A Radical Journal and Institute for Swaziland

September 19, 2019

Launching a radical new journal in Swaziland, Manqoba Nxumalo explains that Ulibambe Lingashoni will be a publication where ideas about the country will be interrogated, debated and analysed. The new online journal, which is part of the newly formed eSwatini Institute for Alternative Ideas, will help Swazis to demand political and social transformation and examine with rigour the essence of the change needed.

By Manqoba Nxumalo

A few months ago with some friends we began discussing the deteriorating socio-economic situation of our country, Swaziland. Readers of roape.net will recall that in 2018 the King of Swaziland unilaterally renamed the country eSwatini. I deliberately call the newly (mis)named eSwatini by its previous name because part of the debates leading to this new organisation we have formed was whether we must comply with King Mswati III unilateral change of the country’s name given the implications of the ensuing legal challenge brought by human rights lawyer Thulani Maseko.

The question we then had to ask ourselves was what exactly could we do to reignite the momentum for change in the country? Of course, we see ourselves as activists in our own right but the urgency to provide clarity of ideas and inspire new consciousness in public conversations became a central focus to our next course of action. It is then that we decided to launch the eSwatini Institute for Alternative Ideas (SIAI) as an umbrella body and hub of progressive thinking in Swaziland. Our aim was simple: defeat ignorance, royal misinformation, ideological undernourishment and political deception.

It quickly became clear to us that if Swaziland is to attain political change then we needed to wage a relentless war against ignorance and ideological poverty. This then called for a clear identification of what is the problem in the country beyond just political rhetoric and hot air. Once the ideas got clearer it became relatively easy to create SIAI as an independent platform and safe space to debate challenges facing contemporary Swaziland. Within this platform came the idea of housing Ulibambe Lingashoni, an online journal that will be the vehicle where ideas about the country are to be interrogated, debated and analysed.

To us the idea of alternative media, alternative history and alternative ideas more broadly is important because they imbue the country with critical thinking and avoid the mantra of ‘change for its own sake’ or ‘our turn to eat’ type of change. In fact, if we are to inspire Swazis to demand political and social transformation then the quality and essence of the ‘change’ needs to be examined with equal vigour.

Writing about education, the Russian Revolutionary and Anarchist, Mikhail Bakunin wondered, for example, if it would be feasible ‘for the working masses to know complete emancipation as long as the education available to those masses continues to be inferior to that bestowed upon the bourgeois, or, in more general terms, as long as there exists any class, be it numerous or otherwise, which, by virtue of birth, is entitled to a superior education and a more complete instruction? Does not the question answer itself?’

Bakunin teaches us that people act according to choices they are exposed to by their education. Put differently, people act or do things in a particular way because they believe or have been conditioned to believe in a particular way. The knowledge or ideas they hold shape their world outlook, how they define social norms and importantly, how they relate to each other. That is why it is important at SIAI to confront the dominant ideas that have held our country and continent prisoner for so many years.

Our work as a hub for alternative thinking is merely to complement various commentators who have long raised critical issues about education, knowledge production, political economy, democracy, development and economy. Our people have for years been systematically fed lies. It is our duty to liberate them from the physical bondages of oppression but also the ideas that ensure they remain prisoners.

Through our various platforms we hope to educate people about the true history of the country while also archiving their own relentless struggle against royal domination and conquest. In our maiden issue former Illovo Managing Director and PUDEMO treason trialist, Mandla Hlathwayo, neatly traces the history of Tinkhundla, the country’s non-party governance system, by looking at the roots of the system of royal control and economic exclusion. Bongani Masuku, the former President of the Swaziland Youth Congress (SWAYOCO) and also former COSATU International Affairs Secretary, tackled the economy and chronicles why it has collapsed. Meanwhile, investigative journalist Thenjiwe Hlophe probes the operations of the European Union in the country. Lawyer Thebeka Litchfied on other hand asks the progressive movement to pronounce clearly on the trial of businessmen Sipho Shongwe. Shongwe is currently on trial for the murder of fellow businessman Victor Gamedze. Litchfield’s argument is that the struggle for democracy in the country must never be hijacked by the criminal underworld just because they happen to harm the interests of the state. While journalist and human rights activist Manqoba Nxumalo wonders if Cyril Ramaphosa’s new dawn will extend to Swaziland. Perhaps the biggest debate is sparked by activist Thabo Hlongwane who rhetorically asks why the Swazi struggle has not reached its full potential.

All of this would not have been possible without the ideas we received from many well-meaning internationalists like Peter Limb whose ideas in the formative stages were critical in honing the rough edges and ensuring we have a clearer focus of what we want. We also acknowledge the advice and guidance we have received from ROAPE whose organization is, in truth, an important model in the formation of SIAI. We have also benefitted from the political advice and guidance from exiled Swazi activist Jabulani Matsebula, former COSATU International Affairs Officer Bongani Masuku as well as Mandla Hlatshwayo and many others. We also had to reach to other influential Swazi commentators outside of the mainstream political circles whose opinions were important to ensure that we talk to the concerns of all Swazis across political and class divide.

We appreciate all the contributors who have completed their work for our inaugural journal issue even if not writing but offering critique, direction and advise. Perhaps the proudest moment for me is the fact that the journal’s Managing Editor is author Perfect Hlongwane, author of the novel ‘Jozi’. We can therefore lay claim to having benefitted from the insightful thinking of the best and most radical in Swaziland and abroad. As Mao said, ‘letting a hundred flowers bloom and a hundred schools of thought contend’.

Manqoba Nxumalo is the Chairman of SIAI. The journal was launched on September 15 and is available on the website here.

The Money Drain: Financial Outflows from Southern Africa

ROAPE

September 17, 2019

england-imperialism-as-octopus — An American cartoonist in 1888 depicted John Bull (England) as the octopus of imperialism, grabbing land on every continent. HWC925

Action for Southern Africa’s report, The Money Drain: How Trade Misinvoicing and Unjust Debt Undermine Economic and Social Rights in Southern Africa, was recently launched at the Southern African Development Community People’s Summit in Dar es Salaam. For roape.net, the report’s author, Sunit Bagree, outlines some of the actions that the UK government must take in order to end these damaging financial outflows.

By Sunit Bagree

Twenty-five years after the end of apartheid, Southern Africa, i.e. the 16 member states that make up the Southern African Development Community (SADC), is almost free from foreign political domination. ‘Almost’ because of the UK’s continued illegal control over the Chagos Islands, which are rightfully part of Mauritius.

But is Southern Africa free from economic subjugation? Many progressive scholars and activists contend that Africa remains subject to a neo-colonial international economic order. Just last month on the ROAPE blog, Angus Elsby argued ‘given that many African countries still tend to rely heavily on their natural resource exports for domestic employment, foreign exchange earnings and tax revenues, the concentration of commodity export profits in Europe is a major cause for concern’.

By shining a light on the massive financial outflows from the SADC region, a new report by Action for Southern Africa (ACTSA) adds further weight to such arguments. It finds that Southern African countries lose at least US$8.8 billion in trade-related illicit outflows, and at least US$21.1 billion in external government debt payments, per year. It puts these sums in the context of the dismal state of economic and social rights in the region.

For many in Southern Africa, enjoyment of economic and social rights remains a distant dream. For example, 5.4 million people are undernourished, more than in 2005. This has terrible impacts on health, as does the fact that more than 40% of the population in 12 countries do not have access to basic sanitation services. Meanwhile, 3.5 million children of primary age are out-of-school in the Democratic Republic of Congo alone. These children will struggle to get decent jobs, especially considering the fact that the regional youth unemployment rate of 31% is higher now than it was in the late 1990s.

SADC governments can certainly do far more to realise the economic and social rights of their citizens. Yet a key factor behind the lack of economic and social rights fulfilment in Southern Africa is the paucity of resources at the disposal of the region’s governments. This is why the financial outflows are so important. And this is where rich countries, not least the UK, are neglecting their moral and legal (under international human rights law) responsibilities.

Trade-related illicit flows are generated through trade misinvoicing – the deliberate falsification of the value, volume, and/or type of commodity in an international commercial transaction of goods or services by at least one party to the transaction. After making a false declaration on an invoice submitted to customs, criminals can use intermediaries in secrecy jurisdictions to capture and divert illicit profits to tax havens. If this trade were conducted legally, however, then it could be taxed by governments, and the revenues spent on pro-poor economic and social programmes.

The UK in effect controls a major network of secrecy jurisdictions and tax havens, notably the three Crown Dependencies and the 14 Overseas Territories. The UK government must crack down on these secrecy jurisdictions and tax havens, including by: creating public registries of all beneficial and direct owners of companies and trusts; developing a system of automatic exchange of financial information that works for poorer countries; and making public country-by-country reporting mandatory for all multinational corporations.

