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Editorial the Mandela We Will Remember

Editorial the Mandela We Will Remember

CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 3 & 4, 2013 Page 1

Editorial

The Mandela We Will Remember

“I have fought against white domination and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which .”

n Thursday, 5 December 2013, the world lost one of its Tutu, Allan Bosak, and Winnie Mandela, also deserve credit for greatest leaders with the passing of Nelson Mandela. the extremely important roles that they also played in the OFew people have ever had as unanimous a celebration, liberation struggle. So do the other leaders of the liberation in all continents of the world, upon their passing as the one that movement; the millions of ordinary peasants, workers, students Madiba is currently having. Beyond the mythologisation that is and professionals; the leaders and populations of the ‘Frontline also so obviously part of what is going on, we are indeed talking States’; and the global anti- and solidarity movement. about a man who had the courage to pronounce the words cited Mandela himself has said and repeated many times that theirs above in a court where he was being tried for treason by of one was a collective struggle, and that if there is one thing he would of the most racist and brutal regimes that have ever existed; a like to be remembered for, it would be that of having been a man man whose integrity, humility and commitment to the cause of who has performed his duty to his people. social knew no bounds; a man who voluntarily stepped However, Mandela not only symbolized the struggle for justice, down from power at a time when his popularity was extremely he also embodied and led the struggle against apartheid, even high, and after only five years in office. All these qualities are in while he was languishing in jail on . That is the stark contrast to what characterizes most leaders of today. His Mandela we are also celebrating. contribution to the struggle to end apartheid and build a peaceful, united and democratic South Africais huge.He has also inspired Some of the limitations of his performance as the first President millions of people around the world. of post-apartheid South had to do with the circumstances under which the transition from apartheid to democracy was Mandela’s legacy is far from being exclusively positive. South negotiated. Although the South African transition is paradigmatic African society is still riddled with contradictions of a racial and in many respects, and a clear departure from what has been class nature. Some of the inequalities, such as the high called the ‘Nuremberg paradigm’ (Mamdani), for it prioritized concentration of land, wealth and power in a few hands that ‘reconciliation’ and the creation of a basis for all South Africans were among the defining features of apartheid society, are still to live together in a post-apartheid ‘rainbow nation’,to very much with us. South African capital deploys itself in the accountability (the creation of a ‘Truth and Reconciliation rest of the continent with even greater ease today than before. Commission led by Archbishop was an However, despite these problems, there is no comparison important part of that process), following what had already between apartheid society and today’s democratic . become a tradition in African processes (see Mandela was not alone in the struggle for the liberation of Africa the contributions of Zeleza, Mkandawire and Cooper to this from and apartheid. Many of his contemporaries, issue of CODESRIA Bulletin), the ‘global community’, such as (), Mwalimu including the defenders of big business, actually left little room (), Leopold Sedar Senghor (), Gamal Abdel for any radical shifts in the economic system. The ANC’s Nasser (), Mohamed V (Morocco), , that was already much more reconciliatory (Ethiopia), (Congo), JomoKenyatta (), than the ‘manifestoes’ around which the movements steeped SekouToure (), (), in the philosophy of the BCM had rallied, was ‘cleaned up’ Augustinho Neto (), Sam Nujoma (), Ahmed Ben (i.e. purged of all references to what could remotely resemble a Bella () and, later, Amilcar Cabral (Guinea Bissau and call for the building of a mixed economy) in the course of the Cape Verde), and Thomas Sankara (Burkina Faso) were also long transition to democratic rule. highly committed pan Africanists, and in many respects, In many respects, one can in fact draw a parallel between the visionary leaders. The children of Soweto, the women and men kinds of constraints that President Barrak Obama faced in his of the African National Congress (ANC) and other South African attempts to reform the health care system of the , liberation movements such as the Pan Africanist Congress and the parameters that were set for those who were serious (PAC), the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM), the Black about transforming South Africa. The uproar provoked by the Peoples’ Convention (BPC), and the Azania People’s forced mergers of some of the historically disadvantaged (i.e. Organisation (AZAPO); the workers’ unions, and the many other black and coloured) universities with some historically white people who played leadership roles in the liberation movement, universities was a good illustration of the difficulties. The slow such as , , , Albert pace of the redistribution of land, that is still highly Luthuli, Alfred Nzo, , , Sobukwe, concentrated in a few hands, is another illustration of the Albertina Sisulu, Dulcie September, Strini Moodley, Neville difficulties; as were the many struggles that President Thabo Alexander, Tsetsi Masinini, Chris Hani, Saths Cooper, Desmond CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 3 & 4, 2013 Page 2

Mbeki has had to wage at various levels. The abandonment of social science research in such a context, therefore, required the Reconstruction and Development Programme through overcoming many barriers that were not only of a disciplinary which housing and important social services were provided to nature, but also, linguistic barriers (because, in addition to the millions of working and lower middle class people, signaled different African languages, each one of the colonial powers the definitive abandonment of attempts to build social left its own language as the official language of its former democracy in South Africa. colonies), and political, gender, and generational barriers. Still, the world is very fortunate to have people like Madiba CODESRIA has done pioneering work in the field of child and (Nelson Mandela) to show to our children and grandchildren as youth, gender, sexuality, and human and citizenship rights.It role models, and evidence of the fact that, yes, there have has published many books that have broken new ground. In been,there are, and there can still be people playing visionary addition, CODESRIA publishes 12 journals, the oldest of which leadership roles characterized by courage, moral and professional is Africa Development, first published in 1976 and the youngest integrity, humility and unflinching commitment to universal is Method(e)s (Journal of Social Science Methodology) which democratic and human values and to their own peoples. Of will release its first edition in 2014. All CODESRIA journals are course, as he has clearly demonstrated in his book Conversations published in English and French, some with a translation into WithMyself (Macmillan 2010), Mandela was also just a human Arabic and Portuguese. being, with his doubts, worries, desires and limitations. There is The editors of these journals are drawn from the different regions no shortage of examples of leaders and ordinary people of Africa while others are part of the Africa Diaspora. The journals displaying such traits. are representativeof the wide spectrum of the social sciences. Furthermore, if we, at CODESRIA, are celebrating Mandela, it is Africa Development takes care of those shades of social sciences also because his story resonates very well with those of many that do not fit in the narrowly defined confines of specific African scholars (including great South African Scholars such disciplines. CODESRIA is convinced that the best way forward, as Ruth First, Archie Mafeje, and Bernard Magubane) who, in for the social sciences and humanities, is to move along the their own modest ways, have displayed incredibly high levels multidisciplinary/interdisciplinary path because many disciplines of commitment to Africa through their work, and made great cannot make complete senseof social, realitiesin isolation. sacrifices in their attempts to do research, teach, advise and CODESRIA is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year, in a build independent institutions in and for Africa. The Mandela context characterized, on the one hand, by a number of story also resonates very well with the CODESRIA story. contrasting phenomena and contradictory trends indicating both CODESRIA was established in 1973 by African scholars with a the persistence of huge challenges and the emergence of new view to creating an autonomous space and a forum for social ones, and many positive developments and the availability of science research and knowledge production in Africa. Hundreds many opportunities on the other hand. of scholars contributed (some evenmade huge personal That is why the Executive and Scientific Committees, and the sacrifices)tothe buildingof a CODESRIA whose only interest is Secretariat, and the entire CODESRIA community also draw to promote scholarship and produce knowledge in Africa as inspiration from Madiba, even as we engage critically with his part of the advancement of science, but also as a contribution legacy. to development of our societies in ways that enhance the freedom and wellbeing of our people. Sincere condolences to his wife GracaMachel, his ex-wife Winnie Mandela and the entire Mandela extended family; to our South CODESRIA has all along been aware of the need to transformthe African and other African compatriots; and to all the peoples of global epistemological order. African scholars have, for a long the world. time, been working with what Valentin Mudimbe has called a ‘colonial library’, because the social sciences, as we know them Hamba Kahle Mandela (Go Well Mandela) today, are to a large extent the product of the European Enlightenment that came to us through the encounter with the West and we, in Africa and the global South in general, have internalised many of the Eurocentric theories and paradigms in Ebrima Sall our work. Executive Secretary The context in which CODESRIA was established was one of extreme political fragmentation, because of the colonial partition Alex Bangirana of the continent into a multitude of small territories. Promoting Head, Publications CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 3 & 4, 2013 Page 3

CODESRIA Honoured Latin “American and Caribbean” Regional Integration Award 2013

e are very pleased to inform members and friends of The ceremony at which the award was presented to CODESRIA the African social community that CODESRIA is the was held in Santiago, , on 3 October, on the back of the Wrecipient of the "2013 Latin American and Caribbean Sixth South-South Institute, and the 29th Congress of the Latin Regional Integration Award". American Sociology Association, both of which were held in Santiago. According to Professor Pablo Gentili, the Executive Secretary of the Latin American Social Science Council (CLACSO), the This was the first time that the award, which CLACSO has been award has been given to CODESRIA in recognition of the work giving out for several years now, was given to a non-Latin that CODESRIA has been doing over the years to promote American or non-Caribbean institution or person. regional integration through research, as well as South-South Dr. Ebrima Sall, the CODESRIA Executive Secretary, thanked cooperation. CLACSO for the award, and below is his acceptance speech at the occasion.

CODESRIA Acceptance Speech

n behalf of the President of the interests of their peoples, as well as CODESRIA, Professor Fatima the interests of all the peoples of the world. Harrak, and on behalf of the Ebrima Sall O Executive Secretary The scholars who, twelve years later, met Executive Committee and Secretariat of to set up CLACSO were driven by the CODESRIA, and on my own behalf, I would CODESRIA same spirit: a desire to transform the global like to express sincere thanks to the board Dakar epistemological order that overly favoured and the Executive Secretary of CLACSO, the West, that tended to mirror the global power relations and Professor Pablo Gentili, for selecting CODESRIA to be the the inequalities associated with those relations, as part of the recipient of "The Latin American and Caribbean Regional struggle for a better world. The struggle to transform the global Integration Award." epistemological order is part and parcel of the struggle for the We feel very highly honoured and we are extremely pleased. We transformation of global relations for a just world. also take this as a very good ‘anniversary present’, because Transforming the global epistemological order has not been, CODESRIA is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year. and is not going to be easy. We have, for a long time, been CODESRIA was established in 1973 by African scholars with a working with ‘colonial libraries’ (Mudimbe), because the social view to creating an autonomous space and a forum for social sciences, as we know them today, are to a large extent products science research and knowledge production in Africa. of the European Enlightenment that came to us through the CODESRIA, like CLACSO, is arguably a child of what could be encounter with the West and we, in the South, have internalized called the ‘Bandung Spirit’. We tend to think about Bandung many of the Eurocentric theories and paradigms in our work. primarily in political and international relations terms. But the The study of our regions (Africa, Asia, Latin America and the ‘Bandung Spirit’, I would argue, also existed in the field of Caribbean) has become a big international industry and large knowledge production. sections of our communities (including our Diasporas) are members of ‘epistemic Communities’ that extend far beyond our As the was being fought between the then East and regions. the West, the nations of the global South which, after having suffered from one form of imperial domination or another, refused Geographical aspects aside (after all, the ‘South’ is not so much to take sides in what they saw as a war between great powers about geography, but about politics, power relations, and social seeking to dominate the world, not for the sake of justice and conditions), the issue is also that of putting scholarship and equity, but for their own hegemonic interests. Representatives knowledge production in the service of humanity, rather than to of the "non aligned" nations met in Bandung, , in the service of dominant classes or powers. The geographical 1955 to discuss ways of collaborating to protect and promote South is now very highly diversified, with some of the BRICs CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 3 & 4, 2013 Page 4 resembling the advanced capitalist countries (the ‘developed Many of the dependency theorists, such as Frank, Prebish, world’) more than they resemble what used to be called the Cardoso, and Stavenhagen, whose work shifted development . paradigms in a major way, were from this region. Liberation philosophy had its roots here. Henrique Dussel wrote The Participants in the founding congress of CLACSO decided to Invention of the Americas a few years before Edward Said’s encourage the building of regional research councils (similar to book titled Orientalism, and Valentin Mudimbe The Invention CLACSO) all across the South. The Africans who CLACSO of Africa and, later, The Idea of Africa were published. These invited to its founding congress, most notably Professor Samir books and many others (like Samir Amin’s Eurocentrism, and Amin from Egypt, carried the message back and decided to ’s works on African history and civilization, implement the decision that they – the participants in the Partha Chatterjee’s work on nationalism and modernity, etc.) CLACSO congress who came from across the Global South – have had a profound impact on how we think about the Americas, had made, i.e., to form independent councils and organisations the Orient, Africa and the global South. of scholars such as CLACSO, in Asia and Africa as well. The challenge has been to deepen the paradigm shift away from The context in which CODESRIA was established in Africa was the reference to the West as the primary centre or mover of one of extreme political fragmentation, because of the colonial history and theory, towards more de centred theory and partition of the continent into a multitude of small territories, approaches to history (like the Comaroffs, Mbembe, Boaventura each of which has, since gaining independence been struggling de Sousa and many others have been doing). In some sense, to build itself into a cohesive nation and a truly independent this is also what the great pan-Africanist thinkers such as Du state. Promoting social science research in such a context Bois, Nkrumah, Nyerere, Cabral and others have been engaged therefore required overcoming of many barriers that were not in. The reverse movement was also very important. African only of a disciplinary nature, but also, linguistic barriers (because, culture and scholarship inspired scholarship and struggles in in addition to the many African languages, each one of the this region – Senghor was read in Columbia, Amin was read colonial powers had left its own language as the official language along with Prebish, Frank, Cardoso and others, Mkandawire's of its former colonies), and political, gender, and generational work on transformative social policy was highly appreciated in barriers. CODESRIA therefore adopted a pan-African approach Latin America. right from the start, out of conviction, given that it comes out of a long history of struggle for liberty that the global pan-African Regional integration is nowadays presented as a necessity, if movement was part of, but also out of necessity. The need for we want our regions to preserve their sovereignty and negotiate an autonomous continental research space and a networked, a more respectable positions in the world; it is also necessary for pan-African research community, was made even greater by the the preservation of the interests of our peoples; and for prevalence of authoritarian regimes on the continent at the time. development. Kwame Nkrumah, Cheikh Anta Diop, Mwalimu Therefore regional integration and South South cooperation Julius Nyerere, Amilcar Cabral, , Tajudeen were inscribed in the philosophy and work of CODESRIA from Abduraheem and many other great African leaders, and the the outset. leaders of the global pan-African movement were all in support of regional integration, and right now there is an interstate We are right now in the closing session of the sixth edition of movement towards greater integration in Africa, led by the the South South Institute jointly organized by CLACSO, and Regional Economic Communities of Africa CODESRIA and IDEAs. Each edition has been attended by (ECOWAS, SADC, EAC, IGAD…). But there is also a popular between 20 to 30 young scholars; the institute has become a movement for integration. Regional integration is also necessary formidable vehicle for building lasting scholarly collaborations to ensure peace and greater human security. Latin America and across the South. The research conferences and workshops, Africa can learn a lot from each other in terms of their experiences. the research grants, and the publications produced by our institutions serve the same purposes. Of course, Regional integration is not going to be a miraculous solution to all our problems of development: the class divisions The ultimate objective is to think together and project the that exist at the national level also manifest themselves at the perspectives of scholars from the South on all the global issues regional level, and for that reason, there are competing regional of our time. The only way to make knowledge truly global, and integration projects: there are those driven by and favour capital, bridge the global knowledge divides, is to have knowledges of informed today mainly by neoliberal philosophies and serving various kinds, including indigenous and endogenous the interests of the big businesses of the world. There are also knowledges from all over the world recognised, which would be the alternative regional integration projects that seek to enhance an important step towards the transformation of global political, the freedoms and well being of the peoples of the different economic and cultural relations. regions (there are interesting examples here in Latin America). As I said, the struggle to transform the global epistemological Here too, I think it is very important that research informs regional order, to make it truly universal, is part and parcel of the integration policies that seek to enhance the freedom and well transformation of the world to make it a better place for everybody. being of our peoples. Latin America and the Caribbean have been at the forefront of As I am saying this, in this beautiful and historic Senate Building, that struggle. The pan-African movement has some of its roots my mind also goes to all people like Salvador Allende and Simon in this region (Latin America and the Caribbean), with great Bolivar, who sacrificed a lot in order to see to it that their regions people such as Toussaint L'Ouverture, Henri Sylvester Williams, and their peoples unite to become and remain free, and live in , Leon Damas, Aime Cesaire and others. much better social and economic conditions. CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 3 & 4, 2013 Page 5

Our South South programme, I would argue, is a model of Before concluding, I would like to take this opportunity to also collaboration. CODESRIA has been involved in many thank Sida for the support rendered to the South-South programmes of this kind, and still is: SEPHIS, the South-South Programme, and for the decades-long support to both CLACSO Sustainability Forum (SSSF), WSF... and works with many South and CODESRIA. The challenge now for Pablo Gentili, Jayati South networks. However, this programme is, in many ways, Ghosh and I, is to encourage research funding agencies of the unique: the way in which it has been conceptualized and the South, both state and private, to also support the programme. way it is managed are good examples of scholarly collaboration, We are now enlarging the membership and broadening the and I would like to acknowledge all those who made it possible thematic coverage of the programme. And we are reaching out for the programme to come this far: Atilio Boron, Emir Sader, both to the social movements, and to the policy makers. The Bayo Olukoshi, Hari Singh (of the APISA), Sam Moyo and, next level of cooperation is that of establishing joint research before then, Marcia Riviera, Thandika Mkandawire, Abdallah and publication projects, and to engage in the study of each Bujra, Samir Amin, and many others. other’s regions more systematically, and more deeply. There are also the programme staff who, on a day to day basis, Last, but not least, we also need to disseminate the results of make sure that the programme stays on course and moves forward—Gladys Lechini, Alberto Cimadamore, Luciana Gil, our work much more effectively, using all the possibilities that Carolina Mera, Victoria Mutti, Mauricio, Dominique… on the the information and communications have created. CLACSO side; at IDEAs (Malini, Chandru), and at CODESRIA: I thank you for your attention. Pinkie Mekgwe, Carlos Cardoso, Mame Sokhna Thiare Toure.

Political and Social Thought in Africa Helmi Sharawy The essays collected together in this book reflect the author’s varied experiences in the realms of politics and social struggle, he notes that they cannot be separated from his other experiences in my own country, Egypt over the years. These extend from popular culture or folklore, to the wide world of African liberation politics, and to the Committee for the Defence of National Culture. This book is like a long trip with African culture from the 1950s to these beginnings of the 21st century, it is most likely going to provoke many memories, sweet and bitter, with maybe the bitter ones as the more lasting. The author notes that it seems as if the only relationship that seems to have mattered for a long time, for the Egyptians, was the river Nile which joins the country with ten other African countries, while a vast desert stands in-between. Such separation ignores the ancient relations between Pharaonic Egypt and the rest of Africa, the Egyptian role in supporting many African liberation movements seems to have been forgotten. The author has set himself some tough questions: Is it legitimate today to sub-divide the African continent according to the races it contains? Can this, moreover, be simply done with a-historic content for race, or an idealistic concept of identities? Or are we going to talk about the Arabism of Egypt, Libya or Maghreb as if it were an identity gained with the advent of the Arab race, implying that these were ‘lands with no people’ – a sort of ‘No Man’s Land’ or fragile spaces that could not confront the invading empire? Or will Arabism equate with Bantuism or negroism sometimes, and Hausa and Swahili cultures at other times? These are the types of issues that Helmi Sharawy examines in this very important book. Experiences that inform this book began with the author’s first encounter in March 1956, with some African youths who were in Cairo for higher studies or as representatives of African liberation movements with whom he worked as an intermediary with the Egyptian national state left an everlasting impression.

Children and Youth in Africa: Annotated Bibliography 2001–2011 Mwenda Ntarangwi This annotated bibliography provides a summary of scholarly work specifically focused on children and youth in Africa published between 2001 and 2011 in both journals and books. Some African scholars have questioned this view of children especially when it comes to their own agency and full participation in socioeconomic production for households, the idea of children as vulnerable social subjects continues to shape much of the research that was carried out on African children. This view of children as passive and vulnerable is also reflected in much of the work and perceptions of children in the West especially when seen from an economic perspective. Western restrictions on specific age limits that govern children’s participation in work or labour, whether paid or not, and the subsequent rights that go along with them are often not easily translatable to many African contexts. As is often in the case of children acting as household heads and fending not only for themselves but for their siblings and times their parents, the Western notion of children as ‘emotionally priceless but economically useless’3 is not tenable. This construction of African children and youth in terms of received Western categories of personhood is still very strong today. The overwhelming focus of research publications on HIV/AIDS and orphans, violence and child-soldiers, children’s rights, and street children, demonstrates this continued interest in regarding children as vulnerable and in need of adult protection. Moreover, with most of the research projects being shaped by external funding agencies it is not surprising that many of the research questions being pursued tend to focus on areas of study preferred by these agencies. Focusing on the vulnerable child in Africa is mostly a result of the construction of childhood in modern (mostly) Western perception of childhood based on chronological age. This book examines the wide spectrum of writing on children and youth in Africa. It is very important for all scholars working in this field. CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 3 & 4, 2013 Page 6

Tributes to Nelson Mandela (1918–2013)

“For my Generation, the Death of Mandela Marks the End of Africa’s Liberation Struggle”*

LSE’s African Chair Thandika Mkandawire Personally, I did a prison stint in 1961 and suffered imprisonment for his role in the Thandika Mkandawire emerged as a “Prison Graduate” after three struggle for the independence of London School of Economics months of incarceration on trumped-up and 30 years of exile. In this post, he writes UK charges of inciting violence. We took it for about the role Nelson Mandela played in granted then that being jailed for nationalist inspiring his generation of political activities came with the territory. activists. The rapid pace of decolonisation was brought to a halt on the It is difficult to write about Nelson Mandela without sounding shores of the Zambezi River by the recalcitrant racist regimes of sycophantic or as if engaged in uncritical hero worship. South Africa and and the decrepit, fascist Portuguese Mandela’s stature and personality left little room for other regime of Salazar who continued to insist on maintaining its sentiments other than colonies. those of profound We anxiously followed the fate of Mandela when he went admiration and gratitude. underground as the “Black Pimpernel”. His arrest in 1962 The post-World War II and his conviction for life in 1964 together with the era produced some assassination of Lumumba and the Unilateral Declaration memorable African of Independence (UDI) in in 1965 were major leaders who grace the reversals to the liberation of the continent. These were only pantheon of champions countered by the emancipation of the “Protectorates” of of the African liberation southern Africa a few years after Mandela’s sentencing. It struggle. There is little did appear then that not only would the wave of liberation doubt that Nelson be derailed on the banks of the Zambezi river but that it “Madiba” Mandela would be reversed by neocolonial machinations that ranked among the best of included the assassinations of African leaders and coup these. d’états. South Africa took the war outside its border, hunting In this brief note, I will down exiled leaders. simply point to the If the life imprisonment of Mandela seemed like a major influences the man had on reversal for and a victory for the my generation (politically remaining racist and fascist regimes, the Nelson Mandela speaking). For much of statement at the dock of the court on 20 April 1964 was one the last century during the most inspiring statements for my generation. which I grew up, Africa was involved in ridding itself of colonialism and racist rule. From the 1960s onwards, the walls of “This is the struggle of the African people, inspired by their own colonial domination crumbled one after another as the suffering and experience. It is a struggle for the right to live. I have colonialists granted independence or simply ran away as did cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society, in which all the Belgians while ensuring that King Leopold’s ghost would persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunity. It is continue to haunt the heart of Africa that Congo is. And so for an ideal which I hope to live for and achieve. But, if needs be, my my generation, the death of Mandela marks the triumphant end Lord, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.” of Africa’s liberation struggle. We read it as a call for the final push in southern Africa through The name Mandela became first inscribed in the annals of armed struggle. We also understood it as meaning that the usual African liberation as nothing particularly unusual at the time. path of “protest-detention-talk-statehouse” that had been taken The late fifties was an era of trials and detentions in the colonies. by many nationalist leaders was closed for the remaining colonial The Treason Trial, which took place from 1956 to 1961, was regimes of the region. It was clear now that the struggle for closely followed by those of my generation largely through liberation in southern Africa had taken a dramatically different Drum Magazine. Mandela was one of 156 people arrested and turn – that of armed struggle and indeed the liberation movements tried for high treason. During this period leaders such as Jomo of Lusophone Africa, Namibia and Zimbabwe took this position Kenyatta, Dr , , and we were to witness an acceleration of armed struggles in the and were in and out of courts, detentions centres region. Three decades later came the end of apartheid, a or prison. Some, like Patrice Lumumba, were assassinated. remarkable achievement in Africa’s tormented history. CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 3 & 4, 2013 Page 7

Mandela’s release on 11 February 1990 marked the beginning of The second was Mandela’s deep sense of duty and a warm the final chapter in the struggle for the liberation of the continent sense of respect for the people he led and the movement to from colonial domination but it was also a spur to the struggle which he had been of selfless service. Contrast that to the for the “Second Independence” – the struggle for the end of arrogance of some of the triumphant nationalist leaders who authoritarian rule and democracy – that was being wedged rewrote history for their own purposes and reduced the throughout the continent. It emphatically underscored the fact movements that had brought them into power into massive that the incarceration of a person for political reasons had no voices of sycophancy and intolerance. moral basis. Political prisoners in every African country became The third feature was Mandela’s eminently sane relationship to “our Mandelas” calling for release. In Malawi one political power. It never got into his head. And for all his regal bearing prisoner released in 1994 had spent as much time in jail as putatively born of his royal upbringing one felt he was a humble Mandela. and loyal servant of a movement to which he has given so There were so many features in the amazing life of this much. Mandela contributed by example in his exercise of power. outstanding man. Highlights will differ from one commentator One unfortunate outcome of the heroic struggles for liberation to another. One of the most highlighted areas has been the spirit and the enormous personal sacrifices incurred by individual of reconciliation exuded by a man who had been incarcerated leaders was the production of “heroes” who in turn produced, for close to three decades. Important though this aspect was in wittingly or unwittingly, hero worship. A number of leaders light of the racial animosity and fears that apartheid had conducted themselves with a sense of entitlement to the throne generated, it was not unique to Mandela. on the basis of their contribution and sacrifices. Mandela emerged from all this with a remarkable sense of duty and From its original articulation by , “reconciliation” recognition of the many others that had contributed to the became the slogan of all the leading nationalist movements in struggle. He graciously retired from office after only one term of white settler-dominated countries. It is often forgotten that even leadership, a remarkable gesture, given Africa’s experience with Mugabe was feted in the capitals of Europe for precisely national heroes turned “life presidents” and his enormous conveying that message. popularity. Mandela’s gesture cast the searchlight on the “Life The focus of the West on reconciliatory overtures occluded Presidents” on the continent and exposed much of the pomp other aspects of the leadership of these men – the avaricious and grand standing for what it was – waste and arrogance accumulation of wealth in case of Kenyatta and the brutal The fourth was his commitment to democracy and rule of law. In repression of fellow citizens on the part of Mugabe. In all these a sense Mandela normalised the idea of democracy in Africa. cases, reconciliation skirted the issue of justice. And within No leader could proudly proclaim himself (it was always a he) a South Africa the terms of reconciliation are still a hotly debated dictator by claiming that African culture sanctioned it without issue. So there must obviously be something more to Mandela looking extremely foolish. than the “spirit of reconciliation”. Mandela was the one individual of and to whom it can be said Four things struck me as why the man is the most admired among the African continent was unanimously proud and infinitely Africans. One was Mandela’s deep commitment to the liberation grateful. of the African people, a commitment baldly stated in court and underscored by his years on Robben Island. Hamba Kahle, Madiba

* First published: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/africaatlse/2013/12/06/for-my-generation-the-death-of-mandela-marks-the-end-of-- liberation-struggle-thandika-mkandawire/

The Mandela I Knew

uring my incarceration in the same isolation block, which was rarely used, save single-cell block in Robben Island Saths Cooper as a punishment and in some instances when DMaximum Security Prison with International Union of specific groups of prisoners were first Nelson Rohihlala Mandela between 1977 to Psychological Science admitted to the prison after their conviction. 1982 I got to know him intimately and had , SA Madiba mentioned an incident involving the the advantage of interacting with him on a Late Neville Alexander where the latter was daily basis. accustomed to use first names which had apparently caused resentment amongst peasant inmates. This These were less than ideal conditions, often fraught with the was Madiba’s way of informing us that he preferred to be called tensions that accompany incarceration, but such hardships provide Madiba, although we had used the respectful ‘Ntate’ (Sesotho/ the opportunity for the best and worst in ourselves to emerge. Setswana for a male elder). He probably foresaw that as we were The perspicacity of the man was demonstrated the very next urban university-student types in our late twenties and early day after Aubrey Mokoape, the Late Strini Moodley and I were thirties, we could lapse into using first names. moved to his B-Section single-cell block from the C-Section CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 3 & 4, 2013 Page 8

