Ethiopia Against the Odds

February 4, 2019

In a blogpost on Ethiopia’s current challenges, Yohannes Woldemariam examines the hurdles facing the new leadership in the country. While the recent protest movement has determined the course of the country’s reforms, Woldemariam sees ethnic conflict, political division and violence hampering a political class that continues to have blind faith in capitalist development.

By Yohannes Woldemariam

Nation-building in polyethnic Ethiopia is proving to be a daunting challenge. Ethnicity was also contentious within the Ethiopian student movement of the 1960s. The late Marxist student leader Walleligne Mekonnen confronted it in 1969, at a time when it was taboo. Walleligne argued that there were many nations within Ethiopia and gaining social mobility was dependent on wearing an Amhara mask. Ethiopia had been described as a prison of nations. Once again, the ethnic genie is out the bottle, flaring up in every corner, testing the new Abiy administration’s ability to hold the country together.

Upon assuming power in 1991, the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) federal structure purported to ensure equality of ethnic groups but in practice became dominated by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) and some elites from within the EPRDF. The effect of TPLF/EPRDF rule was to normalize the hegemony of the TPLF, sidelining the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) in 1992 and instituting a system of kleptocracy. The original reason for the founding of the TPLF in 1975 was to demand self-determination for Tigray which overtime vacillated between outright secession or autonomy within a democratic Ethiopia. The Tigray represents about six percent of Ethiopia’s population.

Eight months into Abiy’s administration, the EPRDF is all but history. The Amhara Democratic Party (ADP), the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples’ Region (SNNPR) and the Oromo Democratic Party (ODP) have been making a concerted effort to separate themselves from the TPLF and to appear as agents of change.

Clashes, claims and counterclaims

Clashes over claims and counterclaims of boundary areas and identity questions have intensified in Ethiopia. These disputes have territorial and descent-related emphasis. There is a long-standing dispute between Oromia and the Somali region over land, which have become deadly, causing displacement of an estimated two million people. Efforts at ethnic consolidation in different regions are being accompanied with violations of the rights of other ethnic groups residing in territories where they are considered non-indigenous.

Ethiopia has nine regions (known as ‘Kilils’). The Southern region, which consists of 56 ethnic groups has seen demands for a separate regional status from the Sidama, after multiple deadly clashes against the Wolayta in Hawassa. The Gurage are asking for Kilil status and that number is increasing. The reasons vary from deep socioeconomic inequality, competition for land, resources and the deliberate mobilization of ethnicity for political ends. The language-based formula of EPRDF federalism has further perpetuated the ethnic based conflict. There are over 85 languages in Ethiopia.

Many agree that some form of federalism is the way forward but the current language-based system is blamed for promoting sectarian violence. A federal project that ignores social realities, local capacities, and histories of particular places, while exclusively focusing on the consequences from a national perspective has been damaging communities. In Ethiopia, federalism has benefited local predatory powers who collaborate with TPLF elites, land grabbers, and investors from India, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and China. Very little power has permeated to the grassroots. The Benishangul-Gumuz and Gambella areas have been targeted because of their endowment with natural resources.

Clashes are ongoing between Oromia and Benishangul-Gumuz regions. The predominantly agro-pastoralist Afar are clashing with the Issa-Somalis. Issa Somalis from across the border in Djibouti and Somaliland are assisting Issa Somalis in Ethiopia against the Afar, threatening to block Ethiopia’s vital railway line to Djibouti’s port. Though there is now a more sympathetic administration to Abiy’s reforms in the Afar region, TPLF officials are fueling conflict with their deep networks in contraband trade in the region. Many in the Amhara region are also believed to harbor claims over territories from Oromia. The conflict against the Amhara in the Benishangul region has displaced many and lives have been lost.

Even university campuses have not been immune from ethnically inspired violence. There were 34 injured at the University of Assossa with three fatalities. Students from Tigray refuse placement in universities outside Tigray because of concern for their safety and security. The proposition that a region should have self-government assumes a correspondence between the boundaries of the nation and the boundaries of those who live in a specific Killil. Yet, in most of Ethiopia there are people in every Killil who are not members of the dominant ethnicity. There has never been a consensus on where one boundary begins and ends. For example, some Oromo nationalists claim territories as far as Wollo in the north. There are also ethnic enclaves whose national affiliations are ill-defined and overlap with territory claimed by two or more groups.

The Amhara region has claims over areas currently in Tigray, such as Humera, the Wolkite and Raya areas. Conversely, the TPLF believes there are no identity issues among the Raya and Wolkite, arguing instead that there are territories still included in the Amhara regions that belong to Tigray. Some Tigrean ethnonationalists claim land as far as Metema and argue that even present-day Gondor was once Tigrinya speaking. Meanwhile, ethnic violence in the Raya and Alamata areas of southern Tigray have been dealt with ruthlessly by Tigrean forces. Many ordinary Tigreans have also fled to Tigray from persecution and mob violence in other regions. While key leaders of the TPLF, including the former spy chief Getachew Asseffa targeted and indicted by Abiy’s anti-corruption campaign, are fanning Tigrean nationalism.

Abiy’s message of ‘Ethiopiawinet’ (pan-Ethiopianism) is viewed with suspicion by some within the Oromo opposition who see it as assimilatory, even as it has gained resonance with the Amhara, in the multi-ethnic city of Addis Ababa and within the vocal diaspora. Yet, the Oromo see the Amhara as expansionist and disrespectful of Oromo culture. It is a historic grievance that was buried briefly because of common opposition to the TPLF. The Oromo youth movement (recently discussed on roape.net) which helped propel Abiy to power, is impatient with what they see as slow pace of reform at the local Woreda and Kebele levels. While former EPRDF officials with a history of benefiting from corruption and enforcing TPLF human rights violations are still in place.

Abiy succeeded in convincing the OLF to abandon its armed struggle based in Eritrea and return to Ethiopia to wage ‘peaceful competition’ for power. Yet, the leader of the OLF, Daud Ibssa, is in a contentious relationship with Abiy over disarmament and the reintegration of OLF troops. Although Ibssa’s troops repatriated from Eritrea have been disarmed, other troops already in parts of Western Wollega are in open warfare, reportedly robbing banks and destroying government property. Other decentralized armed bands also operate in the area, making it difficult to know who is responsible.

In contrast, another faction of the Oromo resistance led by General Kemal Gelchu seems to have reached an understanding with the ODP, which Abiy chairs. Indeed, Gelchu has been appointed as the security chief for the Oromia region where Lemma Megersa, a close ally and adviser of Abiy’s, is the regional president. This is resented by his rival Daud Ibssa. Another faction, the Oromo Democratic Front (ODF) led by Lencho Letta, was among the first to embrace Abiy and return to the country.

These elite rivalries have a regional character. Gelchu’s supporters hail mainly from the southeast and have generally warmed up to ODP views, while Daud’s supporters are mainly from Wollega and tend to be closer to secessionist opinions. Western Wollega is where law and order has been persistently violated. Some horrific killings have also been carried out in Burayo against the southerners and the Amhara. Within the Amhara region, violence has occurred against the Kemant and the Agew. Recurrent violence in the Moyale area perpetrated by armed Oromo militants towards Garre Somalis continues to spill over into Kenya. Businesses, homes and livelihoods have been destroyed with thousands seeking refuge across the border in Kenya.

Federal troops have intervened in the Somali region by arresting the notorious Abdi Illey – currently in prison awaiting trial – and appointing as president a sympathetic Somali economist Mustafa Omar, who was in exile until recently. This region of Ethiopia has experienced much communal violence under Illey’s Special Forces in cahoots with TPLF generals. A mass grave implicating Illey was uncovered in the region.

The Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) fighting a low intensity guerilla war in the region since 1984 is another group returning from Eritrea that has abandoned its armed struggle to wage a peaceful struggle for ‘self-determination.’ This is a region where the Chinese have been exploring for oil and gas. The conflict in the Ogaden is in part due to the investment in resource extraction and the grievances associated with the lack of development.

Other groups that have similarly returned from Eritrea include the Tigray People’s Democratic Movement (TPDM), Amhara Democratic Forces Movement (ADFM) and Patriotic Ginbot 7 (PG7). PG7 leader, Berhanu Nega says his organization’s task is to assist in the stability of the country before any political competition can take place. His troops have disarmed. Some have demobilized and the majority are in camps being assisted to reintegrate into society. Yet, some of his own troops accuse him of making false claims, reneging on his promises and abandoning them.

In addition, the much-heralded peace between Eritrea and Ethiopia has yet to be accompanied by the implementation of the border demarcation according to The Hague verdict. The peace overtures towards Eritrea seem to exclude the Eritrean people with opaque agreements concluded in secret, increasingly angering the long-suffering Eritreans. The language used by the Eritrean dictator, that the ‘border doesn’t matter’, is creating deep anxieties and suspicions among Eritreans. Eritreans value their independence which came at a huge cost.

Initiatives for Peace

To remedy human rights concerns and regional disputes, the Abiy administration has proposed the establishment of a National Truth and Reconciliation Commission and an Identity and Branch Commission to resolve border and identity disputes. The House of Peoples’ Representatives approved a bill to establish a commission with a mandate to carry out an investigation related to identity and regional boundaries. The bill was opposed by TPLF members as a violation of the constitution but the ADP, ODP and the SNNRP members voted for it overwhelmingly. The Commission, accountable to the Office of the Prime Minister, is mandated to produce research-based recommendations on disputes over identity and regional boundary issues.

There are no details yet on the scope, depth and duration for these commissions. Will reconciliation entail an investigation only into TPLF/EPRDF years or will it go further back to the Dergue period? Can Ethiopia move beyond ethnic politics and towards policy, class or citizenship-based politics? Will the commission’s recommendations be accepted by the TPLF which views its very formation as a violation of the constitution? Currently, there are more questions than answers.

Though Abiy mania is still pervasive, increasingly there are questions about his ability to restore law and order. Random vigilante violence and ‘score settling’ is widespread while federal troops are intervening in certain areas to put out localized fires.

Forthcoming elections

It is against this background that elections are scheduled for 2020. It is hoped that elections might channel ethnic competition into nonviolent democratic expression. The rules of the game have yet to be laid out. Birtukan Medeksa, a former judge and political prisoner under the late Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, has been appointed by Abiy to head the National Electoral Board. Ethiopians have little faith in the neutrality of the electoral board from past elections. The only contested election was in 2005, where the opposition surprised the EPRDF by winning most of the seats in Addis Ababa, resulting in bloodshed and a crackdown on opposition leaders.

For some it is hard to imagine a credible election taking place in the country considering the fragile security situation. Politician and activist, Berhanu Nega, thinks more time is needed to establish the rules of the game to ensure fair and free elections. Berhanu emphasizes the importance of building durable institutions rather than holding hasty elections for the sake of holding elections. While those arguing for the scheduled elections see the poll as essential for changing the composition of parliament which is currently dominated by the EPRDF and its exclusionary notion of democratic centralism.

There is a proliferation of numerous political parties, 81 by some estimates. Many of these political parties are organized along ethnic lines with few organized around ideas, ideology and political differences that cut across ethnicities. Abiy is urging that the number of parties be limited to three or four. Ethiopians must quickly weigh the suitability of various consociational, federal, or other decentralized constitutional arrangements and of coalition governments, proportional representation, and other electoral systems.

In some ways, Abiy’s situation resembles that of Mikhail Gorbachev who was an international celebrity while the Soviet Union was crumbling from within. Nations with many different ethnic groups, can still develop a national culture around shared history but Ethiopia appears to be finding it difficult to find such common convincing references. Abiy persists in trying to inculcate ‘Ethiopiawinet’ by mentioning symbolic battles where Ethiopians died together, fighting foreign invaders. However, the human and social cement that creates and sustains identity in Ethiopia still lies in the family, the ethnic, the sect, or religious confession, not in statehood or nationhood – and here lies the challenge.

In conclusion, it is hard to imagine Ethiopia will be ready for any meaningful elections in a year and half with some fearing elections might further fuel ethnic violence. What the protests in the last three years did was to weaken the state. In one sense this was good because it was a repressive and violent structure, but it left a vacuum in law and order that could accelerate the unravelling of Ethiopia as a country. We should celebrate the protests, but we must remain sober about the challenges that Ethiopia now faces.

Yohannes Woldemariam is a political economist who has taught and worked in universities and research centers in Europe, Costa Rica, Africa and the United States. He can be reached at: ywoldem@gmu.edu

Featured Photograph: A 1999 map of Ethiopia (Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division).

The Making of Neoliberal Africa

ROAPE

January 30, 2019

Introducing a new collection on neoliberal restructuring in Uganda, the editors argue in this blogpost that the country has been a hotspot for capitalist restructuring, transformation, contradiction and crisis, past and present. Uganda has undergone an unprecedented political, socio-economic, cultural and ecological transformation, brought about by neoliberal capitalist reorganisation since the 1980s. Rather than seeing a post neoliberal world they argue that there is much more to come.

By Jörg Wiegratz, Giuliano Martiniello, and Elisa Greco

Neoliberalism as a project of reframing the social order and advancing market civilization appeared on the scene of global politics almost forty years ago. Exploring the key features of this restructuring might help understand the character of current political, economic and cultural structures and dynamics, the future direction of social change and perhaps anticipate major implications, contradictions and tensions embedded in this process. We argue that this is a central task in analysing the development of capitalism in Africa.

In our view Uganda is an exemplary case of neoliberalism, not only in Africa but across post-colonial, aid-dependent regions in the Global South. Many of the proto-typical, text-book characteristics of neoliberalism are present in Uganda. Why is that? Why does the caricature-type definition of neoliberalism – power and handouts to the bourgeoisie, immiseration for the subaltern classes – actually look like a pretty good approximation for the realities of neoliberal Uganda? These are questions that are of central importance in contemporary scholarship and beyond.

In the future, historians will probably debate what neoliberalism was all about. They may discover different takes on this in the literature from that time and perhaps they, like us, will find more useful the studies that focussed not on specific policies – ‘free market’, liberalisation, privatisation, etc.- but on the overall trajectory of social change, of what in academic speak is also called ‘social engineering’. Perhaps, these future historians will see that neoliberalism was about institutionalising a particular type of capitalism around the world, about embedding and locking-in a particular architecture of social relations. Perhaps, they will agree that the world was not post-neoliberal at all by the late 2010s, as some analysts of that age had prematurely claimed. Indeed, as we approach 2020 the world has never been more capitalist, neither has Africa.