ACTSA’s analysis of Southern Africa’s soaring external public debt concludes that this debt is riddled with injustices. The case of Zimbabwe, which originally defaulted on its debt in 2000 and is in long-term debt default, provides an insight into the nature of these injustices. Some of Zimbabwe’s external public debt is illegal, some is odious and some is illegitimate.

British private loans to Zimbabwe in the 1970s that were used to buy weapons, in violation of UN sanctions, represent an example of illegal debt. The £15 million of UK government backed loans for the Zimbabwean police to buy British-made Land Rovers in 1998 represent an example of odious debt; this is because the UK was aware that the vehicles would be used to oppress Zimbabwean civil society activists and opposition politicians. As for illegitimate debt, a proportion of foreign loans to the country fall into this category, as the amount and/or terms of certain loans severely hinder the ability of the Government of Zimbabwe to realise human rights, including economic and social rights.

Moreover, debt justice requires rich countries such as the UK to acknowledge and pay the climate debts that they owe to Zimbabwe (and other SADC countries). An urgent reminder of this came in the shape of Cyclone Idai in March, which killed 344 and affected approximately 270,000 people in Zimbabwe alone.

Of course, none of this excuses the disregard for human rights, democratic politics and the rule of law on the part of Zimbabwe’s leaders (something that the UK has until very recently refused to confront when it comes to the current Zimbabwean President). Yet doing nothing and thus layering failure upon failure makes no sense.

Instead, debt justice in Zimbabwe (and in other SADC countries) would mean that rich countries cancel illegal, odious and illegitimate debts, as well as pay their climate debts, but only in a way that ensures that citizens truly benefit. In countries that lack democratic oversight, such as Zimbabwe, this could be achieved by creating a fund managed by the United Nations – not the World Bank or International Monetary Fund due to their lack of impartiality and fetish for neoliberal economic policy conditions – to manage cancelled debts and compensation for climate debts.

The UK should also support comprehensive public debt audits in Zimbabwe and in all other SADC countries. This drive for greater transparency in Southern Africa must be matched by greater transparency in the UK. As 90% of publicly traded loans to African governments are given using UK law, there is an urgent need for all loans to foreign governments to be recorded in a comprehensive and publicly accessible registry. Without reliable information we cannot halt Southern Africa’s money drain.

Sunit Bagree is Senior Campaigns Officer at Action for Southern Africa (ACTSA), the successor organisation to the Anti-Apartheid Movement.

Gambling against the Kenyan State

ROAPE

September 13, 2019

After spending several months with gamblers in Kenya, Mario Schmidt finds that many see their activity as a legitimate and transparent attempt to make ends meet in an economy that does not offer them any other stable employment or income. In a blogpost co-published with The Elephant, gambling, Schmidt argues, can be seen as an act against an economy in which wealth is not based upon merit but upon social relations and where profit and losses are distributed in a non-transparent way through corruption, inheritance and theft.

By Mario Schmidt

In the period from June to August this year Kenyan gamblers were hit by a wave of shocking news. Only a couple of weeks after Henry Rotich, Kenya’s National Cabinet Secretary, proposed a 10% excise duty on any amount staked in betting in order ‘to curtail the negative effects arising from betting activities’, the Kenyan government decided to shut down several betting companies’ virtual mobile money wallet systems because of alleged tax evasion. As a consequence, gamblers could no longer deposit or withdraw any money. This double attack on the blossoming betting industry has a background both in Kenya as well as elsewhere. Centred around the capitalist conundrum to realign the moral value of hard work and the systemic necessity to make profit, states tend to combine moral attacks on gambling (see the case of Uganda) with attempts to raise revenues. The vice of gambling turns into a virtue as soon that it raises revenue for the state.

It is also gambling’s allegedly nasty character which made the term a prime metaphor for the excesses of finance capitalism as well as for the pitiful status of the economies of neoliberal Africa characterised by rampant inequalities. Social scientists, politicians as well as journalists portray financial capitalism as a place where, in the words of George Paul Meiu, ‘gambling-like speculation and entrepreneurialism replace labour’ and the ‘magical allure of making money from nothing’, as Jean and John Comaroff have written, has seized the imagination of a vast majority of the population. Faced with a dazzling amount of wealth showcased by religious, economic and political leaders alike, young and unemployed men increasingly put their hopes on gambling. Trying to imitate what they perceive as a magical shortcut to unimaginable wealth, so the story goes, they become foolish puppets of a global capitalist system that they often know little about and have to face the dire consequences of their foolish behaviour.

After spending several months with gamblers both in rural as well as urban Kenya, I can only conclude that this story fails to portray reality in its complexity (see Schmidt 2019). While it is undeniable that some gamblers attempt to imitate the acquisition of a form of wealth that they perceive as resulting from a quick-to-riches scheme, a considerable number of Kenyan gamblers do not. In contrast, they portray and enact gambling as a legitimate and transparent attempt to make ends meet in an economy that does not offer them any other stable employment or income.

Narratives about betting leading to poverty, suicide and alcoholism neglect the fact that the majority of young Kenyan gamblers had already been poor, stressed and under extreme economic pressure before they started gambling, or, as a friend of mine phrased it succinctly: ‘If I don’t bet, I go to bed without food every second night, if betting does not go well, I might sleep without food two days in a row. Where’s the difference?’ Gambler’s betting activities therefore cannot be analysed as a result of a miserable economic situation alone. Such a perspective clearly mutes the actors’ own view of their practices. They see betting as a form of work they can engage in without being connected to the national political or economic middle class or elite, i.e. without trying to enter into opaque relationships characterised by inequality. In other words, I interpret gambling as directed against what gamblers perceive as a nepotistic and kleptocratic state capitalism, i.e. an economy in which wealth is not based upon merit but upon social relations and where profit and losses are distributed in a non-transparent way through corruption, inheritance and theft.

Before I substantiate this assumption, let me briefly offer some background information on the boom of sports betting in Kenya which can only be understood if one takes into account the rise of mobile money. The mobile money transfer service Mpesa was introduced in 2007 and has since changed the lives of millions of Kenyans. Accessible with any mobile phone, customers can use it to store and withdraw money from Mpesa agents all over the country, send money to friends and family members as well as pay for goods and services. A whole industry of lending and saving apps and sports betting companies has evolved around this new financial infrastructure. It allows Kenyans to bet on sports events wherever they are located as long as they possess a mobile phone to transfer money to a betting company’s virtual wallet.

Gamblers can either bet on single games or combine bets on different games to increase the potential winning (a so-called ‘multi-bet’). Many, and especially young, male Kenyans, bet regularly. According to a survey I conducted last November around a rural Western Kenyan market centre 55% of the men and 20% of the women have bet in the past or are currently betting with peaks in the age group between 18 and 35. This resonates with a survey done by Geopoll estimating that over 70% of the Kenyan youth place or have placed bets on sport events.

Both journalistic and academic work that understand these activities as irresponsible and addictive had previously primed my perception. Hence, I was surprised by how gamblers frame their betting activities as based upon knowledge and by how they enacted gambling as a domestic, reproductive activity that demands careful planning. They consider betting as a meticulously executed form of work whose attraction partly results from its detachment from and even opposition to Kenyan politics (for example, almost all gamblers avoid betting on Kenyan football games as they believe they are rigged and implicated in local politics). Put differently, the gamblers I interacted with understand their betting activities as directed against a kleptocratic capitalist state whose true nature has been, according to my interlocutors, once more revealed by the proposal to tax gambling in Kenya.

Two of my ethnographic observations can illustrate and substantiate this claim, the first being a result of paying close attention to the ways gamblers speak and the second one a result of observing how they act.

Spending my days with gamblers, I realized that they use words that are borrowed from the sphere of cooking and general well-being when they talk about betting in their mother tongue Dholuo. Chiemo (‘to eat’), keto mach (‘to light the fire’), mach mangima (‘the fire has breath’, i.e. ‘is alive’) and mach omuoch (‘the fire has fought back’) are translations of ‘winning’ (chiemo), ‘placing a multi-bet’ (keto mach), ‘the multi-bet is still valid’ (mach mangima) or ‘the multi-bet has been lost’ (mach omuoch). This interpenetration of two spheres that are kept apart or considered to be mutually exclusive in many descriptions of gambling practices sparked my interest and I began to wonder what these linguistic overlaps mean for a wider understanding of the relation between gambling and the ways in which young, mostly male Kenyans try to make ends meet in their daily lives.

While accompanying a friend of mine on his daily trips to the betting shops of Nairobi’s Central Business District, I realized that the equation between gambling and reproductive work, however, does not remain merely metaphorical.

Daniel Okech, a 25-year-old Master of Business Administration worked on a tight schedule. When he did not have to attend a university class during the mornings which he considered not very promising anyway, he worked through websites that offered detailed statistical data on the current and past performances of football teams and players. These ranged from the English Premier League to the football league of Finland (e.g. the website FootyStats). He engaged in such meticulous scrutiny because he considered the smallest changes in a squad’s line-up or in the odds as potentially offering money-making opportunities to exploit. Following up on future and current games, performances and odds was part of Daniel’s daily work routine which was organised around the schedules of European football leagues and competitions. The rhythm of the European football schedule organised Daniel’s daily, weekly and monthly rhythms as he needed to make sure to have money on the weekends and during the season in order to place further bets.