Our respect for him and the older prisoners and our disquiet as essentially embracing all those who were not white. I never with using clan/tribal names, resulted in our continued usage of heard him use the pejorative ‘non-white’ after October 1977. ‘Ntate‘ until it simply became Madiba. Months later, when Thus it perhaps is that the Constitution of the Republic of South Zithulele Cindi and Kaborone Sedibe (also my co-accused in Africa relies on this generic description of blacks (eschewing the SASO/BPC trial) replaced Aubrey and Strini in the B-Section the narcissistic and demeaning term ‘non-white’), as opposed cell block, Madiba realized that Zithulele as a matter of principle to privileged whites who had generally enjoyed and benefitted wouldn’t use any clan/tribal names. Madiba deftly resorted to from the previous apartheid system. calling him ‘Ou-Maat‘, thus opening the door for Zithulele to We asked for and got a meeting with all the Rivonia trialists a reciprocate by calling Madiba ‘Ou-Maat’. Indeed, when certain few days later to make known our strong reservations about Stalinists within the African National Congress (ANC) objected their impending meeting with George Matanzima and members to Madiba fermenting ‘puzamandla‘ (a protein supplement that of the Cabinet, concerning their possible release as was given to black African prisoners) to have with his ‘mealie part of the Transkei Homeland Independence celebrations. This pap‘ porridge each morning, Zithulele - who was beyond the we did the following day, amidst intense but cordial questioning. Stalinists’ rein - was the source of Madiba’s fermented breakfast, The meeting with Matanzima was aborted, and the Transkei which he clearly enjoyed. anniversary celebrations went ahead without anyone being The generational and political gaps were obvious and it was released from prison. I often wonder how someone who had much easier to overcome the latter. We naturally accorded been in jail for some 15 years, with the harsh prospect of serving Madiba and the older comrades the respect that we were wont life imprisonment would have felt of black hotheads who put to do our elders, which was part of our upbringing, and indicated principle above all else. to them the many ways in which we perceived the world Madiba’s initial impression of me as a radical hothead was differently, which Madiba and many of the older leadership probably tempered over time and through various interactions acknowledged. of a social, sport and political nature. We used to share early The political differences were much more difficult to resolve. morning runs around the tennis court, have regular tennis The source of tension was the post-June 1976 aftermath which matches, and I even learnt to play dominoes which he loved to resulted in the largest influx of political prisoners in the history play almost daily after lunch. He would often share personal of Robben Island. This portended a ripe recruitment opportunity and political information and felt obliged to inform the leadership for the older sections of the liberation movement which were of the various political organizations of any developments that largely comprised of middle-aged members. Initially, the Pan may impact them. He was adamant that all our organizations had Africanist Congress (PAC) attempted to avoid recruitment, been infiltrated by apartheid agents, which the record confirms. because of its inherently divisive nature, but the ANC had no Yet some of his fellow trialists could not accept that Gerhard such qualms. Madiba and Walter Sisulu – the ANC Liaison with Ludi (an apartheid agent) had infiltrated Rivonia. the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) – decried this There was no rancor in any of our dealings with Madiba and the situation and only when the BCM had dwindled in size around older ANC leadership, despite the periods of intense tension 1980 did they sign a non-recruitment pact. The PAC, then feeling caused by the recruitment already alluded to. Our engagements that it had lost out in the numbers game, baulked at signing. were always cordial and grew to an easy camaraderie and The major political difference between the ANC and us in the deepening mutual respect. Disagreements on political positions BCM was the ANC’s four nations hypothesis; that Africans, never degenerated into acrimony – which was quite rife with the Coloureds, Indians and Whites comprised the four spokes that influx of hundreds of post-June 1976 youth into the rest of emblazon the ANC wheel. We held that all blacks were oppressed Robben Island – but always ended with us agreeing to disagree. by a phalanx of white racist power and privilege that was This is something that our polity sorely lacks, as is seen in our apartheid and that our unity as blacks in opposition to apartheid tense and violence-prone political discourse. was paramount. From the time that I first met him in those miserable conditions in In our first encounter that chilly Spring afternoon in 1977, he prison till the time of his recent illness he exuded a regal demeanor also invited us to discuss with him when his exams were over and carriage that infused respect amongst all who came into (the SASO/BPC trialists were denied study privileges) the contact with him. A stickler for custom and pleasantries, he question of when it was appropriate for a liberation organization dictated the pace of the ensuing interaction, by careful listening, to open its membership to other races. Our response was that usually without interruption, and then presenting how he saw the ANC had taken such a decision at one of its conferences in the way forward. Very few could refuse to take tea with him, by Tanzania and that our BCM was founded on the testimony of all which time any anger and rancor had dissipated. blacks – Africans, Coloureds and Indians – working together in When he had made up his mind about a position he was the same formation to actively oppose apartheid. We never committed to it, despite the howl of protests from others around traversed this topic again. In many ways, the ANC in Robben him. But if you could convince him that his position was flawed, Island was different to the ANC outside those prison walls, as he would not hesitate to acknowledge this. In this way he was most of the information only reached prison much later. The able, for example, to move white racists in our midst to accept natural tendency in most people - and politicos are no exception the inevitability of peaceful transformation in our country. And, – is to retain understandings that we are familiar with. he led by example, making extraordinary concessions to Although he initially could not understand the birth and growth reconciliation which, unfortunately, some in our country have of the Black Consciousness Movement, he soon began to taken for granted, ignoring the massive exploitation, appreciate our standpoint and accepted the definition of ‘black’ and suffering wrought by the erstwhile apartheid system. CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 3 & 4, 2013 Page 9

During his presidency of our country he was magnanimous to Africa and abroad. Each will have their memories of being many of his detractors within the ANC who, if they had been touched by a ‘saint’ in his lifetime. Madiba was the first to in power, may not have been as generous. He went out of his disavow that he was a saint, but he was far from being a sinner way to accommodate numerous former prisoners from across either. There will be other occasions to dissect his foibles. the political spectrum who owe their positions to his ability to Now is the time for South Africans to acknowledge the debt of rise above partisanship. Beneficiaries of apartheid owe him a gratitude that we owe to his singular contributions. Pity it is particular debt of gratitude for his reconciliatory approach that that there will be constant squabbling about his legacy. He has permitted them to continue with their enterprises and deserves better. Unfortunately, greatness in public life is not a positions, in most cases reaping unimaginable profit and guarantee of equanimity in private life. personal benefit. His ability to relate to all sectors of society, his sense of humor Since his release from prison, his accession to political power and quiet dignity has enamored him to people all over the world as our nascent democracy’s Founding President and his who have had the fortune to interact with him. History will record retirement, my interactions with him were infrequent. I avoided in detail his role in shaping our country. His lengthy illness has being intrusive. When we did meet, it was always with great allowed most of us to grieve and accept his passing. It’s now fondness and he had the knack of saying the right thing, time to celebrate his life and times that we have been so much a whatever the circumstances, especially to those I was with, part of, and ensure that what he and we have struggled for will whether family, friends or colleagues. This quality will endear not be in vain. him to all those people that he has interacted with in South

Hamba Khale, Madiba: The Contestation Between Symbolism and Mythologies

s Mandela passes on to join the ancestors, a wave of It is the tragedy of great people that their passing provides the sadness sweeps the entire planet. There can be few opportunity for those in power to create a myth to serve their Aplaces and few people who are not in some way deeply own interests, a myth that often serves to arrest the very vitality affected by this event. that such lives inspired. We are already witnessing the creation of mythologies of Madiba symbolizes many things for many Mandela. (Or perhaps consolidation is a people. For the survivors of the brutality of Firoze Manji better word, for this process has been going apartheid, he is the symbol of the victory of CODESRIA on for some time, especially since he their struggle for freedom and justice, the Dakar resigned as President). The mythologies symbol of the possibility of a future that is will be articulated through obituaries in about creating a better world, and not a world corporate media, through the speeches of politicians, through built on bitterness for past crimes, the symbol of all those values the eulogies sung at his funeral, through the proclamations of on which the South African constitution was founded. For the commemorative holidays, biographies, institutions, and so on. oppressed and exploited across Africa, he represents the finest qualities of integrity and principled leadership, the hero who Mythologies about great people, whether they portray them as dared to re-assert the humanity of the colonized over the tyranny saints or as villains, are idealized representations, and as such, of empire. For those unjustly imprisoned, he symbolizes the fundamentally reactionary. Mythologies are the sustenance of hope of freedom. For anti-apartheid activists across the world, all forms of fundamentalism, whether religious or ideological Mandela represents the worth of the years of persistent (e.g. the market fundamentalism of neo-liberalism). The organizing and creative campaigning. For groups like Amnesty contributions of great people are frequently reduced to a few International, he represents their shame for failing to recognize simple ‘truths’, truths that are based on the denial of him as a political prisoner. For capital (international and local), uncomfortable aspects of their stories, and thus ironically based Mandela is the saint who delivered a peaceful transition from also on lies. apartheid that ensured that their hegemony continued The process of mythologizing represents a contestation between undisturbed. For the international financial institutions and symbolism and mythology. The greatest disservice that we could , the rapid implementation of pay to Mandela is to allow the complexity, courage and humanity programmes in South Africa would not have been possible of his long life to be reduced to a fairy tale. Mandela represents without the endorsement of Madiba. for so many the finest values of courage, liberation and freedom. All these symbols of Mandela, and many others, co-exist. They For all his exceptional greatness, he lived and struggled in the are all in some ways true, and yet none of them are wholly world as a human being with others. His legacy should not be accurate. Physically small in stature, Mandela is universally placed on a pedestal of myth but rather inspire us to take lessons recognized as a giant of our era for good reason. The example of from the complexity and imperfections of those struggles as we his life of courage, compassion, and determination in the face of continue the . extreme violence and injustice reaches into the dark prisons of Dakar, 6 December 2013 our times and into the hearts of millions of people around the world who hope and struggle for a better future for humanity. CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 3 & 4, 2013 Page 10

Mandela’s Long Walk with African History

he has Mandela’s death. I remember February 11, provoked an outpouring of Paul Tiyambe Zeleza 1990 as if it were yesterday. I sat glued to Tmourning, celebration, and Quinnipiac University the television with bated breath for the live commentary around the world that is Connecticut, USA broadcast of Mandela’s release. I told my unprecedented for an African leader. then six-year-old daughter this was one of Glowing tributes have gushed from world the most memorable days for my generation leaders and major magazines and newspapers have carried and she would live to remember it, too. I choked with tears of special features on his extraordinary life and legacy. He has joy, anger, sadness, pride, anticipation and other bewildering been showered with lavish praise as a great man, titan, colossus emotions as we watched the tall, smiling, dashing, and unbowed and conscience of his nation and the world for his magnanimity, Mandela walking out of Victor Verster Prison beside his wife, moral courage, and dignity; for his resilience, patience, and Winnie, a militant in her own right who had suffered so much passion; for his charisma, charm, regal countenance and and done a lot to keep his memory alive. They walked with common touch; for his humility, visionary and political brilliance; defiant dignity, holding hands, their other arms raised with and above all, for his spirit of forgiveness and reconciliation, clenched fists. The announcement of his death, although long believed to be the driving force behind the South African anticipated because of his age and grave illness, came more “miracle” that steered the beloved country from the abyss of a unceremoniously. It arrived as a news alert on my iPad as I was racial bloodbath. Several countries including , Kenya, working on some memo in my office. But it was no less and Tanzania have declared three days of mourning, and in momentous for it marked the end of an era, of Africa’s long several European countries and the United States flags were twentieth century. flown at half mast as part of national mourning for Mandela. Predictably, the traditional media and social media have been Everyone, it seems, seeks to bask in Mandela’s reflected glory, awash with tributes, reminiscences, and verdicts on Mandela including many African leaders who compare quite unfavorably the person, the politician, and the symbol. In the United States with him for their mendacity, self-aggrandizement, and dictatorial and Britain, politicians, pundits, and celebrities have been falling tendencies. But there are critics, including some in South Africa all over themselves to find the most laudatory words to describe and among the African left, who accuse Mandela of having Mandela as the epitome of global moral authority, of humanity failed to dismantle the South African apartheid economy that at its best, the last in the hallowed canon of twentieth century has left millions of black people especially the unemployed saintly liberators from to Martin Luther King. youth in grinding poverty. Reconciliation, they argue, rescued Such encomiums are to be expected for a world hungry for whites from seriously reckoning with apartheid’s past and its goodness, forgiveness, trust, and optimism that Mandela legacies and deprived blacks of restitution. Mandela’s death exuded so masterfully. Conveniently forgotten is the fact the forces South Africans to reflect on the post-apartheid state he British and American governments upheld the apartheid regime helped create. Deprived of Mandela’s aura, some believe, the for decades and condemned Mandela’s African National ANC’s monopoly of power will continue to erode. Such critical Congress as a terrorist organization. We all remember Ronald assessments of Mandela’s legacy can only be expected to grow, Reagan’s and ’s resolute defense of the but for now they are drowned by outflows of endearment. apartheid regime and fierce condemnation of the ANC and its leaders including Mandela. In the United States, ANC leaders It is hard to remember that Mandela was once widely reviled in were officially regarded as terrorists until 2008! much of Euroamerica as a terrorist as he was revered in Africa and the progressive world as a revolutionary figure. He is now The sanctified portrait of Mandela hollows out the exceedingly everyone’s venerated hero, the man sanitized into a transcendent complex and contradictory man and historical figure that myth; his place in African history stripped of its messy contexts Mandela was and the true measure of his life and legacy. Anyone and multiple meanings; his life and legacy of protracted struggle who has ever read Mandela’s two-volume autobiography, Long morphed into a universal redemptive tale of reconciliation. His Walk to Freedom, and the equally voluminous biographies iconic image of lofty leadership satiates a world mired in including Anthony Sampson, Mandela: The Authorized pettiness; it is a resounding reproach to the small-minded Biography and Meredith Martin’s Mandela: A Biography, leaders most countries are currently cursed with. The various knows he was not the caricatured figure of the popular media Mandelas being commemorated offer different opportunities who rose from clan royalty to the South African presidency to people, politicians and pundits in the North and in the South— and global political celebrity, appropriately purified by 27 years absolution from the barbarous crimes of for the of imprisonment. Rather, his greatness arose from the very former and affirmation of their humanity for the latter and a complexities and contradictions of his life and times and how reminder of the heady dreams of independence. he embodied them, experienced them, articulated them, learned from them, manipulated them, deployed them, and tried to As with the day he was released from prison in 1990, many will transcend them. He was not much of a father for his children, remember where they were when they heard the news of but he became a beloved father of the nation; he had several CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 3 & 4, 2013 Page 11 failed marriages but the public was seduced by his warm The decolonization drama started in Egypt in 1922 with the embrace; he was a ruthless political operator as much as he restoration of the monarchy and limited internal self-government was a self-effacing leader; and his deep sense of empathy and finally ended in 1994 with the demise of apartheid in South cultivated out of the very texture of daily life and struggle under Africa. In the long interregnum, decolonization unfolded across apartheid allowed him to effectively deal with his jailors and the continent, reaching a crescendo in the 1950s and 1960s; in negotiate with his Afrikaner opponents in the transition from 1960 alone, often dubbed the year of African independence, 17 apartheid to democracy. countries achieved their independence. The colonial dominoes began falling from North Africa (Libya 1951) to West Africa Moreover, Mandela’s unflinching loyalty to his comrades in (Ghana 1957) to East Africa (Tanzania 1961) before reaching the liberation movement sometimes blinded him to their Southern Africa ( and Malawi 1964). The settler laagers limitations with adverse consequences as exemplified by his of Southern Africa were the last to fall starting with the two immediate successors; and there was the loyalty he Portuguese settler colonies of Angola and Mozambique in 1974, exhibited to the unsavory leaders of states that had supported followed by Rhodesia in 1980, and Namibia in 1990. South Africa, the anti-apartheid struggle such as Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi the largest and mightiest of them all, finally met its rendezvous and Nigeria’s Sani Abacha. The early Mandela was known for with African history in 1994. Mandela is cherished because of being impetuous and boisterous; the later Mandela could be his and his country’s long walk with African history. fiercely stern, coldly calculating, and compellingly charming to seize opportunities and advance his aspirations. At age 33, he Mandela embodied all the key phases, dynamics and ideologies declared that he would be South Africa’s first black president, of African nationalism from the period of elite nationalism before but when he did achieve this goal at 76 he forswore the the Second World War when the nationalists made reformist grandiosity of office so beloved by many leaders in Africa and demands on the colonial regimes, to the era of militant mass elsewhere. However, there were constants in his life, too. He nationalism after the war when they demanded independence, remained supremely proud and confident of himself and his to the phase of armed liberation struggle. Many countries African heritage, and his commitment to South Africa’s liberation achieved independence during the second phase through struggle was steadfast. peaceful struggle. Others were forced to wage protracted armed struggle. The variations in the development and trajectories of Many have remarked on Mandela’s remarkable understanding nationalism were marked by the way each individual colony of the nature of politics and the performance of power that was acquired and administered; the traditions of resistance in enabled him to embody the nation better than many of his each colony; the presence or absence of European settlers; the fellow founding fathers of African nations and his two social composition of the nationalist movement; and the nature successors. Above all, he is praised for his lack of bitterness and ideologies of the leadership. Similarly, there were different after spending 27 years in jail and his embrace of forgiveness ideological orientations and emphases. Some nationalists and reconciliation. The manner in which this issue is discussed espoused secular or religious ideologies; among the former often serves to advance the redemptive narrative of Mandela’s there were competing liberal, socialist, and Marxist ideologies road to political sainthood. Only he and his closest confidants that would later frame postcolonial development agendas. of course know how he truly felt. Post-apartheid reconciliation may or may not have been a romantic attribute of Mandela the All along, African nationalism unfolded in a rapidly changing man; it was certainly a pragmatic imperative for Mandela the world. Most critical were the effects of the Great Depression nationalist leader. Mandela’s life and legacy cannot be fully and the Second World War; the emergence of the Superpowers understood through the psychologizing and symbolic and the Third World; and the growth of Pan-Africanism and discourses preferred in the popular media and hagiographies. civil rights struggles in the Diaspora. Independence marked It could be argued that he and his comrades were able to the triumph of the first out of the five humanistic and historic sublimate their personal anger and bitterness because the objectives of African nationalism, namely, decolonization. The liberation struggle was too complex, too costly, too demanding, other four objectives included nation-building, development, too protracted, and too important to do otherwise. democracy, and regional integration. In so much as Reconciliation was both a tactic and a necessity because of the contemporary Africa is largely a product of struggles for dynamics of the liberation struggle in South Africa. independence and their complex, changing, and contradictory intersections with colonialism, imperialism, and globalization, This is to suggest that like all great historical figures, Mandela Mandela’s life and legacy as a historic figure are conditioned can best be understood through the prism of his times and the by the contexts and imperatives of nationalism. Like many of political, economic, social, and cultural dynamics and conditions Africa’s founding fathers, Mandela’s life spanned much of that structured it. Mandela changed much in his long life but it South Africa’s existence as a nation, traversed the various was a life defined by the vicissitudes of African nationalism. phases of the country’s nationalist movement, and embodied For those who don’t know much about African history, or are the trajectories of post-colonial Africa. wedded to exceptionalist notions of South African history they would be surprised to learn the parallels Mandela shares with Mandela was born in 1918, a mere eight years after the founding the founding fathers of many other independent African of South Africa as a nation out of four separate settler colonies nations, in whose rarefied company he belongs. In fact, his and an assortment of conquered African states and societies, historic significance, and the eruption of grief over his death and six years after the formation of the African National and gratitude for his life in the Pan-African world and elsewhere Congress. He was thirty when the country’s racist settler regime can partly be explained by the fact that he is Africa’s last gave way to the uncompromising racial barbarity of apartheid founding father. in 1948. In the early 1940s he was one of the founders of the CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 3 & 4, 2013 Page 12

ANC Youth League in the early 1940s that sought to radicalize others were overthrown in coups like Nkrumah or died in office and rescue the ANC from its reformist politics. When the ANC like Kenyatta and Boigny. Before Mandela, the only other adopted the Program of Action in response to the establishment African leaders to voluntarily leave office were Senghor and of apartheid, he became the leader of the Defiance Campaign in Julius Nyerere, the founding President of Tanzania. the early 1950s. In 1955 he was among 156 activists who were Mandela’s example shines all the brighter when compared to tried in one of the largest political trials in South African history his nemesis in Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe, once a widely that lasted from 1956 to 1961. Following the Sharpeville Massacre admired liberation hero who remains president 33 years after in March 1960, the liberation movement decided to shift to independence. Mugabe together with the likes of President armed struggle and Mandela was charged with the formation of now in power for 27 years, the of the ANC’s Unkotho we Swize (Spear of the Nation). same number of years Mandela spent in apartheid jails, and In 1963 Mandela and nine other leaders including Walter Sisulu, still going, represent the dinosaurs of African politics in a his mentor, and Govan Mbeki, the father of future President continent that has been undergoing various forms of , were charged with sabotage at the infamous democratic renewal since the turn of the 1990s, in part influenced . During the trial, on April 20, 1964, Mandela uttered by the demonstration effect of South Africa’s transition to his immortal words from the dock: “I have fought against white democracy and Mandela’s enlightened exit from office after domination and I have fought against black domination. I have only five years. cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all The lateness of South Africa’s decolonization, it can be argued, persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. helped compress the sequentiality, as it turned out for the early It is an ideal I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it independent states, of the five objectives of African nationalism. is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.” Thus Mandela was While the latter achieved decolonization, they struggled hard not an advocate of Gandhi’s or King’s non-violent resistance, to build unified nations out of the territorial contraptions of not because he was not a man of peace, but because he correctly colonialism which enjoyed statehood without nationhood. They understood that in the South African context, fighting against came to independence in an era when development, democracy, an obdurate racist settler regime required all available tactics and regional integration were compromised by weak national from mass protest to armed resistance. For him multiple tactics bourgeoisies, relatively small middle classes, and the Cold War had to serve the overall strategy of achieving national liberation. machinations of the two Superpowers, the United States and In short, as a freedom fighter he was simultaneously a political the former . leader and a guerrilla leader. Under the ANC’s broad and tolerant political umbrella he worked with traditionalists, liberals, Mandela’s South Africa benefited from both the positive and socialists, communists, and Black Consciousness activists, negative experiences of postcolonial Africa, the existence of a both before and after his long incarceration. highly organized and vociferous civil society, and the end of the Cold War, which gave ample space for the growth of Mandela outlived apartheid by nearly twenty years. His story democratic governance and the rule of law. But the new post- can be told of other African nationalists. Some progressed from apartheid state was held hostage to the dictates of the peaceful protest to armed liberation struggle. They included negotiated settlement between the ANC and the apartheid the nationalists of Algeria, Kenya, Mozambique, Angola, regime arising of out of the strategic stalemate between the two Guinea Bissau and Zimbabwe. Many of those who led their sides—by 1990 South Africa had become ungovernable, but countries to independence were also born either just before or the apartheid state was not vanquished as happened in Angola after their countries were colonized. Examples include Jomo and Mozambique. This, combined with the global triumph of Kenyatta, Kenya’s first President, born at least six years before neo-liberalism in the post Cold War era, guaranteed the powerful Kenya became a British colony in 1895, who outlived interests of capital in general and the white bourgeoisie in colonialism by 15 years by the time he died in 1978; Kwame particular against any serious economic restructuring despite Nkrumah of Ghana born in 1909 who also outlived colonialism the great expectations of the masses and the ambitions of by 15 years; Félix Houphouët-Boigny the first President of Cote successive development plans by the new government from d’Ivoire who was born in 1905 and died in 1993, thirty three the Reconstruction and Development Program to Growth years after the end of French colonial rule; Léopold Sédar Employment and Redistribution to the Accelerated and Shared Senghor, Senegal’s first president who ruled for twenty years, Growth Initiative. was born in 1906 and died in 2001, outliving colonialism by forty one years; and in my own homeland, Hastings Kamuzu Nevertheless, the post-apartheid state achieved much faster Banda who was reportedly born in 1898, a few years after the growth than the apartheid regime ever did. The country country was colonized, lived to rule Malawi for thirty years witnessed massive expansion of the black middle class and the between 1964-1994 and died in 1997. ANC government fostered the growth of a black bourgeoisie through the black economic empowerment program much as The long and large lives of many of Africa’s founding fathers the apartheid regime before it had cultivated the Afrikaner including Mandela represents a historic rebuke to the bourgeoisie through apartheid affirmative action. There was destructive conceits of European colonialism. In the notorious also some reduction in poverty, although huge challenges words of , the Prime Minister of the settler colony of remain in terms of high levels unemployment and deepening , now Zimbabwe, the European colonists inequality. Interestingly, South Africa now lags behind much believed colonialism would last at least a thousand years. Set of the continent in terms of rates of economic growth, in part against many of his fellow founding fathers, Mandela stands because of the lingering structural deformities of the apartheid out for his singular contribution to democratic politics. He economy in which the peasantry was virtual destroyed, the relinquished power after only one five-year term in office. Many CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 3 & 4, 2013 Page 13 labor absorptive capacity of the economy is limited by its high growing black political representation, together with cost structures, and South Africa suffers from relatively low TransAfrica, spearheaded the anti-apartheid sanctions levels of skill formation for an economy of its size because of campaign which galvanized the country from churches to the apartheid legacy of poor black education. It is expected college campuses. Over the past two centuries, African that South Africa will soon be overtaken by Nigeria as Africa’s American mobilization over Africa has been greatest where the largest economy. The continent’s rapid growth, reminiscent of intersection of imperialism and whiteness as concrete and the immediate post-independence years, which has been symbolic constructs, national and international projects and dubbed by the world’s financial press with the moniker of a policies, have been most pronounced and where Africa ‘rising Africa,’ has given rekindled hopes for the establishment advocacy is likely to yield significant domestic dividends. of democratic developmental states that might realize the For the CBC passing anti-apartheid legislation was imperative remaining goals of African nationalism. not only because this was a popular cause in the black Thus, Mandela’s political life and legacy resemble in significant community, and increasingly throughout the country, it offered ways that of other African founding fathers, and South Africa’s them an opportunity to demonstrate and raise their power and trajectory mirrors that of other African countries, profile in the halls of Congress, which would enable them to notwithstanding the differences of national historical and advance their domestic agenda. So widespread and powerful geopolitical contexts. It is worth remembering Mandela’s did the movement become that Democratic and even rhetoric of reconciliation was a staple among many African Republican politicians scurried to prove their anti-apartheid founding presidents in the immediate post-independence years. credentials. In 1986, after nearly two decades of black Jomo Kenyatta used to preach reconciliation, urging Kenyans Congressional representatives sponsoring sanctions bills, the to forgive but not forget the ills of the past as a way of keeping CBC registered a historic victory, when it succeeded in getting the European settlers and building his nation fractured by the the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act passed over President racial and ethnic divisions of colonialism. Even Mugabe in the ’s veto. That marked the apotheosis of African euphoric days after independence urged reconciliation between American influence on US policy towards Africa, which was white and black Zimbabweans before domestic political not to be repeated any time soon. Mandela’s release in 1990 challenges forced him to refurbish his revolutionary credentials and subsequent visits to the United States were widely by adopting radical land reform and rhetoric. celebrated as the return of a native son. This was true in other parts of the Diaspora from the Caribbean to Latin America, Reconciliation was such a powerful motif in the political Europe to Asia. discourses of transition to independence among some African leaders because of the imperatives of nation building, the second It is therefore easy to understand the iconic status of goal of African nationalism. It was also a rhetorical response to Mandela and the overflow of emotion his death has provoked the irrational and self-serving fears of imperial that since in the Pan-African world. The fact that President Obama Africans were supposedly eternal wards of whites and incapable started his politics as a student at an anti-apartheid rally, of ruling themselves, independence would unleash the atavistic and his acknowledged indebtedness to Mandela’s exemplary violence of “intertribal warfare” from which colonialism had life and struggle, offers a poignant thread in the thick ties saved the benighted continent, and in the post-settler colonies, that bind Africa and the Diaspora in the struggle for the retributive cataclysm of white massacres. Instead of emancipation from racial tyranny and dehumanization. For comprehensive accountability for apartheid and its normative the rest of the world Mandela’s life and legacy resonate institutional violence, which engendered “crimes against deeply because his progressive nationalism was humanity”, post-apartheid South pursued “truth and fundamentally a struggle for human freedom and dignity, for reconciliation” that individualized both the victims and social justice and equality. It us not hard to see why that perpetrators and shifted the logic of crime and punishment of would be universally appealing to a world rocked by the the Nuremberg Trials for the logic of crime and confession, horrendous devastations of the twentieth century, a century justified tendentiously in the name of “Ubuntu.” of emancipatory, ambiguous and destructive mass movements, of mass culture, mass consumption, mass Mandela bookends Nkrumah in Africa’s independence education and mass media, as well as mass war and mass struggles. Nkrumah fired the Pan-African imagination, Mandela murder. The first part of this long century was dominated by gave it its most memorable consummation. The former was a the genocidal regimes of Hitler and Stalin and the overlords key architect of Pan-Africanism, a cosmopolitan intellectual of imperial Europe, while during the second half the long arc activist whose Diaspora associates included W.E.B Dubois, of history swung towards the liberators from the South such George Padmore and C.L.R James, while the latter was largely a as Gandhi and Mandela and from the imperial heartlands home grown pragmatic revolutionary whose long incarceration themselves such as Martin Luther King. That, I would and struggles revitalized the intricate Pan-African connections submit, is Mandela’s global historical significance—he was between the continent and its Diaspora. a major player in the most important political movement of In the United States, the anti-apartheid struggle offered the the twentieth century, decolonization. And for that his place civil rights movement it’s most powerful and successful in history is assured. intervention in American foreign policy. The Congressional 07 December 2013 Black Caucus (CBC) that emerged in the mid-1970s out of CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 3 & 4, 2013 Page 14

