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Radical Agendas #5: An Eco-Socialist Order in South Africa

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By Jacklyn Cock

An ecological transformation is required as part of a  ‘new liberation struggle’ in South Africa. This involves   a ‘just transition’ from the present fossil fuel regime that is moving us towards ecological collapse and catastrophe.   The article suggests that the impetus to this ecological transformation is coming strongly from two aspects of the ecological crisis: accelerating climate change and the spread of toxic pollution of water, air, land and food that is experienced as ‘environmental racism’.  The implication is that what Von Holdt and Webster (2005) conceptualised as a triple transition from democracy (economic liberalisation, political democracy and post-colonial transformation), requires a fourth dimension: an ecological transition to a society marked by a very different relation with nature, a relation combining social justice with ecological sustainability.

“new coalitions and forms of co-operation between both labour and environmental activists contains the promise of a new kind of socialism that is ethical, ecological and democratic.”

This comprehensive and transformative change could contain the embryo of a post-capitalist eco-socialist society. Such a vision is finding concrete expression in alternative social forms, new alliances and forms of power which are promoting counter-narratives of solidarity through environmental justice, energy democracy, transformative feminism and food sovereignty.  These could involve features such as the collective, democratic control of production for social needs, rather than profit; the mass roll out of socially owned renewable energy could mean decentralized energy with much greater potential for community control; the localisation of food production in the shift from carbon-intensive industrial agriculture to food sovereignty; new relations between men and women and the sharing of resources in more collective social forms. Support for such alternatives is related to the growing recognition that the fundamental cause of the deepening ecological crisis, which is having devastating impacts on the working class, is the expansionist logic of capitalism. The recognition is growing that the fundamental cause of the deepening climate crisis is the expansionist logic of capitalism. It is ‘a crisis arising from and perpetuated by the rule of capital, and hence incapable of resolution within the capitalist framework’ (Wallis, 2010:32). This recognition is promoting new coalitions and forms of co-operation between both labour and environmental activists. This new solidarity contains the promise of a new kind of socialism that is ethical, ecological and democratic.

The ecological crisis

South Africa is a microcosm of how the ecological crisis is deepening globally. Despite 21 years of international negotiations there is no binding global agreement on the reduction of carbon emissions. On the contrary   carbon emissions are rising (61% since 1990) which means climate change is intensifying and having  serious impacts – particularly in Africa – in the form of rising food prices, water shortages, crop failures, and dislocation from more extreme weather events. This is largely because the political systems of the most powerful countries are dominated by the interests of fossil fuel corporations and committed to the pursuit of economic growth at all costs (Klein, 2014).

Capital’s response to the climate crisis is that the system can continue to expand by creating a new ‘sustainable’ or ‘green capitalism’, bringing the efficiency of the market to bear on nature and its’s reproduction. The two pillars on which green capitalism rests are technological innovation and expanding markets while keeping the existing institutions of capitalism intact. Underlying all these strategies is the broad process of commodification: the transformation of nature and all social relations into economic relations, subordinated to the logic of the market and the imperatives of profit (Cock, 2014; Satgar, 2014).

This pattern is replicated in contemporary South Africa which is committed to a ‘green economy.’  It is one of the most energy and carbon intensive countries in the world, relying on coal as the primary energy source and a policy of supplying cheap energy to industry. The privatised oil company Sasol’s plant at Secunda is converting coal and gas into liquid petroleum and in the process creating the single greatest point-source site of CO2 emissions on the planet (Bond, 2015:6). Overall South Africa’s commitments to reducing carbon emissions are vague and insubstantial. At present over 500 tonnes of carbon a year are emitted, two new coal-fired power stations (among the largest in the world) are being built and forty new coal mines are planned, most of them in Mpumalanga on the most fertile land in the country. Communities living close to the operative coal-fired power stations and open-pit working or abandoned mines, are dealing with mass removals and dispossession, loss of livelihoods threats to food security, health problems associated with water and air pollution, corruption in the awarding of mining licenses and inadequate consultation.

“Communities living close to the operative coal-fired power stations and open-pit working or abandoned mines, are dealing with mass removals and dispossession, loss of livelihoods threats to food security.”

In addition to coal mining, the externalisation of the costs of industrial production in the form of pollution of the air and groundwater in many communities means that many South Africans are exposed to what Nixon (2011) has called ‘the slow violence’ of toxic pollution in a process which is insidious and largely invisible. Mostly  Black South Africans continue to live on the most damaged land, in the most polluted neighbourhoods often adjoining working or abandoned mines ,the coal fired power stations, steel mills, incinerators and waste sites or polluting industries, without adequate services of refuse removal,  water, electricity and sanitation. In the province of Gauteng alone there are some 1.6 million African people living on mine dumps that are contaminated with uranium and toxic heavy metals, including arsenic, aluminum, manganese and mercury. This pattern amounts to expressions of ‘environmental racism”. At the same time it is estimated that 83% of rivers are damaged from sewage pollution, deforestation is increasing and the threats to biodiversity include the loss of 5,000 rhinos from poaching since 2008.

This pattern of ecological damage is likely to increase with ‘Operation Phakisa (meaning ‘speed up’) which involves R60 billion worth of deep sea oil and gas exploration. Government recently granted prospecting licenses for marine phosphate mining which involves extensive dredging of the seabed. “If South Africa permits seabed mining, we will become the only country in the world to allow such a destructive practice” (Roux, 2015:7).  We are moving towards ecological catastrophe because government remains wedded to the dominant interests of the mineral-energy complex. This is the context in which new, potentially transformative social formations are emerging in contemporary South Africa.

Confronting the ecological crisis: new alliances, forms of power and organisations

The ecological crisis is driving new initiatives, along with the social crises of deepening poverty and unemployment, upheavals within the labour movement, new political groupings and growing grassroots dissatisfaction with the conventional political structures. What is distinctive about these initiatives is a focus on building popular power, developing new forms of solidarity including formal and informal alliances and coalitions, a regional focus and the use of symbolic power with a strong normative dimension to dramatise both the causes and the consequences of the ecological crisis. They are organising around concrete issues in the everyday experience of working people, especially rising food and energy prices. This “politics of everyday life is the crucible where revolutionary energies might develop” (Harvey, 2014).

There is a growing emphasis on moving beyond denunciation to formulate alternative narratives of food sovereignty, energy democracy, transformative feminism and environmental justice which could be building blocks for an eco-socialist order. For example, several organisations are not only mobilising opposition to fracking but also are “exploring alternatives which will foster energy sovereignty and transformative development while protecting the natural resources and people of the Karoo” (Black Thursday Southern Cape Land campaign statement 13.7.2015). Other  organisations are promoting  concrete post-carbon alternatives such as the  Earthlife’s Sustainable Energy and Livelihoods Project which  combines water harvesting, food sovereignty and clean energy, through installing, maintaining and training women on the use  of biogas digesters and PVC solar power units.

Some of these new alliances or coalitions are between formerly antagonistic groupings, such as those concerned with conservation of threatened plants, animals and wilderness areas and those concerned with social needs. An example  is the struggle against the proposed open cast Fuleni Coal mine stretching 3550 hectares close to the order of Hluhluwe iMfolozi Park, one of Africa’s oldest game reserves and central to rhino conservation where local women have mobilised with the support of conservation organisations. They have formed the iMfolozi Community and Wilderness Alliance.There are powerful forces involved in this  struggle; interests in the coal mine include” Glencore and BHB Billiton, the world’s largest commodity trader and mining house respectively” (Bond, 2015:9). Another  example of disparate groupings  uniting  is the Save Mapungubwe Coalition which was formed to safeguard the Mapungubwe National Park, a World Heritage Site, from an Australian –based mining company, Coal of Africa. The diverse coalition included environmental NGOs such as World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the Endangered Wildlife Trust (EWT) as well as local people. Such alliances are beginning to close a historic gap. In the past environmental initiatives involved a fault line which divided the ‘movement’ into two (sometimes antagonistic) main streams: those organised around the discourse of conservation and those organised around the discourse of environmental justice.

“In the past environmental initiatives involved a fault-line which divided the ‘movement’ into two (sometimes antagonistic) main streams: those organised around the discourse of conservation and those organised around the discourse of environmental justice.”

Many of these new social formations are against different forms of extractivism. For example the women struggling against threatened removals by the establishment of the Fulani coal mine are being assisted by WoMin (Women in Mining) which is a new regional alliance of organisations which emphasizes solidarity among women. Recently it convened a gathering of activisists from some 24 different organisations in the region calling for building ‘popular alliances against Big Coal” and a new form of development “that recognises and supports the work of care and reproduction”. (WoMin Declaration 24.1.2015). A women’s wing of the new organisation Mining Affected Communities in Action (MACUA) has been established. These organisations are responding to how black, working class women are the ‘shock absorbers’ of the climate crisis, experiencing most intensely the devastating impacts of rising food prices water pollution and energy poverty. They are building ‘counter power’ in what could develop into a form of transformative feminism.

Some of these coalitions linking conservation and community groups are focusing on strategic litigation in ways that are empowering. For example a coalition of eight civil society and community organisations  represented by  the Centre for Environmental Rights (CER) have instituted legal action against the Minister of Mineral Resources following his granting of a coal mining right to Atha-Africa Ventures inside the sensitive Mabola Protected Environment. CER and the older organisations such as the Legal Resources Centre and the Centre for Applied Legal Studies   are building the capacity of communities in terms of their rights (and mining companies’ obligations) in terms of the Constitution, NEMA, the National Water Act new mining requirements, and other applicable laws”.. as well as “the different avenues of recourse for violations of environmental  rights” (CALS, 2014:30).

Furthermore new alliances between labour and environmental activists are emerging. Many trade unionists emphasize the links between the climate crisis and neo-liberal capitalism. This found organisational expression in two COSATU committees established in 2010 consisting of representatives from all affiliates and from key environmental organisations. These structures have survived the turmoil in COSATU, promoted shared research into coal mining, chemicals and poultry farming with NUM, CEPPWAWU and FAWU. Following discussion at a workshop in Durban in July 2011 on climate change the Central Executive Committee of COSATU meeting on  22 – 24 August 2011 and attended by National office bearers, representatives of the 20 affiliated unions and 9 provincial structures, adopted  a Climate Change Policy Framework which stated its commitment to a ‘just transition’ and stressed that Capitalist accumulation has been the underlying cause of excessive greenhouse gas emissions, and therefore global warming and climate change (COSATU, 2012).

Two broad approaches to the notion of a ‘just transition’ exist: the minimalist position which emphasizes shallow, reformist change with green jobs, social protection, retraining and consultation. The emphasis is defensive and shows a preoccupation with protecting the interests of vulnerable workers. An alternative notion views the climate crisis as a catalyzing force for   massive transformative change towards socialism. Now expelled from COSATU, the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) supports this vision. It is arguing for a socially owned renewable energy sector and other forms of community energy enterprises where the full rights for workers are respected. Social ownership means energy being claimed as a public or common good that can take a mix of different forms such as public utilities, cooperatives or municipal owned entities.

Currently NUMSA is strongly promoting the notion of energy democracy, as a building block towards socialism. “An energy transition can only occur if there is a decisive shift in power towards workers, communities and the public – energy democracy. A transfer of resources, capital and infrastructure from private hands to a democratically controlled public sector will need to occur in order to ensure that a truly sustainable energy system is developed…Energy democracy offers perhaps the only feasible route to a new energy system that can protect workers rights and generate decent and stable jobs, make just transition real and be responsive to the needs of communities..”(Sweeney, 2012:3). An understanding of a ‘just transition’ simply limited to the goal of a low carbon economy could contain the embryo of a very different order. But it could also mean the expansion of the present privatised renewable energy programme in which electricity becomes totally unaffordable for the mass of South Africans. As a NUMSA official pointed out, “Renewable energy at the service of capital accumulation could result in even harsher patterns of displacement and appropriation of land than those brought about by other forms of energy” (Abramsky, 2012:349). In the South African context this notion is spreading and understood to involve resisting the agenda of the fossil fuels corporations and reclaiming the energy sector as part of ‘the commons’, public resources that are outside the market and democratically controlled.  Different experimental forms of social ownership of energy are emerging all over the country.

Another example of unions  and environmental organisations collaborating is the Climate Jobs Campaign which has collected 100,000 signatures in support of  creating jobs to address both poverty and climate change.  Based on meticulous research, it has demonstrated that up to three million such jobs, challenging capitalist ownership in favour of community owned projects, are possible.

Some of the activists working with the labour movement come from the environmental justice ‘movement. Members of organisations such as Earthlife Africa, Groundwork, the Vaal Enviromental Justice Alliance and the South Durban Community Environmental Alliance as well as newer anti-extractivist organisations such as MACUA and WoMin are bridging ecological and social justice issues and formulating an alternative social order. As with ‘energy democracy’ their foundational concept of environmental justice could be another conceptual building block towards an eco-socialism.

The hybridized and travelling discourse of environmental justice originated in the US in opposition to practices termed ‘environmental racism.’ It was radicalised in South Africa in a rather messy, haphazard process of translation to link the core principles of social justice, equity, heath, human rights, democratic participation, accountability and ecological sustainability. Environmental justice struggles involve a range of mobilising issues, though the most common demands and claims relate to ‘rights’ and health, a tendency related to the constitutional framing of the human right in the post-apartheid constitution proclaiming the right of all “to live in an environment that is not harmful to health or well-being” (Section 24 of the Bill of Rights). But much popular mobilisation is related to access to services such as water and energy and are localised, episodic, discontinuous and are not framed as ‘environmental ‘struggles. However doing so could provide an ideological basis for unified collective action.

