‘Bashir, to the Dustbin of History’

March 14, 2019

‘Bashir, to the Dustbin of History’- an interview with Mohamed El-Nour

Sudanese activists in Europe continue to build solidarity for the revolutionary struggle that has, since mid-December, spread across Sudan. What are the dynamics of the uprising, and what is the role of the diaspora?

For roape.net, Joe Hayns translates and introduces an interview with Mohamed El-Nour, an activist with the ‘Sudanese Revolutionaries and their Supporters in Marseille’ collective. El-Nour was interviewed by Oum Ziad for the Marseille-based, left-wing journal, CQFD.

In November 1851, nearly four years after the protests that began Europe’s ‘Springtime of Peoples’, Friedrich Engels wrote that ‘it is the fate of all revolutions that the union of different classes, which in some degree is always the necessary condition of any revolution, cannot subsist long’. Three months after the first Ṭasqut Bas! (Get Out!) protests against Omar al-Bashir and his regime, what can be said about the the ‘union of classes’ in Sudan?

Is the country more Tunisia, or Syria? Is the Sudanese Professionals’ Association (SPA) — the fledgling union federation, referred to indirectly in the interview below — able to cohere the popular classes against the state, as the General Union of Tunisian Workers did in 2011? Or, as Sudanese radical Magdi el-Gizouli recently asked, will the SPA continue to develop apart from the very ‘small farmers and non-professional workers’ who initiated the protests — is the revolution too ‘early’ for a progressive bloc to develop?[1]

Against them both, is al-Bashir a Bashir al-Assad, or a Ben Ali — able or not to superintend an anti-revolutionary bloc? And how can the left outside the country and the region come to understand revolutionary Sudan, except by analogy?

There is a clear answer to at least the latter question. Whilst detailed news of Khartoum remains scant in the press, Saturday 2 March saw, in Brussels, the largest demonstration yet of Europe-based Sudanese organisations; and, in London, groups directly connected with the SPA continue to organise weekly protests (in Trafalgar Square, from 2pm). Such activities, and the following interview, show again that it is more through diasporas than international editors that the left in Europe can rebuild both its internationalism, and its comprehension of today’s ‘Springs’.

Joe Hayns

Oum Ziad: How is the popular revolution organising itself?

Mohamed el-Nour: Since 19 December, spontaneous assemblies have taken place across the majority of the major towns and cities in Sudan, especially after Friday prayers, and even after football matches, as in Omdurman, as organised by supporters of the al-Hilal club.

On 25 December, unions called for a march on the Presidential Palace in Khartoum. The following Friday — ‘the Friday of Anger’ — journalists, doctors, and lecturers called for a strike. There was no political party amongst these mobilisations. The student collectives, who have been very active on the marches, have mobilised without displaying signs of party membership.

Only the Sudanese flag, the national anthem, and popular chants have marked the protests: ‘Liberty, Peace and Justice’, ‘Revolution is the Choice of the People’, or ‘The People Demand the Fall of the Regime’. Out of fear, Bashir closed the universities on 22 December, but that didn’t prevent the students from revolting.

There have been many expressions of oppositional support and fraternisations from the military, but the Sudanese don’t have any confidence in any mediating body, in parties or unions. Sadiq al-Mahdi, former Prime Minister of al-Bashir, is already pretending in the international media to embody the opposition — but one of his sons is currently adviser to Bashir himself, and, at the start of the revolution, al-Mahdi signed yet another [intra-Sudan] peace accord, in Germany. Forty-three such peace accords have been signed since 2003, and have done nothing other than distract international attention from the continuous massacres in Darfur and the Nuba Mountains. These acteurs de la paix (actors of peace) are, in fact, acteurs du pouvoir (actors of power).

Can we speak of a Sudanese Spring?

The majority of the media, when they have spoken about Sudan, have begun with evoking ‘bread riots’, but this is only denying the revolutionary aspect of the uprising.

Sudan was the first country in Africa and the Middle East to have a revolution, in 1885, against Anglo-Egyptian domination. Since independence, there have been two revolutions: in 1965, after pressure from the streets, the President Ibrahim Abboud duly left power; in 1985, the removal of the military government of Jaafar al-Nimeiry aimed for the restoration of civil government — before the coup d’état of Omar al-Bashir in 1989.

As the Arab Spring arose, we were ecstatic at the images of Tahrir Square. The history of the people of Sudan is connected to the Egyptian people. Today, many Sudanese activists are refugees in Egypt, even whilst the Egyptian authorities cooperate — punctually — to deliver opponents of the regime to Niss [National Intelligence and Security Service, the Sudanese security service]. In July 2013, al-Sisi’s coup and the return of the ‘ideology of the gun’ in Egypt served as a warning — and we don’t want to give an opportunity to partisans of a violent coup. That’s why the Sudanese protests are non-partisan and unarmed.

The popular revolution raged in the northern towns, before spreading to other regions — but the rebel groups in Darfur, Kordofan, and the Nuba Mountains remain, for the moment, quiet.

The northern cities are the heirs of Sudanese independence [i.e., fought for and received the benefits of independence]. In Omdurman, the sibling city of the Khartoum, on the opposite bank of the Nile, the demonstrations are daily. This town was built by those so-called ‘African’ elites opposed to the colonial power, and has for a longtime harboured rebels such as al-Mahdi — mystic heroes of the struggle for independence.

Whilst the popular uprising started in the northern cities, it spread rapidly to Darfur, above all to Nyala and al-Fasher, whose residents are under the repressive whip of Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, nicknamed ‘Hemetti’, former head of the Janjawid forces, and a warlord who has been recycled through the government’s paramilitary forces. Darfur, despite the ceasefire, has been exhausted by the various sequels to the war of 2003.

I’m originally from al-Geneina, the Darfuri town on the Chad border. My village was burned to the ground when I was fourteen years old. In 2013, the rebel groups of Darfur called for support for the revolution that exploded in Kassala. Today, they’re being more discrete, in order to not be accused of manipulating the revolution.

On what is al-Bashir basing his power?

Bashir’s coup was supported by the Islamist ideologues like Hassan al-Turabi.[2] After replacing al-Turabi, Bashir continued to rely on rigorist Islam. On the 8 January this year, in a televised speech, Bashir again referred to a ḥadīth [a report of a saying or act of Mohamed], in declaring that the soldiers firing on protests is ḥalāl — that it is permitted. This was too much for certain religious figures, who immediately contradicted Bashir’s fantastical interpretation, and took the side of the protesters.

Sudan is in the process of changing, driven by a new generation — educated, and diverse. One of our demands is the equality between men and women. Lots of Sudanese women have been part of the protests; they are also the target of repression.

For sure, the second pillar of power is the security apparatus, which monopolises the state budget. Since 19 December, there have been 40 deaths and more than 1000 arrests. On 9 January, after protests in Omdurman, dozens of wounded were being cared for in the major hospital — where Bashir’s men opened fire. At the same time, in Khartoum, at the Green Square, the dictator launched his campaign for the 2020 presidential election, at which the crowds obligingly applauded.

The same scenario, a massacre, was repeated on 16 January, at the Royal Care International hospital in Khartoum. Many doctors have been killed or arrested when supporting the demonstrators. Then, people occupied the hospital in protest.

We treat announcements of defections from the army with suspicion, since some of the them are simply waiting opportunistically for the fall of the tyrant, like Salah Ghosh, the Director of the Secret Services.

How is one a revolutionary in exile?

The exilés play a crucial role against censorship, and in the coordination of information. The Revolutionary Sudanese of Marseilles allows us to build concrete solidarity between ourselves, and also to alert the international community. It was the online mobilisation that gave us the hashtag #TuTombes, which alludes to the overthrowing of Bashir. In Sudan revolutionaries connect with virtual IPs, in order to send us information. We have been forced to take this action because of the closing of borders in Africa — many millions of Euros have been sent by the EU to the regime, as part of the Khartoum Process, an agreement about the externalisation of European borders — and by the incessant repression of the Other, and sometimes by the collaboration between European and Sudanese authorities over the expulsion of sans-papiers [those ‘without papers’, living ‘illegally’ in France and Europe] and opponents of the regime.

Despite this, for me, Sudan’s future is also being forged in Europe, since it remains a site of Sudanese power. In three years, we’ve created Sudanese assemblies in nearly every town in France. We’re here to change history — it’s one of our slogans, ‘Bashir, to the Dustbin of History’.

Joe Hayns is an activist and member of UK-based group rs21. He is a doctoral researcher working on Morocco.

Featured Photograph: London solidarity protest with the movement in Sudan, 27 January, 2019 (taken by Paula Mitchell)

ROAPE is grateful to the radical French monthly CQFD for permission to edit and republish this interview.

Notes

[1] See el-Gizouli’s bilingual blog, StillSudan. The quotation is from the short essay – follow the hyperlink in the interview above for the Arabic essay – ‘On a Revolution Unprecedented and Controversial: What to do with the Sudanese Professionals’ Association?’ (‘للثورة جِدّة وجدل: ماذا نفعل بتجمع المهنيين؟’).

[2] For a 1994 profile of al-Turabi, see Judith Miller’s Foreign Affairs article ‘Faces of Fundamentalism’; for a more recent sketch, see Rob Crilly’s 2010 Saving Darfur: Everyone’s Favourite African War. In 2011, al-Turabi told AFP that ‘(w)hat happened in Tunisia is a reminder. This is likely to happen in Sudan (…) If it doesn’t, then there will be a lot of bloodshed. The whole country is armed. In the towns, it will be a popular uprising, but in Darfur, and in Kordofan as well, they have weapons.’

Connections in Accra

ROAPE

March 13, 2019

ROAPE, with the Third World Network, held the first Connections Workshop in Accra in November, 2017

ROAPE’s first workshop was held with our partners, Third World Network, in Accra, Ghana. The workshop focused on industrialisation, financialisation and radical transformation in Africa. In these videos we interview activists, trade unionist and researchers, including Peter Adejobi, Hibist Kassa, Ndongo Sylla, Sam Ashman and Josephine Alabi. They speak about the importance of the workshop, the necessity of a firm understanding of radical political economy for their activism, and extending the debates across the region and continent.

Expanding the Space for Criticism in Rwanda

ROAPE

March 12, 2019

Continuing our examination of Rwandan development, An Ansoms looks at how the space for open contestation around problematic aspects of rural policy seems to have increased in the country. Both the national and local media, actors from within civil society, as well as the farmers on the ground are increasingly and openly commenting on flaws in the agrarian modernisation model. Such space for open criticism oriented towards local authorities is new in Rwanda. Though the question remains whether this new openness can evolve towards a larger debate around policy orientation.

By An Ansoms

Over the past twenty-five years, Rwanda has been characterised as a miracle in terms of post-conflict economic reconstruction. Economic progress was moreover accompanied by a rapid decrease in poverty. When from 2007 onwards, policy makers started focusing on the importance of the rural economy, this seemed to translate in concrete improvements in living conditions of Rwanda’s rural farmers. Between 2006 and 2011, survey data indicated a strong decline in poverty headcount. However, together with others, we warned on roape.net of the perverse effects of agrarian modernisation and professionalization on smallholders’ livelihoods.

Since then, the debate on the evolution of poverty has been lively. The analysis of the data of recent household surveys (2013/4 and 2016/17) leads to divergent conclusions. And indeed, the statistical game with various poverty lines and with different price data is not easy to follow for a non-specialist. The Rwandan National Institute of Statistics (NISR) concluded that poverty decreased between 2010/11 and 2016/17; although the decrease was non-significant between 2013/14 and 2016/17. Anonymous authors reacted with a quite firm politically-charged message, classifying NISR’s analysis as ‘lies’ and accusing the World Bank of complicity in providing a cover-up. At the same time, however, the authors provide a solid technical analysis on the same database – with detailed presentation of their syntax files – that indicates a strong increase in poverty for the same period.

Discussions on problematic figures

Alongside the debate on poverty, another debate is being picked up in surprising ways. For years, the problem of malnutrition remained largely ignored in Rwandan policy circles. Early 2018, however, president Kagame himself brought up the percentage of 38% of under five children being stunted (according to official statistics). During his keynote address at the 2018 National Leadership Retreat, he raised it as a major issue, and called upon his ministers to justify why this figure was still so problematically high. Since then, government officials, national media, and civil society actors are drawing attention to malnutrition, to potential causes and solutions.

Another interesting phenomenon is the acknowledgement of high-level government officials that they do not dispose of reliable disaggregated performance measurements. This debate is not (or no longer) confided behind-the-curtains. In fact, the matter was put on the agenda by Prime Minister Ngirente during the same Leadership Retreat. Since then, with the Minister of Local Government Shyaka, they have openly commented on the manipulation of districts’ 2018 performance figures; and they highlight the way in which this impedes efficient governance.

Increased space for contestation

Now that these debates are reaching out into the public domain, the space for open contestation around problematic aspects of rural policy seems to have increased. Both the national and local media, actors from within civil society, as well as the farmers on the ground openly comment on flaws in the agrarian modernisation model.

Within the media, the New Times has evolved from regularly reporting on a variety of problems and incidents to a sustained editorial focus on the structural issues impeding equitable progress in the agriculture sector (see for example here and here and here). Also other media platforms have also taken up a critical pen. Recently, Igihe, for example, gave a detailed account of how local populations have decided to destroy banana plantations in the absence of a market to sell their production. Local radio stations – such as Isango Star, Radio Salus, radio Izuba – organise popular live broadcasts in which complaints about food shortage, crops and financial losses due to top-down regulations, etc. are openly discussed. During these debates, local authorities are called upon to react to local dissent. According to one of our interviewees, local authorities were in the past generally very reluctant and they sometimes tried to intimidate the journalists in question. However, the margin of manoeuvre of the media has increased to such extend that they are capable of pressuring the local authority in question to respond ‘on air’. Such space for open criticism oriented towards local authorities is new in Rwanda.