Debates

Peacekeeping as Occupation: the African Union Mission in

n November 2012, in the wake of a UN From the seemingly banal text of UN report accusing Uganda of backing Security Council resolutions, to Samar Al-Bulushi the M23 rebel group in the Democratic AMISOM’s flashy monthly magazine I Yale University Republic of Congo, the Ugandan celebrating the opening of Mogadishu’s USA government threatened to withdraw its FIFA-refurbished soccer stadium, to peacekeeping troops from Somalia. With mind-numbing EU funding reports, the Ugandans constituting at least one third examination of the African Union Mission institutions and bureaucrats that design of the 17,000 strong peacekeeping mission in Somalia (AMISOM), I suggest that peacekeeping operations devote consi- in Somalia, the media warned of the ‘peacekeeping’ is a form of violent labor- derable energies to portray the sudden potential for a ‘security vacuum’ absent – an occupation of two sorts – influx of armed labor as a legitimate, the Ugandan forces. The spatial metaphor characterized not only by the colonization ‘neutral’ and stabilizing presence in of emptiness implied by this term is foreign territories. Like discourses of striking considering the massive influx of development, UN rhetoric on peace- arms and military actors in Somalia since keeping subsists on a logic that appears late 2006, all in the name of ‘peace’. While to stand outside political-historical Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni did context, inserting itself to fill seemingly not follow through with his threat, he was vacuous minds and territories as needed. exercising newfound leverage as one of Launched with an initial six-month the continent’s leading brokers in the mandate in January 2007, AMISOM is market for violent labor. formally operated by the African Union. In The War Machines (2011), In effect, however, AMISOM constitutes anthropologist Danny Hoffman suggests the UN Security Council’s legalization of that we think of violence as a mode of an illegal military operation:1 just one work. Like their counterparts in Sierra month before the Security Council vote, Leone and Liberia where Hoffman 50,000 US-backed Ethiopian troops had conducted his ethnographic study, invaded Somalia with the declared violent work has become an increasingly objective of unseating the Islamic Courts of space but also by a substantial amount secure source of employment for Union—the first stable government of legitimation work by transnational Ugandan men who work as armed ‘rebels’ Somalia had seen in years (Hagman and governing bodies like the in Congo, as ‘peacekeepers’ in Somalia, Hoehn 2009; Lindley 2010; Kamola 2013). and the African Union. and as private security ‘contractors’ in Despite the illegality of the Ethiopian Iraq. Crucial to the nature of this work, according to Hoffman, is flexibility of movement: the ‘ability to allow for the temporary colonization of space and then, when necessary, the rapid redeployment of bodies to another location’ (Hoffman 2011: 172). While Hoffman points to multiple sources of the demand for this form of labor, from transnational mining companies, to private security, to the state itself, he devotes less attention to the discourses and practices that produce and define the movement of monies, arms, and troops, naturalizing some while criminalizing others (see Maurer, Coutin, and Yngvesson 2002). Through an Rationalisation of AMISOM’S Work in Progress CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 3 & 4, 2013 Page 15 intervention, both US and UN officials the African Peace Support Operations, the Engineers) conduct follow up trainings discouraged their immediate withdrawal, AU commission for African Peace Facility, of these same Somali forces. Collectively stating their concerns, again, about a the UN Monitoring Group on Somalia, and these seemingly endless ‘capacity potential ‘security vacuum.’ With as the Restructuring and Rebuilding Fund building’ projects serve to legitimate the many as 20,000 deaths and 2 million for Somali Security Sector Reform. In this movement of certain troops, monies, and displaced in a matter of months, this web of committees, commissions, plans, arms into specific spaces. military adventure had indeed wreaked an and ‘support’ offices, mid-level But what of the daily realities of life in incredible amount of destruction. Rather bureaucrats are tasked with producing Somalia? Without direct observation, we than demand an investigation, however, public and not-so-public documents that know little of the content of these the UN authorized the continued presence account for their institution’s role and that trainings and the extent to which they of foreign troops with the declared goals delineate the legitimate from the emphasize operational ‘flexibility’ over the of restoring stability and supporting illegitimate (whether in the use of violence rule of law. We hear little of the salaries national reconciliation. In just one or the flow of monies). It is this not paid, of arms sold on the black market, document (Security Council Resolution legitimating work that distinguishes and of lives lost – at least one source 1744), the UN simultaneously affirmed its peacekeeping operations from other places an estimate at 3,000 AMISOM respect for the sovereignty and territorial forms of violent labor. troops, which may surpasses the total integrity of Somalia, and rendered legal Public documents (reports, press number of UN peacekeepers who have the illegal presence of foreign troops. 2 It releases, etc.) celebrate the latest round died in all previous operations.6 Nor do is in this sense that I suggest we think of of trainings, while semi-public ones (grant we hear of abuses committed by the peacekeeping operations not just as reports, TORs) account for money spent peacekeepers themselves against the territorializing practices, but also as or to be spent. By studying these population they were called on to protect. bureaucratic ones, in which creative rule- documents, we observe the painstaking While UN reports have documented black making procedures are integral to the preoccupation with terminology, market arms sales by AMISOM troops to circumvention or re-writing of existing characterized by debates over when to Al-Shabaab, reports international laws (see de Goede 2007). use the terms peace-building, peace- of indiscriminate mortar and rocket attacks While the territorializing dimension is keeping, peace-support, or peace by AMISOM in civilian areas, leading not performed through the conquering of enforcement. While each term is intended only to loss of life but repeated space, the legitimating dimension is to signify a different type of operation, all displacement.7 And while key decision- performed through press conferences, are intended to be distinguished from war makers may have reasons to keep such workshops, AMISOM publications, and and violence, and instead be associated stories from the public eye, mid-level Security Council resolutions. with the politically neutral and morally bureaucrats are steeped in emails, Today, AMISOM consists of over 17,000 righteous (see Pugh 2007). trainings, conferences, and paperwork. armed personnel and dozens of civilian The documents they produce – and the Further examination of public documents staff.3 With forces drawn from Burundi, very process of producing them – work teaches us about ongoing ‘capacity Uganda, Djibouti Kenya, Sierra Leone, to simplify complexity, avoid ambiguity, building’ efforts: US military and private Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroon, Mali, Senegal, and generate a common framework of security companies train Ugandan troops and Zambia, AMISOM fulfills Alexis de knowledge and meaning tied not to any in prior to their deployment; US Toqueville’s call for the creation of a specific place or incident, but that extends private security companies obtain State special ‘African army,’ 4 designed to elastically across time and space (See Department contracts to transport the minimize the cost in European lives but Feldman 2012). At the same time, however, Ugandans to Mogadishu; and upon with substantial financial and bureaucratic they are designed to conjure a kind of arrival, the Ugandan government (like its support from outside Somalia. With an political complexity and precarity that Burundian counterpart) hires the ‘non- approximate annual budget of $700 justifies the need for bureaucratic profit’ US security company Bancroft million5 , funding comes in various forms ‘expertise’. In some ways, the Global to ‘transform’ these ‘conventional (arms, ‘logistical’ materials, trainings, rationalization of AMISOM’s work by AU, combat forces’ into a ‘much more salaries for troops) from the US, UN, EU, State Department, UN, and Somali sophisticated peace-support operations , NATO, , , bureaucrats seems to serve not only the capability.’ (Not announced publicly is and Qatar. Collectively, these actors purpose of public legitimation, but also a the fact that the State Department constitute the thought and practice kind of self-hypnosis though which reimburses the Ugandan and Burundian behind a dizzying array of governing bureaucratic officials persuade governments for the Bancroft-led bodies that remain relatively invisible in themselves of their high moral purpose trainings rather than pay Bancroft contrast to the black bodies of AMISOM (See Scott 1992). In this sense, the directly). Ugandan troops then train that constitute the operation’s pubic face: contracting of violent labor seems as Somalis, but the Somalis also fly to Kigali UN Support Office for AMISOM, the Joint much about the empty clichés of rule of and Djibouti City for (re)-training by Security Committee, the Joint Financial law and democracy promotion as it is Rwandan and Djiboutian forces, who Management Board, the Technical about physical occupation of a given themselves are trained by US or private Selection Committee, the National territory. While it is on the streets of security actors. And to ensure ultimate Security and Stabilization Plan, the Somali Kismayo and Mogadishu that violence is ‘professionalism,’ private security Reconstruction and Development Plan, made real, it is in the bureaucratic offices companies like Bancroft (including the International Contact Group on of , Geneva, and New York that it Dyncorp and Pacific Architects and Somalia, the UN Trust Fund for AMISOM, is made banal. CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 3 & 4, 2013 Page 16

Notes References and Verdeja, eds., Globalization, Social 1. When the Kenyan army launched its own Arendt, Hannah. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Movements and Peacebuilding. Syracuse: (illegal) invasion of southern Somalia in Report on the Banality of Evil. Penguin, 1963. Syracuse University Press, 2013. October 2011, the UNSC again legalized Butler, Judith. Precarious Life: The Powers of Lindley, Anna. ‘Leaving Mogadishu: Towards A their presence by authorizing an increase in Mourning and Violence. New York: Verso, Sociology of Conflict Related. the number of peacekeepers from 12,000 2006. Mobility,’ Journal of Refugee Studies (2010). to 17, 731 in order to account for—and assume responsibility for paying the salaries De Goede, Marieke. ‘Underground Money’ Maurer, Coutin, ‘In the Mirror: The of— the Kenyan forces. Cultural Critique 2007. Legitimation Work of Globalization,’ Law and Social Inquiry (2002). 2. United Nations, ‘Security Council De Tocqueville, Alexis. Writings on Empire and Pugh, Michael. ‘Peacekeeping and critical Authorizes Six-Month African Union Slavery. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins theory,’ International Peacekeeping 2007. Mission in Somalia,’ Security Council University Press, 2001. Resolution 1744, http://www.un.org/News/ Feldman, Gregory. The Migration Apparatus: Riles, Annelise. Documents: Artifacts of Modern Press/docs/2007/sc8960.doc.htm3 Difficult Security, Labor and Policymaking in the Knowledge. Ann Arbor: University of to determine exact figures, especially when Michigan Press, 2006. European Union Stanford: 2012. Higate, Paul, factoring in the various funding arms with and Marsha Henry. ‘Space, Performance, Scahill, Jeremy. Dirty Wars: The World Is a agencies/offices focused on AMISOM. and Everyday Security in the Peacekeeping Battlefield. Nation Books. 2013. Perhaps this is worth emphasizing in the Context,’ International Peacekeeping Scott, James. Domination and the Arts of text itself?4 (2010). Resistance: Hidden Transcripts. New Haven: 3. Writing in 1841, Alexis de Tocqueville Hoffman, Danny. The War Machines: Young Men Yale University Press, 1992. warned of the potential human and financial and Violence in Sierra Leone and Liberia. Vicky, Alan. ‘Cheap Help from Uganda,’ Le cost to of long-term French military Durham: Duke University Press, 2011. Monde Diplomatique May 2012. Available engagement in Algeria: This is an intolerable at http://mondediplo.com/2012/05/ state of things that, if it continues, will Human Rights Watch, ‘Harsh War, Harsh Peace: 05uganda nullify our actions in the world and will soon Abuses by al-Shabaab, the Transitional force us to abandon Africa. We must Federal Government, and AMISOM in Weizman, Eyal. Hollow Land: ’s Architec- therefore find a way to make the same effort Somalia,’ April 2010. http://www.hrw.org/ ture of Occupation. New York: Verso, 2007. reports/2010/04/13/harsh-war-harsh-peace with fewer men, fewer illnesses, and less Wezeman, Arms Flows and the conflict in money. The best means to achieve this is Human Rights Watch, ‘Somalia: Stop War Somalia. SIPRI Background Paper 2010. the creation of a special African army Crimes in Mogadishu,’ February 2011. http:/ Williams, Paul. ‘Towards More Effective ‘(Tocqueville 2001: 75). http:// /www.hrw.org/news/2011/02/14/somalia- Partnership Peacekeeping in Africa,’ forums.ssrc.org/kujenga-amani/2012/11/19/ stop-war-crimes-mogadishu towards-more-effective-partnership- Kujenga Amani, November, 2012. Available at Houreld, Katharine. ‘Bancroft Global peacekeeping-in-africa/ 6 http://forums.ssrc.org/kujenga-amani/2012/ Development, U.S. Group, Advises African 11/19/towards-more-effective-partnership- 4. James Traub, ‘From Black Hawk Down to Troops In Somalia,’ Huffington Post, peacekeeping-in-africa/· In 2008 the UN Standing Up,’ http:/ www.foreignpolicy.com/ August 2011. Available at http:// Monitoring Group estimated that as much articles/2013/05/31 www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/10/ as 80% of the arms, ammunition and other from_blackhawk_down_to_standing_up7HRW, bancroft-global-development- material supplied to support the TFG had ‘Somalia: Stop War Crimes in Mogadishu,’ somalia_n_923531.html been diverted for private purposes, to the (Feb 2011). See also HRW, ‘Harsh War, Kamola, Isaac. ‘ at Sea: Piracy and Somali arms market or to opposition groups. Harsh Peace,’ (April 2010) State ‘Failure’ in the Gulf of Aden,’ in Smith (Wezeman quoting a UN report)

Teaching and Learning in Context Why Pedagogical Reforms Fail in Sub-Saharan Africa By Richard Tabulawa ISBN: 978-2-86978-569-4 — pages: 200 Since the 1990s, sub-Saharan Africa has experienced unprecedented attempts at reforming teacher and student classroom practices, with a learner-centred pedagogy regarded as an effective antidote to the prevalence of teacher-centred didactic classroom practices. Attempts at reform have been going on all over the continent. This book attempts to explain why pedagogical change has not occurred in spite of the much energy and resources that have been committed to such reforms.The book also takes us inside what the author calls ‘the socio-cultural world of African classrooms’ to help us understand the reasons teachers dominate classroom life and rely disproportionately on didactic methods of teaching. Its conceptual analyses capture the best of both the sociology and the anthropology of education in contexts of poverty, as well as the politics of education.The book concludes that a socio-cultural approach should be the basis for developing culturally responsive indigenous pedagogies, though these may or may not turn out to be in any way akin to constructivist learner-centred pedagogies. CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 3 & 4, 2013 Page 17

Flexible Exchange Rates and the Chinese Yuan

hese thoughts are comments on subject to huge fluctuations: for example, texts I received from friends from the dollar/euro rate doubled in one TChina. They complement my Samir Amin direction and then the other. These article "China 2012" which was published Third World Forum enormous fluctuations are obviously not on the Pambazuka News website as Dakar explained by transformations of the Number 45. relative competitiveness of the economies concerned (these transformations are Introduction creators of this supply and demand: very slow). They are explained by the fact The proposals made by HSBC concerning productive enterprises (sometimes of the that adopting flexible exchange rates the management of the Yuan can be monopolies), "workers", peasants, banks, opened up a spectacular scope for short- summed up in one phrase: China should etc. It is therefore not a realistic theory term speculation on the currencies. We adopt the flexible exchange system, taking reality as the starting point for must ask who has profited from this meaning it should allow the Yuan understanding; it is rather an ideological speculation? They are the ones who exchange rates to be freely determined by dogmatism a priori. Deng Xiaoping used defend flexible exchange rates. to say that you should always take reality the international currency market. The Second, regarding exchange rates between as a starting point. This "theory" does expected benefits of this system are: (i) major currencies (the dollar, the euro, the the exact opposite: it starts from an eliminating risks related to the current yen, the pound, the Swiss franc) and those ideological illusion bearing no exchange rate; (ii) reducing the costs of of countries in the Global South, adopting resemblance to reality. It is therefore a transactions; (iii) offering China more flexible exchanges has produced extreme dogmatic, unscientific theory. freedom to manoeuvre in her national and volatility in and continuous devaluation international policies. So the real issue which then arises is of the Global South currencies. This However, the entire history of the last fifty knowing what hidden interests are being devaluation has enabled the capital of the years proves that the flexible exchange defended by the defenders of this theory. monopolies of the Global North to "buy" system does not actually reduce exchange In fact, these interests are those of the real assets in the South at negligible rate fluctuations, but rather it makes them great financial monopolies of the historic prices, such as mines, factories, extremely volatile. Yet HSBC acts as centres of imperialism (USA, Europe, commercial chains, banking companies though we should ignore reality and ). These monopolies dominate the and land. This was the aim all along. Take subscribe unconditionally to the production and markets, which are as an example – did flexible dogmatic theory which claims that the managed exclusively in their interest, that exchange rates support the growth of the open market brings stability. We should is, maximising their superprofits. I refer Brazilian GDP? It remains very modest at therefore: back to my book The Implosion of 3 per cent. So do we want to reduce China's Contemporary Capitalism, (which has growth rate to such an extent? (i) Discuss this theory to find out whether been translated into Chinese), and to the it is true or false developments therein that I devoted to Flexible Exchange Rates and (ii) Find out what led HSBC to adopt this the contemporary system of "globalised, Stagnated Growth opinion - whose interests (Chinese or generalised and financialised monopolies". Let us therefore return to the issue of who otherwise) are being defended by this This is the fundamental reality from which the real beneficiaries of this system are. bank and all those proposing flexible the characteristics of real capitalism can Forget their ideological discourse, which exchange rates. be analysed. argues that flexible exchange rates are favourable for all countries, all people and The Illusion of Flexible Exchange Flexible Exchange Rate System all individuals on the planet. Rates and Devaluation of Currencies The fact is that the system has produced The theory which states that flexible The flexible exchange rate system was fifty years of continuous growth of the exchange rates bring ‘stability’ is adopted by the major powers (the USA, financialised monopoly superprofits (that scientifically and logically baseless. It is Europe, Japan) in 1973-1975, and then is, the monopolies that operate on the essentially a theory derived not from an gradually became "accepted" by (or financial markets), especially the major analysis of capitalism not as it exists in rather "imposed" on) the countries of the banks of the USA, Europe and Japan. reality, but rather from a totally imaginary Global South. What has it produced over What is the true cost of this growth? The system, defined by a "generalised market" those fifty years? where those that create supply and stagnated growth of the real economies demand (of and for anything – goods, First of all, it has not even produced a of the USA, Europe and Japan. This cost employment, liquid assets, agricultural relative stabilisation of the exchange rates was basically initiation into a permanent land, access to resources etc.) are free and of major countries (dollars, pounds recession – where we declare victory at rational "individuals". The theory sterling, marks then euros, Swiss francs, 0.1 per cent to 1.2 per cent growth and substitutes these "individuals" (homo yen). On the contrary, it made these claim that we have recovered from the œconomicus) for what in reality are the exchange rates volatile, meaning they are recession! CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 3 & 4, 2013 Page 18

The defenders of this system are therefo- So why does HSBC Bank offer the oppo- – an economy dominated by re those that profit from it, primarily major site of what is required? The little colony foreign capital, with Chinese associates. banks. HSBC is one of these. HSBC is an – Hong Kong – has no choice but to sup- What is more desirable? Going in that old colonial British bank, established in port growth which comes from exports, direction or slowly transforming Hong Hong Kong following the First Opium and thus to be competitive, at all costs, in Kong so that it truly becomes more and War. This bank has never been sensitive increasing exports continuously, without more Chinese, and less and less foreign? to the "interests of China"! It remains fo- restrictions. But China is not Hong Kong Like China, where the presence of foreign reign to these interests and is only sensi- – China has choices. Thinking of turning interests is accepted, but subject to the tive to the growth of its superprofits. China into a "large Hong Kong" is the command of the Chinese state and Chinese same as wanting to turn China into a "lar- interests, and not the other way round. Flexible Exchange Rates versus ge colony" that sacrifices the standard of is in a different situation to Hong Uncertainty of the Yuan Rates living of its people, for the purposes of Kong, because if Taiwan was a Japanese export. Exports whose recipients are the- Until now, China has resisted continuous colony, the power that the Kuomintang refore foreign consumers, producing an pressure to put an end to manipulation exerts there would eradicate it. Admittedly extreme trade balance surplus, with no of the Yuan (Government and Central the KMT is a reactionary party and as purpose. Bank of China). This resistance has such, is not immune to influences from allowed China to continuously record Does adopting the flexible exchange within the comprador bourgeoisie. the strongest growth rates in the world. system give more freedom to manoeuvre However, the KMT also originates from a Naturally, we can always say there is a in national economic policy? In reality, the which brought forward a risk involved due to the uncertainty of total opposite is true; the volatility of the national plan (which was bourgeois). I the Yuan rates, as decisions that may be exchanges creates a fragile situation won't develop this any further, as my taken by the Chinese authorities which reduces the range of choices, in knowledge of Taiwan is highly insufficient. terms of national economic policy, and concerning this rate of exchange are HSBC believes that its argument for obliges these choices to be subject to the "unknown". I will even say that these adopting flexible exchange rates for the limits of what the dominant system allows Chinese authorities have made errors and Yuan is reinforced by saying – look at (that is, the system dominated by the could make more in the future. Nobody Hong Kong, our fortune is made from a monopolies of the major powers - USA, has a foolproof vaccine. Yet this is a minor mass of floating capital, thanks to Europe, Japan). The "emerging" countries risk – as the errors can be corrected – in speculation on the exchange rates of Latin America and South-east Asia are comparison with the enormous risk of (although HSBC prefers to say "financial victims of this very system, and their room unpredictable volatility of the Yuan rates transactions" rather than "speculation") to manoeuvre has been greatly reduced involved in adopting the flexible exchange ...Yes, the fortune of foreign bankers! Does in comparison to that of China, which is system. that really equate to the fortune of China? larger precisely because China has kept External versus Internal Demand out of financial globalisalisation (and out Internationalisation and Prospects If the theorem that "the flexible exchange of the flexible exchange system). for Convertibilityof the Yuan system brings stability" is false, then the Behind HSBC and the other large banks The Sopanha’s position in the second corollaries that can be deduced from it lies the strategic political objective of the article that I will comment on is different are also false. However, HSBC draws all USA, Europe and Japan, which is to ruin to that of HSBC. It is a careful position, its corollaries from the acceptance of this China's sovereign plan of building a great close to the official position of the Beijing false theorem. independent modern economy, forcing authorities. Sopanha notes that Would a flexible Yuan rate reduce her to adhere the plan to an unequal internationalisation is already at work, but transaction costs? Or on the contrary, relationship with the major powers, and the prospects for convertibility and would its volubility, in turn, give them reducing it to tender like the plans of other opening up of the capital account are still more scope? There is no reason for flexible countries of the Global South, Brazil, etc. a long way off (on the horizon for 2020). exchange rates to promote the growth of Sopanha seems to approve this cautious Financial "Speculation" or foreign trade. This depends on other, policy. "Transaction" much more decisive factors, that is, the Although it is remote, convertibility, Behind HSBC is Hong Kong, but what is nature and volume of China's production. floating exchange and the opening up of Hong Kong? It was a British colony until the capital account still remain the Moreover, why should China strive for it was politically reinstated into the objective. I have said it before, and I will unlimited export growth that exceeds Chinese nation. The economy set up in repeat, that carrying out this objective GDP growth? It's absurd. China must Hong Kong was a colonial economy, would be catastrophic. However, if we reverse this ratio and switch the growth dominated by firms that were and have must go in this catastrophic direction, it’s driver from external to internal demand. remained the property of foreign capital, better to go slow rather than fast! By The future of Chinese industries is the even if "rich Chinese" are associated with going slowly, at least it will be possible to immense Chinese market and improving it, like a comprador bourgeoisie. HSBC is observe the negative effects of steps in the standard of living of the working class. a bank of this type, that is property of this direction, to correct them and stop! It is not export growth to the detriment of foreign capital, with Chinese associates. the domestic market. It is not surprising that this bank proposes To prevent countries from stopping on a policy that would turn China into a large this catastrophic path, the ideologists of CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 3 & 4, 2013 Page 19

Washington, the IMF and the World Bank mercial exchange and direct investments enormous dollar continues to increase invented "shock therapy" – which abroad, and exclude international finan- relentlessly. destroys everything and adopts all cial transactions of speculation. As the So is it necessary to continue, modifying principles of economic liberalism objective of the Bancor was to reduce only the surplus composition and usage, overnight, as found in USA. under speculation and not to grant it full scope making liquid investments in the dollar Yeltsin accepted "shock therapy" and it for deployment, as with the floating ex- rather than buying real assets such as was a total disaster – Russia would change system. Exchange rates between factories, mines, agricultural land? This experience much suffering and would take the selected currencies would have been solution could be tempting, but it involves several decades to leave the tunnel it was fixed rather than left to the market. Of cour- dangers that must not be underestimated: driven into by "shock therapy". se, these fixed rates could be revised from time to time by concerted decision of the The vulnerability of such investments is Moreover, in my opinion, if China goes countries concerned, but not on a day- considerable. Imperialist countries make slowly (towards 2020?) the danger of to-day basis, as the system’s total auto- this kind of investment in the Third World. catastrophe is highly likely to have nomy would be left to the national However, foreign investments are always disappeared by this time, as the neoliberal economic policies. The different conse- dangerous for non-imperialist countries system, founded on the free markets, quences of these different policies would that do not have armed forces ready and financial deregulation and flexible then have imposed intermittent revision waiting to take action if necessary to exchange rates, is already very sick. I have of the rates. ensure their "rights" are respected. For previously stated that the implosion of example, imagine that following a serious this system has begun and it will continue The Bretton Woods system rejected the natural disaster, China has to draw on her to deepen. What will be left of this system Bancor. It went much too far and limited foreign assets, and consequently in 2020? I believe it will have disappeared the then enormous power of the dollar, requests that Washington refunds a large by this time, but I don't know what it will which Keynes wanted to associate the quantity of US treasury bills. If the USA be replaced by - it could be better or it pound sterling with on equal footing. refused, what would China do? Declare could be worse. For example, by this time, However, Bretton Woods retained a small war? Here's another example – when the euro could have disappeared and the part of the ideas of Keynes – fixed but Allende nationalised copper in Chile, the European Union could even become revisable exchange rates and subsequent USA organised the Pinochet coup. Could fragmented (with Great Britain being the creation of SDRs besides other reserve China do the same? Surely not. first to leave). This is not my topic of currencies. Bretton Woods was then discussion in these comments. I refer back abandoned in 1971, to the advantage of Some of these asset acquisitions are ne- to my book The Implosion of Contem- floating exchange rates. gative for the country that China moves porary Capitalism. What I have read – between the lines – of into: an example of this would be the sale Zhou's intention in the long term is the of African agricultural land. Practising this The Bancor as the Sole Bancor. But I admit, as comments from policy destroys the prospect of building International Reserve Currency the most senior Chinese officials would a broad front of the Global South coun- Sopanha finishes by interpreting a suggest, that my capacity to read between tries against American hegemony and suggestion made in 2009 by Zhou the lines is somewhat limited. imperialist pillaging. This path should not Xiaochuan, Governor of the Central Bank be taken, as it will serve to insulate China of China, to make Special Drawing Rights Foreign Assets Acquisition versus and thus eventually incur America’s ag- (SDRs) an international reserve currency Liquid Reserves gression, if Washington deems it to be alongside the other major currencies (the The issue raised concerning China's necessary. The plans for acquiring forei- dollar, the euro, the Chinese Yuan, etc.), purchase of foreign assets deserves to gn assets must therefore be studied in which would require the Yuan to become be developed. China has given first concrete terms, and they must be asso- a convertible currency. priority to the growth of its exports, which ciated with plans to intensify good coo- is stronger than that of the GDP. It then peration between China and the countries My personal reading of Zhou’s of the Global South. For example, China suggestion is different. It seems to me that, accumulates a growing surplus which it places almost entirely in liquid reserves, buys a copper mine in Zambia and asso- beyond short-term measures such as the ciates this purchase with participating in SDRs, Zhou was thinking more of the long retained largely in dollars, that is by buying US Treasury bills with only Zambian industry building, which the term proposal made by Keynes in 1945: western "club of donors" always denies. the Bancor. minimal interest, which in reality is negative, (lower than the rate of inflation). These industries are in a partnership, The Bancor could have been the sole in- China/local state. The advantage: China ternational reserve currency, rather than This choice of giving priority to exports contributes to building a "Global South a reserve currency alongside others. The was probably necessary to begin with, in front", reducing the insulation pursued Bancor would have been defined as a the 1990s. China had to gather together a by the USA. Yet perhaps unfortunately, basket of national key currencies, balan- decent volume of currencies quickly, in we no longer believe that China has this ced according to the importance of each order to import the goods that were potential. This is a serious error. essential to growth; equipment and currency. It would have been measured technology, raw materials, oil. However, On many of the issues raised here, I by the volume of real transactions made recommend reading this excellent book: in each of these national currencies. By China has gone too far in this direction, as the reserve placed in the already Yilmaz Akyuz, Financial Crisis and "real transactions" we must include com- Imbalance: South Centre, Geneva, 2012. CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 3 & 4, 2013 Page 20

N.B. qualities to them (as the homo The result of interactions on the markets The so-called economic science taught œconomicus is defined by selfishness and will thus depend on these anticipations, in the universities of the West, especially rationality of behaviour). All that can be it is unknown, and can thus be imagined in the United States, is founded on one concluded in order to understand how the how we please. fate of the Chinese would depend on these premise: the existence of a "homo If you ask yourself false questions such dragons. œconomicus" – a human being that would as what are the characteristics of the not have known evolution in history, that The Chinese did not have the monopoly dragon, the sex of the angels, or the would be identical today to beings of five on this way of thinking. The European anticipations of the homo œconomicus, thousand years ago, that would be the Christians of the Middle Ages believed you cannot use your intelligence in an same everywhere on the planet and across in the angels. Theologists, as intelligent effective and useful way. You waste time; all the ages, and would belong to neither as ourselves, could write theses on topics you sterilise the intellect. The American any particular nation or people, nor any such as "the sex of the angels" because universities of economics do not produce social class that makes up this nation. they thought that the answer to this intelligent experts; they sterilise their Whether entrepreneurs, factory or bank question would increase understanding students’ intellect. owners, workers or peasant farmers, they of the world. are all the same homo œconomicus, and This kind of economics is merely a the interaction of all these equal and Method: deriving knowledge by taking pseudo-science, like the science of the identical individuals, by their exchanges an imaginary premise as a starting point. dragons or the angels. It was created in on the market, would constitute the social Method of presenting the arguments response to Marx and to discredit him. fabric and the economic system of concerned: using jargon to the ordinary Marx effectively began to teach us the production. Economics is reduced to this people (such as the jargon of today’s reality of society on the basis of real simplistic anthropology, the worst kind economists). This is a means of imposing (existing) concepts; recognition of of anthropology imaginable. This kind of the political conclusion that we want to successive and different periods in the economic science then exerts all its reach in invoking the "indisputable history of peoples and humanity, intelligence on deducing what logic science of the experts". recognition of specific structures of organisation of production and power, and allows to be deduced from interactions It goes without saying that by taking an of social classes etc. Marx is realistic; on the markets. imaginary premise as a starting point, any whereas American "economics" is not. This curious way of thinking is not new. conclusion can be drawn – anything, The ancient Chinese believed in the everything and the exact opposite. We I also wanted to avoid jargon, which existence of dragons. Thinkers, as are told that the homo œconomicus acts serves to mask reality, and draw on intelligent as ourselves, would work hard rationally, on the basis of what he thinks language which, I hope, is accessible. at drawing conclusions on the existence of the actions and reactions of others of these imaginary beings and attributing (these are the famous "anticipations").

