Congo Binga: Notes on Burri’s Grande Sacco

March 16, 2016

By Meredeth Turshen

According to Emily Braun, curator of the Burri retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum in New York (October 9, 2015–January 6, 2016), this painting (a collage of burlap sacks – see below) was created in 1961 to commemorate thirteen Italian airmen murdered in the chaos of Congolese power struggles that followed independence from Belgium. This account can be traced to a review of an exhibit of Alberto Burri’s work at the Houston Museum of Fine Arts in 1963. The massacre occurred in mid-November 1961 in Kindu, a town in South Kivu, an eastern province of DR Congo that sits just above copper-rich Katanga. ONUC, the United Nations Operation in Congo, sent the Italians there to deliver supplies to a unit of Malaysian troops. Congolese soldiers loyal to Antoine Gizenga, who supported Patrice Lumumba (assassinated on January 17, 1961 in Lubumbashi), apparently mistook the Italians for parachutists fighting with Moïse Tshombe, leader of the Katanga secession.

Burri

Alberto Burri’s Grande Sacco: Congo Binga was a commemoration to thirteen Italian airmen murdered in Kindu, 1961

The pieces of burlap are arranged in quadrants to create a central cross. The patch on the lower right is stamped Congo Binga, the name of a plantation town on a tributary of the Congo River in Equateur Province, some 850km northwest of Kindu where the murders occurred. How ironic that a sack from a Congo plantation, the sort of workplace where millions of Africans had died at the hands of Belgian colonists, should be used to memorialize thirteen Italian pilots!

Binga plantation belonged to the Lever palm oil monopoly. Jules Marchal, writing about colonial exploitation in Congo, notes that the war years, 1940-45, were the apogee of forced labour on such plantations. The Belgian Congo concluded an agreement with London to supply palm oil, which was at the top of their list of necessary raw materials to produce cooking oil, soap, margarine and cosmetics. To get the palm nuts, Africans had to scale trees 15-20 metres in height; they were expected to cut fruit and supply 150 crates monthly, each weighing 35 kilos. They were paid derisory sums for this arduous and dangerous work; even the Belgians admitted that the men were underpaid. Cutters were also compelled to cultivate certain crops (cotton, foodstuffs, palm trees); failure to meet the quotas was punished with prison sentences, and in prison the chicotte (rawhide whip) was still in use in 1959.

Alberto Burri (1915-1995) dropped out of school in 1935 to enlist in Benito Mussolini’s campaign to expand the Italian empire in Africa (Asab, 1869; Massawa, 1885; Somalia, 1888; Eritrea, 1890; Libya, 1894; Ethiopia, 1936). Burri fought in Ethiopia, a campaign that illegally used mustard gas and phosgene and claimed the lives of three-quarters of a million Ethiopians by the end of the world war – an estimated 7 per cent of the population. After completing his medical degree in 1940, Burri went on to fight in the 102nd Black Shirt Battalion’s invasion of Albania (annexed by Italy in 1939) and the Axis campaign in North Africa. He was captured in Tunisia by the British in May 1943; Mussolini was deposed 25 July 1943 and died 28 April 1945. Turned over to the Americans, Burri was shipped to a POW camp in Hereford, Texas. There he took advantage of arts and crafts classes and learned to paint. The Americans urged the imprisoned Italians to sign a pledge of allegiance to the Allies, but Burri was one of some 900 officers who refused to change sides.

There is no account of how a burlap sack from Binga came into Burri’s hands; he usually obtained his materials from a mill in his hometown Città di Castello, a city located in the north Umbrian province of Perugia. In 1960, the plantation would have been producing palm oil, coffee, cocoa and rubber—perhaps a sack of Binga coffee beans made its way to Rome. Mobutu Sese Soko acquired the site following his ‘Zairianization’ of foreign enterprises in 1974, one of fourteen that made up CELZA (Cultures et élévages du Zaïre). The plantation was still productive in January 1999, during the Second Congo War, when Jean-Pierre Bemba (Mouvement pour la libération du Congo) and General James Kazini (a Ugandan army officer who served as commander of the Uganda People’s Defense Force 2001-2003) organized a large operation to confiscate tons of coffee beans, an example of the stripping of Congo assets by Uganda and Rwanda. Binga was all but defunct by the time its current owner acquired it in 2004; he is an American named Elwyn Blattner who heads the Groupe Blattner Elwyn, a vast enterprise of palm oil, rubber and forestry businesses based in Kinshasa.

Alberto Burri went on to become a major figure in postwar art. In 1955 he married the American dancer Minsa Craig (sister-in-law to Studs Terkel, the popular American oral historian) and lived in both the US and Italy. In the late 1950s Burri shifted from sacks to materials fabricated for shelter, critical to economic infrastructure: cheaply manufactured wood veneer, industrial plastics, sheet metal and Celotex insulation board. Through this use of architectural materials Burri’s art is close to architecture. Architecture had played a seminal role in the advancement of Fascist ideologies, and many art critics have speculated on the meaning of Burri’s use of an oxy-acetylene torch to destroy these materials.

Congo Binga is neither the most imaginative nor the most lyrical of Burri’s sacchi. It does, however, speak eloquently of Italian, African and colonial history.

Meredeth Turshen is a Professor in the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University. Her research interests include international health and she specializes in public health policy. She has recently published Gender and the political economy of conflict in Africa: the persistence of violence.

Chiadzwa Diamond Fields: Unprecedented Plunder

ROAPE

March 11, 2016

By Raymond Sango

In 2008 at the height of the economic crisis in Zimbabwe thousands of unemployed youths flooded the Chiadzwa mining area in what was a dramatic ‘diamond rush’ following the expiration of DeBeers mining licence in 2006 and the cancellation of Africa Consolidated Resources’ mining licence. DeBeers had plundered diamonds at Chiadzwa for roughly 13 years using its ‘Exclusive Prospecting Orders’ (EPOS). The international diamond mining company covertly expropriated thousands of tonnes of diamonds under the guise of exploration samples, crushed rock samples and kimberlitic rock samples.

The unemployed youths who later descended on Chiadzwa in 2008 to pan for diamonds were brutally massacred by the military and police as the government moved in to create a ‘formal looting format’ , partially in response to the World Diamond Council which pressured the government to curb the smuggling of diamonds. Approximately four hundred miners were killed in 2008 through indiscriminate volleys of gunshots fired by mounted police accompanied by dogs and helicopter.

Soon afterwards seven private entities began operations at the mine: Marange Resources, Anjin Investments Ltd, Diamond Mining Company, Gyn Nyame Resources, Jinan Mining Ltd, Kusena Diamonds, and Mbada Diamonds. Ownership of these companies was a joint venture with the state. Chiadzwa is a devastating exposé of the reality of Mugabe’s so-called radical pan-Africanism while displaying the regimes commitment to international business. Hundreds of unemployed youths were massacred and thousands driven away to pave the way for an ‘efficient’ model of capital accumulation.