The possibility of a unified environmental movement

At present there “is no clearly identifiable, relatively unified and broadly popular environmental movement in the country” (Death, 2014:1216). However this could be changing and here, as elsewhere, a unified environmental movement could “in alliance with others pose a serious threat to the reproduction of capital” (Harvey, 2014:252). Clearly coal, as the main driver of the ecological crisis in the form of climate change constitutes a powerful ground for unified action. Formal alliances in opposition to coal began in 2013 in a partnership between groundwork, Earthlife Africa and the Centre for Environmental Rights to challenge Eskom and are growing. The issues of land dispossession, health impacts through water and air pollution, loss of livelihoods, corruption in the granting of mining licenses and inadequate consultation with frontline communities are some of the grounds for unity. The expansion of coal mining on some of the most fertile land in the country also raises the issue of increasing food insecurity.

“The Food Sovereignty Campaign is mobilising grassroot communities, engaging in activist schools, study groups, establishing food gardens and developing innovative strategies such as bringing together grassroots experiences and ‘expert’ evidence.”

While coal is a cause, food insecurity is acknowledged to be one of the most serious consequences of climate change. Popular mobilisation against the present food regime in South Africa is growing. It is increasingly acknowledged as profoundly unjust in the co-existence of hunger (53% of the population officially classified as experiencing hunger either regularly or intermittently) and food waste (a third of all food produced) and ecologically unstable because of its dependence on fossil fuels. One of the growing initiatives confronting the food regime is the Food Sovereignty Campaign. This is mobilising grassroot communities, engaging in activist schools, study groups, establishing food gardens and developing innovative strategies such as bringing together grassroots experiences and ‘expert’ evidence, as in the case of the 2015 People’s Tribunal on Hunger, Food Prices and Landlessness. In the South African context food sovereignty is “an anti-capitalist emancipatory practice” (Satgar, 2011:1).

The foundational concept of food sovereignty includes agro-ecology and refers to “puts the aspirations and needs of those who produce, distribute and consume food at the heart of food systems and policies rather than the demands of markets and corporations” (Angus, 2009:53). It involves a comprehensive attack on corporate industrialised agriculture and its social and ecological consequences.  To regain social control, power and democracy in the food system is a direct challenge to capitalist relations. It could also involve a challenge to patriarchal relations from the black working class women who are the ‘shock absorbers’ of the food crisis.

There is a congruence between food sovereignty and the logic of eco-feminism; both emphasize working with rather than against nature.  Furthermore  the challenge to corporate power links to a socialist-feminism which recognises that to free women means deep, transformative change, Embryonic forms of a transformative feminism incorporating these elements and going ‘ representation  are emerging’. This implies women acting in solidarity for collective empowerment rather than individual advancement, to challenge both corporate and patriarchal power “as part of the larger struggle to eradicate domination in all its forms” (Hooks, 2015:22).

Collectively all these initiatives confronting the ecological crisis are demonstrating an alternative paradigm, a different relationship both between human beings and between human beings and nature, what Hilary Wainwright (2014) calls “power as transformative capacity

Conclusion

The ecological transformation that is essential in South Africa involves linking the principles of justice and sustainability and implies that the socialist emphases on class solidarity and collective ownership and democratic control must be connected to two other imperatives: gender justice and a  new narrative of the relation between nature and society. The conceptual building blocks of eco-socialism: food sovereignty, energy democracy, transformational feminism and environmental justice are gaining momentum. New social forms emerging around these ideas embody fragments of a vision of an alternative post-capitalist future.

Jacklyn Cock is a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Sociology at the University of the Witwatersrand, and an honorary research associate of the Society, Work and Development (SWOP) Institute.

Notes

Abrahamsky, K. 2012. ‘Energy and social reproduction’, The Commoner issue no 15. Pp 337 – 3

Bond, P. 2015. ‘Climate, water and the potential for South Africa’s ecological restoration’, Unpublished paper.

Centre for Applied Legal Studies (CALS) ‘Changing corporate behaviour: the Mapungubwe case study. (2014)

Cock, J. 2014. ‘The green economy: a just and sustainable development path or a ‘wolf in sheep’s clothing’, Global Labour Journal vol. 5.1.

Death, C. 2014 ‘Environmental Movements, Climate Change, and Consumption in South Africa’, Journal of Southern African Studies. Vol. 40 no 6, pp1215 – 1234

Harvey, D. 2014. Seventeen Contradictions and the end of capitalism New York: Oxford.

Hooks, B. 1988. Talking Back. Thinking feminist, thinking black. New York: Routledgde

Klein, N. 2014. This Changes Everything. New York: Simon and Shuster

Kovel, J. 2001. The Enemy of Nature. The end of capitalism or the end of the world.  London: Zed Books

Nixon, R. 2012. Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Panitch L. and Leyes, C. 2006 Coming to Terms with Nature. Socialist Register (Toronto: Palgrave.)

Roux,S. 2015. ‘Now they’re coming for the seabed’, Mail and Guardian 31.8.p.7

Satgar,V.. 2011. Editorial in Solidarity Economy Newsletter no. 12

Satgar, V. 2014. ‘South Africa’s Emergent Green Developmental State?” pp 126 -153 in Williams, M. (ed) The End of the Developmental State. Pietermaritzburg: UKZN Press

Sweeney, S. 2011. Resist, Reclaim, Restructure: Unions and the Struggle for Energy Democracy. New York: Cornell University.

Wainwright, H. 2014 State of Power. Amsterdam: Transnational Institute.

Wallis,V. 2010. ‘Beyond green capitalism’, Monthly Review 8pp 32 – 47

Webster, E. and Von Holdt, K.(eds) 2005. Beyond the apartheid workplace. Scottsville: UKZN Press

Namibia’s Moment: Youth and Urban Land Activism

By
ROAPE
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By Heike Becker

A few months short of the 25th anniversary of independence from South Africa in March 1990 Namibia reached her Fanonian moment. As Achille Mbembe has explained this term with regard to the South African student movements of 2015, a new generation has entered the country’s social and political scene and has forcefully asked penetrating new questions. In Namibia this has come in the shape of the Affirmative Repositioning (AR) movement.

Urban land activism

AR is a movement of urban youth, which took off from a spectacular action of its three founders, and was initially associated particularly with the outspoken Job Amupanda, who was at the time still the ruling Swapo Party Youth League’s (SYL) Secretary for Information, Publicity and Mobilisation. In November 2014 Amupanda, George Kambala and Dimbulukeni Nauyoma occupied a piece of land in an affluent suburb of Windhoek, which belonged to the Windhoek City Council. The land activists highlighted high rental and property prices, which make life in Windhoek impossibly expensive even for young professionals, let alone the large numbers of the urban poor.

The movement, expressly aimed at improving the socio-economic conditions of urban youth, has constituted the biggest mass action since Namibia’s independence in 1990. The AR movement embodies a groundswell of profound anger and frustration about the enormous social inequality twenty-five years after Namibian Independence in 1990. It is Namibia’s urban young, and particularly university and technikon students and graduates that mobilise for social justice with the urban poor.

The three young men’s land activism raised heckles with the country’s political establishment, who condemned it as ‘illegal land grabbing’. When the action was ended after a few days, using social media platforms extensively, the activists started mobilisations of young people to apply for land at the Windhoek municipality, which took on the character of mass demonstrations when 14,000 young people submitted individual land applications to the City of Windhoek on 21 November. In a second round of mass action in February 2015, thousands more land applications were handed over to the municipalities of Windhoek and a number of other towns. In the end, over 50,000 applications were submitted to local authorities across Namibia, 16,000 of those requested the allocation of land in Windhoek. Compared to Namibia’s tiny population of just 2 Million people, and the capital’s moderate size of 322,000 inhabitants (2010), this is an astonishing amount.   

On 27 March 2015, barely a week after the flashy celebrations of a quarter century of postcolonial Namibia and the concurrent inauguration of the country’s third president, Hage Geingob, the AR movement’s leadership publicly announced that if the land applications would not have been met by local authorities, the movement would take the land by force with mass invasions across the country. They set a deadline: 31 July 2015. In the run-up to that date, land invasions took place on several occasions on the outskirts of Windhoek and protests were held in other towns as well. While AR did not officially claim responsibility for these actions, Amupanda warned that “this was a taste of what awaits municipalities when the deadline arrives.” (The Namibian, 22 June 2015)

Responses to the movement

The movement’s activism seems to have been perceived as a threat by the national-liberation-movement-turned–ruling party Swapo, which expelled the three leading AR activists, who all had been with the SYL. Along with them the League’s secretary was dismissed, who had publicly expressed his support of their actions. Foremost among the public tongue lashing was former Swapo and Namibian president Sam Nujoma, the country’s still influential “autocratic personality and father figure” (Melber 2015: 50). The ‘Founding Father of the Namibian Nation’ (the official title bestowed upon him when he left office in 2005) angrily described the AR movement activists as being provocative and disrespectful and accused them of inciting violence and undermining Geingob’s new government. (The Namibian, 27 March 2015)

However, other sections of the political establishment took the movement’s concerns more seriously. While public anxiety gripped Namibia due to the threats to take urban land by force should the applications not have been processed and approved by July 2015, this was dissolved eventually through the different approach embarked upon by the country’s new President. Hage Geingob had pronounced in his inaugural speech to aim for more social equality and had named poverty alleviation as a key dimension of his programme. He had indeed made first steps toward implementation with the establishment of a new Ministry of Poverty Eradication and Social Welfare, headed by veteran activist Bishop Zephania Kameeta. Namibia’s new president personally negotiated with the activists, dismissing opposing voices in the party and cabinet with a presidential press release, which unequivocally stated his re-affirmed “willingness to engage and dialogue with the leaders of the Affirmative Repositioning Movement”. While Geingob condemned threats of violent acts, he emphasized that Swapo’s decision to expel its ill-disciplined youth members was irrelevant for the government’s position to engage on the pressing issue of land and decent shelter. (Republic of Namibia 2015)

After a 10 hour meeting a week ahead of the 31 July deadline, Geingob and the AR movement leadership agreed to work together on a plan to provide serviced plots. Windhoek and the major towns of Walvis Bay and Oshakati were selected as pilot sites and land clearing started immediately. Recently the AR movement’s Job Amupanda said that the activists were glad that despite the difficulties they initially encountered, they had got government to work with them and that they were confident that their dream was being realised. (The Namibian, 16 December 2015)

Challenging the zombie mentality

In February 2015, as the movement was getting traction fast, the three leaders of the movement spelt out their aims in writing: “AR seeks to establish an order quarantining and liquidating this capitalist anarchy, it is about standing up for the 60 percent of our population and shielding them from capitalist greed and economic rape.” (Kambala, Nayoma & Amupanda 2015) On his facebook wall, Amupanda, who teaches Political Science at the University of Namibia, cites Biko and Fanon as theoretical inspirations, combined with a devotion to a Marxist understanding of class struggle as the driving force of history. Regarding ‘race’, and the relationship with the white minority (about 5% of the Namibian population) he appears somewhat ambiguous. While thus far, unlike in South Africa, ‘decolonization’, as a project of knowledge and mind, has not been put on the movement’s agenda, the AR leaders acknowledge the inspiration of early 20th century anti-colonial struggles in northern Namibia. The “economic privilege of whiteness” has been identified as a future point of attention. Thus far, however, the ‘social ills’ of poverty, inequality, hunger and diseases have been prioritized as ‘national projects’, Amupanda posted (16 January 2016).       

Central to the movement’s activities is the declared aim to ‘liberate’ the youth who they want to “convert into active citizens and upright activists”, the movement’s leaders declared after their November 2015 summit. And further, that their aim was to challenge “the general zombie tendency and the bullshitisation (sic!) of politics and society”. (The Namibian, 4 December 2015)   

The ‘Zombie’ mentality of Namibian society has been a key target of the activists’ criticism. The frequent use of the term apparently angered Swapo politicians who felt insulted, where the AR movement activists condemned “clapping and singing for the satisfaction of politicians” (The Namibian, 6 January 2016). Yet, as the movement’s leaders have repeatedly pronounced, they are not into protest for its own sake. Instead, they call to young people “to involve themselves in things that have practical benefits for themselves, their families and communities.” A strong concept of constructive engagement and developmental ‘self-help’ ideology has all along been complementing the movement’s otherwise radical rhetoric and activism. Even at the height of their provocative land activism, the movement did not only indicate that it preferred a co-operative to an antagonistic relationship with the authorities but offered 30,000 youths as volunteers under an initiative called the ‘AR Free Labour Programme’ to service land with unpaid labour should the government allocate plots by the 31 July deadline.    

A paradoxical movement?

What started as a movement, which was narrowly focused on urban land activism has recently branched out into other social issues. A year after it appeared on the postcolonial Namibian scene, the AR movement held its first ‘summit’ in Windhoek in late November 2015. The reports from this meeting, which brought 450 activists together, confirm the blend of radicalism and self-help developmentalism, which had shown already during the mass urban land campaign. On the one hand the summit resolved to continue addressing “capitalist greed, corruption and other injustice”. On the other, however, the AR movement decided to set up a ‘consortium’, which would engage in economic endeavours “to provide leadership and practical direction towards economic freedom to the youth”. (The Namibian, 5 January 2016)

With this apparent paradox, the AR movement epitomizes Namibia’s Fanonian moment; yet it has also come to embody the new hope, which many among the youth associate with the new dispensation under Geingob. Many young people perceive the politics of Namibia’s third President as different from those of his predecessors’ in both substance and style. With his emphasis on the knowledge economy and his willingness to engage, he is being seen as a modernizer and a flamboyant intellectual; yet he also, as a long-time commentator of Namibian politics has critically charged, remains “wont to indulge in his predecessors’ bogus anti-imperialist antics” (Melber 2015: 62).