Also civil society actors – present in the domain of rural development – indicate that there is increased room for advocacy. Interestingly, the channels through which they negotiate are not necessarily the formal channels. At the level of each district, the Joint Action Development Fora (JAF) were installed in order to increase coordination between local authorities and civil society. But in most cases, the discussions within these fora are limited to configuring each actors’ role in the imihigo performance contracts. However, actors from civil society do mention that ‘knowing each other’ helps to discuss problems with policy implementation through more informal interaction. At the same time, they very delicately wrap their advocacy within debates that have already been launched by the president and other high-ranked authorities. From there, however, civil society actors do not necessarily keep themselves to ‘safe ground’. They instrumentalise the diplomatic framing in order to expand their margin of manoeuvre to point to the many issues at stake in the domain of rural policy reform.

In addition, the population itself is increasingly open about their opinions on policy decisions from local authorities that negatively affect their livelihoods. When, for example, the national ombudsman’s team goes into the rural zones, farmers use the opportunity to pass on their complaints in very outspoken ways. During a recent field visit in Nyaruguru in January 2019, for example, it took the ombudsman’s team an entire day to listen to local complaints from very outspoken citizens. Community members pointed to various issues, including corruption and abuse of power from local authorities in their presence, and urged the team to stay and listen ‘until we are finished’. Again, it is unusual to see ordinary farmers making such criticisms to their local authorities in such outspoken way.

Local authorities between the hammer and the anvil

The increased levels of contestation raise the pressure upon local authorities. They find themselves between the hammer and the anvil. On the one hand, they have been formatted in a system of ‘performance at all cost’. As mentioned in a previous blog, ‘local leaders’ positions depend upon their capacity to prove results in reaching pre-imposed quantitative targets, not upon their capacity to critically assess the suitability of those targets, and adapt them to local level realities’. As a result this has led to a culture of ‘gutekenika’, a word widely used to refer to local authorities’ tendency to ‘fabricate performance’ in line with the imposed, top-down targets.

At the same time, however, decentralised authorities are now rendered accountable for the erroneous information they have passed up the hierarchy. Forging figures is framed by high-level government officials as ‘entanglement in corruption and bribery’ and counterproductive to the government’s national development ambitions. At the same time, people on the ground no longer contain themselves when they are faced with an outlet for their discontent, circumventing a direct confrontation with the local authorities in question.

Towards new policy orientations?

Do these tendencies of openness signal a new path, both in terms of green revolution ambitions as well as in terms of the organisation of the political and administrative chains implementing those ambitions?

As such, it is clear that the Rwandan government is increasingly responsive to reported problems with agrarian modernisation. In reaction to the 2016 food crisis, farmers have been given more freedom to produce crops for self-sufficiency. For example, the previously banned sweet potatoes are again allowed and the rigid imposition of mono-cropping has also been moderated. In certain zones, multi-cropping is even promoted by authorities as a sound agricultural practice. However, there is currently no public debate around the structural difficulties that smallholders face within the agrarian green revolution model and the main explanation of policy makers for explaining malnutrition is still focusing on ‘farmers’ ignorance’ around a healthy food diet. Such reactions fail to acknowledge how imposed market-oriented crop choices and limited bargaining power on markets has reduced farmers’ capacity to diversify their food patterns. It is rather ironic that in such a context, the government continues to promote export-oriented production – now even targeting China as an export market.

In terms of governance, the reaction from high-level authorities to ‘forged’ local levels figures is more than lip-service. There is a real ambition to increase authorities’ accountability at all levels. However, there is still no public debate around the systemic flaws in the administrative chain’s way of functioning. The flaws are mainly attributed to malicious authorities doing a lousy job, without acknowledging the responsibility of the broader system’s top-down target-oriented rationale. There is very limited margin of manoeuvre for local authorities to prioritise local concerns over national ambitions.

Remaining taboos

However, the opened-up of space for expressing dissent around rural policy making and implementation is real. Though the question remains whether it can evolve towards a larger debate around policy orientations. For this to happen, remaining taboos have to be tackled.

First, in all our interactions with actors involved, people stress upon the absolute necessity to frame contestation against policy in a constructive manner. Also we, as researchers, have been continuously warned to restrict ourselves to ‘constructive criticism’. The definition of ‘constructive’ is not always clearly defined, but generally identified as ‘not calling into question the overall good intentions of national policy makers’, and ‘being capable of proposing alternatives’. As a result, there are two perverse effects. First of all, actors are often scared to formulate their criticism in a clear way. As one of our key respondents said: ‘We often think about how concealing our criticism, how to ‘wrap it’ in finding ‘half-truths’ that touch upon the sensitive issue without going into direct confrontation with authorities.’They have to find the best way to express divergent views, beyond ‘naming and blaming’ local authorities. As one of our respondents framed it: ‘umukuru ntiyanga uwumukebura yanka uwumutuka’ (‘the authorities do not refuse criticism, they are against blame/insult’ our translation]. However, these compromises in finding the ‘right constructive formulation’ often impede pointing a finger to the core of the problem. In addition, the obligation to come up with alternatives often puts actors – media, civil society, farmers – in a position far beyond the scope of their expertise. It is too easy to scale down a proposed alternative – and with it the underlying criticism – as ‘unrealistic’ when the actors formulating it lack technical expertise and scientific back-up to transform an idea into a concrete and realistic proposal.

Second, it remains taboo to tackle the fundamental power imbalances embedded within the new agrarian model – particularly when it comes the abuse of power by elites with political and military connections. In the framework of the demobilisation of ex-soldiers, many actors with a military history have been integrated into the rural economy. The Rwandan Defence Force – as an institutional structure – has occupied a key role in many rural development projects (terracing, etc.). When these projects conflict with local priorities and concerns, people are too afraid to react. A similar fear is present among the population when being confronted with the abuse of power by certain (ex)military elites who hold key positions in food commodity chains.

Conclusion

These are interesting times in Rwanda. A government – driven by the ambition to perform and to be accountable – is being confronted with the downsides of a highly interventionist agrarian modernisation that conflicts with the needs and logic of smallholder farmers. But there is increased openness to discuss. We can only hope that the current window of opportunity will allow Rwandan smallholders to find greater bargaining power in the overall policy making processes. In addition, that their risk-minimising strategies and local know-how are taken into account as a legitimate source of knowledge in tackling Rwanda’s major challenges laying ahead. In areas such as multi-cropping, seed selection, food conservation and nutrition … farmers’ knowledge and techniques have proved to be relevant and adaptive across centuries.

An Ansoms is a long-standing ROAPE contributor. She has a PhD in Applied Economics and is a Professor in development studies at the Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium. Her focus is on natural resource conflicts and challenges for rural development in the Great Lakes Region of Africa.

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

Utsa Patnaik on Agrarian History and Imperialism

ROAPE

March 7, 2019

Max Ajl speaks to the Marxist economist Utsa Patnaik about agrarian history and imperialism. Her work on the economic history of India and other countries under colonial rule, shows how the experience deepened food insecurity and unemployment, trends which reemerged again under neoliberalism. The interview was conducted as part of the activities of the workshop on ‘Agriculture and Imperialism’ in November 2018, Beirut, Lebanon, organised by the Thimar Collective.

Good morning and thank you very much for being with us today. Can you start by telling us how you began your study of economics and what your initial research was?

I got interested in economics at an early age because there was quite a lot of Marxist literature in our house – Karl Marx’s Capital, the Marx-Engels volumes and Lenin’s writings. My father, though an engineer by profession, was interested in Marxism. Because I read this literature as a teenager, I thought of learning economics. I joined the Delhi School of Economics for graduate studies. We had excellent teachers at that time including Professors Sukhamoy Chakravarty, Amartya K. Sen, K.N. Raj. Then I completed a DPhil in economics at University of Oxford in England on the subject of the development of capitalist farming in India, returning in 1973 to teach at the new Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi, where I taught for 37 years before retiring in 2010.

You have developed a strong criticism of the advance of neoliberalism in India. Can you tell us a little bit more about how you saw that process?

The main criticism of neoliberalism is it destroys our food security and undermines livelihoods of small producers. The economic history of India and other countries under colonial rule, showed there were certain alarming economic trends of deepening food insecurity and unemployment at that time which were coming back again under neoliberalism. If you did not study this history and simply looked at present day neoliberal policies (of free trade and cutting back public spending, ‘austerity’) you would never be able to identify those trends. The most important was the inverse relation under free trade colonialism, where exporting more from agriculture always reduced our food security. The mechanism was income deflation. The consumption of the peasantry in India was severely restricted by very high taxes and rents so that peasants were forced into growing and selling export crops. Grain-producing land was diverted to tropical crops, exported to satisfy the metropolitan demands that were insatiable because their cold lands can produce only one crop. Our lands are very productive because we can grow at least two crops per year, and in some areas of India up to three crops.

There is heavy, continuous and one-sided demand that the North always has on our lands, for the simple reason that agriculture is constrained by climate, and so is very different from any other sector. You can produce shoes and textiles anywhere in the world, but no amount of capitalist technological change, will allow North America to produce sugarcane or Germany to produce coffee. They can never import-substitute in these goods, but this reality is never mentioned in their economic literature. They want an international division of labor in which we specialize in growing tropical non-grain crops to export to them while they export to us the grain they can produce in great amounts. Not in the past – Britain was dependent on India then, even for part of its wheat imports. But with rising productivity, Europe and North America now have large surpluses of grain and dairy products, but their rich populations don’t want to eat only bread and dairy products or fresh vegetables only in summer. They want coffee, tea and cocoa, they want tropical products and fresh vegetables, fruit and flowers in the middle of winter. But they are incapable ever of diversifying their own production to these crops. So today they demand the products of our lands, to an even greater extent than before. A lot of things fall into place once you understand that – why they have always wanted and got access to our lands, but we don’t need access to their lands. That is what the WTO is all about, the repeated mantra is: open up your agriculture.

The people who support free trade policies might be puzzled and say, ‘What’s wrong with that? You’re earning foreign exchange for exporting more, your farmers are getting more income!’ The problem that they do not see, is that even though our lands are more productive they are limited in area, we cannot actually satisfy the huge appetite of rich advanced countries populations and also feed our own population. It’s just not possible. Through studying history, I find the inverse relation obtained not just in the India-Britain dynamic. If you look at Java under the Netherlands, or Korea under Japan, you find the same inverse relation. I gave the data in my book The Republic of Hunger (2007) for Java and for Korea. For the people in Java rice availability went down sharply as the Dutch diverted land to tropical export crops. From 1910 and 1945, Korea was a Japanese colony. The Japanese took over half of Korean rice output by the 1930s so the Korean peasantry was pushed down to near-starvation level. In every single developing country, I found this inverse relationship. In India, from 205 kilograms per head food-grain output and after exports, 197 kg available for consumption (average for 1909 to 1914) the availability went down to 159 kg (average for 1933 to 1938) and dropped further to 137 kg by 1946, our worst year. Daily per head calorie intake went down by 650 calories. Grains supplied a little more than three quarters of the daily calorie intake as well as protein intake of the average Indian even as late as 2005 and there was even higher dependence earlier. Poor populations cannot afford enough milk and other animal products and depend heavily on cereals and lentils. Even in Lebanon, I find that apart from vegetables, people are reliant on basic food staples such as cereals, lentils and beans.

If we invest a lot in improving our agricultural productivity – then, yes, in theory we could do both, we could export as well as maintain production for our own needs. But the neo-liberal policy regime is predicated on governments cutting back on expenditure – that is one main policy pillar, apart from free trade, which is the other. There is a basic contradiction: governments are asked (by international financial institutions) to cut spending, and so not only India, all developing country states have been cutting very sharply their rural development expenditures, and research on new crop varieties. As a result, you cannot raise land productivity, and at the same time you are asked to export more and more to fill supermarket shelves in the North. Income deflation plus free trade – these colonial policies are being replicated in new modern forms. Our food grain output per head was bound to go down and mass incomes were also being squeezed by income deflation so demand per head was falling. From the early 1990s, I was the only person who was warning repeatedly that free trade and cutting public spending are dangerous because our food security will be badly affected.

That is precisely what has happened, from 182 kilograms per head output and after exports, 174 kg. availability in the early 1990s we went down to 159 kg. availability by 2008, the same level as in the 1930s seven decades earlier!

This was a period of imperialist advance worldwide. Can you connect what happened in India to your macroeconomics of imperialism? Especially that contained in the recent book that you co-authored?

It is a complex phenomenon. In post-war Europe and America policies were quite different from what they were from the 1970s onwards which saw a big policy shift. Post-war Europe was engaged in reconstruction, the dominant theoretical discourse then was strongly influenced by Keynesianism. The post-war reconstruction boom was helped by American aid to war-ravaged Europe. The idea that you had to build up lost employment and purchasing power through government spending, dominated. It is only after the oil price shocks of the early 1970s that policies changed, West Asian oil money was deposited in the Northern banks producing an enormous increase in liquidity and the power of finance grew very suddenly, very fast. Financial interests have traditionally always had a very clear agenda – an income deflating agenda.

Firstly, they have an inflation targeting agenda, and to do so, they carry out an income deflating agenda. I think it’s not too difficult even for non-economists to understand, that those who make their money income by lending money to others, which is what financiers do, have a different set of interests as Karl Marx had explained long ago, from those who make their money from investing in production. A capitalist manufacturer wants an expanding market and he wants cheap credit for carrying on production and for investment – capitalists want to borrow at low interest rates. The financier wants exactly the opposite, he wants high interest rates because he is making his money as interest return from lending, not from producing anything. However, the nominal interest rate is not what interests financiers, they want to make sure that the real interest rates are high. If the inflation rate goes up their real rate of return will fall.

