both water and electricity is a problem for millions of workers. One tap can supply dozens, sometimes hundreds, of households. In addition, there are no sewerage pipes or pipes are blocked. Hand sanitisers are a luxury.

For those who live with no yard, being out in the street is the norm. It is also the only source of fresh air because many shacks have no windows. For children it is the space to play and run around – it is simply the only place where life can exist.

Yet soldiers and police have murdered workers simply for being in the street. There have even been several instances of people sitting in their yard and being ordered inside their house. This has been accompanied by soldiers and police going inside the house and raiding alcohol from fridges claiming it was illegally bought.

Chillingly, some of those who have provided legitimate answers as to why they were in the street (showing the groceries that they have just bought, for example), have been violently attacked by soldiers or police.

In Cape Town the authorities bussed hundreds of homeless people into an open stadium. They were told it was to get tested. Once they were there they were not allowed to leave. Food was not provided for nearly a week. In the process a young woman was raped.

When those jailed in the stadium protested, the media was forced away from the stadium whilst police went in. The authorities later claimed it was to restore ‘calm’. In reality, with no cameras present, people were brutalised.

Large investors get favoured

It is, however, not the case for the wealthy. Wine producers were allowed to export wine for a week. The giant South African Breweries remained open. Factories where processes could not be interrupted were allowed to remain open.

Just under three weeks into the lockdown, and with the infection rates spreading, the government allowed the mines to open. Mines in South Africa are notorious for their lack of health and safety. In mines the temperature can exceed 35 degrees Celsius (South African mines are amongst the deepest and hottest in the world).

With workers concentrated in the mines, this produces a dangerous environment for the rapid spread of any airborne infections. Many miners suffer from health problems such as tuberculosis and other lung diseases. The mines are a perfect disaster waiting to happen.

The South African government is following the example of the Trump government in wanting to end the lockdown. Profits are more important than workers lives.

On 16 April, three weeks into the lockdown, the government announced that it would end in phases. The argument for ending it was that the curve has been flattened sufficiently but the real reason was that the economy was taking a battering. Ratings agencies placed South Africa’s investment grade into junk status followed by an immediate crash of the South African Rand.

Yet the vital thing to understand is that the flu season in the southern hemisphere is nowhere near its peak. Winter season is only just starting. Experts predict that the Covid-19 infection rate will only peak between August and October – in 4 to 6 months from now. Allowing workers back to work is a recipe for widening the pandemic.

The simple solution would be to provide food to workers. South Africa can afford it. Annually food producers dump 10 million metric tons of food each year and South African bosses have fantastic wealth. In the days after the lockdown four of the biggest billionaires made a R4.5bn (about £200m) loan available. This shows the wealth that they sit on.

A wealth tax would easily sort out the problem of feeding workers and the poor, though the government and rich are not interested in workers lives. Profits drive this world and the poor die.

Ashley Fataar is a political activist in Cape Town and he writes for websites and newspapers around the world.

Featured Photograph: Dayo Paul, ‘Protest Looms in Lagos, Abuja over Covid-19 lockdown’ Newswatch Nigeria (1 April, 2020).

Let’s Decolonize the Coronavirus

ROAPE

April 20, 2020

In a dispatch from their lockdown in Kigali, two UK-based researchers Andrea Filipi and Katrin Wittig reflect on the international media coverage of the Coronavirus pandemic and Africa. They argue that the coverage has recycled stereotypical portrayals of Africa, and that the West may be losing an opportunity to rethink itself and its relationship with the continent.

By Andrea Filipi and Katrin Wittig

Ladies and gentlemen, Africa is – once again – burning. ‘Chinese Virus: the catastrophic scenario of an infection in Africa’. ‘Africa meets pandemic with violence, confusion’ or ‘Coronavirus is an existential threat to Africa and her crowded slums’ are just a few of the headlines we’ve been reading in the international press over the past few months. The coronavirus pandemic has become the latest incarnation of the persistent discourse about the continent’s destiny to fail. And it does not quite matter who’s doing the talking, whether it’s the UN’s Secretary-General, the WHO Director-General, Bill Gates, international NGO giants or the countless media outlets that produce the headlines. Every crisis is an opportunity, it is said. But when it comes to our relationship with ‘Africa’, it seems that we the Westerners, the power holders, the global elite, who benefit from the current world system and are disproportionately sheltered from emergencies, are missing an opportunity to interrogate the way that we see ourselves and the rest of the world.