Land and Agrarian Reform in Zimbabwe Edited by Sam Moyo and Walter Chambati

ISBN: 978-2-86978-553-3 •pages : 372 p. The Fast Track Land Reform Programme implemented during the represents the only instance of radical redistributive land reforms since the end of the Cold War. It reversed the racially-skewed agrarian structure and discriminatory land tenures inherited from colonial rule. The land reform also radicalised the state towards a nationalist, introverted accumulation strategy, against a broad array of unilateral Western sanctions. Indeed, Zimbabwe’s land reform, in its social and political dynamics, must be compared to the leading land reforms of the twentieth century, which include those of , Russia, China, Japan, , Taiwan, and Mozambique. This book comes to a conclusion that the Zimbabwe land reform represents a new form of resistance with distinct and innovative characteristics when compared to other cases of radicalisation, reform and resistance. The process of reform and resistance has entailed the deliberate creation of a tri-modal agrarian structure to accommodate and balance the interests of various domestic classes, the progressive restructuring of labour relations and agrarian markets, the continuing pressures for radical reforms (through the indigenisation of mining and other sectors), and the rise of extensive, albeit relatively weak, producer cooperative structures. The book also highlights some of the resonances between the Zimbabwean land struggles and those on the continent, as well as in the South in general, arguing that there are some convergences and divergences worthy of intellectual attention. The book thus calls for greater endogenous empirical research which overcomes the pre-occupation with failed interpretations of the nature of the state and agency in Africa. CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 3 & 4, 2013 Page 21

New Media, New Truths, New Lies: Popular Struggles in Africa and the Media*

he bursting of citizens onto the unions and many other such formations streets of Tunisia and Egypt early across the continent. in 2011 and the ensuing overthrow T Firoze Manji Such lack of awareness is, I would of the dictators Ben Ali and Mubarak CODESRIA suggest, symptomatic of much of attracted widespread media attention Dakar mainstream media’s reporting on the that characterized these events as the global South where the agency of citizens beginning of an ‘Arab Spring’.1 But during is assumed to be lacking. The narrative the same period, though largely ignored and the perspectives of the ‘wretched of by the mainstream media, there were perhaps caught napping by the illusions the earth’ is rarely seen as worthy of mounting protests, demonstrations and of stability that they had been fed to them reporting, it is the narrative of imperial actions by citizens in a number of other by the US administration were taken by power or of corporations that tends to African countries including Algeria, surprise. Without reporters on the ground predominate. Or put it another way, there Angola, Benin, , Burkina Faso, until much later, their primary source of is tendency to see the people of the global Cameroon, Djibouti, , Kenya, information became new media, especially South, and especially in Africa, as natives, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, and . They were quick not as citizens — the objects, not the Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, to name the events, therefore, as the makers, of history. Somalia, Senegal, South Africa, , Twitter and Facebook revolutions. As Swaziland, Togo, Uganda, Western many studies have subsequently shown, Where discontent has been reported Sahara, Zimbabwe.2 While many of these neither of these new media outlets could upon, the explanation that is often have not (yet) been on a scale witnessed be shown to have played a significant role presented, especially by the more in either Tunisia or Egypt, the fact is that in the mass mobilizations of citizens. conservative sections of the media, is that the events in these countries represent Indeed in Egypt, the largest popular the uprisings have occurred because the qualitative changes in the political and mobilizations occurred in the aftermath of growing middle-classes have rising social environment. And yet these events the Mubarak regime decision to cut off expectations for individual freedom, have received little media attention. The access to the internet and to the mobile mobility, money, private health and only significant exceptions seem to be in phone networks. In characterizing the education, luxury commodities, cars, and the case of Côte d’Ivoire, Libya, Somalia uprisings as a function of new media so on. It is suggested that what is fuelling and Mali where Western governments alone, they revealed an apparent lack of the discontent with autocratic regimes is have been involved in military inter- awareness of the scale of social middle-class aspiration for an unfettered ventions; Senegal, where mass protests, discontent that had been manifest and market and frustration with the regimes especially by the youth, prevented former growing in both countries for some years that prevent them enjoying these benefits. president Abdulaye Wade from prior to the mass mobilizations that To give credence to this perspective, the establishing his dynasty; and South brought down the regimes. There had African Development Bank and the World Africa where striking miners in the Lonmin been a series of worker and student Bank claim that Africa has a burgeoning platinum mines were massacred. Even in strikes across Egypt in the years before, middle class: apparently one-in-three these instances, the perspective of the and activists had pounded their feet Africans are today middle class, based media has been, I would suggest, strongly organizing and encouraging people to on the ridiculous definition of that class biased towards propagating the narrative protest. The mobilisations were the result as being those with an income of $2-$20 a of power – corporate and imperial power. of sheer hard work by activists and trade day, a group that includes a vast number unionists. of people considered extremely poor by The uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt were, any reasonable definition, especially for much of mainstream media, What also tends to be ignored are the given the higher prices of most consumer unexpected, just as they were for the US subclinical manifestations of rising durables in African cities. Conveniently administration, the IMF, and the World discontent that are reflected in the forgotten, of course, is that 61 per cent of Bank who had been lauding the regimes emergence of a wide range of social Africans, who are below the $2 a day level, of Ben Ali and Mubarak as stable allies of movements such as Bunge la Mwaninchi are destitute, hardly able to keep body democracy before the uprisings began. (People’s Parliament) in Kenya, Abahlali and soul together. Tunisia was even declared the most base Mjondolo in South Africa, the shack- successful and stable government! While dwellers movement, landless peoples So what gave rise to the protests, provided almost 24-hour movements, peasant movements, uprisings and revolutions that we have coverage from within Tunisia and Egypt women’s movements, movements of been witnessing? during the uprisings, the majority of LBGTIQ people, anti-eviction campaigns, western broadcasting and print media, anti-privatization movements, trade CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 3 & 4, 2013 Page 22

A common history cheaply to the private sector, principally rapidly. Unemployment, landlessness and The discontent that gave rise to the to international corporations. The state homelessness became the lot of the many. uprisings in North Africa has causes and was barred from subsidizing agricultural Forced to survive on inadequate nutrition, origins similar to the social upheavals production (in the way that US and living in squalor and lacking the basic witnessed in other parts of the continent, Europeans continue to support agri- infrastructure of water and sanitation and namely the growing impoverishment of culture today), and prohibited from adequate food, it is hardly surprising that the majority associated with neoliberal investing in social infrastructure, the period saw a growing prevalence of economic policies that have dominated including capital investment in health, diseases associated with suppression of the global South over the last 30 years. education, transport and telecom- the immune system and weakened munications, until eventually public resistance to infection. This was a period during which there have goods – the commons – were sold off to This period witnessed not only wide scale been, especially in Africa, systematic and taken over by international and systematic dispossession of natural reversals of the gains of independence. corporations. Tariff barriers to imports resources and wealth from the continent, from advanced capitalist countries were It is important here to recognize the but also a gradual political dispossession removed, access to natural resources extraordinary achievements of post- of citizens’ ability to influence social and opened up for pillaging, and tax regimes independence governments prior to the economic policies. African governments relaxed to the advantage of international 1990s. There were major economic and had in effect become more accountable corporations and the local elite. social transformations carried out by post- to the international monopolies, independence governments as part of the The effect was to reduce the state to a international financial institutions, banks social contract established with the mass narrowly prescribed role in economic and aid agencies (most of whom ardently movements whose uprisings during the affairs, with precious little authority or supported the implementation of post Second World War period had resources for the development of social neoliberal policies) than to the citizens brought nationalists into power. These are and public infrastructure. Its primary role who elected them. frequently forgotten by media, academia was in effect reduced to ensuring an And it is thus no surprise that we are wi- and the ‘development’ industry alike. ‘enabling environment’ for international tnessing as a result a growing disenchant- According to a UN/WIDER report capital and policing the endless servicing ment with the policies pursued by our produced by Surendra Patel, over the 40 of debt to international finance institutions governments, a rising anger at the wide- years from 1950-1990, countries of the and governments. With such narrow ning gap between rich and poor, and a South sustained an average annual marge de manoevre, governments growing realization that the lot of the ma- growth rate of over 5 per cent by a abdicated their role in determining jority has been to continue to suffer in population ten times larger than that of economic and social policies. the developed world. There had been much the same way as – and sometimes significant levels of industrialization and Over time, privatization was extended to worse than – they had under colonial or increasing share of manufacturing in land, agriculture, and food production and apartheid rule. It was this anger, combi- exports; an increase in the rates of distribution. The scale of land-grabbing ned with the frustration with the way in savings and investment; and an that has been a feature of the most recent which their regimes fattened themselves unprecedented expansion of social forms of dispossession taking place in through their collusion with international development, including health and Africa have, in general, received a fair capital in the exploitation of their coun- education, dramatic improvements in life- amount of attention by the media and to tries that fuelled the explosion of citizens expectancy (from 35 to over 60 years), some extent also by the development on to the streets of Tunisia and Egypt. literacy and unprecedented expansion of industries. But for the large part, land- And it was the same frustrations and an- education.3 In other words, in a relatively grabbing has been portrayed as positive ger that have brought about protests and short period, the underdevelopment of investment and in support of uprisings across so many African coun- the continent by European and trans- ‘development’, and rarely is there analysis tries. Indeed, I would go so far as to sug- Atlantic slavery and by colonialism about of the price paid by the peasantry in the gest that the events we have witnessed which so brilliantly wrote4 loss of land, livelihood and the creation in , , Occupy movements, was on the way to being reversed. of mass poverty. And rarely is attention Wisconsin, and even the Idle-No-More given to the fact that the land so grabbed movements, share the same fundamental Such gains of independence were to be is to be used for the needs of the advanced etiology. cruelly arrested beginning in the early capitalist countries and corporations, and 1980s. Almost without exception, the not for the benefit of citizens who Stereotypical perspectives same set of social and economic policies originally owned it. How, then, has the period of pauperization – the so-called structural adjustment and impoverishment of the continent over programmes – were implemented across The result of neoliberal policies was to the last thirty years been portrayed? the African continent opening avenues increase the gap between the haves and for capital expansion through the extreme the have-nots. A small minority, whose The predominant view of Africa is not a privatization and liberalization of the interests and enterprises were closely place that had been devastated and economies. The state was declared associated with the multinational impoverished by slavery and colonialism; ‘inefficient’ (despite its earlier remarkable corporations and finance, got obscenely nor as a place that had succeeded in the achievements) and public services were rich, while the standard of living of the immediate post-independence period in first run down before being sold off majority and value of the wage for those reversing some of those historical lucky enough to find work declined CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 3 & 4, 2013 Page 23 disadvantages against all odds; nor a He went on to castigate white Development pornography place where attempts to implement social anthropologists "who came to study It is important here to emphasize that it policies that favoured the majority were ‘primitive society’. Had he lived today, would be wrong to blame mainstream frequently thwarted by assassinations, perhaps he might have turned his ire on media for such caricatures of Africa and western supported coups d’état, threats development academics, professionals its people. This perception of Africa is to and economic blockades, to say nothing and perhaps even sections of the media be found pervading, to varying degrees, of foreign military intervention to achieve who today perform a similar function! business, academia, parliamentary regime change. The stereotypical view is that Africa is political milieu (especially foreign policy), Rather, Africa is portrayed – either hopeless, indebted and heavily aid- the arts and literature. It is to be found explicitly or implicitly – as a place whose dependent – a ‘basket-case’, as Tony especially in the development / aid natural state has always been a place of Blair so delicately put it – a continent that industry. Indeed, this perspective is at the poverty. fails to develop without the assistance of heart of the rationale for overseas develo- aid and the noblesse oblige of the pment aid, overseas volunteering, the The reality is that it has become development industry. That this view is work of many international development conventional to describe Africans only unsubstantiated by the facts does not agencies, development courses at in terms of what they are not. They are appear to deter its propagation. universities, and public responses to chaotic not ordered, traditional not fundraising for ‘poverty alleviation’. modern, tribal not democratic, corrupt not According to a recent study of 33 ‘sub- honest, underdeveloped not developed, Saharan’ African countries conducted by International development NGOs and the irrational not rational, lacking in all of those the University of Massachusetts, these aid industry tend to have a cozy things the West presumes itself to be. countries lost a total of $814 billion relationship with the media. Governments White Westerners are still represented as through capital flight during the period need to justify devoting public funds to the bearers of ‘civilization’, the brokers between 1970 and 2010. Taking into ‘development’. And NGOs need to entice and arbiters of development, while black, account a modest estimate of the interest the public to make donations for their post-colonial ‘others’ are still seen as earned on that capital, this would amount work in Africa. To raise funds effectively, uncivilized and unenlightened, destined to a cumulative total loss of at least $1.06 or to justify aid, Africans are portrayed as to be development’s exclusive objects. trillion. Even without interest, the volume suffering victims, starving, emaciated and of capital flight far exceeds the amount of pleading for help. Graphic images are used At the heart of this construct of Africa is official development aid ($659 billion) and of starving children by ever growing in effect an implicit denial that Africa’s foreign direct investment ($306 billion) numbers of competing charities to gain people have a history, or that if there is a received by these countries over the same the attention of the public. But repetitive history, it is irrelevant to today’s challenge period, making Africa a net creditor to portrayal deadens the appeal. So each of ‘development’. Thus, half a century the rest of the world.7 With rather few image depicting poverty has to be more after most African countries achieved exceptions, such perspectives rarely get graphic that the last to elicit responses. independence, there are parallels with the aired. The spiral leads to may be characterized denialism that pervaded colonial rule as ‘development pornography’.9 during which it was also assumed that During the early years of the new millen- Africans had no history. As Milan nium, many Northern governments pro- It was the use of such pornography that Kundera put it: claimed that aid to developing countries Walter Rodney – back in the 1970s – so had grown. Through an analysis of IMF roundly condemned: "Oxfam never "The first step in liquidating a people is data, Abugre was able to show that the bothered their conscience by telling [the to erase its memory. Destroy its books, increase could be largely accounted for public] that capitalism and colonialism its culture, its history, Then have by the cancellation of debt to Iraq and created the starvation, suffering and somebody write new books, manufacture Nigeria. Since debt relief is considered as misery of the child in the first place." Save a new culture, invent a new history. part of aid, the repayment of interest on the Children Fund’s current use pictures Before long the nation will begin to forget debt also needs to be considered as part of the ‘black child with a transparent rib- what it is and what it was. The world of the equation. Taking debt servicing case, huge head, bloated stomach, around it will forget even faster. … The into account, his analysis showed that protruding eyes and twigs as arms and struggle of man against power is the the net flow of aid from the North to the legs’ for fundraising might equally be struggle of memory against forgetting."5 South over the period 2002 to 2007 amoun- blamed for failing to telling the public that Walter Rodney made much the same point ted to minus $2,785 billion. That is to it is development policies, corporations, about the destruction of memory under say that, the net flow of aid was not – as banks and international financial colonial rule: is usually portrayed as being in favour of institutions that created the ‘starvation, suffering and misery of the child in the The removal from history follows the South – but rather a net flow of aid 8 first place.’ logically from the loss of power from the South to the North. which colonialism represented. The Thus, despite all the evidence (and I have That mainstream media should reflect the power to act independently is the only cited here a few examples), prevailing pervasive prejudices of the dominant guarantee to participate actively and wisdom remains that the North is the ideology is hardly surprising and it would consciously in history. To be saviour of the peoples of the South, and be wrong to hold it solely accountable colonised is to be removed from in particular, that Africa cannot survive for creating these negative stereotypes history, except in the most passive without being supported by the North. about Africa. But its power to amplify such sense.6 CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 3 & 4, 2013 Page 24 views makes its role clearly important in Worse still, "… of all 153 articles litical situation would also have pointed the process of propagating and legiti- [analysed] only one showed any attempt out how the Ugandan government uproo- mizing the mythology. by a journalist to obtain an account from ted local farmers in the area and interned a worker about their version of events. nearly a million of them in camps. Unable Media and social protest There is scant evidence of journalists to tend their farms, their lives were con- The media’s shortcomings however are having asked the miners the simplest and trolled by Ugandan military personnel, especially revealed in relation to the most basic of questions, namely ‘what and the population became dependent for reporting of protest by citizens or strikes happened?’."12 their survival on hand-outs from the de- by workers. Protests are frequently Figure 1: Sources of information related to the reporting of the Marikana massacres13 sensationalized (or sometime just ignored). It is rare to have analyses that explain to the reader what brought about the protest or strike. Instead, if the action is reported on, there is a tendency to report on scenes of violence or to portray those engaged as causing disruption to the public or to ‘development’. Where there is violence, it is frequently the protestors who are condemned: the possibility that the violence might be provoked by over- reactions of the police or the decision of the state to employ heavy-handed repressive mechanisms is rarely given much credence. The result is a caricature that criminalizes protestors in the eyes of the public and the police and legitimizes state repression.10 To some extent, journalists are only as good as their sources. If the expert velopment and humanitarian agencies The other feature of much of mainstream opinions they seek are primarily from (who equally benefit from ignoring the media on which I want to briefly comment governments, business, academia, causes of the interning of so many peo- is in relation to information that gets international NGOs and other institutions ple). None of that received attention from propagated through new media sources. that are imbued with the ‘basket-case’ the most of mainstream media. perspective of Africa, that perspective will There is a tendency to take at face value inevitably get reproduced by the media. and report uncritically on campaigns that But in particular, what was missed by al- More worrying in the long run is the reinforce dominant prejudices such as most everyone was the involvement of related, deeper bias regarding the seen last year in relation to Kony2012. much darker forces in the development of the video that caused such a stir. Investi- credibility and legitimacy of sources of Here was a video that portrayed an gations by Horace Campbell14 subse- information when it comes to the American talking with his five-year-old quently exposed the fact that Jason reporting of social protest. Thus, for child that sought to demonize Joseph Russell of "Invisible Children" and father example, in an analysis of more than 2000 Kony, the leader of the LRA. The intent to the 5-year-old in the video, was him- stories in about here was clearly to mobilize public opinion self trained at the US military sponsored , for example, Bennett found to support a call for US military Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT) that reporters paid much more attention intervention in Uganda. The video went at the University of Southern California, to the views of political elites than to non- viral, but its premise was rarely subject to whose website declares: "ICT was esta- official forms of public opinion, such as any critical analysis in the mainstream 11 blished in 1999 with a multi-year contract protest groups or opinion polls. media. Why was the LRA being singled from the US Army to explore a powerful out for attention now? As Mamdani The way in which the now infamous question: What would happen if leading points out, "The LRA is a raggedy bunch miner’s strike in the Lonmin platinum technologists in artificial intelligence, gra- of a few hundred at most, poorly mines in Marikana, South Africa, during phics, and immersion joined forces with equipped, poorly armed, and poorly which more than 40 workers lost their lives, the creative talents of Hollywood and the trained. Their ranks mainly comprise was reported (at least in the early period) game industry?" The extent to which the those kidnapped as children and then is illustrative. In analysis of articles Kony2012 video was part of a military turned into tormentors. It is a story not published in the period immediately experiment to see how new media can be very different from that of abused children following the events, it was found that used for manipulation of the public ima- who in time turn into abusive adults. In media focused almost exclusively on the gination remains unknown. views of business, parliamentarians, mine short, the LRA is no military power." But the critical point about the Kony2012 owners and management, government and Anyone familiar with the events in the video was that it played to the dominant police, with only 3 per cent providing the north of Uganda would already have prejudices about Africa, without which it views of miners themselves (see Fig 1). known this. Anyone familiar with the po- CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 3 & 4, 2013 Page 25 would not have gained the popularity that with relatively few exceptions, their output which the media propagates ideology (or it did. In addition, the media focused on tends to be ignored by corporate media. constrains itself in expressing negative the phenomenon of a video that went perspectives). To overcome some of the shortcomings remarkably viral, but without serious of media, civic society has of course no Pambazuka News is often perceived of as critical analysis of its content and validity. alternative but to raise critical voices of a news magazine / website / newsletter. protest against bias in the media, while at But producing and disseminating news Conclusion the same time supporting new media was never its purpose. The whole point That Africa gets portrayed in negative initiatives that publicize alternative of Pambazuka was a political one - to ways cannot be wholly blamed on the perspectives. But it is important at the nurture, support and contribute to the media. Media is after all only one of many same time not to delude ourselves too building of a progressive pan-African institutions in modern capitalist societies much about the power of the media: while movement. We did this in numerous ways: that manufacture and propagate ideology it is true that media tends to reinforce by commissioning and publishing and prejudice. As Herman and Chomsky prevailing prejudices and ideologies, the articles, by producing podcasts, by have argued, there are considerable reality is that the public is not incapable participating in campaigns, by giving pressures on the media for conformity to of forming their own opinions about the voice to those engaged in the struggle political consensus. These include nature of the materials broadcast or for freedom and justice, by enabling social pressures from ownership of the media published. The public may be fooled some movements to use it as an organizing tool, houses, their dependence on advertising of the time, but not necessarily all the time. by organizing events and in some cases as the principal source of revenue, even by publishing books. My point here I believe that there is a danger of devoting pressures what information is sourced, is that the driving force of building a too much energy to either critiquing who is considered ‘legitimate’ and the movement was the purpose of Pambazuka. media or trying to create alternative forms resources available for investigative Our point, to paraphrase that well-known of media. In capitalist societies, especially reporting, the political and/or legal threats saying, was not to just to report on the in a period such as ours, where there is that media potentially face in addressing world, but to change it. politically sensitive materials, as well as such centralization, concentration, and the pressures to conform with prevailing financialisation of capital, as well of the And I think that should be at the heart of ideology and prejudices in society.15 media, it is almost inevitable that media the program for the future. What can we will reflect the interests of those who hold do to support the oppressed, exploited, The shortcomings of mainstream media, power. Indeed, in some instances, those the ‘wretched of the earth’ to bring about combined with the opportunities created interests are propagated aggressively. the changes that are so desperately by developments in information and The power of corporate media is needed to ensure the future of humanity communications technologies, have led substantial. But that is not to say that and the future, dare I say it, of the planet? to the emergence of alternative media in a they are not susceptible to change. How to we ensure that those voices are way that had not previously been Look at how corporate media represented heard and how do we ensure that they possible. There are today a number of can organize to bring about change. significant websites that provide women in the 1950s and 1960s. That alternative perspectives and analyses representation did not change merely It is applying ourselves to that goal that about Africa – including the South African because convincing arguments were we will change the way in which media Civil Society Information Service provided, but because the rise of the portrays our struggles. The media will (www.sacsis.org.za), Jadaliyya (http:// women’s movement challenged those change in response to momentum of the www.jadaliyya.com), Sahara Reporters perspectives. That is not to say that struggles for freedom and justice, not the (http://saharareporters.com), West Africa women are not exploited by the media other way round. That is not to say that Democracy Radio (http://wadr.org), and today, but rather to say that there is corporate media will simply lie down and others, including Pambazuka News (http:/ unfinished business that will once again accept the changes. Media is a terrain for /www.pambazuka.org) which I founded. be taken up as the most oppressed and contestation between corporate power, There are also a number of broadcasting exploited reassert themselves through the state and citizens. But whereas networks operated by activists in the struggle. corporate media draws strength from the Diaspora (Africa Today on KPFA.org, To give another example, there were power of money and its privileged access Afrobeat on WBAI.org etc). Networks remarkable changes in the way in which to the state, citizens can draw their such as Al Jazeera have to some extent the people of Egypt or Tunisia were strength from struggles of ordinary played an important role in providing a portrayed just a couple of years ago. people, the disenfranchised, and the non-western perspective on news Where once they had been seen as docile, exploited. (although it too suffers from the lazy and accepting, such portrayal of the pressures imposed on it by its owners people was transformed when the streets Notes about both what it can report as well as were filled with protesting, creative and * First presented at the World Social Science how particular news is reported). courageous people seeking to take the Forum, Montreal, (October 2013) future into their own hands! To some extent, these alternative media 1. Despite the fact that both Tunisia and Egypt sources perform an important function in The point is that the rise of social are both in Africa, and have a long and overcoming some of the shortcomings of movements, the emergence of the struggle intimate political and historical connection corporate media. But their influence on of the oppressed and exploited plays a with the rest of the continent (both are mainstream media tends to be limited as, significant role in changing the way in members of the African Union). CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 3 & 4, 2013 Page 26

2. For further details and analyses of these 8. Abugre, C: (2010): Development aid: robbing of Freedom Symposium, Rhodes University, uprisings, see Manji F & Ekine S: African the poor to feed the rich. Pambazuka News. Grahamstown, October 2012. Awakening: The Emerging Revolutions http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/ 13. Newspapers sampled: Business Day, The Star (Oxford, Pambazuka Press 2011). features/65096 (including Business Report), The New Age, 3. Patel S (ed): Technological Transformation 9. Rotimi Sankore (2005): Behind the image: Citizen, Mail and Guardian, City Press, The in the Third World. Volume V: The Historic Poverty and 'development pornography' Sunday Times and Times, Sowetan, Beeld, Process. UN/WIDER 1995. http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/ Die Burger, Sunday Independent, Financial features/27815 Mail. 4. Rodney, W: How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. Originally published in 1972, the 10. Duncan, J (2013): The stuff of investigative 14. Horace Campbell (2012): Kony2012: book has been republished by Pambazuka journalism. SACIS: http://sacsis.org.za/site/ militarization and disinformation blowback. Press in 2012. article/1535# http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/ 80989 5. Milan Kundera: The Book of Laughter and 11. Bennet W: Marginalising the majority: the Forgetting, New York, Alfred A. Knopf, news media, public opinion and Nicaraguan 15. Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, 1979. Policy Decisions. Quoted in Onyedike, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Emmanuel U: Re-positioning Africa: The Economy of the Mass Media, New York: 6. Rodney 1983 op cit. role of African-Americans in changing media Monthly Review 1988 7. Boyce, James K and Ndikumana, Leìonce treatment of Africa. Journal of Third World (2012): Capital Flight from Sub-Saharan Studies 13:2 (1996: Fall), p51-60. African Countries: Updated Estimates, 1970 12. Duncan, J (2012): It's not just the unions - 2010. Political Economy Research that are cut off from the people but the Institute, Amherst: University of media too. Paper presented to the Lineages Massachusetts, October 2012.

The Land Question, Land Grabbing and Agriculture in Africa*

Introduction and food aid to feed previously self When we studied peasant agriculture in sufficient peasant households. Thus food Peter Anyang’ Nyong’o imports and food aid has been growing in Africa from the seventies down to the African Research and nineties, our main concern was to see how Africa, especially with climatic changes Resource Forum, which have adversely affected rain fed peasant agriculture would first and Nairobi, Kenya foremost continue to provide livelihood agriculture in the tropics. for families that relied on very small plots But different models of agricultural It is under these circumstances that of land for their farming, or had to lease production in Africa defined different governments in Africa, in collaboration land from large land owners who charged methods of incorporating peasant with some western governments, recently them exorbitant rents, or had to surrender agriculture in this wider global political embraced the idea of leasing or selling their produce to state-owned or economy. Hence studies of small peasant large tracts of land to commercial farming multinational firms which rendered them agriculture, medium peasant production by western based companies to produce to work as a " working at set ups, out-growers and contract farming food or biofuels that could earn foreign 1 home". There was a concern regarding dominated the study of peasant exchange while also providing the how global capitalism was exploiting agriculture in Africa as well as the Third domestic economy with food. This is peasant labor for global accumulation World in general. While the peasants who somehow regarded as yet another way of using the post-colonial state more or less benefited from the green revolution, in modernizing African agriculture. as a prefect in this process. But the prefect, in particular, improved their But modernization, as Samir Amin too, had to be paid for his services, and livelihoods through higher productivity, the bill always ended up at the peasant’s observes, has always combined in Africa things tended to remain static constructive dimensions, namely the door step: hence the double exploitation with most peasant households sinking of the peasant commodity producer. accumulation of capital and increasing further into poverty and even productivity, with destructive aspects – Excluded from profit sharing but included disengaging from producing for the reducing labor to the state of a commodity 2 in the chain of production as the most market altogether. With declining sold on the market, often destroying the critical cog in the machine, there was an productivity in subsistence households, natural ecological basis needed for the assumption that the peasant would remain and unable to feed themselves; with the reproduction of life and production – and a permanent feature of global capitalist dislocation of producers from their farms polarizing the distribution of wealth on a accumulation for a long time in Africa due to internal conflicts and even civil global level. Modernization has always unless a process of "de-linking" occurred wars, governments and international simultaneously integrated some work in the history of Africa’s social formation. organizations resorted to food imports force, as expanding markets created CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 3 & 4, 2013 Page 27 employment, and excluded others who apartheid regime in South Africa, followed historical injustices regarding land use, were not integrated in the new labor force closely by , now land access and land ownership to be after having lost their positions in the Zimbabwe, where the white/black political addressed following the political demise previous systems.3 In its ascending and economic divide was no doubt fascist of the apartheid regime in 1994 but very phase, capitalist global expansion in almost every aspect of life. In Kenya, little has been done to date. Somehow the integrated many along with its excluding though land alienation from Africans was ANC government has been expected to processes. But now, in the third world also the project of the colonial state, racial take some queue from what has been peasant societies, it is excluding massive oppression and exploitation was not as happening in Zimbabwe without numbers of people while including severe as in the two southern African necessarily disrupting productivity in the relatively few.4 countries. Britain had made it clear in 1923 South African agrarian economy. that Kenya would not go the same Amin made these comments four years But in a book edited by Sam Moyo and direction as Northern Rhodesia and South before the 2007-2008 global food prices Walter Chambati to be published this year Africa. But conflicts over land ownership crisis that beckoned the land grabbing by CODESRIA entitled "Land and and land tenure systems intensified over phenomenon to begin in earnest. As Agrarian Reform in Zimbabwe: Beyond time in all the three colonies, defining the several studies have now shown, current White Settler Capitalism", the narrative character of the nationalist struggles land grabbing is even more ruthless in of the failure of the radical measures at almost along similar narratives. excluding massive numbers of peasant land reform and land redistribution farmers from production, making it While the British government has finally initiated over ten years ago by Mugabe necessary to ask whether the benefits apologized to the Kenyan Mau Mau may very soon be revised, if the data and assumed to ensue are, in the final analysis, freedom fighters – or the Kenya Land arguments presented by Moyo and his mere marketing gimmicks or forms of Army – and compensated them (if only in colleagues are indeed tenable. If that is delayed gratification. It is also possible token form) for the Mau Mau atrocities the case, then South Africa will obviously that putting so-called idle land to com- after more than 50 years of denial, in South be on the spot on how it deals with the mercial production for either food crops Africa the Transvaal Agricultural Union land question in post apartheid South or biofuels should give a challenge to (TAU) has come out to deny any land Africa. Contrary to the impression created African governments to develop more theft on behalf of the Boer and Afrikaan over the last ten years, the essays in this realistic land reform programs that put all farmers and accused the ANC of book advance the thesis that land redis- land to productive use without necessarily distorting the South African agrarian tribution has been successful. Although putting the peasants in jeopardy. But land history.6 As South Africans commemorate problems have been encountered along grabbing is not new to Africa; it dates to 100 years since the passing of the 1913 the way, the African farmers have been colonial times. Thus, in order to address Land Act, TAU argues that this British adapting to commercial farming reaso- the phenomenon as it is emerging today, Act was never the "cornerstone of nably well and productivity in such farms it must not be treated in isolation from the apartheid", nor did it represent any "land has been improving with time. history of land ownership, alienation and theft" from black African people by white It has already been demonstrated in the grabbing that has been characteristic of South Africans. According to TAU blacks Kenyan case that small holding agricul- struggles over land from colonial times to did not have any concept of land tenure ture can, with reference to certain crops, today. or land ownership, so nothing could be be more productive than large scale com- stolen from them. A titanic battle is mercial farms. The Kenya Tea Develop- Colonial Agriculture and Land therefore shaping up in the Republic of ment Authority (KTDA) and Kenya’s a Grabbing South Africa between the extreme right of million acre resettlement scheme proved the white farmers and the ANC The former British settler colonies in that small holding agriculture was more nationalists, with the former accusing the Africa, particularly Kenya and Zimbabwe, productive than commercial large scale ANC of representing what it calls "the for example, share something in common white settler farms which were inefficient black supremacists." with the Republic of South Africa where and generally less intensive in land use. the land issue is currently becoming It was after the formation of the Union of But small holder agriculture in Kenya is almost explosive. In all three countries South Africa in 1910 under British colonial itself currently going through enormous immigrant white farmers settled many rule that the 1913 Land Act was enacted stress, with the prices of farm inputs years ago and acquired land for farming mainly to give security to the white going beyond the ceiling, scarcity of la- while using cheap black labor. By farmers by providing them with tenure on bor increasing, affordability of labor be- depriving African peasants of their land their farms while the Africans were coming problematic, family labor no through grabbing and compelling them relegated to marginal lands, ostensibly longer reliable as young ones increasin- to work as cheap or even free labor on predisposing them to harsher conditions gly abhor rural life and cost of living for white farms, systems emerged in all the of subsistence farming and the poverty peasants generally untenable. three countries where political power was attendant therein. Seeking to perform used to the advantage of the white farming cheap labor in white farms and mines was Farm Subsidies groups and to the gross disadvantage of therefore not a choice but a necessary Many governments in Africa have the African masses, leading to decades option to guarantee social reproduction responded to this crisis of peasant-based of conflicts that culminated in wars of of families and communities relegated to agricultural production by proposing national liberation in all the three 7 such unproductive land. Black South government subsidies to peasant countries.5 At the extreme right was the Africans have been expecting these agriculture. The case of Malawi under CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 3 & 4, 2013 Page 28