If like our imagined future historian-of-neoliberalism, you also think this is a good way to understand ‘neoliberalism’, then you might be struck by how little data and analysis exists for the various African countries regarding the embedding of the ‘market society’ model . There is very little written on how this specific capitalist ideology and model of social order was institutionalised, not just in the realm of economic policy making or the economy more broadly, but across polity, society, and culture. In this broader sense, the making of African neoliberal capitalism in the various societies of the continent is rarely demonstrated in detail by scholars and other analysts. Rather, analyses of development and politics dominate African studies, as well as public debates while there is relatively little written about African capitalism.

This is the political and research background against which we, as editors of the new collection titled Uganda: The Dynamics of Neoliberal Transformation, had started years ago. We wanted the volume to distinguish itself from the existing scholarship in at least two ways. First, we wanted it to be a collective, multi-disciplinary undertaking to overcome the limitations of one-researcher-type monographs and articles. Second, we aimed at a collection that has authors focused squarely on neoliberal Uganda.

A major objective of this undertaking was to map, understand and explain the key features of both, the making and operation of neoliberal-capitalist Uganda. We did not want a volume that spoke of government ‘shortcomings’, or one that included a SWOT analysis, or used development speak, or offered policy advice. We were not interested in identifying dysfunctional policies in order to correct them, or states of mal-governance that needed betterment. Rather, we focused on revealing and understanding the purposes, objectives, and interests that underpinned the actions of the powerful – governments, donors, corporations, etc. There were several major questions we wanted to address in the collection. What does 30 years of neoliberal reform and transformation do to a particular society? What is the New Uganda, the new neoliberal-capitalist market society, all about? What are its characteristics?

When we started working on this collection, we felt that there was only a budding scholarship available on Uganda that gave neoliberalism the analytical seriousness and treatment that it deserves. Social science scholarship on Uganda has not sufficiently analysed the many characteristics of the all-encompassing process of change triggered by neoliberal reforms. And yet Uganda is a hotspot of capitalist restructuring, transformation, contradiction and crisis, past and present. The collection includes 25 researchers – with a range of data sets and analytical frames – offering a critical, multi-disciplinary heterodox analysis of the unprecedented political, socio-economic, cultural and ecological transformations brought about by neoliberal capitalist restructuring in the country since the 1980s.

For Western donors, corporations, and development agencies – and many Western academics too – Uganda was a testbed for getting capitalism to work on the continent, for creating a fully fledged market society, including a corresponding culture and politics. There are many examples but let’s take a contemporary one: Uganda is currently hosting one of the largest experimental programs of genetically modified organisms on the continent under the aegis of funders including the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Monsanto and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. There are similar interventions being aggressively promoted in other African countries which have a similar status of ‘pilot country’ with international donors (such as Ghana and Tanzania). Such ‘experiments have been the hallmark of neoliberal societal re-ordering and daily life for the last three decades. We argue that a systematic analysis of African neoliberalism in these donors ‘darling’ states would constitute a meaningful contribution to broader understandings of contemporary capitalism at the global level.

Notably, in Uganda, donors and IFIs have thrown not just money, but also all sorts of other resources to make this neoliberal restructuring work. ‘Reform’ has become a decades long mantra. All sectors of economy, society and culture have been forced to open up to neoliberal restructuring: ‘Reform for a better Uganda’ became the dominant call. These reforms had to clean the international image of an unsettled and unstable country, to ‘civilise’ the country, yet again. So reforms were cast as bringing about transition from chaos. The mantra became ‘normalise’, ‘modernise’ and ‘be like us’ – like the West. This is how the reform rationale was set up. In other words, for Uganda to ‘reform’, to become properly capitalist, was the raison d’être for the intervention of dozens of foreign actors, from multi- and bilateral donors (i.e. foreign governments), to aid organisations, corporations, religious organisations, global entertainment industry celebrities, etc.

Yet what did all this restructuring result in? This is probably one of the most awkward and critical questions to confront the reformers. Not just because there is no easy answer but because much of the data, let alone experiences and opinions of life in the new society, tell a story of conflict, crisis and social harm for millions of Ugandans, while other data indeed supports the government-donors’ narrative of ‘Uganda as a success’.

The global chorus of approval for Uganda’s restructuring is predictable enough. IMF Managing Director, Cristine Lagarde calls Uganda – in respect to the Fund’s GDP growth and poverty reduction objectives – an African success (incidentally, she said this in 2017, at the height of post-election crisis in the country). While, the UN Resident Coordinator and UNDP Resident Representative in Uganda, Rosa Malango, approvingly uttered in a 2018 speech, ‘Uganda is widely recognized for producing a wide range of excellent policies on social, economic and development issues’.

And yet, the newspaper front-pages tell a very different story. Alongside the reports about various national improvements and achievements including the openings of new factories, infrastructural developments and symbols of state power and purpose – a new bridge, a new highway, a new building for the Uganda Revenue Authority (now the highest building in the country) – one typically finds reports about how the neoliberal project is in crisis, or, indeed, under attack.

Do you want a glimpse of some recent examples? The Bank of Uganda faces a parliamentary probe over in-house fraud and mismanagement (in relation to controversial closures of commercial banks in the past 25 years); state agencies target and beat up critics; investors get defrauded, robbed, and attacked – leading to threats by members of the Chinese business community that they will leave if the security situation does not improve; military and police officers are protecting factories of foreign investors – the list goes on and on. At the same time investors, businessmen and -women, the ruling party, the National Resistance Movement, and many prominent advocates of reform, together with members of the ruling class, are regularly denounced and mocked in the public debate.

Between international acclamation and domestic ridicule what has actually happened to the rates of poverty, hunger and food security? Here is a section from our introduction, titled ‘Interpreting change in neoliberal Uganda’:

[Reports from the mid-2010s showed:] Millions were food insecure …[and] could not afford two meals… And, almost 2/3 were estimated in the recent Uganda poverty status report to earn less than 2$/day, thus classed by government statistics as ‘poor’ (19.7 per cent, at up to 1$/day) or ‘non-poor insecure’ (43.3 per cent, 1–2$/day) (2012/13). Other estimates suggested that 88.3 per cent of Ugandans (30.6 million) could live on less than 3$/day… The latest official poverty figure has increased between 2012/13 and 2016/17: from 19.7 to at first 27 per cent; then UBOS [Uganda Bureau of Statistics] revised this figure downward a few months after publication to 21.4 per cent [56 per cent in 1992/3, eds.], signalling a contentious politics of numbers which involves a plethora of competing methods of measuring.

Against this background, our book intervenes in the debate about what constitutes the New Uganda, more than 30 years into the neoliberal experiment. Our volume confidently confronts the accounts of the powerful, by questioning the mainstream narratives of a highly successful post-1986 transformation and contrasts these with empirical evidence of a prolonged and multifaceted crisis generated by a particular version of severe capitalist restructuring. Such an approach has, to date, been given little space in the context of neoliberal academia. We thus critique and challenge what thinkers from Rosa Luxemburg to George Orwell observed as the ‘truth’ of the ruling classes – we see this as a crucial political act.

In conclusion, we would argue, as we do in the book, that we are witnessing neither the last breath of neoliberalism, nor are we on the way out into a post-neoliberal world. Looked at from Uganda, the neoliberal project is alive and kicking and it is going through new rounds of restructuring, imbalances, tensions, conflicts, protests, and, you guessed it, more restructuring. There is much more to come.

Click here to read the introduction to the collection released from ZED and until the end of January there is a 50% discount on the volume.

The book production was financially supported by ROAPE with the purpose of advancing radical political economy analyses.

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 is a regular contributor and an editor of roape.net.

Giuliano Martiniello is an Assistant Professor and Director of the MSc in Rural Community Development at the Faculty of Food and Agricultural and Food Sciences, American University of Beirut.

Elisa Greco is a member of ROAPE’s Editorial Working Group and an expert on the political economy of food and agriculture in Africa. She is a Research Fellow in Agricultural Value Chains at the School of Earth and Environment at the University of Leeds.

Featured photograph: Motorcycle taxi in Kampala (Jörg Wiegratz, January 2019).

Revealing Lies, Questioning Complicity

ROAPE

January 29, 2019

Continuing our exposé of the Rwandan government’s subterfuge (and World Bank and IMF complicity) roape.net’s expert reveals what is really going on behind the states recent poverty statistics. This blogpost finds an increase in poverty which is too large, too sustained, too wide-spread, and the findings too robust and too compelling to be ignored, or to be dismissed as mere statistical blips or methodological quirks. The evidence published on roape.net, shows that as the government continues to spend its meagre resources on unprofitable five-star hotels, empty skyscrapers, and even the president’s favourite football club, and imprisons or kills anyone who dares to question the official narrative of success, the lives of ordinary Rwandans continues to deteriorate.

Following years of controversy surrounding the results of the EICV4 survey (the Integrated Household Living Conditions Survey or Enquête Intégrale sur les Conditions de Vie des ménages), the National Institute of statistics of Rwanda (NISR), has released the much-anticipated results of their latest household survey, EICV5. To their credit, the NISR immediately made available the EICV5 datasets following publication of the first official results, which makes it possible for the public to verify NISR’s results.

In this blogpost, we will estimate changes in poverty from 2014 to 2018, based on the recently released EICV5 survey data. For this exercise, we have used the same syntax files that were initially published on roape.net as part of our review of EICV4 poverty estimates (see the post here). Some minor changes have been made to the syntax files in order to ensure full comparability across surveys and to bring our estimates closer to the official NISR estimates. [1] We have clearly indicated in the syntax file each place where changes have been made, to allow other researchers to replicate our results (click here to download the syntax file). None of the changes made affect the main conclusions of this paper.

We will start by looking at poverty trends estimated from the EICV5 and EICV4 data. We then look at disaggregated results and additional supporting evidence from the EICV surveys, that will help us to triangulate the initial findings. Finally, we will compare per capita household consumption estimated from the EICV with the same indicator estimated from National Accounts Statistics, in order to update our assessment of the reliability of official GDP growth statistics.

Poverty

The poverty trend is estimated using a number of different plausible poverty lines, to verify the robustness of our results. The chosen poverty lines are the same that were used in our initial review of EICV4 results in 2016 (see the post here).

The main difference between our estimates and those published by NISR in the EICV5 poverty profile (NISR, 2018) is that we update the poverty lines based on the cost of the underlying food basket, using detailed price data available within the EICV surveys themselves (self-reported prices by respondents in the farming module), whereas NISR is thought to have updated their poverty line using an aggregated inflation rate derived from CPI price data. Both methods are, in principle, valid and should yield similar results if (a) the inflation/poverty line calculations are correct, and (b) if the price data sources are reliable and of good quality.

Unfortunately, no information was provided in the EICV5 poverty profile report (NISR, 2018) to explain how the 2018 poverty line was calculated by NISR nor which inflation rate/ price data they used to update their poverty line since 2014. Therefore, it has not been possible to replicate the official NISR results, nor to verify whether their calculations are valid for their chosen price data (point (a) above).[2] Our contribution will thus be limited to checking point (b), namely whether NISR’s conclusions still hold when EICV price data are used to update the poverty line instead of CPI data. We have not checked the robustness of our own results against other alternative price-data sets mentioned in the debate (MINAGRI, ESOKO, CPI), as we were not able to access those datasets. We hope that other researchers will take up this task.

We start with the official poverty line used in the latest EICV5 poverty profile (NISR, 2018), which was re-introduced in NISR’s second EICV4 poverty profile (NISR, 2016) after having been initially dismissed in the first EICV4 poverty profile on the grounds that it was out-of-date (NISR, 2015). This poverty line (called acttotpoor01 in the syntax file and annex) is based on a food basket calculated in 2001 based on the consumption patterns that were prevalent at that time. In 2014, according to prices reported in the EICV4 survey, this basket would have cost 333.19 Rwf. per adult equivalent per day (see Table 7 in the annex). Based on prices reported in EICV5, this same consumption basket cost 473.95 Rwf. per adult in 2017 (see Table 8 in the annex). In 2014, 51.6% of the population fell below this poverty line (i.e. were unable to afford the basic consumption basket + associated share of non-food consumption). In 2018, 57.6% of the population fell below this poverty line. This implies an increase in poverty of 6.1 percentage points between 2014 and 2018, which is statistically significant at the 1% level (see Table 1 below).

As pointed out in NISR’s first EICV4 poverty profile (NISR, 2015), the 2001 poverty line is woefully out-of-date, as it reflects consumption patterns that were prevalent almost two decades ago. For this reason, we agree with NISR’s own assessment that it is better to use the new poverty lines calculated by NISR in 2015, which reflect consumption patterns that were prevalent in 2014. For EICV4, NISR calculated two different poverty lines: one 5-step semi-normative poverty line reflecting the minimum cost of reaching 2500kcal per day of nutrition using low-cost and high-calorie food types (called adjtotpoor14), and one 4-step non-normative poverty line reflecting actual consumption patterns that were prevalent in 2014 (acttotpoor14). Methodologically, the 4-step non-normative line is identical to the one that was estimated in 2001, and can therefore be used to make valid inter-temporal comparisons that take into account changing consumption patterns over time, based on the criteria defined by the World Bank (proposition 1) (World Bank, 2018).

The first of these poverty lines is based on a food basket that cost 274.76 Rwf in 2014, and 410.98 Rwf in 2018. Based on this basket, the poverty rate increased from 42.8% in 2014 to 52.4% in 2018, meaning that poverty increased by 9.6 percentage points (statistically significant at 1%). The second poverty line is significantly higher, since it is based on people’s actual (low-calorie and high-cost) consumption patterns, rather than expert-determined ‘optimal’ consumption patterns. This food basket is thus significantly more expensive (342.66 Rwf in 2014 and 509.17 Rwf in 2018), with correspondingly higher poverty rates (56.6% in 2014 and 64.8% in 2018). This basket yields an increase in poverty of 8.3 percentage points between 2014 and 2018 (statistically significant at 1%).

In other words, as we had already shown in our review of the EICV4 results, both the high (4-step) and the low (5-step) poverty lines calculated by NISR in 2015 yield very similar trends, when consistently applied across surveys, even though they naturally show very different absolute levels of poverty depending on the cost of their respective food baskets. More poverty lines are available in the syntax files and in the annex, which all confirm the increase in poverty of around 7 to 9 percentage points when used consistently across surveys.