To illustrate, suppose the interest rate is five percent and the rate of inflation is five percent then for the person lending money the real interest rate, is zero. The interest rate has to be higher than the rate of inflation. In order to maximize the real interest rate they always want the inflation rate to be very low. That is why you hear of inflation targeting all the time, when finance dominates industry. But there is more than one way of targeting inflation. The best way is to increase production especially in agriculture, as fast as demand is increasing, then prices will not rise and this method benefits, it does not hurt people. But the path that financial interests choose is always to restrict demand for a given production level – they don’t want mass demand to rise. Even when unemployment exists, they always advise governments that you can’t spend more, putting forward wrong arguments. But the real reason is that higher public spending will set in motion the Keynesian multiplier, in turn mass incomes will rise, so demand would rise, inflation may rise especially for primary goods, and they hate inflation because it means their own returns will fall. A manufacturer would like his output price to go up relative to his input price because he profits from that. But the financier absolutely hates inflation and when finance dominates industry you get these income deflating policies badly affecting people, which are uniformly applied by the IMF and World Bank across the world as ‘austerity measures.’

In many countries, they have pushed for actual legislation to prevent governments from spending more, they will say first that you have to keep your fiscal deficit down to 3 percent and countries have cut it down to 3 percent. Then they’ll say that you have to balance your budget that is, cut spending even more, so that fiscal deficit is zero. And probably then they would want surplus budgets namely negative fiscal deficit! It is very clear, this deflationary agenda of ‘austerity’ which has been pushed by financial interests successfully now all across the world. And it has had a disastrous impact on employment and living standards for the mass of the working population.

In India too the Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management Act was passed 2004 under pressure from global financial interests. It has an additional objective for them, to squeeze mass demand so that land and resources are shifted away from local consumption to meet the consumption demands of advanced countries.

Your theory of imperialism sees this as differentially applied, particularly vis-à-vis depressing the prices of tropical agricultural products.

There are multiple layers of contradiction. On the one hand domination of finance means that ordinary people in the advanced world too are hit by it because you have higher unemployment. The rise of the Right in the advanced world is because the Left has not understood the agenda of finance and has not sufficiently opposed neoliberal policies. To a very large extent it has got intellectually hegemonized by all the wrong theories that financial interests have put forward. All this hype about globalization, efficiency, free trade – they have succumbed to it. When progressive people do not have a clear theoretical perspective that austerity imposed by finance is hitting the interests of the working people, then in the advanced countries too, you will see the rise of fascist elements as happened in the classic case of Germany in the 1920s and 30s (where Germany’s creditors had insisted on deflation). The Left there was very strong but not wise enough to unite with others and mount an effective theoretical as well as practical challenge against the rise of fascism. These fascist forces come in and say to the people, you are unemployed or losing income. Who is to blame? It is the immigrant who is to blame, or the religious minority. They divert the people’s anger into the wrong channels – targeting minorities, targeting immigrants, and so on. That is precisely what Trump is doing. That is precisely what is happening in Brazil and in India. I think the theoretical opposition to neo-liberalism has been too weak on the part of the progressive Left. It needed to have a much stronger and uncompromising opposition, but they were all taken in by the hype about globalization being good.

In fact, globalization represents nothing but a new phase of the domination of finance capital domestically within the Northern countries, but also economic re-colonization of the global South. You have discontent and unemployment in advanced countries. The attempt by their governments and by global finance is to shift the burden as much as possible to the developing countries. They are constantly told to devalue their currencies, so their products become cheaper for the North. Despite their poverty, their own public grain procurement and distribution for ensuring some food security, is at present under attack in the WTO so that the North’s surplus grain can penetrate their markets. They are pressurized to cut public development spending. Such income-deflating and unemployment raising measures lead to far worse outcomes for them, because the initial level of income itself is so much lower. The advanced capitalist countries start with much higher income levels, they have some kind of unemployment benefit and social welfare schemes. Finance tries to attack these, but in Britain the doctors have stood out against the dismantling of the National Health Service which used to be practically free, and which was set in place by the Labour government immediately after the Second World War. There is still some protection.

But in developing countries where the population has such a low level of income if you say that you cannot have development expenditure and you have to have private high-cost health and education, market-pricing of energy and inputs for farmers, that you must also remove any kind of price support to farmers and expose them to global price volatility, the result is disastrous. We never heard of farmer suicides due to debt before the 1990s in India, only from 1997 when the neo-liberal attack on farmers took effect did you hear of debt-driven suicides that by now exceed 300,000. And the sad thing is it is our own government which is the instrument – our finance ministers, our economists, who are so completely hegemonized by the wrong theories peddled by global finance that they are attacking the interests of their own people by implementing these policies. Can you imagine anything more tragic than that?

I think this also underlines the importance of theoretical resistance. We must show up the fallacies in the theories which are uncritically accepted. I’ve tried to do that to some extent by critiquing the incorrect theories that justify past and present globalisation. For example, Ricardo’s theory of comparative advantage says that there is always benefit from specialization and trade for both trading countries, but it is a logically incorrect theory. Ricardo himself was a poorly educated, but very clever stockbroker. He was a very modest man you know. He said ‘I am not as learned as Adam Smith. I have not studied philosophy, I have not studied history.’ If you read Ricardo, you see he had very good reason to be modest! Because if he had studied philosophy, which includes the study of logic, he could not have put forward the theory of comparative advantage, which assumed that both countries entering into trade could produce both commodities. This is a very simple material fallacy, namely an incorrect statement of fact since Ricardo’s country could never produce tropical goods whose ‘cost of production’ could not even be defined in his country. His basic assumption is not true for any Northern country, so the conclusion of mutual benefit is not true as I have pointed out with numerical examples in my essay ‘Ricardo’s Fallacy’ (in K S Jomo ed. The Pioneers of Development Economics).

Karl Marx had actually attacked, in Theories of Surplus Value, Ricardo on rent, in fact Marx is scathing about Ricardo’s logical mistakes with respect to the theory of rent. Marx as a trained philosopher would have criticized Ricardo’s theory of trade as well, except that he never completed his intellectual project. He intended to study ‘capital, landed property, wage- labour; the State, foreign trade, world market.’ He set out this project in the Preface to A Contribution to a Critique of Political Economy published in 1859. Reading his plan of work you realize he completed less than half of his intellectual project and never formally discussed ‘the State, foreign trade, world market.’ I have no doubt at all that if he had got around to analyzing international trade, he would have spotted Ricardo’s mistake and would have pointed out that the theory was fallacious. It remains very important to critique the wrong theories which have dominated our syllabi, which are taught to this day to our students and completely mislead them. That critique has to be carried out constantly.

Can we go a touch deeper into Marx’s thought? In A Theory of Imperialism, you discuss how Marx anecdotally and journalistically analyzed colonialism. But this was only very partially carried forward by the subsequent Western Marxist tradition – for example, you state Lenin and Luxemburg put forward analyses that may have been incomplete but were certainly highly attentive to imperialism.

As I mentioned earlier there is a basic problem and this is that Marx’s own theoretical project was never completed. He did write about colonialism at length in his newspaper articles, for the New York Daily Tribune, but Northern academics don’t take those articles seriously, the economists especially only look at the three volumes of Capital, (only the first volume was published in his lifetime) which do not discuss international trade at all – Marx never got around to opening up his closed model in Capital to foreign trade though he had certainly intended to do so. So, there is a fundamental problem with a lack of completion of his rigorous model of capitalism, of Marx’s own project. Marxists should understand that it was an incomplete project and so you can’t treat Capital as a finished product – Marx never intended to leave it as a closed system, he was forced by debt and illness into premature death. He had a very hard life – how much could you expect one man to do after all! His incomplete project should have been carried forward by others. But you need to be a true Marxist to carry forward his project and unfortunately most of those who call themselves Marxist in Northern universities in my view are not Marxists at all. They see Marx’s published works as some kind of Bible and treat it narrowly and scholastically rather than looking at the realization of Marx’s grand project of human liberation. Humanity does not end where Europe ends, or America ends. Lenin’s contribution as well as Rosa Luxembourg’s work are both of inestimable value because they applied the Marxist method to areas that Marx himself had not touched. Towards the end of his life, Marx realized that his original vision of proletarian revolution in Europe was not going to materialize. And why not? Because the safety valve European capitalism had was emigration. They simply exported their unemployed to the new world. As a result, the potentially explosive social and economic contradictions within Europe were defused. Marx realized that and by the 1870s, he looked towards Russia, he was studying Russian and corresponding with Russian revolutionaries. What he wanted to see was revolution and human liberation wherever it occurred. If the proletarian revolution was undermined in Europe by emigration and colonial wealth coming in, he wanted to see it happening elsewhere. Lenin carried this vision forward and for the first time he integrated the role of the peasantry into Marxism, as well as the role of the colonized and oppressed peoples. Luxembourg also did so very explicitly in her Accumulation of Capital. She was the only one who talked about colonial exploitation with very specific examples, including India and Egypt.

Lenin argues that one of the constituents of imperialism is capital export. But some of your work and others such as Amiya Kumar Bagchi discuss how capital export was actually fundamentally different when it was exported to settler colonies versus capital exported to other locations.

Lenin was right about the general importance of capital exports, relying on data from J. A Hobson. But the scholarly information they had access to a century ago, was very limited. You cannot expect an individual like Lenin both to lead a revolution in Russia and to research the details of colonial exploitation! Later UN historical trade data series compiled in 1942 and in 1962, showed that it was the tropical colonies that had huge trade surpluses and earned gold and foreign exchange from the world. Researching the details, we find that the metropolis took all of the colonies’ foreign earnings, and this allowed the metropolis to export capital to regions of European settlement. The producers of the export goods back in their colonies were never actually paid for their exports because the ‘payment’ came out of the cash taxes collected from the very same producers.

This mechanism once explained is actually quite simple, but until explained, it was not so easy to understand. It is only by studying both Indian and British trade data intensively over many years, that I could see the real patterns emerging. The question I asked myself was, if there was a drain of surplus from India which was huge compared to Britain which was tiny in terms of resources, it had to show up somewhere in the British statistics. So why was not a single historian of British industrialisation, including Eric Hobsbawm who was a Marxist, giving even a single reference anywhere, not even a footnote, to the Indian literature on the drain of wealth?

I realized that the British historians were making incorrect estimates of their own trade. Phyllis Deane and W.A. Cole had published in 1967, British Economic Growth 1688–1959, which was standard reading for anyone wanting to know about British economic history. Yet they were using a wrong definition of trade, a definition which is not in any macroeconomics textbook – which is not used by the World Bank, or UNCTAD, or the IMF, the bodies which present trade data for all countries. Deane and Cole were leaving out re-exports completely and measuring only part and not the whole of Britain’s trade. They added up imports used within their country and exports of their own goods. But the correct definition is total imports plus total exports, including re-exported imports. I reworked the data using Deane and Cole’s own series for the 18^th and 19^th centuries. By the year 1800 the actual trade was £82 million, but the figure that Deane and Cole give us is £51 million! The correct trade to GDP percentage was 56 percent at that date, not 34 percent as they stated. It is very important for us to look at what Northern academics are doing with their own data, but we remain intellectually colonized and we take it for granted since they are well-known professors from Cambridge they must be correct, but very often they are not.

What Britain was getting from its Indian and other colonies was international purchasing power by taking these goods as the equivalent of tax. It was a very clever system. But the producers themselves did not realize that they were not being paid, because the government agent who bought the goods from them was different from the agent who took their tax money, and the transactions took place at different times, so they did not connect the two and did not realize that a part of their own money was coming back, so that effectively they were not being paid but were being taxed out of their goods. Suppose you are a peasant farmer in Lebanon, and I am the foreign power taking 100 lira in taxes. I use 50 of those lira to buy your fruit for export. You think it is a normal market transaction because you are getting money for your fruit just as you would get from a local trader. But it’s not a normal transaction because actually you are not getting paid. Part of the tax you have paid is merely being converted from cash to goods.

Phyllis Deane wrote a book called The First Industrial Revolution in 1965, in which she had a whole chapter on how important re-exports were because they helped Britain to buy strategic goods from Continental Europe and North America. Then in 1967, two years later she published the joint book with Cole, in which that discussion was cut out completely, and from the data series they cut out re-exports so giving wrong estimates. Were they doing it deliberately, or was it just a conceptual confusion? We will never know. It doesn’t matter, but the fact remains it’s a wrong estimate.

All of the discussion of British economic growth ignores the drain of wealth from colonies completely. Therefore, it is theoretically and analytically an incomplete discussion. In fact, the quality of scholarly work on British economic growth itself is quite poor in my opinion, because they can’t explain why that country was the first to industrialize. Naturally, for they ignore the fact that it already had the largest empire in the world. From the mid-19th Century, after the great rebellion in India, 1857-59, the governance of India passed from the East India Company to the British Crown. They put in place a more complicated looking mechanism of taking our earnings, but essentially still very simple, by using Bills of Exchange. The minister in Britain in charge of Indian affairs was called the Secretary of State for India. By this time Indian goods were going directly all over the world. The Secretary of State for India in Council told foreign importers of Indian goods who needed to pay for their imports, ‘You deposit your gold, or sterling, or your own currency with me in London in exchange for a bill to an equivalent Rupee value that you can send to Indian exporters for cashing in rupees in India.’ So all the gold and foreign exchange Indian producers had earned, the international purchasing power went into the account of the Secretary of State in London, for Britain to use. The exporters in India receiving Council Bills deposited them in banks and were issued the rupees, but not in the normal manner – the rupees for cashing the bills were paid to banks by the Treasury in India, out of the budget. About one-third of the budget went for cashing the bills, a very abnormal use of budgetary funds we do not ever see in any sovereign country. Today in independent India, say I export $1,000 worth of goods to USA. The dollars come to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) which of course keeps the dollars, they add to India’s international purchasing capacity. But at the current exchange rate of Rs.70 per dollar, the RBI makes a fresh issue of 70,000 rupees to me not connected in any way whatsoever to the budget. But in colonial India our foreign earnings never came back to the country, additionally even the rupee value was not actually paid to the producers since they were cheated by cleverly using their own tax payments to reimburse them out of budget funds. That is why the export surplus was a correct measure of massive transfer of our foreign earnings to Britain, and our producers got poorer and poorer the more they exported because then they were taxed even more heavily.