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

Notes

Kambala, George; Dimbulukeni Nayoma and Job Shipululo Amupanda 2015. Affirmative Repositioning – The Two Options. New Era, 13 February 2015.

Melber, Henning. 2015. From Nujoma to Geingob: 25 years of presidential democracy. Journal of Namibian Studies, 18 (2015): 49-65.

Republic of Namibia. 2015. ‘Office of the President, Press release, 17 July 2015’. Windhoek.

Radical Agendas #4: Gender in South African Politics

By
ROAPE
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By Shireen Hassim

Recently, the University of Cape Town (UCT) student organization #RhodesMustFall, displayed a banner proclaiming: “Dear History: This revolution has women, gays, queers, and trans. Remember that.” It was a profound declaration that the old politics of the left can no longer hold, and that the masculinist, male-dominated forms of oppositional politics that centred the male subject as the defining agent of transformation must be confronted.

To understand where this statement – which went viral on social media – comes from, we need to consider both the failures of the state-led democratic project and the modes of analysis and organisation on the left. An honest examination is especially timely as progressive politics is re-grouping around new formations ranging from political parties such as the Economic Freedom Fighters, to student movements, to broad front civil society arrangements such as the United Front. The women’s movement itself, to the extent that it ever existed in coherent form, has also seen several changes in the past two decades with the collapse of the Women’s National Coalition, the ever-increasing distance between the ANC Women’s League and feminists, and the emergence of a much wider range of organisations dealing with issues of violence and sexuality. Importantly, through initiatives such as the Feminist Table, connections are being forged between women’s organisations working at the brutal edge of the economic crisis in families, households and communities, and feminist thinkers.

But can the left itself connect in new ways? In this period of see-sawing between despair and hope, what are the possibilities for a renewed conversation on what redistribution would entail – redistribution of economic resources and assets to be sure, which remain central to projects of the left, but also the redistribution of social and political power which remain marginal? Women, gays, and queers appear to be caught between two forms of nationalism: a state-based, liberal project in which ‘women’ occupy a particular place in governmentalism, and a resurgent populist Africanism which for the most part privileges racial identity over all other forms. Are Zuma and the Malema merely two sides of the same patriarchal coin?

“But can the left itself connect in new ways? In this period of see-sawing between despair and hope, redistribution of economic resources and assets to be sure, but also the redistribution of social and political power which remain marginal?”

The ANC has proven that the old allies of feminism are all too unreliable. Pulled kicking and screaming behind a project of equality over the course of a century, the ANC in government found ways to blunt the concept and denude it of its particular radical content developed by women under its banner. In both Women’s Charters (1954 and 1994), the concept of equality referred to substantive equality. By this was meant attention to the systemic ways in which gender power operated through both the economy and the family-household.

The drafters of the Charters – and the thousands of women involved in the Federation of South African Women and the Women’s National Coalition recognized that representation in the formal institutions of the state mattered: nothing about us without us. They well understood that the law was complicit in inscribing inequality and upholding it in ways that mattered for women’s everyday lives. But as even a cursory reading of the Charters will show, they were at pains to point out that formal discrimination was indelibly tied to maintaining a system of exploitation of women’s labour and control of women’s sexuality.

That legacy, rich in debate and contestation, has been abandoned by the ANC in government. Going into the democratic era, there was a political consensus that not only should women have greater voice in decision making about public resources, but that those resources should be directed towards reducing the inequalities that are rooted in economic and social structures. That consensus is embodied in the Constitution. To be sure, one part of this related to parity in representation, full legal equality for all, and a public commitment to the rights of women. But that was always understood among feminists inside and out of the ANC to be one side of the bargain; the other side was the redistribution of status and resources.

Slowly but steadily, the last two decades have witnessed the Women’s League taking up the space as official representative of women in politics, in the process dislodging claims for redistribution. Under the presidency of Thabo Mbeki, a form of liberal feminism found firm footing. Women became the face of the modernist, national project of governing. Indeed, South Africa could be an exemplar of the argument made by Nancy Fraser that feminism is a crucial ally in the restructuring of capitalism. The easy incorporation of women into the existing places of power through the use of quotas, the spiraling illusion that projects of gender equality could be disaggregated from decision-making about the economy and the celebratory discourse about women’s progress in the new South Africa are all examples of this.

The Women’s League of course benefited from supporting both Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma: it gained positions for its members in Cabinet and in provincial legislatures, as well as in the Commission on Gender Equality. In 2007 it was poised to nominate a woman for the position of president of the ANC, in line with the suggestions by Mbeki about his successor. Many hoped that successor would be Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, a longstanding leader in the Women’s League and a smart and capable politician.

But Mbeki’s game was up and, by the end of that year, the League joined the winning side. It supported Zuma against the views of feminists in its own party, who were concerned about the macho assertions of power, the attitudes of sexual entitlement and the homophobia displayed by Zuma during his rape trial. Standing by their man came at a price. By the 2014 elections it was so hopelessly aligned to Zuma that it could not even maintain the pretense of support for women’s political power. It declared that South Africa was not ready for a woman president. This year it has made an about turn and rumours are that it will be nominating a woman for president at its elective conference this month. Truth is, no amount of spinning can conceal the fact that the Women’s League has done little during the past two decades of democracy to build public support for women’s rights, let alone shift gendered patterns of economic inequality.

“…no amount of spinning can conceal the fact that the Women’s League has done little during the past two decades of democracy to build public support for women’s rights, let alone shift gendered patterns of economic inequality.”

Even by the minimal standard of formal equality, the ANC has regressed in its support for feminism and the Women’s League has not been able to leverage its close relationship to the powerful faction in the party into political advantage. The women appointed to Cabinet and to parliament cannot seem to stop their party from introducing legislation that threatens the rights of women living under traditional authorities. It took a campaign led from outside the party, under the auspices of the Alliance for Rural Democracy, to halt the legislation. The Department of Women can seemingly not provide leadership in the battle to end gender-based violence, infamously tweeting in August 2015 the query ‘what should we do about women who lay charges (of gender-based violence) and then withdraw them’. They were roundly criticized by gender-based violence activists for having no understanding of the complexities of navigating the justice system. Hosting Sixteen Days of Activism and Women’s Month events is meaningless when government budgets for addressing violence and for supporting women affected by violence are massively cut.

In place of a politics of removing inequalities, the various structures set up to represent the interests of women in policymaking – such as the Office on the Status of Women – suggest the triumph of form over substance. Once the Ministry of Women’s Affairs was set up, none of the ministers that headed it could come up with the programs or the resources that would address the hard realities of life for poor women. Instead, they championed a bill that would legislate gender equality in both the public and the private sector – a cold sop to compensate for the lack of proper ideas and strategies. Now even that Ministry has been moved, this time into the Presidency – precisely the location in which the Office on the Status of Women was sidelined. This latest shuffle seems to be a typical gesture that gives the appearance of elevated status without the power to actually do much (or be properly accountable through the structures of parliament).

In fact, it is hard to see it as anything other than a retrogressive step for the project of getting government to deal with the gendered impacts of its economic policies. Zuma hopes that the Minister will champion women’s socio-economic empowerment and rights: so would we. But does anyone really believe that Susan Shabangu, who disastrously mismanaged the aftermath of the Marikana massacre, remembers her trade union roots?

Much of the collapse of the idea of substantive equality is attributed to the shift in the leadership of the ANC away from the ‘modern’ ideas of Mbeki to the more ‘traditionalist’ ideas of Zuma. Indeed it is fair to argue that Zuma has shifted the public debate to the right on issues of gender and that crude patriarchalism is far more evident under his presidency. More pertinently, the left in the tripartite alliance resolutely refused to listen to the feminists who warned that he was not the standard-bearer for progressive politics that he was portrayed to be. Of course, the association of Mbeki with the quota project and the initial support of the Women’s League for the continuation of Mbeki’s presidency complicated the picture. But only a little.

“More pertinently, the left in the tripartite alliance resolutely refused to listen to the feminists who warned that he was not the standard-bearer for progressive politics that he was portrayed to be.”

Mbeki may have incorporated women into his project of neo-liberal governance but there was never any doubt that Zuma would make things worse. It was very evident by 2009 that Zuma’s personal life revealed that his support for women’s and gay rights was thin. While the ANC Youth League was boosting Zuma with its 100% Zuluboy campaign, feminist activists were visibly and vocally opposed. The left in the alliance had little time for feminist arguments. The stakes were ‘higher’ they said: returning the party to the branches was the key consideration. Radical change was to hand. Gender was a secondary issue, they said impatiently. In effect, they made a Faustian pact and left it to history to prove the feminists right.

This raises the question of whether the Economic Freedom Fighters, the radical new kids on the political bloc, can offer any hope for beleaguered feminists. The signs are not promising. This first and obvious point to make is that the EFF is driven by the same team that brought us ‘100% Zuluboy.’ It is a team, moreover, led by Julius Malema who was taken to the Equality Court for his comments on women and sexual consent, and who made the infamous statement that the word intersexed did not exist in the Pedi language and hence it was unAfrican. Secondly, the EFF have chosen an explicitly militarized and masculinist mode in which to make their entry into politics. This is signaled by the language of the party: Commanders, Fighters, Central Command. It is also signaled by the gendered nature of the chosen uniforms: overalls for the men, housecoats with doeks for the women. The EFF supports substantive equality and redistribution and on paper it looks like a fair ally on the core issues.

However, their rhetoric slips dangerously into verbal abuse. When he was still leader of the ANC Youth League, Julius Malema referred to the then opposition parliamentary leader Lindiwe Mazibuko as a ‘teagirl’. As a more recent example and in a tussle in parliament this year, Malema referred to Minister of Small Business Development Lindiwe Zulu as a ‘straatmeid’ – literally a girl of the streets, figuratively a sex worker! As Siphokazi Magadla points out, such sexism is telling: it is ‘a crude reminder of the sexist double-standards faced by female guerillas in the aftermath of war where they are expected to conform to dominant ideas of feminine respectability.’

“…such sexism is telling: it is ‘a crude reminder of the sexist double-standards faced by female guerillas in the aftermath of war where they are expected to conform to dominant ideas of feminine respectability.’ “

The other new kid on the block, the United Front, has begun promisingly with an upfront commitment that it would not reproduce the typical patterns of civil society organisations in which women act as the backbone of the movement and men take on leadership. Some feminists suggest that the United Front’s association with former COSATU General Secretary Zwelinzima Vavi will taint the project. Vavi was notoriously brought down by allegations of a non-consensual affair with his secretary. It is too early to call whether this whiff of the familiar will be enough to keep feminists away from the United Front – whose anti-austerity politics has enough in other ways to bring together those who want radical change through nonviolent means.

There is no doubt that key feminist questions have only been engaged thus far at the margins of political debate: the gendered nature of power, the implications of a masculinized politics for women’s sense of agency, and more particularly how we might understand the implications of masculine forms of power for women as political subjects of postcolonial democracy in its South African form.

The sphere of the ‘political’ continues to be constructed in terms of high politics: the formal state, associated parties and allies such as trade unions, and oppositional social movements and NGOs. Even though racism and its multifarious forms of persistence in social and economic relations are re-entering public debate, the left pays scant attention to the sphere of the social. Economic policy debates simply pay lip service to the gendered forms of production and reproduction, leaving these connections to be made by the small number of overburdened feminist activists. It is a rare event when there is attention to gender dimensions of inequality in the writings of the male left. Issues of sexual identity and gender-based violence remain a ‘bit on the side’ of politics. The RhodesMustFall banner references precisely the ways in which these important concerns are either ignored or counterposed to the project of radical change, and the refusal of young feminists to collude in that positioning.

Shireen Hassim is Professor of Political Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand. She has published widely in the field of gender and politics, and her most recent book The ANC Women’s League: Sex, Gender and Politics was published by Jacana in 2014.

Notes

Magadla, Siphokazi, “The deafening silence of the EFF’s leaders” SACSIS 15 September 2014, available at http://www.sacsis.org.za/site/article/2133.

Lopez-Gonzalez, Laura, “Poor left out of new plan to end hunger – activists”, Health E-News, March 5, 2015, http://www.health-e.org.za/2015/03/05/poor-left-out-of-new-plan-to-end-hunger-activists/

Jacklyn Cock and Meg Luxton, “Marxism and Feminism: Unhappy Marriage or Creative Partnership?” in Michelle Williams and Vishwas Satgar (eds) Marxisms in the Twenty-First Century: Crisis, Critiques and Struggles, University of the Witwatersrand Press 2014

Pumla Dineo Gqola “How the ‘cult of femininity’ and violent masculinities support endemic gender based violence in contemporary South Africa” African Identities  5(1) 111-124.