It has been estimated that the Chiadzwa diamond fields account for 13 percent of global rough diamond supply and that the aggregate worth of all the diamonds at the field is between US$60 billion and US$70 billion. Government estimations have spoken of diamond production earning the state US$600 million in monthly revenue in the aftermath of the Kimberly Process Certification in 2012. Rough projections on diamond production at Chiadzwa by the Ministry of Mines put a figure of US$1 billion in diamond revenue for the year 2012 alone and an increase in subsequent years to US$3 billion. Diamonds have the potential, the government claimed, to produce enough capital to generate employment and fund education, health and retool industries. The truth is very different.

Yet the ‘looting’ partnership between government bureaucrats, Chinese and other foreign companies has limited the potential of diamond production to improve the lives of ordinary Zimbabweans. At one point Minister of Mines, Walter Chidhakwa responded to the rampant pillaging of diamonds, explaining that he would ‘rather halt mining operations if mining companies continue to fleece government through understating of the stones.’ In February this year Chidhakwa argued that during the brief period of artisanal mining at Chiaadzwa which was soon broken by repression, diamond mining had a significantly larger multiplier effect on the economy than during the period of joint ventures between the state and the Chinese firms. This is quite an admission.

There have been a number of noticeable and recorded encounters to illustrate the depth of the plunder of diamonds such as the disappearances of sacks full of diamonds and inconsistencies between the price the diamonds have been sold at and the figures sent to the government. In 2015 Lovemore Kirotwi, the Director of Core Mining and Minerals and Chairperson of the Zimbabwe Diamond Technology Centre was charged with defrauding US$2 billion through covert and underhand dealings in the diamond industry. Transfer pricing, trade mis-invoicing, and capital flight through the repatriation of profits by Anjin Investments Ltd, one of the leading companies in the area. Undeclared profits were repatriated to China and local elites to secret bank accounts in South Africa, Hong Kong, the Cayman Islands and other areas. Far from the vision of diamond mining being used to improve the lives of the poor.

Conservative estimates of the loot drained by government bureaucrats working in concert with Chinese companies repeat the figure of US$16 billion, which is money lost to corruption, an amount which surpasses the US$11 billion in debts Zimbabwe owes to both domestic and internal creditors. The history of Chiadzwa diamond fields and other nearby areas such as Chimanimani is replete with deep-seated pillaging by both foreign and domestic capitalist elites. From the secret theft of diamonds by DeBeers from the 1990s to the sophisticated looting by Chinese companies working in concert with the state and elites in the army and ZANU PF.

Realizing the possibility of resistance emerging in Chiadzwa and as part of the regimes’ Indigenization and Economic Empowerment policy, the mining companies and the state launched the Zimunya-Marange Community Share Ownership Trust. This was an effort to win over the poor seething with anger as they helplessly watch billions being made and expropriated from their own land as they were forcibly relocated to other areas.

The recent ‘realization’ of the extent of the pillage occurring at Chiadzwa by the state and the threat of a halt to mining operations has been provoked by the current political dynamics inside ZANU PF and the global price of diamonds. We have seen the recent annihilation by a faction calling itself the G-40 of two groups within ZANU PF, one of these factions has now created a party using the name, Zimbabwe People First, led by former Vice President Joyce Mujuru and the other faction is led by Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa. This expresses the power struggles which are at play at the Chiadzwa diamond fields.

Although there is systematic corruption at Chiadzwa, as we have seen, this is being used by factions in the government to justify the ejection of corrupt companies. The forced amalgamation of all the firms under the Zimbabwe Diamond Mining Corporation, is part of a concerted effort by the state and ruling elites, aligned to the First Lady, Grace Mugabe, to wipe clean the diamond fields of all their enemies and to enfeeble the internal rebellion in the party by cutting the source of funding to their feeding trough. So state intervention under the pretext of addressing corruption is not genuine.

Another dynamic which is at play is the global commodity price fluctuations which have hit the diamond industry hard. As an extractive industry it has been the core force in recent years of ZANU PF electioneering strategy and also at the centre of its patronage system. The fall in the demand of diamonds has among other reasons meant a curtailment of investment in Chiadzwa. This has led to reduced output of diamonds. The fall in demand has increased demands made by ZANU PF for the ‘lions share’ in diamond mining, as President Robert Mugabe has explained in a recent interview. Faced with an unrelenting economic crisis the thinking within the state has shifted towards a greater level of nationalisation to stimulate the economy and derail the impending decisive economic explosion.

If there is acknowledgement that there has been serious plunder at Chiadzwa diamond fields, a commission of inquiry should be opened to investigate and expose those who were responsible with appropriate legal measures being instituted against the criminals. Civil society, trade unions and community organisations should unite in their demand for an end of corruption at Chiadzwa but also the nationalization and appropriation of all the properties of those who were involved in the looting. The failures of private capital have been laid bare and there is currently a pressing need to insist on the public ownership of Chiadzwa, placing the mines under the control of the miners themselves. If the Minister of Mines agrees that artisanal mines fared better than private capital, as he stated in February, then a lot more can be achieved by organized workers running Chiadzwa. Perhaps this is the only way real justice can be found for those massacred in 2008.

Raymond Sango is an activist and writer from Zimbabwe, he carries out research on the country’s political economy for the Zimbabwe Labour Centre. He was a participant at last years joint ROAPE/JSAS conference in Zambia and an interview with him can be found here.

Featured photograph: Julien Harneis

Radical Engagement: an interview with Issa Shivji

ROAPE

March 8, 2016

An interview with Issa Shivji

ROAPE: Firstly, could you briefly tell me what was your role in the Review and in what context?

Issa Shivji: A good number of comrades who started ROAPE, then called RAPE, were from Dar es Salaam or had passed through Dar es Salaam. We had participated together in intellectual and ideological struggles on the University of Dar es Salaam Campus. I was a student in law from 1967-1970 and then a young faculty member in the Faculty of Law.

I did not have a direct role in the founding of ROAPE but was closely connected with the founders and we often exchanged notes. I remember that I encouraged my students who had done brilliant work on the post-Mwongozo working class struggles to send their papers to ROAPE which were published. Similarly, reporting and analysis of the struggle of students in the late seventies was also published in ROAPE. In that sense, ROAPE played an important role in disseminating intellectual work and struggles across the continent and to progressive audiences outside Africa.

ROAPE: How would you assess the contribution of ROAPE in the last forty year? Considering the powerful and clarion appeal to action, practice and radical analysis in the first issue.

IS: The Editorial in the first issue was undoubtedly a clarion call for concrete analysis of concrete conditions for concrete action. It came from the womb of the struggles from which the founders had come. In hindsight, it was perhaps ambitious, even naïve, but, then, sounded real, feasible and an honest illustration of theoretical praxis. I didn’t see anything wrong with it then or now. It also unabashedly proclaimed that the Journal will not be eclectic nor pander to bourgeois intellectual fashions; rather it will be guided by Marxist theory – certainly not in any dogmatic or “partisan” fashion – yet maintaining a class stand and outlook of the working people.

