The Silences in the Ngo Discourse

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. 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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 colonial 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’ 4 THE SILENCES IN THE NGO DISCOURSE 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.

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