PAMBAZUKA

SPECIAL REPORT 14

THE SILENCES IN THE NGO DISCOURSE:

THE ROLE AND FUTURE OF NGOS IN AFRICA

Issa G. Shivji Pambazuka News is the authoritative pan-African electronic weekly newsletter and platform for social justice in Africa providing cutting- edge commentary and in-depth analysis on politics and current affairs, development, human rights, refugees, gender issues and culture in Africa. To view online and subscribe for free, go to http://www.pambazuka.org/ Pambazuka News is also produced in French. Visit www.pambazuka.org/fr for more information

Pambazuka News is published by Fahamu Ltd © Fahamu 2006 ‘The silences in the NGO discourse: the role and future of NGOs in Africa’ © 2006 Issa G. Shivji All rights reserved. Redistribution of the material presented in this work is encouraged by the publisher, provided that the original text is not altered, that the original source is properly and fully acknowledged and that the objective of the redistribution is not commercial gain. Please contact the publisher if you wish to reproduce, redistribute or transmit, in any form or by any means, this work or any portion thereof. Fahamu 2nd floor, 51 Cornmarket Street, Oxford OX1 3HA, UK [email protected] Fahamu Trust is registered as a charity 1100304 Fahamu Ltd is a not for profit company limited by guarantee 4241054 Fahamu SA Trust The Studio, 6 Cromer Road, Muizenberg 7945, Cape Town, South Africa [email protected] Fahamu SA is registered as a trust in South Africa IT 372/01 Fahamu Kenya P O Box 47158 - 00100, GPO Nairobi, 1st Floor, Shelter Afrique House, Mamlaka Road, Nairobi, Kenya Tel + 254 (0)20 272 5991 Mobile + 254 (0)725 721623 [email protected] Fahamu Ltd is registered as a company limited by guarantee F. 15/2006 in Kenya The views expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of Fahamu Ltd or Fahamu Trust. THE SILENCES IN THE NGO DISCOURSE:

THE ROLE AND FUTURE OF NGOS IN AFRICA

by Issa G. Shivji Faculty of Law University of Dar es Salaam [email protected]

Keynote paper presented to the Symposium on NGOs held at the MS-Training Centre for Development Cooperation in Arusha, Tanzania, 28-29 November 2005 THE SILENCES IN THE NGO DISCOURSE

By way of a preface The national project and This paper is an attempt to examine critically the its impediments role and future of the NGO in Africa in the light of its self-perception as a non-governmental, non-political, non-partisan, non-ideological, non-academic, non- 1885: The slicing of the African ‘cake’ theoretical, not-for-profit association of well- By 1885, when European kings, princes and presidents intentioned individuals dedicated to changing the sat in Berlin to slice up the African continent with world to make it a better place for the poor, the their geometrical instruments, the African people had marginalised and the downcast. It is the argument of already been devastated by the ravages of the West the paper that the role of NGOs in Africa cannot be Atlantic slave trade. In West and Central Africa, the understood without a clear characterisation of the indigenous civilisations from the sophisticated Saharan current historical moment. trade routes, with Timbuktu as its centre, to the On a canvass of broad strokes, I depict Africa at the empires of Angola, lay in ruins (Davidson 1961:197). crossroads of the defeat of the national project and On the Eastern seaboard, the European invasion led the rehabilitation of the imperial project. In the face by the Portuguese defeated and destroyed the city of the avalanche of ‘end of history’ diatribe, I find it states of Swahili civilisation (ibid., Sheriff 1987:15 et necessary, albeit briefly, to reiterate the history of seq.). All in all, some 50 million souls are estimated to Africa’s enslavement from the first contacts with the have perished in the triangular slave trade that lasted Europeans five centuries ago through the slave trade for roughly four centuries (1450–1850). to colonialism and now globalisation. The aim of this The development of the European and North Ameri- historical detour is to demonstrate the fundamental can industrial revolution and the global lead that this anti-thesis between the national and the imperial gave to Europe and America was in no small measure projects so as to identify correctly the place and role built on the backs of Africans (Williams 1945). The co- of the NGOs in it. lonial episode was thus the tail end of the long and I locate the rise, the prominence and the privileg- destructive contact between Europe and Africa. The ing of the NGO sector in the womb of the neoliberal slave trade tore apart the very social fabric of African offensive, whose aim is as much ideological as eco- societies, destroying the internal processes of change nomic and political. I argue that the NGO discourse, and imposing on the continent a European world view or more correctly the non-discourse, is predicated on in which the peoples of Africa belonged to the lowest the philosophical and political premises of the neolib- rung of the so-called civilised order. No other conti- eralism/globalisation paradigm. It is in this context nent, including those that suffered formal European that I go on to discuss the ‘five silences’ or blind-spots colonisation, had their social, cultural and moral or- in the NGO discourse. I draw out the implications of der destroyed on this scale. these silences on the contemporary and future role of The dominant European historiography, at best, re- the NGO sector in Africa. counts the colonial episode while ignoring four centu- At the outset, I must make two confessions. First, ries of pre-colonial contact. Yet the present cannot be the paper is undoubtedly critical, sometimes ruthless- fully understood and grasped nor the future charted ly so, but not cynical. Secondly, the criticism is also without constantly keeping centre-stage the centu- a self-criticism since the author has been involved in ries-old processes of what Rodney called, How Europe NGO activism for the last 15 years or so. And, finally, Underdeveloped Africa (Rodney 1972). I must make it clear that I do not doubt the noble The pre-colonial and colonial legacy of Africa is thus motivations and the good intentions of NGO leaders a continuing saga of domination, exploitation and hu- and activists. But one does not judge the outcome of miliation of the continent by the imperial powers of a process by the intentions of its authors; one analy- Europe and America. It is the thesis of this paper that ses the objective effect of actions regardless of inten- that imperial relationship continues, notwithstanding tions. Hopefully, that is what I have done. the brief period of nationalism. In the next section I briefly recapitulate the salient features of the colo- nial legacy and the abortive national project.

The colonial legacy

From its very inception, the most important feature of colonialism was the division of the continent into countries and states cutting across ‘natural’

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geographic, cultural, ethnic and economic ties which of learning and entrepreneurship, to be perpetually had evolved historically. First, there was the artificial ruled and disciplined, the internal social division and drawing of boundaries literally with rulers reflecting stratification of African society was suppressed and the balance of strength and power among the imperial muted. Instead, traders and craftsmen and skilled states. The boundaries divided up peoples, cultures, labour was imported: South Asians in East Africa, natural resources and historical affinities. On top of Lebanese in West Africa. Thus a hierarchy of racial that, the newly-created countries became subjects of privileges was constructed, the epitome of which was different European powers with their own traditions the settler colony. The middle classes that devel- of political rule, public administration, cultural oped in the interstices of the colonised social order outlooks, languages and systems of education. Africa were stunted at best, or caricatures, at worst (Fanon was never Africa; it was Anglo-phone, Franco-phone, 1963). or Luso-phone. Fifth, religion and education were the vehicle for Second, colonial economies answering to the needs reproducing the colonial racial and cultural complex- and exigencies of metropolitan powers were disin- es – white was superior, black was inferior. The white tegrated and disarticulated. The notorious export- man’s beliefs were a religion; the black man’s, witch- oriented, vertically-integrated economies, based on craft/ ‘black magic’. The white man’s means of com- export of raw materials and import of manufactured munication was language; the black man’s, dialect. As goods was the result. The internal processes of spe- Fanon puts it: cialisation and division of labour with mutual interde- pendence (craftsmen and cultivators, producers and The native is declared insensible to ethics; merchants, industrial and agriculture, etc), a possible he represents not only the absence of values, harbinger of future industrial development, were de- but also the negation of values. ... The cus- liberately destroyed and systematically discouraged toms of the colonised people, their traditions, (Kjekshus 1977 & 1996). Within and between coun- their myths – above all, their myths – are the tries, there was extreme uneven development. very sign of that poverty of spirit and of their The underlying economic logic of the colonial econ- constitutional depravity. That is why we must omy was of course the exploitation of its natural and put the D.D.T. which destroys parasites, the human resources. Colonies became the sites of gener- bearers of disease, on the same level as the ating surplus while metropoles were the sites of accu- Christian religion which wages war on em- mulation, resulting in the development of the centres bryonic heresies and instincts, and on evil as and the underdevelopment of the peripheries. The yet unborn. ... The Church in the colonies is processes of production relied heavily on coercion, the white people’s Church, the foreigner’s rather than the apparent consensus of contract for its Church. She does not call the native to God’s reproduction – forced labour, forced peasant produc- ways but to the ways of the white man, of tion, forced cash crop sales, restrictions on organisa- the master, of the oppressor. And as we know, tion and association, criminalisation of ‘civil relations’ in this matter many are called but few cho- (for example, breach of employment contracts led to sen (Fanon 1963: 32). penal sanctions, so did non-cultivation of minimum acreages of cash/food crops), etc. Thus force was im- The ‘few chosen’, the colonised elite, were thus a bricated in the process of production (Mamdani 1987, caricature, alienated from their own people and yet not Shivji 1987 & 1998). fully accepted by their master. Sartre sums it well: Third, people were divided along ethnic, religious and racial lines. Some tribes were labelled martial The European élite undertook to manufac- and therefore a recruiting ground for soldiers; oth- ture a native élite. They picked out prom- ers were condemned to be labourers and their areas ising adolescents; they branded them, as became labour reservoirs; still others were supposed with a red-hot iron, with the principles of to be chiefly to provide the political henchmen of co- western culture; they stuffed their mouths lonial state apparatus. Missionary education became full with high-sounding phrases, grand gluti- the means to spread Christianity and save the souls nous words that stuck to the teeth. After a of pagans while producing the future educated elite. short stay in the mother country they were Indigenous religions and world views were condemned sent home, white-washed. These walking as paganism while Islam, one of the oldest religions to lies had nothing left to say to their broth- enter and be internalised in Africa, was systematically ers; they only echoed. From Paris, from discriminated against. London, from Amsterdam we would utter Fourth, condemned as lazy and indolent, incapable words ‘Parthenon! Brotherhood!’ and some-