Even though betting is based upon knowledge, habitual adaptations and skills, it rarely leads to a stable income. With regard to the effects it has, betting appears to be almost as bad as any other job and Daniel does not miscalculate the statistical probabilities of football bets. He knows that multi-bets of fifteen or more rarely go through and that winning such a bet remains extraordinarily improbable. What allows gamblers like Daniel to link betting with ‘work’ and the ‘reproductive sphere’ is not the results it brings forward. Rather, I argue that the equation between the ‘reproductive sphere’ and betting is anchored in the specific structure between cause and effect the latter entails.

What differentiates gambling from other jobs is the gap between the quality of one’s expertise and performance and the expected result. For young men in Nairobi, one could argue, betting on football games is what planting maize is for older women in arid areas of Western Kenya in the era of global climate change: an activity perfected by years of practice and backed up by knowledge, but still highly dependent on external and uncontrollable factors. Just like women know that it will eventually rain, Daniel told me that ‘Ramos [Sergio Ramos, defender from Real Madrid] will get a red card when Real Madrid plays against a good team.’

For young men who see their future devoid of any regular and stable employment betting is not a ‘shortcut’ to a better life, as often criticised by middle-class Kenyans or politicians. It is rather one of the few ways in which they can control the conditions of their type of work and daily work routine while at the same time accepting and to a certain extent even taming the volatility of the world surrounding them.

Gamblers do not frame their betting activities in analogy with the quick-to-riches schemes they understand to lie behind the suspicious wealth of economic, political and religious leaders. While religious, economic and political ‘big men’ owe their wealth to opaque and unknown causes, gambling practices are based upon a rigid analysis of transparent data and information. By establishing links between their own life and knowledge on the one hand and football games played outside the influence of Kenyan politicians and businessmen on the other, gamblers gain agency in explicit opposition to the Kenyan state and to nepotistic relations they believe to exist between other Kenyans.

Therefore, it is unsurprising that, in the context of the betting companies’ alleged tax evasion, many gamblers have not yet repeated the usual complaints and grievances against companies or individuals that are accused of tax evasion or corruption. While some agree that the betting companies should pay taxes, others claim that due to the corrupt nature of the Kenyan state it would be preferable if the betting companies increase their sponsoring of Kenyan football teams. No matter what an individual gambler’s stance on the accusation of tax evasion, however, in the summer of 2019 all gamblers were eagerly waiting for their virtual wallets to be unlocked so they could continue to bet against the state.

Mario Schmidt is a postdoctoral researcher at the a.r.t.e.s. Graduate School for the Humanities at the University of Cologne, Germany. His publications cover a wide area of topics ranging from cultural classification of money in Western Kenya to gambling in Nairobi and the history of French anthropology.

Featured Photograph: appeared in the Kenya’s Daily Nation ‘You have 48 hours to get your cash out of betting firms’ (12 July, 2019).

Zimbabwe’s Moment of Hope – 20 years of the MDC

ROAPE

September 11, 2019

Twenty years ago today a major new political movement emerged in Zimbabwe. The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) was founded at a mass rally on 11 September 1999, in the capital Harare. At the time it marked the high-point of popular struggles across the continent and it was the first time since independence in 1980 that the country’s president, Robert Mugabe, was seriously threatened. Farai Chipato celebrates both the achievements of the MDC and examines its tragic and calamitous mistakes.

By Farai Chipato

11 September 2019 marks 20 years since the founding of Zimbabwe’s main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), the first movement that truly threatened the dominance of the ruling ZANU-PF party and president Robert Mugabe. The MDC began as the political voice of a broad alliance of Zimbabweans who sought political, social and economic change in Zimbabwe, spurred by disillusion with the failures of the country’s once radical liberation movement. Since 1999, it has weathered two difficult decades, beset by an authoritarian government, violent elections, internal strife. Moreover, much of the party’s original ideological drive has been lost in its struggle to unseat long term president Robert Mugabe, and his successor Emmerson Mnangagwa. It is worth reflecting on both the achievements and the mistakes that have led the party to this point and considering its prospects for contributing to a more equal future for Zimbabwe.

The MDC was born in 1999 out of a broad movement of civil society groups that had been pushing for constitutional reform in the face of increasing economic hardship and political repression. Led by a mixture of trade unionists, church leaders, and intellectuals, the movement had arisen in response to the economic devastation created by structural adjustment economic policies in the 1990s, frustrated by a lack of government consultation, and the erosion of earlier gains in education and health, made in the 1980s. As it became clear that ZANU-PF was intent on subverting the constitutional reform movement, its leaders came together to form the MDC, with respected trade union leader Morgan Tsvangirai as its leader.

The new party had an immediate political impact, striking an early blow against ZANU-PF in early 2000. When the government put forward a new constitution for a referendum in February, intended to centralise and strengthen its power, the new MDC party was at the forefront of the campaign that defeated the new document. Building on this success, the party won a significant number of seats in the parliamentary election later that year. In the early 2000s, the MDC leadership moved to strengthen and institutionalise the party, whilst setting out to challenge the long-held ZANU-PF hegemony. In 2002, Tsvangirai contested his first presidential election, receiving over 40 percent of the vote, despite an unfair election and providing Robert Mugabe with his first serious challenger since independence in 1980.

Despite these successes, the party struggled with contradictory impulses and factional rivalry from the beginning. There was always a tension at its heart, between its more radical elements, including trade unions and socialist groups, and elite interests, like professionals and business leaders, particularly white Zimbabwean farmers. The association with white agricultural capital became more detrimental as ZANU-PF shored up its base through its support of invasions of white owned farms and a programme of land redistribution in the early 2000s. As the international community lent its support and financial resources to the MDC in opposition to these policies, some Zimbabweans dismissed the party as a neo-colonial agent, due to its lack of engagement with the issue. By rejecting many of the legitimate demands of the land reform movement, the party ceded the agenda to ZANU-PF, alienating many rural Zimbabweans. Moreover, the more radical elements of the party were already being marginalised, with socialist member of parliament Munyaradzi Gwisai expelled from the party in 2002. Gwisai argued that the party had been co-opted by elite interests, straying from its roots in the trade union movement.

These problems were exacerbated by factional splits within the party over strategy, leading to a breakaway group forming the rival MDC-M after the 2005 senate elections, led by academic and former student activist Arthur Mutambara. Key leaders, including former trade unionist Gibson Sibanda, and lawyer Welshman Ncube left to join the new party, weakening the opposition. This dynamic was mirrored in a fragmentation of its support among civil society groups and the workers movement, who were forced to take sides in the disputes. The strain of violent reprisals and persecution by the security services also took their toll on the opposition, as the government became increasingly ruthless in its bid to stay in power.

By the 2008 general election, Zimbabwe was in crisis, due to hyperinflation and increasing repression by the ZANU-PF government. Electoral violence reached a crescendo when Tsvangirai narrowly beat Mugabe in the presidential vote, precipitating a second-round ballot between the two candidates. The government responded by deploying the security services to terrorise opposition supporters, prompting many to go into hiding and Tsvangirai to withdraw from the second round, ceding victory to ZANU-PF. Whilst an internationally mediated settlement ended the crisis by creating a government of national unity (GNU), MDC-T’s decision to back down cost them overall victory, allowing ZANU-PF enough space to cling on to power.

During the GNU, both the MDCs entered government with Mugabe’s ZANU-PF, with Tsvangirai installed as prime minister, Mutambara as his deputy, and prominent MDC leader Tendai Biti taking on the finance ministry. The party played a key role in stabilising Zimbabwe’s ailing economy, introducing a basket of international currencies to replace the now worthless Zimbabwe dollar, and providing a foundation for some economic growth. However, MDC leaders were unable to put in place security sector reform or overhaul the electoral system, key elements of the state that had been captured by ZANU-PF. The party leadership also became increasingly distant from the wider movement, as the international community channelled funding to Tsvangirai’s office, and its policies became heavily influenced by international development orthodoxy Several MDC politicians were also embroiled in embarrassing corruption scandals that tarnished the reputation of the party.

When the GNU ended in 2013, and a new general election was called, Robert Mugabe had rebuilt his party’s strength, and skilfully sowed dissent among opposition politicians, who proved ill-prepared for the campaign. ZANU-PF won a surprise landslide victory, leaving MDC supporters demoralised, and the Zimbabwean people disillusioned with the possibilities of opposition politics. The party was engulfed with further factional struggles, leading Biti to be expelled from in 2014.