Supposing we had been credited even one-quarter of the massive sums we had actually earned in foreign exchange? We had this export surplus from day one, from 1765 onwards. Then we could have imported technology to build up a modern industrial structure many decades before Japan started doing it after its Meiji Restoration in 1867. But not a single dollar, not a single pound sterling from export surplus earnings was allowed to come back. That was the beauty of the system Britain operated from its own point of view, that they got this huge international purchasing power. According to the UN data for three decades ending in 1928, India was earning the second largest export surplus in the world, second only to the USA.

I estimated that the drain of wealth from India to Britain for the period 1765 to 1938 amounted to £9.2 trillion (equivalent to $45 trillion) using India’s export surplus earnings as the measure and compounding at a low interest rate of 5 percent. (My essay titled ‘Revisiting the drain, or transfers from India to Britain in the context of global diffusion of capitalism’ appeared in a book I co-edited in 2017, titled Agrarian and Other Histories – Essays for Binay Bhushan Chaudhuri).

Using its political control to take India’s and other colonies’ huge export surplus earnings for its own use meant that Britain could become the world’s largest capital exporter and help to spread capitalist industrialization to regions of European settlement. During the 50 years after 1870 it was importing much more than it exported from the European Continent and North America – namely it was running current account deficits with these regions. Yet it was exporting vast sums of capital to develop infrastructure to these very same regions, so it was running capital account deficits too with them. (Remember capital exports unlike goods export, are a negative item and normally a country would need to have a current account surplus to be able to export capital, because the balance of payments always has to balance). The fast-rising balance of payments deficit it had with Europe and North America was only possible because it took all its colonies earnings to pay for these deficits. So, today’s entire advanced industrial world actually parasitically benefited from the wealth drained from colonies.

Can you talk a little bit about the reception of your work and imperialism and your work on the drain, in both India and the Western intellectual sphere, especially Western Marxism? If there has been reception?

In India, yes, it has been quite widely read, and abroad, it has attracted some notice – I think one reason for that is that Akeel Bilgrami also insisted that there should be a commentary on our arguments. Originally, he had asked a number of people to give their comments, including Noam Chomsky, who said that our book would need careful reading which would take more time than he had initially thought. David Harvey, out of three or four people who had been approached, agreed to give his comments. It was useful because like many Marxists in Northern universities he had never been exposed to the more than century-old theory and discussion of the drain of wealth under colonialism. Therefore for him to engage with our specific project was perhaps difficult and meant entering a new terrain. We did not agree with the points that he made but it was still good that he did take the trouble of reading the book and giving his criticisms. Now, I think slowly, our argument may start percolating down because books are not read immediately, nor do ideas get disseminated very fast especially if they are not within the conventional mould.

This is an abridged version of an interview which is co-posted by Thimar and roape.net.

Utsa Patnaik has taught economics at Jawaharlal Nehru University, India starting 1973 until retiring in 2010. She has written, edited and co-edited several volumes including Agrarian Relations and Accumulation – the Mode of Production Debate (1991), The Agrarian Question in Marx and his Successors in two volumes (2007, 2011), The Agrarian Question in the Neoliberal Era (2013) with the late Sam Moyo and most recently A New Theory of Imperialism (2016).

Max Ajl is a researcher in Development Sociology at Cornell researching the Tunisian national liberation movement and a contributor to roape.net.

Sudan’s Revolutionary Crisis: Markets, the Quran and Army Officers

ROAPE

March 5, 2019

For roape.net Magdi el Gizouli provides a detailed account of the revolutionary crisis in Sudan. Events started on 18 and 19 December last year in the small city of Atbara, but soon spread across the country. However, the forces of counter-revolution in the country are formidable. Importers, wholesale merchants, bankers, military and security officers, large landowners, sharia scholars and preachers embedded in Islamic banks, all have stakes in maintaining in the current regime. Magdi el Gizouli argues that to dismantle their powers and to fulfil the promise of the Atbara moment requires a revolution in Leninist terms. The country and its peoples have been subject to deep and dramatic socio-economic changes of which the current wave of protest is a symptom, it is so far unclear whether the leadership of the protest movement can turn elemental anger into systemic agency.

By Magdi el Gizouli

Sudan, i.e. the rump northern Sudan, is in the throes of a revolutionary crisis. The initial spark of the current wave of protests came from Atbara, a dusty town around 350 kilometres north of Khartoum. Once the capital of Sudan’s railways, home to its largest assembly of proletarians and most able trade unionists, and a nursery of its indigenous modernity, Atbara is today a crisis zone of austerity.

Already under Sudan’s previous dictator, Jaafar Nimayri (in office from 1969 to 1985), Atbara was punished for the audacity of its working class by cycles of austerity measures targeting the Sudan Railway Workers Union, the ‘mother of all Sudanese trade unions’, and the dismantling of the very railways that employs these rebellious workers.

Sudan Railways survives today only as a museum as a result of over two decades of US sanctions on Sudan which included a US Treasury ban on some 170 government entities. The combination of lack of spare parts of US manufacture, austerity and privatisation left Sudan’s 5,000 km long railway outdated and dysfunctional. Atbara did not fare better. What was once a brimming hub of African modernity today carries the scars of neoliberal assault but little if any of its benefits, laid off workers surviving in an economy of peddling and scavenging and few opportunities for upward mobility apart from employment in the government’s ever widening security sector or deadly adventures in Sudan’s gold rush.

In its quest for rents, the government of President Bashir handed over fertile lands in the Atbara River basin and beyond to a motley band of Arab Gulf investors who grow animal fodder for export to their home economies. In July 2014, the government of Sudan signed off a 99 years lease to Saudi Arabia granting the sister country land rights over an expanse of around a million acres to be irrigated from the newly erected twin dams of Upper Atbara and Setit close to the Eritrean border, a US$1.9 billion project funded by a set of loans from China, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

It was also in the vicinity of Atbara that the industrious Sudanese had to grapple with the disciplinary and lethal edge of international finance. In March 2018, Atbara Hospital received the corpse of a 30 years old man lethally shot by Russian security guards in a dispute between a Russian company that had been granted mining rights by the government in Wadi al-Sungheir and Sudanese artisanal miners who insisted on trespassing come what may. In their attempt to resist the takeover by the Russian company, the Sudanese artisanal miners banded together and apparently ransacked some of the company’s superior machinery in Luddite fashion and threatened to storm its administrative offices. Five other miners were seriously injured but survived to tell the story.

Atbara in many ways is exemplary of the conundrums facing heartland Sudan, a capital-poor rural agricultural economy unable to sustain livelihoods, receiving spurts of international capital mainly from the Arab Gulf with a decisively extractive plan of action, as a consequence land dispossession and chaotic urbanisation into an import-dependent urban economy governed by the interests of mercantile capital. Starting in December 2018 Sudan is currently witnessing the longest and widest wave of popular protest against the regime of President Bashir since its inception in 1989. It would be no overstatement to say that Sudan has arrived at a moment of revolutionary crisis according to Lenin’s definition, quoted here at length:

[1] when it is impossible for the ruling classes to maintain their rule without any change; when there is a crisis, in one form or another, among the “upper classes”, a crisis in the policy of the ruling class, leading to a fissure through which the discontent of the oppressed classes burst forth. For a revolution to take place, it is usually insufficient for “the lower classes not to want” to live in the old way; it is also necessary that “the upper classes should be unable” to live in the old way; [2] when the suffering and want of the oppressed classes has grown more acute than usual; [3] when, as a consequence of the above causes, there is a considerable increase in the activity of the masses…. (Lenin, 1964).

A postmodern eye might dismiss these formulations of systemic social conflict around a class axis as a discredited metanarrative of no worth but how does one make sense of politics in times of economic/political crisis? Or how does one comprehend the return of the masses to politics? If anything, the ongoing wave of protests in Sudan has resurrected the notion of mass political action after a long historical break where politics was effectively hijacked by powerful contenders in government and in opposition who rotate in cycles around negotiation tables according to a rationale that Alex de Waal has aptly described as a ‘political marketplace’ (de Waal, 2015).

Events started on 18 and 19 December last year in Atbara. Pupils of Atbara Industrial School took to the streets angered by the tripling of bread prices following a long period of bread shortages and were soon joined by day labourers from the town market and students from other schools as well as a local university. Within hours, the headquarters of the ruling National Congress Party (NCP) were on fire, local government officials had disappeared from the scene, their symbols of authority, cars and offices, ablaze and local security cabals were yet to devise a response to the rebellious young women and men who had taken control of the streets. Similar events unfolded in the following days a in a string of mostly provincial towns, Dongola, Gedaref, Rahad, Nuhud as well as the capital Khartoum.

Soon enough an umbrella of professional syndicates, the Sudanese Professionals Association, emerged as the leadership ‘candidate’ for the mass movement. The Professionals Association borrowed its organisational form from Sudan’s two previous precedents of popular uprising, October 1964 and April 1985. Its elatedly nationalist political discourse echoes the poetics of the Graduates Congress, the first political vehicle proper of the Sudanese intelligentsia. The really existing Sudan of 2019 is another theatre of action, however. The country and its peoples have been subject to deep and dramatic socio-economic changes of which the current wave of protest is a symptom, it is so far unclear whether the leadership of the protest movement can turn symptomatic anger into systemic agency.

Wheat subsidies and the social contract

In November 2017, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) issued a separate document (Fund, 2017) ahead of its regular consultation report with the Sudanese government which came out in December. Those interested in Sudan’s budgetary affairs, have learned over time to read highlights of the annual budget from what is for practical purposes an ‘IMF instruction sheet.’ The document prepared by three IMF economists involved in the September 2017 talks with the Sudanese government tackled primarily ‘consumer subsidies.’

Political stability in Sudan’s heartland, where the government’s authority it today more seriously challenged than ever before, comes at a price that includes the maintenance of affordable bread and fuel prices, not an unusual situation in the region (Salvurakis, 2008). Sudan imports almost all of the wheat it consumes, around 2.5 billion tonnes per year, and since the independence of South Sudan in 2011 its fuel needs far exceed its local oil production.

The government’s deep involvement in the fuel and wheat market is designed to mitigate these political risks and maintain social order. In that sense, bread subsidies constitute a critical component of an implicit social contract between the government and the middle class, and the reduction of the subsidy has been consistently associated with urban unrest, for instance in 1992 and in 2013.

The long hiatus of political accommodation between 1995 and 2013 in Sudan’s heartland is runs parallel with Sudan’s oil years, when oil production from the warzones of southern Sudan provided the rulers of Khartoum with a stable rent from a peak oil production of around 450,000 barrels per day (bpd). At the height of oil plenty GDP growth reached 10%, inflation dropped to around 8% and Sudan’s fiscal deficit to around 1.9%. Transfers from the central government to the states multiplied between 2004 and 2007 from a meagre 1.5% to 8% of GDP, approximately 47% of total government expenditure in 2008, reflecting the dividends of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) between the government of Sudan and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army/Movement (SPLA/M) that brought an end to Africa’s longest civil war.

To maintain political loyalties and satisfy the demands of peace the government had to spend generously, eventually running a current account deficit of ca. US$4.2 billion from 2004 to 2008 on the background of a total debt of around US$33.7 billion (today the figure stands at around US$50 billion). Oil brought with it its Dutch disease and Sudan’s non-oil exports (mainly gum Arabic, sesame and livestock) slumped as the Sudanese currency appreciated and public expenditure increased. The flow of external revenues fed into networks of nepotism and self-enrichment that became a defining feature of the economy and of government.

The CPA granted the southern Sudanese the right of self-determination. They were offered the choice between unity with the Sudan under the system outlined in the CPA or secession to form a new country of their own. An unchallenged majority opted for the latter and South Sudan was declared an independent nation in 2011. Overnight, the central government in Khartoum lost 75% of its foreign exchange earnings and 45% of general government finances, a budgetary loss of US$300 million per month. Inflation soared to levels around 40% and the value of money diminished within months by around 60%.

Unsurprisingly, relations between the old and the new Sudan proved difficult to manage as both sides invested in allies across the border to secure leverage and win concessions on the post-secession negotiations table. Conflict resumed in Sudan’s South Kordofan and the Blue Nile and a rebellion pitting political and ethnic rivals against each other engulfed South Sudan within months of its independence.

The economy of the rump Sudan has been in free fall ever since. Virtually all economic indicators took a deep dip including foreign direct investment, the value of the currency, public revenues and expenditure and sources of external grants while inflation and the value of imports soared. The devaluation of the local currency forced an effective dollarisation of the economy and as a consequence precipitated a severe shortage of foreign currency and unbounded speculation in the foreign exchange market.