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where in Africa or Asia lips would open ‘... demands of their peoples in the European idiom of thenon!...therhood!’ It was the golden age human rights and national self-determination within (Sartre, Preface to Fanon 1963: 7). the international context of the rise of national lib- eration in the post-second world war period. Yet, the Sixth, the colonial state was an implant, an alien ideological genesis of African nationalism lay in Pan- apparatus imposed on the colonised society. It was Africanism. The locus of Pan-Africanism was the con- an excrescence of the metropolitan state without tinent itself, not the artificially created spaces bound the latter’s liberal institutions or politics. It was by colonial borders called countries. a despotic state. It did not have ‘its’ civil society Literally, therefore, Pan-Africanism begot national- in the colonial social formation. ‘Its’ civil society ism, rather than the other way round. Pan-Africanism was the metropolitan civil society, or, at most, the preceded nationalism by almost half a century. Logic narrow European settler community in the colony. The and history neatly coincided. The founding fathers of colonised society was a subject-society, (‘a collection Pan-Africanism were African-Americans, the African of heathens/natives’) governed by coercion and diaspora, whose only identity could be African, rather regulated by custom, not a civil society (constituted than Nigerian or Congolese or Kenyan. The leading by persons/citizens) governed by rights and duties lights of the independence movement, like Kwame and regulated by law (Mamdani 1996). Nkrumah and Jomo Kenyatta, themselves were incu- The governance structures of the colonial state re- bated in the Pan-African movement, conceived, prop- flected and reinforced the racial, ethnic, and religious agated and organised by the likes of the great George divisions and fragmentations of the colonised society. Padmore, W. DuBois, C. L. R. James and others (see For the subject-society, the state was represented by generally Legum 1965). the policeman and the tax collector and the district When Nkrumah returned to the continent his vi- commissioner who also doubled up as a magistrate, not sion was one of West African federation rather than by the legislative councillor or a judge. To resolve a the independence of the Gold Coast. At the thresh- dispute with a neighbour, the ‘native’ man went to a old of Ghana’s independence, Nkrumah, with great chief; to be punished for murder or non-payment of tax foresight, undertook such historical initiatives as or- or theft of master’s property, he was dragged to the ganising All Africa People’s Conferences bringing to- magistrate or a judge to be hanged or imprisoned. gether independence parties and trade unions. Some We may sum up then by stating the obvious. On the leading African nationalists like Nyerere realised and eve of independence, African nationalists faced a for- repeated often that there could not be African nation- midable task: the task of transforming the brutalised alism outside Pan-Africanism. ‘African nationalism is colonial societies into national societies. The national meaningless, is anachronistic, and is dangerous, if it is project thus called for an African revolution in every not at the same time Pan-Africanism’ (Nyerere 1963a sense of the word. in Nyerere 1967:194) Nyerere was prepared to delay the independence of his country to facilitate the East The nationalist challenge and the defeat of African federation. He argued that once these coun- the national project tries became independent with their own flags, and national anthems and presidents and prime ministers it would be that much more difficult to dissolve in- The first challenge and defeat: dividual sovereignties in a larger sovereignty. History Pan-Africanism vs. territorial nationalism proved him right. The colonial divisiveness, both within and between Nkrumah constantly and vehemently argued that African countries, seriously undermined the national left on their own, independent African countries would project right at its inception. The colonial infrastructure become pawns on the imperialist chessboard. He too was an exact anti-thesis of a national economy. The was tragically proved right in the then Congo. Under only reason for individual African countries as loci of the guise of United Nations, Western imperial powers national independence was the fact that each one of led by the United States conspired in the assassina- them fell under the jurisdiction of a different colonial tion of the great nationalist leader Patrice Lumumba. power. In sum, the colonial rationale thus became the Since then Congo has descended into the cycle of vio- rationale of the national project, a contradiction in lence from which it has yet to recover. terms and a paradox. As African countries became independent one af- This paradox was acutely felt, if not always clearly ter another Nkrumah’s All Africa Peoples Conferences understood, by the first generation of African nation- dissolved into the Conference of Independent African alists. Tutored in the ways of their European coun- States, which eventually formed the Organisation of terparts, African nationalists coined and crafted the African Unity. Nkrumah continued his battle cry for

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the Union of African States to the chagrin of even his some African nationalists had predicted and others own friends. Nyerere, who advocated a gradualist- painfully realised, ‘territorial nationalism’ was an cum-regional approach to African unity, clashed with anachronism and that is what it eventually proved to Nkrumah who believed that the regional approach to be. But African nationalists like Nyerere, who took the African unity would in fact become an obstacle to reins of the state on the morrow of independence, had political unity of the continent and that regionalism to work within the constraints imposed by ‘territorial would inevitably play into the hands of imperialism nationalism’. In the process they ended up making (see generally Shivji 2005a). Logic was on the side of virtue of necessity as the authoritarian logic of the Nyerere but history and political economy proved Nk- colonial state reasserted itself. rumah right. The independent state, Nyerere argued, had the Nkrumah with great foresight wrote Neo-Colonial- twin task of development and nation building. The ism, the Last Stage of Imperialism for which imperi- state in Africa, he asserted, preceded the nation (Ny- alism never forgave him. He was overthrown in 1966 erere 1963a & 1963b). Ironically, though, the state by a CIA-sponsored coup. Nyerere’s own practical at- that was supposed to build the nation was the inher- tempt at uniting Zanzibar with Tanganyika in 1964 was ited colonial state – despotic, divisive, and in every much more a pragmatic response to intense cold-war respect antithetical to the tasks of nationbuilding. pressures rather than an example of Pan-African unity Nationalism in the hands of the post-colonial state de- (Wilson 1989). The OAU itself was bedevilled by impe- generated into statism, politically authoritarian, eco- rial machinations making Nyerere, one of the found- nomically rapacious, internationally compradorial and ing fathers, angrily condemn it as a ‘trade union of nationally dictatorial. The ideology of nationalism re- African leaders/states’! solved into various ideologies of developmentalism at In the hands of the state, the national project in- best, or ethnicism, at worst. The liberal constitutional evitably and inexorably became a statist project and order bequeathed by the departing colonial masters nationalism resolved itself into various ideologies of was a tragic joke because it was superimposed on a developmentalism and nation building, in the process despotic apparatus also invented, strengthened and undermining Pan-Africanism (see Wamba 1991 & 1996, bequeathed by the colonial master. The despotic in- Shivji 1986). Ironically, territorial nationalism, born frastructure endured while the liberal superstructure of Pan-Africanism, became the latter’s gravedigger. blew off in the winds of factional political struggles or While paying fulsome tribute to Nkrumah’s great vi- the so-called development imperatives (Shivji 2003). sion at the 40th anniversary of Ghana’s independence ‘We must run while others walk’, Nyerere declared. in 1997, Nyerere lamented the failure of the first gen- In the hurry to develop, he added, ‘we’ cannot afford eration of African nationalists to unite Africa: liberal checks and balances. Justifying the executive, or ‘imperial’ presidency, as it is branded in African Once you multiply national anthems, na- jurisprudence, Nyerere wrote in the London Observer tional flags and national passports, seats at newspaper: the United Nations, and individuals entitled to 21 guns salute, not to speak of a host Our constitution differs from the American of ministers, Prime ministers, and envoys, system in that it … enables the executive you would have a whole army of powerful to function without being checked at every people with vested interests in keeping Af- turn …. Our need is not for brakes to social rica balkanised (Nyerere 1997). change … – our lack of trained manpower and capital resources, and even our cli- The second challenge and defeat: mate, act too effectively already. We need developmental state vs. democratic accelerators powerful enough to overcome development the inertia bred by poverty, and the resis- tances which are inherent in all societies The independence movement in Africa was essentially (quoted in Mwaikusa 1995, 105). led by proto-middle classes, or petty bourgeoisie, consisting mostly of the educated elite. No doubt Independence had raised people’s expectations. To it was a mass movement in which Africans were maintain their legitimacy, the new regimes had to reasserting their African-ness after five centuries deliver on both the development and social fronts. of domination and humiliation. Tom Mboya called it As we have seen, the colonial state had deliberately ‘the rediscovery of Africa by Africans’ (Mboya 1963) suppressed and undermined the development of a and Amilcar Cabral defined national liberation as the middle class which would have taken on the task of process of ‘becoming Africans’ (Cabral 1980). Yet, as being an agency of development. That fell to the