But a Journal based in Europe, unconnected with real-life social struggles on the ground in any direct way, obviously could not consistently do what it set out to do. Over a period of time, it did become and has become a left academic journal, broadly progressive, nonetheless eclectic in the content of articles it publishes. This is not to say that it has not made a worthwhile contribution. The Journal carried fine analytical pieces bearing directly or indirectly on struggles. In its debating and reporting pages it gave exposure to accounts of struggles which helped in forging solidarities and mutual support. I doubt though if it has, or even, could participate fully in the ideological debates taking place on the continent, say, for example, in the 1980s.

ROAPE: ROAPE covered both the development of structural adjustment and the economic crisis in the late 1970s and 1980s, but also the resistance to it. In this period the radical liberation movements of the 1970s became marginalised, under multiple and ultimately irresistible pressures. How would you chart the developments in African political-economy since the journal was founded? To what extent is such a project for transformation relevant today?

IS: To answer your last question first: yes, because the “project of transformation”, as you call it, does not ever become irrelevant! But I chuckled on reading that phrase of yours: in the 1960s and 1970s we would have called it by its true name, ‘Revolution’, not as a project, but real life struggles of the working masses. It seems to me that much of the language and vocabulary – imperialism, revolution, liberation, etc. – became “profane” words with the onslaught of neo-liberal ideology on the right, and post-modernism on the left. Some of that vocabulary is still lingering on ….

I guess I have partly answered the first part of the question. Under neo-liberalism, radical political economy also went out of the window – instead many of us, radical intellectuals, were swallowed up by human rights, policy analysis, poverty reduction, etc on the theoretical/ideological plane, and by NGO-type activism on the terrain of practice and struggle. During this period any analysis grounded in a rigorous theoretical framework even in the academia was dismissed by neo-liberals as irrelevant and star-gazing while by some post-modernists as mega-narratives that had overstayed their usefulness.

On the whole, though, as neo-liberalism teeters towards its end, methods of radical political economy, albeit, of course, in a more creative fashion, are coming back. I think the younger generation is groping for answers and mainstream bourgeois economics and political prescriptions do not give them answers. It is the bigger picture they want to understand. By definition, mainstream bourgeois theories in the era of financial capitalism are incapacitated from dealing with the bigger picture. The ideologists of the financial oligarchy have so much ideologised the bigger picture that their theoreticians have become prisoners of their own ideology.

ROAPE: What is the project of radical political economy on the continent in 2016? How should ROAPE and its contributors and supporters engage with such a project?

IS: The answer to this will be too prescriptive, perhaps presumptuous and self-indulgent. Like others, I am trying to find my feet in the new, post-liberal environment and that can only be done in real life struggles, not in theoretical speculation.

ROAPE: What should the relationship, in a publication like ROAPE, be between academic analysis and study and activist engagement?

IS: Hunh! Aren’t you already positing a dichotomy, (between academic analysis and practical social struggles), which should be problematic for a radical perspective? It would sound cliché for me to say that academic analysis itself is, or should be, an activist engagement and activist engagement should flow from it.

ROAPE: Is it still feasible to envisage a project, as ROAPE did in the 1970s, of radical, continental transformation and a pan-African socialist future?

IS: Why not? Just as we have not seen the predicted “end of history”, we have not witnessed the “disappearance of imperialism”. African liberation and working people’s emancipation is very much on the agenda and so long as that is the case revolution is very much on the cards. One who thinks revolution is not feasible is not a revolutionary. When, how, where of course are questions at a different level. Those are not the kind of questions that you and me can truthfully answer in an interview, or in ROAPE, for that matter.

ROAPE: ROAPE.net, based in South Africa, is an attempt develop an online platform that can reach a new audience, including a large one in Africa who may not have access to the print issue. How do you envisage this initiative developing?

IS: I believe it is a good initiative. Perhaps it should move in the direction of a debating forum. We need to bring on board a lot of issues both of the theoretical and practical kind. My hope is that people involved on the ground would be attracted and would participate and share their experiences.

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

Uganda 2016: the Struggle to Win Acholi Minds

ROAPE

March 3, 2016

By Gabrielle Lynch

President Yoweri Museveni’s recent re-election in Uganda has prompted significant debate. According to official results, Museveni of the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) won in the first round with 60.62 % of the popular vote. However, international election observers and diplomats have criticised the uneven playing field and house arrest of principal opposition candidate Kizza Besigye of the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC); while the latter – who officially secured 35.61% – insists that he won.

However, most analysts assumed that, one way or the other, Museveni would be announced the victor. Thus, while an uneven playing field – together with various problems with the process (from the late opening of polling stations in Kampala to the opaque tallying process), repeated arrest of Besigye, and strategically placed security services – are a source of popular anger and frustration, they are not particularly surprising. As one man in Gulu lamented: ‘This is how elections are in Uganda.’

More surprising than Museveni’s grip on power, is the strength of the political opposition. It is widely accepted that FDC ran a lacklustre campaign in 2011, and just six months ago it was unclear whether Besigye would contest for a fourth time. However, once the FDC leader stepped forward, he quickly became the obvious choice for those tired of Museveni’s thirty year long rule.

Besigye’s resurgence was particularly striking in the Acholi sub-region of northern Uganda (made up of Agago, Amuru, Gulu, Kitgum, Lamwo, Nwoya and Pader districts). In 2006, Besigye secured 79.22% of this vote. However, in 2011, his support dropped to a mere 17.38% behind both Museveni (40.83%) and Norbert Mao of the Democratic Party (DP) (26.39%). In 2016, Mao opted to support Amama Mbabazi’s candidacy on a Go Forward ticket. Nevertheless, Besigye secured 42.03% of the sub-regional vote, as compared to Museveni’s 41.10% and Mbabazi’s 10.91%; and if the opposition’s claims of widespread malpractice are true, his share could be even higher.

Photograph: Gabrielle Lynch

Clearly, NRM held on to much of the ground that they had won in 2011. However, they expended vast amounts of time and energy trying to improve on the same – a task in which they failed. Candidates and supporters spent more money than ever before – with money spent on posters, t-shirts, public address systems and mobilisers, but also on direct handouts to individuals, groups and associations. The NRM campaign also promised further goodies if the region voted for NRM candidates, and threatened economic marginalisation and even a military takeover in the case of an opposition victory; the latter constituting no idle threat in an area that is still recovering from a long and vicious war that involved abuses by both the Ugandan military and the Lords Resistance Army (LRA). Such intimidation was then reinforced by a visible security presence, and by the looming threat of potential violence at the hands of security officers, but also by Crime Preventers – a partisan community policing initiative. Finally, but not least, NRM claimed credit for bringing peace and stability to the region, and for various development projects – from the electrification of many rural areas to new roads and hospitals.