The government’s response was to initiate a round of austerity measures reminiscent of the early 1990s. Public expenditure was cut and taxation was increased. The post-secession budget of 2011 included measures slashing fuel, sugar and bread subsidies, salary cuts and a 20% reduction of development budgets affecting all public corporations. The 2012 budget followed on with an increase in value added tax in the telecoms sector from 20% to 30% and the 2013 budget added another layer of taxes on the licensing of vehicles and foreign travel permits (Sharfi, 2014).

As an immediate consequence of the loss of oil revenues, Sudan’s foreign exchange reserves were stripped down within a few years from a maximum of US$1.87 billion in 2005 to a meagre US$0.18 billion in 2017. The government’s attempts to offset this severe shortage through loans and grants from regional allies, foremost Qatar, offered temporary relief at moments of severe crisis but did little to resolve the structural deficits of the economy.

As part of its economic liberalisation package in the early 1990 the government had adopted a floating exchange rate doing away with an earlier dual system. A stable exchange rate emerged thanks to the flow of foreign direct investments (FDI) related to the exploration of oil and subsequently oil revenues. The global economic crisis of 2008 precipitated a series of fluctuations as oil prices fell. With the loss of oil in 2011 the government resorted to fixing an official exchange rate in an attempt to control domestic prices for imports including wheat and fuel and dampen inflation as the value of the currency continued to depreciate. Inevitably, investors and businesses responded by shifting their money abroad. The Bank of Sudan attempted in vain to control the flight of capital by imposing import restrictions and capital controls thus triggering further shortages in goods as domestic importers were handicapped by increasingly limited supplies of foreign currency.

The chaotic government policy delivered during the period 2016-2018 four different US dollar exchange rates, an official central bank rate primarily for government transactions, a wheat import rate, a commercial bank rate intended to encourage Sudanese expatriates to send their remittances through the banking system and an unofficial parallel rate which exceeded the latter three by an ever-widening margin.

In response to incessant prodding from the IMF the government decided in January 2018 to devalue the Sudanese pound by around 60% and launched a new unified official exchange rate while the parallel rate continued to jump ahead. This was followed by a second devaluation in October 2018 when the government entrusted a newly formed council of bankers and foreign currency traders with the task of setting the country’s exchange rate themselves. The stubborn margin between the official and parallel rates remained hard to overcome as the demand for foreign currency remains high and supply dear.

The IMF opposes subsidies’ provision with an uncompromising ideological zeal. Its extraordinary document set out to detail this position and provide statistical evidence in its favour. This doctrinaire opposition to subsidies and the arguments devised by the IMF economists in that regard were the mainstay of government propaganda for the following year. President Bashir and his lieutenants did not tire of repeating the IMF mantra to an unwilling audience including their own parliamentary caucus and NCP chapters in the states.

The IMF stated in its November 2017 report:

Sudan maintains a number of consumer subsidies which ostensibly are aimed at protecting socially vulnerable groups. These primarily include subsidies on energy (fuel products and electricity) and wheat products. However, there is a large body of international experience showing that subsidies are an inefficient policy instrument to protect lower income groups (Fund, 2017).

The IMF calculated that a removal of subsidies would result in a 216% increase in retail prices of fuel products, bread and electricity tariffs with a real income loss of ca. 15% when direct and indirect effects are considered. In total the fiscal costs of consumer subsidies amount to around 5.2% of Sudan’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), 4.2% for energy products and 1.0% for wheat, a percentage that equals the wheat subsidy average for countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), but is lower than in Tunisia (1.75%) and Egypt (2.5%).

To buttress its argument the IMF provided statistics that prove the regressive nature of the fuel subsidies. People in the highest income quintile of the population assume almost a 50% share of the fuel subsidies compared to a meagre 5% for people in the lowest income quintile. Conspicuously absent from the IMF comparison charts is the distribution of wheat subsidies, probably because it does not fit the model. There is also no explanation at all whether in the IMF document or in the original report published 2014 and titled ‘Reducing fuel subsidies and expanding social assistance’ of how the 5 quintiles were generated and what the actual cut-offs are. You would have to trust the IMF with your subsidy to take their assessment at face value.

There is also an interpretation gap that is worth addressing. It is arguably the case that the richest 20% benefit the most from fuel and electricity subsidies while the poorest 20% much less so. The IMF calculated that the lower 20% would suffer a 9% loss in real incomes as a consequence of the removal of fuel subsidies alone. What it did not dwell on is how the removal of subsidies would impact the 60% in between, your proverbial middle classes as it were. For these the difference between to subsidy or not to subsidy will determined their class position . The removal of subsidies arguably endangers their class status and threatens to push them down the social ladder. This might partially explain the social composition of the protesters in Khartoum’s streets and social geography of the protests.

While subaltern elements predominated in the protests in Sudan’s provincial towns, the protests in Khartoum are so far the preserve of the country’s threatened middle classes, highly educated professionals, lawyers, doctors, engineers as well as university students. The famed strongholds of protest are upper middle-class neighbourhoods, where wheat bread bought from modern bakeries is a basic food item. Khartoum’s peripheral zones, home to the war displaced and the abjectly impoverished are yet to join in the ‘national’ anger. In these neighbourhoods with names like zagalona (they threw us away) and Korea (implying the end of the world) bread, whether subsidised or not, is too expensive for the regular consumer and dietary patterns approximate rural Sudan, where sorghum and millet continue to be the staple diet of the majority.

To mitigate the impacts of the removal of subsidies the IMF, not the International Union of Muslim Scholars, advised the expansion of the state-controlled Zakat (alms) system, a religious obligation of adult able-bodied Muslims that the Sudanese state has hijacked for political utility. The IMF’s enthusiasm for Zakat is the consequence of a ‘neoliberal’ policy in vogue since the mid-1990s, for cash transfers to the poor (Lavinas, 2013). Sudan’s statist Zakat system is in a way well adapted to serve such a purpose and can neatly fit in a model of social welfare that is ‘targeted’ and not ‘universal’, ‘financialised’ instead of a decommodified provision of goods and services, a system that instead of recognition of needs and equal access of public goods concedes particular entitlements to certain vulnerable groups and stigmatises rather than empowers.

To the ears of the middle-class protesters, the very notion of Zakat is an insult. Many made the point that their anger was not about bread but about freedom and dignity. Their rally cry so far has been ‘freedom, peace and justice.’ Protesters shout slogans against their Islamist adversaries in government – ‘we will stamp every koz’, a metaphor of greed and rapaciousness.

Market authoritarianism and counter-revolution

The convergence of market authoritarianism and political Islam, austerity and Zakat, is a formula that Sudan’s Islamist rulers devised to further an economic agenda that they ascribe to but did not necessarily author, a global agenda as it were, capitalist penetration with an Islamist face. When investigating Sudan’s predicament, the tenor is usually laid on the second element, the Islamist face. Political Islam provided an idiom and a legitimising ideology for a process of capitalist penetration that had reached political deadlock with the outbreak of the 1983 civil war and the toppling of Jaafar Nimayri in 1985.

It would not be an exaggeration to say that political Islam replaced the sectarianism of the Sudan’s historical political heavyweights, the Umma Party and the Democratic Unionist Party, as the ideology of the ruling segments of the Sudanese bourgeoisie and the religious state became the embodiment of counter-revolution.

The basic components of the economic agenda under question have remained essentially the same since 1978, the date that Nimayri’s finance minister, Badr al-Din Suleiman – the author of Sudan’s extensive privatisation programme in the early 1990s – signed the first of a series of stabilisation programmes with the IMF and the World Bank, the so-called ‘Economic Recovery Programme.’ The highlights of this agenda included currency devaluation; liberalisation of trade; bank credit restrictions; interest rate increases; curtailment of the money supply; reduction of the government’s budget through social spending cuts, massive layoffs and removal of subsidies on goods and other consumption items; removal of all controls on profit repatriation; privatisation of government-owned enterprises and social services (Prendergast, 1989).

Sudan turned to the IMF for rescue after a series of disastrous experiments with ‘development’ writ large, megaprojects of scale in the 1970s under the Breadbasket Strategy focused on food production for the Arab world. By 1978 Sudan’s indebtedness and trade and budgetary deficits called for salvation. Nimayri’s government had accumulated a total debt from international and Arab financial institutions amounting to about US$2.4 billion . Khartoum was no longer able to meet its financial obligations to its debtors, equal to around 17.9% of its export earnings.

Right about the time Badr al-Din Suleiman, was negotiating a way out for Nimayri’s financial troubles, businessmen with a reputation for nightly prayer rather than hard drink had forged an alliance with Prince Mohammed al-Faisal bin Abd al-Aziz Al Saud, a Saudi royal and financier, to establish an Islamic bank in Sudan. Faisal Islamic Bank, a bank with an ‘Islamic orientation’ and ‘Sudanese features’ was inaugurated in 1977, the third in the Middle East following on Dubai Islamic Bank (1975) and the Islamic Commercial Bank of Abu Dhabi (1977). Within a few years Sudan, and even before the imposition of the 1983 sharia laws and the outright prohibition of interest, Islamic banks had gained the upper hand in the financial sector (Abdel Mohsin, 2005).

Islamic banks provided access to foreign capital – the surplus petrodollars of the oil boom in the Gulf, at a time when the financial sector in Sudan was emaciated by Nimayri’s 1970 decision to nationalise the entire commercial banking sector and the restrictions he imposed on foreign capital. Foreign banks were allowed into the financial market again by the mid-1970s but were prohibited from dealing directly with Sudanese citizens, only export-import agents and Sudanese nationals working abroad. Islamic banks in a way provided a relief to a capital-stripped commercial sector and were a tool of empowerment for the Islamic movement as a class, a credit system where political loyalty was quite often the only collateral asked of devotees. Their ideological attraction for a devoted Muslim is of course obvious.

Sudan’s Islamic banking system maintains a nominal ban on interest and offers instead variations on profit and loss sharing contracts or fixed-income modes of finance. Supervisory boards of Islamic sharia scholars are embedded in the management of banks and oversee their activities. These sharia supervisors have the authority to sanction bank operations which they judge to be contradictory to sharia regulations and file complaints against individual banks or bank officials to the Bank of Sudan. Their regulatory behaviour is however often a matter of convenience. As senior employees, often of multiple banks, they rarely exert an independent function.

Rather than attract capital the system discourages lenders wary of financial losses. The total amount of deposits in Sudanese commercial banks is estimated at around 12% of GDP (2015). This structural deficiency is compounded by an entrenched lack of confidence in the banking sector born out of a history of economic and political instability.

Importantly, for two decades (1997-2017) Sudan’s banks were effectively cut off from the global financial system by a comprehensive regime of US trade and financial sanctions. Under these conditions the banking sector remains weak and undercapitalised and its contribution of credit to the private sector was a meagre 6.7% of GDP at the end of 2016.

Commercial banks operate under the close supervision of the Bank of Sudan, an arrangement often justified by the recurrent risk of insolvency. In fact, the government has come as a result of repeated interventions to partially own 41% of the commercial banks. One pertinent issue has been the deployment of bank loans as tools of political patronage. During the oil decade the ratio of non-performing loans in commercial banks reached 26% compared to the 2017 figure of 3%. Omdurman National Bank for instance serves as a cash reservoir for officers of the armed forces and the security establishment and was rescued by the Bank of Sudan from impending bankruptcy in 2007. Likewise, the Bank of Livestock Wealth was declared insolvent in 2014 and the Bank of Sudan stepped in to acquire 55% of its shares.

Akin to Sudan’s troubled 1980s, economic freewheeling outpaced the formal economy in post-oil Sudan. A parallel market emerged and expanded with a main focus in the foreign sector of the economy. Mis-invoicing and smuggling of exports and imports, the funneling of remittances from Sudanese expatriates to the parallel market for foreign exchange and the consolidation and expansion of rent-seeking activities came to dominate economic activity.

Sudan’s post-oil economic woes came to a peak in 2018 with the collapse of the Sudanese pound, an acute shortage of foreign currency, runaway prices and inflation rates beyond 60%. The rise in prices is the third fastest in the world in recent months behind war-torn South Sudan and Venezuela. To protect the Sudanese pound the Bank of Sudan ordered severe restrictions on cash withdrawals resulting in an extreme liquidity crunch. Bank customers were initially barred from withdrawing more than the equivalent of US$160 in February and March 2017 going down to no more than US$17 US a day in September 2017.

The overall result has been a further decline in deposits as individual customers and businesses scuttled to acquire foreign currency and stash their money in their homes and offices. Out of options, the government resorted to printing higher denomination bank notes and appealed to the business sector to deposit their money in the banks. This invitation came with a lift of all import restrictions and a generous downgrade of the preferential customs US dollar exchange rate for importers, from 18 Sudanese pounds to 15 pounds compared to the official exchange rate of around 47 Sudanese pounds and an informal market rate in the range of 70-80 Sudanese pounds. Instead of subsidising bread, the government opted to subsidise loyal import traders.

Counterrevolution and revolutionary action

What could this moment of crisis deliver? Going back to the Lenin quote above, he goes on to say:

not every revolutionary situation gives rise to a revolution…A revolution arises only out of a situation in which the above-mentioned objective changes are accompanied by a subjective change, namely, the ability of the revolutionary class to take revolutionary mass action strong enough to break (or dislocate) the old government, which never, not even in a period of crisis, ‘falls,’ if it is not toppled over (Lenin, 1964).

The political instincts of the network of professionals at the helm of Sudan’s mass movement suggest a friendly coup as their preferred route out of the current crisis. So far, army officers are the only absentees from the list of modern professionals, doctors, lawyers, engineers, judges etc, who constitute the umbrella Sudanese Professionals Association. The political formula for this demand is a transitional government of technocrats with room for a military sovereign à la Egypt’s President Sisi.