We are two female political scientists, both of us from Europe, who happened to find themselves in Rwanda during the unfolding of the coronavirus pandemic. We feel compelled to share our observations about the way in which ‘Africa’ is being talked and written about during this global turmoil. As researchers interested in the African Great Lakes region, part of our training has been about becoming aware of how the West has historically imposed on Africa, maybe more so than on any other continent, its own vision of what it is: the dark continent. We are always cautious when ‘Africa’ is essentialized and its more than 50 countries are treated as a unitary entity, more often than not equated with violence, confusion and chaos. This continued colonial imagery, which has concrete negative consequences for African people, has rightly led to a renewed call to decolonize knowledge production. Thus, we feel appalled that well into the twenty-first century, influential media outlets (such as The New York Times, The Guardian or L’Express) and opinion-makers have perpetuated certain clichés over recent weeks.

Since the news of the virus first started gaining the attention of the global media in late December last year, we have detected three more or less distinct phases with respect to how Africa makes its way into the debate. In the early days, what we call the first wave, the virus was largely confined to China and other parts of Asia. Not a lot of outlets talked about it reaching Europe yet, or certainly not into the full-blown, unprecedented extent that we are seeing today. Following initial condemnations of the Chinese government’s secrecy, it was subsequently largely praised for stepping up to the plate and putting its authoritarian toolkit to good use to ensure control and compliance with restrictive measures. This, combined with the highly developed infrastructure and surveillance techniques of places like Singapore, South Korea and Hong Kong, was largely credited with keeping the epidemic at bay. The dominant narrative was that the world would be fine as long as the virus remained in those countries that were deemed to have the capacity to act effectively. Read: Not Africa. This is how Africa entered the media discourse about the virus, as the ‘catastrophic scenario’, mostly framed around the ‘massive challenge’ it constituted for the world community. Africa would threaten global containment precisely due to the infamous lack of effectiveness and infrastructure of the African state.

To be clear: we do not mean to argue here that the infrastructure (paved roads, hospitals, schools, and other attributes of contemporary states) of most African states is not overall inferior to that of many European or Asian countries, or that countries of the African continent are not, on average, poorer than those on other continents of this world. But it is striking that, even at a time when Africa was not yet hit by the epidemic, it was primarily Africa that was presented as the ‘most vulnerable target’. Africa was instantly contrasted with the efficiency of Asia (a stereotypical discourse in its own right), and once again framed as inferior and lacking. As Bill Gates told the American Association for the Advancement of Science in mid-February, ‘This disease, if it’s in Africa, is more dramatic than if it’s in China.’

This essentializing discourse, problematic in itself, also seems to point the finger exclusively at African governments, without even an acknowledgment of the structural context which gave rise to, and perpetuates, these same governments’ weaknesses. We are referring, of course, to the way in which the continent is incorporated into the world hierarchy, which began with its colonial conquest and continues to this day. Sociologist Hèla Yousfi discusses this in her timely article in Libération. Before the virus reached Europe, we did not detect any global concern about Europe’s capability to handle the crisis; if anything, the expectation would have been that Europe’s ‘advanced systems’ would move swiftly and efficiently to contain the virus. An Al Jazeera article at the end of January exclaimed that ‘Europe’s health infrastructure is well prepared to fight the spread.’ And yet several countries in Europe mishandled the crisis, certainly at its outset.

When the virus did spread to Europe, a second wave of discourse about the pandemic began, with references to Africa beginning to appear more frequently in the global media. For that brief period between late February and early March, there was astonishment at how it was that the virus was threatening Europe, not Africa. How could a global catastrophe be avoiding the very continent known for catastrophes? This is when the hypotheses about Africa being protected by its warm climate, and by its age pyramid, enjoyed prominence. Be that as it may, our point here is that the discourse illustrates the underlying need to explain why Africa has been spared at that point, and to do so through some of its trope attributes: heat and youth bulges.