As Tsvangirai’s health failed, the impetus of resistance to ZANU-PF’s authoritarian policies and economic mismanagement shifted to new, social media-fuelled social movements, led by a new generation of activists. Many young Zimbabweans and civil society commentators felt that both the MDC and NGOs had become too fixated on promoting political rights, like freedom of speech, at the expense of focusing on the socio-economic needs of ordinary Zimbabweans, that had originally animated the opposition movement. Activist and human rights lawyer Doug Coltart argued that, ‘when the 2016 social movements emerged, MDC was in disarray and people found a new avenue.’ By the time Robert Mugabe was finally ousted in 2017, due to his erratic policies and intra-party intrigue, it was his own deputy, aided by the security services, who led the way.

The MDC-T’s decision to support what amounted to a military coup in 2017 proved another error, as it helped to legitimise the rule of Zimbabwe’s new president Emmerson Mnangagwa, who entrenched an increasingly militarised ZANU-PF in power. However, by this point Tsvangirai was ailing, and he passed away in February 2018, mourned by many across the political spectrum for his brave leadership and unrelenting activism. Unfortunately, his dominance of the party over the previous two decades left a political vacuum, leading to further factional disputes over the succession to the leadership. Nelson Chamisa, a young lawyer and evangelical preacher, and a former vice-president of the party ultimately prevailed as the new leader, but many within the party questioned his undemocratic ascent to power. One of Tsvangirai’s other deputies, Thokozani Khupe disputed Chamisa’s leadership, and left the party, taking many supporters with her to form a rival MDC-T.

Despite these inauspicious beginnings, Chamisa was able to unite many elements of the opposition in the new MDC Alliance, which brought back several previously alienated leaders, including Biti and Welshman Ncube. This allowed the MDC to make a strong showing the 2018 presidential election against ZANU-PF, with Chamisa’s firebrand oratory and youthful enthusiasm comparing well to Mnangagwa’s stiff campaigning. Whilst the president was just about able to secure victory, once again helped by electoral manipulation and the use of state institutions, Chamisa was shown to be a potent electoral force and a threat to ZANU-PF in future contests.

Less encouragingly, the campaign was increasingly fought on personality rather than policy, with both MDC and ZANU-PF putting forward manifestos that promoted similar neo-liberal policies that involved cutting public spending, encouraging international investment and reducing restrictions for businesses. The MDC’s background in the labour movement was becoming increasingly irrelevant, as the new generation of leaders were drawn from the legal profession or academia, and the trade unions were hamstrung by mass unemployment. Academic and labour researcher Godfrey Kanyenze believes that de-industrialisation and informalisation during the 2000s ‘really destroyed the social base of the MDC and also of the labour movement,’ leaving the party disconnected from the workers who had initially supported it.

Since the 2018 election, Zimbabwe has once again suffered from a rising economic crisis, coupled with political violence, as the government seeks to consolidate its control. Although ZANU-PF put on a front for the 2018 elections, promising an end to corruption and an opening up of democratic space, by 2019 the violence and repression had returned. The MDC has refused to recognise the results of the 2018 election but has little recourse to overturn Mnangagwa’s win.

MDC’s future trajectory is hard to judge, but the party seems to have drifted far from its roots in radical economic activism and the workers movement, moving more towards its pro-business wing. There are also some worrying signs from Chamisa’s new generation, which has focused on building up his personal brand, using chauvinistic rhetoric to attack those who question his authority in the party.

Despite these misgivings, the MDC remains the best hope for change in Zimbabwe, compared to the ZANU-PF, which is now fully reliant on the security services, the army and a kleptocratic system to maintain its rule. Beyond its potential to bring about change, the brave activism of MDC politicians and supporters, often in the face of mortal danger, must be also recognised. Over the past 20 years, members of the party have suffered financial hardship, harassment, injury and even death in pursuit of a better Zimbabwe, and for this they should be saluted.

Farai Chipato is a PhD candidate in the School of Politics and International Relations at Queen Mary University of London. His research concerns the relationship between development donors and civil society organisations in Zimbabwe, with particular reference to democracy and human rights issues. Farai is a member of ROAPE’s Editorial Working Group.

Featured Photograph: an MDC-T demonstration in Harare in April 2016 (‘MDC-T Demo: A reflection of people’s growing anger‘ in The Independent 22 April, 2016).

Mugabe’s Legacy: From ROAPE’s Archive

ROAPE

September 6, 2019

On Robert Mugabe’s death in an exclusive hospital in Singapore, ROAPE makes available some of the articles that we have published on Zimbabwe over the long period of his rule. Like much of the left, we celebrated the fall of the racist white regime of Rhodesia in 1980. In a special issue that year we cheered on Mugabe’s party in the following terms: ‘Of all the political movements in Zimbabwe, ZANU-PF stands out as the most progressive and patriotic organisation fighting for the true interests of the labouring masses’ (Vol. 7, No.18). Though these sentiments were shared by many, opinion quickly changed.

In the first years of its rule much was achieved in Zimbabwe, but the government faced two ways. In the early 1980s, Mugabe’s ZANU-PF pushed through reforms in education and health that transformed the lives of a generation though the party also pursued a campaign of brutal repression against ZAPU ‘terrorists’ in Matabeleland in the south of the country. From 1983 ZANU-PF forces -with the help of the North Koreans – murdered more than 20,000 people in what was regarded as an opposition stronghold. The party’s ruthless nature was exposed.

As reforms gave way to economic crisis and IMF and World Bank supported structural adjustment in the early 1990s, an urban based, working class resistance movement rippled across the country. These protests eventually coalesced into the political coalition, the Movement for Democratic Change, founded twenty years ago. ROAPE continued to offer criticism and analysis to what was happening on the ground – noting and rejoicing at the largest opposition movement to ZANU-PF rule since independence.

Writing in ROAPE in 2000 Peter Alexander described the election that almost toppled Mugabe’s ZANU-PF (Vol. 27, No. 85). This was the first time since independence in 1980 that the country’s president was seriously threatened. In the elections, held in June 2000, the worker-backed MDC won 57 out of 120 elected seats, with Mugabe’s ZANU-PF securing 62. Alexander argued that had the election been free and fair, the MDC would have won more constituencies than ZANU-PF that year. Since the party had only existed for 16 months, this was a remarkable achievement.

Mugabe showed extraordinary tenacity as he clung to power and outmanoeuvred an increasingly hesitant and cautious opposition. In the 2000s the country plunged deeper into crisis, exacerbated by Mugabe’s efforts to shore-up his support base. He became the figurehead of an arguably fake anti-imperialism, promoting a ‘Third Chimurenga’ or uprising, to complete the unfinished anti-colonial revolution. As part of this process, ZANU-PF pushed through land reform which fundamentally and permanently altered Zimbabwe’s political-economy. ROAPE charted the course of these reforms.

Our current issue (Vol. 46, No. 159) focuses specifically on the complexity of land reform in Zimbabwe. Edited by Grasian Mkodzongi and Peter Lawrence, they introduce a special issue that examines Zimbabwe’s Fast Track Land Reform that formally started in 2002. The experience of land reform is a key element of Mugabe’s legacy.

We invite our readers to access some of our analysis on Zimbabwe (and Mugabe) over the years:

Special Issue – Zimbabwe (1980) and especially Peter Yates’ article on ‘The Prospect for Socialist Transition in Zimbabwe’.

Peter Alexander’s ‘Zimbabwean workers, the MDC and the 2000 elections’ (2000).

Grasian Mkodzongi and Peter Lawrence’s editorial ‘Fast track land reform and agrarian change in Zimbabwe’ (2019).

Featured Photograph: In June 1982 Robert Mugabe visits the Netherlands, and is welcomed by Prime Minister Van Agt.

The Revolution has Emerged: Sudan’s Acute Contradictions

ROAPE

September 5, 2019

In the first of a series of blogposts on the extraordinary revolutions we have seen across Africa this year, Emma Wilde Botta examines the roots of the uprisings in Sudan. After decades of repression, the Sudanese people rose up in 2018-19, but the compromises that have temporarily pacified the country’s towns and cities, rest on a set of acute contradictions.

By Emma Wilde Botta

In April, Sudan’s president, Omar al-Bashir, was ousted in a military coup. With the head of the regime cut off, a power struggle ensued between the military junta and the popular movement demanding civilian rule. In August, the main opposition coalition and the transitional military council formally signed a power-sharing agreement following nine months of nationwide protests and brutal repression by paramilitary forces. The massive struggle from below offers a powerful example of how to fight against authoritarianism and for democracy.

Sudan’s uprising was one of the most well organized and advanced revolts in the region. At its peak, millions were participating in sit-ins, the country was paralyzed by a general strike, and military discipline was breaking down among the rank and file. Women and union leaders were at the forefront of demonstrations. In a widely circulated video that captures the spirit of the revolution, an unnamed woman leads a march, chanting: “From Kordofan [the revolution] has emerged, after we have been hit by gunfire. This is a government with no feelings … and the Nuba mountains, like Darfur their blood is very expensive. We will protect our land, oh farmer. Our Sudan will be set free!”