Shireen Hassim 2014 Violent Modernity: Gender, race and bodies in contemporary South African politics, Politikon, Vol. 41, No. 2:167-182

The Salon Volume 9, Special Issue on RhodesMustFall, available at http://www.jwtc.org.za/the_salon/volume_9.htm

Obituary: John Peel

By
ROAPE
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By Caroline Ifeka

John Peel, who died on 2 November, aged 73 years, was a social scientist of considerable range and influence. His was a scholar of great integrity grounded in a humanity expressed over fifty years of weighty participation in and respect for the social sciences and arts, literary and visual, of Africa in general and of the Yoruba peoples of Nigeria in particular.  He was truly a loyal friend of Africa, passionate about the Yoruba, and their broadly based but endlessly deep and dynamic cultures and historic civilisations. His was a life dedicated to achieving superbly written high quality scholarship that he integrated with  a perceived duty to provide both committed leadership in the academy and enduring generous friendship to many in Africa,  Nigeria and Liberia, also in Europe, the US and UK.

John was born into an English middle class family, attended private preparatory school and subsequently was an outstanding pupil at King Edward’s School, Birmingham.  John’s father, Edwin Arthur Peel, held the position of Professor of Education at the University of Birmingham from 1950 to 1978; Peel pere was an advocate of Skinner’s empiricist statistical methodologies in educational psychology, rejecting Piaget’s and Vigotsky’s subtle interactive theories of children’s mental and emotional development. His mother, Norah Yeadon, was a school teacher who devoted herself to bringing up her two sons and three daughters.  In his address on the occasion of John’s funeral at St Michael’s Highgate on 20 November 2015, his close friend, the distinguished historian of the Akan people (Ghana) Tom McCaskie, suggested that John’s commitment to providing responsible leadership (possibly instilled by his father) co-existed uneasily with his desire for freedom in which to enjoy writing, thinking, walking, gardening and researching great French cathedrals.

John graduated in 1963 with First Class Honours in Literae Humaniores from Baliol College at Oxford.   A broad classical education in Ancient History, Greek and Latin Literature and Ancient Philosophy prepared him well for his subsequent development as a comparative sociologist, theorist and social historian under the flexible direction of the brilliantly able Weberian scholar, Donald Macrae, at the LSE’s Department of Sociology between 1963-66. Here John wrote up his doctoral Yoruba field research on African Prayer-Healing churches, subsequently published as Aladura: A Religious Movement among the Yoruba in 1968. The book was received to considerable acclaim as achieving a radical change in how we should analyse the role of people and religion in social change.

John’s interpretation of  Christian evangelism in Yorubaland  from a largely ‘bottom-up’  perspective – in terms of what ordinary and elite people thought, felt and desired for themselves –  rather than in  ‘top-down’ Western missionary and scholarly terms (‘orientalism in black Africa’),  rocked sociologists in Nigeria’s newly established then stellar universities of Ibadan, Nsukka and ABU (Zaria). Scholars in late 1960s and early 1970s in British and American social science, still largely dominated by ‘top-down’ empirically grounded models of society, were equally stunned.

‘Aladura’ introduced to African and Euro-American social science and history  a scholar of high calibre,  grounded in Western classicism, who sought in sociology and the history of African religions, to document  how Africans viewed, reasoned and yearned in their relations with the divine.  As John’s subsequent magnificent corpus would demonstrate, for all time, Yoruba Africans  lived for the most part orderly lives  in communities, large and small, guided by inter-personal and societal moral codes whose ancestral guardians, divinities, and lineage elders upheld strict moral rules for living in peace with culturally different and similar others.

However well ‘Aladura’ was received, acclaim in some quarters was qualified. The distinguished Yoruba social scientist, Oladejo Okedeji, like myself, was critical of the book’s somewhat problematic generalisations that to our then empiricist minds neglected conventional sociological methodologies (of the kind espoused by his father). Meanwhile, back in the UK, John was referred to in 1970s academic talk as ‘the great white hope of British sociology.’

John’s major publications on the role of culture and  religion in social change support, contrary to structural functionalist ‘reflectionist’ and Marxist materialist theorists, the Kantian and neo-Weberian  ‘intellectualist’ view, namely that fundamental concepts of the human mind structure experience.  ‘Aladura’, based on doctoral fieldwork and archival research, interpreted the rise of African prayer-healing churches from the 1920s – led largely by a growing class of clerks and junior professionals as school teachers – in the light of Kant’s argument that reason is the fountain-head of morality and attainment of a social life lived according to civilised principles of peace, tolerance and democracy. Yoruba, Ibo and Edo  clerks, primary school teachers, and literate traders felt the need for spiritual solace and support in ways resonating with indigenous religion’s emphasis on securing through prayer (adura), ritual (visions),  and sacrifice (in cash and kind) the good will of God’s Holy Spirit in battles against the Devil so social relations and individual fortune may  flourish.

Yoruba  and other Nigerian converts to African churches struggled to find biblically authorised ways of accommodating colonial and post-colonial society’s new trans-ethnic wage labouring realities with traditional cosmologies, rituals and kin-based relations of subsistence production. This theme of predominantly lower middle and working class urban dwellers’ efforts to accommodate tradition with modern realities through engaging in, and leading, new evangelical churches underpins John’s three subsequent publications on history and the role of religion in Yoruba social change: Ijeshas and Nigerians: The Incorporation of a Yoruba Kingdom, 1890s-1970s (1983),  Religious Encounter and the Making of the Yoruba (2000), Christianity, Islam and  Orisha-Religion: Three Traditions in Comparison and Interaction (posthumous, forthcoming).

These major works crown a life time of outstanding, stellar accomplishment in scholarship and academic leadership. Among other achievements he was appointed Editor of the International African Institute’s Journal Africa [1978-1986]; General Editor of the IAI’s African Library 1985-; elected Vice-President 1999-2000. In his role as a distinguished Professor, subsequently Emeritus Professor of Social Anthropology at the School of Oriental and African Studies, he was highly respected and admired by generations of students for his clarity and depth of thought, beauty of expression and capacity to impart to graduates in Peel-ian  interactionist terms the view that African cultures – and indeed indigenous religions as Yoruba Orisha –  are not ‘backward’ religions suppressed out of existence by dominant Christianity or Islam.  Rather are animistic ‘traditional’ religions, such as Orisha or Vodu (the latter is an official religion of the  Benin Republic), that are positive, dynamic forces that shape local  manifestations and practices of  modern Christianity and Islam whilst being shaped by these  world religions with their well-attested capacity  to suppress by means ostensibly peaceful and violent ‘traditional’ ecstatic religions.

John’s innate conservatism – reflected I suspect in his life-long devotion to Max Weber’s intellectualist view of religious conversion under early industrial capitalism (The Protestant Ethic And The Spirit of Capitalism, 1905) – informed his stout-hearted  eschewal of according a serious role in change to twentieth century capitalism, class relations and  under-development.  Unlike contemporary  post-modern scholars of religion and change whose cultural constructionism apparently exists in a bubble, floating freely in the writer’s head unanchored to the people in question, John’s analyses were soundly embedded in and integrated with ethnographically rich empirical data, written missionary and oral African historical texts, dating approximately from the 19th century. Yes, such ‘traditionalism’ informed by Weberian themes is a far cry from the theoretically rich and passionate neo-Marxist class based analyses of power, economy and African society published by ROAPE in its golden age in the 1970s and early 1980s.  But the outstanding quality of such a voluminous published output, so assuredly written with aptly chosen Yoruba adages, proverbs, and prayers demonstrating the inner spirit and values of a truly amazing African civilisation, assuredly compels our admiration and gratitude.

John’s unfortunately all too brief ‘third age’ following retirement in 2007 was rich in varied activities:  from visits to France  to enjoy the company of dear friends residing there and to pursue his French cathedrals project in which Tom McCaskie and others were frequent companions. John was blessed with great happiness through his relationship with, and subsequent marriage to, Anne Ogbigbo, a UNMIL (United Nations Mission in Liberia) official in Liberia responsible for human rights and development. From 2009 John visited Liberia frequently, staying for extended periods with Anne in Robertsport, a beautiful community on the coast, its oceans producing  crab and lobsters cooked to perfection by Anne and enjoyed by their household’s many visitors, African and European.

Desiring freedom from duty, John relaxed in Robertsport.  Writing to friends we learned that he enjoyed strolling around and dropping in on friends for chats over a beer. John came to know well  Robertsport and its warm, friendly people of all classes. This was anthropological field research at its most enjoyable. On Sundays he attended the local Episcopalian church (known locally as ‘Episcopol’) built atop a steep wooded hill; there he became a well-loved friend, singing heartily favourite hymns and participating in post-service discourse with traders, chiefs, government officials, women entrepreneurs and youth.

Known in Robertsport as ‘Papi’ or ‘Papa John’, since his death at 4 p.m. in  his London home on 2 November, 2015, many Robertsport friends phone Anne, comforting her and wanting her back home. Then, with Anne present, church folk will offer a special service in John’s memory while  Muslims will give prayers and ‘sacrifice’ to John’s soul to ensure his safe on-ward passage. Meanwhile, long-time friends in Nigeria are calling up Anne, asking her to join them there in the launching of John’s final book as well as in a projected Memorial Service at which people from many walks of life and quarters of the world will be present.

John’s legacy is so rich it will live far beyond our lifetimes, a joy for all lovers and scholars of African civilisations in an increasingly materialistic and conflicted world, a legacy that vandals and greed can never destroy.

John David Yeadon Peel, Sociologist And Social Historian. Born 13 November, died 2 November 2015. He is survived by his second wife, Anne Ogbigbo, three sons by his first wife, and six grandchildren.

Caroline Ifeka is a researcher in historical anthropology at the Australian National University in Canberra. For years she has written and researched on conflict, multinationals, the state, religions and the changing responses to Christianity in West Africa.

 

Le Burkina élit l’ex dauphin de Blaise Compaoré

By
ROAPE
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By Bruno Jaffré

Le Burkina a voté pour d’anciens proches de Blaise Compaoré renversé pourtant à la suite d’une puissante insurrection populaire. Cela peut paraitre paradoxal mais ce résultat est pourtant logique en regard de la réalité de la situation politique du pays.

Les résultats de la présidentielle sont là. Roch Marc Christian Kaboré, candidat du MPP (Mouvement du Peuple pour le progrès) a été élu président du Faso dès le premier tour avec 53,49% des suffrages, soit plus de 1 668 169 millions de voix.

Son rival, Zéphirin Diabré de l’UPC (Union pour le progrès et le changement) obtient 29,65% du suffrage, soit 924 811 voix.

Viennent ensuite Tahirou Barry, du PAREN (Parti pour la renaissance nationale) 3,09%, M Bénéwendé Sankara de l’UNIR/PS (l’Union pour la renaissance/ Parti sankariste) avec 86 459 voix soit 2,77% et Saran Sérémé du PDC (Parti pour la démocratie et le changement), ancienne dirigeante du CDP, le parti de Blaise Compaoré avec 1,73%. Les autres candidats font tous des petits scores.

Une élection non contestée

Cette élection s’est déroulée sous la surveillance de près de 16000 observateurs accrédités ou non, qui ont assisté, pour une partie d’entre eux, au dépouillement. La soirée électorale s’est déroulée dans un certain enthousiasme. Nombreux étaient les électeurs et les militants de la société civile à surveiller le dépouillement. Le Commission électorale nationale publiait très régulièrement les résultats au fur et à mesure qu’ils étaient vérifiés, relayés par plusieurs sites internet et les radios. La Convention des Organisations de la Société Civile pour l’Observation Domestique des Elections (CODEL) qui comptait à elle seule 6000 observateurs a relevé quelques dysfonctionnements qui ne sont pas de nature à dénaturer les résultats. Les observateurs de l’Union Européenne ont salué le bon déroulement de la présidentielle et des législatives, dans un climat de calme et de sérénité, mais relevé le vide juridique du code électoral en ce qui concerne la limitation des dépenses et la transparence dans la provenance des fonds utilisés.

Une certaine fierté semblait largement partagée d’avoir réussi ces premières élections depuis le départ de Blaise Compaoré et personne n’en contestait les résultats. Une vraie réussite de ce point de vue, alors que dans de nombreux autres pays de la région, la coutume est de se proclamer élu, pour certains candidats avant même la publication des résultats officiels, les autres se lançant immédiatement dans la contestation. Les félicitations aux vainqueurs se sont multipliées de toute part.

De la représentativité du gagnant

Si l’opération exceptionnelle d’inscriptions sur les listes électorales lancée en mars 2015 a permis d’augmenter les inscrits de 27%, pour atteindre plus 5 517 000, il reste que seulement 800000 en ont profité. Dans un pays qui compte 17 millions d’habitants, avec il est vrai 65% de la population de moins de 25 ans, si les progrès sont notables, il reste encore beaucoup à faire, alors que le potentiel approche les 9 millions. Le score du gagnant, ramené aux inscrits, atteint 30% mais seulement 18,4%, si l’on rapporte son nombre de voix par rapport au corps électoral potentiel, c’est-à-dire la population en âge de voter. La participation des inscrits a été en effet de 60%, à comparer aux 54% des présidentielles de 2010 où Blaise Compaoré avait été élu avec seulement 1358900 voix.

Pourtant on l’a vu, les moyens n’ont pas manqué pour amener les électeurs à voter. Certes les militants du PCRV (Parti communiste révolutionnaire voltaïque) ont appelé au boycott, mais cette forte désaffection pour les élections va bien au-delà de ce qu’ils représentent. Elle est plutôt à rechercher probablement du côté de la population pauvre. Préoccupée par la recherche quotidienne des moyens de subsistance, elle pense que ces élections ne les concerne pas ou surtout que quelque soient les résultats, cela n’améliorera pas sa situation.