This campaign clearly persuaded significant numbers of people to vote for Museveni, but Besigye nevertheless edged ahead in the polls. This was despite the fact that FDC candidates and mobilisers had little money, and enjoyed none of the benefits of incumbency. So why did NRM’s money and threats fail to sway the local majority, and why did Besigye regain much of the ground he had lost in 2011?

In short, Besigye benefited from the force of the opposition’s principal campaign message; namely, that Museveni had overstayed, and that NRM was trying to use money and threats to impose weak leaders on the community. In turn, opposition politicians insisted that people should stay firm and brave, and elect strong leaders that could defend people’s interests. People were thus encouraged to take money from NRM candidates, but to view such gifts as something that should not buy five year’s in office. The idea, summarised in one Acholi saying, was simply that, while you can play with someone’s stomach, you cannot play with their brain.

In making this argument, opposition leaders pointed (amongst other things) to a series of land disputes, which they cast as attempted land grabs by well-connected individuals. The implication was that weak leaders would not only fail to improve on local service delivery, but would also facilitate further land grabs. This sense of impending threat was then interwoven with a narrative of past injustice where people from the west of Uganda were alleged to have reaped disproportionate benefits from Museveni’s rule, while the north had suffered gross injustices during the war and ongoing economic marginalisation. Local opposition leaders in turn calling for affirmative action, reparations and accountability.

Such reasoning resonated with popular understandings of the past and possible futures, and was bolstered by communal narratives of ‘good character’ – with emphasis placed on attributes such as honesty and bravery.

This message also benefited from shortcomings of the NRM’s campaign. Particularly problematic was the fact that, in clear breach of electoral laws, much of the gift giving was associated with a serving military officer. Worse still, with an officer who was widely disliked and alleged to have killed a prominent opposition activist back in 2002. The fact that the officer was also supporting a number of family members and an alleged lover, helped opposition politicians to present NRM efforts as a “family affair” that sought to entrench the interests of a few over and above the majority.

But why was it Besigye, and not Mbabazi, who gained ground, even though the latter was backed by the popular local leader Norbert Mao? First, Mbabazi’s character was also in question due to his association with grand corruption scandals. At the same time, Mao’s support proved half-hearted as he encouraged people to vote for Mbabazi, but also recognised that they might want to vote for Besigye, and insisted that the most important thing was that they reject Museveni. In addition, while FDC had taken time to develop party structures and to engage party mobilisers, Mbabazi’s Go Forward platform lacked an active presence on the ground. In this context, and as the reception of the FDC leader at rallies across the country suggested a two-horse race, Besigye emerged as the embodiment of a popular rejection of the status quo.

Such local level dynamics are interesting in and of themselves. However, they also highlight the inability of an overly simplistic notion of patron-client relations to explain local voting patterns. Ugandans did not simply reward the candidate who channelled the most resources down to the local level. Instead, campaigns were a matter of persuasion whereby candidates had to convince people that they were best placed to protect and further individual and collective interests. In this endeavour, NRM campaigned on a platform of incumbency – they had the power to distribute and deny resources, and to ensure peace and security. In contrast, the opposition campaigned on the need for change, and for strong leaders that could defend and promote community interests. Persuasive messages that left the Acholi vote divided.

Gabrielle Lynch is Associate Professor of Comparative Politics, University of Warwick in the UK

Thank you, Martin

ROAPE

March 3, 2016

By John Saul

At the beginning of this decade (November, 2010) I was asked to come to South Africa to present a keynote address for a “Conference in Honour of Martin Legassick” that was to held at the Red Location in Port Elizabeth. It was, in fact, a great honour for me to be invited by the organizers to do so and I gladly accepted, just as I am honoured to have been asked by Leo Zeilig to write briefly of Martin here on the sad occasion of his recent passing.

But where to start a discussion of a career so rich and varied, albeit one which I both admired but was on many occasions in disagreement with? After all, he was a “Trotskyist” while I am a kind of free-lance, New Left Marxist. And he had become a left-wing, working-class-focused critic of the ANC as an activist first within the Marxist Worker’s Tendency and then the Democratic Socialist Movement; meanwhile, I remained – albeit as an anti-apartheid activist deeply skeptical about the ANC/SACP’s vanguardism and deep-seated Stalinism and, closer to (my) home, unsettled by its wrecker’s role within the Canadian liberation support movement – much slower to become as outspoken about the ANC and those many compromises it made with capital that had helped ease its ascendancy than I should have been.

In fact, as a friend of Martin’s, I began my Port Elizabeth talk in 2010 with a few more personal words related to such realities. For, as I then said, it would be impossible for me, then or now, to overestimate all that I have learned from Martin Legassick about both class struggle and South Africa – especially since the night, 30 or more years ago, when I met with him and several of his comrades in the dingy office of their “Marxist Worker’s Tendency of the ANC” in a dark and rain-swept corner of London’s East-End. I was there, at his invitation, to have Martin’s case and that of his colleagues explained to me in order that I might relay it accurately to anti-apartheid activists in Canada. I won’t say that I agreed with everything Martin told me then, nor would I agree with him on every issue today. But I agreed more often than not and, in addition, have always admired and respected Martin, his strength of character and his dedication both to principle and to struggle. I remember, in particular and in this respect, one revealing story from his last stormy days in the ANC. At some important meeting or other of the movement in London, years ago when he was under stern fire from the powers-that-be of the ANC, he approached another similarly beleaguered member of the organization in the lobby and said to him militantly: ‘X, we’ve got to stand up to them…this may be our last chance.’ The other person’s reply: ‘You stand up to them, Martin. I’m already on my knees.’ Rest assured: Martin was never on his knees to anybody!

A Joint Work in Progress

Of course, Martin Legassick’s principles have come across in all his actions and in all his writings, writings that focused on a wide-range of both historical and contemporary matters, and I will not attempt to summarize that impressive body of work here. Let me merely concentrate on his grand 2007 volume (725 pages!), the summa of a life fully and militantly lived and entitled Towards Socialist Democracy. In that volume he begins his Preface by setting out his chief premise clearly:

This book is a contribution to debate about the way forward, in South Africa and internationally, towards socialist democracy. By socialism I mean a society that serves the needs of the people, rather than profit for a capitalist minority. The world is ripe – over-ripe – for socialism, and indeed it is increasingly a necessary development for human survival. The idea of socialism comes to the fore whenever masses of people are in struggle – as in South Africa in the 1980s, or in Latin American early in the twenty-first century.

He then gives a tour d’horizon of the left’s twentieth century endeavours, again globally and also in South Africa, and concludes (on pages 575 and 576):

The establishment in South Africa of workers’ democracy with a nationalized and planned economy would terrify big business internationally. However, with the respect by the masses of the world for the victorious mass struggle against apartheid, and with the turn to the left in many sectors of the world the example of a workers’ democracy in South Africa would be enormously appealing, and, with today’s communications technology, would inspire the international working class even more rapidly than did the example of the Russian revolution.