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state. Regardless of the ideology, whether capitalist one after another African governments (including the or nominally socialist, of whatever variety, the state radical nationalist) found themselves at the door of became the site of accumulation, private and public. IMF and the Paris Club pleading for mercy (Cambell & Public sector in African countries, from socialist Stein eds. 1991). Tanzania to capitalist Malawi, played the dominant The 1980s, described by economists as Africa’s ‘lost role. Nyerere justified his nationalisations more decade’, was also the transition decade which marked on grounds of ‘economic nationalism’ than on the the beginning of the decline of developmentalism and principles of socialism (Nyerere 1968:262). Whatever the rise of neoliberalism, euphemistically called glo- the pundits of neoliberalism may proclaim today, the balisation. The ‘lost decade’ signalled both the de- fact remains that the Bretton Woods institutions, the cline of the developmental state and the loss of its so-called ‘donor community’ and the multinationals, political legitimacy. African people seem to have lost all in concert, used the African state in its own out both on development and democracy. Thus the interest while closing their eyes to mismanagement internal situation began to witness political stirrings and corruption when it suited them. and rethinking, both practical and ideological. But During the first one-and-half decades of independ- as the African political economy has again and again ence the African economies showed modest growth demonstrated, the continent is firmly inserted in the rates; modest in comparison to other continents but imperialist web. Instead of the space opening up for impressive given the initial conditions at the time of internal struggles of the people, the opportunist impe- independence. Investment and savings ranged between rialist intervention derailed it by imposing top-down, 15 to 20 per cent of the GDP. Primary and secondary so-called multiparty democracy and good governance, school enrolment was expanded. Tertiary education, etc. Western powers took the opportunity to reassert which in many countries literally did not exist during their political and ideological hegemony and recover colonial times, was introduced. Medical and health the ground lost during the nationalist decades. Let us statistics also showed improvement. But this growth quickly recapitulate that trajectory. and development was unsustainable. It was predicated on the reinforcement of colonial foundations. The third challenge and defeat: Growth in agriculture production was based on ex- nationalism vs. imperialism tensive cultivation rather than a rise in productivity through chemicalisation, mechanisation and irriga- Colonialism left by the front door and returned through tion. It depended heavily on exports of a few primary the back door in the form of what Nkrumah called commodities traded on a hostile and adverse interna- neocolonialism. Radical nationalists were overthrown tional market. The growth in the manufacturing indus- in military coups (Nkrumah, Ben Bella) or assassinated try was heavily of the import-substitution type with (Lumumba, Pio Gama Pinto, Sankara) in adventures little internal linkages and dependent on the import sponsored by Western imperialism (see generally Blum of intermediary inputs. Investment was largely public 1986 & 2001; De Witte 2001). A few who managed to while domestic private capital was stashed away in survive had to compromise and play ‘hide-and-seek’ foreign countries. One estimate has it that by 1990, with imperial powers (Nyerere, Kaunda); others 37 per cent of Africa’s wealth had flown outside the became paranoid and despotic at the apprehension of continent (Mkandawire & Soludo 1999:11). To top it being overthrown or assassinated (Sekou Toure) and all, foreign capital concentrated in extractive indus- many simply became compradors doing the bidding tries, which simply haemorrhaged the economy rather of imperial masters (Kenyatta/Moi, Houphet Boigny, than contributed to its development. Senghor, etc). During this period, the developmental state also Harking on the need to build nations out of frac- borrowed heavily whether for productive or prestig- tious ethnic groups and the need for rapid develop- ious projects. Petro-dollars accumulated by interna- ment, the post-independence ruling classes and gov- tional banks during the 1973 oil crisis were off-loaded erning elites centralised and concentrated power in in the form of cheap loans to developing countries. By the executive arm of the state on the one hand, and the end of the 1970s, cheap loans turned into heavy hegemonised autonomous expressions of civil society, debt burdens. By this time, the limits of the early on the other (see generally essays in Shivji 1991). Else- growth were reached and the economic shocks of the where, ruling factions resorted to whipping up ethnic late 1970s plunged the African economies into deep divisions to keep themselves in power. crisis. Numbers fell, growth rates became negative, Yet it is also true that during this period, imperial- debt repayments became unsustainable, fiscal imbal- ism was ideologically on the defensive. The movement ances went out of control, and so did inflation. Social of the newly independent countries (non-alignment, services declined, the infrastructure deteriorated and UNCTAD, new economic world order, right to develop-

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ment, etc), the successful Chinese, Cuban, and Nica- now. And you didn’t get famines quite as raguan revolutions, the defeat of the US superpower frequently in Africa then as you do now in Vietnam, and the student and youth anti-imperial- (quoted ibid., 98). ist movement all over the world, enhanced the pres- tige of national liberation movement. This was what The neoliberal package is, and has been, far more Samir Amin calls the period of Bandung excitement an ideological offensive than simply an economic (see generally Amin 1990). programme. But let me not jump the story. In the In Africa the triumph of the armed struggle in Mo- next section I quickly retrace the beginnings of the zambique, Angola and Guinea Bissau represented, neoliberalist phase in Africa. ironically, both the high point of radical nationalism and its precipitous decline in the next decade. Portu- gal was the weak link in the imperialist chain. It was The imperial project and its defeated by the national liberation movement sup- ported by much of the rest of Africa. But imperialism succours was not destroyed. The national liberation movement in power embarked on an alternative, anti-imperialist The neoliberal offensive path of development. The struggle between nation- alism and imperialism found its most concentrated On the heel of the defeat of the national project came expression in southern Africa. Imperialism, through the imperialist offensive to destroy and bury it, which, its proxy, the apartheid South Africa, showed its true by definition, is the immanent dream of imperialism. colours by supporting terrorist organisations like RE- On the economic front, the neoliberal package boiled NAMO in Mozambique and UNITA in Angola. These or- down to further deepening the integration of African ganisations caused havoc in these countries, leading economies into the world capitalist system, thus to compromises on all fronts, a change in direction reproducing the essentially colonial and neocolonial of development and loss of the national liberation vi- economic structures. sion. The national liberation elites were utterly com- In 1981 the World Bank published its notorious re- pradorised, disowning their own past and slavishly port, Accelerated development for Africa: an Agenda echoing the rising neoliberal rhetoric. for Africa. It was certainly an agenda for Africa set Again, as history would have it, the ‘success’ of by the erstwhile Bretton Woods institutions with the one of the longest and most militant national libera- backing of Western countries but it had little to do tion movements in Africa, the South African, was not with development, accelerated or otherwise. The re- so much the high point of radical nationalism against port and the subsequent structural adjustment pro- imperialism, but rather the beginning of its end. By grammes concentrated on stabilisation measures: the end of the 1970s and early 1980s, the nationalist getting rid of budget deficits, bringing down rates of era, particularly its territorial variant, was coming to inflation, getting prices right, unleashing the market a close. The defeat of actually existing socialisms in and liberalising trade. According to the World Bank, Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union further narrowed the villain of the declining economic performance in the space for the expression of radical nationalism Africa was the state; it was corrupt and dictatorial, it and anti-imperialism. Imperialism took the offensive, had no capacity to manage the economy and allocate initially on the economic front with its structural ad- resources rationally, it was bloated with bureaucracy, justment programmes, followed by an undisguised po- and nepotism was its mode of operation. The Bretton litical and ideological offensive, ridiculing and humili- Woods institutions would not bail out the crisis-ridden ating nationalism while rehabilitating imperialism. economies unless the governments adopted structural Douglas Hurd, the then British foreign secretary, could adjustment programmes to get stabilisation funda- say in 1990 that ‘we are slowly putting behind us a mentals right. period of history when the West was unable to express Balancing budgets involved cutting out subsidies to a legitimate interest in the developing world without agriculture and spending on social programmes, in- being accused of “neocolonialism”’ (quoted in Fure- cluding education and health. Unleashing the market di 1994:99). And a British historian, John Charmley, meant doing away with protection of infant industries launching his book Churchill: The End of Glory, could and rolling back the state from economic activity. The unashamedly declare: results of SAPs have been devastating as many stud- ies by researchers have shown. Social indicators like The British Empire vanishing has had a very education, medical care, health, nutrition, rates of deleterious effect on the third world. Look literacy and life expectancy all declined. Deindustri- at Uganda under the British and look at it alisation set in. Redundancies followed. In short, even