Qui est Roch Marc Christian Kaboré ?

Marc Roch Christian Kaboré n’est pas vraiment le symbole du renouveau politique auquel on aurait pu s’attendre après une insurrection.

Il participe à la révolution comme membre de l’ULCR (Union des luttes reconstruites), le parti de Valère Somé, dont il est resté ami. Il est propulsé directeur de la BIB (Banque internationale du Burkina), alors qu’il n’a que 27 ans. Valère Somé sera arrêté et torturé, après l’assassinat de Thomas Sankara, dont il est resté très proche. Roch Kaboré, lui, se range derrière Blaise Compaoré.

Il a occupé tous les postes les plus importants du régime précédent, Premier ministre, mais aussi Vice-Président puis Président de l’Assemblée nationale, Secrétaire exécutif du CDP, le parti de Blaise Compaoré, avant d’en devenir le Président. On le citait alors comme le dauphin probable de Blaise Compaoré.

En 2010, au lendemain du congrès du CDP il déclare à propos de l’article 37 : « la limitation du mandat, dans son principe est antidémocratique. Il va contre le droit du citoyen à désigner qui il veut. » (source :http://www.lefaso.net/spip.php?arti…). C’est justement l’obstination de Blaise Compaoré à vouloir modifier cet article qui limitait les mandats qui fut justement à l’origine de l’insurrection. Roch Kaobré va se trouver victime des combats internes du parti, les hommes de François Compaoré, le petit frère du Président, s’emparant de la direction. Lors de la création du MPP, il déclarait qu’il n’avait rien contre Blaise Compaoré si ce n’est une divergence à propos de l’article 37.

Il quitte la direction du parti en 2012, après la révolte qui a traversé le pays en évoquant une nécessaire alternance à la direction du CDP ! (voir http://www.fasozine.com/blaise-comp…).

Lors d’un débat sur TV Monde, en septembre 2015 (voir http://mobile.tv5mondeplus.com/vide…, à partir de la 21eme minute) le journaliste Jean Baptiste Placca, bon connaisseur de la région a affirmé que Salif Diallo et Roch Marc Christian Kaboré auraient envoyé des émissaires pour rassurer Blaise Compaoré. Ils pourraient tenter de le faire revenir au pays s’il restait tranquille. La direction du MPP a cependant démenti. Les liens familiaux existent entre Blaise Compaoré et Roch Marc Christian Kaboré. De plus ce dernier et Salif Diallo ont des intérêts communs dans des sociétés où ils sont tous les 3 actionnaires.

Son élection ne constitue pas une surprise, si ce n’est peut-être qu’elle est intervenue dès le premier tour. Il est issu de l’ethnie majoritaire, les Mossis, un atout de toute première importance. Une photo d’un meeting du parti montrait des rangées bien remplies de « bonnets rouges », les chefs traditionnels, exhibant leurs fameux bonnets. Il est souvent présenté comme un homme de consensus et de compromis, sachant arrondir les angles. Lors du coup d’Etat de septembre 2015, nous avions relevé son hésitation après avoir pris connaissance du projet d’accord de la CEDEAO qui reprenait partiellement les revendication de Gilbert Diendéré (voir https://blogs.mediapart.fr/bruno-ja… et https://blogs.mediapart.fr/bruno-ja…). Il avait en effet déclaré à l’AFP qu’li n’était pas « en mesure de dire s’il allait lever ou non le mot d’ordre de désobéissance civile ».

Salif Diallo, le véritable dirigeant du Mouvement du Peuple pour le progrès

Roch Marc Christian Kaboré, Salif Diallo et Simon Compaoré ont créé le MPP, en janvier 2014, à grand renfort de moyens financiers, moins d’un an avant l’insurrection, alors que de puissantes manifestations avaient déjà été organisées dans tout le pays. Ce parti prend très rapidement de l’ampleur. Il publie de longues listes d’anciens militants du CDP démissionnaires. Grâce à son activisme, en employant les méthodes de mobilisation du CDP, il accueille de nombreuses personnes avides de changement. Il attire aussi les jeunes ambitieux, car il est vite apparu comme un potentiel futur gagnant des élections. Le MPP se réclame de la social-démocratie, il postule pour entrer dans l’Internationale socialiste, à moins qu’il n’y soit déjà. Plusieurs partis qui se classaient à gauche lui apportent leur soutien.

Salif Diallo est le véritable leader de ce parti. Il milite dans la jeunesse au sein du Parti communiste révolutionnaire voltaïque, qui s’est opposé à la Révolution, puis participe à une scission pour créer le GCB, qui se rallie à la révolution, mais participera à la lutte politique contre le « réformisme » de Thomas Sankara. Entre temps il s’est mis au service de Blaise Compaoré et intègre son cabinet au ministère de la Justice. Il se trouve en effet dans sa maison le jour de l’assassinat de Thomas Sankara, et deviendra son chef de cabinet jusqu’en 1989. Il occupe ensuite différents postes à la présidence de 87 à 1991, puis ministre en charge des missions de la présidence, lors du conflit au Libéria. Dans un document trouvé dans la maison du François Compaoré après l’insurrection, datant de 1999, des soldats ayant combattu au Libéria en 1989 et 1990 accusent « famille présidentielle, les politiciens, les barons du régime, les opérateurs économiques et le Commandement du CNEC à l’époque dont le chef de file est l’incontournable Diendéré (NDLR : à l’origine du putsh de septembre 2015) » d’avoir détourné l’argent qui leur était dû et ils précisent : « L’actuel ministre de l’environnement Salif Diallo peut témoigner, lui qui faisait la navette entre Ouagadougou et l’aéroport international de Robert-Ville Libéria, souvent pour convoyer les armes et munitions, tantôt pour ramener les tonnes d’or et diamant ainsi que les cantines de dollars. » (Voir http://blaisecompaore2015.info/Docu…). Dans le numéro 89 de la revue Politique Africaine daté de mars 2003, on peut lire dans un article sur la rébellion en Côte d’Ivoire page 80 : « Il semble en effet que ce dossier extrêmement sensible ait été géré par un tout petit cercle de fidèles du chef de l’Etat, au premier rang desquels figurent son frère François Compaoré et Salif Diallo, l’influent ministre d’Etat et homme lige de Blaise Compaoré, déjà mis en cause dans les trafics avec le Libéria, la Sierra Leone et l’Angola »

Il commence à faire des propositions de réformes, en 2008, pour faire évoluer le régime, qu’il sent à bout de souffle, et se retrouve en disgrâce nommé ambassadeur en Autriche. Il se met un peu plus tard au service du président du Niger.

Dans un ouvrage de Valère Somé, intitulé « Nuits froides en décembre » paru récemment au Burkina. Il écrit : « Salif Diallo, à l’époque, Directeur de cabinet du Président Blaise Compaoré, dirigeait personnellement les séances de tortures, y prenant même une part active ; lui un civil ». Une polémique l’oppose aussi aux étudiants de l’UGEB, (Union générale des étudiants du Burkina)) qui l’accusent d’avoir favorisé l’arrestation de l’étudiant Dabo Boukary, mort sous les tortures.

Salif Diallo fait profil bas chaque fois qu’il est interpellé sur son passé, affirmant notamment qu’il est disponible s’il est convoqué par la justice. Il a aussi déclaré qu’il ne s’opposerait pas à l’extradition de Blaise Compaoré, si sa culpabilité était prouvée. Et Roch Marc Christian Kaboré, de son côté a déclaré : « Si d’autre part, il n’y a rien qui est retenu contre lui, il lui est tout fait possible de rentrer dans son pays et d’y vivre tranquillement » ! Certes les enquêtes sont en cours, mais une telle déclaration rend sceptique sur leur volonté d’aller au bout des procédures judiciaires concernant les dirigeants de l’ancien régime, d’autant plus qu’ils en font partie.

Si Salif Diallo était vraiment sincère il pourrait commencer par raconter tout ce qu’il sait sur les années noires du régime, les auteurs des crimes politiques, la participation de son régime aux guerres et diverses déstabilisations régionales. N’était-il pas à l’époque, l’intime de Blaise Compaoré, son conseiller le plus proche ?

Comment la victoire du MPP a-t-elle été possible ?

Au vue du profil des gagnants, de la mobilisation du peuple pour le changement, de la popularité de Thomas Sankara dans le pays, qu’ils ont contribué à assassiner alors physiquement et politiquement, on peut s’étonner de ces résultats.

Pourtant ils étaient prévisibles. Salif Diallo se vante de connaitre parfaitement bien son pays et il a probablement raison. Il est de plus considéré comme un stratège hors pair. La vérité c’est que les hommes qui ont quitté le CDP pour le MPP l’ont quitté en amenant avec eux leurs réseaux, de deux types : les réseaux internationaux de soutien qui ont financé leur campagne et les réseaux à l’intérieur du pays qui quadrillent villages et quartiers. Ils ont employé les mêmes méthodes que celles que le CDP employait lors des élections précédentes. Remettre en place ces réseaux par lesquels transitent les sommes énormes qu’ils ont dépensées durant ces élections. Une amie de Dori me faisait part de 3 personnes qui allaient distribuer jusqu’à 25000FCFA par personne dans les quartiers pour acheter des voix. Un autre ami me confirmait ces méthodes dans d’autres régions. Le journal l’Observateur faisait d’ailleurs état de participants au meeting du MPP, se plaignant de ne pas avoir reçu les sommes promises ! Dans un pays pauvre, ce n’est pas négligeable. Nous l’avons dit plus haut les chefs coutumiers, encore très influents ont été mis à contribution, en ville comme à la campagne.

D’autre part, la contribution du MPP au départ de Blaise Compaoré, a été déterminante, même s’il n’a rejoint l’opposition que très tardivement. La scission au sein du CDP a contribué à affaiblir considérablement ce parti, en le vidant de nombreux militants et d’une partie de ses réseaux. Ce parti est semble-t-il à l’origine de différentes associations de la société civile partie prenante de l’insurrection. Et la veille de l’insurrection, des militants de ce parti, auraient organisé des réunions clandestines, pour préparer les manifestations et fabriquer des cocktails Molotov qui ont contribué à affaiblir les forces de l‘ordre le jour de la prise de l’assemblée nationale.

Enfin ce parti a attiré de nombreux jeunes, engagés dans le combat contre Blaise Compaoré, certains se réclamant de Thomas Sankara pensaient pouvoir jouer en rôle pour le changement ou espéraient tout simplement obtenir des postes.

Il faut encore ajouter que l’histoire du régime de Blaise Compaoré reste à écrire. Qu’aucun procès n’a encore eu lieu, et ce que nous avons rappelé ci-dessus à propos de Salif Diallo, est très largement ignoré, y compris parmi la jeunesse qui n’a pas connu cette période. Son passé commence à le rattraper. C’est d’ailleurs une des raisons qui ont fait que ce parti a choisi Roch Marc Christian Kaboré comme candidat. Une partie des jeunes veut croire au changement, préfère se projeter dans le futur, au détriment d’une introspection sur le passé de ce pays meurtri, au risque d’oublier que l’mpunité est le cancer de la démocratie.

Et maintenant ?

Aux législatives, le MPP vient en tête avec 55 députés, suivi de l’UPC, le parti de Zéphirin Diabré, deuxième aux présidentielles, avec 33 sièges, et du CDP, avec 18 sièges. L’assemblée comptant 127 députés, le MPP n’obtient pas la majorité absolue et va devoir faire des alliances. Les tractations commencent. Le MPP affirme vouloir une alliance des partis de gauche, et dans ce cas aurait besoin aussi des députés de plusieurs petits partis dont les 5 députés de l’UNIR PS, le parti sankariste.

Du côté du Balai citoyen on se satisfait du bon déroulement des élections. Il faut dire que cette association y a grandement contribué.

Tout le monde accepte le résultat, c’est ce que les votants ont choisi. Mais déjà on rappelle les nombreuses promesses du parti gagnant et on promet une vigilance accrue. Les futurs dirigeants disposent certes d’une longue expérience, Salif Diallo étant en plus connu comme étant un fin stratège, mais la partie ne s’annonce pas facile. Ils affirment vouloir aller très vite. Satisfaire les nombreuses promesses nécessite les moyens colossaux qu’ils auront bien du mal à réunir. Les attentes sociales sont énormes et les syndicats, comme la société civile qui se réclame de la veille citoyenne, ne vont pas leur laisser de répit. L’avancement des dossiers Sankara et Zongo est une exigence largement partagée. Par ailleurs, les acteurs de la Transition qui ont rendu le rapport de la Commission de réformes et de réconciliation vont veiller à ce que les préconisations soient rapidement mises œuvre. Sans oublier la délicate affaire des écoutes téléphoniques entre Guillaume Soro et Djibril Bassolé, qu’il va falloir gérer avec la Côte d’Ivoire voisine.

Bruno Jaffré est le biographe le plus important de Thomas Sankara, et est fortement considéré comme expert du Burkina Faso. Son étude de Thomas Sankara, La Patrie ou la mort est publié par  l’Harmattan.

Chasing Fraud and Profit

By
ROAPE
-

By Nataliya Mykhalchenko

In recent years, fraud – an intentional deception made for personal gain or to damage another individual – has increasingly penetrated various sectors of the global economy. Public and private actors are extensively undertaking anti-fraud measures in the Global North and in the Global South. Some interesting trends are emerging as part of this, as has been referred to by some actors it could be seen as a ‘war on fraud.’ An examination of articles published about anti-fraud measures in the past years in various online newspapers from Tanzania, South Africa, Ghana, Malawi, Kenya and Rwanda suggests that the existing anti-fraud initiatives may be only addressing the symptoms rather than the root causes of the fraud phenomena.