Bingu wa Mutharika is often cited as a it is usually the cunningness of the buyer reported to be using huge funds to buy success worth emulating. But even before or the gullibility of the seller. In any case land in deals that could face farmers out. governments go the Mutharika way, basic the transactions are usually shrouded in Using British hedge funds and European questions need to be addressed and secrecy, and consequently the seller financial speculators to buy or lease vast answered. Are all peasant farm sizes the gains as an individual in terms of areas of African farm land, these same in all cases to be subsidized and kickbacks while the community or nation institutions were taking advantage of what difference does it make in terms of from which the land is leased or sold political regimes and elites eager to earn returns to the peasant every season when suffers enormous loss. While the buyers hard currency by "hawking" their lands subsidies are received? In each and every argue that the land leased or sold is idle cheaply in an international market created parcel of land cultivated by the peasant, anyway and putting it to productive use and controlled by few actors. For example, what constitutes the major cost: labor, is good for the local economy, critics have the American universities were going farm implements, cultivation (by hoe, ox- argued that land grabbing has not so far through London-based Emergent asset driven plough or tractor), fertilizers, produced positive results: food management firms running one of Africa’s weeding, harvesting or storage? What production is negatively affected, the largest land acquisition funds by JP aspects of these will be subject to subsidy environment can be easily endangered Morgan and Goldman and Sachs currency and what does such subsidy mean in the and the profits earned by the so called dealers.11 By 2011, final analysis? investors are not usually ‘ploughed back’ estimated that close to $500 million had to the domestic economy. been invested in such deals by this group It is as a result of the consideration of with the expectation of getting 25 per cent these issues that Nyerere introduced In an attempt to reduce American return on investment. in Tanzania. Eventually, however, dependence on oil from the Middle East this initiative was unsuccessful not so and , for example, the George The same article went on to point out that much because it was not rational, but more W. Bush administration offered huge the largest land deal in Africa then was in because its implementation came with financial incentives to Midwest farmers South Sudan where as much as 9 per cent various forms of political oppression and to turn their into biofuels (ethanol). of the land is said by Norwegian analysts economic exploitation by state agents and This contributed significantly to the global to have been bought between 2007 and agencies that the peasants rejected, and food price crisis of 2007-2008, which led 2011. This deal was negotiated between a hence the so called failure of Ujamaa. But to riots and deaths in many countries. In -based firm, Nile Trading and the cooperative movement organized by addition, EU countries signed up to an Develo-pment, and a local co-operative the peasants themselves can reproduce undertaking to use a greater proportion run by absent chiefs. The 49 year lease of the Ujamaa concept without allowing the of transport fuel from biofuels (10% by 400,000 hectors of Central Equatoria for heavy hand of the state to distort the 2020), thereby contributing significantly around $25,000 allows the company to advantages of pooling resources together, to the global land grab by encouraging exploit all natural resources including oil rationalizing labor, organizing marketing them to find land for biofuels production and timber. The company, headed by and ensuring stable incomes for peasant elsewhere, particularly in Africa, because former US Ambassador Howard Eugene farmers. The tea and coffee cooperatives they cant be produced within the EU.9 Douglas, says it intends to apply for UN- in Kenya are worth looking into in this backed carbon credits that could provide Such crops as Jatropha were the first to regard. it with millions of dollars a year in be touted as major sources of biofuels revenues. that could grow in the tropics easily, being Biofuels, Land Grabbing and the reasonably resistant to the vagaries of the Research by the World Bank and others African Peasantry weather and poor soil conditions. Hence suggest that nearly 60 million hectors of Following the world food price crisis of they would be planted in vast stretches land, an area the size of France, has been 2007-2008, multinational corporations, of marginal lands without depriving either bought or leased by foreign companies foreign governments and international the peasants or the pastoralists of land. in Africa in recent times. The figure may financial institutions started to acquire Recent evidence, however, shows that be growing. This could not cause any large tracts of land in Africa for purposes optimism on biofuels, such as Jatropha, serious concern if, in the final analysis, it of growing food crops and biofuels in is now fading in such places like Ethiopia, added positively to a green revolution what has now come to be known as a land Malawi, Mozambique and Tanzania. that, in effect, improved agricultural 8 grabbing phenomenon. Land grabbing Nonetheless there is still growing productivity, provided employment to is described in various ways. It is seen, literature from international NGOs and many unemployed youths in Africa, for example, as getting large tracts of land research institutes cautioning on "the reduced poverty and created a value cheaply from naïve and ignorant "local land grabbing industry" in Africa, and its addition industry that progressively rulers" in Africa, be they chiefs (as in threat to food production, increase in integrated agriculture to industry in South Sudan) or government executives poverty and marginalization of peasant Africa’s development. As Olivier de (as in Mozambique, Tanzania and farmers and pastoralists in Africa. Schutter, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Madagascar). This land may be bought the Right to Food observes, "if it is to be In an article published in the British daily, or leased very cheaply for a number of truly responsible, agricultural investment The Guardian, in June 2011, US years. The price of buying or leasing is must be investment that benefits the poor universities were said to be involved in quite often worked out without any in the South, rather than leading to a "land grabbing" in Africa.10 Institutions reference to the prevailing market forces. transfer of resources to the rich in the including Harvard and Vanderbilt were If there is any force to determine the price North. It must be investment that truly CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 3 & 4, 2013 Page 29

reduces hunger and malnutrition, rather in land tenure systems will be necessary Question in Kenya", Review of African than aggravating them."12 De Schutter to enhance the commercial viability of Political Economy No. 20, 1980. has been very consistent in cautioning farming in Africa? If we stop at the level 2. This has happened in the Sugar Belt in Kisumu European governments and multinational of commercial viability alone, then County, Kenya, where peasant production corporations to go slow on biofuels perhaps there would be little reason to of sugar under contract terms with the state- production in the Third World which has break up the large scale commercial farms owned factories has declined drastically over a tendency of impacting negatively on in South Africa as part of land the last 20 years, and most 10-acre farms peasant agriculture and impinging on the redistribution to African small holders either lie idle, or have been turned into "right to food". But he has also noted who, at the moment, have no land. grazing land or farmed for subsistence. that growing crops for food and fuel Assumptions must be made that, like in together can work but farmers and the case of Kenya, the new land owners 3. Samir Amin, "World Poverty, Pauperization policymakers must prioritize hungry will produce more productively than their and Capital Accumulation," Monthly Review, people and think local.13 In this regard, predecessor commercial farms. But it must Vol. 55, No. 5, October 2003. the peasant farmer need not necessarily be noted that, in the Kenyan case, the 4. Ibid. be treated with kid gloves. If peasant small large scale white commercial farms were, 5. See, for example, Essy M. Letsoalo, Land holdings are to survive, they need to be in actual fact, rather inefficient. Without Reform in South Africa, Braamfontein: competitive and viable in producing for a poorly paid or free labor they could not Skotaville Publishers, 1987. domestic market that will ensure that all have survived since large parts of the are fed even before any produce is farms often lay idle. What model will South 6. "Whites Never Stole Land from Black South exported in the commercial circuit. Africa therefore follow in land reform: the Africans," Before It’s News, Wednesday, June Zimbabwe model or the Kenyan one, or 5, 2013. Looking Ahead: Some Questions none of the above? Is it possible to lease 7. Letsoalo, Chapter 3. to be Addressed land rationally to foreign companies for 8. See, for example, Borras Jr., Saturnino M., commercial farming without necessarily The main question we are currently facing Ruth Hall, Ian Scoones, Ben White and distorting the local agrarian economy? in Africa, whether we are looking at land Wendy Wolford, "Towards a better reform and redistribution in the former In the final analysis, it does not follow understanding of global land grabbing: an settler colonies or recent cases of land that land reforms will necessarily lead to editorial introduction," Journal of Peasant grabbing, is the tension between small enhanced agricultural productivity. Case Studies, 38 (2); Hall, R. "Land Grabbing in holder farming and commercial large scale studies show that land reforms could Southern Africa: the many faces of the agriculture. Are African farms, of whatever enhance, reduce or even have no impact investor rush", Review of African Political size, commercially viable given their whatsoever on agricultural productivity. Economy 38 (128), June 2011; Leigh levels of productivity and global com- In Mexico, Chile and China land reforms Brownhill, "Land Grabs as re-colonization petitiveness? In any case, does African was followed by decline in agricultural in 21st century East Africa," Kilimanjaro 3 agriculture need to be commercially viable production. But in Cuba, Egypt and now (1), January 2011; to be useful to the African people? To Zimbabwe, land reforms have led to 9. Robin Palmer, Land Grabbing in Africa, what extent have African peasants increased agricultural production. All responded positively or negatively to the www.indcatholicnews.com/news. (April 19, depends on the nature of the land reforms 2013). vagaries of the global agricultural undertaken and the context in which such markets? Or do they really need to reforms are introduced and implemented. 10. The Guardian, "US Universities in Africa respond to these markets to be viable? In Africa, most of the food in produced ‘Land Grab’", June 08, 2011. See What happened to our previous concern by small holder farms; and since this is www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jun/08/us. for de-linking as a way of organizing likely to remain the same for some time to 11. Ibid. African economies which would reproduce come, any land reform contemplated 12. See www.guardian.co.uk/profile/olivier-de- themselves on the basis of self reliance needs to secure the land holding of such schutter within national democratic and groups, or a land tenure system in which developmental states? Have African small holding agriculture is fully catered for. 13. Olivier de Schutter, "In a World Hungry for peasant producers always been victims Biofuels, Must Come First," of the unfavorable prices of factor inputs Notes The Guardian, October 12, 2012. or are there other indigenous methods by www.guardian.co.uk/global development- * Address to the IDEP-UNISA-CODESRIA which they at times circumvent these development/poverty-matters. Roundtable Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 17-18 difficulties through crop diversification, June, 2013 crop rotation, straddling and "cheating the state"? 1. Several studies published by The Third World Forum, CODESRIA and IDEP. See also P. Suppose commercial viability of Anyang’ Nyong’o, ed. "The Peasant agriculture is important, then what reforms CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 3 & 4, 2013 Page 30

Fractal Complexity in Mamokgethi Setati’s Work on the Nexus between African Languages and Mathematics

Introduction called on African-centered researchers to That Mamokgethi Setati (née Mmutlana) become pluridisciplinarians, Clyde Ahmed has emerged as the preeminent scholar Abdul Karim Bangura Winters (1998) states that the on the nexus between African languages Howard University & Pluridisciplinary specialist is a person who and mathematics is hardly a matter of American University’s Center for is qualified to employ more than one dispute. One need only do a Google Global Peace discipline – for example, history, search of the phrase "African languages linguistics, etc. – when researching aspects of African history and Africology and mathematics" to discover that the employing them appear in the first in general. first name that comes up and also paragraph of the data analysis section. numerously is Setati’s. It is therefore only The history of the Pluridisciplinary fitting that when the Broken Hill Research Methodology Methodology can be traced back to the Proprietary (BHP) selected Setati for a The major challenge for me was how to mid-1950s with the works of Diop and 2010-2011 National Science and transform the linguistic pragmatic or deep- Jean Vercoutter. The approach was Technology Forum (NSTF)-BHP Billiton level meanings in the six journal articles concretized by Alain Anselin and Clyde Award in honor of her outstanding examined for mathematical modeling. As I Ahmad Winters in the 1980s and early contributions to Science, Engineering, stated earlier, this called for the utilization 1990s. A brief history of this development Technology and Innovation, it had the of the Pluridisciplinary approach that with brief backgrounds of these four following to say: "…for her innovative, helped me to mix linguistics and pioneers is retold in the rest of this section. quality research on teaching and learning mathematical approaches: more precisely, mathematics in multilingual classrooms" G. Mokhtar in his book, Ancient Linguistic Presupposition and Fractal (www.nctfawards.org.za/). Civilizations of Africa (1990), traces the Methodology. Furthermore, it behooves development of Pluridisciplinary From Setati’s World Wide Web site, one me to state here that discussions of this Methodology to the works of Diop and also learns that, as of this writing, she methodology also appear in the following Vercoutter. Diop was born in Senegal on has authored and coauthored 20 journal works: Abdul Karim Bangura (ed.), December 29, 1923 and died on February articles, four book chapters, four edited Fractal Complexity in the Works of Major 7, 1986. He was a historian, anthropologist, volumes, 24 conference publications, six Black Thinkers, Volumes One and Two, physicist, and politician who investigated research publications, and six San Diego, CA: Cognella Press, 2013; the origins of the human races and pre- publications in public print media Abdul Karim Bangura, "A Mathematical colonial African culture. His education (www.kgethi.com/). While my extensive Exploration of Fractal Complexity among included African history, Egyptology, search yielded approximately 8,030 the Axioms on the African State in the linguistics, anthropology, economics, and citations of Setati’s writings, I found no Journal of Third World Studies: From sociology. He is considered one of the systematic analysis of them, even though John Mukum Mbaku to Pade Badru," greatest African intellectuals of the 20th such potential exists. This paper is an Journal of Third World Studies, Vol. xxix, Century. Jean Vercoutter was born in attempt to fill this void. Specifically, I No. 2, Fall 2012:11-64; Abdul Karim France on January 6, 1911 and died on July employ the mathematical concept of Bangura, "Fractal Complexity in Cheikh 6, 2000. He was a French Egyptologist. Fractal Dimension and Complexity Theory Anta Diop’s Precolonial Black Africa: A to explore the idea of spectrum Pluridisciplinary Analysis," CODESRIA According to Mokhtar, Diop and progressing from more orderly to less Bulletin, Nos. 1 & 2, 2012:10-19; and Vercoutter were in total agreement on the orderly or to pure disorder in the text. This Abdul Karim Bangura, "Fractal point that it is necessary to study as much called for the utilization of the Complexity in Mwalimu Chinua Achebe’s detail as possible all the genes bordering Pluridisciplinary approach that helped me Things Fall Apart: A Mathematical on the Nile Valley which were likely to to mix linguistics and mathematical Exploration," Critical Interventions, provide fresh information. Mokhtar notes approaches—more precisely, Linguistic Number 9/10, Spring 2012:106-121. The that Vercoutter considered it necessary Presupposition and Fractal Methodology. following is a discussion of these to give due weight to the palaeoecology Before discussing the results generated techniques. of the Delta and to the vast region which from the MATLAB computer runs, had been termed by other researchers the however, it makes sense to begin with an Pluridiciplinary Methodology Fertile African Crescent. Mokhtar points out that Diop advocated tracing the paths expose of the research methodology Pluridisciplinary Methodology can be taken by peoples who migrated west- employed in this paper, followed by brief generally defined as the systematic wards from Dârfur, reaching the Atlantic descriptions of the six solely authored utilization of two or more disciplines or seaboard by separate routes, to the south journal articles that serve as the data branches of learning to investigate a along the Zaïre Valley and to the north sources for the analysis. A listing of the phenomenon, thereby in turn contributing towards Senegal, on either side of the six articles and the justification for to those disciplines. Noting that Diop had CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 3 & 4, 2013 Page 31

Yoruba. He adds that Diop also pointed Winters is the only African American that the writing systems used by these ancient out how worthwhile it might be to study attempts to confirm Diop’s theories in founders of civilization could be Egypt’s relations with the rest of Africa in relation to the genetic unity of the deciphered. The utilization of Diop’s greater detail than had been done, and Egyptian, Black African, Elamite, Sumerian linguistic constancy theory allowed Diop further mentioned the discovery, in and Dravidian languages. Winters is Winters to confirm his own hypothesis the province of Shaba, of a statuette of mainly concerned with the unity of the and read the common signs used to write Osiris dating from the 7th Century before ancient and new worlds’ Black the Harapant, Minoan and Olmec scripts the Christian era. Similarly, argues civilizations and the decipherment of (Winters 1998). Mokhtar, a general study might be made ancient Black writing systems used by Winters’ most significant finding is the of the working hypothesis that the major these Africans. This interest had led him cognate language of Meroitic. By emplo- events which affected the Nile, such as to learn many languages, including ying the evidence presented by the the sacking of Thebes by the Syrians, or French, Tamil, Malinke/Bambara, Chinese, Classical sources that the Kushites ruled the Persian invasion of -522, had far Arabic, Otomi, and more (Winters 1998). empires in Africa and Asia, Winters is able reaching repercussions on the African Winters had used Diop’s genetic model to show that the cognate language of Me- continent as a whole (Mokhtar 1990:55). in his research by combining anthropo- roitic was the Tokharian language spoken Furthermore, according to Winters, two logical, linguistic and historical methods by the Kushana people of Central Asia. He major scholars who have advanced the to confirm that the center for the rise of has been able to decipher many Meroitic Pluridisciplinary approach by combining the originators of the Egyptian and inscriptions by using the Kushana/ anthropological, historical and linguistic Manding civilizations, the Magyar or Tokharian language (Winters 1998). methods to explain the heritage of African Hungarian civilization, the Dravidian According to Dani Nabudere (2003), people, constituting a third school of civilization, and the Sumerian and Elamite Pluridisciplinary Methodology involves Africancentric researchers (the first and civilizations was the Fertile Crescent of the use of open and resource-based second schools being the African the highland regions of Middle/Saharan techniques available in an actual situation. American and the French-speaking Africa. He also explains how Blacks Thus, it has to draw upon the indigenous African and African Caribbean, founded civilizations in the Americas and knowledge materials available in the respectively), are Anselin and himself East and Southeast Asia. A major finding locality and make maximum use of them. (Winters 1998). Anselin teaches ancient from Winters’ work is that the ancestors Indigenous languages are therefore at the Egyptian linguistics at the University of of the Dravidian and Manding-speaking center of the effective use of this Guyana Antilles. He is an anthropologist people seem to have left Africa at the same methodology. and also the founder of the Journal of time around 2600 BC, and that these people Caribbean Egyptology. Winters is a founded civilizations in Europe, Elam, What all this suggests, according to Na- lecturer at Governors State University at India and ancient China (Winters 1998). budere, is that the researcher must revisit University Park in Illinois where he the indigenous techniques that take into Like Diop before him, Winters also teaches curriculum design and research consideration the epistemological, cosmo- discusses the African sub-stream in methods courses. He also is a 28-year logical and methodological challenges. European languages, the conflict between teaching veteran of the Chicago Public The researcher must be culture-specific African people and Indo-European- Schools system. and knowledge-source-specific in his/her speaking people, and the loss of early orientation. Thus, the process of redefi- Anselin is the author of three important African settlements in Europe to the ning the boundaries between the diffe- Pluridisciplinary Africancentric books— contemporary European people due to rent disciplines in our thought process is (1) Samba, (2) La Question Puele, and (3) natural catastrophes and wars around the same as that of reclaiming, reordering Le Mythe d’Europe—and numerous 1000 BC. Winters provides valuable and, in some cases, reconnecting those articles. In Samba, Anselin demonstrates source material for the elaboration of the ways of knowing, which were submerged, how the corpus of Egyptian hieroglyphics African influence on European languages subverted, hidden or driven underground explains both the Egyptian civilization and and those of East and Central Asia by colonialism and slavery. The research the entire world of the Paleo-Africans. He (Winters 1998). should therefore reflect the daily dealings also makes it clear that Kemetic civilization Winters had discovered that the Proto- of society and the challenges of the daily originated in the Fertile African Crescent Saharan people used a common writing lives of the people. and that Black African and Kemetic system. He also was able to read the civilization at its origination was unified Towards this end, following Nabudere, at ancient inscriptions left by these people from its foundations in the Sahara up to least the following six major questions in the Sahara dating to 3000 BC. He was its contemporary manifestations in the should guide Pluridisciplinary research able to confirm this development by languages and culture of Black Africans. (2003:13): comparing the Manding and the Elamite In La Question Puele, Anselin examines languages, and the Sumerian and the unity for Egyptian, West African and (1) How can the research increase Dravidian languages. The evidence of a indigenous knowledge in the general Dravidian languages, political traditions genetic relationship between the body of global human development? and culture. He also provides a detailed Manding languages, which Winters used discussion of the "Black Ageans." The to decipher the earliest Proto-Saharan (2) How can the research create linkages findings comprise a thorough represen- writings and other languages spoken by between the sources of indigenous tation of the affinities between the Agean the founders of civilization in India and knowledge and the centers of learning and Dravidian civilizations (Winters, 1998). on the continent and in the Diaspora? Mesopotamia, led him to hypothesize that CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 3 & 4, 2013 Page 32

(3) How can centers of research in the (a) African Spirituality refers to those can enable the "triple agenda of communities ensure that these com- aspects of people that have enabled deconstruction, reconstruction, and munities become "research societies"? them to survive as a human com- regeneration" to be undertaken at the munity throughout the centuries. It same time. Consequently, the Pan- (4) How can the research be linked to the transcends European classical Afrikan University must develop the production needs of the communities? humanism with its class, socio- University as a new institution of higher (5) How can the research help to ensure economic and geographical limitations education, which can help in reshaping that science and technology are based on Greece and the Athenian the direction of education on the con- generated in relevant ways to address City-State, which is based on a system tinent toward a more culture-specific problems of the rural communities of slavery. African Spirituality leads and culturally relevant curriculum and where the majority of the people live to enlarged humanities and recaptures pedagogy of liberation. It must draw and that this is done in indigenous the original meaning of humanity from those heritages and provide the languages? which Western scholars, beginning students, adult learners and the with Plato, in their hollow and lopsided communities with a space in which (6) How can the research help to reduce search for material progress, have they can learn as well as carry out their the gap between the elite and the abandoned (Nabudere 2003:3-4). research and be trained by their communities from which they come teachers, community experts, and con- by ensuring that the research results (b) Contemporary African Philosophy is sultants at the University campuses as are available to everyone and that a critique of the Eurocentric "idea" and well as in the community knowledge such knowledge is drawn from the "general philosophy" in its sites. Essentially, the Pan-Afrikan communities? metaphysical perception that University must be people-centered The truism that indigenous knowledge is European humanism is superior to that and community-based in which critical to Africa’s development prompted of the African people. This falsehood, everyone enjoys the freedom to learn a workshop titled "Indigenous Know- which has been perpetuated by Eu- and speak (Nabudere 2003:5-6, 14). ledge Systems and Intellectual Property rope to this day, hinges upon the belief that the rest of humanity has to be (e) African Epistemology and Cosmo- in the Twenty-First Century: Perspectives forced to believe like Europe in order logy imply the development of an all- from Southern Africa" convened at the to be "humanized" into a singular inclusive approach which recognizes University of Botswana from November humanity. Contemporary African all sources of human knowledge as 26 to 28, 2003 which culminated into a Philosophy seeks to "de-structure" valid within their own contexts. This book with the same title published in 2007 this European pretext and emphasize calls for the adoption of hermeneutic by the Council for the Development of humankind’s "shared humanity" philosophy in its African essence. This Social Science Research in Africa (Nabudere 2003:4). African-based epistemological and (CODESRIA) based in Dakar, Senegal. cosmological foundation is the prere- The tenor of the workshop and subse- (c) The African Renaissance is the initia- quisite for the production and develop- quent book is that the twin themes of tive to recapture the basic elements ment of knowledge (Nabudere 2003:6-7). indigenous knowledge systems and of African humanism (ubuntu, eternal intellectual property rights have moved life, and immanent moral justice) as (f) African Humanism/Ubuntu is a con- to the center of academic discourse within the path to a new humanistic univer- cept from the Southern African Nguni the context of innovation and the com- salism. This initiative, according to language family (IsiNdebele, IsiSwati/ Chancellor Williams, "is the spiritual IsiSwazi, IsiXhosa and IsiZulu) mercialization of knowledge. This is and moral element, actualized in good meaning humanity or fellow feeling; because wealth is no longer reckoned in will among men (and women), which kindness. Ubuntu serves as the terms of physical assets alone. Unfor- Africa itself has preserved and can spiritual foundation of African tunately, the traditional imbalance give to the world" (Nabudere 2003:4). societies. It is a unifying vision or between the North and the South, which worldview enshrined in the maxim has for long manifested itself mainly (d) The Pan-Afrikan University does not umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu: i.e. "a through trade, is replicated even in begin in a vacuum, for it has a deep person is a person through other tapping intellectual property given to heritage of culture and "civilizational" persons." This traditional African residents of the developing world who values that must inform its recreation aphorism, which can be found in every remain largely unable to define their (e.g., the Sankore University in corner of the continent, articulates a property rights. Once again, the West Timbuktu). These institutions are to basic respect and compassion for exploits Africa and the rest of the deve- be found within Africa’s ancient others. It can be interpreted as both a loping world by expropriating indigenous achievements. They must be unearthed factual description and a rule of knowledge systems and patenting them and reclaimed. If the Pan-Afrikan Uni- conduct or social ethic. It both versity is to respond to this historic in the West (Mazonde and Thomas 2007). describes the human being as "being challenge and be a part of the correc- with others" and prescribes what that Various scholars have suggested many tion of its historical distortion and theft should be (Bangura 2005 & 2008). major concepts to underlie the of African heritages, it has to provide Pluridisciplinary Methodology, but it is deeply thought out and well-con- (g) African Languages are at the center Dan Nabudere (2003) who has provided ceived vision and mission, with a well of developing the Pan-Afrikan Univer- the most succinct definitions and articulated strategy to achieve its ob- sity at all knowledge sites. Language, discussions for most of these concepts. jectives. For it to be successful, it as Amilcar Cabral correctly pointed They are as follows: must be a part of the creation of a out, is at the center of articulating a counter-hegemonic discourse which people’s culture. He stated that the CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 3 & 4, 2013 Page 33

African revolution would have been It should explore the reunification of adult learners to formal institutions of impossible without Africans resorting allied disciplines (which have been learning and remove the division to their cultures to resist domination. subdivided into sub-disciplines) into between informal, non-formal, and Thus, culture is a revolutionary force unified fields of study (Nabudere formal education in line with African in society. It is because language has 2003:14). traditions and culture. It will also remained an "unresolved issue" in provide for the coo-peration in research Africa’s development that present day (i) Hermeneutic Philosophy recognizes between the Pan-Afrikan University education has remained an alien the basic unity of human endeavor and the communities, in addition to system. As put it, "to through "discourse" that expresses providing for the recognition of speak a language is to assume its "the intelligibility of Being-in-the learning out-comes gained through world and carry the weight of its world" (Nabudere 2003:16). their own contexts outside the formal civilization." Kwesi K. Prah has education system (Nabudere 2003:20). (j) Integrated and Synthesized Know- argued consistently that the absence ledge is based on the notion that of African languages in the curricu- (m) Kemetic Civilization is a Black privileging African-centered curricu- lum has been the "key missing link" African civilization whose origination lum must transcend a narrow concep- in the continent’s development. in the Fertile African Crescent was tion of what is purely African to Consequently, the Pan-Afrikan Uni- unified from its foundations in the include such knowledge within the versity must build its curriculum on Sahara up to its contemporary mani- wider synthesized framework of glo- the basis of promoting African festations in the languages and cul- bal knowledge (Nabudere 2003:17). languages at the sites of knowledge ture of Black Africans (Winters 1998). and at the same time try to build (k) Afrikan-based Pedagogy draws ins- The favored methodological approach for libraries at those sites in the languages piration and materials for learning from Pluridisciplinary studies is Hermeneutics, of the people living there. They must real life situations of the African peo- an open-ended approach that permits be promoted as languages of science ple, especially in the rural areas, by cross-cultural communication and and technology. This calls for the adopting those pedagogical methods exchange of ideas and opinions to complete revamping of the epistemo- and techniques that inform their promote understanding between all logical and cosmological worldview of philosophy of life, their worldview, the current discourse. It also calls for knowledge systems in their diversities. and their lived experiences and This African philosophical-pedagogic the application of different methodo- practices. The key to developing an approach hinges upon the acceptance of logical and pedagogical approaches Afrikan-based Pedagogy hinges pluralism and cultural diversity. It stresses to learning and research in African upon the knowledge specific-sites the need for the "fusion of historical conditions (Nabudere 2003:10). where African experts of different bran- ches of knowledge are located. These horizons" as the best way of transmitting (h) New Humanities is to serve as the sites will inform both the content and understanding between different lived core department in the division of the the pedagogy. The pedagogy will histories or experiences of different Pan-Afrikan University concerned incorporate "oracy," which contains communities as the basis of their with research and advanced studies. forms of art and techniques to which existence. It insists on both the cultural In the words of Chancellor Williams, they give expression, which is context and the historical contingencies the New Humanities "will have the essential for adult learning. By mains- of events as necessities for a true task of enlisting the services of the treaming this form of expression, its comprehension of the different lived world’s best thinkers of the work of agents gain visibility and recognition experiences. Furthermore, the approach developing a science of humanity in knowledge creation and production. through studies expressly aimed at has its roots in the African/Egyptian This will enable indigenous tales, better human relations. It is to be at mythical figure of Hermes, the messenger stories, proverbs, legends, myths, the heart of the entire education of knowledge from the gods to mortals symbols and epics to be resuscitated, system and, therefore, the nation." and the interpreter of the divine message for these forms of knowledge incor- Williams believes that the central idea to humankind, and that is why porate people’s philosophies of life, in this philosophy is life. He argues Hermeneutics is named after Hermes norms, values in a kind of "moving" that since neither Western science nor (Nabudere 2003:7-8). and "living library" (Nabudere 2003:19). religion has provided satisfactory Hermeneutics is to be employed on the answers to three questions (From (l) Life Long Learning, which has premises that encourage self-directed where do we come? Why? And where recently become a mantra of many learning, which engages with the are we bound?), it is imperative for the developed countries and internatio- Pan-Afrikan University to provide the knowledge, interests, and real life nal organizations as a novel approach situations that learners bring to their space for discussing these eternal to learning in the 21st Century, is learning situations. This notion of site- questions. This approach calls for the deeply embedded within African cul- specific knowledge attempts to offer a reorganization of the disciplines of the ture and epistemology. Learning and social and human sciences as well as "culturalization" in African societies corrective to the Eurocentric tendency of the natural sciences into a holistic were considered continuing proces- universalizing knowledge around learning process. The reorganization ses that "took place from birth until Occidental centers and sites of knowledge should lead to a breaking down of the death with the family unit, extended which are privileged to the disadvantage over-compartmentalization and over- family, the village and the entire of others, claiming to be the only sites of fragmentation of faculties, depar- community participating" (Nabudere "rationality" and "scientific knowledge." tments, and branches of knowledge. 2003:19). Life Long Learning will bring Recognizing the other sites and centers CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 3 & 4, 2013 Page 34 leads to a truly multi-polar world of global definitions, agree on the content Consequently, in order not to necessarily knowledge culled from all sources of categories applied to the material presume the conclusions to be drawn, human endeavor (Nabudere 2003:8). analyzed. Two individuals, who had cues to the intent of the author of the extensive training in discourse analysis texts examined are ‘deconstructed.’ How, Linguistic Presupposition as the and especially topic identification, were then, are these cues mapped out for the Unit of Analysis given copies of the texts studied to present paper? According to Herbert Paul As stated earlier, the unit of analysis for identify what they perceived as topics, or Grice’s (1975) characterization of meaning the present paper is linguistic more specifically, where one topic ends or non-natural meaning (which is presupposition, which can be defined as and another begins. Although there were equivalent to the notion of intentional an implicit assumption about the world or no differences between the two communication), intent is achieved or background belief upon which the truth individuals and I, the identified topics and satisfied by being recognized. A sender’s of a statement hinges. The linguistic the texts were also given to a linguist who communicative intent becomes mutual presuppositions for this study are drawn has done a great deal of work on topic knowledge to sender and receiver: that out of the writer’s (i.e. Setati’s) topics in analysis for comments and suggestions. is, S knows that H knows that S knows the texts examined. The writer’s topics This approach was quite useful for that H knows (and so ad infinitum) that S here are the a priori features, such as the increasing my confidence that the has this particular intention. So following clear and unquestionable change of meaning of the content is not heavily Roger Shuy (1982), it is necessary to begin subject focus, for defining types of dependent on my analysis alone. by asking "What did the writer do"? Thus, it is clearly necessary to look at linguistic presuppositions found in the After identifying the presuppositions in specific topics developed by the author texts examined. While there are many the texts studied in terms of the topics of the texts analyzed. This is particularly other formulations of ‘topic’ from which identified, these propositions were placed true because, according to Wallace Chafe to chose, the writer’s topics are employed into two categories (order versus (1972) and Carol Kates (1980), the for this paper because it is the writer of disorder) based on the bottom-up structure of intentions can neither be the texts who had topics, not the texts. processing approach common in linguistic defined by the grammatical relations of The other formulations of ‘topic’ include analysis for further examination. This the terms, nor the semantic structure of a sentential topics, discourse topics, involved working out the meanings of the text. Therefore, mapping out the cues to presuppositional pools, relevance and propositions already processed and the intent of the author contained in the speaking topically, topic boundary building up composite meanings for them. markers, paragraphs, paratones, texts analyzed called for: (a) identifying representation of discourse content, Because the texts examined are a communicative functions, (b) using position-based discourse content, and representation of discourse in texts, the general socio-cultural knowledge, and (c) story. Thus, the notion of ‘topic’ in the level of analysis is naturally the written determining the inferences made. present paper is considered as one related text. Text is used here as a technical term to representations of discourse content. – in Gillian Brown and George Yule’s Fractal Methodology conceptualization, "the verbal record of a It is only logical to begin any discussion In choosing the writer’s topic as the communicative act" (1983:6). of Fractal Methodology with a definition recording unit, the ease of identifying of what a fractal is. As I state in my book, topics and correspondence between them In order to ascertain the presuppositions Chaos Theory and African Fractals and the content categories were seriously and in the texts examined, the test known (Bangura 2000:6), the concept of fractal considered. Guiding this choice was the as Constancy under Negation Rule was remains inexplicably defined. This awareness that if the recording unit is too employed. This test is important because, shortcoming is pointed out by Philip small, such as a word, each case will be following Gottlob Frege (1892/1952) and Davis as follows, albeit he himself does unlikely to possess any of the content Peter Strawson (1952), presuppositions not provide and explicit definition: "I categories. Furthermore, small recording are preserved in negative statements or consulted three books on fractals. units may obscure the context in which a sentences. A researcher can therefore Though there were pictures, there was no particular content appears. On the other simply take a sentence, negate it, and see definition" (1993:22). The following is a hand, a large recording unit, such as a what inferences survive: that is, are shared small sample of the various ways the paragraph, will make it difficult to isolate by both positive and negative forms of concept of fractal has been described as the single category of a content that it the sentence. But because, as Stephen provided by Lynn Steen: possesses. For the current paper, two Levinson (1983:185) is quite correct in pointing out, "constancy under negation methods were appropriate. First, there is The concept of fractional dimension, the clear and uncontestable change of is not in fact a rich enough definition to or fractals, was developed in order subject focus. Second, topicalization was pick out a coherent, homogenous set of to describe the shapes of natural found to have been used to introduce inferences," the tests for presup- objects….An interesting property of new characters, ideas, events, objects, etc. positional defeasibility (the notion that fractal objects is that as we magnify presuppositions are liable to evaporate a figure, more details appear but the Finally, in order to ascertain the reliability in certain contexts) and the projection basic shape of the figure remains of the coding unit employed for the paper, problem of presuppositions (i.e. the intact (1988:409). attempts were made to show inter-coder behavior of presuppositions in complex reliability: that is, two or more analysts, sentences) were also employed. using the same procedures and CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 3 & 4, 2013 Page 35