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some of the modest achievements of the nationalist president and one prime minister, castigates the or developmentalist period were lost or undermined whole of the last three decades, which virtually (Gibbon 1993 & 1995, Adedeji 1993). means the whole post-independence period, as ‘lost As the international situation changed with the col- decades’ (for a critical appraisal see Graham 2005). lapse of the Soviet Union, Western imperialist powers The primary responsibility is placed on the African regained their ideological initiative. The neoliberal state for bad governance and lack of accountability, package of marketisation, privatisation and liberali- totally ignoring the role of imperialism in both the sation now became the policy for, but not of the Af- exploitation of African resources and supporting of rican states. Good performers would be praised and non-democratic states when it suited their interests. rewarded with more aid while the insubordinate and Africans are told they have no capacity to think and recalcitrant would be parodied and left to their own African states are told they have no capacity to make wit. While aid had always come with strings, now there correct policies. As the Blair’s Commission for Africa was no attempt to disguise it. Political conditionali- declared with a straight face: ties – multi-party, good governance, human rights, etc – were added to economic conditionalities. Political Africa’s history over the last fifty years has decision-making and policy-making slipped out of the been blighted by two areas of weakness. hands of the African state as Western-financed policy These have been capacity – the ability to and governance consultants1 in their thousands jet- design and deliver policies; and account- ted all over the continent with blue prints of pol- ability – how well a state answers to its icy on Poverty Reduction Strategies and manuals on people (p. 14 )( emphasis in the original). good governance on their computers, gobbling up some 4 billion dollars annually (Mkandawire & Soludo So policy-making, an important aspect of sovereignty, 1999:111). In 1985, to give just one example, foreign has been wrenched out of the hands of the African experts resident in Equatorial Guinea were paid an state. In policy-making, the state is placed on the amount three times the total government wage bill of same level as other so-called stakeholders, including the public sector (Mkandawire & Soludo ibid.:137). NGOs, as we shall see. National liberation ideologies have been rubbished and national self-determination itself has been de- The fundamental premises of clared passé. Africa is told it has only one choice: ei- globalisation or neoliberalism ther to get integrated fully into the globalised world or be marginalised. The spectre of marginalisation Globalisation in Africa manifests itself in the neoliberal is so rampant that even progressive African scholars economic and political package which centres on dare say that ‘Africa may be graduating from being liberalisation of trade, privatisation of national assets the region with ‘lost development decades’ to becom- and resources, commodification of social services and ing the world’s forgotten continent’ (ibid.:xi). marketisation of all goods and services, tangible and The former US ambassador to my country, Tanzania, intangible. speaking to the country’s law-makers was blatantly In sum, the underlying thrust of the neoliberal and clear on what the superpower expected of African globalised development ‘discourse’ is deeper integra- states: tion of African economies into the global capital and market circuits without fundamental transformation. The liberation diplomacy of the past, when It is predicated on private capital, which in Africa alliances with socialist nations were para- translates into foreign private capital, as the ‘engine mount and so-called Third World Solidarity of growth’. It centres on economic growth without dominated foreign policy, must give way to asking whether growth necessarily translates into a more realistic approach to dealing with development. It banishes the issues of equality and your true friends – those who are working to equity to the realm of rights, not development. And lift you into the twenty-first century, where ‘rights’ is within the purview of advocacy NGOs, not poverty is not acceptable and disease must a terrain of people’s struggle. ‘Human-centred and be conquered.2 people-driven’ development that were the kingpin of African alternatives, such as the Lagos Plan of Action, African leaders are left with little option: ‘you are are pooh-poohed into non-existence. Development is either with globalisation or doomed!’ They have fallen within the purview of development practitioners and in line one after another even if it means disowning development NGOs, which, falling in fashion, advo- their own past. Blair’s Commission for Africa report, cate right-based development. which consisted of prominent Africans including one The African people, who were once supposed to be

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the authors and drivers of development and libera- ca) has fallen in line, whether for pragmatic reasons tors of their nations, are reduced to ‘the chronically of survival or to defend their own vested interests. poor’ who are the subject matter of papers on strate- A large part of the African intellectual elite too has gies for poverty reduction, authored by consultants been co-opted and accommodated within the neoco- and discussed at stakeholders workshops in which, lonial discourse. the ‘poor’ are represented by NGOs. The ‘poor’, the It is the argument of this paper that the sudden rise diseased, the disabled, the AIDs-infected, the igno- of NGOs and their apparently prominent role in Africa rant, the marginalised, in short the ‘people’, are not is part of the neoliberal organisational, and particularly part of the development equation, since development ideological, offensive. We turn to this argument next. is assigned to private capital which constitutes the ‘engine of growth’. The ‘poor’ are the recipients of humanitarian aid provided by ‘true friends’ (thanks NGOs or the so-called to the American ambassador for the phraseology) and dispensed by non-partisan, non-political and, presum- ‘third sector’ ably non-involved, non-governmental organisations. In these societies, where stakeholders never tire of At the inception of the neoliberal offensive in the policy-making on the poor, there isn’t its twin oppo- early 1980s, the rise and role of NGOs was explained site, the rich. These societies apparently do not have and justified within the conceptual framework of producers and appropriators of wealth; they only the problematic of civil society. The concept of have the poor and the wealth creators. civil society came into vogue in the 1980s with the In the neoliberal discourse, the African state is vil- impending collapse of the Soviet and East European lainised and African bureaucracies demonised as cor- systems and the democratisation drive in Africa. In rupt, incapable and unable to learn. They need glo- Eastern Europe, following the collapse of bureaucratic balised foreign advisors and consultants, who are now socialist regimes (or actually existing socialism, as termed development practitioners, to mentor, moni- they were then christened), the construction of civil tor and oversee them. Among the mentors and moni- societies was seen as returning to ‘”normal society” tors are, of course, NGOs. After all, the so-called ad- on the Western model’ (Journal of Democracy, visors and consultants move freely between the ‘Triad January 1996, ‘Civil Society after Communism’, p.11). Family’ – the DONs (donor organisations), the INFOs In Eastern Europe itself, the term has been used in as (international financial organisations) and the NGOs, many different ways as contexts (see generally Shivji including GoNGOs (government-organised NGOs) and 2002:101–118). DoNGOs (donor-organised NGOs). The discourse on civil society in Africa too used the In this ‘discourse’ the developmental role of the term with all kinds of meanings from associational state is declared dead and buried. Instead, it is as- connotations (‘civil societies’) to all-virtuous, harmo- signed the role of a ‘chief’ to supervise the globalisa- nious social space (see, for instance, the International tion project under the tutelage of imperialism, now Peace Academy Publication ‘Civil society and conflict called, development partners or ‘true friends’.3 The management in Africa’, 1996). But it is in the mean- irony of the recent Commission for Africa was that it ing of free associations, ‘independent’ of the state, was convened, constituted and chaired by a British that the term has stuck and very often the term civil prime minister, while an African president and a prime society organisations (CSOs) is used interchangeably minister sat on it as members. This symbolises the na- with NGOs. ture of the so-called ‘new partnership’. The message Influenced heavily, as always, by US based Afri- is clear: African ‘co-partners’ in African development canists, it is the false bi-polarity or dichotomy be- are neither equal nor in the driver’s seat.4 tween state and civil society that has predominated. It is true that the neoliberal discourse has not gone Within the neoliberal ideologies, as we have seen, the without being challenged, both intellectually and state is demonised and civil society, often conflated practically. African people have fought on the streets with NGOs, is privileged. Non-government organisa- against SAPs; they have protested in their own ways in tion is presented as the ‘third sector’, the other two their villages and towns and neighbourhoods. African being the state (power, politics), and the private sec- intellectuals have written and argued and shown the tor (capital, economics). This ideological presentation fallacy of the underlying assumptions of neoliberalism of non-government organisation is also the dominant and globalisation. Yet, it is also true, that at least self-perception of the NGO world. Yet it is based on ut- for the time being, neoliberalism seems to hold sway. terly false historical and intellectual premises with se- Virtually the whole of the African political elite and rious political implications (see generally Shivji 2002). establishment (unlike, for example, in Latin Ameri- The concept of civil society in European history