President Bashir hijacked this proposition with a series of decisions on 22 February 2019. He declared a state of emergency, dissolved the central government as well as all state governments and replaced state governors with a coterie of military and security officers. The embattled president announced himself above the fray and promised equidistance from all political actors. He handed over his authorities as chairman of the ruling NCP to a new deputy, Ahmed Haroun, a man who like the president is indicted by the International Criminal Court for egregious crimes against humanity and war crimes committed in the course of the armed conflict in Sudan’s western region Darfur.

As a new prime minister, President Bashir picked Mohamed Tahir Eila, a former state governor with a reputation for business acumen and little regard for the rules of conduct among Sudan’s veteran Islamists. As new vice president, he appointed his defence minister, Ahmed Awad ibn Auf, a military intelligence officer highly respected in the corps and a possible candidate for takeover. President Bashir appointed a number of reliably loyal figures as ministers in sensitive positions, defence, foreign affairs and the ministry of federal government, but left a majority of positions open for willing invitees to the cabinet, probably for the celebrated technocrats as it were.

The president’s precise chess moves were widely interpreted as a severe blow to his Islamist allies who dominate the ruling NCP and as a militarisation of government harking back to the early days of his rule. But the protests did not abate. The young women and men who parade Khartoum’s streets undeterred were not satisfied with the ‘reforms’ of President Bashir, they continued to demand loudly in the streets, ‘must fall, that is all.’

The forces of counter-revolution, it must be said, are however many and dubious. The Islamic Movement that pioneered Sudan’s version of neoliberal transformation has through the years metamorphosed into a social class with a shared relation to the means of production. Importers, wholesale merchants, bankers, military and security officers, large landowners who made fortunes from the reworking of land tenure system in favour of commercial agriculture, sharia scholars and preachers embedded in Islamic banks and even militia members for whom Sudan’s peripheral wars and foreign deployments (for instance in Yemen) have become a livelihood all have stakes in maintaining the current regime. To dismantle their powers requires a revolution in Leninist terms, the promise of the Atbara moment.

Today, President Bashir’s position is truly grave. In many ways he is already a relic from the past. Contending succession plots are being loudly hatched from close quarters in the coalition of counter-revolutionary forces that sustain the current regime with the involvement of regional powers, the Qataris and their allies versus the Saudi-Emirati-Egyptian axis and by extension the Israelis and their US patrons. Between these competitors, Bashir might just survive another day.

If and when the network of professionals at the helm of the current mass movement succeed in bringing him down in alliance with these powers or apart from them is speculation. Whatever combination of forces does will have to devise a formula for satisfying the country’s appetite for imported wheat. The IMF men will arrive at the doors of the finance ministry the day after the regime is toppled, with their infamous prescriptions, your subsidies or your loan!

Magdi el Gizouli is an scholar and a fellow of the Rift Valley Institute. He writes on Sudanese affairs here.

Featured Photograph: Protesters in Omdurman (from ‘Sudanese Regime is Ramping up Repression’ by Charlie Kimber).

References

Abdel Mohsin, M. I. 2005. ‘The Practice of Islamic Banking System in Sudan.’ Journal of Economic Cooperation. 2005, Vol. 4.

de Waal, A. 2015. The Real Politics of the Horn of Africa: Money, War and the Business of Power. Cambridge: Polity, 2015.

Elbadawi, I. A. 1992. Macroeconomic Management and the Black Market for Foreign Exchange in Sudan. Washington DC : World Bank, 1992.

Fund, International Monetary. 2017. ‘Sudan: selected issues.’ Washington : International Monetary Fund, 2017.

Lavinas, L. 2013. ’21st Century Welfare.’ New Left Review . 2013, 84.

Lenin, V. I. 1964. The Collapse of the Second International, Collected Works, Volume 21: August 1914-December 1915. Moscow : Progress Publishers, 1964.

Niblock, T. 1985. ‘Sudan’s Economic Nightmare.’ MERIP Reports. 1985, 135.

Prendergast, J. 1989. ‘Blood Money for Sudan: World Bank and IMF to the “Rescue”.’ Africa Today. 1989, Vol. 36, 3/4.

Salvurakis, J. W. & Abdel-Haleim, S. M. 2008. ‘Bread Subsidies in Egypt: Choosing Social Stability or Fiscal Responsibility.’ Review of Radical Political Economics. 2008, Vol. 40, 1.

Sharfi, M. H. 2014. ‘The dynamics of the loss of oil revenues in the economy of North Sudan.’ Review of African Political Economy. 2014, Vol. 41, 140.

Siddig, K. H. A. 2012. ‘The Controversy of Exchange Rate Devaluation in Sudan: An Economy-wide General Equilibrium Assessment.’ African Development Review. 2012, Vol. 24, 3.

The Revolutionary Left in sub-Saharan Africa

ROAPE

March 4, 2019

For a conference to be held later this year in Dakar, Senegal, The Revolutionary Left in Sub-Saharan Africa, the organisers argue that a political and social history of these movements must be written. The call for papers invites researchers and activists to submit proposals to attend this important conference.

Call for Papers – deadline 15 March

The reason for this symposium stems from the following observation: while the revolutionary left movements of the 1960s and 1970s in Europe, the United States, Latin America and elsewhere have been the subject of abundant literature, similar movements that emerged during this period in Africa are still unknown. There are two main reasons for this ignorance: firstly, it was often an underground history with actors operating in hiding, and secondly, it is also a long-concealed history, either because of defeat (political and sometimes military), or of a certain form of self-censorship due to the subsequent reconversion of former revolutionary actors within the ruling elite or other reasons of ‘disavowal’ of this left-wing activist past.

The symposium is therefore meant to help reveal the invisible, forgotten and retrospectively compressed history of these left-wing movements in order to better appreciate the role they played in this period’s political power relationships, in the broad sense, within post-colonial African States. Beyond the political scope, it will attempt to assess their influence within the process for the ‘modernization of men’, according to Pierre Fougeyrollas’ formula about Senegal, in other words, the post-colonial societal genesis.

From the 1960s onwards, and especially during the following decade, the dynamics of this revolutionary left developed, on the occasion of certain insurrectional events that sometimes led to changes of government, or to the advent of so-called revolutionary regimes, or those professing Marxism or Marxism-Leninism (Congo, Madagascar, Ethiopia, Benin etc.). For this reason, this politicization trend could not be completely overlooked.

Thus, the issue of revolutionary left-wing movements has been addressed contiguously by two types of writings:

– those that studied the revolutionary regimes of the 1970s, most of which were published in the late 1980s and early 1990s, influenced by international geopolitics (East-West cleavage and then the rivalry within the ‘communist’ camp between the USSR model and the Chinese model) on the external level and focusing internally on the ‘reality’ of socialism established by these regimes (see for example the term ‘Marxoids’ applied to the Kerekou regime);

– then on May 1968 in Africa and the Global Sixties, published in recent years, to show that Africa has been part of this broad movement of anti-systemic protest which often tends to be limited to Western countries.

However, the intrinsic history of these ‘anti-systemic’ left-wing movements has yet to be written, probably because the history and sociology of revolutions tend to focus mainly on revolutions that have marked world history, primarily the French, Russian and Chinese revolutions. However, it is also expected that lessons could be learnt from revolutionary movements that have not achieved their goals, in classical terms, of overthrowing governments. Moreover, it can always be considered that even the most emblematic revolutions in world history have also had their share of losers, who would have preferred this revolutionary process to take a different direction, when it took a ‘Thermidorian’ path to use an expression inspired by the French Revolution.

To return to the African continent, at first sight, these left-wing forces were in continuity with the anti-colonialist struggles that preceded the recognition of African independence.

However, they were also confronted with ‘neo-colonial’ African regimes, i.e. supported or even maintained by Western powers. In the case of territories colonized by France, the conflictual nature of this decolonization has been marked by episodes of ‘confiscation’ of independence as part of a ‘French-African’ group (‘Françafrique’), which sometimes led to attempts at armed opposition, as in Cameroon with the UPC or in Niger with the Sawaba.

A while later, in the context of the Global Sixties of worldwide protest, where the center of gravity of the ‘world revolution’ seemed to shift further south, a new left occasionally emerged and ideologically distanced itself from the ‘old’ anti-colonialist left that sprang from the struggles for independence, which were sometimes overwhelmed by this rising generation who ultimately criticized it for not being ‘revolutionary’ enough or for being willing to compromise with the regimes in place.

Considerations contributions should therefore take stock of these different ideological positions claiming to be close to different orientations of international or ‘geopolitical’ Marxism:

on the one hand, allegiance to pro-USSR ‘orthodoxy’ for parties such as PAI in Senegal or G-80 in Niger,
on the other hand, reference to Mao’s China for the Kahidines in Mauritania or And Jëf in Senegal, or Enver Hodja’s Albania for the Voltaic Revolutionary Communist Party (PCRV), or the Communist Party of Dahomey (PCD) without forgetting the case of Trotskyist groups that were sometimes able to establish themselves as in Senegal (GOR) or pan-Africanism (see, for example, the case of RND founded by Cheikh Anta Diop in Senegal or MOJA in Liberia), or
any radical ideology that can be categorized as leftist, while linking them to the effective strategies of these different groups or organizations, most of them underground or based abroad.

With regard to these ideological issues, contributors are expected to be able to identify references to revolutionary theories and experiences outside Africa but also to highlight, where they have existed, attempts to ‘indigenize’ this universalist referent.

Beyond an event-driven, ideological and organizational history that will have to be reconstructed with the available written (leaflets, brochures) and oral (testimonies of former activists) sources, there is a need to clarify the social base (or social bases) of these political movements:

were they limited to the intelligentsia in cities (or even the capital)?, or
did they sometimes manage to establish themselves locally among peasant or urban popular populations?

So what conclusions can be drawn from attempts to ‘integrate the masses’, to use the language of the slogan of the Fédération des étudiants d’Afrique noire en France (FEANF) launched in the 1960s? More specifically, we could examine the interactions between these left-wing movements and social movements, particularly students who have often been the vectors of this revolutionary politicization, but also workers (through the influence of revolutionary militants of trade unions) or youth or women’s movements. In this respect, we could also focus on the linkage between the underground activities of political organizations and the more ‘open’ game within these mass movements.

In connection with the militarization of the political game, one can take stock of guerrilla attempts, including when they proved to be resounding failures, as was the case in Senegal with the PAI in 1964 or in Congo with Ange Diawara’s JMNR in 1972. Similarly, in some countries, the relationship between this radical left and certain ‘progressive’ or even ‘revolutionary’ soldiers is an interesting subject since it was established in a number of situations in which these soldiers have had the support of certain fractions of the left, to take over state power (Sudan in 1969-71, Ethiopia in 1974-77, Burkina Faso in 1983-87).

Moreover, apart from these situations in which political power relations end up by being militarized, it may be appropriate to examine strategies to build counter powers to the regime in place, by setting up a ‘revolutionary’ or at least ‘autonomous’ trade unionism, for example, or other associative forms that are not subservient to the ruling party (see in the case of Burkina Faso, the establishment of CGT-B or MBDHP in the 1980s).

Finally, beyond the organizational attempts, there may also have been attempts motivated by an anti-imperialist sentiment to reject symbols of Western culture and promote a national or African culture (see the manifesto of the Senegalese Cultural Front published in 1977). In this perspective, one can also bring up the issue of hegemony and, in particular, the confrontation/ coexistence with religious authorities, which may have been a problem in the case of radical movements that have sometimes been exposed to stigmatization – ‘communism’ equals ‘atheism’ – meant to discredit their action (see the case of the Communist Party of Sudan).

Beyond the framework of the post-colonial states in formation, the links between the development of these left-wing movements and the international context can also be examined through contacts with other militant forces and the solidarity expressed for other ‘causes’, in favour of other organizations of the revolutionary left in Africa, or the latest national liberation movements in the struggle against Portuguese colonialism or the anti-apartheid movements in South Africa and, beyond the African continent, radical movements like the Black Panthers or armed struggle movements like the Palestinian fedayeens. In the same vein, it might be essential to highlight the role of Diaspora activists (students among others) in order to understand the efforts deployed to effectively implement such solidarity.

Finally, one might wonder what the legacy of this revolutionary left beyond the geopolitical upheavals of the 1990s actually is. Should we consider that the fall of the Berlin Wall has definitively relegated into the ‘dustbins of history’, these left-wing movements, which often profess Marxism. However, one cannot ignore that in many African societies, the multi-party system (including ‘civil society organizations’) emerging at that time was, to a large extent, built by actors from this revolutionary left.

Even if the symposium fails to assess the politics of the left in post-colonial Africa, the issue of the material and ideological dependence towards the Eastern Block or/and relevance of Marxist ideas for Africa and the South cannot be ignored, as some postcolonial theorists do. Besides, how the leftist activists tried to adapt their ideology and political action to the post-Cold War situation and the neoliberal agenda in the 1990’s is also relevant. To conclude, the political and societal legacy of this radical left can also be discussed, bearing in mind that sometimes, as was seen in recent years, it is through memorial activities that we start accessing knowledge about a history that has yet to be written.

In addition to the participation of researchers this symposium welcomes former actors of this revolutionary left who will be able to intervene in the discussions or even intervene during a round table which will be specifically organized for them.

Contribute

Contributors are invited to submit a proposal in the form of an abstract (in English or in French) not exceeding 5,000 characters to the following e-mail address: revleftafrica@rosalux.org by no later than 1 March 2019. Proposals will be reviewed.

On 31 March 2019, selected contributors will be invited to write their contributions of between 30,000 and 60,000 characters by 15 September 2019 at the latest.

A symposium is scheduled to be held in Dakar on 31 October and 1 November 2019.