In addition, according to Steen, of fractals in the 1970s and 1980s. Since work in fractal analysis focuses on two that time, however, in spite of the fact that tasks: (1) showing that fractal The word fractal – coined by (Benoit Zipf and Pareto distributions represent characteristics are present in a particular B.) Mandelbrot – is related to the La- fractal distribution, social scientists have data set and (2) estimating the fractal tin verb frangere, which means "to lagged behind the physical and natural dimension of the data set. They also break." The ancient Romans who used sciences in utilizing fractal mathematics mention that there are various techniques frangere may have been thinking in their works (Brown and Liebovitch for implementing these two tasks (Brown about the breaking of a stone, since the adjective derived from this action 2010:ix). and Liebovitch 2010:2), the discussion of which is beyond the scope of the present combines the two most obvious Brown and Liebovitch observe, however, paper. Nonetheless, it is necessary to properties of broken stones – that in recent years, the application of provide brief definitions of the preceding irregularity and fragmentation. The fractal mathematics by social scientists five italicized concepts based on Brown adjectival form is fractus, which in their studies has grown exponentially. and Liebovitch’s work for the sake of Mandelbrot says led him to fractal Their variety, they note, has expanded as clarity. The significant fact about sets is (1988:420). rapidly as their numbers. They cite the that almost all data sets can be fractal: Furthermore, as Steen points out, "Fractal examples that fractal analysis had been that is, points, lines, surfaces, dimension (is) a measurement of the employed by criminologists to investigate multidimensional data, and time series. jaggedness of an object" (1988:413). the timing of calls for assistance to police, Since fractals occur in different types of by sociologists to investigate gender Keith Weeks (in Hargittai and Pickover, sets, various procedures are required to divisions in the labor force, and by 1992) states: identify and analyze them, with the actuaries to study disasters. The approach hinging upon the kind of data surprising range of fractal phenomena in [J. E.] Hutchinson laid the (Brown and Liebovitch 2010:2-3). foundations of a certain concept of the social sciences led Brown and self-similarity, the basic notion being Liebovitch to call for a comprehensive Brown and Liebovitch define self- that of the object made up of a number survey that would investigate the similarity as a characteristic of an object of smaller images of the original object, common threads that unite them, thereby when it is composed of smaller copies of and so on ad infinitum, typically leading to a broader understanding of their itself, and each of the smaller copies in resulting in detail at all levels of causes and occurrences (Brown and turn are made up of yet smaller copies of magnification, a trait commonly Liebovitch 2010:ix). the whole, and so on, ad infinitum. The associated with objects referred to as word similar connotes a geometrical According to Brown and Liebovitch, if a fractals (1992:107). meaning: that is, objects that have the researcher has rough data, strongly same form but may be different in size From the preceding descriptions, I venture nonlinear data, irregular data, or data that (Brown and Liebovitch 2010:3). to offer a general definition of a fractal as display complex patterns that seem to defy a self-similar pattern: that is, a pattern that conventional statistical analysis, then Scale invariance for Brown and repeats itself on an ever diminishing scale. fractal analysis might be the solution to Liebovitch refers to a thing that has the As for Fractal Methodology, more popu- the researcher. They posit that the non- same characteristics at every scale of larly referred to as Fractal Analysis, itself, normal and irregularity of so much of observation. Thus, when one zooms on a with its applications in the social scien- social science data apparently are the fractal object, observing it at ever-increa- ces, Clifford Brown and Larry Liebovitch result of the complexity of social sing scale of magnification, it will still look in their recent work appropriately titled dynamics. Thus, for them, fractal analysis the same (Brown and Liebovitvh 2010:5). offers an approach for analyzing many of Fractal Analysis (2010) published as part According to Brown and Liebovitch, these awkward data sets. And more of the Sage Publications Quantitative power law relations denote the rule that important, they note, the method also Analysis of the Social Sciences series for a set to achieve the complexity and offers a rational and parsimonious have a succinct exposé on the subject. irregularity of a fractal, the number of self- explanation for the irregularity and The rest of the discussion in this section similar pieces must be related to their size complexity of such data. They insist that is based on their work. by a power law. Power law dristributions the data are not behaving badly; instead, are scale invariant because the shape of Brown and Liebovitch begin by stating they are simply obeying unexpected but the function is the same at every magnitude that several early applications of fractal common rules of which we are unaware (Brown and Liebovitch 2010:5). mathematics emerged in the social (Brown and Liebovitch 2010:1). sciences. These works include Vilfredo Finally, Brown and Liebovitch Brown and Liebovitch go on to Pareto’s 1897 study of the distribution of characterize fractal dimension as the conceptualize fractals as "sets defined by wealth; Lewis Fry Richardson’s 1948 and invariant parameter that characterizes a the three related principles of self- 1960, but published posthumously, study fractal set. An analyst uses the fractal similarity, scale invariance, and power of the intensity of wars; and George dimension to describe the distribution of law relations." They postulate that when Zipf’s 1949 studies of the distributions of the data. It is akin to having a "normal" these principles converge, fractal patterns word frequencies and city sizes. Brown set of data and using the mean and form. They note that the statistic called and Liebovitch argue that while these variance to describe the location and fractal dimension is employed to capture ideas were known by experts in the field, dispersion of the data (Brown and the essential characteristics of fractal they were isolated, quirky concepts until Liebovitch 2010:15). Mandelbrot developed the unifying idea patterns. They add that much empirical CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 3 & 4, 2013 Page 36

Brief Descriptions of the Texts matical learning from a myriad points of and political aspects of investigating Analyzed view and culling from many studies in the learning and teaching in schools. She As mentioned earlier, six of Setati’s solely field not limited to South Africa, Setati points out that the precepts of working authored journal articles serve as the pays greater attention to code-switching "with" instead of "on" teachers have basis for the analysis that follows this because it is a topic that has received become the focal point of the ethical and section. Journal articles, especially when considerable attention in the country. Her educational issues dealing with the they are refereed, represent critical substantive findings affirm that language relationship between researchers and scholarly expertise and are reviewed by has tremendous power in mathematics teachers within educational research. She experts. And when such articles are solely education settings. She therefore calls for then challenges the practice of dissecting authored, they mostly represent that more research on the connection between conducting research "on" and conducting writer’s thoughts alone, as opposed to language and the learning and teaching research "with" teachers because of its coauthored articles which represent more of mathematics from a political point of undergirding tenet that power is than one writer’s thoughts. The six articles view. unidirectional. She therefore advocates for a corresponding power relationship are briefly described in the chronological Third, writing on "’Re’-presenting between researchers and teachers. order in which they were published in the Qualitative Data from Multilingual paragraphs that follow. Mathematics Classrooms" (2003), Setati Finally, in her essay titled "Access to First, Setati in her article, "Code-switching excogitates the notion of ‘re’-presenting Mathematics versus Access to the Lan- in a Senior Primary Class of Second- qualitative data from multilingual guage of Power: The Struggle in Multilin- language Mathematics Learners" (1998), mathematics classrooms. She draws upon gual Mathematics Classrooms" (2008), probes the various ways a senior primary a study on language practices in Setati examines the manner in which lear- mathematics teacher employed code- multilingual mathematics classrooms to ners and teachers situate themselves switching when instructing mathematics investigate the different levels involved vis-à-vis the use of language(s) in multi- to second-language learners with who in ‘re’-presenting such data. She then lingual mathematics classrooms in South she shared a first language. Setati points employs the data to demonstrate that ‘re’- Africa. The results from the investigation out that since linguistic diversity is a presenting multilingual data is more than led to several conclusions. To begin with, conspicuous aspect of South African just talk written down, as the process is learners and teachers who privilege En- society, it creates a number of educational influenced by the theory selected, the glish are concerned with access to the challenges, particularly in the employment research questions probed, the analytical social goods that the language provides. of languages in multilingual classrooms. tools employed, and the aspirations for Next, these learners and teachers do not Consequently, she notes, there has emerged ‘re’-presenting the data. focus on epistemological access but in- sist on English being the language of lear- considerable debate about this matter in Fourth, using data she gleaned from one ning and teaching. In contrast, learners the South African media. The discourse, lesson in a multilingual primary and teachers who support the use of their she adds, has led to two opposing pers- mathematics classroom in South Africa mother tongues position themselves in pectives that are undergirded by identity taught by a copiously qualified and relation to mathematics and, concomitant- and access to economic and political experienced teacher, Setati examines in her ly, epistemological access, thereby rever- power. One postulate is that English is a article titled "Teaching Mathematics in a berating more antithetical discourses. viable language of wider communication Primary Multilingual Classroom" (2005a) in a multilingual society like South Africa. the complex link between language and Indeed, the preceding texts comprise a The other perspective is that schools mathematics education in multilingual closed set of statements within which it should encourage the use of African classrooms in the society. Two major is easier to guess how and why new languages in order to nurture and promote findings emerged from this investigation. insights emerged, and what was those languages. The first finding is that since English was overlooked. Occasionally, they show Second, in her article titled "Researching the dominant language in the classroom, ‘new’ ideas are rediscoveries. But since Mathematics Education and Language in its ascendancy was privileged by today’s studies about the nexus between Multilingual South Africa" (2002), Setati procedural mathematics discourse. The language and mathematics are in process, analyzes policy, practice and research second finding is that while English to understand, let alone to evaluate them, issues that are germane to the learning functioned as the medium of mathematics, is more difficult. Analysts abandon or and teaching of mathematics in South authority, and assessment, the learners’ redefine traditional terms and produce Africa’s multilingual classrooms. She mother tongue functioned mainly as an such a welter of innovations that it is not begins with a brief history of language- instrument of solidarity. Setati therefore easy to find a neutral framework within in-education policy in South Africa to sounds the trumpet for researchers to which they can be compared. espy and comprehend the political role of demonstrate how the stratagem is What unifies the texts can appear rather language when investigating the nexus directed by both political and educational banal. But many linguistic and between language and mathematics interests. She therefore proffers the mathematical insights are so obvious, so education in multilingual classrooms. argument that "Language-use in a fundamental, that they are difficult to multilingual educational context like South Fifth, in the article titled "Researching absorb, appreciate, and express with fresh Africa is as much, if not more, a function Teaching and Learning in School from clarity. Thus, the originality of the of politics as it is of communication and "with" or "on" Teachers to "with" and following analysis hinges upon the clarity thinking" (2002:6). By considering the "on" Teachers" (2005b), Setati discusses with which familiar but uncontested facts nexus between language and mathe- a number of issues concerning the ethical about the texts analyzed are marshaled CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 3 & 4, 2013 Page 37 into a simpler, linguistically and plotted for oscillations between order and (2009) tend to say about Africans who mathematically satisfying unity. disorder in the six texts. This technique write about the African condition, or the made it possible to show visually the wholesale bashing of African leaders, as Data Analysis attractor reconstruction for the various scholars such as George Ayittey (1993, Before engaging in the fractal analysis of major themes in the texts. 1999, 2011) tend to do. In essence, Setati is more optimistic than pessimistic about the data generated from the six texts As shown in Table 1, a total of 1,456 topic the role of languages in South Africa’s described in the preceding section, I will entries were teased out of the text. Of mathematics education, albeit not begin with a discussion of the descriptive these, I categorize 864 or 59 percent as uncritical about its politics. and inferential statistics employed to presuppositions of order and 592 or 41 analyze them first. Before computing the percent as presuppositions of disorder. A similar sentiment is echoed by Amilcar univariate and bivariate statistics to do The mean for the order category is about Cabral in his "Identity and Dignity in the the descriptive and inferential analyses 22 presuppositions, with a standard Context of National Liberation Struggle" of the data teased out of the six texts, a deviation of approximately 19 when he asserts that one of the essential two-dimensional ad hoc classificatory presuppositions; the mean for the characteristics of contemporary history system was developed within which the disorder category is 15 presuppositions, is the people’s struggle for national data were categorized. The first of these with a standard deviation of approximately liberation and independence from categories entails the presuppositions of 14 propositions. The range for the order imperialist rule. This struggle, he order: that is, presuppositions that category is 72 presuppositions and that contends, hinges upon "returning to the suggest a condition of logical or for the disorder category is 57 source" and of identity and dignity in the comprehensible arrangement among the presuppositions, while the variance for context of the national liberation separate elements of a group. This type order is about 349 presuppositions and movement (Cabral 1995:73-74). of presupposition is triggered by that for disorder is approximately 209. From Chief Albert John Luthuli, the presuppositional discourse stretches This means that there are more, and President-General of the African National such as "Linguistic diversity is an statistically significant, topic entries for Congress from 1952 to 1957, we also get important feature of the South African presuppositions of order than there are the following: nation," "One view is that in a multilingual of those for disorder. Moreover there are country like South Africa, English is a significant variations among the themes Who will deny that thirty years of my viable language of wider communication," for each category in terms of topic entries, life have been spent knocking in vain, and "The other view is that there is a need as can be gleaned from the ranges. patiently, moderately, and modestly as to develop and promote African languages a closed and barred door? What have The preceding results make it axiomatic and one way of doing this is to encourage been the fruits of moderation? The to assert that Setati’s treatise on the nexus their use in schools" (these examples are past thirty years have seen the from Setati 1998:34). The second category between African languages and greatest number of laws restricting our encompasses presuppositions of mathematics is gnoseologic. According rights and progress, until today we disorder: that is, presuppositions that to Guinean President Ahmed Sékou Touré, have reached a stage where we have suggest a condition or place of confusion, in his essay, "A Dialectical Approach to almost no rights at all. It is with this mess, disturbance, disarray, or muddle. Culture," Gnoseology refers to the background and with a full sense of This type of presupposition is triggered positive-intuitive thinking that is driven responsibility that, under the auspi- by presuppositional discourse stretches by the African’s spiritual mind (1989:7). ces of the African National Congress, such as "Separating learners according Indeed, Touré considers Black I have joined my people in the new to their first languages may be perceived revolutionaries to have promoted an spirit that moves them today, the spi- as bringing apartheid back, whilst evolution of progressive qualification of rit that revolts openly and boldly choosing one of the languages as a reason that privileges gnoseology, which against injustice and expresses itself medium and not the others may also be facilitates "the transition from ignorance in a determined and non-violent manner. What the future has in store interpreted as favouring one group over to an increasingly deeper and more exact for me I do not know. It might be ridi- the others," "…at senior primary levels degree of knowledge" (1989:14). Thus, cule, imprisonment, concentration pupils are far less capable of handling Touré argues that "Any anthology of African culture tending to situate it camp, flogging, banishment, and even content subjects through English than death. I only pray to the Almighty to outside the realm of reason, of rational through their mother tongue," "…the strengthen my resolve so that none thought, of the law and of gnoseology language transition is not only the pupils’ of these grim possibilities may deter tends to down-grade it and deviate it from problem. It affects teachers and their me from striving, for the sake of the methods, orientations and resources," its true end, which is to qualify mankind, good name of our beloved country, and "It can, however, be predicted that and sacrifices it to the myth of singularity the Union of South Africa, to make it a most schools will not opt for mother and specificity" (1989:14). true democracy and a true nation, in tongue learning, since among speakers Yet still, given the significant number of form and spirit, of all the communities of African languages, mother-tongue presuppositions of disorder in the text, it in the land (Luthuli Museum 1952 policy has a bad image" (these examples is not tenable to assert that Setati engaged speech: are also from Setati 1998:34). in either "romanticizing" about South http://www.luthulimuseum.org.za/ luthulis-life-/speeches). After computing the descriptive and African languages, as some critics like inferential statistics, the data were then Stephen Howe (1999) and Tunde Adeleke CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 3 & 4, 2013 Page 38

Table 1: Univariate Statistics by Types of Presuppositions in the Texts

Sections/Themes in Texts Number of Topic Entries for Number of TopicEntries for Presuppositions of Order Presuppositions of Disorder N%N%

1. Code-switching…(1998) Introduction 26 21028 What exactly is code-switching? 9 69 4 31 The source of the data? 27 71 4 31 How often and why code-switching occur? 22 71 11 29 Types of switching 57 86 9 14 Discussion and notes 8 73 3 27

2. Researching Mathematics…(2002) Introduction 3 75 1 25 The history of language-in-education… 45 59 31 41 The school mathematics curriculum… 20 83 4 17 The relationship between language... 30 43 40 57 Teaching and learning mathematics… 8 50 58 50 The political role of language… 40 70 17 30 Conclusion 2 40 3 60

3. ‘Re’-presenting Qualitative…(2003) ZDM-classification: D20 2 79 6 21 Researching multilingualism… 11 42 15 58 From the actual experience… 20 50 20 50 From transcription to translation 13 43 17 57 From translation to interpretation 31 60 21 40 Suggestion for a way forward 8 67 4 33

4. Teaching Mathematics…(2005a) Introduction 7 54 6 46 What do I mean by discourse? 18 58 13 42 The political role of language 27 59 19 41 Analysis of language(s) used, discourses… 74 64 41 36 Languages, discourses, and cultural… 3 25 9 75 Implications for curriculum, assessment… 11 58 8 42 Conclusion 7 54 6 46

5. Researching Teaching…(2005b) Introduction 8 43 24 57 Negotiating access 65 54 55 46 Providing feedback on analysis of data… 28 82 6 18 The nature of teachers’ involvement… 62 44 27 38 Conclusion 2 66 1 34 CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 3 & 4, 2013 Page 39

Table 1: Univariate Statistics by Types of Presuppositions in the Texts (continued)

6. Access to Mathematics…(2008) Introduction 10 53 9 47 The political role of language and its use… 8 50 8 50 Theoretical framework 9 82 2 18 Data collection and procedure 7 70 3 30 Teachers’ language choices 24 44 31 56 Learners’ language choices 41 58 30 42 What does this mean for research… 6 43 8 57 Conclusion 3 50 3 50

Totals Scores & Mean Percents = 1,456 or 100 64 59 592 41 Mean 22.15 15.18 Standard Deviation 18.687 14.469 Range 72 57 Variance 349.186 209.362

Source: Self-generated data from the texts and computed using MATLAB

Table 2: T-Test: Paired Samples–Test and Correlation

Pair 1: Order-Disorder Paired Differences Mean 6.97 Standard Deviation 11.474 Standard Error Mean 1.837 95% Confidence Interval of the Difference Lower 3.25 Upper 10.69 t-Statistic 3.796 Degrees of Freedom 38 Significance (2-tailed) 0.001 Pair 1: Order and Disorder Paired Samples Correlation Correlation 0.789 Significance 0.0001

Source: Self-generated data from the texts and computed using MATLAB

Essential dignity of Blacks is also Tabourets of honour for the But then the friendly light of your blue expressed in poetic forms such as in hereditary hosts, the princes from the kindness will soften the obsession of President of Senegal and father of High-country. this presence in Negritude Léopold Sédar Senghor’s "For Wild and proud perfumes from the Black, white and red, O red like the Khalan" (a guitar with three strings): thick tresses of silence, soil of Africa We delighted, my friend, in an African Cushions of shadow and leisure like (www.disa.ukzn.ac.za/webpages/DC/ presence: quiet well running. asjul58.22/asjul58.22.pdf). Indeed, Setati is quite unapologetic in Furniture, from Guinea and the Congo, Eternal words and the distant heavy and polished, dark and light. alternating chant as in the loin-cloths advocating that the Essential Dignity of from the Sudan. African languages be elevated and Primitive and pure masks on distant employed in learning and teaching walls yet so near. CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 3 & 4, 2013 Page 40 mathematics in South African schools, involved. It enables the participants attractor correspond to a cognitive despite the dominance of English in the to make relevant connections with structure in the mind of Setati? Or, since I endeavor. As she puts it, their lives beyond the school (Setati was the "signal director" for these data, 1998:40). would it be better to think of them as a ...the power of mathematics and Setati further insists that "socio-cognitive" structure created English can work together in through the interaction between the Setati multilingual mathematics classrooms …in addition to encouraging the use and her targeted audience. to reduce the mathematical oppor- of the learners’ home language, there tunities for procedural discourse. is also a need to consider multilingual Furthermore, Figure 2 is the log-log Further, it appears that for substantial assessment practices, where test items plot (or log-log graph) generated to teaching and learning and engage- can be given in the LoLT [language of represent the observed units ment in conceptual discourse to occur, learning and teaching – i.e. English] described by the two-dimensional the learners’ main languages are and in the learners’ home language(s) variable encompassing order (y) and required. However, given the master and learners can respond to the ques- disorder (x) as a scatter plot/graph. model of English is Inter-national, it tions in a language they prefer. For The two axes display the logarithm of is not always possible to fulfill this this to happen, school language values of the two dimensions, not the requirement. The issue is not only that policies need to be more flexible to values themselves. If the relationship additional language learners learn give teachers the freedom to assess between x and y is described by a mathematics in a language that is not in multiple languages…For learners in power law, their main one, but that the various these [i.e. multilingual] classrooms to a languages used will privilege different be successful in a reform curriculum it y = x ; discourses of mathematics (Setati is important that their home languages then the (x, y) points on the log-log plot 2002:18). be used as legitimate language(s) of form a line with the slope equal to a. Log- Setati also asserts that interaction in a range of mathematical log plots are widely used to represent Discourses (Setati, 2005a:463-464). data that are expected to be scale-invariant The extensive use of Tswana may not Also, as can be seen in Figure 1, the data or fractal because, as stated before, fractal be allowed, but it seems that it is the are plotted in a phase space. The plot is data usually follow a power law. best means available to teachers to neither an orderly periodic oscillation, nor foster mathematical under-standing in A logarithm is an exponent. It is illustrated is it simply a random scattering. There is their pupils. Apart from being an in the following definition: structure here, suggesting that this could educational resource, the use of the For b > 0, b ≠ 1 and for x > 0, learners’ first language is also a key be a slice through a higher dimensional attractor. Would this higher-dimensional y to the world and culture of the learners y = logbx if and only if b = x

Figure 1: Phase Space Portrait Mapping Presuppositions of Order and Disorder

80

60

40

20

0 ORDER 0 10 20 30 40 50 60

DISORDER

Source: Self-generated data from the texts and computed using MATLAB CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 3 & 4, 2013 Page 41

Thus, since a logarithm is an exponent, it But there is a higher level of "orchestra- If my speculation concerning this phase is easy to use exponent laws to establish tion" in which Setati produces meaning space portrait is correct – if there is in- mathematical generalizations. deed an underlying structure that could Conclusion be characterized by fractal variation, this Figure 2 illustrates the fractal dimension is noteworthy in that it could be a com- of the two-dimensionality of the variable. The data gleaned from Setati’s texts made monality within at least some bodies of The binary logistic statistics reveal that it possible to explore a phase space created African literature. Further experiments the relationship between the two by two dimensions: (1) presuppositions of would be needed to test this hypothesis. dimensions is statistically significant at order and (2) presuppositions of disorder. Nonetheless, as Kofi Nyidevu Awoonor the 0.0001 level. Visually, the text This was done to investigate the (1990) and I (Bangura, 2002) posit, the essentially moves halfway across the possibility that a fractal structure could African life concept is holistic – i.e. it is spectrum – it typically moves from exist in the literary dynamics that drive based on an integrative world view. All periodic fractal, rather than stretching all the narratives, similar to the ways that life to the African is total; all human acti- the way to pure order or disorder. Thus, fractal structure exist in attractors for vities are closely interrelated. This has as the results generated after the MATLAB certain nonlinear physical systems. The its underlying principle the sanctity of the computer runs suggest that the substantive findings, as stated earlier, person, her/his spirituality and essentia- combination of negative and positive reveal that it is indeed possible to generate lity. This essentialist view of the person feedback loops, which form the basis of a phase space portrait in which data are confers value to her/his personhood. All several African knowledge systems – as mapped to a structure that has the kind of else – her/his labor and achievements – Ron Eglash (1999:173-4) suggests, also mix between periodic and random flow from this value system. Even perso- form a key mechanism of general self- variation that we would expect from nal shortcomings cannot invalidate it. organizing systems discussed in Setati’s chaotic dynamics. This is not conclusive This salubriousness is evident in Setati’s texts. Indeed, Setati’s framing of the issue proof by any means – a full experiment work which emphasizes the fact that poli- in her texts is reminiscent of African ways: would need to compare the results from tics shepherds the labyrinthine nexus i.e. despite the challenges and hardship, several readers, examine such data in between language and mathematics in their thought processes never become closer detail (for example, perhaps, South Africa’s educational system. As she completely chaotic. scoring every page rather than every thematic section), and look at other such puts it succinctly, In sum, there are at least two levels in presuppositions. But it does suggest that My own experience as a multilingual which order and disorder are contrasted this kind of analysis could be extended teacher and researcher in multilin- here. Within the statements of Setati, or- further to investigations of literary derly and disorderly events come and go. gual mathematics classrooms dynamics. suggests that we cannot describe

Figure 2: Log-log Plot Order vs Disorder in the Texts

2 10

1 10

0 10 0 1 2 10 10 10

Binary Logistic: y = 1.020 + 0.130 R2 = 0.623; p = 0.0001 Source: Self-generated data from the texts and computed by using MATLAB CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 3 & 4, 2013 Page 42

and explain language practices in a serves as a distinctly African rationale Bangura, Abdul Karim. 2005. Ubuntugogy: An coherent and comprehensive way if for these ways of relating to others. African educational paradigm that we stop at the cognitive and the African-centeredness gives a distinctly transcends pedagogy, andragogy, ergonagy, pedagogic aspects. We have to go African meaning to, and a reason or and heutagogy. Journal of Third World beyond these aspects and explore motivation for, a positive attitude towards Studies xxii, 2:13-53. the political aspects of language use the other. In light of the calls for an African Bangura, Abdul Karim. 2002. Sojourner- in multilingual mathematics clas- Renaissance, African-centeredness urges srooms (Setati 2002:15). Douglass College=s Philosophy in Action: Africans to be true to their promotion of An African-Centered Creed. San Jose, Indubitably, in order for Setati to capture good governance, democracy, peaceful California: Writers Club Press. the essentiality of the nexus between relations and , African languages and mathematics, she educational and other developmental Bangura, Abdul Karim. 2000. Chaos Theory and had to attune herself extensively not only aspirations. African Fractals. Washington, DC: The with the scholarly literature and media African Institution. discourses on mathematics education, her We ought never to falsify the cultural reality (life, art, literature) which is the goal Brown, Clifford and Larry Liebovitch. 2010. field of expertise, but also with those on Fractal Analysis. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage linguistics and political science. of African-centeredness. Thus, we would have to oppose all sorts of simplified or Publications. In addition, Awoonor (1990) and I (Ban- supposedly simplified approaches and Brown, Gillian and George Yule. 1983. 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from the French by Harold Salemson). Stanger, KwaDukuya, South Africa. teachers to "with" and "on" teachers. Chicago, IL: Lawrence Hill Books. Retrieved on January 13, 2013 from http:/ Perspectives in Education 23, 1:91-101. /www.luthulimuseum.org.za/luthulis-life-/ Eglash, Ron. 1999. African Fractals: Modern Setati, Mamokgethi. 2003. ‘Re’-presenting speeches Computing and Indigenous Design. New qualitative data from multilingual Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Mazonde, Isaac and Pradip Thomas (eds.). 2007. mathematics classrooms. ZDM (Zentralblatt Indigenous Knowledge Systems and für Didaktik der Mathematik): The Frege, Gottlob. 1892/1952. On sense and Intellectual Property in the Twenty-First International Journal on Mathematics reference. In P. T. Geach and M. Black. Century: Perspectives from Southern Africa. Education 35, 6:294-300. Translations from the Philosophic Writings Dakar, Senegal: Council for the of Gottlob Frege. Oxford, England: Setati, Mamokgethi. 2002. Researching Development of Social Science Research in Blackwell. mathematics education and language in Africa (CODESRIA) Publications. multilingual South Africa. The Mathematics Gangoueus, Chez. Dimanche 22 Juin 2008. Mokhtar, G. 1990. Ancient Civilizations of Africa. Educator 12, 2:6-20. Cheikh Anta Diop: L’Afrique noir Berkeley, CA: University of California précoloniale. Retrieved on January 23, 2012 Setati, Mamokgethi. 1998. Code-switching in a Press. from http://gangoueus.blogspot.com/2008/ senior primary class of second-language 06/cheikh-anta-diop-lafrique-noire... Nabudere, Dani W. 2003. Towards the mathematics learners. For the Learning of establishment of a Pan-African university: Mathematics 18, 1:34-40. Grice, Herbert Paul. 1975. Logic and A strategic concept paper. African Journal conversation. In P. Cole. (ed.). Syntax and Shuy, Roger W. 1982. Topic as the unit of of Political Science 8, 1:1-30. Semantics: vol. 3: Speech Acts. New York, analysis in a criminal law case. In D. Tannen. NY: Academic Press. Senghor, Léopold Sédar. n.d. The Poetry of (ed.). Analyzing Discourse: Text and Talk. Sédar-Senghor—DISA. Retrieved on Washington, DC: Georgetown University Hargittai, István and Cliff A. Pickover. (eds.). January 13, 2013 from http:// Press. 1992. Spiral Symmetry. , www.disa.ukzn.ac.za/webpages/DC/ : World Scientific Publishing Steen, Lynn A. (ed.). 1988. Introduction to asjul58.22/asjul58.22.pdf Company. Contemporary Mathematics. New York, NY: Setati, Mamokgethi. 2008. Access to W. H. Freeman and Company. Howe, Stephen. 1999. Afrocontricism: Mythical mathematics versus access to the language Pasts and Imagined Homes. New York, NY: Strawson, Peter F. 1952. Introduction to Logical of power: The struggle in multilingual Verso Books. Theory. London, England: Methuen. mathematics classrooms. South African Kates, Carol A. 1980. Pragmatics and Journal of Education 28:103-116. Touré, Sékou. 1989. A dialectical approach to Semantics: An Empiricist Theory. Ithaca, culture. In R. Chrisman and N. Hare, eds. Setati, Mamokgethi. 2005a. Teaching New York: Cornell University Press. Contemporary Black Thought. Indianapolis, mathematics in a primary multilingual IN and New York, NY: The Bobbs-Merrill Levinson, Stephen. 1983. Pragmatics. classroom. Journal for Research in Co, Inc./MacMillan Press. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Mathematics Education 36, 5:447-466. Winters, Clyde Ahmad. 1998. The Afrocentric Luthuli, Chief Albert John. 1952 speech. Setati, Mamokgethi. 2005b. Researching . The Western Journal of Black Studies 22. Speeches and Statements by Luthuli. teaching and learning from "with" or "on"

