Volume 20 1993 Issue 58

Review of African Political Economy No.58:3-6 © ROAPE Publications Ltd., 1993 ISSN 0305-6244; RIX #5801 Setting an Agenda for Change In Africa Carolyn Baylies This issue of ROAPE takes up a number of themes which have been a recur- ring concern of our contributors in the past. The pressures imposed by external forces and.imperialist agencies, especially through the structural adjustment policies of the international financial institutions, are pervasive and inexorable, forming the context in which policy or political change must oc- cur. But the internal impetus towards political change of state structures on the continent is also strong, particularly with regard to demands for popular participation. If external forces continue to take their toll, ongoing processes of change, particularly in the political realm, offer some room for cautious optimism. Several of the contributions to this issue address the situation in South Africa, analysing ongoing developments, noting the potential for progressive change, but also offering cautionary advice. Mamdani's analysis of the problems of higher education in post-colonial Africa draws on past experience to evaluate parallels and differences salient to South Africa and to extract lessons which might be taken on board during the South African transition to democracy. Stoneman, in turn, considers structural adjustment programmes and suggests that the case of Zimbabwe may be particularly instructive for South Africa. Mamdani's paper is the text of an address given this year at Rhodes Univer- sity, the University of Natal at Pietermaritzburg, and the University of Dur- ban-Westville. It notes tensions between the large, established, 'historically white' universities and the 'historically black' universities, with the former insisting on the need to uphold academic standards and the desirability of the state leaving the university sector alone and the latter calling for a democrati- cally elected government to redress the balance between resource-rich and resource-poor institutions. Mamdani draws parallels between the current tension within South Africa's higher education sector and the immediate post- colonial experience of other African states, where expatriate lecturers ap- pealed for maintenance of standards and autonomy from the state, while indigenous lecturers called for state intervention and support, and for policies of indigenisation of the faculty, only later coming to the view that too close an attachment to the state bore its own hazards. Mamdani affirms the need for reform in order to redress imbalances and ensure affirmative action within institutions but considers that this should be accompanied by universities 4 Review of African Political Economy forging closer links with their surrounding, disadvantaged communities than with the state. Randall also addresses challenges to the education sector in South Africa in the context of political transition, including the need to ensure and protect its relevance to local communities. His concern, however, is less with higher education than with policies which threaten to defuse the popular initiative asso- ciated with the campaign for people's education — a campaign whose principles were described and evaluated by Mashamba, in ROAPE 48. Surveying the situation from a vantage point several years down the road, Randall ex- presses the fear that the vibrancy of the movement is being lost in a manner parallel to the way in which mass democratic movements have lost their ac- tive function, as the negotiators take centre stage and as the notion of 'the people' is progressively transformed into that of 'citizens'. He queries an overemphasis on education as 'training,' noting that this removes from the agenda a process by which communities define and tackle their problems, at least in part through their control over and direction of the educational process, and casts doubt on the wisdom of training where economic development does not generate jobs for those newly armed with credentials. Randall's stress on the need for communities to maintain a grasp on the education sys- tem in their midst and to ensure their participation in what he suggests should be a problem-solving enterprise is a theme which recurs in various guises in contributions to this issue. This issue of ROAPE contains a special section on Cabral, in acknowledge- ment and celebration of the importance of his contribution to both theorising the struggle against oppression and to the practice of political change. As Ishemo notes, the relevance of Cabral's message has not diminished with time and in many respects is as pertinent to present struggles as to those in decades past. Davidson highlights the emphasis Cabral placed on people doing things for themselves, rather than — what is so often the obverse in Africa — of the state, or external forces, contriving to do things to people. It was the notion of self-development through collective effort that was of central importance to Cabral as activist and theorist and which continues to be relevant today. In this regard, Davidson alludes to the independence of Eritrea as representing the achievement of a 'route of escape' via the sort of popular participation advocated by Cabral. A degree of optimism coupled with a sober assessment of prospects facing Eritrea characterises Markakis's account of developments subsequent to the referendum there in April 1993. With a devastated agricultural sector, reliance on food aid, a poverty stricken population and, indeed, a poverty stricken government, Eritrea may have little choice but to accommodate external pressures and embrace economic liberalism. The tension between ensuring popular participation and accepting, at least in part, the dictates of external donors is indeed a challenge of almost insuperable dimensions. Woldegabriel's piece focuses on demobilisation of almost 100,000 combatants in Eritrea. As he says, Editorial: Setting an Agenda for Change 5 Eritrea is faced with a huge dilemma: how to provide a decent life for those who gave so much. His analysis in some ways mirrors that of Markakis and again asks the question, can Eritrea guarantee a reasonable rate of economic growth and development without a massive injection of capital. And if so, will the conditions be acceptable to Eritreans? The nature of such pressures in the political realm is addressed by Beckman's analysis of the 'neo-liberal ideology' which informs much of the current dis- course on civil society. While neo-liberal theorists applaud the burgeoning of civil society, portray its advance as entailing an equivalent loss to the state, and affirm the desirability of a transfer of nationalist aspirations from the state to civil society, they obscure (or fail to identify) the way in which the state necessarily intervenes — in the name of civil society — to prop up some forces of civil society and undermine others. Civil society is not neutral territory nor autonomous from the state; it is an arena in which social forces compete, where class conflict continues to be acted out and state intervention is invari- ably on the side of capital. In critically evaluating the neo-liberal project, Beckman also comments on the response to it on the part of third world radi- cals. He notes a shift from a former ambivalence toward the state and remarks on the attraction which civil society has come to hold for some radical demo- crats, for whom it represents a space within which the nurturing and protec- tion of popular democracy is perceived as possible. Such room for manoeuvre may emerge. On the other hand, it may well prove elusive given the pervasiveness of imperialist pressures and their potentially destabilising impact. Perseverance, commitment and strength of collective purpose is needed to preserve principles and to protect popular participation and aspirations to the limits of what is possible within constraints constituted by such pressures. It is precisely this, Stoneman argues, that is one of the lessons South Africa to must draw from the experiences of other African states. Suggesting that the balance sheet in respect of structural adjustment shows negative impact on most African states, he focuses on the case of Zim- babwe, arguing that its relative success in resisting the 'totalitarian' influence exerted by international financial institutions via structural adjustment should be highly instructive for other states and particularly South Africa. Resistance to the dogma of orthodoxy and determination to follow a largely self-directed path without engendering confrontation may yet be possible. The analyses of Stoneman and Mamdani are directed specifically at the lessons which the post-colonial experience may offer the South African transition. Yet the other contributions to this issue are no less relevant to that process. The entire process of negotiation and transition in South Africa has been characterised by enormous pressures placed on the liberation movement to make concessions to privilege and injustice. The negotiating agenda of the state, the overt interventions of the institutions of global imperialism, the vio- lence heaped on innocent heads by local 'enforcers' and criminals, the propa- ganda of the media, the earnest and worthy exhortations of a host of 'liberal' 6 Review of African Political Economy politicians and academics, all have been aimed at ensuring that transition will be devoid of much transformation. Efforts have been openly concentrated on limiting the capacity of the democratic

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