For full transparency, we also report the results for the survey-specific poverty line (acttotpoor) that we have computed based on the consumption patterns prevalent in 2014 and 2018, respectively. This poverty line takes into account changes in consumption patterns that have occurred between the two surveys. As in our previous blogposts, the survey-specific poverty line yields a smaller increase in poverty of 3.8 percentage points, compared to the poverty lines that are fixed across surveys. Importantly, however, even this conservative increase in poverty is statistically significant at the 1% level.

The smaller increase in poverty for the survey-specific poverty line is due to the fact that people have shifted to cheaper and lower quality foods between 2014 and 2018 in response to the price shocks that they have faced,[3] thus mitigating the effect of the price increase on the average food basket (the cost of this food basket increased 38% between the two surveys, compared to close to 50% increase for the other food baskets). As pointed out during the discussion with Donal Ring, these changes in consumption patterns reflect negative coping strategies, that lower people’s wellbeing, rather than voluntary consumer choices, that improve wellbeing. It would therefore be wrong to conclude that the increase in poverty has been moderated by the shift to lower costs and lower quality foods. On the contrary, this shift constitutes additional strong evidence of deteriorating living conditions between the two surveys. We therefore do not recommend using this poverty line for trend assessments.

As had been the case for EICV4, our analysis shows, once again, that NISR’s claim of decreasing poverty hinges on the acceptance of NISR’s price data (presumably CPI data) as the best data source to assess the prices faced by the poor during this period. As we already argued in our response to the World Bank’s (2018) defense of the EICV4 results, the onus should therefore be on NISR (and on the World Bank, which now publicly endorses the NISR statistics) to show that their price data provide a more accurate reflection of the prices faced by the poor than the price data available in the EICV surveys themselves (as well as in MINAGRI and ESOKO surveys up until 2014 at least). This is especially true, given that that CPI data had not previously been used in Rwanda to estimate food inflation, due to the fact that it had been deemed inappropriate for this purpose. In 2012, the following reasons were given by NISR for not using CPI data to estimate food inflation:

An alternative source for food price data could have been the food price data collected for the CPI. The MINAGRI data were preferred because: (a) in the EICV1 and EICV2 periods, the CPI had only covered urban areas; (b) because of the change in the index in 2009; and (c) particularly because of the large number of comparable observations the MINAGRI price data offered. Nevertheless, over the period January 2006 to January 2011, the rate of inflation given by the index based on the MINAGRI price data was very close to that given by the CPI, even though the weights were different. (NISR 2012, p.34)

If, as appears to be the case, MINAGRI and CPI data no longer give similar inflation rates, the rationale for using MINAGRI data instead of CPI data would appear even stronger today than it was in 2012. Yet, neither NISR nor the World Bank, have explained why they decided to change price data source mid-course (and revert to a two-decades old poverty line), and why they now consider the CPI price data to be more appropriate for poverty estimation than the previously used price data sources.

Even if NISR were to convincingly show that the CPI data provide the best reflection of food prices faced by the Rwandan poor, they would still need to ensure that this data is applied consistently across all their calculations. At the moment, NISR and the World Bank are using the allegedly unreliable EICV price data (i.e. high prices) to impute auto-consumption levels for subsistence farmers who do not purchase their food in the market, but they are then using the lower CPI prices to estimate the poverty line faced by those same farmers and to deflate aggregate consumption based on the Cost of Living Index. If CPI prices had been applied consistently both for computing the consumption aggregate and the poverty line, the poverty rate would be approximately 55% in 2018, using the 4-step non-normative poverty line. This is still 10 percentage points higher than the 2010 poverty rate and similar to the 2005 poverty rate, using the methodologically consistent and comparable poverty line (for details on the calculations, see comment by EICV below this article). This provides an absolute lower limit and best-case scenario for poverty in Rwanda, in case NISR were to prove that their price data are more reliable than the price data contained in the EICV and other price data sources.

Disaggregated results and other evidence

From 2014 to 2018, the food share of total household consumption increased from 67.5% to 68.9% for the population as a whole, and from 73.2% to 73.5% for the bottom two quintiles.[4]. Since poverty now stands at over 60% (up from mid-40s in 2010), we also report the food share for the bottom 3 quintiles of the population, as these are most likely to cross the poverty line. For this group, the food share of consumption increased from 72.4% to 73.0% from 2014 to 2018.

The share of food expenditures in total household expenditures (i.e. excluding auto-consumption and in-kind transfers and payments) increased even more, from 49.9% to 57.9% for the population as a whole, and from 54.0% to 62.2% for the bottom two quintiles. For the bottom 3 quintiles, the food share of expenditures increased from 53.0% to 61.5% (see Table 2 below). All results but one are statistically significant.

Finally, the average caloric intake decreased from 1199 kcal per adult equivalent per day in 2014, to 1180 kcal in 2018, providing further evidence of deteriorating living conditions during this period (see Table 2 below). This result would mean that the average caloric intake now is lower in Rwanda than it was in 2001 (1347 kcal per adult per day), although it is unclear whether the two estimates are exactly comparable, since we do not know exactly how the 2001 consumption basket was computed.

The disaggregated results by province confirm NISR’s finding of a decrease in poverty in Kigali City, but show that poverty increased significantly in all other provinces and in both urban and rural areas according to most other poverty lines (see Table 3 below, as well as Table 4 and Table 5 in the annex). The increase in poverty is not statistically significant in the Northern Province when using the 2001 poverty line, but is significant at the 1% level when using the 2014 poverty lines (see Table 4 and Table 5 in the annex).

The worst affected province was the Southern Province, where poverty increased by between 12 and 16 percentage points between 2014 and 2018, depending on which poverty line we use (see Table 4 and Table 5 in the annex). In urban areas outside of Kigali, poverty increased by between 13 and 15 percentage points using the 2001 and 2014 poverty lines (see Table 6 in the annex).[5]

GDP

Before concluding, we will update another part of this discussion, which concerns the GDP statistics. In an earlier blogpost, we had questioned why the per capita consumption estimated from household survey data (HHS) had increased much more slowly since 2005 than the per capita final household consumption estimated in the National Account Statistics (NAS) (sourced from the World Development Indicators databank). While it is not uncommon for household consumption estimates from NAS to differ from those estimated from household surveys in a given year, ‘it is more worrying if the two sources give very different estimates of the rate of growth in average consumption’ (Ravallion, 1992).

In the figure below, we provide an updated version of an earlier published graph, which now includes data up to 2017. We also disaggregate GDP figures by final household consumption and other components, to allow for more direct comparison with the EICV. The updated graph, including EICV5 results, confirms that the gap between HHS and NAS estimates of household consumption has grown even wider, as official GDP growth, as well as growth in final household consumption in the NAS, have accelerated, while growth in per capita consumption estimated from HHS has continued to decelerate since 2014. By 2017, per capita GDP was almost twice as large as per capita consumption estimated from the EICV (see figure 1 below).

The figure shows two things. First, the share of household consumption has decreased from 86% of GDP in 2000 to 75% in 2017. This suggests that at least part of the growth in GDP has been driven by government consumption that is not benefiting Rwandan households (especially up to 2010). Given the nature of Rwanda’s investments in large public debt-financed and unprofitable vanity projects, such as the Kigali Convention Centre, the Marriott Hotel, and Rwanda Air, this should not come as a surprise. Secondly, at least part of Rwanda’s allegedly stellar macro-economic performance remains unexplained and unaccounted for, as NAS household consumption has continued to grow at an inexplicably faster rate than HHS household consumption. This is especially true from 2010 onwards, where final household consumption in the NAS has skyrocketed, while HHS per capita consumption has decreased in real terms.

To date, no explanation has been provided by NISR, the World Bank nor the IMF to explain this mysterious discrepancy. Yet, if the discrepancy is due to a mere difference in definition and methodological assumptions between the NAS and HHS, it should have been easy for them to settle this debate long ago, by simply explaining publicly what those differences are and how they affect the results. Given the now proven sharp and long-term increase in poverty in Rwanda, and given NISR’s and the World Bank’s less-than-impressive record when it comes to producing accurate, credible, and transparent statistics about the true nature of this poverty, we have every reason to be concerned about this still unexplained discrepancy. We sincerely hope that other researchers will take up this important task to try to shed more light on this important issue.

Conclusion

The EICV5 survey shows that the increase in poverty has accelerated in the past 4 years in Rwanda, rising by between 8.3 and 9.6 percentage points between 2014 and 2018, using the poverty lines calculated by NISR in 2015 (NISR, 2015). This increase in poverty comes on top of the at least 5-7 percentage points increase that had already occurred between 2010 and 2014.[6] This means that poverty has now been increasing for a total of at least 8 years in Rwanda, and now stands at 64.8%, which is higher than it was when the EICV surveys started to measure poverty in 2001 (using a methodologically consistent and comparable poverty line according to the World Bank’s own criteria). The data also show that the gap between final household consumption used in official GDP figures, and the one estimated from the household survey, has continued to grow over this period, casting further doubts on the reliability of official GDP statistics.

During these 8 years of growing poverty (and possibly also of stagnating GDP growth), the IMF has regularly held press conferences where they praise Rwanda on its economic achievements. The IMF representative in Rwanda, Laure Redifer, even publicly dismissed the claims of rising poverty on the sole grounds that she ‘could see with [her] own eyes’ that poverty was decreasing. And the World Bank went even further, publishing a paper that endorsed Rwanda’s official statistics and provided theoretical cover for NISR’s controversial methodological and data choices, despite failing to address the substantial body of adverse empirical evidence that had been presented by various researchers on roape.net and in the journal and elsewhere.[7].

And all the while, the Government of Rwanda has continued to spend its meager resources on unprofitable five-star hotels, empty skyscrapers, and even the president’s favorite football club, while imprisoning or killing anyone who dares to question the official narrative of success.

Tragically, this is not the first time that this scenario has played out in Rwanda. In the years preceding the genocide, a similarly failed donor-supported forced agricultural reform played a significant part in creating the conditions that enabled Rwanda’s subsequent descent into violence. Then, as now, donors were busy praising the clean streets and efficient policies of the then ‘Switzerland’ (now ‘Singapore’) of Africa. But this time around, donors had no excuse for not knowing, as researchers and people working on the ground, have been trying to warn them for years that something was amiss in Rwanda’s ‘green revolution.’ And, most crucially, the Rwandan government’s own data showing the increase in poverty have been publicly available for everyone to see since at least 2015. Anyone with an internet connection could (and should) have downloaded the datasets from NISR’s website to check for themselves whether the claims made on roape.net were true or false.

The complexity of the technical arguments involved mean that the ‘Rwandan miracle’ myth has largely prevailed in the media and amongst donor, despite mounting and converging evidence from various different sources and sectors pointing to problems in Rwanda’s official statistics. The EICV5 results mean that it will become increasingly difficult to keep this story of success going. This time, the increase in poverty is simply too large, too sustained, too wide-spread, and the findings too robust and too compelling to be ignored, or to be dismissed as mere statistical blips or methodological quirks. It may take some time, but eventually other researchers and independent institutions will verify the evidence published on roape.net, and will produce their own research to establish the facts independently of Rwandan government and donors’ interests. We can only hope that when this happens, it will not be too late to change course to prevent a repeat of Rwanda’s tragic history.

The authors of this article have asked for anonymity.

Featured Photograph: President Paul Kagame of Rwanda in discussions with the officials of the Russian Federation (13 June, 2018).

References

National Institute of Statistics of Rwanda. 2015. Rwanda Poverty Profile Report 2013/14

National Institute of Statistics of Rwanda. 2012. The evolution of poverty in Rwanda from 2000 to 2011: Results from the Household Surveys (EICV).

National Institute of Statistics of Rwanda. 2016. Poverty Trend Analysis Report 2010/11-2013/14

National Institute of Statistics of Rwanda. 2018. Rwanda Poverty Profile Report 2016/17

World Bank (2018), ‘Revisiting the Poverty Trend in Rwanda 2010/11 to 2013/14’, Freeha Fatima and Nobuo Yoshida, Policy Research Working Paper 8585.

Ravallion, M. (1992) ‘Living Standards Measurement Study Working Paper No. 88: Poverty Comparisons, A Guide to Concepts and Methods’, LSM- 88 FEB. 1992.

Notes

[1] The main change was made to the estimation of food consumption, where we now multiply the monthly consumption by 12 to get the annual total instead of multiplying by the number of months in which the respondents declared that they consumed the product. This modification ensures that the food shares we obtain for each item are almost identical to the food shares reported by NISR in NISR (2015), table B4 (see table 7 in annex for a detailed description of our consumption basket with the NISR 2014 4-step actual consumption basket). We therefore suppose that this new assumption more closely approximates the assumptions made by NISR in their own calculations. In addition, we now use the price index computed by NISR (centered on the survey-median) in order to estimate price level differences between regions and across months within each survey. Using NISR’s own price index removes one possible source of discrepancy between our estimates and NISR’s, and therefore allows us to focus on the other possible drivers of change.

[2] In our initial reaction to the EICV5 poverty profile, we had noted several inconsistencies in the official NISR result, which may point to problems in NISR’s calculations and would require independent verification (see comments below this post). Chief among them was the fact that NISR claimed that the national poverty rate had decreased faster than both the urban and rural poverty rates since 2014. In theory, the national decrease in poverty should correspond to a weighted average of the urban and rural poverty change, and should therefore lie somewhere in between those two numbers. Without further detail on the methodology used by NISR to compute their poverty rate, it is not possible to determine the source of these inconsistencies, nor to assess the validity of their calculations.

[3] Table 7 and Table 8 in the annex clearly show that consumed quantities decreased most for the items that increased most in price between 2014 and 2018.

[4] The food shares reported here differ slightly from those reported in our responses to the World Bank a few weeks ago (see here), as we have changed the method for computing food consumption to more closely approximate the official NISR results (see footnote 1 above and attached syntax files).

[5] In an earlier reaction to the EICV5 poverty profile results, which was posted before the datasets were released, we had estimated that the increase in poverty in urban areas outside of Kigali might have been as high as 17 percentage points (see comments below this post). This was because we had assumed that 100% of the population in Kigali City is urban, when in fact 25% of the population in Kigali City is rural. With this correction, the two estimates are consistent.