If the working-class does not take power worldwide in the foreseeable future, the anarchy of capitalism threatens to create a level of global warming which would eliminate life on the planet. That’s the final dreadful alternative posed by capitalism. Working-class power worldwide, by contrast, would point the way towards a harmonious, socially owned democratic planned economy on an international scale, widening the way to a classless society of abundance.

Here I should repeat that I basically agree with great deal of the above – although the outcomes it invokes are far more easily spoken of than realized (as Martin would, I’m sure, be the first to agree). And this is true both of (a) the making of a meaningful break with capitalism and (b), as twentieth century’s grim experience has suggested to us, of any genuinely democratic rendering of the winning and the consolidating of such an outcome.

Moreover, the more we look at the South African setting, the more it, like most settings in the Global South, inevitably drags us away from the most pristine Marxist formulations regarding the nature and importance of the working class and plunges us, even more than elsewhere, into a messy world of additional distinctions and differentiation that have pertinent effects for the realities of struggle, for the realization of socialism, and, of importance to Martin too, for the realization of democracy. For there was more of relevance to societal struggles for social justice and equality than just the complexities internal to the “working class” per se – although how much more and just how to integrate that “more” into our analyses and our practice was something Martin and I may never have entirely agreed upon.

Indeed, I had raised some such matters in my talk in Port Elizabeth and that later, and far into the night over dinner, we further debated many nagging problems, problems precisely about both the scope and meaning of various central concepts in our various writings and of their political implications: “the working class,” “democracy” and “revolution” to go no further afield. But Martin was always a good person to have such differences of opinion with because you knew that he deeply cared about the questions being raised (and was also deeply versed in them), about the diverse outcomes and practices differing definitions pointed towards, and about the long-term future success of each and every struggle we were ever concerned with – and not least, of course, as they affected the very forging of a revolutionary project in present-day South Africa.

Back to Port Elizabeth

To return to Port Elizabeth in 2010, I had launched my Port Elizabeth talk with a quote from Alain Badiou in his The Communist Hypothesis:

We know that communism [with a small “c”] is the right hypothesis. All those who abandon the hypothesis immediately resign themselves to the market economy, to parliamentary democracy – the form of state suited to capitalism – and to the “inevitable” and “natural” character of the most monstrous inequalities.

Capitalism as, in effect, “common-sense”: this Martin knew full well simply would not do, knew that that capitalism and the recolonization of South Africa by capital, as overseen by the ANC and the unholy alliance of white and black elites, could not add up into a real liberation. In short, it simply could not serve as a meaningful and humane “common-sense” either – could not, in Badiou’s words, serve as something “inevitable” or “natural.” As I concluded my Port Elizabeth talk:

True, the elites of capital and the state are working hard to establish just such “commonsensical” and “natural” premises. Meanwhile, it is, quite obviously, to Martin Legassick’s enormous credit that he has kept the banner of real socialist common-sense, of class-struggle common-sense, aloft over and against the banner of capitalist “common-sense.”

In sum: thank you, Martin.

John S. Saul has also taught at York University, the University of Dar es Salaam (Tanzania), the University of Eduardo Mondlane (Mozambique) and the University of Witwatersrand (South Africa). He is the author/editor of more than twenty books on southern Africa and development issues.

Towards Socialist Democracy

ROAPE

March 2, 2016

One of our great Marxist political economists, Martin Legassick, has died, after battling cancer so bravely the past couple of years. One of the best things to read, to understand and appreciate his contribution, are his remarks prepared for the closing plenary of the World Association of Political Economy forum on 21 June 2015 upon being awarded a Distinguished Achievement Award in Political Economy for the Twenty-First century.

By Martin Legassick

Let me say, once again, I am honoured to receive this Distinguished Achievement Award for my book, Towards Socialist Democracy. At its launch at the Cape Town Book Fair in 2007 Patrick Bond asked why the book was so long! I replied, Patrick, you publish a book every year, but this is the product of 40 years activism, discussion and research!

Here obviously I can only advance a series of propositions from such a long book without substantiating them, though, eight years later, I have updated their emphasis in line with the concerns of this forum.

In the first place, capitalism is in crisis. It offers only prospects of increasing austerity, increasing inequality, and increasing unemployment — particularly for youth, who in despair turn to gang culture, drugs and crime and are in danger of becoming a destroyed generation. Together with that, with ecological disasters and global warming, capitalism has the potential for destroying life on this planet.

I am for democratic eco-socialism built from below.

The crisis affects every country, at this moment most acutely in Greece. All working people (I return to what this means) need to support the struggle of the Greek people because the course of events there will affect the ability of capitalism to impose greater austerity on the working classes of other countries.

At the same time, there is the frightening rise of xenophobia, religious fanaticism and terrorism – horrible dangers suffered mainly by women who lose their breadwinners — created in futile reaction to imperialist oppression and division of the working class, together with the present weakness of left leadership.

A major theme of my book was a critique of Stalinism the ideology of “Communist” Parties such as the SACP. I maintain that the term Stalinism does not just describe a repressive system but a world view defending the interests of ruling bureaucracies against the working class – with international repercussions which have set back the struggle of the working class for generations. Stalinism is not a variant of Marxism, but alien to Marxism

Like all humans, Marxists make mistakes. Marx did; Lenin did. So did Trotsky. Their uncritical followers do too. But one tragic legacy of Stalinism has been to bury the legacy of Trotsky’s ideas. Stalin hated Trotsky and had him murdered, as well as tens of thousands of his followers. But Trotsky had many correct ideas which advanced the theory of Marxism. His analysis of the degeneration of the Russian revolution, his analysis of fascism and critique of Stalinist’s then ultra-left approach – drawing on Lenin’s critique in the Comintern in 1920-1 of this tendency — were among the ideas which led Perry Anderson (not a Trotskyist) to write “The historical scale of Trotsky’s accomplishment is still difficult to realise today.” Trotsky’s innovative use of the concept of bonapartism in its proletarian variant characterizes the phenomenon of a totalitarian bureaucracy presiding over a (degenerate) workers’ state such as the Soviet Union was, and a number of other countries, including China – mostly if not entirely now reversed.

Regarding South Africa, my argument drew on Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution – that national oppression would only be ended when capitalism is ended. It was a theory tested and proved in practice in the 1917 Russian revolution and proved negatively in the defeat of the revolution in China in the 1920s as a consequence of the rise of Stalinism.

The ANC claims, farcically, it is pursuing a ‘national democratic revolution’. But its policies are neo-liberal capitalist, serving the interests of mining and finance capital, entrenching South Africa as the most unequal society in the world, with horrendous poverty and unemployment. I heard at this meeting that there are 400 new coal mines in operation or being opened up (with the encouragement of government – despite its supposed commitment to the environment) – all dependent on cheap black labour and on the oppression of women as social reproducers.

The ANC’s policy of so-called black economic empowerment (the enrichment of a few blacks to join the white elite) cannot end racism or national oppression. The majority of blacks remain poor and tend to resent all whites as rich, while whites see poor blacks as threatening criminals. Racism and racial discrimination persists, and, with it, inter-racial violence (including a culture of internecine violence in the poor areas – in which women are subjugated). Only the replacement of the present state by a democratic workers’ state can begin to end all this – but then it could be ended rapidly.