Economic fraud, ranging from fake mobile phones, medicine and garments, to tax fraud and bank fraud has serious negative implications for the economic system of the country. Tax fraud especially, harms the well-being of a country, with millions of dollars lost every year. Moreover, fraud causes substantial loses for individual companies. It is not surprising then that although state actors are pursuing some anti-fraud activity, private actors, both from the Global North and the Global South emerge as leaders in the anti-fraud sector. Private actors are especially active in the banking and insurance sectors, electronics, pharmaceuticals and in the energy sector. Anti-fraud activity initiated by these actors widely employs technology and popularisations campaigns to safeguard the respective brands and financial institutions from counterfeits, substandard products and tampering with financial transactions.

In the banking sector for instance, technology is used to protect financial transactions by securing credit cards with new chip technology. Such initiatives often require customers to reveal personal information, and in some instances even biometric information. This, as claimed by some, will make financial transactions more secure and will help acceleration into cashless-societies.  In the pharmaceuticals, electronics and in the garment industry, technology is used to check for authenticity and often require the participation of customers. Various incentives, such as free warranties, phones and textiles reward consumers for part-taking in such initiatives. Here, brands ‘empower’ costumers to play a role in protecting themselves from fakes; and at the same time, this creates an image of a reliable and a safe brand, that cares for their customers. Market, consumer, and brand concerns are evident in such initiatives.

A trend worth noting is increased activity of specialist companies, including those from the North as part of this ‘battle on fraud.’ Companies such as the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE) are especially active on the African continent. ACFE is the world’s largest anti-fraud organization and a provider of anti-fraud education, training and certification. It widely pursues awareness raising and educational campaigns to popularize the anti-fraud sector. Other companies, especially those from the North, that offer technological solutions for fighting fraud also stand out. These companies mainly offer computer software and other technical support. In some instances international organisations also push for the anti-fraud initiatives. For example, the Human Development Innovation Fund (HDIF) and UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) awarded a grant to a profit-making company Sproxil (a provider of innovative brand protection) in helping to expand the company’s business in Tanzania and to educate consumers about the health risks associated with counterfeit products (Taylor, 2015). The ‘Mobile Product Authentication’ – Sproxil’s anti-counterfeiting service – allows consumers to differentiate between fake and genuine products through the use of a mobile phone. The marriage between the HDIF, DFID and the American private company Sproxil suggests a joint interest of state and capital in, amongst others, promoting this product on a new market, and thus, expanding returns on the business. It is not yet clear what role the Tanzanian people and the state are to play in such a deal.

While ‘technological fixes’, such the one mentioned above, could be effective in theory, in practice they seem to be only masking the problem rather that addressing the root causes. Recent research (Wiegratz, 2012; 2015) reveals that more examination of the neoliberal restructuring that took place in many African countries is needed to understand the often high level of fraud in these societies. Based on his research in Uganda and elsewhere, Wiegratz argues that the moral-economic and interrelated political-economic aspects of neoliberalism have contributed to the routinisation of fraud across many societies. The question that needs to be asked then, is whether the current nature of the anti-fraud activity addresses the root causes of the fraud phenomenon. Can a technological solution, which can be breached by more sophisticated technology, address an issue that is more deeply embedded in social and political aspects of the economic system?

As was noted by Tombs and Whyte (2009), fraud is inherently liked to the issue of power. The examination of the newspaper articles reveal that power struggles are indeed a feature of the anti-fraud activity. In some instances political connections are used to influence the running of investigations, revealing that some initiatives have a particular political character, where power capacities of various actors allegedly linked to fraud, amongst others, influence who is prosecuted and who is not. This suggests that power plays a role in shaping the dynamics of the anti-fraud measures.

What is also worth noting is the fact that the anti-fraud sector is becoming a money making terrain. This can put the integrity and the effectiveness of the anti-fraud activity into question. The analysis of the identified initiatives suggests that a business impetus characterises and drives some anti-fraud initiatives across the examined countries. If we consider the research findings of the above mentioned academics, then we could ask whether the repercussions of neoliberal restructuring (which normalise fraud) could in fact be profitable for those, who according to the official narrative, aim to tackle fraud. To put more simply, does the profit motive of the anti-fraud ‘warriors’ in fact thrive on the very existence and increase of fraud? Here one can draw a parallel with the pharmaceutical industry, where some have argued that it is in fact not profitable for large companies to release drugs that can cure certain diseases permanently, because it is simply more profitable to continue treating the symptoms of the illness. Is the anti-fraud sector under the risk of deteriorating into something similar? Is it the case that is it in fact not profitable to permanently contain fraud?

To conclude, further enquiry is needed regarding motivations that drive measures, especially those resulting in financial gain. Understanding the role of power relations in shaping and influencing the anti-fraud sector is another aspect needing research. While it is not yet clear what effect, if any, the current anti-fraud activity is having on levels of fraud, the above discussion suggests that the instrumental nature of the measures risks masking rather than addressing the issue. This may well be because it fails to challenge the economic system that creates conditions for its very existence.

Nataliya Mykhalchenko is a third year International Development student at the University of Leeds. Her project was on the political economy of anti-fraud measures in Africa and is informed by the ongoing research of Dr. Jörg Wiegratz on anti-fraud measures in Uganda.

Notes

Taylor, P, 2015. UK funding will help Sproxil enter Tanzanian market. Securing Industry. Available at: http://www.securingindustry.com/pharmaceuticals/uk-funding-will-help-sproxil-enter-tanzanian-market/s40/a2305/#.VlzAGHbhDIU

Tombs, S. and Whyte, D., 2009. The State and Corporate Crime. In: Coleman, R and Sim, J and Tombs, S and Whyte, D, eds State, Crime, Power. Sage: London.

Wiegratz, J., 2015. The New Normal: Moral Economies in the ‘Age of Fraud’. In: Whyte, D., ed. How Corrupt is Britain?, London: Pluto

Wiegratz, J., 2012. The neoliberal harvest: the proliferation and normalisation of economic fraud in a market society. In: Winlow, S. and Atkinson, R., eds. New directions in crime and deviancy, London: Routledge

 

 

 

Being Cheated by Family

By
ROAPE
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By Malin Nystrand

In Uganda, as in many other societies, it is common for business owners to employ their own relatives in their business enterprises. These employments are, from the business owners’ perspective, primarily seen as part of the larger pattern of social responsibilities within the family (Nystrand, 2015). Employing relatives is seen as a social obligation, not as a contribution to the business, and most business owners find these employments difficult to handle.

In my study of social responsibility of owners of SMEs in Uganda several interviewed business owners complained that employed relatives did not understand their role as employees and indicated that relatives perceived that they had some type of claim on the business because of the family relationship. Firing an employed relative was very difficult because of opposition from other relatives, even in cases of fraud and where the employee had inflicted large damage to the business enterprise. This is what happened in Peter’s (not his real name) manufacturing firm, where a large number of employees, including employed relatives, had gone behind his back for several years and squandered money from the business for private consumption. The employees had bought cars and built houses for themselves at the company’s expense and Peter lost a lot of money. When he discovered the fraud he dismissed all those who had been involved, wrote-off what he had lost and restarted the business again with new people. Even though the relatives had squandered money on such a large scale, the larger family criticised Peter for firing the employed relatives. ‘It was horrible, because I had relatives in there. I tried to punish them. My relatives were on me: “how can you punish, how can you threaten your cousins.”’

Similar stories were recounted by other business owners. Richard had lived abroad for many years and during this time he started a business venture sending second hand electrical goods to Uganda. He involved a cousin to sell the goods and also sent him money to manage the business venture. The cousin stole the money and the business venture came to nothing. Richard decided not to employ relatives after this incident. He attributed cheating among relatives to the lack of accountability in this type of relationship. As expressed by a third business owner, Michael, who also had suffered economic loss due to an employed relative’s behaviour: ‘They have that tendency of saying that what can he do to me, he can’t sue me, because the relatives will see me as a very bad person, so you have to suffer silently.’

In literature on close social groups and business (for example, Granovetter, 1995) it is often assumed that family relations entail trust and mutual support. The problem identified is primarily that claims on the business’ resources from members of the social group can be a drain and hamper investment in and growth of the business enterprise. The business owners discussed above all took large responsibilities for members of their extended families by funding education, etc. But they did not benefit from the trust within social groups that is normally assumed to be the other side of the coin in such relations. Only one of the business owners I interviewed fitted into the ‘ideal’ picture of how family relations were integrated into business in a way that strengthened both structures.

The stories of fraud by employed relatives puzzled me. From the business owners’ perspective it was a person that they had tried to help, by involving them in the business, which had turned against them and stolen their money. Naturally, it has to be acknowledged that the cases above are told from the business owners’ perspective. We do not know how previous behaviour, power relations and different interests of the persons involved affect the relationship. Furthermore, self-reporting with regard to moral behaviour tend to be biased towards viewing oneself as morally superior. Another reasonable objection is that the assumption that family relations are inherently trustful and supportive might not reflect realities anywhere in the world. But the reason why I found fraud puzzling in these cases was that norms of mutual support within the extended family are still very strong in Uganda. There is something here that has to be better understood, either with regard to the nature of family relations in business or in relation to views on economic fraud.

One explanation would be to view fraud by employed relatives as part of the general problem of fraud in Uganda. Corruption and fraud is widespread, both in the public and private sector (Nystrand, 2014), and sometimes interpreted as an expression of a neo-liberalisation of moral economies (Wiegratz, 2010; Wiegratz and Cesnulyte, 2016). The view that fraud is permeating society has also been expressed in Ugandan popular music, such as in the songs Kiwani by Bobi Wine and Bayuda by Jose Chameleone. The fact that economic fraud occurs also within social groups where trust is assumed to be a main asset, i.e. within the family, might be seen as an expression of this general problem.

Another perspective would be to focus on the business owners’ complaint that relatives thought that they had some type of claim on the business due to the family relation. This might indicate a collectivistic view of ownership and rights that might collide with the neo-liberal view of individual ownership.

A completely different take would be to see the extended families’ concern with social cohesion even when economic fraud has taken place (as described by both Peter and Michael above) as a sign that social relations are given a higher priority than money, i.e. the opposite of economic interests permeating society. A similar view is reflected in Richard’s motivation to why he wanted to preserve the relationship to the cousin who squandered his money:

I try to preserve every relationship that I have. For me, yes, money is very good but it is not the ultimate. It is good to enable you live the kind of life you want to live … But if you take it as the number one, “you stole my money”, then you will have many enemies.

Richard’s view that ‘money is not the ultimate’ is noteworthy and points to a moral position that deviates from the profit-maximising position often assumed to be dominant among business actors. However, Richard speaks from a position of high socio-economic standing as his businesses, both in Uganda and abroad, were relatively successful. His material position is somewhat different from, for example, the small scale traders in Uganda that are the focus in the analysis by Wiegratz and Cesnulyte (2016): some of these traders give priority to money over other moral concerns (such as being somewhat lenient with poor trading counterparts such as peasants), is in part due to high economic insecurity and very low profit margins that characterises their businesses. These contrasting narratives point to the importance of giving attention to class when studying moral economies. Who can afford to prioritise social relations over money?

Dr Malin Nystrand is a lecturer working in the School of Global Studies at the University of Gothenburg. Malin’s areas of interest are social responsibility, informal social safety nets, small business owners’ role in society, corruption, critical perspectives on the development discourse and forms of governance.

Notes

Granovetter, Mark (1995), “The Economic Sociology of Firms and Entrepreneurs”, in Alejandro Portes (ed), The Economic Sociology of Immigration: Essays on Networks, Ethnicity and Entrepreneurship, New York: Russel Sage Foundation

Nystrand, Malin (2014), “Petty and grand corruption and the conflict dynamics in northern Uganda”, Third World Quarterly 35(5), 821-835

Nystrand, Malin (2015), The Rationale of Taking Social Responsibility: Social Embeddedness of Business Owners in Uganda, PhD thesis, University of Gothenburg

Wiegratz, Jörg (2010), “Fake Capitalism? The Dynamics of Neoliberal Moral Restructuring and Pseudo-development: The Case of Uganda”, Review of African Political Economy, 37(124), 123-137

Wiegratz, Jörg and Egle Cesnulyte (2016), “Money Talks: Moral Economies of Earning a Living in Neoliberal East Africa”, New Political Economy 21(1), 1-25

 

 

In the Name of the People

By
ROAPE
-

By Miles Larmer

In the Name of the People is, first and foremost, a study of the massacre of 27 May 1977 that followed the revolt/coup led by Nito Alves against the ruling MPLA in Angola, in which thousands and possibly tens of thousands were killed. It is however at least two other things: a journalistic examination of the role of the British left in silencing contemporary discussion of these events; and a first-person narrative by the author of both her discovery of these events, and her own complicity in the wider romanticisation of an African/‘Third World’ path to socialism that accepted, tacitly or explicitly, widespread repression in the name of liberation. Whether Pawson’s particular blend of historical insight, political comment and personal journey works is probably itself a highly personal judgment. I found Pawson’s book to be, in equal parts, insightful, exasperating and captivating: whilst lacking the rigour of academic analysis, it is far more involving and better written than the vast majority of academic texts.