[6] The 2010-2014 trend was estimated using a slightly different methodology, as explained in footnote 1 above. This means that the reported 2010-14 and 2014-18 trends might not be exactly comparable. We will leave it to others to fine-tune these numbers and estimate historical trends going further back in time.

[7] Most crucially, the World Bank failed to explain or justify NISR’s sudden switch to CPI data, which had previously been deemed inappropriate by NISR itself for estimating food inflation in Rwanda (NISR 2012, p.34), or to explain why this new price data source generated such radically different poverty rates from the price data previously used by NISR for poverty estimations.

Annex

Click here for Tables 8 & 9 (EICV4 food baskets and EICV5 food baskets)

Protest, Repression and Revolution in Ethiopia

ROAPE

January 24, 2019

Protesters chant slogans during a demonstration over what they say is unfair distribution of wealth in the country at Meskel Square in Ethiopia's capital Addis Ababa, August 6, 2016. REUTERS/Tiksa Negeri - RTSLDSE

By Mebratu Kelecha

Since 2014 protests in Ethiopia have taken an unexpected and unprecedented turn, which has pushed the regime into permanent crisis. One of the triggering factors was in April 2014, when the Addis Ababa City Administration officially launched an urban expansion plan aimed at responding to the industrial and human growth of the capital city. Soon, the popular movement, known as the Oromo protests, began when students across Oromia protested a plan to expand Addis Ababa by 1.1 million hectares deep into the neighbouring Oromia region. Since then, an unprecedented wave of popular struggles have rocked Ethiopia.

There are two main reasons for these protests. The first concerns the existing political tensions, especially on land, socio-economic development and identity issues in the Oromo communities gathered around the city of Addis Ababa. The second is a violent security reaction that created a vicious circle of state repression. As usual, the government responded violently to protests, killed thousands, arrested and accused of terrorism many thousands of others. The desire to impose development projects from the above is another factor that partly explain the protests.

Before continuing, some context needs to be provided. Since 1991, the current regime in Ethiopia has been marked by recurrent violent incidents. Conflict with the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) from 1992 has been a continual feature for nearly three decades of EPRDF rule. For decades the OLF was outlawed and labelled a terrorist organisation. The 2005 elections, illustrative of state repression, left a legacy of trauma and pain: about 200 people were shot by security forces, and thousands were imprisoned. Yet for most of the period since the seizure of power, state repression remains largely ‘invisible’ to the outside world, except for well-informed observers, while international condemnation is rare. Ethiopia had long won this international acquiescence by becoming a key partner in the global war on terrorism, especially on the Somali front.

However, we need to look more deeply at the context of the Oromo protests to understand the significance. Several indicators point to a social explosion in Oromia region, even before 2014. For example, there were tensions between 2003-2004 on the transfer of the administrative capital of the Oromia region from Addis Ababa to Adama. After several protests over the political marginalization of Oromo, the late Prime Minister Meles Zenawi’s government decided to return the regional capital to Addis Ababa after losing all city council seats during the 2005 elections. Yet such actions failed to quell dissatisfaction.

On the contrary, the feeling of not benefiting from the fruits of development has increased with the disappointing promises of the so-called developmental state in the last decade. There is widespread disgruntlement against expropriations, repressions and corruption. Taking advantage of this growing discontent, Oromo activists in the diaspora began reuniting with young people at home, promoting nonviolent resistance to engage in advocacy and hold demonstrations against government policy particularly since 2009. This began in response to the absence of an organized Oromo group at a time, and a general frustration at the internal politics in the OLF.

Despite these problems, the movement of young activists developed rapidly, and within a few years they successfully established Oromo media houses in the diaspora and the creation of networks of Oromo activists at home. Thus, when the protests began in April 2014, it was relatively easy to mobilize young people, and concerns about the fate of farmers on land that the government wanted to transfer to Addis Ababa, for example, could be clearly articulated.

What actually happened?

At this point the protests were relatively small and student-led and limited to university campuses, though there were still many casualties among the students. The pre-election period in May 2015 prompted the government to suspend the city expansion project temporarily, which was due to resume immediately in the post-election period. On 12 November 2015, protests were resumed in Ginchi, a small town about 80 km southwest of Addis Ababa, because of the local authorities’ decision to remove forests and football field for an investment project. The Ginchi incident sparked protests that pulled the surrounding areas into a wider wave of action and spread into several other parts over the coming weeks and months.

By mid-February 2016 in the West Arsi area of Oromia, near the city of Shashamene, the federal police arrested a bus full of guests going to a wedding, they were playing Oromo songs in honor of brides and grooms. The police claimed there were Oromo activists on their way to ignite protests. The incidence prompted clashes between crowds of local farmers who gathered around the bus and the federal police. The police quickly used their weapons indiscriminately, causing multiple deaths and raising to the ground the nearby towns of Siraro, Shala and Shashamene. Police violence continued for nearly for a week. Led mainly by students from high schools and universities, further protests gained momentum quickly after they spread rapidly into more than 400 different locations throughout the Oromia region, students were now joined by farmers, government employees and other groups.

From the outset, the government accused the protest movement of infiltration by rebel groups, including the OLF. As we have seen the government long held that these groups were terrorist organizations supported by external forces such as Eritrea and Egypt. These kinds of label were actively used to discredit protesters and to justify the deployment of the Antiterrorist Task Force in the region, which was eventually deployed on December 15, 2015. Added to this was the surprising arrests of several moderate opposition leaders, such as Bekele Gerba and Merara Gudina of Oromo-Federalist Congress.

In 2016, there were two further important and symbolic victories for the movement. In May 2016, Oromo activists leaked Ethiopian national exams before the exam date. This incident, while sending a strong message that the Oromo protests were a grassroots mobilization, also seriously embarrassed the government which had claimed mass support for decades. There was another symbolically important moment later in the year. On August 21, 2016, the marathon runner Feyisa Lelisa crossed the finish line in Rio de Janeiro and immediately crossed his hands over his head, expressing his solidarity with the protest movement in Ethiopia. The athletes’ gesture cames directly from the nonviolent resistance movement that was organizing demonstrations across Oromia. Lelisa’s solidarity was important to Oromo and other oppressed people in Ethiopia and was a call to global public consciousness. Such incidents helped to galvanize popular protests in the country and solidarity action abroad.

Repression continues, protests intensify

As government repression intensified, activists effectively deploy Oromo’s resistance music to promote protests, represent their experiences of marginalization and resist official narratives. Activists established contacts with prominent Oromo musicians and provided them with the resources they need to travel around the country and abroad, as well as to organize concerts that brought together Oromos from all walks of life. Dozens of such resistance songs were released during the protest movement.

These musical events played a central role in providing alternative spaces for voicing Oromo issues, exploring concerns of unemployment, poverty and exclusion and clarifying the complex dilemmas facing the struggle for political freedom. Stages were effectively used to mobilize resources, build networks and organize people for nonviolent resistance. Without fear of exaggeration, Oromo music became the driving force of Oromo-nationalism, to protest the injustice and repression in Oromia.

Accordingly, Oromo protests continued and were relayed by the Oromo in the diaspora throughout 2016, peaking in October 2016 after a tragic event during the Irreecha celebration, the annual Oromo Thanksgiving festival in Bishoftu, a city fifty kilometers from the capital. A stampede at the festival, provoked by the security forces, killed dozens of people and fuelled public actions that caused the destruction of government institutions, including foreign companies they believe had exacerbated their suffering. A national state of emergency was declared on November 9, 2016, and government repression intensified, as federal military units were deployed throughout the Oromia region. A few months after declaring a state of emergency, the regime announced itself the winner, believing that the movement was dead.

However, despite the restrictions imposed by the state of emergency, in parallel there have been significant developments. First, the decrease in riots and protests led to an increase in political activity that prompted opposition movements to unite their forces against the regime. Second, since the beginning of 2017, many Oromo public figures have spoken out against a marked increase in attacks by paramilitary groups, including the Liyu police (a paramilitary militia). The growing attacks of the Liyu police were provoked by the Tigray People Liberation Front (TPLF), the leading party within the ruling EPRDF, helped spread conflicts between ethnic Somalis and Oromo, giving the military the excuse to further weaken protests. Third, despite the regime’s assertion that the state of emergency succeeded in suppressing Oromo protests, Oromo activists made a conscious decision to regroup and strategize for the next phase of the struggle.

Thus, despite the repressive tactics used by the regime against demonstrators, Oromo protest action managed to sustain itself and began to organize another wave of protests in August 2017. The economic boycott and the Stay at Home campaign was announced by Oromo activists on August 23, 2017. As planned, the campaign began on the scheduled day throughout Oromia. For three days, businesses in large and small towns, daily markets in rural villages and intercity transportation remain closed. Across the Oromia region the shut down and boycott was complete.

Failed concessions and a widening movement

As of January 2016, the authorities announced a series of corrective actions, including the removal of the Addis Ababa master plan, ministerial reshuffles at the federal and regional levels and the opening of discussions between the government and opposition parties. However, the appearance of these measures failed to reassure demonstrators. In addition to lost confidence, the withdrawal of the master plan was regarded as an attempt to conceal the lack of genuine concessions. Thus, the protests continued, taking advantage of a surge of new discontent — a serious disappointment over an illegal tax increase and the invasion of the Liyu police in Oromia, as we have seen.

The Oromia region was not the only region affected by a wave of popular protests. The persistence of Oromo protests in the face of the government’s harsh reaction inspired other regions to air their grievances, especially Amhara, where repeated tensions intensified from 2016. The tensions stemmed from a series of events that caused deep discontent. For example, repeated rumors about the transfer of border lands to Sudan were spread by opposition groups and the diaspora in the United States. There was also discontent at the fate of the Amhara people from other regions, where there were reports of harassment and forced displacement caused by TPLF ’militias’. The Ethiopian Satellite Television and Radio (ESAT), a Washington-based opposition television station, repeatedly aired these issues, presenting them as genocide against the Amhara people. In addition, the Wolqayt identity questions, suppressed in the Tigray region, similarly raised protests and violent reactions around Gondar in August 2016. Lastly, there is another question concerning the issue of identity by the Qemant people in the Amhara region, whose activists met with violent reactions from the authorities. Protests have spread in these two regions and more widely at the country level. Increasingly, we were witnessing a national movement.

Estimating the number of deaths of protesters across the regions from government repression is exceptionally difficult. However, while we cannot find an accurate figure, we can establish several facts. The protests were for an extended period, three years, during which repression, violence and murder were a feature from the start. As the scholar, Yohannes Woldemariam, has shown that the commissioner for human rights wanted access to investigate but this was denied. Yet mass graves are still being discovered. Woldemariam states, ‘One figure that was given in the last three months is 669. A gross underestimate in my view… another estimate of the death rate by Human Rights Watch is over 1000 deaths and tens of thousands detained.’ This is also likely to be a serious underestimate.

Understanding the protests

The large-scale movement in the Oromia region certainly took the name of Oromo protests, but the protesters were highlighting social and political injustice, unemployment, forced evictions, unequal representation, constitutional rights violations, marginalization, repression, undemocratic practices and corruption that impacted every Ethiopian. These are slogans that were chanted throughout the protests.

In addition, there is was a political event that played an important role in intensifying the crisis within the ruling party and to provoke the arrival of reformist Abiy Ahmed to the EPRDF’s helm. Over the years of Oromo protests, the voices calling for an historic alliance between Amhara and Oromo groups have grown louder. This appeal first appeared in a foreign country in July 2016 thanks to the rapprochement of two competing online TV channels based in the United States: the Oromo Media Network (OMN) and ESAT. The former is directed by Jawar Mohammed, who was a leading advocate of the Oromo protests, while the latter is founded by Amhara intellectual circles.

In Ethiopia, however, this call struggled to bear fruit, until solidarity demonstrations in August 2016 were held in the Amhara region to condemn violence in the Oromo region. Many expressions of solidarity were made at rallies, at one in the Amhara region it was stated that, ‘the blood flowing in Oromia is also our blood.’ Immediately this challenged the ruling party’s ‘divide and rule;’ tactics, pitting the Oromo and Amhara against one another.

In November 2017, the Oromo Democratic Party (ODP) reached out to Amhara Democratic Party (ADP) in a spirit of solidarity and cooperation that led to renewed hope of ‘expropriating’ power from the TPLF. However, the broader alliance established by ODP and ADP to wrestle power away from TPLF was tactical from the outset, and not strategically anchored on a shared political visions. Ethiopia’s political history shows the difficulties faced by the main elites of Oromo and Amhara to ally themselves durably. The regime has often tried to use ethnic and ideological cleavages to precipitate the fall of popular movements. It was the popular movements from below that provided the impetus for community solidarity.

These facts revealed the limitations of the EPRDF’s overall political project. The protests point not only to the patterns of governance that must be changed, but also to the highly indoctrinated EPRDF political project, which is anchored in revolutionary democracy and its organizational discipline of democratic centralism. EPRDF, which often relies on its seven million members, finally appears to be struggling: the Amhara branch (ADP) has begun to break away from the messianic doctrine of the ruling Front. Under these pressures, big political changes were about to take place. The EPRDF – and its principle anchor, the TPLF – faces the most serious challenge in its decades long struggle for political hegemony.

We can say categorically that without the conditions prepared by the protests the reform process that was embarked on in 2018 would have been unthinkable. As Woldemariam has explained, emboldened by the protests and the general climate of ungovernability, the constituent parts of the EPRDF, particularly the ADP and the ODP outmanoeuvred the TPLF in the selection process that saw the election of Abiy Ahmed.

Manoeuvres and reforms from above

On 15 February 2018, Hailemariam Desalegn, Ethiopia’s beleaguered prime minister, resigned hoping to facilitate an end to ‘unrest and political crisis’ in the country. A second state of emergency was also declared the day after Hailemariam’s resignation, mainly to subdue tensions within the EPRDF by placing the country under military control. The resignation was another concession to the popular protests that already created a rift between hardliners and soft-liners in the ruling coalition.

One of the most categorical achievements of the Oromo protests is the emergence of a faction known as Team Lemma, named after Oromia President Lemma Megerssa, and offering an alternative future for EPRDF and Ethiopia. The package included replacing the old guards with a new generation of leaders and including tthe reformist Abiy Ahmed. Once in place Prime Minister Abiy quickly moved in to convince people that real change was being made. Being the country’s first Oromo leader, the ethnic group at the centre of three years of anti-government protests, Abiy Ahmed was officially sworn in as the prime minster in parliament on April 2, last year. He was again almost unanimously re-elected as the head of the ruling coalition at the EPRDF Congress, held in Hawassa at the end of October 2018. His election saw the release of tens of thousands of political prisoners, including Bekele Gerba, the key figures of the Oromo protests and the abducted Briton Andargachev Tsege, who had been on death row.