Committee: Ibrahim ABDULLAH, Jimi ADESINA, Hakim ADI, Kate ALEXANDER, Pascal BIANCHINI (organiser), Françoise BLUM, Carlos CARDOSO, Jean COPANS, Thierno DIOP, Mor NDAO, Ndongo Samba SYLLA (organiser), Leo ZEILIG

African Studies in Eastern Europe – Connections and Agendas

ROAPE

March 2, 2019

ROAPE’s Jörg Wiegratz discusses a conference in Hungary that pulled together African studies associations across much of Eastern Europe. It was an opportunity for important connections between researchers from the region and Africa. In a selection of interviews from the conference Jörg asks about the dynamics of research for Africanists across Eastern Europe.

The workshop series that ROAPE co-organised with local partners across Africa in 2017-18 is pointedly called ‘Connections’. The videos you see below are an outcome of the connection dynamics that emerge from these important and productive gatherings. In Dar es Salaam I met for the first time the Hungarian scholar Tamás Gerőcs, and we have been in contact ever since. Tamás has subsequently written for ROAPE, amongst others a blog about a debate at the workshop, as well as a Briefing on Russia in Africa that will be published soon. Thanks to the connection made in Tanzania I was informed about a bi-annual African Studies Conference in Pécs, in Hungary, that was taking place a few weeks after our workshop in Dar es Salaam held in April last year.

One of the purposes of my attendance at the conference in Hungary – besides learning about the main workshop debates, the political economy analyses of speakers and African studies perspectives more broadly – was to connect ROAPE with the scholarly community that gathered in Hungary, including the respective African studies associations across much of Eastern Europe, and to learn more about the dynamics of African studies in these countries as well as to enquire about possible collaboration.

The programme of the 5th Pécs African Studies Conference titled Africa’s changing international relations and realities can be found here. Scholars came from various countries, including South Africa, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, Austria, Turkey, Russia, China, the US, the UK, and Italy. The conference included a session titled, ‘Visegrád Political-Scientific Symposium on Africa Policies and African Studies’ (the Visegrád Group, is an alliance of four Central European states – Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia) that was a dialogue among and between representatives of university departments/research centres of African Studies of the four Visegrád countries and heads of departments of African Affairs in ministries of foreign affairs.

If you are interested to know more about the conference, the research and teams working in African studies you can contact the main organiser István Tarrósy (University of Pecs, tarrosy.istvan@pte.hu) who is also the current Director of Hungary’s Africa Research Centre. These are the links to some of the African studies associations/research centres in Poland, Hungary and Czech Republic.

Below you can find videos of interviews (mostly) with scholars from Eastern Europe – Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, and Romania – mainly about African studies in their countries. May the connections continue to grow and blossom.

Jörg Wiegratz is a Lecturer in the Political Economy of Global Development at the University of Leeds and a member of the editorial board of ROAPE. His recent book is Uganda: The Dynamics of Neoliberal Transformation (co-edited with Giuliano Martiniello and Elisa Greco, Zed, 2018). His is a regular contributor and editor of roape.net.

https://youtu.be/ylKmrMwOwhM

The Real History of Imperialism: A Comment on Recent Debates

ROAPE

February 28, 2019

In a major contribution to our debate on imperialism, James Parisot argues that the discussion has centred on a non-historical, economistic variation of historical materialism that, in reducing capitalism to the capital-wage labour relation, ends up doing injustice to the real history of imperialism and the expansion of capitalism. A full history of imperialism is also a history of capital exploiting a wide variety of racialized and gendered labour forms along a complex gradation including ‘free’ wage labourers, chattel slaves, and unpaid housework.

By James Parisot

The continuing debate over contemporary imperialism triggered by John Smith’s criticisms of David Harvey and Harvey’s reply on roape.net has been wide ranging and brought forth many important questions for 21^st century global capitalism. The discussion was primarily centered around insights from Smith’s book Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century regarding questions of economic exploitation between those countries which continue to have wealth stripped from them based upon highly exploited and lowly valued labor, and those, such as the United States, whose companies generate great profits through transfers of value to what Smith calls the ‘imperialist countries.’

The central questions in the discussion are centered around transfers of value: to what extent are ‘imperialist countries’ generating wealth through the super-exploitation of the global labor pool? To what extent are the profits of this accruing to capitalists in the global north? What has the rise of East Asian capitalism meant for this?

The tendency, though, particularly in Smith’s conceptualization, has been to economize the concept of imperialism. In other words, imperialism is primarily seen as an economic process through which a particular country extracts profits from exploited countries. This is similarly repeated in a different way in Usta Patnaik and Prabhat Patnaik’s recent book A Theory of Imperialism wherein imperialism is seen as primarily an economic project.

In both cases the goal is to develop a concrete understanding of imperialism and update classical Marxist theories of imperialism for capitalism today. As Patnaik and Patnaik put it, ‘economics does not look at capitalism as it has really existed.’ They aim to correct this. But, I would argue, both accounts ultimately fall back upon a non-historical, economistic variation of historical materialism that, in reducing capitalism to the capital-wage labor relation, end up doing injustice to the history of imperialism in itself. Most importantly, the history of imperialism is also a history of capital exploiting a wide variety of racialized and gendered labor forms along a complex gradation ranging including ‘free’ wage laborers, chattel slaves, and unpaid housework.

More generally, Marx’s goal in Capital was famously to criticize political economy in order to superseded it. Instead, many variants of Marxism have been caught within an alternative political economy, as E.P. Thompson pointed out decades ago. To keep moving forward and expanding the ‘level of abstraction,’ though – and moving towards the concrete -also requires moving beyond a conception of capital centered around wage labor and capital.

Patnaik and Patnaik hint at this in a certain way when they argue that ‘in addition to the capital-wage labor relationship’ imperialism works to immiserate the petty commodity producers of the world. This could potentially lead to an argument in which other forms of labor besides wage labor are seen as historically part of capitalism. But much of the rest of their account falls back on discussing, for instance, the ways that the ‘metropolitan’ wage labor class depends upon a lesser paid wage labor class in the periphery. Thus while the authors could potentially expand on the question of capitalism’s diverse labor forms, they instead fall back on an analysis abstracted purely to the level of economics, in doing so they tend to fall back to what historical materialism has the potential to criticize.

In Smith’s account he defines capitalism primarily along the classic Marxist circulation of capital M-C-M prime discussion. For Smith, merchant capital is characterized by ‘buy cheap sell dear’ as oppose to real capitalism, defined by surplus value extracted by capital from wage laborers. Again, capitalism is defined abstractly, essentially as the capital-wage labor relationship. And imperialism in this regard is primarily about how capital in ‘imperialist countries’ exploits labor in different parts of the world to different extremes.

Harvey’s account, written a decade and a half ago, presents a somewhat more nuanced approach. Most importantly, he tries to bring together the question of capital’s drive for profit with an analysis of the state’s drive for territorial control and expansion. Harvey’s account also moves past economism by examining issues of militarism, nationalism, and racism in more or less detail, and sees these all as historically specific aspects of imperialism. The Marxist framework Harvey uses throughout his work – not just this book – again focuses capitalism on the wage labor-capital relationship. Additionally, historically speaking, the distinction between a territorial logic of politics and an economic logic of capital may not be so clear cut, as will be discussed below.

Capitalism and imperialism beyond wage labor

As Jairus Banaji has written, modes of production are not the same as relations of exploitation. In other words, capitalism has not historically exploited only one type of labor, but a variety. This has included, as Marxist feminists have discussed since the 1970s, gendered unpaid household work, and also a wide variety of forms of coerced labor from indentured work to chattel slavery. Historically, capital has subsumed pre-existing labor forms, brought them ‘formally’ into its control, and gradually remade them to create profits through the exploitation of different types of social labor.

More generally, within historical materialism this is a historical problem. Too often, the lessons of Marx’s Capital have been extrapolated and forced upon capitalism’s ‘actually existing’ history. The result has been that the ‘origins of capitalism’ are pre-framed as a search for the generalization of the wage labor-capital relation and market dependence. This has also led to the overly-sharp distinction between so called merchant’s capital and productive, industrial capital. But in the case of, for instance, the colonization of (what became) the United States, the divisions between merchant and industrial or productive capital were never so clear cut. The joint stock companies that brought over white settlers – or what might be better called European settlers in the process of inventing ‘whiteness’ – did so to profit. In the case of Virginia, the Virginia Company was not simply ‘merchant capital’; the company itself, early on, actually ran the colony with the goal of generating profit regardless of what type of labor form was dominant. And when the Dutch West India Company started New Netherland (eventually lost to the British, becoming New York) the goal was to build a profitable colony using a variety of labor forms including indentured and indebted hired out wage laborers and slaves.

And while slavery was an uneven type of labor, as slaves worked in conditions ranging from having been purchased by small, partly self-sufficient farmers to large plantations, so on plantations slavery was a form of calculated capitalism. Additionally, not all slavery was agrarian; in some cases, slaves worked in factories, built railroads, and so on. In these cases, it was not unusual for companies to use both wage laborers and slaves interchangeably, or else assign different jobs to each work category, as for capitalism firms, the goal was profit regardless of the particular labor form. To a certain extent racially organized chattel slavery could even be seen as an unusually ‘pure’ form of capitalism as the entire body of the slave is entirely owned by the capitalist, not just their labor power and time.

And it was a mixture of capitalism and complex labor forms that drove imperialism across the expanding American Empire. For much of this history until the decades before 1900, different social forces pushed westward expansion. Capitalism was always there, especially in the plantation south, but was somewhat less dominant in the north. A ‘society with capitalism’ became a ‘capitalist society’ as, over time, northern petty commodity producers were pushed into capitalist relations. This occurred in a variety of ways, from debts pushing farmers towards commodity production, to rising land costs and decreasing land availability, to capitalist speculators taking control of western land, and so on. And – of course – empire was built through the racially organized elimination of native peoples.

But in the American south, for example, the questions of imperialism and capitalism are inseparable from the question of slavery. States including Texas were brought into the expanding American Empire as slave states as capitalist plantation slavery moved west to generate profits: here capital pushed to acquire new land, which drove war and imperialism against Mexico and native American groups in the area.

Similarly, much of the far west, places like Montana, Colorado, and California, were incorporated into empire through capitalist driven imperialism. In particular, the state sought out and worked with capital to locate profitable zones of resource extraction in, for example, the mining industry. Thus the imperial conquest of space was pushed by capital. But the types of labor used in building this region included for instance Chinese coolie labor as, again, capital sought out whatever most effective and profitable racialized labor forms it could, not just traditional wage labor.

In this regard, also, the question of a distinct political-territorial logic of expansion and a capitalist logic of power remains blurry. Very often, political actors and economic actors were not separate, nor were the institutions that engaged in expansion. While Harvey has suggested that the agents of politics and economics in capitalism are different, and politicians aim to increase their power via other states, while capitalists seek our profit (and imperialism is driven by the interconnections between these) in practice these lines remained historically blurry. In the history of American expansion very often the speculators and capitalists moved west were the same people who build governments in new areas, and political authority was built with the goal of stabilizing their capitalist interests. In other words, just as it cannot really be said that Donald Trump’s political interests as President are distinct, exactly, from his business interests, so records show speculators moving to the frontier and forming states and becoming politicians with the overarching goal of generating profits from land acquired from dispossessed native Americans.

What this history shows, then, is that some of the analysis discussed above has too narrowly framed the question of imperialism as primarily driven by capital and the state using wage labor. In other words, an economistic view of capitalism derived from Marx’s Capital has substituted an actual historically grounded perspective on the history of capitalism and imperialism. The result is, essentially, an anti-historical, flawed concept of imperialism.

And while in our era it does appear, to an extent, that wage labor has become the dominant form of capitalist labor, slavery continues to persist in different ways. Capitalist labor, for that matter, rarely lives up to the level of ‘pure’ freedom economic perspectives suggest, workers tended to be forced to work through debt, state control, and coercion. The International Labor Organization for instance estimated in 2016 that almost 25 million people across the world continue to work as forced laborers in slave-like conditions. These are primarily people living in poor countries and often working in resource extraction jobs, as in these cases it may be possible to examine the ways that imperialism in the global north benefits from forced labor in the global south. In other words, even today, a theory of imperialism needs to account for the persistence of coerced and non-waged or indentured forms of labor.

In summary, this blogpost has suggested that the questions of capitalism and imperialism debated on roape.net are inseparable from the history of the racialized and gender labor forms including and beyond wage labor that capital has historically exploited. Imperialism remains a process structured beyond wage labor, and accounts that overly-economize this miss, in many regards, the deepest and most malignant aspects of capitalism’s exploitation: the ways capitalism conquers not only the labor time of the world’s people but all aspects of their lives. Not all workers under capital have even the luxury of spending 40 hours a week exploited directly by capital, and the rest of their lives consuming for capitalism to continue functioning. Rather, historically, capitalism and imperialism have rested on a bedrock of racialized and gendered entirely forced labor, and continue to do so.

James Parisot currently teaches in the sociology department at Drexel University in Philadelphia, PA and is author of How America Became Capitalist: Imperial Expansion and the Conquest of the West.

Vasily Grigoryevich Solodovnikov – A Fighter for African Liberation

ROAPE

February 26, 2019

Vladimir Shubin celebrates the extraordinary life of an African scholar, activist and diplomat. Vasily Grigoryevich Solodovnikov, who died last year, spent decades working with African liberation movements. He worked tirelessly for the liberation of Southern Africa, and movements for colonial freedom across the continent. Shubin celebrates a legendary figure who was the first Russian citizen to be awarded the South African Order of O.R. Tambo.