Although the publisher’s claim that the events of the 27 May are an ‘unwritten story’ are wide of the mark – the events are, as Pawson herself reveals, commonly discussed, if still controversial, in Angola, and fairly well established amongst southern African analysts – the book does bring into the Anglophone public domain the complex events leading up to, during and following the massacre in greater detail than before. Most significant is emphasis placed by interviewees on the division between the mostly black African rebels, led by Nito Alves, and the mestiço-dominated MPLA government, which not only showed little empathy with the unsurprisingly racialised perception of post-independence urban Angolans who saw their society still run by the very people they thought had been ousted following the Portuguese coup of 1974, but who were then accused of being ‘black racists’ for holding such views.

Pawson not only secures interviews with relatives of those who were killed or disappeared, but also with some significant protagonists. The most significant of these is Fernando Costa Andrade aka ‘Ndunduma’, whose inflammatory editorials in Jornal do Angola during the revolt are compared to the role of Radio Mille Collines in the Rwandan genocide. As well as revealing the thinking of both the MPLA regime in its murderous reprisal attacks against the rebels – themselves led by an faction of the MPLA – significant insight is provided regarding the timing of events, including those outside Luanda. Pawson, a former BBC Angola correspondent, is as committed as the average historian to the gathering of historical detail, whilst also being alive to the endless contradictions and ambiguities arising in the recalling of historical memory. Whilst she doesn’t say it as clearly and consistently as she might, the narratives regarding the events of 37 years ago that Pawson provides are evidently inseparable from current Angolan politics, something which makes the study doubly valuable.

Many of these insights could however have been narrated in a book half this length: the analysis of 27 May is interspersed with the narrative of Pawson’s own journey, both journalistic and personal. This includes more relevant material about the difficulties of getting a visa, or the perceptions of ordinary Angolans of the western researcher. Pawson provides plenty of local African detail bordering on the Kapuściński-esque, which is in turns enticing and gruesome. Pawson’s interviews in Britain are also presented in an extraordinary level of detail, which occasionally works – the dissonance of an interviewee describing her husband’s disappearance in a Debenhams café is particularly striking – but generally doesn’t. The relevance of Pawson’s descriptions of her own neighbourhood in east London, or the ‘yummy mummies’ of Belsize Park, comes across as dull or gauche. She also has an irritating habit of intruding on interviewees and even historical sources with her own immediate thoughts, rather than allowing them to speak for themselves.

Pawson is more successful in her efforts to hold the British left responsible for its silence over the events of 27 May. Her encounters with Victoria Brittain and Michael Wolfers, and their general refusal to engage with her critique, are both painful and mesmerising. Pawson engages in equally pained self-criticism for her own naivety regarding, for example, Cuba’s role in African liberation struggles (the book rightly depicts the almost neo-colonial role played by Cuba in Angola in the late 1970s and 1980s), and her willingness to discuss this naivety so openly may force many readers, including those sympathetic to ROAPE, to reflect on whether, in supporting African liberation movements over the past fifty years, we have ourselves overlooked or dismissed atrocities committed by liberation movements either during the struggle or thereafter.

Pawson’s ability to look beyond the personal is however undermined by her lack of serious engagement with wider literature. For example, she compares (p. 5) the silence regarding 27 May 1977 with the ‘well known’ events of the Gukurahundi in early 1980s Zimbabwe; she is apparently unaware of the long silence of western civil society and sympathetic states regarding the Matabeleland massacres, precisely because of their support of the new Mugabe regime. Pawson similarly makes good use of Fanon’s prescient warnings regarding the post-colonial African state, but seems not to have read, for example; Jeffrey Herbst or Crawford Young’s instructive analyses of the colonial legacy for those states; those, like John Saul, who have critiqued liberation movements from the left; or those who have argued, like Henning Melber and Roger Southall, that a particular type of authoritarian regime has emerged from Southern Africa’s liberation struggles. In the Name of the People has exactly 103 footnotes.

If the book has, from an academic perspective, serious weaknesses, then Pawson successfully avoids other pitfalls with alacrity. Despite her entirely justified sympathy with the victims of the massacre, she is alive to the contradictory and ambiguous narratives of their contemporary representatives, and does not attempt to impose a single explanation on these complex events. She is acutely aware that victory for the golpistas in 1977 carried no obvious prospects for a more radical or less repressive regime. Pawson, like most disillusioned left-radicals with an enduring and passionate engagement with African liberation, struggles to make sense of the detritus of her hopes: these incomplete struggles, both for southern Africa liberation and in Pawson’s heart, have instructive lessons for many of us.

Miles Larmer teaches African history at the University of Oxford and he divides his time equally between History and the inter-disciplinary African Studies Centre. Miles studied at the universities of Westminster, London and Sheffield, and taught at the universities of Pretoria, Keele, Sheffield Hallam and Sheffield.

 

 

 

 

Radical Agendas #3: The Numsa Moment

By
ROAPE
-

By Edward Webster

The Marikana massacre of 16 August 2012 triggered a wave of strikes across South Africa, culminating in an unprecedented uprising in the rural areas of the Western Cape. It also began a process of political realignment. The dramatic entry of the Economic Freedom Front (EEF) into parliament was to become the most spectacular. But could the historic decision of Numsa in December 2013 to withdraw its logistical support for the ANC and its mandate to the union’s leadership to form a United Front and Movement for Socialism, be of more long term significance? It certainly was the popular view on the left at the time (Satgar, 2014). The “Numsa moment”, one support group boldly proclaimed, “constitutes the beginning of the end for the ANC and its ambivalence towards neo-liberalism” (Democracy from Below, December 2013).

The expulsion of Numsa from Cosatu in November 2014, followed by the expulsion of Zwelinzima Vavi in March 2015, the long-standing general-secretary, did not initially slow down enthusiasm for the Numsa moment. But the outcome of the Cosatu Special Congress in July, where Cosatu President Sidumo Dlamini seemed to win support from the carefully chosen delegates, has led to a more reflective mood. The launch of a rival pro-ANC metal union, the Liberated Metalworkers Union of South Africa, Limusa, further complicates the narrative. The postponement of the national launch of the United Front and on-going differences in strategy, is leading to a more sober assessment of the Numsa moment.

On Turning Points

Is Marikana and the “Numsa moment” a turning point, the beginning of the ‘next liberation struggle’ or does it mark the disintegration of a once powerful labour movement? We begin our answer to this question by revisiting South Africa’s turbulent labour history and the contested nature of Numsa’s politics.

“Is Marikana and the “Numsa moment” a turning point, the beginning of the ‘next liberation struggle’ or does it mark the disintegration of a once powerful labour movement?”

In the history of South Africa, mass strikes, “trials of strength”, have crucially impacted on the relationship between political parties and social classes, leading to a realignment of politics. Three strikes can be identified as turning points. Firstly, the 1922 white mine workers strike went on for three months and brought South Africa to the brink of civil war. The outcome of the strike was a class alliance between the emerging Afrikaner nationalist movement and white labour that was to lay the foundations for modern South Africa’s apartheid labour regime.

Secondly, the 1946 African mine workers strike marks another turning point. The strike highlighted the growing urbanisation of African workers. Afrikaner nationalists used this “threat” to help them win the 1948 general elections, which they contested on a programme of white domination. Importantly, it also helped cement an alliance between black labour and African nationalism, and the formation of the Congress Alliance in 1955 between the African National Congress (ANC) and the recently formed South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU).

Thirdly, the mass strikes of black workers in Durban in 1973 marked another turning point. It took place during the high point of apartheid, at a time when it was widely believed that strike action was not possible in South Africa. The strikes were to lay the foundations for the modern labour movement, as trade unions were established in all the major metropolitan areas of South Africa.

If the 1973 strikes led to the reconfiguration of the industrial relations system and the emergence of an independent workers movement for the first time in South Africa, it was the massacre of 34 striking mine workers on 16 August 2012 at Marikana that was to call into question the sustainability of the new post-apartheid labour and political order.

A Working Class Politics?

The idea of a workers’ party has deep roots in South Africa’s post-1973 labour movement. It was first openly articulated by the predecessor of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), the Federation of South African Trade Unions (Fosatu), in a speech by general secretary Joe Foster in 1982. He argued that Fosatu’s task was to build a working –class organisation within the popular struggle to represent workers politically. The South African Communist Party (SACP) saw Foster’s speech as an attack on its ‘vanguard’ role as the historic political representative of workers. It argued that Fosatu was promoting “syndicalism”, and that “trade unions cannot be political parties.”

In the eighties a powerful shop steward movement had emerged amongst South Africa’s metal workers rooted in the idea of worker control. (Webster, 1985:231-260) They had begun, in 1981/2, to go beyond the factory floor to wider issues related to the reproduction of the workforce. These actions ranged from resistance to the demolition of shacks in Katlehong to demands for worker control over pension funds. This was to culminate in the November 1984 mass stay-away in Gauteng led by unions, students and township residents. Unions were reaching out to those sectors outside the formal proletariat and developing forms of social movement unionism. Importantly, they were turning to political answers for their members’ problems and were searching for national level political responses. But this did not entail subordination of labour organisations to the nationalist movement. “The contradictions generated by capitalist development I concluded, “had given birth to a working class politics. The central issue now confronting the organised working class is the form and content of this politics” (Ibid, 280).

“The contradictions generated by capitalist development, had given birth to a working class politics. The central issue now confronting the organised working class is the form and content of this politics.”

But this was not to be. The debate on working-class politics was overtaken in the mid-1980s by the national liberation struggle and the transition to democracy led by the African National Congress (ANC). Indeed in 1984 the South African Communist Party (SACP) shifted its hostile position towards the democratic labour movement and decided to recruit trade unionists (Forrest, 2011:459).

In December 1985 Cosatu was launched as a ‘historic compromise’ between the two dominant political traditions, the national democratic tradition, mobilizing around the Freedom Charter, and the workerist tradition of Fosatu with its emphasis on building strong shop floor structures. This merging of the two political traditions led to a furious debate inside Cosatu. Those opposed to alliance politics charged that this new political direction was “misdirected,” and that this “rush” to espouse “alliance politics” will result in a situation where years of painstaking organisational work will be swept aside and workers will again be without democratic unions (Lambert and Webster, 1988:33).

Numsa Strategies

Alliance politics, and the victory of the ANC led Alliance in South Africa’s first democratic elections in April 1994, was to shift the focus of COSATU from workplace issues to a growing concentration on economic and industrial policy. Numsa leadership embraced what some have called strategic unionism, an engagement in tripartite structures such as Nedlac, a peak-level social dialogue forum, and the concept of “progressive competitiveness.” This involved labour adapting to global competition by developing new skills and a more strategic engagement with capital and the state. But, as Karl von Holdt demonstrated in his ethnographic study of Highveld Steel, “replacing ‘the culture of resistance’ with a ‘culture of productivity’ created an ‘organisational crisis’ in Numsa.” (Von Holdt, 2003:198) The strategy failed for a number of reasons: the process through which it was adopted, its complexity and lack of union capacity, doubts about its internal coherence, and the possibility that it could increase members’ workload and lead to job losses (Ibid, 196-202).

Numsa’s new strategy had an essentially corporatist agenda for labour. It aimed at a ‘reconstruction accord’ with the new government and participation in workplace and tripartite structures. But the idea of a separate party of workers had not died. At its fourth congress in July 1993, Numsa re-asserted the need for independence from the new government and called for the working class to develop an independent programme on how to advance to socialism. This, the congress declared, could take the form of a working class party (Forrest, 2011: 475).

The ANC’s “non-negotiable” embrace of neo-liberal economic policies in 1996 through the Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) strategy, led to a direct confrontation with COSATU and sections of the SACP. This began a process of increasing marginalization of the left from the ANC and growing tensions , articulated most strongly by the COSATU General Secretary, Zwelizima Vavi, accusing the ANC leadership of being a “predatory elite”. Growing disillusionment with the ANC led to the re-emergence inside NUMSA of the idea of a workers party.

To assess the extent of support for a workers party in the broader population, we conducted a survey of a large nationally representative sample of adults between February and March 2014. (Webster and Orkin, 2014) Surprisingly, a third of South African adults definitely thought that “a new political party,” a workers’ or labour party, “will assist with current problems facing SA” (the proportion answering ‘probably not’ or ‘definitely not’ were 15% and 13%).

In 2012, a sample of Cosatu shop stewards was asked a more specific question: “If Cosatu were to form a labour party and contest national elections, would you vote for such a party?” 65% said they would. In the 2014 survey, among the fully employed 69% agreed with the question (30% said “definitely” and 39% said “maybe”).

A Workers’ Party?

Numsa has approached the question of a workers’ party with caution. Following independence, trade unions in post-colonial Africa have tended initially to submit to the ruling party that drove the liberation struggle. But growing marginalization led unions in countries such as Zambia and Zimbabwe into opposition and the formation of a separate political party, which, in the case of Zambia’s Movement for Multiparty Democracy, won state power in elections.

“The existence of a relatively large industrial working class, strong civil society organizations and an independent trade union movement with a political culture of shop-floor democracy makes the survival of a workers’ party more likely.”

However, there has generally been a low level of political tolerance of political opposition in post-colonial Africa. Unlike established democracies, these new governments are engaged in the complex task of nation building. The result is a culture of “us” versus “them,” and union-backed oppositional parties have often been quickly labeled “counter-revolutionary” and “imperialist.” The union-backed Movement for Democratic Change soon became the focus of organized violence inflicted by the Zimbabwean state.

Could South Africa be a special case in post-colonial Africa? The existence of a relatively large industrial working class, strong civil society organizations and an independent trade union movement with a political culture of shop-floor democracy makes the survival of a workers’ party more likely.