This blogpost will focus on the roots of the uprising then examine the events of the 2018-2019 revolution itself with a particular focus on revolutionary agency.

The roots of Sudan’s uprising

The neoliberal restructuring of the Sudanese economy began during the 16-year dictatorship of Nimeiry (1969-1985). At the behest of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), he liberalized the economy, curbed food subsidies, and increased privatization which benefited his political Islamist party.

Rejecting the IMF measures and the implementation of sharia law, a popular uprising toppled Nimeiry in 1985 and ushered in a short-lived democratic government. In 1989, the Islamists retook power through a military coup, bringing Bashir and his National Congress Party to power. They continued to implement neoliberal policies, and the process of privatization enriched a small group of military generals. Bashir devoted an estimated 70% of the national budget to the military and security sector. Overtime, the highest strata of the military developed a significant degree of economic and political power.

In 2003, Bashir relied on the Janjaweed, a notorious group of Arab militias, to push back rebels in Darfur as part of the ongoing civil war over resources and land allocation. The resulting campaign has been called a genocide. The Janjaweed were transformed into a state-sanctioned paramilitary force called the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) commanded by General Mohamed Hamdan Dagolo (commonly known as ‘Hemedti’). Hemedti uses the RSF as a personal militia to defend his massive business empire or gold mines and airlines.

Decades of authoritarian rule, repression, racism, and crony neoliberalism wrecked Sudan’s economy and exacerbated social tensions. In 2013, people rioted over bread prices, in a prelude to the recent protests. The RSF crushed the protests, killing over 100 people and arresting hundreds more. During this wave of civil unrest, neighbourhood resistance councils developed, and these small groups of friends and neighbours worked together to share information and coordinate protests.

Sudan’s economic woes, due in large part to exorbitant military spending, were exacerbated following the succession of South Sudan in 2011. Sudan lost 75% of its oil revenue. Additionally, twenty years of U.S. sanctions largely cut Sudan off from the global financial market. Bashir responded by ramping up austerity measures, with the IMF’s encouragement. The privatization of public assets and the slashing of government food and fuel subsidies contributed to social unrest. In response to soaring commodity prices and repression by the RSF, demonstrations became a consistent feature of Sudanese civil society.

The 2018-19 revolution

In mid-December 2018, people in Atbara, a small town far away from the capital Khartoum, rioted over an increase in bread prices and burned down the headquarters of the ruling National Congress Party. An army colonel defected to the side of the protesters and prevented the RSF from entering the city. In other towns and cities, simmering economic frustration and resentment towards the regime boiled over.

Though formal trade unions had been infiltrated by the regime, independent labour organizations played a pivotal role in the uprising. In particular, the Sudanese Professionals Association (SPA) took a lead in coordinating protests and came to be seen as the organic leadership of the movement. This network of banned trade unions formed through struggle in 2016, is composed of professional workers such as doctors, lawyers, engineers, and journalists. These workers led increasingly precarious lives as wages declined, working conditions worsened, and the lifting of government subsidies threatened their social position.

The demands for economic justice quickly broadened to calls for the regime to fall. On the 1 January, 2019, the Forces for Freedom and Change (FFC), a broad opposition coalition spearheaded by the SPA of workers associations, liberal and leftist political parties, feminist groups, and armed movements, published a list of demands. At the top was the end of Bashir’s presidency.

The revolt continued to gain momentum, reawakening old networks and drawing on experience from past struggles. On 6 April, the anniversary of the 1985 popular uprising, protesters began a massive sit-in at the army headquarters in Khartoum. Similar sit-ins began in other cities. They became a gathering place for millions of people to debate the way forward, share community meals, and sing revolutionary songs. The outpouring of creative resistance and solidarity offered a glimpse into another possible society.

Though the regime has systematically disenfranchised rural parts of the country and used racism to reinforce the urban/rural divide, the movement permeated rural communities as well. Unlike in 2013, urban resistance was matched by rural struggle. In many places, student led the way with mass marches, and the armed movements followed this non-violent lead. The FFC included the Sudan Revolutionary Front, an alliance between armed rebel groups largely based in peripheral areas. When the regime attempted to use racism divisively, the chant went up, “Ya onsori wa maghroor, kol albalad Darfoor!”/“Hey racist [Omar Al-Bashir], we are all Darfur!” in an extraordinary show of anti-racist solidarity.

The regime responded to the movement with violence. On 6 April, military and security forces attempted to violently disperse the sit-ins, killing dozens of protesters. Called to fire on fellow citizens, some junior army officers and lower ranking soldiers refused their orders, and several were killed defending the popular movement. The revolutionary consciousness spreading among the lower ranks of the army terrified the high command.

On 11 April, the generals disposed Bashir, gambling on a coup in order to avoid a collapse of the army and placate the people. The military announced a Transitional Military Council (TMC) headed by Defence Minister Awad bin Auf, a man with direct connections to atrocities committed in Darfur. He was forced to step down within 36 hours. General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, Bashir’s former chief of staff and head of ground forces, took his place. Hemedti, head of the RSF, emerged as the de facto leader of the TMC.

The formation of a military junta did not quell the protests. Having learned the lesson of Egypt’s revolution, the movement refused to leave the streets until the military ceded power. In the words of Sudanese activist, Mohamed Mustafa Diab, ‘The Sudanese people understand that the enemy is not a single man; it is the whole regime and everything it represents…“A civilian government or an eternal revolution.” That is one of the most popular slogans right now. As long as we maintain pressure, we — the Sudanese people — will have the final say.’

Foreign powers quickly backed the Sudanese military, hoping to preserve the structure of the state. Saudi Arabia has benefitted from thousands of RSF troops fighting in their bloody war in Yemen. European nations rely on RSF soldiers to patrol the desert and prevent migrants from reaching Europe. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Egypt’s military dictator and head of the African Union, eased political pressure on the TMC in an effort to promote stabilization.

In late April, the FFC and the TMC entered into a stormy process of negotiations brokered by the African Union and Ethiopia. The negotiations were compromised from the start. In May an article by a small group of socialists in Egypt clearly articulated the contradiction:

the problem is not so much the personalities of the negotiators as the overall strategy of the opposition. By agreeing to negotiate with Al-Bashir’s generals, and allowing them to participate in the transition period, the leaders of the opposition are trying to reconcile the demands of the revolutionary street on the one hand, and the counter-revolutionary generals on the other. This strategy is suicidal for the revolution. Regardless of who the negotiators are, they will betray the hopes of the revolutionaries.

The TMC threatened its negotiating partners with arrest and, when talks broke down, conditioned resumption of discussion on compromise. They repeatedly demanded an end to the sit-ins and a dismantling of the barricades set up around Khartoum. Whenever the FFC called off negotiations, they came back to the table before winning significant demands or conditions.

Much of the negotiating process was opaque. According to Hajooj Kuka, a neighbourhood resistance committee activist, this lack of transparency was frustrating for the movement. He explained, ‘the people who are on the street, who are organizing these protests, who are out and protesting, and putting their lives in danger, don’t really know what’s happening. And this attitude that there’s a few elitists who know better and who should negotiate in hiding… is really against the revolutionary feel of what’s happening on the ground.’

This negotiation strategy can be explained in part by the political parties within the FFC that have traditionally functioned as the institutionalized opposition to Bashir. Their method of negotiating with the regime and participating in parliament primed them for a compromise with the military. Additionally, the class position of many of the FFC members and explicitly those within the SPA influenced the negotiations. As professional workers, they were more willing than the movement in the streets to trust the generals.

In organization and in rhetoric, the SPA did not pose itself as a political alternative to Bashir’s neoliberal, autocratic regime. The organization was strictly not a political party. The seemingly apolitical nature of the SPA likely appealed to many people who distrusted political parties. Though the SPA impressively united the resistance to Bashir in the FFC, it missed the opportunity to reclaim or redefine leftist politics in this moment.

The mobilization rhetoric of SPA derived from Sudan’s effendiya, a nationalist ideology of the small class of Sudanese who were educated to fill the ranks of the civil service during colonialism and who were prepared for post-colonial rule. This framework was too narrow to speak to the diversity of the Sudanese people and reimagine a Sudan that embraces all, across ethnic, racial, religious lines. The dominant slogans of “peace, freedom, and justice” and ‘mandaniyaa’ (civilian) fail to wed political demands with class demands in a moment ripe for a revolutionary message. Rather than drawing from alternative frameworks of the working class or the feminist movement, the SPA appealed to the universal rights and freedoms of citizens, using language that is not incompatible with the neoliberal state.

The failure to centre class demands and implicitly or explicitly raise revolutionary slogans may partially explain why Khartoum’s peripheral neighbourhoods of poor and displaced people did not join in the protests as enthusiastically as the middle-class neighbourhoods.