Thus, having produced Team Lemma as its overall effect, the Oromo protests have since become, in the opinion of some commentators, a full-scale revolution that is increasingly triggering fundamental changes in the country. Abiy has initiated intense and inclusive discussions with members of the public inside and outside the country including members of the Ethiopian diaspora in North America and Europe and called on political parties in exile to return to their home and resolve differences through dialogue. Political prisoners have been released, armed groups decriminalized, massive human rights violations and torture practices by state security and police have been openly addressed. Reform of the judicial system and democratic institutions have begun, and women have been appointed to half the posts in Abiy’s new cabinet, he has also created a new ministry of peace to strengthen the momentum of his radical reform programme and boldly mobilized to build consensus on a common national agenda to help lay the foundation for a stable political culture.

As roape.net has already reported, the rapprochement between Ethiopia and Eritrea was unlikely until Abiy Ahmed came to power as a result of the popular protests. There is no doubt that the dawn of peace between Ethiopia and Eritrea will continue to serve as a catalyst for resolving the long-standing conflicts in the region and becomes an instrument for rectifying the diplomatic impasse. Eritrea seems to be moving towards improved relations with its neighbours, which have raised hopes for a more stable Horn of Africa. The open rejection of revolutionary democracy by ODP and ADP, much to the chagrin of the TPLF, is another sign that Ethiopia seems to be moving in a dramatic new direction. The success in this political ‘spring’ and the return of dissidents has created a completely new situation in the country. The prime minster seems to believe that elections are the basis of a democratic Ethiopia. The concrete step in this direction was the consultative meeting held on 27 November 2018, with the leaders of political parties. The discussions focused on the process of democratization, as well as the electoral reforms needed to ensure that the forthcoming elections are free and fair, enhance democratic space, ensure justice and the rule of law.

It can be assumed that the 2020 elections will lead to fierce competition between federalist and pan-Ethiopian groups that support and oppose the current federal structure, respectively. One of the risks facing the new prime minister is also the ways in which the basic contradiction between these two groups can be accommodated in his initiatives and future reform programs. Thus, the 2020 election will certainly be an unprecedented test for the new regime, but also a great success if it leads to a new form of fair electoral competition alongside the already established popularity.

We can say, without exaggeration, that the protests of the last three years erased the status quo and allowed the government of Abiy Ahmed to emerge, and embark on a project of serious political and democratic reform. However, despite the real hopes, there are still many systemic problems to be solved. First, there is an urgent need to organize rules for political engagement and participation. A clear political roadmap is needed to support the impressive measures that have been announced. Failure to build consensus on the rules of the game could threaten the regime’s survival. Second, the conflicts that occur here and there, if not dealt with properly, could turn into a threat to the existence of the Ethiopian state, giving way to possible political regionalism raising its head. Such a scenario has the a capacity to plunge the entire region into chaos.

I think that the collapse of the state amounts to committing collective suicide, and Oromo youths and others have a vested interest and moral responsibility in preventing such an outcome. As the majority, the Oromos do not lose anything from democracy taking root in Ethiopia, but they can end oppression and give young people the opportunity to play a key role in the region. This was revealed when protesters chanted for democratizing the system, creating an inclusive political community and making the country home to every Ethiopian, with jobs, rights and dignity for all.

Finally, the democratic transition that Ethiopia currently needs is a complex process, in which the interaction of social forces with organized politics will influences its trajectory and results. The transition requires the simultaneous destruction of the existing authoritarian structures and the construction of a new democratic order, based on popular participation and action.

Mebratu Kelecha is currently a Doctoral Researcher at the School of Politics and International Affairs, University of Westminster. He works on comparative religion, public policy federalism, democratization, and developmental states. Mebratu is a member of the editorial board of the Review of African Political Economy.

Featured Photograph: Protesters during a demonstration chanting against the unequal distribution of wealth in Ethiopia (Addis Ababa, August 6, 2016).

Call for Contributions

ROAPE

January 22, 2019

The revolutionary left in Sub-Saharan Africa (1960’s-1970’s): a political and social history to be written

Background

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

The Capitalist Game: Football in Africa

ROAPE

January 22, 2019

Adam Rodgers Johns explores the commercialisation of football in Africa. He argues that at the professional level the continent’s most popular sport provides us with fertile grounds for the analysis of capitalism in Africa.

By Adam Rodgers Johns

The trend towards the commercialisation of football is not limited to the most powerful and competitive leagues in Western Europe but affects all regions of the world, including Africa. In recent years, the commercialisation of elite level professional football has affected the world’s most popular sport at unprecedented levels – from ownership, sponsorship, ticket sales to TV licensing. There are numerous ways in which Africa is linked to the global business of football. For example, the huge popularity of European, specifically English football, has significant commercial implications in terms of broadcasting revenue, merchandise and gambling.

There are a number of examples from the African continent where there has been an attempt to create a commercial football culture. The commercialisation of football at the professional level is impacting the continent’s most popular sport in unexpected and largely unexplored ways. Following debates in this series on Capitalism in Africa, developments in football represents an example of the unstudied capitalist phenomena of Africa, and provides an opportunity to reverse this trend.

The adoption of new business models is changing how we think about the global game. For example, within six years of being founded by the Red Bull drinks company, RasenBallsport (RB) Leipzig had achieved the remarkable feat of obtaining six promotions in six years to reach Germany’s top ranking, finishing as runners-up and qualifying for the 2017–18 UEFA Champions League in their first season in the Bundesliga. The City Football Group (CFG), despite being only five years old, already owns six clubs on four continents and is rapidly becoming one of the most powerful forces in the world’s favourite sport.

Earlier this year the Rwandan state announced that it had signed a controversial ‘Visit Rwanda’ sleeve sponsorship deal with Arsenal FC in a deal reportedly worth £30 million. The expropriation of African players to European leagues represents another area where Africa has been fully integrated into the networks of global capitalist sport. Transfer fees continue to inflate exponentially; the Senegalese footballer Sadio Mane became the most expensive African football player in history when he signed to Liverpool in 2016 for a £35 million transfer fee.

There has been a steady rise in the football academy industry in Africa as European clubs attempt to capitalise on the business of player development. Several top European teams have academies in East Africa, such as Juventus in Nairobi and Barcelona in Rwanda and Uganda. Following structural adjustment in the 1980s there was a lack of investment in sport, and therefore these academies were generally welcomed.

However, there are also private, non-affiliated academies that expose young Africans to the greed of non-certified agents and convince them to sign exploitative contracts. This has been likened to a form of neo-colonial exploitation; the export of raw materials, in this case African football talent, for consumption and wealth generation in the European core. Recently it emerged that Manchester City has been illegitimately funding an academy in Ghana. Profiting from the business of player development is the stated intention of the City Football Group: ‘It’s like venture capital in that if you invest 10 million each in 10 players, you just need one to get to the top who is going to be worth 100 million’ Ferran Soriano, the Manchester City CEO is quoted as saying.

Evidently, in business terms (TV revenues, ticket sales, advertisement, club budget, players’ salaries, etc.), Africa as a region is to-date peripheral in global football. Scholar Paul Darby describes the peripheral relationship of African football to European football in terms of dependency and exploitation, evident in the transfer of African players to European leagues, and the mass spectatorship for European football. Nevertheless, domestic football remains extremely popular and occupies an important position in society.

Studying capitalism in Africa through the lens of commercial football provides fertile grounds for empirical analysis, for example in terms of merchandise, stadia development, privatisation of ownership, media and broadcasting, sponsorship, advertising, slogans, supporter behaviour (flags, songs, routines), players/supporters subjectivities and more. Analysing these areas allows us to explore the repercussions of the embedding of an ever more advanced spirit of commerce into previously less commercialised social realms. Moreover, football is a social realm with unparalleled levels of popularity and everyday engagement which provides further opportunity for investigation.

Studies of football in Africa have emphasised the political embeddedness of football in Africa and inferior financial resources as the main impediments to the development of football on the continent. Following this assessment, it has been suggested that the development of football in Africa necessitates the creation of the type of professional and commercial culture which surrounds European football. It is believed that the privatisation of domestic football clubs will lead to increasing levels of professionalism and a move away from (alleged) practices of political corruption in the football sector.

Several examples from East Africa exemplify this growing phenomenon. In Tanzania, football since independence has been synonymous with the rivalry between Simba FC and Yanga SC. These clubs are supporter-owned, relying on their supporters for funding, and have the support of the ruling independence political party, CCM (literally the Revolutionary Party). Following independence football was highlighted as an area of culture central to the project of nation building, leading to the national rivalry between Yanga and Simba.

However, the creation from scratch in 2007 of Azam FC by the Tanzanian corporation Bakhresa Group has disturbed this status-quo. Bakhresa Group are a multinational conglomerate whose products under their signature Azam brand span from marine transport to ice-cream, soft-drinks to television service provision. Azam FC’s motto – ‘Better team, better products’ – demonstrate their shameless marketing model.

Azam FC’s commercial model is praised by supporters and non-supporters alike as a positive move in the development of football in the country. For example, their vastly superior financial resources have enabled them to build their own stadium (whereas Simba and Yanga play their matches in the national stadium). They also run a training academy and can afford to buy players from overseas. This has enabled their rapid rise to challenge for the national title, at the time of writing, Azam FC sit at the top of the Tanzanian Premier League. This stark example makes clear the potential of commercially-driven football teams to embed themselves in local football scenes.

Followers of the English Premier League may be familiar with the sports betting platform SportPesa, which has links with Arsenal, Southampton and Hull. The brand was launched in Kenya and ‘pesa’ is the Kiswahili word for money. In 2016 SportPesa became the commercial partner of the Kenya Football Federation – they have the naming rights to the Kenyan Premier League and are the main sponsor of the two most popular football clubs in the country, Gor Mahia FC and AFC Leopards SC.

This commercial partnership has impacted the structure of football, whereby previously each club operated as a SACCO (Saving and Credit Cooperative Organisation) and was funded directly by the supporters. Evidently, this commercial sponsorship is also intrinsically linked to the controversy surrounding the rise in gambling in Africa, another example of capitalist social phenomenon embedding itself on the continent.

In Uganda it was recently announced that StarTimes – the Chinese media company and digital TV operator with close links to the Chinese government – would be taking over both the naming and broadcast rights of the Uganda Premier League, in a ten-year deal reportedly worth $7 million. This is generally understood as the biggest sponsorship deal in Ugandan football to date and demonstrates a further instance where the commercialisation of football in East Africa is linked to wider developments in the political-economy of the region, namely Chinese investment.

These examples illustrate the commercialisation of football in East Africa, and the significant impact this is having on local football scenes. As Jörg Wiegratz has argued in this series, there is a substantial lack of empirical analysis directly concerned with capitalist social phenomena in Africa. Therefore, empirical research is required into how commercial models of football get embedded into local environments, and the changes this brings at economic, socio-cultural, and political-economic levels. The increasing commercialisation of football in East Africa provides an opportunity to explore the emergence of these processes in practice.

Wiegratz and I have recently teamed up to develop research questions on the dynamics of the commercialisation of football in Eastern Africa. They include: to what extent has commercialisation affected the development of football in each country: i.e. led to increasing levels of professionalism, improved the quality of performance and overall spectator experience? How has this affected the popularity of domestic football in comparison to the massive interest in European football? Is there any evidence that football development at the domestic level leads to an improvement at the continental and international level?

How do these new models and economic visions breed new desires and practices of accumulation in terms of match attendance/television viewing numbers, consumption of official merchandise and related products etc? How do these new configurations create new social categories and tensions between the individual and collective, for example by disturbing the status-quo and disrupting engrained supporter allegiances?

Furthermore, what changes has commercialisation triggered, especially at the economic and socio-cultural level (relationships, practices, norms, values, attitudes, ideas, discourses)? How has commercialisation interacted with (and possibly altered) the political embeddedness (power structures, varying interests, political allegiances, etc.) of domestic football in each country?

There is a shortage of academic literature on football, despite the heterogeneous economic, political and cultural significance of the global game. Studies in popular culture have often stressed the unique potential of popular culture to reflect contemporary reality, and football represents one area which can be understood as having this potential. Ultimately the mass popularity of football provides important insights on what people themselves consider important in their lives, and therefore necessitates deep analysis.

This, combined with the analytical lacuna on capitalism in Africa, provides fertile grounds for innovative research. Empirical analysis of these processes will allow us to identify what the implanting of the commercialisation of football in East Africa can tell us about the broader phenomenon of capitalism in Africa generally.

Adam Rodgers Johns is a freelance writer and postgraduate student in African Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. He blogs here.

Race, Politics and Pan-Africanism

ROAPE

January 18, 2019

Mpumelelo Tshabalala discusses a symposium that marked the 60^th anniversary of the All Africa People’s Conference which was hosted at the University of London last month. The symposium created the space for reflection on the historical significance of the 1958 AAPC and on how it can be used to understand and shape where Africa is today. Tshabalala also raises some important questions about race and politics at the event.

By Mpumelelo Tshabalala

On Thursday, 6 December 2018 the All Africa People’s Conference’s (AAPC) 60-year commemorative event took place in one of Senate House Library’s grand, parliamentary styled rooms. The symposium was incredibly rich, evident in the effort made to set and comprehend the context of the original conference in 1958. Further to the presented content, accompanying the programme was a list of the AAPC’s delegates, fraternal delegates and observers, a 1958 map of the continent and information on the complimentary commemorative conference taking place in present day Ghana at the same time. The organisers had prioritized the inclusion of personal, narrative accounts of those present at the AAPC, so the list of speakers included three witnesses of the original event. Perhaps, most successfully, the symposium created the space for reflection on the historical significance of the 1958 AAPC and on how it can be used to understand and shape where Africa is today.

In a lot of ways this symposium felt historic – one such way was the opportunity to engage with living history. We were addressed by those with first-hand accounts of the AAPC. Zambia’s first President, Kenneth Kaunda recorded, two days prior, and shared a video link address in which his grey eyes looked tired but patient, and his frail hand waved a white handkerchief after each poignant sentiment.