What would the social base of such a party be? In the 2014, nationwide adult sample, 30% of the full-time or part-time employed would definitely support a workers’ party, rising to 40% of the unemployed. The highest expression of ‘definite’ support for the idea of a workers’ party was among the black working poor; among those with household incomes of less then R8000 a month; of primary/secondary education; and in the main working age of 18-49. By contrast, the lowest expressed ‘definite’ support for a workers’ party was among whites, Indian and coloureds alike; with household incomes of more than R8000 a month; of tertiary education; among the oldest.

This survey question indicated the size of the potential support base, and broadly identified its likely class features. But what will the form and content of a working class politics be in SA ? Is it to involve a broad workers’ party, along the lines of Brazil’s Partido dos Trabalhadores, with links to working-class communities , academics and small farmers. Or is to be a more traditional labour party along the lines of the UK Labour Party, with close ties with organized labour? Is it to be a revitalized Marxist-Leninist vanguard party, a mirror image of the SACP; or will something distinctive emerge out of the initiative to establish a United Front (UF).

Designed to link unions to struggles in the community, a National Working Committee of the United Front was established in December 2014. Although it still remains to be formally launched nationally it has an estimated two hundred and fifty loosely affiliated social justice and environmental justice affiliates. Of particular concern are climate change and the demand for eco-socialism. However, its political direction remains uncertain: should it be openly socialist, or a broad front similar to the United Democratic Front (UDF) of the eighties; is it a step towards a worker’s party or is it an autonomous body connecting a range of community based organizations; should it engage in electoral politics or should it remain at arms-length from party politics?

Importantly, the multiple expressions of local-level militancy that emerged over the past decade is a fragmented militancy, different from the social movement unionism of the early to mid eighties. The link between the current township protests and NUMSA is tenous. Indeed the high levels of unemployment in these communities – sometimes as high as 80% – has led to conflicts – and intensified violence – between the employed who are trying to maintain collective solidarity in a strike and those who want to go to work. This emerged most dramatically in the strikes on the platinum mines in Rustenburg. The coercive tactics used to maintain solidarity, described by Chinguno as a form of “violent solidarity, “runs counter to the democratic traditions of labour (Chinguno, 2015a and 2015b: 178).

“…the multiple expressions of local-level militancy that emerged over the past decade is a fragmented militancy, different from the social movement unionism of the early to mid-eighties.”

It is important to emphasize that the new initiatives, organisational forms and sources of power are emerging on the periphery of organised labour. The strikes at Marikana were not led by a union but were the product of the self-activity of labour, as Sinwell and Mbatha (2013: 32) argue: “The agency of workers, and more specifically the independent worker’s committee, is arguably the key feature surrounding the event of the Marikana Massacre…The committee at Marikana is important in understanding the strike wave along the Rustenburg Platinum Belt where these independent organisations emerged. Industrial sociology more generally has been dominated by investigations into formalised unions…”

Labour’s Dilemma

Labour’s dilemma in post-colonial countries is how to express its distinct working class politics in such a way that it does have a confrontation with the state or alienate itself from those who continue to support the dominant national narrative. Interestingly, the Ghana Trade Union Congress (TUC), has chosen the path of non-alignment with any specific political party. It prefers to develop its own political demands, lobby for these demands and advise its members to vote for the party that supports the GTUC’s programme. A similar approach has been adopted amongst informal worker organisations in India (Agarwala, 2013:98) Informal worker movements, Agarwala demonstrates, are most successful when operating within electoral contexts where parties compete for mass votes from the poor. She calls this competitive populism. These informal worker organisations are not attached to a particular party nor do they espouse a specific political or economic ideology. In this way they have successfully organised informal workers. As one organiser observed: “The informal sector is entering into the previously formal sector, and the formal sector is being cut in size…. We cannot differentiate between formal and informal workers, because politicians only care about getting most votes” (Cited in Agarwala, 2013: 98).

We are entering a new kind of politics, what some have come to call the “politics of precarity” where precariousness at work creates a crisis not just of job-quality but also of social reproduction (Lee and Kofman, 2012) There is, as Jennifer Chun argues, a “growing interest in a new political subject of labour…women, immigrants, people of color, low-paid service workers, precarious workers, groups that have been historically excluded from the moral and material boundaries of union membership” (Chun, 2012:40).

“We are entering a new kind of politics, what some have come to call the “politics of precarity” where precariousness at work creates a crisis not just of job-quality but also of social reproduction…”

Whether the left activists of the labour movement have the political imagination and energy to take advantage of this new terrain remains to be seen. What is clear is that the old labour order is no longer sustainable and building an alternative is going to require patient and long-term organisational work.

Edward Webster is Professor Emeritus, Society, Work and Development Institute (SWOP) at University of Witwatersrand. He is the outgoing director of the Chris Hani Institute, an independent left think tank in Cosatu House.

Notes

Agarwala, Rina. 2013, Informal Labour, Formal Politics, and Dignified Discontent in India (New York: Cambridge University Press).

Chinguno, C (2012), Marikana and the post-apartheid workplace order,” Society, Work and Development Institute (SWOP), Working Paper No.1 (April) (Johannesburg,University of the Witwatersrand).

Chinguno, C. (2015b), The shifting dynamics of the relations between institutionalisation and strike violence; a case study of Impala Platinum, Rustenburg (1982-2012), Doctoral Dissertation (Johannesburg: University of the Witwatersrand).

Chun, J. J. (2012), “The Power of the Powerless: New Schemes and resources for organising workers in neoliberal times,” in Suzuki, K. (Ed) Cross National Comparisons of Social Movement Unionism (Berlin: Peter Lang).

Democracy from Below (2013), “The ‘NUMSA moment’ is OUR moment,” University of KwaZulu-Natal (30th November-Ist December).

Forrest, K. (2011), Metal that will not bend: National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa 1980-1995 (Johannesburg; Wits University Press).

Lambert, R and E. Webster (1988), The re-emergence of political unionism in Contemporary South Africa, William Cobbett and Robin Cohen (ed) (London: James Currey).

Lee, C K, and Y. Kofman (2012), “The Politics of Precarity : Views Beyond the United States,” Work and Occupations, 39 (4): 388–408.

Satgar, V (2014), “The ‘Numsa moment’ leads left renewal,“ Mail & Guardian, August 22 to 28, p. 25.

Von Holdt, K. (2003), Transition from Below: Forging Trade Unionism and workplace Change in South Africa (Scottsville; University of Natal Press).

Webster, E. (1985), Cast in a racial mould: labour process and trade unionism in the foundries (Johannesburg; Ravan Press).

Webster, E and M. Orkin (2014), “Many believe workers’ party could help solve SA’s issues,” Business Day, July 15.

 

 

Gaming, Naming and Shaming ‘Licit Financial Flows’

By
ROAPE
-

By Patrick Bond

‘Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) is always prefaced with the two words ‘much needed, my colleague Sarah Bracking insisted this week at a Zimbabwe NGO conference. ‘Have you ever heard FDI referenced without those two words?’ We all shook our heads. The FDI mantra is this century’s cargo cult.

The meeting was in Harare in August 2015 and dedicated to fighting illegal capital flight from across the African continent. But would some of the region’s sharpest economic-justice NGOs take the next step and also consider fighting legal financial outflows –in the form of profits and dividends sent to TransNational Corporate (TNC) headquarters, profits drawn from minerals and oil ripped from the African soil?

The worst FDI tends to come solely in search of raw materials, but commodity prices have been crashing over the past year: oil by 50%, iron ore by 40%, coal by 20% and copper, gold and platinum by 10%. Far greater falls can be traded to prior peaks in 2011 and 2008.

Commodity Price Crash

GraphPriceCrash

 

Source: Reserve Bank of Australia

Slowing FDI is promising in part because the so-called 2002-11 commodity ‘super-cycle’ appears definitively over, so extractive industry pressure will probably slow dramatically. Although traumatic job losses are on the cards – Anglo American last week announced a third of its South African mining jobs will soon be shed – that could also mean less financial looting of Africa. My argument to the conference proceeded through seven points.

First, the category of so-called “illicit financial flows” (IFFs) reflects many of the corrupt ways that wealth is withdrawn from Africa, mostly in the extractives sector. These TNC tactics include mis-invoicing inputs, transfer pricing and other trading scams, tax avoidance and evasion of royalties, bribery, ‘round-tripping’ investment through tax havens, and simple theft of profits via myriad gimmicks aimed at removing resources from Africa.

In addition to these tireless researchers and activists, there are also policy-oriented NGOs working against IFF across Africa and the South, including several with northern roots like Global Financial Integrity, Tax Justice Network, Publish What You Pay and Eurodad. The implicit theory of change adopted by the head offices of such NGOs often strikes me as touchingly naïve: i.e., they argue, because transparency is like a harsh light that can disinfect corruption, it is mainly a matter of making capitalism cleaner by bringing problems like IFFs to light.

But second, even if IFFs were reduced, there’s another reason that FDI leaves Africa much poorer: what I term Licit Financial Flows (LFFs). These are legal profits and dividends sent home to TNC headquarters after FDI begins to pay off. They are hard to pin down but can be found within what’s called the ‘current account,’ along with trade.

So to find out, strip out trading: according to the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) database, the last fifteen years or so witnessed mostly evenly-balanced trade between Sub-Saharan African countries and the rest of the world, with a slight surplus (more exports than imports) from 2000-2008, and then a slight deficit, growing in 2014.

Africa’s rising debt, trade deficit and current account deficit

IMFgraphic

Source: International Monetary Fund

Third, the legal LFFs are volatile, no more so than Africa where FDI has fallen from its $66 billion peak annual inflow in 2008 to a recent level around $50 billion. That’s not only thanks to shrunken global commodities markets and the end of the Chinese growth miracle. The UN Conference on Trade and Development (Unctad) also recordsa sharp rise in ‘new national investment policies that are restrictive’ since 2001, though cargo-cult Africa has been slow to keep up with that trend.

Then there’s the overall problem of capitalist crisis as it appears in 2015: what we Marxist political economists termcapital’s worsening ‘overaccumulation’, or glutting of markets. (Das Kapital spelled it out and David Harvey is the bestguide.)

As a result, nearly everywhere, FDI is in retreat, with 16% less flowing globally in 2014 than in 2013, according to Unctad’s new World Investment Report. This is potentially very good news for those concerned that TNCs loot through LFFs, in Africa and everywhere.

Fourth, getting back to the danger zone in Africa, the current account deficit in turn requires that state elites attract yet more new FDI, so as to have hard currency on hand to pay back old FDI, or to take on new foreign borrowings so as to make payments on home-bound TNC profits and dividends. And since FDI is slowing, foreign debt is soaring. For Sub-Saharan Africa, what was a $200 billion foreign debt from 1995-2005 (when G7 debt relief shrunk it 10%) is now nearly $400 billion.

South Africa’s emerging debt crisis

SAgraphic

Source: Reserve Bank of South Africa

Fifth, more nuance is important in terms which firms are doing the looting. It’s not just the Western TNCs, which looted this continent for centuries. The single biggest country-based source of FDI in Africa is internal, from South Africa.

In June, the South African Reserve Bank revealed that Johannesburg firms were in 2012-14 drawing in only half as much in profits (‘dividend receipts’) from their overseas operations as TNCs were taking out of South Africa. But that was a step-up from the 2009-11 period when local TNCs pulled in only a third of what foreigners took out of South Africa. It seems that Johannesburg companies have been busier looting the rest of the continent recently.

Sixth, a threat to this pleasing trend of declining FDI, and hence less looting, is renewed and yet more frenetic mining. To this end, vast public subsidies may be pumped through the new ‘Program for Infrastructure Development for Africa.’ The donor-supported, trillion dollar project is mainly aimed at neo-colonial extraction of minerals and oil, and its transport along new roads, railroads, pipelines and bridges to new ports, along with electricity generation overwhelmingly biased towards mining and smelting.

Patrick Bond’s presentation on BRICS, development and Africa at the ROAPE/JSAS conference in Livingstone in August 2015.

So seventh, we should reconsider the historic colonial-era bias of the continent towards extraction of non-renewable ‘natural capital’ – i.e., minerals, oil and gas (the exploitation of which leaves Africa far poorer in net terms than anywhere else) – given how the continent’s net wealth has been shrinking rapidly the last few years, even the World Bank admits in its Wealth of Nations series.

We should instead focus economic policies towards rebalancing, which might require, in the short term, that Africa re-imposes exchange controls to better control both IFFs and LFFs, then lower interest rates to boost growth, audit ‘Odious Debt’ before further repayment, and better control imports and exports.

It is a sound short-term economic strategy appropriate for what we might hope will be a post-FDI world. In Africa, the name Samir Amin – the continent’s greatest political economist and at 83 still going strong – has been associated with this sort of delinking strategy since the 1960s. I would like to optimistically think that the resonance of these seven points is growing, as fast as the FDI is retreating.

Patrick Bond is based at the University of the Witwatersrand School of Governance and the author of numerous books on African political economy.

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For 50 years, ROAPE has brought our readers pathbreaking analysis on radical African political economy in our quarterly review, and for more than ten years on our website. Subscriptions and donations are essential to keeping our review and website alive.
Subscribe
Donate
We use cookies to collect and analyse information on site performance and usage, and to enhance and customise content. By clicking into any content on this site, you agree to allow cookies to be placed. To find out more see our
Privacy Policy