Turning point and road to constitutional agreement

As negotiations unfolded after April, the popular movement continued to express itself in the streets, demanding civilian rule. The security forces and the RSF continued their repressive campaign of intimidation, arrests, and murder. In late May, the country participated in a 2-day general strike.

3 June marked a turning point in the revolution. On this day, the last day of Ramadan, the TMC imposed a countrywide internet blackout and sent in the RSF to clear the Khartoum sit-in. The paramilitary force massacred over 100 people, raped dozens, and injured over 500 others. According to eyewitness Mohammed Elnaiem, ‘[The RSF and army] started shooting at us and we all started running away from the barricades, and running into houses to hide. I haven’t been brave enough to go outside to rebuild the barricades like some other people have been since then. It’s terrifying. There’s gunshots everywhere. In my neighborhood there is reports of a sniper in an abandoned building. I don’t know where specifically so it’s really risky. They want to terrorize us at home.’

In response, the FFC suspended negotiations. The SPA published a list of immediate demands to be met before talks resume. They called for an open-ended political general strike. From 28 May to 29 May, over 80% of the population participated in the strike, shutting down most of the country. Three days after the start of the strike, the SPA called for it to end. The FFC re-entered negotiations with the very forces that were responsible for 3 June massacre before they had been brought to justice.

But in the streets, the masses advanced ahead of the leadership of the movement. They insisted on retribution for the killing and wounding of protesters. The TMC had lost its moral authority, and mass demonstrations for civilian rule and justice for 3 June martyrs took place across Sudan. On 1 July, the SPA published a 2 week-long plan that matched the militancy of the street. Marches and demonstrations were to culminate in a general strike on 14 July.

However, four days later, the FFC and TMC reached a verbal agreement to share power. The FFC cancelled protests for the upcoming week and organized demonstrations in support of the deal.

Immediately, some of the FFC coalition members publicly condemned the tentative deal. A statement from the Darfur Displaced General Coordination (DDGC) read, ‘The aim of this agreement is also to block the realisation of the goals of the revolution: to bring down the regime, prosecute its criminals, achieve freedom, peace and justice, establish a civilian-led government, resolve the civil wars in the country and restore the rights of displaced people and refugees.’ The Sudan Revolutionary Front, a coalition of armed movements, rejected the deal as did the Sudanese Communist Party who withdrew from negotiations and called for popular protests to continue.

The struggle advances

On 4 August, the FFC and TMC signed a constitutional declaration that marked the beginning of a 39-month long transitional period. Until elections in 2022, Sudan will be governed by a sovereign council composed of 5 civilian members, 5 military members, and 1 member chosen jointly. A military member will lead for the first 21 months, and then a civilian member will lead for the last 18 months.

The declaration establishes a council of ministers tasked with implementing its mandates during the transitional period. The FFC nominated economist Abdalla Hamdok as prime minister, and he will select ministers from a list prepared by the FFC. The defence and interior ministers will be appointed by military members of sovereign council.

The declaration also establishes an appointed transitional legislative council that will be majority civilian with 67 members from the FFC and 33 members from other political forces that were not part of the FFC. In a significant victory, no fewer than 40% of the council members must be women.

All potential ministers and legislative council members must be confirmed by the sovereign council, and decisions on the sovereign council must be adopted by a two-thirds majority. This means that the minority of military members can veto decisions, in essence nullifying the rule of civilians on the country’s highest authority.

A few days after the signing of the accord, the SPA announced that it would not take any of the civilian seats on the sovereign council. They intend to participate in the legislative council ‘as an independent regulatory authority’ and ‘watchdog’ to ensure the mandates of the declaration are carried out during the transitional period.

The declaration did not include concrete economic reforms, specific mandates to improve the rights of women and youth, a plan to prosecute those responsible for war crimes, nor a rigorous investigation of 3 June massacre. The failure to include social and economic reforms leaves many of the movement’s central demands unrealized. The deal also dodged larger questions of war and peace, racism and marginalization, and the rights of displaced persons and refugees.

Despite its limitations, jubilant crowds gathered in Khartoum to celebrate the signing of the deal. Sara Abdelgalil of the SPA told the New York Times, ‘It’s a very tough compromise. We just hope that we will achieve a civilian-led government at the end of the three years. And if we fail, we will go back to the street.’

Ordinary activists expressed similar resolve. Ramzi al-Taqi, a fruit seller in Khartoum, told Agence France-Presse, ‘If this council does not meet our aspirations and cannot serve our interests, we will never hesitate to have another revolution. We would topple the council just like we did the former regime.’

Conclusion

Sudan is in a state of acute contradiction as popular forces share power with the very actors that repressed the movement. As Sudan enters the next phase of its revolution, much hinges upon whether the FFC can win over a majority of the rank and file soldiers in support of the people.

Bashir’s trial has begun over corruption charges, but many question whether he will be held accountable for his greatest crimes. Some suspect that the military is using the trial to deflect attention away from 3 June massacre.

Newly appointed Prime Minister Hamdok has approved 14 civilian minsters from a list provided by the FFC. He reiterated that this is meant to be a government of ‘technocrats’ rather than politicians. Among his selections are Asmaa Abdallah as Sudan’s first female foreign minister and Ibrahim Elbadawi, a former World Bank economist, as finance minister. Hamdok has also reached out to the World Bank and IMF to discuss Sudan’s debt.

Many of the problems that led millions of Sudanese to revolt – decades of repression, lack of democracy, neoliberal austerity, the unrealized rights of refugees – have not been resolved. Bread and fuel queues have already begun to reappear. The revolutionary process is not over and, as it unfolds, the Sudanese people who have now felt their power, will undoubtedly fight to shape their own destiny.

In the midst of the 6 April sit-in in Khartoum, a mass movement in Algeria overthrew long time, autocratic president Abdelaziz Bouteflika, imbuing Sudanese protesters with confidence. The emergence of these concurrent movements indicates that the conditions that gave rise to the Arab Spring and protests in Burkina Faso and Senegal will continue to spark resistance.

Assessing and learning from these movements remains an urgent task. They raise important questions about the level of trade union and working-class involvement, the weakness of organizations and political parties, the ‘absence of ideology’ of the main opposition groups, and the role of the organized left and its revolutionary wing.

The next blogpost will provide an overview of the Algerian uprising and trace the dynamics of the movement.

Emma Wilde Botta is socialist activist and writer based in Oakland, California. She has written extensively on the Arab Spring, the Gulf States, Iran, and US imperialism. Her writing has appeared in TruthOut, the International Socialist Review, and Socialist Worker.

Featured Photograph: A work by by Khalid Kodi showing a Sudanese woman in front of the military HQ in Khartoum; the RSF militia raped dozens of women and killed more than 100 protesters on 3 June as they broke-up the sit-in at the military HQ (16 July, 2019).

The Rwandan Debacle: Disguising Poverty as an Economic Miracle

ROAPE

September 2, 2019

Recently the Financial Times published an investigation carried out by their data analysis team, which confirmed the findings that have been published on roape.net on poverty in Rwanda over several years. Of all the countries in the world for which there is data, only South Sudan has experienced a faster increase in poverty over the past decade. Rwanda’s official poverty statistics are verifiably false. The government, supported by the World Bank, is involved in a tragic debacle in which the poor are the real victims.

On 13 August 13 2019, the Financial Times published a lengthy investigation carried out by their data analysis team, which confirmed the findings that had been published on roape.net by several academics, regarding poverty in Rwanda. In particular, the Financial Times confirmed that the 7 percentage points decrease in poverty reported by the National Institute of Statistics of Rwanda (NISR) in 2016 , and endorsed by the World Bank in 2018, corresponded to an inflation rate of 4.71% for the period 2011-2014, that is, much lower than the total national CPI inflation for that same period (23%).

NISR responded by denying that they had deflated consumption by 4.71%, and saying that the comparison with CPI inflation was inappropriate because they had used a completely different methodology, called a Cost of Living Index (COLI), which ‘adjusts household consumption for each household, for each of the 12 months of the survey, in each of Rwanda’s five provinces.’ Surprisingly, however, they did not clarify by how much their COLI had deflated consumption between the two surveys in each of the five provinces, as would have been expected following their rejection of the FT’s figure.

NISR’s line of defense is almost identical to the one published a few months earlier by the World Bank, which had claimed, without providing alternative estimates nor explanations for the discrepancy, that ‘there is no clear theory to guarantee that the national average of COLIs and the national CPI need to be consistent’. In reality, a COLI is just a combined spatial and temporal price index calculated for the subsample of the population living in poverty, so there are, actually, very strong theoretical reasons why the two should be comparable and should, in most cases, yield fairly similar results, as pointed out by the World Bank’s former director of research and former acting chief economist, Martin Ravallion.