Bereket Habte Selassie, present in 1958, described the experience of watching Kwame Nkrumah speak. He had since gone on to serve as Attorney General under Haile Selassie and took us through his decision to resign from the regime for reason of its imperialist policies. His nostalgic tone illustrated just how much the AAPC shaped his identity and contributed to his strong adherence to the principles of Pan-Africanism.

The celebrated Ghanaian writer, Cameron Duodu – who reported on the conference in 1958 – spoke with poetic cadence. He unpacked the ‘P’ in AAPC explaining that it was in fact a people’s conference and not a state conference as contrasted to the Conference of Independent African States held in Ghana earlier that year. He reminded us of the centrality of solidarity and unity as themes at the AAPC and the fact that these ideas rapidly led to the creation of the OAU. He brought into sharp focus the importance for Africans to overcome what another speaker had referred to as the continent’s global ‘humiliation’. Africans still need to be afforded the respect they deserve, the ‘right to manage and mismanage all their affairs.’ I was compelled to ululate after his address.

During the course of the morning, Dan Branch, Marika Sherwood and Leo Zeilig discussed the histories and influence of Tom Mboya (of Kenya’s trade union leadership), George Padmore (a Trinidadian activist) and Franz Fanon (the Martinique-born revolutionary) – individuals that had all participated in the AAPC.

The third session ‘Africa and the wider world’ was electric. Joseph Godson Amamoo delivered his views on ‘the African personality on the world stage’ – and it was the most interesting display of cognitive dissonance. It is jarring to watch an elder, black, African man incite tropes about Africans’ inability to rule – insinuating that Africa required the intervention of Western sponsored multinationals and the imposition of neo-liberal principles. During the question and answer session, two Black floor members rebutted his contribution. They spoke of the World Bank and IMF’s structural adjustment programmes, the de-industrialisation policies of colonialists, and France’s continued control of multiple francophone African countries’ economies. What was hard to see was Amamoo’s inability to concede the point – he maintained that Africa was not able to successfully self-govern.

Koffi de Lome was the youngest of the speakers on the panel and he articulated an interesting youth perspective under the heading ‘the resonance of the AAPC for Africa today – African lives matter’, leading me to question him on two issues from the floor.

I commented on what I regarded as the judgmental tone regarding where he feels the continent should be. He certainly painted the picture that the previous generation had not done enough to fulfill the hopes of the AAPC. I challenged him to contextualize this disappointment. I appealed to generosity in our judgment of previous generations. To reinforce this point, African ‘ethnic’ and ‘tribal violence’ is a mirror to the West’s fascism and xenophobia. Africa’s ‘corruption’, ‘neo-paternalism’ and ‘clientelism’ is matched by the West’s lack of transparency regarding political party funding. African leaders are, like most, susceptible to the corruption of power. Monolithic narratives describing the continent as a violent, corrupt, chaotic place are enacted to perpetuate racist double standards about which countries are viewed as ‘adults’ and which countries are treated as ‘infants’ within the global family.

My second point was to problematize Koffi’s belief that the discussion of race should not form a focus of Pan-Africanism. Demolishing divisions has to begin with a process of naming such divides. Having the language to discuss the way in which we allow our societies to be shaped by these entrenched divisions is essential if we are to deconstruct them. Thinking that we are a post-race generation is to completely underestimate the scope of race-based colonial domination. It should not soon be forgotten that it was colonialism that introduced meaning to skin color, and then used it to justify the forced kidnapping, murder and unethical medical experimentation on black bodies and the expropriation of their land. These actions structurally deformed our societies. Merely obliterating the use of racialized terms will not address the fact that these abuses have multiplied over the years and created structural inequality that is racialized within, among and between countries.

Overall, the list of symposium speakers was overwhelmingly male. The two female speakers were both white. While the participants were predominantly comprised of older white men. Sherwood was the only panelist I heard refer to a black woman’s contributions to Pan-Africanism – Amy Ashwood Garvey. As the day progressed the panels (and attendees) got progressively darker and younger in their composition and the focus of discussion shifted to how we ought to understand our past, Pan-Africanism and the influence that the AAPC has had on both.

I valued Zeilig’s presentation of an ‘unplugged’ Fanon. His talk ‘Franz Fanon: The Debate Over Violence versus Non-Violence’ cited some of Fanon’s speeches which called for individuals to take up arms. Zeilig’s presentation was also symbolically important. Watching a white man endorsing Black people’s agency to be violent runs contrary to my experiences at similar symposiums. More commonly white speakers discussing Black lives seldom choose to focus on white people’s responsibility to eradicate the racist structures from which they benefit. Zeilig was directed in a question by a white, female participant about the role non-violence should play in Black lives. I then asked him, almost in answer, about the role that white allies should play in encouraging their counterparts to stop paternalistically disrespecting Black people’s agency to engage in violence.

As a South African, I found Salem Mezhoud’s presentation on ‘Arabness’ and its relationship to ‘Africanness’ enlightening. During his session, he attempted to unpack Morocco’s precarious relationship with the notion of Africanness by looking at its associations with the OAU, EU, AU and ECOWAS. It was a provocative contrast of identity creation and race-making in North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa and exposed the ramifications of these processes.

The question that continues to linger for me is whether Pan-Africanism is inherently an idea that originated in the diaspora and among elites with international experience and exposure? Most speakers at the symposium appeared to assume that Pan-Africanism had not been previously conceived of or aspired to prior to WEB Du Bois’ coining of the term. I tend to think otherwise. I wonder to what extent this assumption is informed by the tendency to focus on recorded Western history.

Mpumelelo ‘Mpumi’ Tshabalala – is currently pursuing her MSc at the School of Oriental and African Studies in African Politics. She is an attorney by profession and the founder of Mpumelelo Yesizwe Legal Consulting a South African consultancy advising on how areas of law can be used to transform African societies.

Featured Photograph: the map of the African continent from 1958 distributed to participants of the symposium in December.

A New Generation of Popular Protest in Zimbabwe

ROAPE

January 15, 2019

In this blogpost Farai Chipato addresses the emergence of a new range of social movements in Zimbabwe over the past five years, their achievements in resisting the ruling party and the prospects that these groups could provide long-term radical social and economic change.

By Farai Chipato

Over the past five years, Zimbabwe has been seized by a series of interlocking crises, from economic stagnation, to a military coup, and a contested presidential election. In 2013, ZANU-PF, the country’s ruling party won a surprise landslide victory, ushering in President Robert Mugabe to his fifth term in office. The win allowed the ruling party to shake off its erstwhile coalition partners, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), and consolidate its grip on power, after five years of a unity government that had seen grudging co-operation from the former rivals.

ZANU-PF’s return to uncontested power saw Zimbabwe falling back into the economic stagnation and political repression that had preceded the coalition government, dashing the hopes of opposition supporters and civil society activists committed to social and economic change. The election loss was the latest defeat in a long running struggle by the opposition, creating a sense of fatigue among pro-democracy activists and their international funders. Zimbabwe’s trade unions, heirs to a long and distinguished legacy of labour activism, had been decimated by years of economic hardship, leaving them weak and unable to mount a sustained challenge to the newly invigorated government.

It was against the backdrop of this exhaustion of opposition politics that a new group of social movements emerged to challenge the government. These movements broke away from the established NGO-based approach of prominent civil society organisation, by appealing to disaffected urban youth, creating three major upsurges in activism between 2013 and 2018.

Occupy Africa Unity Square

The first of the new wave of protests was ignited by the work of Itai Dzamara, a young journalist in the capital, Harare, whose lone protest in 2014 quickly expanded into an influential movement. Dzamara was driven by frustration with Zimbabwe’s economic decline and politically repressive government, which had left his generation in a state of perpetual insecurity. His disarmingly simple method, standing in Harare’s Africa Unity Square holding a placard reading ‘Failed Mugabe must go’, soon attracted attention from other disaffected young Zimbabweans, who joined in his regular protests. The movement was dubbed Occupy Africa Unity Square (OAUS), drawing inspiration from the protests that spread across the West after 2011.

The tenacity of this new, youthful generation of activists in the repressive environment post-2013 helped to raise the profile of their protests in central Harare, as they weathered harassment, violence and arrests from police and security agents attempting to disrupt their activities. Dzamara’s personal delivery of a petition to the president’s office in October 2014, calling for Mugabe’s resignation, further raised his profile, as did his subsequent detention and interrogation, along with two other activists.

As the OAUS began to organise rallies, punctuated by fiery speeches from its charismatic leaders, Dzamara was increasingly viewed as a threat to the ruling ZANU-PF, who were concerned with an Arab spring style uprising by an increasingly militant youth movement. The government became further alarmed when the movement started making connections with more established civil society organisations and the main opposition. In March 2015, Dzamara spoke at a major MDC rally, once again calling for Mugabe to go, and promising further action against ZANU-PF. Days later he was abducted in his local neighbourhood by government agents, with his whereabouts is still unknown as of 2019.

Whilst OAUS continued their protests into 2016, led by activist Dirk Frey and Itai Dzamara’s brother Patson, the momentum behind the wider movement stalled without its original leader and the opportunity to unite opposition forces was lost. However, the Dzamara’s disappearance attracted international attention, and generated outrage within Zimbabwe, continuing to inspire activists in his own movement, and more broadly.

The Hashtag movements

In April 2016, a second wave of protest activity emerged around a new figure, Pastor Evan Mawarire, a Pentecostal preacher who caused a social media stir by posting a video of himself, wrapped in the Zimbabwean flag, passionately voicing his frustrations with the state of the country. As the video went viral, Mawarire quickly became a leading voice of opposition to the government, as other young Zimbabweans on social media followed his lead in the #ThisFlag movement. The pastor soon faced police harassment and charges of inciting violence but continued to co-ordinate with other activists in calling for protests. In June 2016, 15 OAUS activists were arrested at another of their signature demonstrations, whilst a new movement, #Tajamuka/Sesjikile staged a protest at the Rainbow Towers Hotel in Harare, where the Vice President Phelekezela Mphoko had been living at tax payers’ expense since December 2014. The protest was led by former MDC politician Promise Mkwananzi, now an informal sector activist, and Sten Zvorwadza, of the National Union of Vendors Associations (NAVUZ), a combative advocate for informal workers.

The atmosphere of rebellion was compounded in late June, when riots broke out at Beitbridge on the South African border, as the government issued a blanket ban on all imported goods crossing into Zimbabwe. While the government relaxed the regulations somewhat in the face of the protests, activists continued to demonstrate, culminating in the torching of a customs warehouse in July 2016, as protestors fought running battles with riot police. The wave of protests, both in Harare and nationally, came to a head on 6 July, with a mass stay away, which left the streets of the capital empty. The protest was publicised by activists from #ThisFlag, #Tajamuka, and OAUS, with co-ordination and promotion through social media, particularly WhatsApp, Facebook, and Twitter.

Whilst a follow up protest was less successful, demonstrations were re-ignited in August, with the introduction of bond notes, a government issued currency that was intended to ease the shortage of US dollars, but which was seen as a return to the discredited Zimbabwean dollar, which had been abandoned due to hyper-inflation in 2008. Several protests went ahead over August, organised by groups like #Tajamuka, with demonstrators clashing with police, who used tear gas, batons and water cannons to quell the crowds.

Meanwhile, Mawarire’s legal troubles continued, and on 12 July he handed himself in to the police, to be charged with inciting public violence and disturbing the peace. While the charge was soon dismissed, direct condemnations followed from President Mugabe, and Mawarire decided to leave Zimbabwe for the USA, for his own safety, taking him out action until his return in February 2017. The movements were deprived of another influential leader, and the protests had failed to move the government on the bond notes issue. By early 2017, momentum had once again stalled.

The Coup that was not a Coup

The final set of protests was initiated by divisions within the ruling party but drew on the existing social movements and the energies that were unleashed in previous demonstrations. In November 2017, internal divisions in the ZANU-PF government came to a head, leading to the dismissal of Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa, whose faction had been at odds with an ascendant grouping around Robert Mugabe’s wife, Grace.

This precipitated a military coup by senior soldiers, who, alarmed by Grace Mugabe’s rise, sought to remove her husband. However, despite the successful detention and exile of Mugabe-loyalists by the military action, the president refused to resign, leaving the military awkwardly searching for a legal route to remove him without drawing international condemnation. Long-time opponents of Mugabe in Zimbabwe and the international community held back from criticising the coup, preferring a newly coined euphemism, ‘military assisted transition.’ On Saturday 18 November, a range of protest groups came together with ZANU-PF aligned war veterans to organise mass demonstrations in Harare and across the country, calling for Mugabe to go.

Zimbabweans turned out for the protests on an unprecedented scale, united across party divisions in the desire for change. Activists from the hashtag movements and OAUS helped to mobilise the youth through social media and led contingents during the event, which took on a joyful, irreverent, atmosphere, as an outpouring of frustrations over economic decline, corruption and mismanagement was vented in the streets. Protestors embraced the armed forces as heroes, as pictures were spread across the globe of triumphant Zimbabweans cheering tanks and congratulating soldiers. When Mugabe stepped down days later, the protests were seen as a defining moment in the political transition, as Emmerson Mnangagwa was sworn in as the new president.

Distinguishing the new social movements

The new social movements may have been inspired by a long legacy of activism in Zimbabwe, but they were marked out by some crucial differences from established organisations in civil society. One of the key factors for the movements was their youth focus. Young people represent an increasing proportion of Zimbabwe’s population, with the majority now subsisting through work in the informal sector. Whilst Zimbabwe has a relatively high proportion of university graduates, the lack of available employment has meant that many well-educated young people are either unemployed or under-employed, often left struggling to survive in the informal sector of the country’s major cities. It is these disaffected youth, along with militant student activists, who formed the core constituency of new social movements, rather than the professionals, intellectuals and trade unionists who were the driving force behind previous resistance movements in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

A second important factor was the use of social media in disseminating information, connecting activists and mobilising protestors. Young, urban Zimbabweans are increasingly connected to online communities, that allow them to converse freely without gathering for risky political meetings. Facebook is now one of the most popular forums for debate and many Zimbabweans are connected to a series of WhatsApp groups. Whilst Twitter is still a relatively elite space, it has seen significant debate, with key figures in the government, opposition and civil society engaging in conversations and often rancorous disagreement. The ability to share information widely through social media has allowed activists with little or no organisational structure to effectively mobilise significant numbers of demonstrators for actions, and spread their message beyond their immediate locality, capturing a national audience.