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represented the transition from medieval feudalist lows on the heels of the crisis of the national project. to capitalist society. This was part of the bourgeois Unless there is self-consciousness on their part of this revolutions. In that context civil society was, both for fundamental moment in the struggle between impe- Hegel and Marx (and even perhaps Weber), for exam- rialism and nationalism, the NGOs end up playing the ple, an ensemble of free, equal, abstract individuals role of ideological and organisational foot soldiers of associating in the public sphere of production as op- imperialism, by whatever name they are called. posed to the private sphere of the family. For Marx, In the next section we will demonstrate how the civil society was synonymous with bourgeois society. five silences in the NGO discourse contribute to the The concept is developed in opposition to feudal re- mystification and obfuscation of the role of NGOs. lations where the public and the private are merged and statuses are determined by birth and privileges, where politics is direct ‘that is to say, the elements of The five silences civil life, for example, property, or the family, or the mode of labour, were raised to the level of political What are NGOs? life in the form of seignority, estates, and corpora- tions’ (quoted in Sayers 1991:75). We quickly state without much argument the salient At the same time for Marx (and this is directly features of NGOs in the African setting. relevant to our conceptual debate on civil society), First, a large number of African NGOs were born in whereas civil society presents itself as an ensemble of the womb of the neoliberal offensive which began to free individuals and as a separate sphere from state/ open up some space for freedom of association. One politics, it is, as a matter of fact, the soil from which of the features of the statist period was the organisa- arises, and in which is embedded, state power. For tional hegemony of the state. In the first flush of the our purpose, it is necessary to highlight two conclu- opening up of organisational space, NGOs proliferated sions. First, that so-called civil society, in the sense of without critical examination of the place and role of the public sphere of production, is not a harmonious NGO and its underlying ideologies and premises. The whole but rather a terrain of contradictory relations anti-state stance of the so-called donor-community between classes – the two poles being the producer was the real push behind the upsurge in NGO activity. class and the appropriator class. Second, that the Second, NGOs are led by, and largely composed of, separation between state and civil society, between the educated elite, located in urban areas and well- economics and politics, is ideological; that is how the versed in the language and idiom of modernisation. bourgeois society appears and presents itself. The re- Broadly three types of NGO elite may be identified. ality, rather, is that those who command and control First is the radical elite that was previously involved the sphere of production also wield political power, in political struggles with an explicit vision for change that is, the state. and transformation but which found itself suppressed When applied to colonial society, we find that the under the statist hegemony. Many of these elites took colonial sphere of production is essentially controlled the opportunity to express themselves politically in the by imperial capital. The colonial mode of production NGOs. They saw NGOs as a possible terrain of struggle is characterised by extraction of surplus from non- for change. This section of the elite is essentially polit- capitalist classes through the use of (state) force. The ically motivated without being necessarily involved in national bourgeois project promised by the independ- partisan, party-politics. The second category includes ence movement is aborted and defeated as we have well-intentioned individuals driven by altruistic mo- seen. In the 1960s and 1970s, there was a great de- tives to better the conditions of their fellow human bate among third world intellectuals as to whether a beings/compatriots. In other words, they are morally national bourgeois project can succeed at all in the motivated. Third is the mainstream elite, not infre- third world, particularly in Africa, in the era of impe- quently even former government bureaucrats, who rialism (see Amin 1990, Tandon 1982, Mahjoub 1990). shifted to the NGO world once they found that that is Be that as it may, in Africa the transformation from where the donor funding was directed. The motivation colonial subject society to a bourgeois civil society is of this elite is quite simply careerist. It is driven by incomplete, stunted and distorted. What we have is material gains rather than any altruistic motives. It is the continued domination of imperialism – a reproduc- personally motivated. This category keeps swelling as tion of the colonial mode – in different form, the cur- jobs in the state and private sector become more and rent one being labelled globalisation or neoliberalism. more competitive or difficult to come by. Within this context NGOs are neither a third sector Thirdly, an overwhelming number of NGOs are do- nor independent of the state. Rather they are inextri- nor funded. They do not have any independent source cably imbricated in the neoliberal offensive which fol- of funding and have to seek donor funds through the

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usual procedures set by the funding agencies. In this for triennium reports and proposals for more funding. respect, the degree of independence they can exer- The ‘success’ of an NGO is measured by how efficient- cise in relation to donor agendas varies from NGO to ly it is managed and run and the criteria for measur- NGO, depending on the perspectives of its leadership. ing efficiency are borrowed from the corporate sec- In practice, though, as would be readily acknowledged tor. Training NGOs are set up to train NGO managers by even the most radical among them, their scope for in ‘strategic framework analysis’, in charting ‘inputs’ action is limited. This does not necessarily mean that and ‘outcomes’ tables, in setting indicators and in a few may not exercise greater autonomy in their out- methods and techniques to log the vision and the mis- look and ideology and be still accepted; exceptions sion and the strategy in log frames! As Brian Murphy are necessary to prove the rule. observes in a pithy article he wrote for Oxfam’s De- While some NGOs may be quite involved with and velopment in Practice series (Murphy 2001:60–85): appreciated by the people whom they purport to serve, ultimately NGOs, by their very nature, derive This ethos has been embraced by and is now not only their sustenance but also legitimacy from the aggressively – sometimes ruthlessly – pro- donor community. In the current international con- moted by senior managers in many of our juncture, even political elites located in the state or leading NGOs, convinced that restructuring political parties seek legitimacy from the so-called our organisations along corporate lines is the ‘development-partners’ rather than their own peo- ticket to successful integration in the new ple. Not surprisingly, there is a fair amount of circu- trilateral global order that sees the public, lation of the elite between the government and the private, and voluntary sectors somehow as non-government sectors. partners in development … (ibid., 74). Fourth, by far the greatest number of NGOs are ad- vocacy NGOs, focusing on particular areas of activity Increasingly the model for the ‘successful’ such as human rights, gender, development, environ- NGO is the corporation – ideally a transna- ment, governance, etc.5 While there are always NGOs tional corporation and NGOs are ever more set up by politically or morally motivated individuals marketed and judged against corporate ide- with a genuine desire to ‘do something’, and which als. As part of the trend, a new develop- are genuinely meant to respond to the need of the ment scientism is strangling us with things people, it is also true that a substantial number of like strategic framework analysis and re- NGOs are set up to respond to what is perceived to sults-based management, precisely the val- be in vogue among the donor-community at any par- ues and methods and techniques that have ticular time. Donor-driven NGOs, I would guess, are made the world what it is today (ibid., 80). perhaps the most dominant. Besides advocacy tasks, NGOs are also increasingly Finally, the rise, role and features of NGOs which commissioned by donors, or the state, or even the objectively situate them within the imperial project is corporate sector, to do consultancy work for them or reinforced by certain ‘silences’ in the NGO discourse. to be their executive agencies to dispense funds or I discuss this next. services. Thus NGOs have come to play a major role in the ‘aid and development industry’. In the NGO world, Privileging activism or changing the world it is not at all ironical that a non-governmental body without understanding it is assigned by the government to do a governmental job funded by a donor agency which is an outfit of a During the revolutionary moment of the 1960s and foreign government. Thus USAID may fund a gender 1970s, when the national liberation movement NGO to raise awareness among women on the new was at its height, it used to be said that we should land law whose terms of reference are set by a gov- ‘think globally and act locally’. This summed up ernment ministry. To complete the picture, one may four fundamental ideas. One, that imperialism was find that the same USAID may have recommended and global and oppressed all peoples worldwide, so we sponsored a consultant who drafted the land law for must understand it in its global context. Two, that the government in the first place. imperialism would have to be fought at its local Fifth, while most NGOs may insert in their char- manifestations. The concrete analysis of the concrete ters a vision or a mission statement, these are vague, situation was underlined. Three, the slogan expressed amorphous (‘poverty-reduction’!) and often meaning- the international solidarity of all peoples across the less. In any case, they are quickly forgotten and what globe against imperialism. Fourth, that imperialism takes over are the so-called strategic plans and log and national liberation had to be clearly understood frames which can be tabulated, quantified and ticked and correctly described in all its aspects so as to