By Vladimir Shubin

In November 1995 some weeks before my departure from the University of the Western Cape I was invited to deliver a lecture in the South African Military Academy in Saldanha. The Academy, a year and half after the first democratic election looked still like a ‘whites only’ establishment – it did change, but much later.[1] I was received by Chief of the Academy, South African National Defence Force Brigadier, who as soon as I mentioned my affiliation to the Institute for African Studies in Moscow struggled to pronounce a Russian name, difficult for outsiders – Solodovnikov.

This episode happened almost 20 years after Professor Solodovnikov left his post at the Institute for diplomatic service and ten years since he retired from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but his name was still well remembered both by his friends and also, should I say, his opponents. Born on 8 Match 1918, just four months after the Russian revolution, he lived a long life, but what he managed to accomplish could fill several lives.

As a rural boy from the ‘Old Believers’ village of Chrnorechye (Black River) in the Samara region he began working after finishing primary school and at 15 years old he became a tractor driver.[2] However his life changed when he saw a notice about the ‘workers faculty’, a bridging course for young workers to prepare them for tertiary education. Officially his primary education was not sufficient to register, but nevertheless he was admitted as a smart young man who proved to be a hard worker.

The road to knowledge had opened for Vasily. His studies were interrupted when Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union in 1941. Solodovnikov was not conscripted and tried to join the Red Army voluntarily but was refused for health reasons. However, with fellow students he made a contribution to the victory. Studying in the evenings, in the day students worked at the local aircraft factory, installing and then operating the equipment that was evacuated from the territory occupied or threatened by the enemy.

After receiving a degree as an industrial engineer, he began teaching in the institute where he trained but the next year he was recommended to the All-Union Academy of Foreign Trade. From that moment, Solodovnikov’s life took an important turn. After studying in the Academy, he worked in AMTORG, a Soviet foreign trade company in the USA, based in the Ministry of Foreign Trade in Moscow, then he joined the academic Institute of Economics as a doctoral student and after the successful completion of the degree he became its academic secretary. In 1956 Solodovnikov was one of the founders of the famous IMEMO – the Institute of World Economy and International Relations – and soon became its Deputy Director.

However, from 1961 he became involved in practical work once again, in the UN Secretariat and then as the Soviet Deputy Representative to the United Nations, but this did not last for long. In June 1964 he was appointed Director of the Institute for African Studies of the USSR Academy of Sciences (Professor Ivan Potekhin, the Institute’s founder and first director by that time was terminally ill).[3]

So, administratively Solodovnikov became involved in African studies only in 1964, when he was 46 years old, but already by that time he had developed a deep (though distant) knowledge of the continent, dealing with what was called ‘underdeveloped’ and then ‘developing’ countries both in his practical work and academic studies, in fact his first monograph was titled ‘Export of Capital’ and one of his first articles was ‘Economic co-operation between the Soviet Union and Underdeveloped Countries.’

Solodovnikov was director of the Institute for 12 years and visited 21 African countries not only as an inquisitive researcher (he published 12 books and over 300 academic articles) and experienced diplomat, but also as a major public figure. During his years at the head of the Institute he was elected Chair of the Soviet Association of Friendship with Peoples of Africa and Vice-Chair of the Soviet Afro-Asian Solidarity Committee.

The latter position meant that this author, who at that time was the Committee’s secretary for Africa, grew to know him well, especially when we were both involved in participation (and sometimes in organization) of international conferences of solidarity with liberation movements. Of them I would single out the International Conference in Support of the Peoples of Portuguese Colonies held in Rome in June 1970.

These days everybody tries to show that they supported the struggle against colonialism and apartheid, but this is very far from the truth. In particular, the government of Italy did its best to prevent the conference taking place, directed as it was against the then colonial regime in Portugal, a fellow NATO country. When the Preparatory Committee met in March the visas for Soviet representatives were issued but only on the day of the meeting.

The Italian government had good reason to worry. The conference was vital for the rise of solidarity movements in Western countries, in particular the trip of António Agostinho Neto – then leader of the liberation movement in Angola – to Sweden immediately after the conference, which signalled the beginning of direct assistance from Scandinavian countries to the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA). However, the most important element of the conference was the reception of the leaders of the liberation movements – Amilcar Cabral, Agostinho Neto and Marcelino Dos Santos by the Pope. This had the effect of a bombshell on Catholic Portugal.

For us the conference had important consequences as well. With approval of Professor Rostislav Ulyanovsky, who was a major figure in the Communist Party’s International Department, Solodovnikov stated clearly (and for the first time) in Pravda that Moscow was supplying ‘arms, means of transport and communications, clothes and other goods needed for a successful struggle’ to the liberation movements of Southern Africa and that ‘military and civilian specialists are being trained in the USSR.’ [4]

However, when a year later, in 1974, Solodovnikov headed another delegation of the Solidarity Committee to a conference in Oslo, the atmosphere was quite different, beginning from its title – the International Conference of Experts for Support of Victims of Colonialism and Apartheid in Southern Africa. The title reflected the ambiguous attitude of the organizers, both in the UN and in Nordic countries towards the liberation struggle, while we regarded ourselves as its supporters rather than experts, and our African comrades regarded themselves as fighters and not just victims.

As Vice-Chair of the International Congress of African Studies, Solodovnikov did a great deal to broaden contacts of the Soviet Africanists with their colleagues on the continent as well as in West and Eastern Europe in particular. [5]

A new stage in Solodovnikov’s activities began when in 1976 he was appointed the USSR Ambassador to Zambia. It is hard to believe now but at that very period the situation with anti-colonial forces in Zambia was at a critical moment. President Kenneth Kaunda openly supported Jonas Savimbi and his UNITA movement in the civil war in Angola and this effectively meant that he was on the same side as Pretoria. He bitterly criticised Moscow and Havana for their involvement in Angola saying, ‘A plundering tiger with its deadly cubs is now coming in through the back door.’

No doubt the main reason for Kaunda’s ‘change of heart’, his rapprochement with MPLA (and with the ANC for that matter) was the defeat of South African intervention and the strengthening of the Angolan government’s control over the country’s territory at that time. However, it is hard to overestimate the role played by the new Soviet Ambassador.

Prior to Solodovnikov’s departure from Lusaka the US Embassy in its dispatch to the State Department wrote in 1981, ‘Solodovnikov, a long favourite of the American and Western European media which touted him as Moscow’s Southern African wizard, leaves behind an impressive record in Zambia… Solodovnikov can take considerable personal credit for Soviet successes in Zambia. His patient, unaggressive style coupled with an impressive understanding of Africa put him in a good stand with Kaunda and the Zambian leadership.’[6]

His influence was impressive. Indeed, Solodovnikov even became a protagonist in four novels published in South Africa and the West! Solodovnikov’s stay in Lusaka coincided with the rise of the liberation struggle in South Africa and in particular with successful operations of the Umkontho we Sizwe (MK), the armed wing of the ANC. When MK fighters on 1 June 1980 attacked several strategic targets, South African Minister of Police Louis de Grange stated, ‘The Russian Ambassador in Lusaka, Dr Solodovnikov, played an important role in the planning of ANC and communist strategy and he was assisted by a South African refugee woman, Frene Ginwala’, though by that time Solodovnikov had not met her.[7]

As Soviet Ambassador he kept very close to his heart all matters of co-operation with the liberation movements based in Lusaka, sharing their achievements and difficulties. Naturally he was disappointed with the results of the March 1980 general election in Zimbabwe when ZANU prevailed over ZAPU. ZAPU was the party of Joshua Nkomo, Solodovnikov’s good friend. Soviet diplomatic relations were delayed until February 1981. Meanwhile, as Solodovnikov wrote bitterly later, ‘The government of R. Mugabe was in a hurry to establish diplomatic relations with those countries that in the period of the struggle of independence of the people of Zimbabwe were openly calling ZANU leaders and its rank and file fighters terrorists, who were allies of Ian Smith’s regime and who were clandestinely supplying him with oil and weapons, used to shoot Zimbabwean refugees in the camps in Mozambique and Zambia and fighters of the PFZ [Patriotic Front of Zimbabwe] including those from ZANU.’[8]

Soon after returning from Zambia, Solodovnikov retired from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and went back to the Academy of Sciences combining his research with public activity in the Soviet Afro-Asian Solidarity Committee. His role in this period is reflected accurately in the title of his 2002 pamphlet – ‘USSR and South Africa 1987-1991: I opposed the policies of Gorbachev-Shevardnadze in South Africa.’[9] As head of the Solidarity Committee’s delegation to Lusaka in the end of February 1990 he met Nelson Mandela in the Zambian capital and then in March 1991 led the first Committee’s delegation to come to South Africa after the unbanning of the ANC.

Solodovnikov passed away on 30 September 2018, half a year after his centenary was celebrated. Even though reaching an advanced age, he continued to work, to share his vast knowledge and rich experience. During his long life Solodovnikov met many prominent revolutionaries and statesmen, from Ho Chi Minh and Che Guevara to the presidents of African countries, and he also became a legendary figure who was rightfully the first Russian citizen to be awarded the South African Order of O.R. Tambo.

As to his political views let us quote his own words: ‘I, like my distant ancestors, who refused to accept church reform, remain in my previous positions, remain an ideological and political Old Believer.’ [10]

Vladimir Shubin is Principal Research Fellow, Institute for African Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences and Research Fellow, Centre for Military Studies, Stellenbosch University.

Notes

[1] I can confirm its present non-racial character as Research Fellow of its Centre of Military Studies.

[2] ‘Old Believers’ are part of Orthodox Christians who left the Church after the reforms of the Patriarch Nikon of Moscow in the 17^th century.

[3] This version of the Institute’s name in English is accepted now, but I would prefer a more direct translation – Africa Institute (ИнститутАфрики in Russian).

[4] Pravda, 7 July 1970.

[5] Accidentally or not, the last congress was held in Khartoum in December 1991, in the days of the Soviet Union’s collapse.

[6] Report sent to Solodovnikov. American Embassy, Lusaka to Secretary of State, Washington DC. Subject:‘Soviet-Zambian relations; the end of Solodovnikov era.’ Doc_nbr:1981Lusaka0149/

[7] Frene Ginwala, future speaker of the National Assembly of democratic South Africa was living in the UK at that time.Rand Daily Mail, 3 June 1980.

[8] V. Solodovnikov. K istoriiustanovleniyadiplomaticheskihotnosheniimezhdu SSSR I Zimbabwe [On the history of the establishment of the diplomatic relations between the USSR and Zimbabwe] in Afrika v vospomnaniyahveterabovdoplomaticheskoisluzhby [Africa in Reminiscences of Veterans of Diplomatic Service], Moscow: XXI vek-Soglasie, 2000. P.165.

[9] V. Solodovnikov. SSSR n Yuzhaya Afrika 1987-1991: YavystupalprotivpolitikiGorbacheva-Shevardnadze v YushnoiAfrike. [“USSR and South Africa 1987-1991: I opposed the policies of Gorbachev-Sheverdnadze in South Africa]. Moscow: InstitutAfriki, 2002.

[10]V. Solodovnukov. Tvorcheskii put v afrikanistiru I diplomatiyu.[A Creative Path to Africa Studies and Diplomacy], Moscow: InstitutAfriki, 2000, p.25.

Support the Boycott

ROAPE

February 24, 2019

The Review of African Political Economy supports the boycott of the University of London central administration. The boycott is part of the campaign of outsourced workers in the union, the Independent Workers of Great Britain (IWGB), for the same treatment as their directly employed colleagues. The boycott will continue until these workers are made direct employees of the University of London on equal terms and conditions with other directly employed staff.

Currently outsourced cleaners, receptionists, security officers, catering staff and porters at the University of London central administration suffer from far worse terms and conditions. This means they receive worse sick pay, holiday pay, maternity pay and pension contributions than their colleagues for no other reason than they are outsourced.

Outsourcing is a key pillar of neoliberalism and it has devastated working conditions in public services and universities across the world. In Africa such practices have been part of the long-running restructuring of economies and states. Yet, the continent has also been at the cutting edge of campaigns against outsourcing. In South Africa, for example, in recent years the campaigns to decolonise higher education, end privatisation and scrap fees have also demanded and secured an end to outsourcing (see here).

We call on our readers and supporters to boycott all events organised at Senate House, University of London, support the campaign and sign the petition (please click on the link here).

For years outsourced workers at the university have campaigned, demonstrated and taken strike action against bullying, lies and repression.

For an end to bullying

Outsourced workers are much more likely to suffer from discrimination, bullying and harassment than directly employed workers. For example, the IWGB dealt with 54 complaints from outsourced workers at the University of London in 2017, over issues including unlawful deduction of wages, discrimination and failure to provide a statement of particulars. In the same period of time it dealt with only two complaints from direct employees.

For fairness

Outsourced workers have repeatedly been on strike and the university still refuses to sit down and negotiate with them.

For an end to lies

After initially committing to end outsourcing, the university has since gone back on its commitment and said that cleaners will remain outsourced until 2020 and catering until 2021, when in-house options will be presented alongside other commercial bids.

For accountability

Outsourced workers continue to live under a regime of bullying and with managers that are not held to account. In June 2018 the IWGB revealed that a senior manager for outsourcing company Cordant that had previously assaulted a migrant worker was a supporter of the far right. In October, the IWGB revealed that outsourcing company Cordant and the university failed to remove a Cordant manager after three separate women brought complaints of sexism and homophobia against him. Two of these women continue to be managed by the culprit.

For an end to repression

The University is responding to legitimate industrial action by the workers by hiking up security. The Guardian reported in June that just two months of heightened security cost the university almost half a million pounds. In the last strike on 30 October the University used bailiffs with handcuffs and extendable batons in a clear attempt to intimidate workers and protesters.

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