Despite these statements, most observers, including the authors of this blog, had, until recently, assumed this whole affair to be nothing more than a terrible mistake or an embarrassing oversight on part of the World Bank – or , as Justin Sandefur put it, a case of ‘NISR ma[king] convenient choices – perhaps choices WB couldn’t categorically call “wrong”.’ Any such doubts about the World Bank’s complicity, should now have been dispelled by their third public endorsement, without new supporting evidence, of NISR’s increasingly indefensible results. Indeed, in their latest press statement, published in response to the FT’s story, the World Bank did not only fail, for the third time, to address the legitimate and simple questions raised by various independent researchers, they decided to dig in their heels and accuse the FT of having used the wrong deflator:

the appropriate deflator for measuring poverty is not the Consumer Price Index or GDP deflator, but rather a composite “cost-of-living” index that is representative of the food and non-food consumption choices of poor households as well as the unit prices they face in the markets where they purchase goods and services. Poor households consume a diet that is less diverse and relies more on self-produced (especially in rural areas), basic, and cheaper staples.

This ambiguously worded press statement is particularly disingenuous and incriminating in that it hints, without stating so explicitly (because they know that that would be wrong), that the FT over-estimated poverty because they failed to account for the fact that poor people consume ‘cheaper’ goods than those included in the CPI. That is, in any case, how the statement was interpreted by Rwanda’s government officials, official media, and the army of Rwandan twitter trolls, who all quoted the World Bank press statement, claiming that it vindicated NISR’s numbers because the FT had used the ‘wrong deflator.’

As the World Bank’s experts know, however, what is at issue here are not the absolute levels of prices faced by poor households, but the rate of change in those prices. The fact that the World Bank did not, despite having all the data needed to do so, provide any indication as to what that rate of change might have been, is surprising, to say the least, since this could, by their own admission, have helped to settle this issue once and for all.

Fortunately, that evidence is already available in two blogposts on roape.net, including the work presented by Sam Desiere in 2017 and in another recent blogpost. This shows unequivocally that the (cheaper) food items consumed by poor people in rural areas increased more in price than the (expensive) items consumed by rich urban households, resulting in a food inflation of over 30% for poor households for the period 2011 to 2014. There is a simple explanation for this, which is that markets function better in urban areas, with better access to imported food, which makes them less vulnerable to adverse domestic production shocks.

And since poor households consume proportionally more food than non-poor households, that higher food-inflation rate weighed more heavily in the total final inflation faced by poor households, than in the inflation of non-poor households. This means that poor households faced unambiguously higher total (food + non-food) inflation than non-poor households over the period 2011 to 2014. This result is robust and holds for all publicly available price data sets (CPI, EICV, ESOKO), as the World Bank knows, since they have the data.

In other words, if NISR and the World Bank had computed their COLI correctly, it should have shown a total inflation rate for poor households that is higher than the national CPI inflation rate of 23% percent for this period, not lower as NISR and the World Bank suggest. The onus should therefore now be on the World Bank and NISR to explain why their estimate is lower than all alternative estimates of inflation that can be computed from publicly available data sources. They would also need to explain what price data source they used to compute their COLI, and why they think that this, as yet unnamed, price data source is more appropriate for estimating poor-inflation than the standard data sources that have always been used for this purpose in the past.

Below, we copy figure 1 from the World Bank (2018) paper, which plots the actual COLI used by NISR in each of the 5 Rwandan provinces over the 12 months of the EICV3 and EICV4 surveys (Integrated Household Living Conditions Survey).[1] If NISR had accounted for inflation between the two surveys, their COLI should have jumped by an amount corresponding to the appropriate inflation rate in each province between the end of the EICV3 survey (October 2011, written as 1110 in the graph) and the start of the EICV4 survey (October 2013, denoted by 1310). As the graph clearly shows, however, this is not the case. In all provinces, except Kigali, the October 2013 COLI is almost identical to the October 2011 one. In the Southern province, it is even slightly lower, which would imply a negative inflation rate.

Source: World Bank (2018, p.17)

Now that these facts have been clarified, using the World Bank’s own graph, it would be appropriate for the World Bank to clearly state whether they still stand by their assertion that NISR’s COLI is an appropriate deflator? If so, they would need to explain whether they truly believe that poor rural households in Rwanda faced a negative to null inflation between October 2011 and October 2013 in all areas outside of Kigali? This would, of course, probably make Rwanda the only country in Africa, perhaps even in the world, to have experience virtually no inflation at all outside its capital for a full 2-year period.

Hiding behind the alleged “complexity” of poverty calculations, as the World Bank tried to do in their latest press statement, is simply not good enough for an institution that prides itself on the quality of its expertise. The issue under scrutiny (whether rural Rwanda experienced inflation or not) is actually fairly straightforward at this stage, and the magnitude of the disagreement is too large to be dismissed as trivial methodological quibbles, as the World Bank tried to do when it claimed that: ‘Differences over methodologies for poverty estimation are common in all countries, including developed ones’.

It is important to remember that, while the FT report only focused on the period 2011-2014,[2] the estimates published on roape.net in 2019, which have not been challenged by any experts, have shown that poverty has continued to increase since 2014, and now stands at over 60% in Rwanda. This is, higher than when NISR started to measure poverty back in 2001 and up by as much as 15 percentage points since 2011. Of all the countries in the world for which there is data, we could only find one (South Sudan), that that has experienced a faster increase in poverty over the past decade. By contrast, NISR and the World Bank claim that poverty has decreased 8 percentage points over this period and now stands at 38%, which would make it a star performer comparable to some of the best Asian tigers. That’s a 23-percentage points difference between the two poverty estimates! If the World Bank’s experts are not even able to tell whether Rwanda is experiencing a catastrophic economic collapse like South Sudan, or an unprecedented economic miracle like the “Singapore of Africa”, then it could be argued that its expertise is of little or no value.

That is why the World Bank’s repeated insistence on publicly defending NISR’s obviously and verifiably flawed results, even when presented with mounting and robust adverse evidence, is so extraordinarily baffling and damaging. For there is something even more fundamental at stake here than the authoritarian model of development that Rwanda stands for. It is the status of facts and scientific evidence in public policy dialogue. In the age of fake news and alternative facts, the world needs, more than ever, to be able to rely on those institutions that are supposed to be the custodians of objective facts, which are the requisite common foundation for any viable democratic dialogue.

Whatever the final outcome of this saga might be, it is already clear that the reputational damage inflicted on the World Bank’s role as “leading provider of objective, unbiased data”[3] will be immense, possibly irreparable, as had been feared by the group of World Bank whistleblowers calling themselves “Professionals for Truth in Aid”.

Unfortunately, it is not only the World Bank that is being less than transparent on Rwanda. For the past several years, the IMF has repeatedly exalted Rwanda’s GDP growth figures, despite failing to explain why growth in final household consumption reported in the National Account Statistics is so much higher than that reported in Household Survey data. In addition, bilateral donors have also been happy to hold up Rwanda as an African success story, despite mounting doubts about the veracity of the data underlying that narrative.

Ultimately, of course, the true victims of this debacle, are the Rwandan poor, whose plight over the past decade has been ignored by the very people who were supposed to help them, and passed off instead as an economic miracle, to satisfy distant imperatives of institutional expediency or political convenience.

The authors of this article have asked for anonymity.

Featured Photograph: A community meeting in Rwanda (6 March, 2018).

Notes

[1] For anyone wanting to verify these numbers, the COLI can be derived simply from NISR’s own datasets by looking at the difference between nominal and real consumption reported by NISR: COLI=cons1_ae/sol (where cons1_ae is nominal consumption per adult equivalent, and sol is real consumption in January 2014 prices). The values underlying the graph can be generated with the following command in STATA: table s0q19m id1, c(mean COLI), where id1 is the province variable and s0q19m represents the month of interview, which is contained in the household.dta file.

[2] The FT presumably chose to focus on this period because it was the only period for which a statistical manipulation could be easily proven, due to the discrepancy between NISR’s (2016, p.42) claimed rate of inflation of 14.0% (16.7 for food, weighted at .659, and 9% for non-food, weighted at .341) and the effective rate of inflation of 4.71% that could be deduced from the COLI (see World Bank, 2018, p.13, footnote 10). For the period 2014-2018, NISR did not indicate any inflation rate at all. This extremely unusual (even unheard of) move, means that it is not possible to show that they have misreported their own inflation rate for this period, since they reported none.

[3] Term used by the World Bank to describe itself (see link here).

Affiliates for ROAPE’s Editorial Working Group

ROAPE

September 1, 2019

The Review of African Political Economy is looking for affiliates to join the journal’s Editorial Working Group (EWG) for a year starting from January 2020.

Eligible candidates should be African nationals currently attached to a UK university for a PhD in the social sciences or humanities with an interest in the journal’s academic and activist work. Preference will be given to applicants who will have finished their fieldwork by January 2020, and who will be resident in the UK in the following year.

The remit of the journal is as follows: ‘Since 1974, ROAPE has provided radical analysis of trends, issues and social processes in Africa, adopting a broadly materialist interpretation of change. It pays particular attention to the political economy of inequality, exploitation and oppression, and to struggles against them, whether driven by global forces or local ones (such as class, race, ethnicity and gender). It sustains a critical analysis of the nature of power and the state in Africa in the context of capitalist globalisation.’