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conduct an organised and conscious struggle against it. tivists. Yet, we know that every practice gives rise to This was the basis of the profound intellectual debates theory and every action is based on some theoreti- on the theory and practice of imperialism and national cal/philosophical premise/outlook. NGO action too is liberation. As Amilcar Cabral, one of the foremost based on certain theoretical premises and philosophi- leaders of the African liberation movement, put it in his cal outlook. This, however, is assumed as ‘common ‘weapon of theory’, ‘every practice produces a theory, sense’ and therefore not interrogated. and that if it is true that a revolution can fail even I believe I have shown sufficiently that the ‘com- though it be based on perfectly conceived theories, mon sense’ theoretical assumptions of the current nobody has yet made a successful revolution without a period, and which underpin NGO role and action, is revolutionary theory’ (Cabral 1969:73–90, at 75). neoliberalism in the interest of global imperialism and What is interesting about that period is that the fundamentally contrary to the interests of the large radical intellectual discourse was integrated with majority of the people. Taking for granted the fun- militant activism; the two were mutually reinforcing. damentals of neoliberalism and financial capitalism, The NGO discourse in the current period of apparent or challenging them only piecemeal on specific issues imperial ‘triumphalism’ eschews theory, emphasises (debt, environment, gender discrimination, etc), as a and privileges activism. In the African setting in par- matter of fact draws in the NGOs as protagonists of ticular, whatever is left of critical intellectual dis- the imperial project. Brian Murphy argues that many course, largely located at universities, runs parallel to mainstream NGO leaders have internalised the as- and is divorced from NGO activism. The requirements sumptions and ways of neoconservatism and are con- of funding agencies subtly discourage, if not exhibit vinced that globalisation/neoliberalism is inevitable outright hostility to, a historical and social theoretical and irreversible and have thus joined its acolytes, understanding of development, poverty, discrimina- ironically without much critical analysis of what ‘it’ tion, etc. Our erstwhile benefactors now tell us, ‘Just actually is or means. He continues: ‘What the corpo- act, don’t think’ and we shall fund both! rate PR manager understands implicitly as economic The inherent bias against theory is manifested at propaganda, NGO people often repeat as articles of various levels. We may mention a few. First, the pen- faith’ (Murphy op.cit. 81). chant for project funding which is supposed to be op- erated and completed within a given time – a trien- The permanent present nium for example – does not admit of thinking the underlying premises of the so-called project. Second, Recently, African poverty has been brought to the the managerial techniques of monitoring and evaluat- centre stage of the NGO world, ironically by the likes ing projects, such as log frames, by their very nature of imperial leaders such as Tony Blair. The African NGO compartmentalise and slice up life such that invari- world echoes and repeats the slogan generated by their ably one not only loses sight of the whole, but even Northern benefactors: ‘Make Poverty History’. But how the capacity to think holistically. can you make poverty history without understanding Third, the projects are issue based and are sup- the ‘history of poverty’? We need to know how did posed to be addressed as issues. The issue itself is the poverty of the 5 billion of this world come about identified as a problem at the level of phenomenon; as we need to know even more accurately how the its underlying basis is not addressed but assumed. The filthy wealth of the 500 multinationals or the 225 issue is isolated and abstracted from its social, eco- richest people was created (Peacock 2002). We need nomic and historical reality; therefore, its intercon- to know even more precisely how is this great divide, nectedness to other issues and the whole is lost. the unbridgeable chasm, maintained, reproduced Fourth, issue-oriented and time-limited projects and increasingly deepened and widened. We need to do not admit of any long-term basic research based ask ourselves: What are the political, social, moral, on solid theoretical and historical premises. If at all, ideological, economic and cultural mechanisms which the so-called research by NGOs or consultants (rath- produce and reinforce, and make such a world not er than researchers) relates to policy, not to social, only possible, but apparently acceptable? economic and political interests which underlie the Yet, the NGO discourse seems to have internalised phenomenon under investigation nor to how these the thoughtless idiocies of right-wing, reactionary writ- interests reproduce themselves. The ‘researches’ by ers such as Fukiyama who propagate the ‘end of history’ consultants degenerate into rapid appraisals (some in which the present – that is, of course, the present kind of ‘opinion-polls’). global capitalism under the hegemony of the imperial- In sum, NGO activism is presented and based on ist North – is declared permanent. Any historical under- ‘act now, think later’. Theory, and particularly grand standing of our present state is ridiculed and dismissed, theory, is dismissed as academicism unworthy of ac- or tolerated as a token to create the illusion of ‘diver-

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sity’. In the African setting, any discussion on colonial aberrant or outdated at best and ‘terrorist’ at worst. history invariably elicits the standard response: Let us Thus is derived the basis of the so-called triad of stop blaming the colonialists! How long shall we contin- stakeholders – the state, the private sector and the ue lamenting about colonialism? Thus history is reduced voluntary sector. The state is presented as the neu- to, and then ridiculed as, a ‘blaming exercise’. tral referee, the guarantor of law and order, whose And yet, as I have traced only in a sketch here, main function is to provide stability and an enabling the colonial and imperial history is at the heart of environment for private capital. Private capital is the present African condition. History is not about as- the main engine or motor of growth, which growth signing or sharing blame, nor it is about narrating the will eventually trickle down to the whole of society. ‘past’, which must be forgotten and forgiven or only In this drive for inexorable growth and progress, it remembered once a year on remembrance or heroes is acknowledged that some would inevitably be left or independence days. History is about the present. behind, marginalised, or simply be unable to cope, We must understand the present as history so as to the so-called ‘poor’. You therefore need the voluntary change it for the better. Per force, in the African con- sector to take care of them. Social welfare and provi- text where the imperial project is not only historical, sion of basic needs and services to the community is it is the present. Just as we cannot ‘make poverty his- no longer the responsibility of the state or the private tory’ without understanding the history of poverty, so sector; it is assigned to the NGOs. Thus is completed we cannot chant ‘another world is possible’ without the ‘holy trinity’ of development partners: the state, accurately understanding and correctly describing the capital and the NGO, who are supposedly the major existing world of 5 billion slaves and 200 slave mas- stakeholders in the ‘participatory’ development en- ters. How did it come about and how does it continue terprise. The net effect is that the so-called NGO to exist? And to answer these questions we have to sector, which is presented as pro-poor and morally understand history as much as the philosophy and the driven, legitimises the essentially exploitative capi- political economy that underpin the existing world talist system while the progressive agenda of people- and the vested interests – real social interests of real driven development (the radical, populist agenda of people – that ensure and defend its existence. the nationalists of yesteryear) is co-opted. In effect, therefore, we see a re-enactment of the missionary Society as a harmonious whole positions of the colonial period where the church, of stakeholders charity and catechists played a legitimising role for the colonial enterprise, duping the colonised and Much of the NGO discourse is based on the following damning the freedom fighters. The role assigned to premises inherent in the liberal capitalist world NGOs is in principle not very different, whatever the outlook and its new variant, globalisation. 1) The secular language in which it is articulated and how- separation of self and society, where society is seen ever universal the platitudes of globalisation (‘global as an aggregate sum of atomic individuals. 2) The neighbourhood’, ‘global village’, ‘global citizenship’, liberal goal is to privilege individual interests which etc) it is clothed in (Manji & O’Coill 2002). are knowable and ascertainable (individual self- Just as the colonial enterprise assumed the garb of determination in the language of post-modernism), a civilising mission and used the church as its avant- assuming that social interests would thus have been garde, so the globalisation pundits put on the clothing taken care of. In the post-modernist variant, social of secular human rights and use the NGOs as their interests are in any case unknowable. 3) The social ideological foot soldiers. whole is presented as a harmonious whole in which The international and national orders within which there is a variety of diverse interests, more or less we are functioning are unequal and have conflicting at par. The premise that social interests are not all interests. To pretend that society is a harmonious at the same level and that some are dominant and whole of stakeholders is to be complicit in perpetu- in conflict with others is eschewed. 4) The neoliberal ating the status quo in the interest of the dominant model of development based on private property and classes and powers. In the struggle between national accumulation, and the market as the motor of society liberation and imperialist domination and between and commodification of resources, services and basic social emancipation and capitalist slavery, NGOs have needs is taken as ‘common sense’ requiring no further to choose sides. In this there are no in-betweens. proof. In Africa this translates into further and deeper integration of the economies into the global capital and Non-governmental = non-political? market circuits, the opening up of natural wealth and resources for exploitation by voracious transnational The separation between politics and economics, corporations, and the outlawing of resistance as between state and civil society, is how the bourgeois