Along with its bankrupt policies the ANC has become degenerate. With Zuma, (or even earlier, in the arms deal) corruption started at the top and has spread throughout.

Leaders of the SACP engage in poodle-like defence of every scandal of the ANC: Nkandla, El-Bashir, the Guptas etc – while the party masquerades as left! At this forum comrade Jeremy Cronin in his keynote address claimed the SACP had abandoned the two-stage theory – and was for building socialism now (within, of course, the framework of the ‘national democratic revolution’!) This while SACP leaders, including himself, sit in a government bankrupt in policy and reeking with scandal and corruption. Shame on all who remain in the SACP or under the influence of Stalinism!

In the same address Cronin spoke of “building socialism now” through advances in reindustrialization and advances of a non-commodified economy – by which he means the abolition of exchange-value (money) in favour of exchange of use values (for example, free public transport, free health, free education, free housing). Both aims are in my view futile if incremental and utopian to achieve against global capitalism. The real task for “building socialism now” is to build the forces capable of replacing the capitalist state with a democratic workers’ state which could then, together with international working class struggle, start to build socialism.

There are hopeful signs in the breakaways from the ANC-led triple alliance: the Economic Freedom Fighters, NUMSA’s United Front, AMCU replacing the NUM. They are signs – like the crises in the ANC Youth and Women’s leagues – of the beginnings of the disintegration of the ANC. SACP leader Blade Nzimande denounces these new movements as imperialist-inspired. This is typical Stalinism: link the so-called ‘ultra-left’ with the right while the party is in the ‘reasonable left.’ Hopefully building these new movements and eventually perhaps through their unity in action, they can constitute effective means for the working class to challenge for power, though presently all have weaknesses.

Who is the agency for change? The working class. Who are the working class? In the first place, all those separated from ownership of the means of production. Those actually working for bosses have the power to strike, up to unlimited political general strikes. But the working class includes not only those working for a boss but all the unemployed, whether of working age (young or old), pensioners or children. In particular women, who engage in social reproduction without a wage (as papers at this meeting have highlighted) as well as being among the most exploited workers (on the farms, as domestics, sex-workers) – have a strong interest in preserving the means of social reproduction. They are empowering themselves. Those women or men not actually at work also have potential power, to protest, demonstrate, block roads, etc as recent movements here and around the world have shown. In the present period together with all the poor hard-working peasants, the majority of the peasantry around the globe, have nothing to separate their interests from those of the working class and can join in protest to protect their interests and to build unity in struggle.

So I am an eco-feminist-democratic-socialist. I am indebted to Jacklyn Cock, a co-Award winner, an old friend of nearly 50 years, from whom I have recently learnt much on feminist theory and practice (I was first converted to feminism by Roxanne Dunbar, in the United States, in the 1960s). For my eco-emphasis in addition to Jacky, I am indebted to Vishmas Satgar, also a co-Award winner, and to Brian Ashley.

The majority of the middle class also have interests in socialism – but need to take their lead from the working class. The threat or the reality of costly indebtedness to the banks destroys their independence. In reality, they are also oppressed. The social movements are critical of NGOs who try to control them. The real critique that should be made is not of the middle class as such, but of middle-class political party leaders who posture as representatives of the middle class when they are really acting in the interests of capitalism.

In his keynote address Cronin advocates advancing the struggle by delinking from global capitalism. This, in my view, can bring for any country only temporary and partial relief and again, if incremental is futile and if full is utopian. The Freedom Charter is in fact the starting program for the struggle for power. The immediate task of a democratic workers state is nationalization of the banks, multi-nationals, and big monopolies under democratic workers’ control and management, and planning the economy democratically – moving rapidly to ensure that health, education, housing, transport, etc are free and open to all.

More than that, a fully non-commodified economy which Cronin advocates cannot be created in isolation – it requires the spread of workers’ democracy from country to country. How quickly this needs to occur is uncertain before degeneration would set in. But one example, even more than in Russia in 1917, could today inspire working people around the globe who are all suffering from cuts in living standards in a painful race to the bottom, from gross inequality, and with the threat of the eco-destruction of humanity hanging over them.

But the working class can win! For forty years I have believed this and continue to do so. Viva! Amandla!

Tributes to Martin Legassick

ROAPE

March 2, 2016

Martin Legassick (20 December 1940 – 1 March 2016) was a revolutionary socialist, brilliant researcher, teacher and mentor. He was an outstanding scholar and a pioneer of radical revisionist history in South Africa and a comrade and contributor to ROAPE. Here we post tributes to him and links to some of his work.

Revolutionary Socialist, Scholar, Teacher and Mentor

By Noor Nieftagodien

Comrade Martin Legassick passed away this morning, 1 March 2016, after a protracted and brave fight against cancer. Despite ill health and excruciating pain, he completed his final book project at the beginning of this year.

Comrade Martin was a revolutionary socialist, brilliant scholar, teacher and mentor. He was an outstanding scholar and a pioneer of radical revisionist history in South Africa. From the 1960s when he was a university student, Martin immersed himself in the struggle against apartheid, including mobilizing some of the first international student demonstrations in the United States. From the mid-1970s he became a founding member of the Marxist Workers’ Tendency of the ANC (MWT of the ANC) and left his academic post to work as full-time political activist. He served on the editorial committee of the journal, Inqaba yaBasebenzi, and newspaper, Congress Militant. For this, he was expelled by the ANC in 1985. On his return from exile, Martin continued to play a leading role in the MWT of the ANC and simultaneously became active in working class struggles in the Western Cape. When anti-eviction struggles exploded on the Cape Flats, he spent most of his time working with activists and contributing to build these new movements of the working class. Evenings and weekends were dedicated to meetings and political education classes. After the Marikana massacre, he immediately travelled to the platinum mines to show solidarity and to be part of the movement emerging there. Similarly, he stood by the farm workers under the leadership of CSAAWU. He lived for the struggles of the working class. From 2008 he also dedicated some time to efforts to rebuild the socialist left, especially in the form of the Democratic Left Front and was hopeful that the United Front and a new trade union movement would galvanise the working class in co-ordinated struggles against poverty, inequality and racism. When I met him on his birthday in December last year, he wanted to know about the new wave of students’ struggles and, despite physical weakness, was excited about the prospects of a new generation of activists emerging from this movement.

Hamba Kahle Comrade Martin

In 2006 Noor wrote an article based on notes of a talk he did for Martin’s retirement from the University of the Western Cape, the paper was published in the South African History Journal and is available here.

Noor Nieftagodien is South African Research Chair (SARChI) in Local Histories, Present Realities and Head of History Workshop at the School of Social Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand.