Coloniality of Power in Postcolonial Africa: Myths of Decolonization Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni / ISBN: 978-2-86978-578-6 — pages : 308 p. This lively book interrogates the African postcolonial condition with a focus on the thematics of liberation predicament and the long standing crisis of dependence (epistemological, cultural, economic, and political) created by colonialism and coloniality. A sophisticated deployment of historical, philosophical, and political knowledge in combination with the equi-primordial concepts of coloniality of power, coloniality of being, and coloniality of knowledge yields a comprehensive and truly refreshing understanding of African realities of subalternity. What distinguishes this book is its decolonial entry that enables a critical examination of the grammar of decolonization that is often wrongly conflated with that of emancipation; bold engagement with the intractable question of what and who is an African; systematic explication of the role of coloniality in sustaining Euro-American hegemony; and unmasking of how the ‘postcolonial’ is interlocked with the ‘neocolonial’ paradoxically. It is within this context that the postcolonial African state emerges as a leviathan, and the ‘postcolonial’ reality becomes a terrain of contradictions mediated by the logic of violence. No doubt, Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni’s handling of complex concepts and difficult questions of the day is remarkable, particularly the decoding and mixing of complex theoretical interventions from Africa and Latin America to enlighten the present, without losing historical perspicacity. To buttress the theoretical arguments, detailed empirical case studies of South Africa, Zimbabwe, DRC and Namibia completes this timely contribution to African Studies. CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 3 & 4, 2013 Page 44

Afrikology and Community Conversations on Restorative Cultural practices in the Mt. Elgon area

Introduction other local groups elsewhere in the world. The argument here seems to be that if the Natural resources supply raw material Ronald Elly Wanda1 for getting the work of the world done. driving force towards globalization is Cultural resources organize co- Marcus Garvey Panafrican Institute, domination, then globalised resistance operation among people for getting the Mbale, Uganda based on "global consciousness" ought work of the world done. to be its antithesis. The imperative, as such, for the authentic liberation of Africa, Dani Nabudere, 2006. knowledge as valid within their historical, cultural or social contexts as argued by another revered philosopher The foundation of our talk in this chapter Mogobe Ramose, requires neither a is the timeless supposition that we are and seeks to engage them into a dialogue that can lead to better supplicative apologia nor an interminable culturally more together than we are knowledge for all. It recognises obsequies in defense of being African. alone. Our theme aims to explore the peoples’ traditions as a fundamental "The African must simply be an African, practicalities of culture in peace creation pillar in the creation of such cross- that is, a human being second to none i.n and the workings of Afrikology as an cultural understandings in which the our contingent but complex universe"3 epistemology in East African commu- Africans can stand out as having been The brutal and systematic assault on nities, or to put it simply, Afrikology and the fore-bearers of much of what is communities across Africa and the cultural clusterism in action. What does called Greek or European heritage as subsequent systems (cultural, religious, Afrikology look like? What is the DNA fact of history that ought to be epistemological, curricula’s, governance composition of cultural clusters in Mt recognised, because from this fact etc) imposed on communities denotes that Elgon’s cross-border communities? alone, it can be shown that cross- this is essential. cultural interactions has been a fact To begin with, the first articulation of of historical reality.2 Afrikology declares that: "it is a true The dialectical impact of philosophy of knowledge and wisdom Professor Nabudere argues meticulously colonialism in Africa based on African cosmogonies. It is afri- that for centuries the African personality For Africans the world over, the advent because it is inspired by the ideas has been bedeviled by the burden of of colonialism by Europeans was a tragic originally produced from the cradle of foreign domination that has thus affected experience. In 1885 during the so-called humankind located East Africa. It is not her self-understanding. Subsequently, ‘Berlin Conference’, Africa was scrambled Afrikology because it is African, but it is Nabudere urges that the process of re- up among occupying powers with the sole afri-because it emanates from the source awakening and recovery in Africa has to aim of violently looting as much as they of the Universal system of knowledge be one of a historical deconstruction, could in their areas of influence. Thus originating in Africa. The philosophic what he calls "consciousness raising," African states were created to facilitate product is therefore not relativistic to not by others, but by Africans themselves and ease the efficiency of rapid colonial Africa but universal in essence with its tracing the origins and achievements of exploitation. The colony became a base in Africa. It is also –(ko)logy their civilizations. This, he insists, laboratory of caprice where all sorts of because it is based on the logos-the word, requires the adoption of Afrikology as an clinical trials (political, social, and cultural) which was uttered to set in motion the epistemology that recognises orality as a were performed, causing untold suffering Universe in its originality. It was from that valid source of knowledge. He therefore, to African communities- effects of which word that human consciousness first encourages researchers and practitioners still remain visible this present moment.4 emerged and it was from that cons- alike to adopt a holistic approach towards The dialectical inter-phase that occurred ciousness that humanity emerged as recognising that orality can only be during colonization also left Africa ruined thinking and acting agent with language interpreted under a platform that psychologically and intellectually. The from the word as the active cultural accommodates multi- and interdis- experience left two broad "legacies" on achievement. As Dani Nabudere, the ciplinary approaches. Appropriately Africa; first was the denial of African epistemological and philosophical enough, this is what he calls ‘act locally, identity and second was the foisting of grandmaster of Afrikology, in one of his think globally.’ Implicit in this epigram is western thought and cultural realities and last books (before his sudden death) the belief that it is local struggles in the perspectives on Africans. In Egypt for Afrikology: Philosophy and Wholeness villages that can guarantee African- instance, the late Palestinian-American (2011) illustrates: rebirth, resurgence and renaissance and academic Edward Said has observed that ensure that local communities reject neo- when the British ruling class tried to Afrikology is not African-centric or traditionalism that had been instituted by assume political power over Egypt, it did Afrocentric. It is a universal scientific the colonial state. However, Nabudere at so by first establishing British ‘knowledge epistemology that goes beyond the same time warns that this should not of Egypt’." Said further elaborates that: Eurocentricism, or other ethno- be seen in isolation but in solidarity with centrisms. It recognises all sources of CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 3 & 4, 2013 Page 45

The British were initially not and inspired many of the problems our human rights for the last four hundred concerned principally with military or communities face today; this includes years) that has since been hurriedly economic power over Egypt, but their those now being rotated as universal imposed on African communities, by knowledge of the Orients, including rights and the deliberate portrayal of exogenous forces in collaboration with Egypt, was conceived as a form of women in Africa as victims of traditional local elites, African thought and society power. The objective was to have such culture and in need of rescue. has subsequently experienced a crisis of knowledge about the "distant other" meaning, of life, persons, and community. The identification of African women as in order to be able "to dominate it and This is because this liberal heritage (exert) authority over it." This in effect subordinate victims, devoid of any form imposed on Africans its notion of the meant denying autonomy of of agency to resist or challenge world, values, and manner of living. knowledge over the object of domi- oppression, has roots in historical, According to this heritage, social nation since to do so would have economic, social, cultural and political evolution constitutes the basic principle recognised the existence of knowledge structures designed and defended by of the world and its main assumption is of the object over itself. The object’s Eurocentric philosophies. Ugandan that technical knowledge is therefore the existence could only be recognised, scholar Mukasa Luutu has argued only key to human development. This in the words of the Colonial represen- elsewhere that this perception of African 5 Western view of development is based tatives, in as much "as we know it." justice systems implies that indigenous on the idea that humanity moves in a Africa was insensitive to human rights As such, the current cultural value crisis linear fashion and that this movement or and as such, the concept of human rights among Africans is the result of the impact progress is unidirectional and irreversible. and its protection originated from of liberal philosophy and its associated One implication of this view is that there Western civilization. On the same basis, discourses. For so long the liberal paradigm is and can only be one path or direction human rights have been misappropriated has undermined the hermeneutic power of that humanity can take, and that this is and patented as an organic attribute of Africans to interpret the world through the one provided by advanced Western Western society and values; this has their symbols. One common factor among countries.7 And as Malawian Philosopher portrayed the West as the mode, the liberal theories is the value that they place Harvey Sindima has pointed out, this is yardstick and arbiter over human rights on individual freedom to pursue interests the understanding behind the concepts concerns in the world.6 and goals. This is perhaps why classical of ‘modernity’ and ‘progress’.8 Professor liberals such as the British Philosophers One other key problem characterizing the Sindima rightly concludes, that "centuries John Locke and John Stewart Mills placed post-colonial state in East Africa has been have shown that the alliance between strong emphasis on freedoms from social its tendency to fragment its own progress, science, and technology has control. From this foundational value of communities into hostile factions. Instead not eliminated misery; on the contrary freedom follows the welfare state, wealth, of politically uniting its people within and destitution has emerged and the future of and power manifestations of a mindset across its borders, the African political all creation hangs in the balance".9 centered on individualism. Therefore, the elites have resorted to colonial tactics of concept of the world and manner of living ‘divide and rule’ and the ideology of ‘neo- The legacy of liberalism on which informs Western societies can best tribalism’ by exploiting the ethnic African ‘intellectuals’ and policy be described as materialistic. This way of diversities of their communities to their makers life has captivated the Western civilization benefit and to the detriment of unity in Nowadays in East Africa, Eurocentric ever since and has been aggressively the so called ‘state’. It is common place in ideas are still very prevalent and their exported to all parts of the world where East Africa to be asked by state operatives: liberal notions pervade all aspects of life, their civilization has gone in search for We, toa kipande or kitu kidogo or at times particularly in urban areas. ‘Modernity’ material resources and fulfilling its if you are very unlucky toa kitu yote or ‘catching up’ with the West: its expansionist philosophy. (produce your identity card, or money). technology, infrastructure and even way Instead of utilizing the rich ethnic and of life seem to be the primary objective Epistemological dependency cultural diversities of communities as culture in Africa towards which many countries are busy building blocks to a people’s African striving towards. This precarious Today in East Africa, in spite of flag unity, they use these diversities to divide mentality has been worsened by a brigade independence in the early 1960s, the state the people even further in order to, yet of natives under diverse name tags such is still dependent on Western political again, enrich themselves. In so doing they as "intellectuals," "change agents," or constructs, socio-legal ideas, and judicial perpetuate neo-colonial domination and even "modernists," euro-centrically and epistemological philosophies. Like fall prey to powerful global force. They trained, it seems, in the fine art of social, elsewhere in Africa, this is because the are therefore deliberately failing to political, and worst of all cultural banditry. structures of all nation-states (Kenya, deconstruct the exogenously hegemonic They tend to reject and at times even deny Uganda, Tanzania, , Burundi) agendas wearing economic, religious, Africa’s own cultural and intellectual oozes from an engineered political charitable and other guises programmed achievements. In another arena, one critic metaphysical past, where people never into the colonial state, preferring instead captures this self-denial psyche well: "It dialogued their differences as a basis for to reconstruct it in every way the former was African scholars who were affected federating. They were simply conscripted colonialist would have wanted - one that by Eurocentric education or who had not into geopolitical constructs that they supports them and not communities. been exposed to the rich cultural history neither chose nor bargained for. of Africa that denied the existence of Therefore, colonialism as such, designed Under the liberal heritage (that has guided European thought on development and African philosophy during the "Great CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 3 & 4, 2013 Page 46

Debate" of the seventies and eighties."10 because, although powerful, it cannot domain of operation. Political parties Sadly, there are certain writers such as administer welfare. This observation la- across East Africa, instead of being a force the Ghanaian Kwasi Wiredu in his 1980 ter gave rise to his other book Africa for democratisation, have instead been publication Philosophy and an African Works (1999) that Chabal penned with empty vehicles for tribal barons or cabals Culture, who have busied themselves Jean-Pascal Daloz, in which he argued of kleptocrats without a committed agenda with the appalling task of watering down that, after all, there might be a way of per- for cultural restoration or political or social the insulting language of Eurocentric ceiving Africa as quite efficient – if only reform. Political parties have been writers and their condescending attitudes we were to remove a western lens.11 instruments of convenience for powerful towards African tradition - by supporting individual politicians. Rather than help their fundamental insinuation that The changing global political forge cultural consciousness they’ve led Western tradition of thought is essentially culture: from globalisation to to further fragmentation of the state that superior to the African tradition of glocalisation has in turn led to further violence at the thought. They have gone even further by All over the world today, there is some- heartbeat of communities’.14 saying much more than this. Their thing taking place, a ‘wind of change’ of Newton Garver in his tidy article What conclusion is that Africans may never some sort if you like. We are seeing a lar- Violence Is (1968)15 has suggested that develop any respectable tradition of ge shift of socio-cultural and socio-poli- violence is not only a matter of physical thought unless and until they can copy tical attitudes where communities by and force but rather that it is also psycho- western paradigms. large are retreating to the local as the only logical in that it affects ones ability to make source of security in a world where little their own decisions. He went on to show Cultural rootless leadership and seems to make sense anymore. With so- that each kind of violence has both community fragmentation in East ciety at the international and national le- personal and institutional forms. It is not Africa vel seen as abstract and unrealistic, the my aim to take issue here with Garver’s Today, one pertinent problem that local is increasingly being viewed as real account but merely to tap into his continues to characterize our so-called and practical. In a world where once eve- observations that I think are relevant in states in East Africa is their tendency to ry local phenomenon was examined from the context of our present conversation. fragment their own communities into the point of view of its national and inter- Garver’s account is valuable as it stands. hostile factions. Instead of politically national ramifications, the reverse is likely It gives a useful way of viewing a vast uniting their its people within and across to be the case today. British political so- range of very diverse and often specta- its borders, our political elites have ciologist Frank Furedi captures this chan- cular human behaviour, a way which resorted to colonial tactics of ‘divide and ge well: "ironically, the more the world is enables us to see through the diversity rule’ and the ideology of ‘neo-tribalism’ becoming internationalized, with every and spectacle to certain essential features by exploiting the ethnic diversities of our region brought into an intimate rela- in respect to Afrikology and its application communities to their benefit and to the tionship with the world market forces, the in communities. detriment of unity in the so called ‘state’. more the singularity of the experience of In so doing they perpetuate neo-colonial the parish-pump is insisted upon".12 Garver roots his account of violence in a domination and fall prey to a powerful specific moral practice, namely, the global force. Social movements and evaluation of behaviour in terms of community interactivity fundamental human rights. He argues that It is fair to point out, as such, that the we get an even greater resolution of current economic, political and intellec- In the Mt. Elgon area of East Africa, this restorative exodus has also caught on. diversity if we focus on the question of tual elites suffer from an acute sense of what is common to these two basic kinds cultural relevance before the generality As if responding to Herbert Stein, the American economist’s caustic aphorism of violence. Much of who we are depends of their people. Thus they espouse vi- on our ability to act in concert with each sions and programs of modernity and "If something cannot go on forever, it will stop",13 Community Sites of Knowledge other. This is true of our physical survival. development driven by imported cultural Few of us could live for more than a few benchmarks. This is a direct result of the (CSK – depositories of indigenous knowledge systems) are increasingly days, and none of us would have matured impact of western ways of thinking and into adults, without the ongoing support doing things and its associated discour- becoming nurseries for alternatives socio- cultural and political leadership leading of various forms of interactions. This ses on them, which instils an allergic ins- interdependence, according to Garver, is tinct against African cultural rootedness to organic restorative practices, at the centre of which one finds efforts to address also true of our community and cultural which is fashionably castigated as ‘bac- life. Our language, our knowledge, our kwardness’, ‘ignorance’, ‘superstition’, persistent questions of marginalization, discrimination and social and cultural arts, all of our social structures, and even ‘primitive’, ‘parochial’ etc. In a word, the much of our sense of self are a function African state can be summed up as what exclusions. This is in large measure a response to the declining political and of our capacity for interactions. I think it Professor Patrick Chabal has called ‘non- is fair to say that most of what we value in organic state’. Chabal argues that the cultural capacity of the state and triggered by the realization slowly taking place in life is creatively woven out of our capacity African state is both ‘overdeveloped and for complex, diverse, sustained and soft’. It is overdeveloped because it was the region that democratization will not come from periodic elections, which systematic interactions. One fundamental fastidiously and artificially put into pla- purpose of Afrikology is to enhance our ce. All the textbook institutions of a state political parties have for so long mistakenly viewed as their exclusive ability to interact with each other so as to and its government are present. It is soft improve our lives. It enriches us by CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 3 & 4, 2013 Page 47 amplifying our ability to satisfy our varied. Such a dialogue between the two conflicts, other social and economic desires, power, through concerted worlds had been an on-going struggle and underlying factors have also played a role activity. It is just as clear that diminishing counter-struggle that has to be recogni- in fuelling the conflicts. In addition, the each other’s ability to participate in such zed and understood. The two constitu- conflicts have had negative social, forms of interactivity impoverishes us all, ted a dialectical relationship and this cultural, and economic impacts on all sometimes as is the case in most places in relationship had to be interrogated. We cross-border communities living in the East Africa, in violent ways. Afrikology is came to the conclusion that modernity had area among them: displacement, physical the art of interactions. not fully managed to contain and destroy harm to individuals; the destruction of tradition, but that on the contrary in some property; death resulting in a high Afrikology in communities cases the latter had outlasted the former incidence of orphans and widows; rape Over the past few years, all the major social although with the odd modification. This and other forms of sexual violence and science paradigms from structuralism to interrogation proceeded along the path exploitation; and the resulting food and , world systems theory and that sought to highlight the strategies of general insecurity. Furthermore, these globalization that had sought to explain survival adopted by traditionalism problems have presented the cross- the predicament of African societies in against the destructive impact of a globa- border communities already dealing with terms of structures and epistemologies lizing and universalizing modernization – conflicts of multiple types, from mineral have been countered and critiqued by a which offered no new benefits to those extraction to cattle rustling, to drought, perspective that places primacy and affected by modernization. to post-conflict inter-ethnic violence, to the creation of national parks for tourism emphasis on the human heart, creativity The second narrative comes from Iwoko- in both sides of the mountain in Kenya and resilience, in a word – Afrikology. One dan community site of knowledge based and Uganda. However, until now, there of the most important features of in Palisa, Uganda as it searches for judi- has been no comprehensive effort in Afrikology to the epistemological cial balance through the workings of res- focusing on culture as an alternative struggle in the academic understanding torative justice in redressing inter and dispute resolution mechanism as well as of social and cultural change in Africa has intra-community transgressions. This ari- restorative practices of cross-border been its capacity to explode often victi- ses out of realisation of the fact that wes- communities as a soluble alternative in mizing approaches in exchange for a much tern analytical philosophical paradigms, promoting peace and regional security in more balanced understanding of which inform social sciences and the hu- Africa. After all, the concepts of ‘culture’, communities at work in Africa. Commen- manities, tend to polarise situations. This ‘peace’, ‘security’ and ‘development’ are ting directly on the heritage of the social is in a way what dialectics has meant for indeed, intimately related. science and humanities’ enterprises in western thought right from Plato and Africa, Nabudere, as part of his intellectual Hegel. Philosophically, the Iwokodan res- Case Study 1: Community Dialogues trajectory for the twenty first century, and torative approach has led the community on ‘Language, Culture and Women’s in direct reference to Afrikology, has organised as a clan to rediscover its sen- Rights’ in Uganda and Kenya referred to two diametrically opposed se of utu or humanness cultivated in an orientations. He characterized one as Afrikological epistemology that recogni- Having identified the verbal dependency Eurocentric and subservient to European ses unities and complementarities in rela- of most African intellectuals and social social sciences and the other as Afro- tionships between humans and nature in activists on Western processes of centric in that it is steeped in African general. The African beliefs, which we development and its concepts of rights knowledge from the past. He however, find represented in the basic idea of as a major obstacle to Africa’s develop- makes it clear, as the following case ‘Ubuntu,’ or the need to take into account ment, and because of the prejudicial studies will attempt to show, that ‘reciprocal relations’ that guide peoples’ biases that exists within their ‘modern’ Afrikology is universal and it is at the core perceptions of themselves are crucially inclined psyches, the purposes of our of the creative process of social important in defining a comprehensive journeys in communities in rural northern transformation and cultural restoration, solution to global and local situations, and eastern Uganda and rural western understanding perceptions, ideas, and which in African conditions, happen pre- Kenya were an attempt to bring about a needs. dominantly in rural conditions such as is meaningful, and productive dialogue the case in the Iwokodan community site between modernity and traditional About the case studies of knowledge. conceptions and misconceptions of As a way into this conversation, what human rights by engaging the so called comes to mind and heart immediately are The third account captures afrikological ‘intellectuals’ representing the modernist three recent compelling community ac- efforts by cross-border communities view and the ‘uncertificated/uneducated’ counts. The first is a dialogue in search around the Mt. Elgon area in search of rural masses/natives representing their of meaning that focused on ‘language, collective identities through cultural own traditional view. 16 clusterism organized through a peace and culture and women’s rights’ that took The objective in part, was to create an place deep in the villages at the heart of cultural animation festival that took place in November 2012 in Kapchorwa on afrikological podium that would diffuse communities across Uganda and Kenya. the hostility that exists between It was through this afrikological podium the slopes of Mt Elgon. Cross-border conflicts in the Mt. Elgon area have had modernists and traditionalists, both of that we discovered a discourse in which whom view each other’s motives with the old traditions and cultures were able many dimensions with various correlated causes and factors. Although land has suspicion. Modernists tend to view to interrogate modernity and vice-versa traditionalists as ‘illiterate and backwards,’ within their own contexts, which were been a major contributing factor to the CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 3 & 4, 2013 Page 48 whilst traditionalists on the other hand, He informed the conference that he ce. This dialogue was of particular impor- tend to look at modernists as muzungu opposed the idea raised by some tance because of the northern armed con- (foreign) minded, with imported ideas and participants that the question of women flict between the Lord’s Resistance Army in a rush to rid tradition and replace it and human rights in East Africa were (LRA) led by Joseph Kony’s (now a fugi- with modernity. In a sense, similar to confined to the tradition vs. modernity tive from international justice) and Ugan- Western assumptions where the dichotomy. He instead argued that it was da’s national army that ended in 2006 as a "barbarian" is inferior to the "civilized", a question of language and culture. result of a peace agreement signed in Juba, the rural dweller is accordingly seen as "There is lack of interfacing between the in the then Republic of Sudan. It was one subservient to the developed urban researcher and the researched. The ‘NGO of the longest armed rebellions in Ugan- intellectual. Therefore, the verbal distance expert’ ought to meet with the community da’s history and one of the worlds’ worst that exists between the two is, among and converse the issue of meaning" humanitarian disasters. It began soon af- other things, manifested by their ways of added Nabudere. ter President Yoweri Museveni usurped understanding, perceiving, interpreting, Nabudere argued that language is a gui- power in 1986 also through a five year and evaluating as well as in their modes de to social reality, and that it is the me- armed-guerrilla war. It led to the deaths of of articulation and communication of dium of expression for African societies. thousands while at the same time leaving issues of human rights. The lack of Therefore, from this perspective, experien- around two million people internally dis- meaningful interface between the two ce is largely determined by the language placed. The 23 year civil war also led to a groups appears to be a problem deriving habits of the community, and that each near collapse of family and traditional from the issue of language, culture, and separate structure represents a separate structures; communities in this area re- meaning. reality. Mukasa Luutu, the Vice Chancel- gistered high levels of poverty and crime rates, they became dependent on the sta- Thus, this afrikological community lor of MPAU has supplemented Nabude- te and the donor community. It also led to conversation was a direct attempt at re by adding that language is a modelling the prevalence of HIV and AIDS in the scratching the fabric and personality of system, and that "no language can exist area. As is mostly the case in conflict si- Afrikology, in order to try and understand unless it is steeped in the context of cul- tuations, of all the structural and physi- what is in the heart, not just the mind of ture; and no culture can exist which does not have at its centre, the structure of cal violence that this community those engaged in the conversations. It natural language". This is apparent in the experienced, it was women and children adopted the use of dialogue as opposed use of vocabulary and the semantics of who suffered the most. to debate; this is because dialogue unlike words. Clearly, from Nabudere’s point of debate emphasizes listening to deepen A first dialogue question was "who was view, there is no particular language or under-standing. A dialogue draws Kony’s mother?" asked by a local woman culture that names everything or catalo- participants from as many parts of the Councillor, in perhaps trying to unders- gues the whole compass of knowledge of community as possible to exchange tand Joseph Kony’s background, and the world. Underlying a word, therefore, information face-to-face, share personal maybe to also reach her own sense of clo- is its relationship with other words, and stories and experiences, honestly express sure. This triggered a heated discussion the goal of analysis is to discover voca- perspectives, clarify viewpoints, and bulary sets that carry the underlying se- on African feminity and the role of mo- develop solutions to community mantic components of the language and thers in conflict resolutions. Rhyiming well concerns. Dialogues go beyond sharing a people's culture. with an observation made earlier by Na- and understanding to transforming budere that one cardinal requirement of participants. While the process begins Luutu has pointed that all education in Afrikology is the feminine principle in with the individual, it eventually involves East Africa has been colonially oriented; African consciousness and existence. groups and institutions. It develops it had delinked people from their com- This has been an aspect, he has pointed common values and allows participants munities and societies. "Education as out, which Western epistemology has to express their own interests. It expects such has been presented to us as tried to undermine and sideline in advan- that participants will grow in modernity, which has created a further cing their patrilineal cultural values in understanding and may decide to act distance between individuals and their Africa. The discussions continued into together with common goals. In dialogue, rural community". These days, the script women’s participation in decision-making participants can question and re-evaluate is clear. The state through the constitution about war and peace, it was agreed by their assumptions. Through this process, imposes cultural restrictions under the most participants that Acholi women were people are learning to work together to auspices of the human rights law - i.e. you part and parcel to the initiatives that led improve relations. Ultimately, dialogues are allowed to do all you want culturally to the end of the war and that their role can affect how policies are made. This in as long as it is not repugnant, in some has been pivotal in post conflict recons- effect is restorative learning and cultures homosexuality is considered truction of their community. unlearning that can only be cultivated by repugnant. The law criminalises this. Good conscience is considered good Christian Calls to involve women in matters of war the use of an afrikological epistemology. values. Polygamous relations are proh- and peace have begun being taken The idea of the project, the late Professor ibited but having many mistresses is seriously in other societies around the Nabudere explained in 2011, came as a allowed. world as well; this follows the 1995 United result of a regional conference on Nations Fourth World Conference on A community dialogue, with 12 communi- Restorative Justice and International Women in Beijing, which returned ty researchers, was held in the Acholi re- Humanitarian Law that he had helped women’s role to the forefront of peace gion to focus on two key issues, viz (a) organise back in 2008 in Nairobi, Kenya. activities. The conference suggested that Bride Price and (b) Gender Based Violen- CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 3 & 4, 2013 Page 49 governments should be encouraged to global, unlike restricted rights for women seen by some elders who spoke in the increase the participation of women in the under traditional and local arrangements. dialogue as a betrayal of the values of peace process at the decision-making In spite of a cry from elderly men in the Acholi culture: "Gulu town had given level, including them as part of dialogue, rising to object her views, she birth to a lost generation of Acholi, delegations to negotiate international argued that Acholi elders and chiefs have addicted to material riches, disconnected agreements relating to peace and largely lost their power of social from their roots in the land and without disarmament. regulation, as Acholi women are liberating even basic cultural knowledge". themselves. Economically, women have Violence as such produces enormous In pre-war Acholi society, significant gained access to loans, both individually insecurity and requires one to tread authority was held by a lineage- and clan- and through groups. They own property carefully when asking questions based structure of patriarchal, generally in town, such as buildings, vehicles, and concerning those affected such as those gerontocratic. This structure was brought land, and businesses. Women also in the Gulu forum. People living in contexts into crisis by the civil-war and express satisfaction at having learned to of open violence as have community displacement. Many elders died, and the sell agricultural produce and save money. members in this dialogue tend to watch civil war presented bigger problems for Socially and politically, women pointed constantly for their personal and ‘traditional’ leadership to resolve. The out the number of women who are now in collective security. They search for ways authority of this lineage-based structure positions of authority in prominent NGOs to feel and be safe, and to find protection has also been undermined by the creation and in the local government system. as insecurity has the capacity to create of the Local Council system, which has Women are achieving higher levels of the permanency of feeling uncertain. taken over many of the conflict resolution education and undergoing training by roles previously held by ‘traditional’ It was explained that uncertainty goes NGOs and government on health and authorities. Their disempowerment has hand in hand with the experience of other issues concerning their rights. been further intensified by NGO initiatives unpredictability. In seeking safety, we Three women in particular objected to which tend to favour women and youth. have tended to suspend trust in what was these modernist observations, accusing Finally, displacement itself has had a happening around us. To be insecure has them of exaggerations. Modernity, they significantly negative impact on lineage- meant that no longer having a clear sense observed, has had a significantly negative based leaders, as clans have been of self and having to suspend trust in impact on women’s quality of life. Because dispersed; restrictions on movement have others. This is the plight facing Acholi many men have died, joined armed made clan meetings difficult and land also children today, especially those born at organisations or abandoned their wives, difficult to access, the dialogue noted. the apex of the conflict, as well as those women in large part have been left with who grew up in the camps. "Our youths The dialogue then returned to the primary the primary responsibility for providing especially males are very bitter". subject matter and delved into the issue for their families, which have often of meaning. The Acholi community It is widely recognised that periods of war expanded to include a number of attaches so much significance to the or disaster can produce ruptures or crises dependents in addition to their own marriage ritual, that failure to marry is within societies from which new orders children. Water, firewood and grass for considered a curse (or an abnormality) and can emerge. The Acholi community has roofing are hard to come by, women are it is common for the elders to be called in clearly not been an exception. Through now forced to go out and earn money so to monitor events. Childlessness is also the dialogue, it was agreed that War, that they buy land and or rent a house, counted as one of the most serious urban displacement, inter-tribal and they must also pay for their children’s misfortunes to befall a couple, with international presence, NGO interven- school fees and other medical facilities women typically taking all the blame. In tions, government development projects, that are often inadequate and very such cases, the marriage could be women’s and children’s rights promotion expensive. Another negative conse- dissolved or the husband be allowed to – were all identified as having had a quence brought about by "town life", marry another wife. Polygamy is regarded dramatic impact on the Acholi community they pointed out, was the methods of as a normal arrangement. in particular kwo town – the Acholi com- making money that have emerged in the A young man chiefly depends upon his munity living in and around Gulu town, context of, and which they constantly lineage to get both the permission to marry and how they perceive issues of rights. drew attention to, specifically prostitution a girl and the ability to provide the mate- for women and thievery for men. There were mixed reactions from some rial goods required to pay her indispen- participants when it came to discussing For many older Acholi participants, sable ot-lim (bride price). Although the catalysts of the cultural however, this dominance of ‘NGO marriages were sometimes organized wi- transformation that has taken place in moneyed culture’ in town was an thout the consent of the boy and the girl their community, this led to some unmitigated evil, a of Acholi in the past, such scenarios are increasin- ambivalence and controversy over the society and its cultural values. As one gly rare today, with most people embra- meaning of the social changes that have elderly man pointed out, "before the war, cing the modern ideal of freedom of choice. taken place in their community. For wealth was not held in money, but in Because it was often the father's wealth example, one person took a modernist cattle". As a result, money itself was that afforded the boy the ot-lim, there was view and argued that for some, especially widely perceived as a symptom and agent little he could change. The items to be women and young men, town life, despite of the destruction of Acholi society, as it delivered as ot-lim (which is a practical its material hardships, has been the replaced tangible, rooted resources. All way of saying thank you to the girl's mo- foundation for a world that is modern and money-oriented economic activity was ther) are discussed and a specific date CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 3 & 4, 2013 Page 50 set for the delivery. Instalments are often initiated to prevent a couple from getting beings have to assume responsibility for accepted. Ot-lim can take the form of catt- divorced. their own survival and abandon the unili- le, goats, sheep, household items or mo- near epistemology of looking at complex Drawing from the community conversa- ney. Often, the girl's ot-lim is not spent and diverse realities in a one-dimensional tions, it is logical that governments in East but saved to offset her brothers' ot-lim manner. Africa, in one way or another, try and make when it is their turn to marry and pay. Re- decisions about the legal and political In the course of these dialogues, a funds are made in the event of a divorce. position of both tradition and modernity consensus built up in most participants Participants then engaged in discussions in their social and legal systems. Most of that traditional role models of men and centering on ot-lim, what it meant from a the crises that local communities are fa- women defined their behaviour and how traditional point of view and how it is cing have been expounded by the re- they perceived rights and entitlements. being perceived in modern times. It was commendations that these communities This was a help for both of them. For observed that ot-lim is too expensive and have received from foreign and local "ex- instance, it was agreed that most disa- this is why we are seeing our boys perts" on human rights and development. greements could be settled in the running away from their responsibilities The concept of development has its roots homestead, rather than making the matter by impregnating girls and absconding". in the notion of progress, which is funda- public and going to court. The rules in A participant argued that parent demand mentally a materialist philosophy bent on the village were simple for everybody. a hefty ot-lim if their girl is ‘educated’. unlimited growth or exploitation and ac- The statement: "in the old days, there A girl ought to be a girl in spite of cumulation. The African bureaucrats and were not so many options in life as there educational attainment, he stressed. political elites have been unable to draw are today", as one participant in the Another thought that the problem with on their concept of community when ta- dialogue put it, indicated that participants ot-lim was the distorted meaning. "Ot-lim king decisions on national policies. and the community at large was traditionally meant appreciation; but suspicious of the new freedoms perpe- Women’s rights, no matter how we even- nowadays it literally means paying or tuated by modernist advocates. buying a wife (bride-price). This tually refine the concept, demand that re- traditional custom established good sidents old and young, male and female Women participants in the dialogue relations among families and legitimized in the urban as well as in the rural areas recognised the importance of women’s the children born in the marriage. But are heard, and not pushed aside. Rural organisations in raising their voice and today, some women are given away to the people, commonly referred to as the "illi- providing them with a space in which to man who pays more. This, in a way, can terates" or the "uneducated" in moder- come together and discuss their problems. be seen as the commodification of women nist lingo, who make up the majority of Most of the organisations they referred or forced marriage, which was not the the African communities, need to gain a to are those oriented around small income- original intention of ot-lim. ‘voice’ in the parlance of contemporary generating activities or give out loans. As community, cultural or political studies one woman group leader in the dialogue Another argued that the problem in part speak. Whether we use the older langua- explained, women’s voices are now heard lies with old men that are modernized – ge of "empowerment" or the current speak in public, whereas before ‘women were urbanized, "these men", she observed, of the epistemology of the ‘heart’ as defi- not supposed to have a voice’, demons- "tend to demand a lot for ot-lim and they ned by Afrikology, the philosophical lan- trating the value placed by women on also impose items that are not supposed guage of the moment, the message is clear. having a voice, being heard, both as an to be part and parcel of the ot-lim". And People cannot plan and or speak for individual and collectively as a com- "ot-lim is not bride price, we should stri- others; people must be given a chance to munity. In all the dialogues most women ve to remind those confused about this participate in meaningful ways in resol- resonated the need to have a voice as a definition that ot-lim is a token of appre- ving the challenges of discrimination key feature to the resilience of a com- ciation to the bride’s family and in parti- whether man-made or natural. Solutions munity and its sense of identity. Having a cular the mother. We are not selling our must be inclusive not exclusive. As a re- voice, for them, means defining their own daughters! In the old days ot-lim used to sult, these dialogues about modernist future, thereby repositioning the feminine be shared communally. These days it all verses tradition conceptions of women’s principle as a core constituent of commercialized, people even do electro- rights have depended on thinking about Afrikology. nic cash transfers and people start busi- the world in organic, incremental, bottom- nesses with it". One blamed Acholi up terms rather overarching, top-down Case Study 2: Iwokodan Community community in the diaspora. "They are the abstractions. It has also been about ac- Site of Knowledge problem as they are the ones disorgani- commodation and accumulation of small- zing our community. They disregard our Post-conflict communities are increasin- scale change that adds value to our traditional customs when marrying and gly turning their attention to the legacy communities in how community members see things in terms of modern rights and of indigenous practices of dispute settle- view women and the discourses concer- law", he said. ment and reconciliation. The argument is ning their rights. To paraphrase the late that traditional and informal justice sys- The dialogue then turned its attention to professor Nabudere’s horizontal concept, tems may be adopted or adapted to deve- the issue of divorce and inheritance. It there can be no single ‘centre’ that will lop an appropriate response to a history was observed that the purpose of determine the existence of all human of civil war and oppression. Iwokodan marriage was unity, and argued that in beings everywhere because ‘one-size fits community site of knowledge based in Acholi culture divorce was very much all’ will no longer be allowed to dictate Palisa, eastern Uganda captures well this discouraged - all things possible were global or local development. All human change. CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 3 & 4, 2013 Page 51