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society appears and presents itself. But that is not its ‘An alternative world is possible’, goes another saying real essence. In reality, politics is the quintessence, of the NGOs. The question that this paper has been or the concentrated form of economics. The sphere trying to raise is: What would be an alternative world of politics is built on the sphere of production and in the current African context? I have tried to argue there is a close relationship between those who that Africa is at the crossroads of the defeat of the command production and those who wield power. Yet, national project and the reassertion of the imperial the NGO sector which by its own proclamation stands project. The national liberation struggles of the 1960s for change accepts the ideological myth that it is the and 1970s, which put imperialism on the ideological third sector, that it is non-political, not-for-profit, defensive, have been aborted. Imperialism under the that is, it has nothing to do with power or production. name of globalisation is making a comeback while This bourgeois mythology mystifies the reality of refurbishing its moral and ideological image. NGOs capitalist production and power thus contributing to were born in the womb of neoliberalism and, knowingly its legitimisation. NGOs by accepting the myth of being or otherwise, are participating in the imperial project, non-political contribute to the process of mystification or at least in the process of refurbishing its image. No and therefore objectively side with the status quo doubt, there are very fine and dedicated people in the contrary to their expressed stand for change. NGOs who are genuinely committed to the struggle to Ironically, the non-political NGOs are taken on better the world. But there are serious blind spots and board in the process of so-called policy-making. They silences in the NGO discourse which objectively result participate in, or are made to feel that they are in the NGO world participating in the imperial, rather participating in, policy-making and policy dialogue than the national, project. For NGOs cannot be pro- among stakeholders. This has several implications. people and pro-change without being anti-imperialist First, policy-making, which is an attribute of sover- and anti-status quo. So I argue that NGOs must engage eignty for which the government of the day is sup- in a critical discourse and political activism rather posed to be accountable to its people, is wrenched than assume a false neutrality and non-partisanship. from the state and vested in the amorphous coterie In this perspective, African NGOs need to build of ‘development partners’ or stakeholders. Every one bridges with African intellectuals and scholars where knows who is really the determining stakeholder – the there is a serious debate, albeit on the fringes of old adage applies: the one who pays the piper plays the mainstream, on the ‘alternative African world’. the tune. Second, that the NGOs really participate in Currently, under another false dichotomy between policy-making is an illusion, which in this day and age activism and intellectualism, the critical intellectual of donor-driven policies applies equally to the African discourse runs parallel to the NGO discourse. We state itself. Third, it is presumptuous on the part of need therefore to bring together African activism NGOs to pretend that they represent the people in the with African intellectualism in which we critically process of policy-making. Fourth, the whole process interrogate both ‘our’ compradorial states and their undermines the supposedly democratic/representa- imperial masters. In the next concluding section, I tive character of the state as the state abdicates its briefly sketch some of the thinking that is emerging responsibility for ‘its’ policies, ceases to be account- among critical scholarship in Africa. able to its own people and becomes accountable to the so-called development partners. Finally, the process of policy-making, a political Towards Pan-African process par excellence, is presented as if it were a neutral non-political exercise in which the non-po- liberation, social justice and litical NGOs may participate without losing their non- partisanship! Needless to say, policy-making is a ter- human emancipation: rain of intense conflict of interest and there is nothing neutral about it. The question always is which inter- Where do we stand? est is being served by a particular policy, a question on which an NGO cannot plead either neutrality or First, we must record that the neoliberal project non-partisanship. in Africa has not been accepted without practical and intellectual resistance. In a preface to a book ‘What is a better or an alternative world?’ by African scholars significantly sub-titled Beyond Dispossession and Dependence, Nyerere observed: ‘A better world is possible’ goes the NGO slogan but to build a better world we must understand the world Africa’s history is not only one of slavery, better. This then has been the message of this paper. exploitation and colonialism; it is also a

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story of struggle against these evils, and of alist and consistently pro-people; a revolution based battles won after many setbacks and much on popular power, fighting for and defending popular suffering (Adedeji ed. 1993:xv). livelihoods and predicated on popular participation (Mafeje 2002, Shivji 2000). Just as the African people have struggled and opposed Fourth, that the actually existing states in Af- structural adjustment policies in the streets, African rica are essentially compradorised, that is, they are intellectuals have critically scrutinised their neoliberal neither democratic nor pro-people. That the states underpinnings and exposed globalisation as a new themselves have to be restructured and reorganised form of imperialism. African NGOs must creatively with roots in the people and seeking legitimacy from appropriate these intellectual insights. African NGOs the people rather than from a consortia of G8 (‘the must learn from the actually existing struggles of global gobblers’) imperial powers called the ‘interna- the people before evangelising on donor-fads of the tional community’. day – gender, human rights, ‘fgm’ (female genital Fifth, that the African people have to recover their mutilation) good governance, etc, etc. The educators sovereignty and self-determination, their right to must be educated. think for themselves, albeit in genuine solidarity with Second, critically interrogating the national the oppressed people of the world. project, African scholars have noted the resurgence All in all, I am submitting that there is a need to of nationalism and observed both its positive and integrate the intellectual and activist discourse. Only negative aspects. The first lesson to be drawn is that thus can the NGOs truly play the role of catalysts of the African national project located at the territorial change rather than catechists of aid and charity. In- level is bound to fail. African nationalism, as some deed, the potential of the NGO sector to play such of the fathers of African nationalism realised, is and a role is demonstrated, albeit in its infancy, in such must be Pan-African. Pan-Africanism, they argue, is struggles as the Seattle street fights against the the nationalism of the era of globalisation. Only Pan- world’s foremost imperial institutions and in the dem- Africanism can carry forward the struggle for nation- onstrations condemning the invasion of Iraq against al liberation in Africa. Without a Pan-African vision, the world’s foremost and most brutal superpower. there is the danger that the resurgence of national- If the NGOs are to play that role they have to fun- ism as a reaction to the new imperial assault can de- damentally re-examine their silences and their dis- generate into narrow, parochial, national chauvinism courses; they must scrutinise the philosophical and and even ethnicism and racism (Shivji 2005a & 2005b, political premises that underpin their activities; they Yieke 2005). must investigate the credentials of their development But this new Pan-Africanism must be bottom-up, partners and the motives of their financial benefac- people’s Pan-Africanism, not a top-down statist Pan- tors; they must distance themselves from oppressive Africanism. In the hands of the African state and its African states and compradorial ruling elites. NGOs ‘leaders’, Pan-Africanism degenerates into NEPAD-ism must refuse to legitimise, rationalise and provide a or phony African renaissance (Landsberg & Kornegey veneer of respectability and morality to global pillage 1998). NEPAD, or the New Partnership for African De- by voracious transnationals under the guise of creat- velopment, as the very name suggests, is a donor-de- ing a global village. pendent programme seeking more aid and assistance I dare say that if in the NGO world we understood from the erstwhile ‘international community’ predi- well the history of poverty and enslavement in Africa; cated on further integration of Africa in the unequal if we did scrutinise the credentials of the so-called global structures (see generally Nyong’o et al. 2002). development partners; if we did distance ourselves Calling it a ‘feudo-imperial partnership’ Adebayo Ad- from the oppressive African state; if we did refuse edeji says, the objective of NEPAD is ‘for the African to lend our names to ‘poverty reduction polices and canoe to be firmly tied to the North’s neoliberal ship strategies’ which are meant to legitimise the filthy on the waters of globalisation’ (ibid.:36). rich; if, indeed, we vowed to be a catalyst of change Third, that a fundamental transformation of Afri- and refused to be a catechist of charity, we would can societies, an African revolution, if you like, is very have been toyi-toyi-ing at the doorsteps of Blair and much on the agenda. The nature of this revolution his commissioners, beating our tom-toms and singing is very much debated. It is suggested though that it ‘Make imperialism history’ instead of jumping on the has to be a revolution that is thoroughly anti-imperi- bandwagon of Sir Bob Geldof’s Band Aid.