The third wave represents the current discourse. Now that the virus has reached African countries, yet so far with relatively few confirmed cases, the chorus has it that it is nevertheless only a matter of time before the apocalypse hits the continent. This is where the language of African states’ fragility truly takes centre-stage. In one illustrative example, a UK media outlet wrote at the end of March that ‘Africa’s fragile health systems need to prepare for the worst’. A leaked memo from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which went viral on social media, painted a picture of the coronavirus as the ultimate crisis that will bring down governments in Africa, going as far as making recommendations for how the French government ought to prepare for the aftermath. The Economist also chimed in with what its Africa editor called ‘a big take’ on how ‘Africa is woefully ill-equipped to cope with covid-19’ (The remainder of the editor’s tweet is also worth sharing here, just to cheer you up):

To be fair, some outlets do distinguish among countries, having praised for example Senegal or South Africa for world-class testing methods, and even the aforementioned French memo recognizes that not all governments in Africa are alike. Still, the overwhelming majority of media articles report on Africa in unitary terms and spread anxiety about a coming apocalypse. Given that the virus seems to have reached the African continent only after hitting Asia, Europe and North America, many African governments took early measures to prevent transmission – quite unlike the US or the UK, for example. This might, in an optimistic scenario, translate into a non-apocalyptic outbreak of the pandemic. Of course, this does not mean that the restrictive measures taken in African countries and globally haven’t already had a profound negative impact on peoples’ lives, including through large-scale loss of livelihoods as well as human rights violations. As elsewhere, there is likely to be a variation among countries and communities in terms of the overall impact of the crisis.

Some final reflections before we close. The cure to prevent this expected implosion of ‘Africa’ is once again to be found in money from the West. ‘Africa won’t beat coronavirus on its own. The west must dig deep before it’s too late’, cried The Guardian, recycling many of the clichés discussed above. The same article also quoted Kevin Watkins, the chief executive of Save the Children, as saying: ‘The NHS, just about coping with Covid-19, has 7,000 critical care beds; the average low-income country in sub-Saharan Africa has 50.’ This is a factual comment on the sub-Saharan health care system, which would profoundly complicate the individual states’ ability to cope with the disease, should it reach proportions comparable to those currently seen in North America and Europe. While this comment will likely be read by most readers as a critique of the African state, isn’t it equally a loud condemnation of the humanitarian and development industrial complex, which has ostensibly poured billions of dollars in aid to the continent? What have all the ‘Save the Childrens’ of this world been doing ‘in Africa’ over the past sixty years if not building critical care infrastructure, as one of the top priorities for any country?

It is worthwhile to note that this aid is framed largely as charity, rather than as solidarity. The difference is crucial here: charity implies a power imbalance between the donor (‘savior’) and the recipient (‘helpless victim’) and flows from the rich to the poor, from the strong to the weak, from the top to the bottom. Without saying so explicitly, it calls for ‘the world to save Africa’, thereby implicitly reaffirming Africa’s place as a repository of the poor, the weak, and those at the bottom. Solidarity, on the other hand, starts from a position of partnership, of recognizing the other as an equal, and constitutes a collaboration from which all benefit, albeit in different ways. With the UN Secretary-General busy establishing a new fund to fight COVID-19 in the ‘vulnerable countries of the Global South’ and the African Union appointing special envoys to solicit donor funding, isn’t it time to ask the difficult questions about whether these same mechanisms have historically contributed to solving the problems ‘of the Global South’, or if they have helped to perpetuate them?

We found the lack of solidarity-based language in the media all the more puzzling in a context where the coronavirus epidemic has amply demonstrated the fragile, if not failing, nature of healthcare systems in many ‘rich’ countries. On that note, perhaps it is not just African countries that might apply lessons learned from recent ebola outbreaks in some parts of the continent, as some outlets have suggested; maybe the world outside of Africa could also heed some lessons from African countries for once? Or, maybe we should all commit to stop talking about ‘Africa’ once and for all. Present company included.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie (grant agreement no. 844279).

Andrea Filipi is a PhD candidate and Katrin Wittig is a Marie Sklodowska-Curie post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Cambridge. Andrea researches the politics of protest, while Katrin focuses on the trajectories of rebel groups in war and peace. Their primary regional interest lies in the Great Lakes of Africa.

Featured Photograph: Yanko Tsvetkov’s Atlas of Prejudice (4 December, 2014).

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This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie (grant agreement no. 844279).

Featured Photograph: Yanko Tsvetkov’s Atlas of Prejudice (4 December, 2014).

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