The increasing prominence of young women as leaders in social movements is another feature that has been noted in the post 2013-era. Whilst the most prominent activists, like Dzamara and Mawarire are men, as the movements grew, female activists played a greater role. Fadzayi Mahere, a young lawyer and activist, became one of the main voices of #ThisFlag due to her campaigning on social media, as well as her interviews with political figures that were broadcast on Facebook Live. Meanwhile, Linda Masarira of the OAUS and #Tajamuka became a powerful presence in street protests and was arrested and held in remand for several months on criminal charges, due to her participation in protest. Both Mahere and Masarira participated in the November 2017 protests, helping to mobilise their social media followers, and later announced their intention to run for parliament in the July 2018 elections.

The final important aspect of the new movements is their amorphous and structureless nature. The boundaries between movements are generally porous, as many activists simultaneously worked with several movements at once. As many of the moments were loosely convened over social media. #ThisFlag, for instance, has a huge social media reach, but is still relatively small in terms of staff. Charismatic leaders may create several organisations, moving between them, or leaving them dormant when new opportunities arise. This fluidity makes it difficult to keep track of these movements, and for them to attract funding, either from major donors or smaller philanthropists. Indeed, a key element of the success of these movements has been their refusal to conform to the professionalised structures and behaviours of traditional NGOs, instead presenting themselves as a new, unruly forced for change.

The social movements since the Coup

Having assisted in the removal of Robert Mugabe in November 2018, the new social movements, and more traditional civil society organisations benefited from the opening up of civic space by the new president. Between his inauguration and the July 2018 presidential and parliamentary elections, Mnangagwa pursued a strategy of international re-engagement, promising democratic reforms, the reduction of corruption, and proclaiming the country ‘open for business’ to entice international investors. In the run up to the elections, social movements sought to mobilise the populace to register as voters, and forged new alliances, exemplified by the Citizens Convention, an activist conference held days before the election to launch a new ‘Citizens Manifesto’, endorsed by a coalition of broadly progressive social movements.

However, the cautious optimism of the election campaign gave soon gave way, as Mnangagwa won a narrow victory against his MDC opponent, the popular Nelson Chamisa, amid charges of vote rigging, and questionable pronouncements from the government’s election commission. As protests broke out due to the delay in the announcement of the final results, the government unleashed the army to snuff out resistance, leading to several deaths in the ensuing violence.

Thus, despite the success of the new social movements in mobilising resistance prior to the elections, it remains unclear whether they can sustain their vitality and achieve real social change in the long term. It is important to note that the most successful action taken by the social movements, the removal of Robert Mugabe as president, was actually a protest in support of a military coup. The November demonstrations were the result of a faction within the ZANU-PF drawing on popular antipathy to Mugabe to resolve an intra-party dispute. Moreover, the new President, Emmerson Mnangagwa, has presided over a government that has overseen worsening economic conditions, an increasing militarisation of the state and an upsurge in repression of popular protest, following the July 2018 elections.

The impact of social movements across the political landscape more broadly is also mixed. Sten Zvorwadza and his vendors movement NAVUZ, once staunch opponents of the ruling party, have been co-opted into the new Mnangagwa government, remaining suspiciously silent during reprisals against informal traders following the July election. Meanwhile, leaders of the hashtag movements who attempted to transform their activist credentials into votes have been conspicuously unsuccessful. In May 2018, Evan Mawarire launched a campaign for the local council in Harare, as part of an alliance of independent candidates dubbed POVO, which included other prominent activists from the hashtag movements. However, Mawarire’s fame proved incapable of challenging established support for the main political parties, as none of the POVO candidates managed to win their respective seats. Fadzayi Mahere also pursued an independent candidacy, challenging for an MP’s seat in the Mount Pleasant suburb of Harare. Despite a sustained social media campaign, a highly professional manifesto, and high-profile activities in the community, Mahere was also defeated by her relatively unknown MDC challenger.

One of the key figures to emerge out of OAUS, Patson Dzamara, used his prominence to campaign for the opposition MDC Alliance presidential candidate Nelson Chamisa, who conducted a powerful and highly personal campaign against the president, based around his magnetic rally speeches. Chamisa proved popular, although he was unable to unseat Mnangagwa, and Dzamara was effectively absorbed into the MDC party, rather than offering a new direction for opposition politics.

The future of protest in Zimbabwe

In the aftermath of the July 2018 elections, the energy around social movements has dissipated somewhat, to be replaced by a renewed energy from the trade union movement. In October 2018, several leaders of the Zimbabwe Trade Union Congress (ZCTU) were arrested in a protest against a new tax on electronic financial transactions, creating a rallying point for resistance to the new government. By December, public sector unions were renewing protests from earlier in the year, demanding improved pay and conditions, as doctors went on strike, and the Amalgamated Rural Teachers Union of Zimbabwe (ARTUZ) staged a high-profile protest march from the city of Mutare, to the capital, Harare, continually dogged by police harassment.

What is clear is that as yet there has been little more than cosmetic change from the ZANU-PF government. At the same time, resistance to the ruling party remains fragmented, unable to coalesce into an effective opposition force. However, the renewed vitality of the trade union movement, together with the continuing low-key work of many of the new activists may provide the seeds for a future push that delivers real social and economic transformation in Zimbabwe.

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

Featured Photograph: Farai Chipato’s photograph of Kofi Annan addressing the National Citizens Convention in Harare on 19 July 2018.

The Revolutionary Legacy of Walter Rodney

ROAPE

January 8, 2019

Walter Rodney’s How Europe Underdeveloped Africa is a masterpiece. In this review of the new edition of the book by Verso, Andy Higginbottom celebrates a classic that has lost none of its power. The book brings together in a broad narrative the history of the African continent from a perspective that is at one and the same time Pan-Africanist and Marxist. For all of those interested in Africa’s history and future, the book must be studied once more.

Review of Walter Rodney (2018) How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (London/New York: Verso)

By Andy Higginbottom

This book is a masterpiece. Walter Rodney wrote How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (HEUA) in his late twenties while a lecturer at the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The book brings together in a broad narrative the history of the African continent from a perspective that is at one and the same time Pan Africanist and Marxist. Moreover, it is an original contribution to what was known as the dependency school emanating from Latin America. [1]

The re-edition of HEUA by Verso is to be fully welcomed. As well as the Introduction to the 1982 edition, written shortly after Rodney’s murder, the new edition carries a short and inspiring Foreword by Angela Davis, which sets the scene well in stating that none of the fundamental problems addressed by Rodney have been resolved. One of these threads, Davis notes, is how the condition of African labouring women, as well as men, was pushed down by colonialism. Davis rightly calls on the readership to pick up and ‘deepen Walter Rodney’s legacy’. Let us now review that legacy.

HEUA takes forward the Marxist theory of dependency and underdevelopment from a Pan Africanist perspective. It is a sign of the range and depth of HEUA that there are at least three major debates that it enjoins with various historians, all apologists for European imperialism. The first debate concerns the specific destructive awfulness of the European slave trade. The second debate is over whether Europe benefitted economically from the late nineteenth century ‘Scramble for Africa’ and the colonial regimes that were installed. The third debate concerns the intersection of race and class, the position of the African working poor and the nature of their exploitation under the European colonial regimes. In this review I will identify some of Rodney’s protagonists and the arguments in these debates because of their continuing ideological significance.

As characterises all of Rodney’s writing, the structure of HEUA is clear and methodical. Chapter 1 is a paradigm statement which asks, ‘what is development?’ and ‘what is underdevelopment?’[2] In responding, Rodney outlines his main argument: that Africa’s poverty and underdevelopment are not due to any intrinsic social or biological attributes of Africans but arise from systemic predatory external relations that have in turn become internalised. Whilst some of the specific mechanisms changed, the book’s central message is that for centuries European capitalist imperialism exploited Africa.

Chapters 2 and 3 look at African history up to and then after the arrival of the European slave trade, respectively. Here Rodney counteracts the then emerging orthodoxy (especially of English establishment academia) which tended to minimise the novelty, extent and sheer destructiveness of European slavery for Africa’s development.

Africa’s own history up to the 15^th century was remarkably varied and Rodney charts this in overview and then surveys the internal dynamics of several societies. In his conclusion to this chapter Rodney returns to the concept of development, which he sees as normally arising from the ‘slow imperceptible expansion in social productive capacity ultimately amounted to a qualitative difference, with the arrival at the new stage sometimes being announced by social violence’ (p. 82). His assessment is that in the fifteenth century by and large African societies were still generally characterised by communalism, and only exceptionally had they entered into a degree of class differentiation similar to feudalism in Europe, as in Egypt and Ethiopia.

Of importance for the ideological arguments to come, Rodney further emphasises that while forms of enslavement existed in the pre-European slave trade period, care should be taken as the same term is applied to quite different processes, he analyses their character as specific forms of social oppression that were qualitatively different from what was to come. He summarises ‘slavery as a mode of production was not present in any African society, although some slaves were to be found where the decomposition of communal equality had gone furthest’(p. 82). Here Rodney makes a methodological point that Africa’s history has to be studied both in its own right as well as in comparison to Europe and other parts of the world.

Although Rodney is only occasionally explicit in his text, this is the first big debate against which his synthetic interpretation is positioned.[3] In 1969 historian J. D. Fage wrote that slavery was endemic in Africa before the 15th century and moreover that trade was stimulated by the coastal groups of Africans who willingly cooperated with the Europeans, and benefitted by kidnapping from Africa’s interior.[4] Fage concluded that the European slave trade ‘was essentially only one aspect of a very wide process of economic and political development and social change in West Africa’ (1969, p. 404). There was a connected discussion on the number of captured Africans. The academic consensus, based on counting the arrivals in the Americas, centring on around 11 million. Basing his argument on this data, Fage continues:

…the volume and distribution of the export slave trade do not suggest that the loss of population and other effects of the export of labour to the Americas need have had universally damaging effects on the development of West Africa. Rather, it is suggested, West African rulers and merchants reacted to the demand with economic reasoning, and used it to strengthen streams of economic and political development that were already current before the Atlantic slave trade began (1969, p. 404).

Against this benign view sanitising European destruction, Rodney writes in terms resonant today:

In one sense, it is preferable to ignore such rubbish and isolate our youth from its insults; but unfortunately one of the aspects of current African underdevelopment is that the capitalist publishers and bourgeois scholars dominate the scene and help mould opinions the world over. It is for that reason that writing of the type which justifies the trade in slaves has to be exposed as racist bourgeois propaganda, having no connection with reality or logic. It is a question not merely of history but of present day liberation struggle in Africa (p. 117).

Chapter 4 is the central pivot of the book. Its earlier sections are about the impact of European slavery and can be seen as a chapter in its own right. Rodney’s point is that the European slave trade was both hugely beneficial to Europe and a basic factor in African underdevelopment. In terms of the huge impulse to capitalism that slavery and the slave trade brought, Rodney refers approvingly to the classic of Eric Williams arguing their significance in fuelling the industrial revolution in England.[5] Rodney agrees with another Williams thesis, that African were enslaved ‘for economic reasons, so that their labor power could be exploited’ (p. 103).

The extreme destruction of the European slave trade went beyond the numbers of young African men and women who ended up in the Americas, because the process of their capture generated continuing wars between collaborators and resisters across West Africa and parts of Central and Southern Africa. Rodney also argues that European slaveholder interest was behind the ‘East African Slave Trade’ (p. 109). He shows that whilst the populations of Europe and Asia more than doubled between 1650 and 1850, there was no increase at all in Africa during the two centuries when the trade was its height. The population lost was ten times greater than the 11 million normally cited. Thus, due to slavery, Europe’s expansion sucked the life force of Africans, its success was based on the destruction and distortion of Africa’s development for centuries, even before its further subordination under colonial rule.

Further into Chapter 4 Rodney explains the mid nineteenth century interregnum between Britain ending slavery in its colonies (in 1834) and the ‘Scramble for Africa’ that reached its apogee in the Berlin Conference 1884/5 which decided how the continent would be fully divided up between the rival West European powers. Following a similar approach to that in Chapter 2, Rodney again provides several detailed accounts of different regions, explaining how they fitted into a complex pattern of politico-military developments beset with technological and economic stagnation. This review cannot do justice to the wealth of insight in the detailed studies, as we are sticking with the broader contours of Rodney’s argument.

‘The Coming of Imperialism and Colonialism’ is a key section that takes us into the second major debate. Rodney argues against the ‘curious interpretation of the Scramble and African partition which virtually amounts to saying that colonialism came about because of Africa’s needs rather than those of Europe’ (p. 164). Rodney’s account of colonialism is completely opposed to the orthodoxy of British establishment ‘Oxbridge’ historians such as D.K. Fieldhouse who, he argues, ‘proclaim that colonialism was not essentially economic, and that the colonisers did not gain’ (p.363). In Chapter 5 Rodney explains the many ways that colonisation of Africa contributed to the development of capitalism in Europe. There are many illustrative details, he gives the example of Anglo-Dutch conglomerate Unilever as ‘a major beneficiary of African exploitation’ . Fieldhouse’s later works can be read as an extended response to Rodney’s underdevelopment paradigm. Fieldhouse went on to write:

Unfortunately for the record of colonialism it often proved necessary to use methods unacceptable to humanitarians, then and later, to persuade Africans and some other indigenous peoples to undertake regular work or to produce for the market (1983, p. 73)[6]

Much more unfortunate for the Africans and those other peoples who had ‘unacceptable methods’ i.e. systematic violence, forced upon them! The persistence of English apology for empire as typified by Fieldhouse (one can find all too many examples today) is all the more reason to bring Rodney’s African anti-imperialist history back centre stage.

Chapter 6 of HEUA critically evaluates the supposed benefits of colonialism for Africans. Here Rodney tackles the big myths, that at least the Europeans built railways, schools and the like. He brings out that in one field after another, most especially in education, how colonialism underdeveloped Africa. Rodney argues that colonial education’s promotion of individualism was particularly destructive. There were some minor facilities post 1945 as European colonial powers entered the end game of their rule, and sought to encourage loyalty amongst some sections of the occupied populations, but having weighed these claims the overall evaluation ‘it would be an act of the most brazen fraud to weigh the paltry social amenities provided during the colonial epoch against the exploitation, and to arrive at the conclusion that the good outweighed the bad’ (p. 246). Even more categorically, ‘the only positive development in colonialism was when it ended’ (p. 320).