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Notes Davidson, B., 1961, Black Mother: A study of the 1 Some time ago, the World Bank assigned Marti precolonial connection between Africa and Athissari to advise the Tanzanian president on Europe, London: Longman. governance. De Witte, L., 2001, The Assassination of Lumumba, 2 Press release, US Embassy in Tanzania, 29 July Johannesburg: Jacana. 2003. Fanon, F., 1963, The Wretched of the Earth, London: 3 Incidentally, in a different context, a statement Penguin. from CCM (the ruling party in Tanzania) reacting Furedi, F., 1994, The New Ideology of Imperialism, to adverse comments made by the US on the London: Pluto. Zanzibar election also called ‘development Graham, Y., 2005, ‘Africa’s second “last chance”’, partners’ ‘our true friends’ (see The Citizen, 9 Red Pepper/G8 Africa Commission, http://www. November 2005). ‘We call upon our true friends redpepper.org.uk/global/x-jul05-graham.htm not to issue statements which will encourage or incite bad-intentioned people, political parties Himmelstrand, U. et al., eds., 1994, African or any group to cause chaos or conflict among Perspectives on Development, London: James Tanzanians.’ Currey. 4 The irony of Blair’s Africa Commission turns Kjekshus, H., 1977 and 1996, Ecology Control and cynical when it is recalled that one of Blair’s Economic Development in East African History, commissioners, President Mkapa, comes from the London: James Currey. same country whose first president, Nyerere, in Landsberg, C. and F. Kornegey, 1998, ‘The African retirement, chaired the South Commission, which Renaissance: a quest for Pax Africana and Pan- was conceived and financed by the South! Africanism’, in Foundation for Global Dialogue, 5 There are also many humanitarian NGOs South Africa and Africa: Reflections on the African responding to various the disasters to which many Renaissance, FGD Occasional paper No. 17. of our countries are prone. I do not directly deal Legum, L., 1965, Pan-Africanism: A short political with these in this paper. They have to be treated guide (revised edition), London: Pall Mall Press. differently. Mafeje, A., 2002, ‘Democratic governance and new democracy in Africa: agenda for the future’, in Nyong’o, Ghirmazion and Lamba, D., eds., 2002, Selected references New Partnership for Africa’s Development, NEPAD: Adedeji, A., ed., 1993, Africa within the World: A New Path? Nairobi: Heinrich Boll Foundation. Beyond Dispossession and Dependence, London: Mahjoub, A., 1990, Adjustment or De-linking? Zed books. London: Zed/UNU. Amin, S., 1990, Maldevelopment: Anatomy of a Mahmood, M., 1987, ‘Contradictory class Global Failure, London: Zed Books. perspectives on the question of democracy’, in Blum, W., 1986, The CIA, a forgotten history, Peter Anyang’ Nyongo, ed., Popular Struggles London: Zed books. for Democracy in Africa, London: United Nations Blum, W., 2001, Rogue State, A Guide to the World’s University/Zed Press. Only Superpower, London: Zed books. Mahmood, M., 1996, Citizen and Subject: Bond, P., ed., 2002, Fanon’s Warning: a Civil Society Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Reader on the New Partnership for Africa’s Colonialism, Pinceton: Princeton. Development, New Jersey: Africa World Press. Manji, F. and Carol O’Coill, 2002, ‘The missionary Cabral, A., 1969, ‘The weapon of theory’, in Amilcar position: NGOs and development in Africa’, Cabral, Revolution in Guinea, London: Stage 1. International Affairs 78, 3:567–83. Cabral, A., 1980, Unity and Struggle: Speeches and Mboya, T., Freedom and After, 1963, London: Andre Writings, London: Heinemann. Deutsch. Campbell, H. and H. Stein, eds., 1991, The IMF and Mkandawire, T. and C. C. Soludo, eds., 1999, Our Tanzania, Harare: SAPES. Continent, Our Future’: African perspectives on structural adjustment, Dakar: CODESRIA.

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Murphy, B. K., 2001, ‘International NGOs and the Review, vol. 111, no.1:111–134. challenge of modernity,’ in Deborah Eade and Shivji, I. G., ed., 1991, State and Constitutionalism: Ernst Ligteringen, eds., Debating Development, An African Debate on Democracy, Harare: SAPES. Oxford: Oxfam GB. Shivji, I. G., 1998, Not yet Democracy: Reforming Mwaikusa, J. T., 1995, Towards Responsible Land Tenure in Tanzania, London: IIED. Democratic Government: Executive Power and Constitutional Practice in Tanzania, 1962–1992, Shivji, I. G., 2000, ‘Critical elements of a new Ph.D. dissertation, University of London. democratic consensus in Africa’ in Haroub Othman, ed., Reflections on Leadership in Africa: Nyerere, J. K., 1963a, ‘A United States of Africa’, Essays in Honour of Mwalimu Julius K. Nyerere, Journal of Modern African Studies, January 1963, Belgium: VUB University Press. Cambridge reprinted in Nyerere op. cit. 1967. Shivji, I.G., 2002, ‘Globalisation and popular Nyerere, J. K., 1963b, ‘The Second Scramble’, resistance’ in Joseph Semboja, Juma Mwapachu reprinted in Nyerere op. cit. 1967. and Eduard Jansen, eds., Local Perspectives on Nkrumah, K., 1965, Neo-colonialism: the last stage Globalisation: The African Case, Dar es Salaam: of Imperialism, London: Heinemann. REPOA, Mkuki na Nyota. Nyerere, J.K., 1966, ‘‘The Dilemma of the Pan- Shivji, I. G., 2003, ‘Three generations of Africanist,’ in J. K. Nyerere, op. cit. 1968. constitutions and constitution-making in Africa: An overview and assessment in social and economic Nyerere, J. K., 1967, Freedom and Unity: a selection context’, in M. S. Rosen, ed., Constitutionalism from writings and speeches, Dar es Salaam: in Transition: Africa and Eastern Europe, Helsinki Oxford University Press. Foundation for Human Rights. Nyerere, J. K., 1968, Freedom and Socialism, Shivji, I. G., 2005a, ‘The rise, the fall and the London: OUP. insurrection of nationalism in Africa’, in Felicia Nyerere, J.K., 1997, ‘Africa Must Unite’, edited Arudo Yieke, ed., op.cit. excerpts from a public lecture delivered in Accra Shivji, I.G., 2005b, Pan-Africanism or Imperialism? to mark Ghana’s fortieth Independence Day 2nd Billy Dudley Memorial Lecture to the Nigerian anniversary celebrations, United New Africa Global Political Science Association, Nsukka, Nigeria, July Network website: http://www.unitednewafrica. 2005. com/Africa%20Unite.htm Tandon, Y., 1982, University of Dar es Salaam: Nyong’o, Ghirmazion and Lamba, D., eds., 2002, Debate on Class, State and Imperialism, Dar es New Partnership for Africa’s Development, NEPAD: Salaam: Tanzania Publishing House. A New Path? Nairobi: Heinrich Boll Foundation. Wamba, E., 1991, ‘Discourse on the national Peacock, A., 2002, Two Hundred Pharaohs and Five question’, in I. G. Shivji, ed., State and Billion Slaves, London: Ellipsis. Constitutionalism: An African Debate on Rodney, W., 1972, How Europe Underdeveloped Democracy, Harare: SAPES. Africa, Dar es Salaam: Tanzania Publishing House. Wamba, E., 1996, ‘The national question in Zaire: Sayers, D., 1991, Capitalism & Modernity: An challenges to the nation-state project’, in excursus on Marx and Weber, London: Routledge. Adebayo O. Olukoshi and Liisa Laakso, eds., Semboja, J., Juma Mwapachu and Eduard Jansen, Challenges to the Nation-State in Africa, Uppsala: eds., 2002, Local Perspectives on Globalisation: Nordic African Institute. The African Case, Dar es Salaam: REPOA & Mkuki Williams, E., 1945, Capitalism or Slavery, London: na Nyota. Longman. Sheriff, A., 1987, Slaves, Spices & Ivory in Zanzibar, Wilson, A., 1989, US Foreign Policy and Revolution: London: James Currey. The Creation of Tanzania, London: Pluto. Shivji, I. G., 1987, ‘The roots of the agrarian crisis in Yieke, F. A., ed., 2005, East Africa: In Search of Tanzania,’ Eastern Africa Social Science Research National and Regional Renewal, Dakar: CODESRIA.

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