Robust and Utterly Principled

By Patrick Bond

Martin was robust, forceful and utterly principled, apparently not caring if the distant margins of the political and academic worlds were his life’s home. Political relevance seemed important to Martin only if he looked across, horizontally, to his comrades, never vertically upwards to garner the bogus credibility that so many professional intellectuals seek. His anger was unforgettable, like a pure flame, and I was one to experience it – with various singes still in my memory – and yet I always knew it came from a good place. But he could also channel that energy, deploying his eloquence and likewise his demands on us all with sharp, short clarity, unmistakeable for its revolutionary political import. When facing leaders of the National Union of Mineworkers at an all-in labour-community conference of Amandla! magazine in late 2012, he was the only one amongst us who felt the urgency and courage to ask the necessary tough questions about Marikana, for example. Indeed, his personal fuel carried that strong odour of the arrogance that comes from fearless truth-telling, which he did as well as anyone I’ve ever met in South Africa. He lit veld-fires all over the intellectual landscape dating (quite remarkably) to 1964 in the New Left Review. His intellectual legacy provides the great historical sweeps, the micro-details so lovingly uncovered, and the thoughtful – never hackish – recourse to Marxist political-economic theory and historical materialist method. These are what I will always read from Martin’s dozens of major works, and what I will aspire to emulate. More power to his legacy: an exceptionally high standard of intellectual and political morality.

Patrick Bond teaches political economy at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg and directs the University of KwaZulu-Natal Centre for Civil Society in Durban.

A Down-to-Earth Comrade

By Ashley Fataar

Although Martin Legassick was an academic and provided extraordinary articles, books and papers he remained a down-to-earth comrade who never wavered from the principles of socialism. He had his humorous moments as well as his grumpiness. He was prepared to explain things to new comrades and could also be blunt in criticism of comrades. Though Marin was always prepared to teach comrades and remained active until the last two years of his life. He was one a few Marxists who critiqued the Freedom Charter from a logical and reasoned perspective. I remember him in Cape Town speaking passionately on the housing shortage and crisis in South Africa and how communities were organising around the issue. He was always able to work with a variety of organisations and I noticed the enormous respect they had for him.

Ashley Fataar is a leading member of the Democratic Left Front in Cape Town and he writes for websites and newspapers around the world.

Articles and Links

In 1972 Martin spoke at the famous seminar series started in 1969 at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies coordinated by Shula Marks. The Societies of Southern Africa seminar series, welcomed Martin’s original approach. His paper titled, The Frontier Tradition in South African Historiography is available here. In 1976 he co-authored with Harold Wolpe an article for ROAPE on The Bantustans and Capital Accumulation in South Africa which can be accessed here. In 2007 he wrote Flaws in South Africa’s ‘first’ economy which was originally presented at the Centre for Civil Society Rosa Luxemburg Political Education Seminar at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in February 2006 and published in Africanus Journal of Development Studies. He also wrote an astonishing paper that he was too ill to deliver at the 2015 World Association of Political Economy conference which ROAPE Online has published here.

Kenya’s Cartels: the Power of Bandits in Suits

ROAPE

March 1, 2016

By Koert Lindijer

Youngsters loiter at their ‘base’. The base, an assembly point in a poor neighbourhood, is the place to play a game of cards, smoke bhangi (marijuana), plan criminal activities or preach the ideology of extremism. Drunken chatter from the bar nearby and rap music from the CD vendor fight for dominance. The stench of gasoline from a garage cannot compete with the smell of bhangi. It is here that young people get radicalized and express their disgust of the ‘stinking rich.’

‘We’re trapped here,’ says one boy as he lets bhangi smoke escape from his mouth, ‘My base is the centre of my world. And beyond I see rich neighbourhoods built with stolen money. On television I watch corrupt politicians. It’s my neighbourhood against yours. You’re rich because I am poor.’

The boy will not talk about the recruitment that is taking place in slum areas under the Somali terror group Al-Shabaab, the reason why I came to report in this area. ‘We have learned that we do not need to fight in Somalia’, says his friend. ‘There are plenty of reasons to fight in Kenya.’

The gap between rich and poor is enormous is Kenya. That is not just because of their different income, but primarily because of their different outlook on the country. From the perspective of the poor inhabitants – the majority – Kenya’s elite is rich thanks to massive corruption. Large-scale corruption does not only suffocate an economy, it kills any feeling of brotherhood and nationhood. ‘I am therefore declaring with immediate effect corruption as a national security threat’, declared President Uhuru Kenyatta last November.

In an interview I recently conducted with Dr. Willy Mutunga, the Chief Justice of Kenya, he said: ‘We have become a bandit economy. Africa has become stuck after 50 years of independence, after looting of resources. Inequality is also stuck.’ Putting the blame on the corrupt political elite, Mutunga added, ‘If our constitution and the clause Chapter 6 about corruption were being implemented, I am sure 80% of [politicians] would not be suitable for political leadership.’

Mutunga is averse to the pomp, wealth and self-regard that is the hallmark of many Kenyan politicians. He has been nicknamed, ‘the Robin Hood of the Kenyan judiciary.’ Mutunga claims corruption in Kenya has never been worse than today. ‘The influence of the cartels is overwhelming,’ he said. ‘They are doing illegal business with politicians. If we do not fight the cartels, we become their slaves. But leaders who do take on the cartels must be prepared to be killed or exiled.’

Mutunga’s opinion is similar to the view from the “hood”. The perception that Kenya is more corrupt than ever seems to be vindicated in reading Kenyan newspapers. One of the more sensational stories recently focuses on a judge called Philip Tunoi. It was reported to Mutunga’s office that the judge from the Supreme Court took a two million dollar bribe to sway the opinion in an election petition in favour of Evans Kidero, the governor of Nairobi. The shock was the amount; Kenya is not (yet) Nigeria and high amounts like this are not common in bribing officials.

An even more intriguing newspaper story is about former minister Anne Waiguru, under whose watch 8 million dollars reportedly vanished in her ministry. No minister accused of abuse of office has ever been taken to court and then prison in Kenya’s history. The first big opportunity to show that the rule of law is paramount occurred in 1966. Journalists at the Daily Nation had uncovered evidence that minister Paul Ngei had stolen money from the Maize Marketing Board. Ngei’s political opponent, the equally powerful minister Charles Njonjo, called the editor of the newspaper and consequently gave permission to publish the story.

But the revelation regarding Ngei presented the then president Jomo Kenyatta with a dilemma. A strong bond existed between the two dating back to the anti-colonial struggle. More importantly, Kenyatta could not do without the support of Ngeis Kamba tribe. So the minister went free. The government proposed an inquiry, a usual trick in the cover-up culture. Since then a secret code has applied in Kenya: powerful politicians are above the law, no matter what newspapers reveal about them. Yet it was in Jomo Kenyatta’s time that a mania of predatory profiteering, a system of corruption and patronage, took hold.

The case of Anne Waiguru makes it an even more interesting reading because she is rumored to have had an affair with Uhuru Kenyatta, a rumor denied by the president. But why is she so well protected? Kenyans speculate. She seemed to have everybody in the state apparatus on her side. She was quickly cleared by the official Anti-Corruption Commission. Until a businesswoman involved in the scandal signed an affidavit claiming that Waiguru not only shared in the loot but also played a role in the cover-up. That raised many disturbing questions about the Anti-Corruption Commission.