The person appointed would get first-hand knowledge of editing a radical journal and contributing to some of the tasks involved as part of the ROAPE collective. This might include writing or editing contributions for our website, roape.net, which includes blogs, debates, conference reports and interviews among its content. It might also include contributing to other aspects of the journal’s work, for example, through book reviews, refereeing of articles, support for conferences and workshops, IT, social media and communications. Affiliates will receive a formal letter of appointment and certificate, travel expenses for attending the journal’s quarterly meetings (which are usually held in January, April, June and October) and a free copy of the journal whilst in office.

The journal hopes to gain a broader input, particularly from young people who are actively engaged in appropriate research and activism. The kind of affiliate the journal is looking for is preferably in their late second or third year, committed to the objectives and analysis of the journal and will have returned from fieldwork. They will have to commit to trying to attend EWG meetings (four times a year) and to taking on occasional responsibilities, especially on the journal’s website. We also encourage affiliates to submit at least one piece of work to the journal for peer review whilst they are in office.

If you are interested in knowing more or in putting forward your name, please submit the following:

1) A statement on your reasons for wanting to become an affiliate (500 words max).

2) A CV, which should include:

– your name

– name and email address of your supervisor

– country of origin

– area or topic of research

– year of registration

– publications to date

– experience in relevant fields (event organising, IT, website, writing, editing etc)

The deadline for applications is the end of Friday 20 September 2019. If you have any questions, please contact the Chair of the Editorial Working Group, Hannah Cross. Applications should be returned to Hannah via email at h.cross@westminster.ac.uk.

Featured Photograph: Mural of Amilcar Cabral in Praia, Cape Verde (28 February, 2015).

Ruth First Prize

ROAPE

August 12, 2019

The ROAPE Ruth First prize has been awarded to Mondli Hlatshwayo for his article on the struggles of precarious workers in South Africa and specifically the organisational responses of community health workers. The article can be accessed for free from our website.

Review of African Political Economy

The Editorial Working Group of Review of African Political Economy is pleased to announce the 2018 winner of the Ruth First prize. The prize is awarded for the best article published by an African author in the journal in a publication year.

This year, the prize was awarded to Mondli Hlatshwayo for his article ‘The new struggles of precarious workers in South Africa: nascent organisational responses of community health workers.’ It was published in ROAPE Volume 45, Issue 157 in Autumn 2018.

The article shines the spotlight on community health workers (CHWs), who remain a blind spot in the literature on South African labour studies. Abandoned by mainstream unions and often ignored by labour scholars, the article reveals that CHWs are crafting their own nascent organisational responses as women and as precarious workers.

Hlatshwayo highlights the ‘paradox of victory’ for the African National Congress (ANC), by which trade unions and workers achieved a formal dismantling of apartheid laws and gained organisational rights for labour, but economic liberalisation led to massive retrenchments, the rise of labour flexibility and the pauperisation of workers. This demands more focus on workers’ struggles outside the formal union structures. In Hlatshwayo’s case-study of health workers, it is a struggle for recognition as employees of the state who receive a living wage, rather than the ‘volunteer’ with a stipend and no employment benefits. They have constructed alliances that include left wing, labour-supporting non-governmental organisations and health organisations. Beyond this, the Gauteng Health Workers’ Forum is influenced by the Cuban health care system and debates the reconceptualisation of their role as agents for social change, no longer alienated from control of their work and with the interests of the poor and marginalised at the centre of their practice.

The ROAPE Prize Committee commented on Hlatshwayo’s article: ‘it was a strong piece of research exploring precarious work and alternative forms of organising, outside the straitjacket of established unions. The struggles of CHWs represent new worker-led initiatives in South Africa. This is bread and butter analysis for ROAPE. Particularly pleasing is that the women themselves are at the centre of the article.’ Furthermore, ‘in terms of Ruth First’s legacy, the paper was the most relevant and crucially engages actively with the flesh-and-blood subjects of its theoretical arguments and assumptions about labour struggles, something unfortunately all too rare in academic literature.’

Another member of the committee said it ‘addresses an understudied area in labour struggles, through examining the labour struggles of precarious community health workers. It also explores the human consequences of many key themes of neoliberal state policy by showing the effects of precarious labour, the rise of ‘volunteerism’, cuts in health spending and the outsourcing of public services in South Africa. I really liked the way that it engaged with the health workers themselves, allowing them to make key empirical and theoretical points. Also, this paper is definitely the most in line with Ruth First’s work, looking at labour struggles, the exploitation of workers, and issues of gender and class.’

Mondli Hlatshwayo is a Senior Researcher in the Centre for Education Rights and Transformation at the University of Johannesburg. Previously he worked for Khanya College, a Johannesburg-based NGO, as a researcher. His areas of research include precarious work, female migrants, migrant workers, workers’ education, trade unions and social movements. Hlatshwayo has published a number of peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters on these topics. He is co-editor (with Aziz Choudry) of the Pluto Press book, Just Work? Migrant Workers’ Struggle Today. His Doctoral thesis, which he completed in 2012, was on trade union responses to technological changes.

The article can be read for free until July 2020 and can be accessed here.

Kicking Back: New work practices on ROAPE

ROAPE

August 7, 2019

ROAPE believes it is not enough for us to preach a radical anti-neoliberal politics and not practice or attempt to develop an alternative work ethic to neoliberal capitalism in our own work on the journal and website. As a consequence, we inform our readers and supporters that we are introducing a series of annual shutdowns, starting from 7-27 August on journal production, and from 7 August – 2 September on the website and social media.

The extension of the working day was at the core of Karl Marx’s political economy in his 19th century masterwork, Capital. The expansion of the ‘working day’ has been the central objective of the capitalist class as it is within these ‘days’ that profit is secured. As a consequence, the struggle over working hours has been a key battleground for trade unions and workers for the last two hundred years.

Over the last forty years, during what David Harvey has termed the ‘neoliberal counter-revolution’, ROAPE has sought to analyse these processes and trends across Africa. Deepening capitalist penetration in the economies and societies on the continent, and the expansion of a neoliberal ‘new economy’, has been the target of our politics and interventions. The impact of the renewed offensive on the ‘working day’ has been devastating for labouring classes in both the Global South and the Global North.

The academic and research world has followed the pack. Across all areas of work, we now accept as normal that we are available around the clock, to answer emails – on our phones or computers – at all hours, and in all circumstances. New technologies and social media – potentially means for improving the quality of our lives – enable, as Marx wrote in the 1860s, the expansion of our exploitation and labour. All of our lives – in and out of research, as activists, workers and teachers – have been degraded.

Marx envisaged a world liberated from necessity and the drudgery of the incessant extension of human exploitation. His vision needs to be recalled, ‘it is possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.’

As a radical political journal, we believe that we need to train ourselves in, and encourage, a different working culture, in a way that brings out more satisfaction and allows us more time to pursue other interests, and not just keep our heads above water with other responsibilities. We are far from achieving the society that Marx and the founding members of this journal imagined, but still – right now, today – we must strive to resist a work culture that is destroying our social and intellectual world.

Fundamentally, we believe it is not enough for us to preach a radical anti-neoliberal politics – based on the empirical analysis of political and economic transformation on the continent – and not practice or attempt to develop an alternative work ethic to neoliberal capitalism in our own work on the journal and website.

With the growing sense of a virtual office, we have agreed to have periods of shutdown, in line with many countries, small bookshops, parliaments, schools, the local cafe, and many more organisations! The expectation is that as well as getting some rest, we would quietly get on with any outstanding ROAPE work but we would stop the 24/7 availability that leaves us firefighting most of the time, and could instead take time to improve our working environment.

We inform our readers and supporters that we are introducing a series of annual shutdowns, starting from 7-27 August on journal production, and from 7 August – 2 September on the website and social media. This will mean that we are not communicating with authors and reviewers, and that roape.net and social media will not be emailing, posting, tweeting or updating.

Editorial Working Group

1...616263...98 Page 62 of 98

ROAPEJournal

ROAPEJournal

A Radical Journal and Institute for Swaziland

The Money Drain: Financial Outflows from Southern Africa

Gambling against the Kenyan State

Zimbabwe’s Moment of Hope – 20 years of the MDC

Mugabe’s Legacy: From ROAPE’s Archive

The Revolution has Emerged: Sudan’s Acute Contradictions

The Rwandan Debacle: Disguising Poverty as an Economic Miracle

Affiliates for ROAPE’s Editorial Working Group

Ruth First Prize

Kicking Back: New work practices on ROAPE

An interview with David Hemson – lessons from the South African...

Ruth First Prize: James Musonda’s radical analysis of the 2021 election...

When the IMF and World Bank visited my father

News

The Journal

Activities

Activities