Rodney’s book stands out because it provides us with an integrated history of Africa from the standpoint of the dependency/underdevelopment paradigm, which is that capitalism and imperialism are ‘an integral system involving the transfer of funds and other benefits from colonies to metropoles’ (p. 362). Beyond the notion of transfer, Rodney’s history is an example of the Marxist theory of dependency, in that he analyses the class relations involved, that takes us on to the original source of the transferred funds, African labour in different forms of exploitation, from peasant producers to migrant labour.

Rodney had a great sense of how the working poor of Africa suffered under slavery and colonialism. ‘Capitalists under colonialism did not pay for an African to maintain himself and family.’ (p. 265) One of HEUA’s virtues is that it consistently expresses a class standpoint, connecting national oppression with the specific modes of labour exploitation. ‘By any standards, labour was cheap in Africa, and the amount of surplus extracted from the African labourer was great. The employer under colonialism paid an extremely small wage – a wage usually insufficient to keep the worker physically alive – and, therefore, he had to grow food to survive’ (p.172). Perhaps under the influence of Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy, [7] Rodney uses the term ‘surplus’, whereas it is clear from the context that what is meant is ‘surplus-value’, as Marx defined the concept. Taking from Marx cotton spinning as the example, Rodney draws attention to ‘the labour that went into growing the raw cotton’ and observes that ‘from an African viewpoint, the first conclusion to be drawn is that the peasant working on African soil was being exploited by the industrialist who used African raw material in Europe or America. Secondly, it is necessary to realise that the African contribution of unskilled labour was valued far less than the European contribution of skilled labour’ (p. 266).

Leaving aside for now that the African labourer was also skilled, Rodney argues that their much lower reward (‘valued far less’) was not due to the playing out of free market forces, but the result of repressive ‘monopolistic domination’ by the colonial state. Rodney repeatedly reminds us that although in the same system, the colonial face of capitalism was distinct from its metropolitan face, where at least ‘the rise of the bourgeois class indirectly benefitted the working classes, through promoting technology and raising the standard of living.’ By contrast, ‘in Africa, colonialism did not bring those benefits, it merely intensified the rate of exploitation of African labour and continued to export the surplus’ (p. 312).

In his critical review of HEUA, the South African historian and Trotskyist Martin Leggasick commented that of the work’s ‘limitations and deficiencies’, the most significant ‘is the manner in which its Marxism is at crucial points overtaken by its African nationalism’ and, to reinforce the point, ‘even the title has this implication’ (1976, p. 436).[8] Legassick challenged the wider conceptual framework ‘of the “development-underdevelopment” paradigm’; and was particularly concerned to deny that African workers were more exploited than European workers, whose ‘higher living standards may well be associated with a higher technical rate of exploitation is essential to any systematic understanding of Marx’s analysis’ (p. 436). The reason Legassick gave for European workers getting higher pay is their presumed higher productivity because of working with machines, and hence producing more ‘relative surplus value’. This one sided reading of Capital is the hallmark of Eurocentric Marxism and marks the terrain of the third debate around HEUA, which remains ongoing. Legassick is typical of the Eurocentric Marxist school in his further claim that Rodney is overly concerned with the transfer of surplus from Africa to Europe and is not concerned with the class relations of the production of that surplus, which is blatantly inaccurate. Rodney shows that ‘wages paid to workers in Europe and North America were much higher than wages paid to African workers in comparable categories’ (p. 177, emphasis added). He reports disparities of between four and up to even thirty times, that ‘illustrate how much greater was the rate of exploitation of African workers’ (p. 177). This third debate is vital in considering the continuities of international exploitation as Africa moved out of colonial occupation, to formally independent states where nonetheless mechanisms of underdevelopment and brutal exploitation of African labour continue to operate.

If, as Rodney wrote in 1972, colonialism in Africa had ended, what came after? A.M. Babu’s postscript gives important pointers to the actuality of the problem. In HEUA Rodney laid a thorough historical basis for the study of neo-colonialism in Africa, without itself yet being that study. Rodney’s own life was cut short, he was assassinated in 1980 because he was fighting on the frontline of struggle against neo-colonial capitalism in his home country Guyana. Nonetheless Rodney’s various writings on neo-colonialism are a further strand in his tremendous legacy, and part of the collective consciousness with his contemporaries committed to revolution in Africa, which requires a separate commentary.

HEUA stands on its own as a considerable achievement whose core arguments and debates deserve to be studied carefully by all interested in African liberation, and most especially the upcoming generation for whom it provides an outstanding example of committed revolutionary scholarship.

Andy Higginbottom is an Associate Professor at Kingston University, London. He is involved in solidarity groups supporting social movements in Colombia, South Africa and Tamil Eelam.

Featured Photograph: Verso Blog on ‘Walter Rodney and the Question of Power’ by CLR James.

References

[1] I would like to thank all the students at Kingston University who have worked with me in studying this text.

[2] Between the 1972 first edition by Bogle L’Ouverture and the 1982 Howard University edition, which is followed closely by this Verso edition, the italicisation of certain words for emphasis by the author has been lost in Chapter 1. This would be no more than a quibble except that some of these lost italics occur at key points of the overview argument that Rodney emphasises (see new edition p. 16). It is to be hoped that if there is a reprint by Verso these italics are recovered.

[3] Rodney is almost certainly referring to works by D. Mannix and M. Cowley (1963) Black Cargoes, a History of the Atlantic Slave Trade New York: Viking Press subsequently republished as a Penguin Classic (2002); and especially J. D. Fage (1959) Introduction to the History of West Africa Cambridge: Cambridge University Press which Rodney critiqued in in his 1966 article ‘African slavery and other forms of social oppression on the Upper Guinea Coast in the context of the Atlantic Slave-trade’ Journal of African History, 7 (3), pp. 431-443. This article was part of Rodney’s PhD thesis that was published in 1970 as A History of the Upper Guinea Coast: 1545-1800 New York: Monthly Review Press.

[4] Fage, J.D. (1969) ‘Slavery and the Slave Trade in the Context of West African History’ The Journal of African History, 10(3), pp. 393-404

[5] Williams, Eric (1994) Capitalism and Slavery. 2^nd edition. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press

[6] Fieldhouse, D.K. (1983) Colonialism 1870-1945: An Introduction Basingstoke/London: Macmillan

[7] Baran, Paul and Paul Sweezy (1966) Monopoly Capital. New York: Monthly Review Press.

[8] Legassick, Martin (1976) ‘Perspectives on African “Underdevelopment”’ The Journal of African History, Vol. 17, No. 3, pp. 435-440

‘Calling us to revolt’: an interview with Helen Batubo

ROAPE

December 21, 2018

In an interview with roape.net Helen Batubo, an activist and worker in Nigeria, describes her experiences at the ROAPE workshop in Dar es Salaam in 2018. She argues that there are possibilities of influencing many other activists through these activities. Such events are crucial, she says, in ‘calling us to revolt.’

Can you please introduce yourself for readers of roape.net?

I was born in 1962, in Okrika, an island in the Niger Delta. I was the only daughter and became somewhat of a Tom boy to survive with my many brothers. My dad was my mum’s second husband, but we generally depended on my mum for our upbringing due to his drinking. My primary schooling was delayed by the Nigerian civil war and I later also saw the violence of the Niger Delta militants/gangs first hand. I have suffered my share of sexism and was nearly raped six times (I learnt to fight back after the first time). I ran away from home to join my uncle in Potiskum in the far north east of Nigeria, before gaining a place at Katsina Teacher Training College. Unfortunately, I had to leave before the course finished due to lack of money. I then settled in Kaduna with the father of my daughter and worked to enable him to gain a degree at the University of Benin. After we split up, I had many different jobs to survive and bring up my daughter who is now studying for her masters degree. I have been a sales representative, a printer, a welder, an IT teacher, a nurse and restaurant manager. I have suffered from some poor bosses, but never had the opportunity to benefit from membership of a trade union. I had to leave my most satisfying post, as a teacher in Kaduna, due to the community violence and then settled in Abuja, the capital of Nigeria. I have always had a strong feeling that we need a fairer world, from my own experience and the influence of the Afrobeat singer, Fela Kuti and the struggles against apartheid in South Africa. I was recently introduced to organised socialist politics and have been able to travel outside Nigeria for the first time, to the ROAPE meetings in Accra and Dar es Salaam.

Can you speak about the experience of the workshops you attended?

The workshop in Dar es Salaam gave me so much encouragement. It gave all of us insight and let us know what is happening in the different countries represented. Each person wanted to use their country as an example. So, I learnt the perspectives of the Tanzanians. In turn, the Tanzanians learnt from my ideas and we each learnt from the Kenyans. The workshop allowed us to share our experiences, so by the time we left we realised the different countries had similar problems. We learnt that our African leaders and the world leaders are collaborating to suppress their subjects.

Our countries do not work because of recycling people that are not fit, the masses giving their votes and supporting leaders based on sentiment. The rich people have a way of buying your voters card. Even when you know that the person you are clamouring for to be there, frequently they never get elected or work anyway in their own interests. own personal reasons and gain. Perhaps because the person is going to give you some small change, or if the person is of the same faith as you or of the same tribe as you or you are business associates. So, this is what I mean by choosing our leaders based on sentiment.

The workshop encouraged us to have a mind-set for revolt, to stand up and say no, where possible. The poor and the down trodden should stop blaming the rich because they only encourage them to be there. In the same way, African rulers should stop blaming their former colonial masters, they should stop pointing accusing fingers at the Europeans. They were colonised, quite correct. They were underdeveloped by them, correct. But for how long will they let themselves to be underdeveloped? Don’t they also have a mind to reason for themselves?

Given this situation, what would you argue is the solution?

The masses have to learn collectively to be reasonable and stop being sentimental. The problem is that the masses know the right people to elect to be their leaders, but rather they use sentiment to put the wrong people there. The masses need to look inwards and choose to do things correctly, not selling their votes, saying my brother, my sister should be there. They should elect leaders who have a heart and love the masses, there are people like that who we know. For example, there are people that are even less corrupt in mind than President Buhari of Nigeria, we know them.

Returning to the workshop, the best things were the general deliberations, analysis about how Africa is being impoverished by its leaders. I agree with the topic that indeed, our leaders do not have a heart for the common people, they do not love us! All they think about are their personal wealth, looting for their unborn generations. So, they go to any lengths to force their way into power and remain there. They use dictatorship, they use the military to protect themselves and to commit illicit atrocities.

The general aim of the workshop was to arouse in us radical stories, the radical mind to be able to say “no, enough is enough!” Enough of giving our vote or our mandate to leaders who do not have a focus, but just want to be there for power and wealth.

The possibilities of what we can do to influence others through these meetings that we are holding is crucial. So, the workshop influenced me by calling us to revolt. It must not always be the old people and the money bags that should rule us.

The workshop also helped me to understand the world better, about global warming, climate change and other things. The Europeans are not forcing our leaders to implement policies but they are working in more subtle ways. After all you can force a horse to the river, but you can’t force it to drink the water. If the Europeans are giving us unfavourable policies and our leaders choose to succumb it is not the fault of the Europeans? If our former colonial masters suggest their ideas, it is not mandatory for our rulers to succumb, if it is an unfavourable policy for our people.

Can you speak specifically about the sessions at the workshop, what stood out for you?

The long standing, manipulative and uncontrollable practices of the rich to continuously loot and amass the wealth of Africa was the overwhelming sense I got. Most of the resultant issues have been highlighted during our deliberations not only at the Tanzanian ROAPE workshop, but in our every day discussions as socialists.

Take for example, the session on ‘Imperialism in Africa today: The place of class struggles and progressive politics’, using my country Nigeria as point of reference. we discussed how most of the oppressed poor people assist the looting by protecting and defending the ill-gotten wealth of the few capitalists. The outrageously annoying thing is that many poor people, for a pittance, are so quick in singing the praises, flattering and encouraging the unrepentant looters. This, in turn, boosts the egos of the elite and encourages them to loot even more.

I want to submit, with an apology to persons of a like mindset of Marxism, that most Nigerians are blind followers who do not want to take a firm stand with credible truth. This may be for personal selfish reasons or for other religious or ethnic sentiments. They prefer to keep supporting and recycling square pegs in round holes, in the corridors of power, who continue to loot the wealth that should belong to the people.

If we are not ready to look inwards to identify and retrace our steps to principally correct practices, our undeserving leadership will continue to destroy our lives. Therefore, using this platform, roape.net, I want to say NO to all forms of further wealth looting. We should resolve to only give mandates to selfless, visionary statesmen and women who have the good of the poor uppermost in their hearts. We need such people to get into the saddle of leadership and headship of their states across Africa.

It is quite true that the ruling classes all over, especially in Africa, tend to use unwarranted force to cage citizens against the freedom of questioning their illicit spending. The bad news is that the idea paves the way for the rich to conspicuously loot without blinking or looking back. As a result, we have a society that does not have strong policies to checkmate its leaders and ensure accountability. How and when shall impoverishment be eradicated? The future therefore remains precarious, unless our collective consciousness acknowledges and confronts these ordeals.

So, in summary, what is the alternative? Are you hopeful about the future of the struggle for such an alternative?

Well, that’s difficult to say, if sentiment is still preferred above credibility, then we keep having these useless ‘talk-shows’, pantomimes. Of course, the global bourgeoisie have only succeeded thus far because the domestic rats delight in opening the doors to other rats. As ever, foreign bosses are only able to exploit the poor masses of Africa with the active co-operation of the local elite who have benefited from this relationship beyond their wildest dreams.

I think the workshops could be further improved by having more people there, but I know that this is difficult due to financial constraints. So, more people are not able to share their own ideas. As ever, it all boils down to money! By right, the power is in our hands. If we are doing things correctly, when they are enacting laws, they should include checks and balances. There should be laws that have to do with accountability. There are countries like China or Saudi Arabia, for example, where if you guilty of corruption then you face life in prison or even death. So, no-one talks openly about looting, they deal with their corrupt ministers and other leaders. But here in Africa, we just praise rich people in the hope of getting some small, minor change. It all depends on what we think we can achieve, and then how we fight for it – these were my lessons from the ROAPE workshops.

Helen Batubo is an activist and worker based in Abuja, Nigeria.

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