Waiguru hit back this week saying that the businesswoman ‘was only … a front for a broader, more powerful cartel with various beneficiaries from the political establishment and the bureaucracy.’ Waiguru pointed fingers at a group around deputy president William Ruto, laying bare the mistrust within the ruling coalition of Kenyatta and Ruto, painting a picture of a political marriage marked by vicious infighting over lucrative procurement tender deals.

That brings to mind what Mutunga told me. ‘Yes, I am now at the top. I’m riding a tiger, hoping that the monster will not devour me. But as long as I fight the cartels and they are protected, you cannot achieve anything. You are taking these people into a corrupt investigating system, through a corrupt anti-corruption system, and a corrupt judiciary.’ Mutunga’s challenge is a historic fight indeed.

Koert Lindijer has been based in Nairobi since 1983 and works as the African correspondent for the Netherlands’ daily paper NRC Handelsblad and NOS, the national radio station.

The Revolution Won’t Be Televised

ROAPE

February 29, 2016

By Heike Becker

‘The revolution won’t be televised – the revolution will be live.’ Gil Scott-Heron’s famous 1970 poem has been given a new lease as the title of an extraordinary new documentary by Rama Thiaw. The Senegalese director’s second feature-length film recently premiered during the 66th Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale) to excited acclaim.

Thiaw tells the story of the ‘Y’en a marre’ movement that rose up in Senegal against octogenarian President Abdoulaye Wade’s attempt to clinch to power in 2012. Y’en a marre translates as ‘enough is enough’, or – even more to the point – ‘we’re fed up’. The movement was started by musicians Thiat and Kilifeu, and some of their friends. This was the first West African revolution led by rappers (more recently Y’en a marre’s act was followed by the Burkinabe ‘Balais Citoyen’ movement, led by musicians Sams’K Le Jah and Smockey, that swept Blaise Compaoré out of office in 2014 after 27 years). Rap and new popular protest movement politics make for a fast-paced sequence of meetings, campaigns, concerts, marches, arrests, travel, taking the viewer through the streets of Dakar, to the provinces of Senegal; to Burkina Faso, to the grave and the living history of Thomas Sankara, through music and politics and meetings in university buildings where hardworking old fans cut the thick hot air above. Y’en a marre’s is an exhilarating story of new democracy movements, of a new generation of Africans who are fed up with old men who persist on their claim to autocratic power. A documentation of its story was, more or less, what I expected when I queued up at the Berlinale main movie site on a rainy, cold February night.

I have to confess upfront: The film far exceeded my expectations. Yes, Rama Thiaw follows the rappers and the movement, the self-declared grandsons of Cheikh Anta Diop and sons of Thomas Sankara. She explores the tension and the conflicts between music and politics, the streets and the state, the old, and old-style politicians and the young protesters who emphatically decry power: ‘We are not politicians’, they say, and ‘we are a new type of Senegalese’ who want more than just a change of political leadership; ‘we need a new system’ the rappers declare after newly elected President Macky Sall visits the Y’en a marre headquarters, a run-down old house in Dakar.

Here a new space has opened up for politics as much as for sleeping, Nintendo games, and moving gestures of friendship between the – mostly male – activists of the emerging youth protest movement. Thiaw who has spent years with Y’en a marre from their inception shows the rappers and their environment with an amazing intimacy. The rapper-activists are shown in their everyday life, in their full, loving, fragile humanity. They doubt, find spiritual solace at the beach, argue with each other, let one other and the audience see their vulnerabilities, their emotional and physical exhaustion as much as their conviction, their determination, and their longing for new beginnings. Thiaw’s draws a stirring portrait of a country – and a region – in the grip of change. She also shows, in the most poetic and most intimate, even tender ways possible, a new generation of youthful African activists and their ways of speaking to the world, addressing it from an Africa, which is at the centre of global political and cultural movements.

The film’s extraordinary poignant powers and poetics rose also during the discussion that followed the world premiere in Berlin, where Rama Thiaw shared the stage with Thiat and Kilifeu. The roots of this stirring, intimate portrait are deep, drawing on the extraordinary trust between the director and the main protagonists, who had not even seen the final cut of the film before the first night. Thiat called Thiaw a “visionary modern story teller”, whose work had really complemented their political and musical desires. This is a remarkable story told from the inside.

Thiaw, on her part, significantly spoke about her motivation to make the film. Born in 1978, she had been part of the generation that had brought Abdoulaye Wade to power with the resurgence of the Senegalese student movement in the late 1990s. She wanted to tell a story of different generations of activists, bridging the inspirational histories from the 1950s and 1960s, the 1990s, and the most recent wave, embodied in Senegal in Y’en a marre. The film is fittingly dedicated to Khady Sally, the great Senegalese cineaste, who died in 2013.

‘The revolution won’t be televised – the revolution will be live.’ Writer and director: Rama Thiaw. Production: Boul Fallé Images. Dakar Camera: Amath Niane. Length: 110 minutes. Languages: French and Wolof (with English subtitles)

Heike Becker is Professor of Anthropology at the University of the Western Cape, where she directs research and teaching on multiculturalism and diversity.

Murder of Giulio Regeni

ROAPE

February 25, 2016

ROAPE Online is shocked and saddened by the news about the murder of Giulio Regeni, an activist and a PhD student at Cambridge University working on the Egyptian new labour movement. Under a pseudo name, Giulio wrote reports on his research for the Italian newspaper Il Manifesto. Today, Il Manifesto published his latest, and tragically last contribution. While Egyptian authorities first attributed the death to a robbery or car accident, sources now confirm evidence of torture on Giulio’s body and a slow death. Giulio’s murder is a stark reminder of both the dangers and the importance of research which is politically committed to economic and social justice. It is now estimated that there are more than 6000 political prisoners in Egypt and new prisons are built to house summary arrests without any due process. For us an important question is whether Giulio’s murder is the product of a policy to create fear for all researchers or if it was the action of rogue state agents in competing security services. ROAPE Online sends its condolences and solidarity to Giulio’s family and friends. We encourage all our supporters to sign the online petition calling for the a full investigation into Giulio’s death.

1...949596...101 Page 95 of 101

ROAPEJournal

ROAPEJournal

Congo Binga: Notes on Burri’s Grande Sacco

Chiadzwa Diamond Fields: Unprecedented Plunder

Uganda 2016: the Struggle to Win Acholi Minds

Thank you, Martin

Towards Socialist Democracy

Tributes to Martin Legassick

Kenya’s Cartels: the Power of Bandits in Suits

The Revolution Won’t Be Televised

Decarbonization reproduces colonial inequalities

Oligarchy and the subversion of democracy – warnings from South Africa

The Day Rhodes Fell: Ten Years After

News

The Journal

Activities

Activities