At this site, organised as a clan, the com- who have caused conflict or harm to each the creation of national parks for tourism munity has incorporated strong elements other or to society to face the consequen- in both sides of the mountain in Kenya of modernity in order to preserve their tra- ces of their actions and try to address the and Uganda. ditional justice system and traditional clan harm done. It is the duty of society at As Kenyan scholar Robert Simiyu18 has governance structure. The Iwokodan Clan large to provide them with the opportuni- pointed out, the rhythmic nature of land- is modelled on a modern government ties and institutional arrangements to ena- related violence in the Mt Elgon area, as structure, it has a written constitution, with ble them to do so. This is what the often coinciding with general elections modern governance structures. It has Iwokodan community site of knowledge and other critical moments in Kenya’s opted for restorative justice in the event is attempting to do. national politics, indicates that there may of conflict adjudication, recognising that Case Study 3: The first Mt. Elgon Cross- be more to it than just land disputes or modern courts are not able to deal with border Community Festival: The Road to pure intercommunity hatred. He argues an increasing number of criminal cases. Cross-Border Peace – Overcoming the that there is a possible political motive This has led to increased cost and delay Legacy of Bordered Identities, Cultural for the chaos. This is borne out by the with self-evident injustice being caused fragmentation and Unresolved Conflicts. fact that in some instances, state agencies to individuals and hence a feeling of in- have been implicated in the conflicts, justice. The other problem Iwokodan’s Today’s real borders are not between while in others the state has remained local government minister Mr. Joseph nations, but between powerful and ambivalent. The result, Simiyu argues, is Okwalinga pointed out is that criminal li- powerless, free and fettered, privi- that many conflicts remain unresolved, tigation is particularly dependent on in- leged and humiliated. Today no walls some years after they first started. It is dividual memory. Documents that can can separate humanitarian or human important to note that the land problem objectively refresh memory ordinarily play rights crises in one part of the world has persisted since colonialism, and a small part in the usual kind of criminal from a national security crisis in successive regimes have been unable to 17 case. Witnesses must rely solely on their another… Dr. Kofi Anan permanently resolve the land question to recollection. When it takes more than a Cross-border communities in the Mt Elgon the satisfaction of all community year, and sometimes three years, for a area of East Africa, as is the case elsewhere members. In short, the valleys and slopes case to come to trial, memory becomes in Africa, have gone through such untold of Mt Elgon bare testimonies of the suspect. There are a number of inter and violence and indescribable grief that the severity of the conflicts faced by cross- intra-communities murder cases that the clamour of the victims is still heard, and border communities that have been caged Clan has resolved cordially without refe- the sounds of the silenced-guns, sharp- in imagined political boundaries. rence to the high courts. Consequently, spears and pangas (machetes) still there is an increasing demand for Afriko- To overcome these cross-border divisions reverberate in the minds of the ex-fighters logy’s holistic approach to justice among created in the area, which threaten further as well as those who lived though the communities across the east African re- fragmentation of communities and clans, conflict experience. The scars of the gion, which seeks to shift the focus of we tapped into professor Nabudere’s conflicts are still visible not only on the the trial from the battle between the wisdom and created a situation in which bodies and souls of the older generations lawyers to the discovery of truth by mo- we encouraged cross-border cultural- but also on the young – the continuing difying the complex rules of evidence, linguistic communities to regroup as much stigmatization of widowed women as encouraging the defendant to contribute as possible into ‘clusters’- for instance, ‘husband snatchers’ and their children as to the search for truth, and requiring full linking the Bamasaba with the Samia and cultural orphans is one case in point. and open discovery for the prosecutor. Babukusu or the Sabiny with the Sabaoti Community conflicts in the area have had For defence lawyers, under the current and Pokot or the Iteso with the adversarial system, courtroom victory many dimensions with various correlated Karamojong and so forth, so that they usually translates into obtaining an ac- causes and factors. Although land has become strong nations capable of quittal, and consequently they regard dis- been a major contributing factor to the defending and voicing their local interests covery of the truth as incidental or even conflicts, other social and economic and concerns globally. underlying factors have also played a role irrelevant to this pursuit. There is a di- It is against this background that the in fuelling the conflicts. In addition, the chotomy that is normally created between Afrika Study Centre (ASC) and the Mt the need for justice and the need for re- conflicts have had negative social, Elgon Residents Association (MERA) conciliation. Yet these processes are in cultural, and economic impacts on all with the help of Marcus Garvey Pan- fact two sides of the same coin. The cross-border communities living in the Afrikan Institute/University and other answer this, as the Iwokodan cases vivi- area among them: displacement, physical stakeholders organised the Cross-Border dly demonstrates, is a new afrikological harm to individuals; the destruction of Peace and Cultural festival that took place system that can ensure speed of trial whi- property; death-resulting in a high in November 2012 in Kapchorwa town on le ensuring that the truth will prevail and incidence of orphans and widows; rape the slopes of Mt Elgon in Eastern Uganda. the restorative justice approach offers the and other forms of sexual violence and The social concept and cultural context best result that can integrate the process. exploitation; and the resulting food and in which we undertook the cross-border The modern courts alone cannot ensure general insecurity. Furthermore, these cultural ‘integration’ tried to imagine and that justice prevails in all cases as expe- problems have presented the cross- invent new ways to enable communities rience has shown that modern courts tend border communities already dealing with to break out of their encirclement first by to be overwhelmed by criminal cases. It is conflicts of multiple types, from mineral the global system and then by African the primary responsibility of the people extraction to cattle rustling, to drought, to post-conflict inter-ethnic violence, to elites who control state power that conti- CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 3 & 4, 2013 Page 52 nue to marginalize communities. The fes- and innovating as you work in the com- nity work in the region, the continent and tival is an ongoing afrikological endea- munity. beyond, it featured: Food security; Pea- vour by the ASC and local cross-border ce; Cross-border solidarities; Internatio- The three-day festival was the culmina- communities to deal with the destabilising nal political economy; Pan-Africanism of tion of a ‘People to People Reconciliation’ effects and consequences of western co- peoples; Defence of the commons; Co- linkages and activities that begun in 2006. lonization and domination. After all, there gnitive justice and Community Sites of The basic objective of the festival activi- has been no comprehensive effort in fo- Knowledge; Restorative governance, ties has been to enable each of the cross- cusing on culture as an alternative dispu- economy and justice. border communities to present their te resolution mechanism as well as culture including foods, traditional medi- restorative practices of cross-border com- What room for Pluralism in the cines, handicrafts, songs, dances, social munities as a soluble alternative in pro- African Cultural World? practices, building technologies and other moting peace and regional security in material cultures in one another. This cons- It is our considered view, in this section Africa. tituted a learning experience and demons- that any discussion on cultural pluralism For cross-border communities to trated to them the similarities and breaks ought to be centered on the suspicious undertake this transformation, ASC in their cultural heritages and therefore enterprise of modernity whose dogmatic selected four members (two female and became a firm basis for restorative peace track is that any cultural progress that two males) in April 2012 from each cross- and transformation. The festival explored comes later is inherently better than what border community in both Uganda and the following themes: (a) ‘Food (in) secu- was there before. The concepts of Kenya (they included: , Samia, rity’ and regional security; (b) ‘Cross-cul- rationality, objectivity, and generalization Sabaot, Sebei, Benet, Iteso, Bamasaba, tural spirituality’ and African traditional can be considered to be the theoretical Pokot and the Karamajong) to undergo a cultures; (c) Remembering Dani Nabude- bases on which the current plural project one month intensive ‘Cultural Animation re, the "people’s Professor". These the- is erected. Training Programme’ at the Marcus mes were spread over a three day festival Subsequently, we affirm the following as Garvey Pan Afrikan Institute/University activity schedule. considerations to be given weight. First- in Mbale, Uganda. Course participants Day One was dedicated to matters of ly, pluralism appears to be a cultural fran- (animators) underwent a process of self ‘Food (in) security’ and regional security- chise of globalization aimed at bringing conscientisation through restorative showcasing different cultural foods from together previously isolated people to- cultural learning and unlearning para- each of the Mt Elgon communities. The gether voluntarily and involuntarily into digms and cultural memory methodologies. overall objective was to stimulate interest new and ever closer neighborhoods by Upon completion of the training, anima- and revive the culture of traditional the increasing integration of markets, the tors returned to their respective commu- ‘granary model’ needs; indicating the emergence of new regional political allian- nities to mobilize, learn and prepare their common convergence of strategies to ces, remarkable advances in telecommu- communities for the festival. They were respond to and address the common nications, and transportation that have tasked with the responsibility of obser- problem of food vulnerabilities and prompted unprecedented demographic ving their cultures with deeper interest, approaches to common collaborative cultural shifts. The resulting confluence learn and contribute to the revival and culture of sharing of produce and seeds of peoples and cultures is an increasin- strengthening aspects that communities within the communities. gly global, multicultural world brimming were keen on. Overall they were also ex- with tension, confusion and conflict in Day Two was dedicated to matters of pected to initiate some learning and do- the process of its adjustment to pluralism. ‘Cross-cultural spirituality’ and African cumentation centre that will gather traditional cultures, thus creating a space Secondly, as radical witnesses of materials archived in practices and pro- for the recognition of cultural jurisdiction centuries of alienation and what has been cedures of their cultures and languages. at play in which dialogue about intentions, termed the legacy of one-sided cultural This way, a socio-cultural treasury of values, and assumptions were brought solutions to life and sanitised stereotypes grassroots experiences, mechanisms and out and negotiated. This included we are beginning to see the link between technologies of sustainable environment, awareness building and understanding in what is a mono-cultural model being food and human security systems would which at last dialogue on issues of the propagated as pluralism. For instance, be gathered and showcased at the cultu- 19 'African feminine principle’ were Rothkopf in 1997, examining the cultural ral festival and beyond it. revitalized and knowledge and benefits ambit of education’s relation to foreign In this, they followed the following prin- discussed. This was intended to help find policy pointed out that the very real ciples: Learning by seeing, listening and ways of better linking modern sciences prospect of education is now serving as observing-then practicing; Adopting a to the broader heritage of human kind and a fourth pillar of Western cultures, in doing, using and interacting approach; indeed contribute to scientific knowledge particular American foreign policy in Aquatinting oneself with holistic unders- of universal value. which foreign policy says no to tanding; Critically adopting transdisci- revolutions or any change that is not The final day of the festival was dedica- plinary skills in learning; Adopting favourable to U.S while aggressively ted to remembering the "people’s Profes- Afrikology as a transdisciplinary way of marketing the culture of the west as cool, sor’, the late Dani Nabudere without knowing, being and relating to the demand as the most just, the most tolerant, the whom, the festival would not have taken for knowledge, truth and justice; Learning most willing to constantly reassess and place. The day thus reflected among other to work with culture at the University improve itself, and the best model for the activities, Professor Nabudere’s commu- Campus and the community; Learning future. Furthermore, for communities in CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 3 & 4, 2013 Page 53

Africa, the school environment has been outside the ‘shared loyalty’ while has raised new challenges for all the cultural site at which one begins being fermenting a hankering for the familiar communities in our ongoing pursuit of cultivated by the systematic denigration though geographically distant safe- universal human, animal, environmental of one’s identity, the site at which one haven of a back-home of a fictitious and cultural rights. Appreciably, In the learns how to laugh at his own gods while undisturbed social harmony. Out of this wider sociological sense, tolerance as being instructed to worship other people’s emerge a form, content as well as rationale advanced by pluralism carries with it the gods. School education, although now for the sustenance of a parallel, quasi understanding that intolerance breeds a human right issue and as such compul- resistance, proto-protest sub-culture right violence and social instability, and has sory, is considered to be the place in in the heartland of a mainstream culture. therefore become the social term of choice which the fostering of plural ‘cultural to define the practical rationale of The forth aspect of pluralism we take democracy’ is promoted and advanced permitting uncommon social practice and battle with is its promotion of widely. So, contemporary education in its cultural diversity. individualism at the expense of wholeness simplest form can be seen as foreign as understood in Afrikology or from the cultural capital being transmitted via Conclusion cultural personhood of an African being instructions in schools, and institu- that constitutes his or her identity. The As has been illustrated in this article, the tionalized by the certificates issued by the African concept of a person as wholeness first step on the road to constructing cul- educational systems. But, despite these does not deny human individuality as an tural defences of the mind, outlined throu- shortcomings, as we have discussed ontological fact, or as what the legendary gh our cultural conversations in this earlier, communities especially in the Mt. professor Michel Foucault called an chapter, is the creation of other concepts Elgon area are moving away from the ‘analytic finitude’21 but ascribes and meanings besides what colonialism perspective of African "victimhood" and ontological primacy to the community has bestowed. The ordeals of imagina- cultural pluralism by experimenting with through which the human individual tion undergone by culturally violated com- cultural clusterism fused to the fabric of comes to know both himself and the world munities that have survived colonialism, epistemology's ‘thinking from the heart’ around him. On this Afrikological cultural genocides and slavery and impe- as an approach towards renewed reasoning, it can be said that there is a rialisms should find space and inform our community-centred empowerment and greater wholeness to which the single understanding of human solidarity under restorative cultural forwardness. individual person belongs, though in impossible conditions. By incorporating Thirdly, the wide gap between the pace themselves individual can be seen as Afrikological notions of human solidari- of economic globalization sitting atop a partial cultural wholes. Holism is therefore ty which are based on the assumption that pile of unresolved historical grievances the starting point of the African concept all people share a common underlying on the one hand, and the reality of a ten- of a person. This derivative concept of a humanity, we looked further and pictured se, mistrustful, and anxiety-haunted Afri- person is apparently alien to those the symbolic cultural and social resour- can society on the other, thrusts into our advancing the pluralist canon. This ces such as clusterism for negotiating a conscience a new, pungent, and ambiva- distinction comes as a result of the politer human identity. As we take this lence-filled human situation we can no difference between the holistic and the further, a more profound form of toleran- longer escape. A leading indigenous individualistic conceptions of a cultural ce emerges which resides in the capacity knowledge systems expert and cultura- person or community. Pluralism accords to develop respect, understanding and list Professor Catherine Odora Hoppers primacy to individualistic derivative whilst mutual recognition of others because it has painted an acute picture when she ‘cultural clusterism’ that we are simply makes good cultural sense. observed: advancing here places importance on Our attention would not normally be Afrikology’s wholeness. The traditional drawn towards community narratives as As nations and communities big and African view of a person denies that a holding the promise, potential or small rummage about in this confu- person can be defined by focusing on his sion, one detects various degrees of epistemological lessons of Afrikology and or her physical or psychological hankering for a lost age of social restorative cultural action in communities. characteristics alone. It instead places harmony, cultural homogeneity and Yet our experiences, these settings and emphasis on how he is defined in relation commonly-shared values – occa- people hold seeds, buried and unnoticed, sionally confusing the past state of to his or her cultural world. This primacy but pregnant with life-giving energy that things for a vision for the future. In is meant to apply not only ontologically, instructs our cultural and epistemological the meantime, the perceived fragmen- but also in regards to his epistemic inquiry. The very nature of a seed, we have tation of society, concerns about accessibility. The reality of personhood tried to demonstrate, is a living-dormant crime, persistent undercurrents of in most communities in East Africa as such container that simultaneously is fruit and racism, and growing distrust of is therefore one but it has got many promise, draws our attention towards the neighbour and government, have aspects to it. In cultural and philosophical natural characteristics of Afrikology’s strengthened the attraction of many terms, emphasis has been placed on the collective well-being and the qualities of to the numerous affinity groups primacy of the greater environing cultural resilience that contribute to mushrooming everywhere.20 wholeness over that of cultural indivi- healthy communities not only in East Odora argues that in situations in which dualism or for that pluralism. Africa but all over the world. large immigrant communities find That said, the global climate of cultural These conversations have been a long themselves surrounded by a mainstream change and acute cultural vulnerability travel down the community-lane in culture, the percolation tends to realising the falsity of dichotomisation of encourage antipathy toward those CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 3 & 4, 2013 Page 54

complex human relations, by certain around the Mt Elgon area is not possible 9. Sindima, ibid p.30 restraining epistemologies; this as we in the present regime of culturally isolated 10. Nwala,T. U., Critical Review of the Great have attempted to demonstrate, can only knowledge production. The symbolic Debate on African Philosophy (1970-1990) be corrected under a system of restorative languages used in current educational (Nsukka: William Amo Centre for African justice, restorative agriculture, and systems are not learnt at an early age by a Philosophy UNN 1992) p.5 restorative cultural practices that large percentage of children in the area. Afrikology offers aplenty. Through For them, education especially cultural, 11. Chan, S., Grasping Africa: A Tale of Tragedy practical means and community-centred its language, its methods and its and Achievement. Pp33-34 interactions, we have demonstrated that packaging represents an alienating 12. Furedi, F., Mythical Past, Elusive Future: communities are moving away from the experience both culturally and History and Science in Anxious Age (Pluto perspective of African "victimhood" by epistemologically. Press: London) p.239 adopting the epistemology of thinking 13. Stern, Herbert. See http://www.imf.org/ from the heart’ as an approach towards Notes external/np/speeches/2001/010601.htm community-centred intellectualism and 1. The author is a transdisciplinary fellow based 14. Wanda, R.E, The Big Question. (2010) BBC social as well as cultural activism. at the Marcus Garvey Pan-Afrikan Institute Focus on Africa. BBC World Service, (currently being constituted into a Afrikology stands for manoeuvring space London. Pp 24-25 within and interaction with social, University) in Mbale, eastern Uganda, where economic and political structures that are he coordinates the Institute’s research and 15. Garver, Newton. What Violence is, The external to and at the same time part of academic programmes. He is also the Nation. No 209. 24th June 1968. the community itself. Afrikology is about executive director of Afrika Study Centre 16. There were eight dialogues across Uganda doing justice to communities’ capabilities (ASC), a regional community site of and Kenya, but for the sake of brevity, we to reflect and act without losing sight of knowledge engaged in cross-border resto- have only highlighted the Acholi dialogue the structural circumstances that enable rative cultural research and studies. Email: that took place in Gulu, northern Uganda. [email protected] and at times constrain them. It is about 17. Annan, K., Building a Culture of Peace for the people’s strength. It is about making 2. Nabudere, D., Afrikology: Philosophy and the Children of the World, UN Report (can a difference. It is about creating an Wholeness, (: Africa Institute of be accessed at http://www:un.org). indigenous dialectical space for South Africa) 2011, p.92 communities to reflect on its social and 18. Simiyu, R., 2008, Militarisation of resource 3. Ramose, M., African Philosophy though cultural values and thereby create a conflicts: The case of land-based conflict in Ubuntu. (Mond Book Publishers, ) connecting relationship between itself the Mount Elgon region of Western Kenya, 2005. P.4 that allows room for reflexivity and ISS Monograph No. 152, Institute for reflectivity that then reveals the inner soul 4. Wanda, R. E., Comprehensive Report on Security Studies, Pretoria. of the community to the world at large. In Community Sites of Knowledge, 19. Rothkopf, D. (1997). In Praise of Cultural the Upanishads of Nabudere, the epis- (Unpublished work), MPAU, Mbale, Uganda, Imperialism?. Foreign Policy, 107, 38–53. temological grandmaster of Afrikology, we November 2010, p.4 20. Odora Hoppers, C.A. (2005). Managing can equate the fundamental nature and 5. Said, E., [1992] Orientalism, Penguin, Diversity: A Challenge for Europe. Keynote universalism of Afrikology as a passage London. See also Said, E [1994] Culture address to the Conference on «Managing that speaks to how those who become and Imperialism, Vintage, London in Dani Diversity: A Challenge For Global wise lose the Great Oneness, the Way Nabudere, Archie Mafeje: Scholar, Activist Participation. City Hall of The Hague 24 Rivers all flow into the sea. In the and Thinker, Africa Institute of South June 2005. Stockholm: Stockholm transformation from the solitary to the Africa, 2011, p.2. University, Institute of International communal, there is a mysterious physics 6. Luutu, B.M., International Human Rights Education. that each generation has to relearn and and African Traditions of justice: The quest advance regarding how we are more 21. Fowcault, M., The Order of Things, forConnection and meaning, East African together than alone. In the hard-earned Tavistock Publications, London, 1970 Journal of Peace and Human Rights, No 8, experience of Oneness, we all have the p.315. (2002) p.142. chance to discover, through love and suffering, that we are at heart the same. 7. Arif, Nasr ibid p.6 The task for us today is to restore 8. Sindima, J. H., Africa's Agenda: The Legacy connections that history has shattered. of Liberalism and Colonialism in the Crisis Making cultural education a lived of African Values, (Greenwood Press: experience for many cross-border learners London)- 1995 p.2 CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 3 & 4, 2013 Page 55

CODESRIA Reports

An Advanced Research Project on Peace, Security and Post-Conflict Reconstruction in the Great Lakes Region of Africa: A Reflection on a New CODESRIA’s Social Science Initiative and Its Policy Implications

his reflective essay is a critical general principles. It is necessary to commentary on the nature of the search for a multipolar peace arrangement issues raised, and pertinent Tukumbi Lumumba-Kasongo within the perspectives of global T Facilitator of the Project questions posed regarding CODESRIA’s capitalism that more strongly re-enforces ongoing initiative on Peace, Security and Cornell University its expressed ideology of unipolar Post-Conflict Reconstruction in the Great USA liberalism but also advocating functional Lakes Region of Africa. Another targeted regionalism. objective is to inform CODESRIA’s Great Lakes Region, there will not be any I was privileged to be selected as the constituencies and African political genuine progress, despite some legal and facilitator of this advanced research communities and their associates about political efforts at peace. Dialogues, project on peace, security and post- the intended goal of African researchers’ sovereign national conferences, or les conflict reconstruction in the Great Lakes contributions toward sustainable peace concertations nationales among the Region of Africa – the initiative of the and security, a sine qua non for progress political elites will continue to only be the Council for Development of Social to occur. By and large, this article aims to maneuvering arenas of power sharing, Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA), share information and to also seek power struggle, and essentially empty which is managed by Bernard Mumpasi feedback on the project, as we continue avenues for the ordinary people. Lututala, the Deputy Executive Secretary to think about this initiative and its impact There is no tangible historical evidence of CODESRIA and with the support of and policy implications in the long run. that supports the assumption and the Ebrima Sall, the Executive Secretary. Both In the field of international relations, we claims that the conflicts related to or would agree with me that given the often tend to presuppose that peoples caused by, the structures of the importance of this project – as a search who do not have any tangible common contemporary state or nation-state and for durable peaceful solutions in the interest – imagined, invented or real – are its capitalistic economy can possibly be region – its potential impact toward the very much unlikely to go to war against solved either by enchantements, general implementation of peace and security, and one another. In the Great Lakes Region ritualism, or by the psychology of denial. the special composition of the of Africa, a complex nexus of factors is The so-called postmodernist theories, for researchers, a reflective comment on its shared by its peoples including their instance, of explaining the conflicting values needs to be articulated and shared. histories, cultures, and politics, the world and their embodied solutions have What are the ultimate objectives and dysfunctionality of the contemporary little relevance, as they are not grounded expectations associated with this complex nation-states, the contradictions related in the specific historical and materialistic advanced research project? How will this to the functioning of global capitalism in foundation of the society. team of African researchers deliver the its peripheral extremism, and the local Furthermore, the conflicts cannot be outcome of their works? And what should power struggles framed in absurd liberal solved by simply describing their be done with their findings and policy democratic jingoism. The nature of the symptoms. The conflicts in this region recommendations upon the completion of conflicts reflects the layers of should be dealt with from structuralist their research projects? assumptions, claims and practices perspectives of state-societal relations, A dynamic group of knowledgeable associated with the dynamics of geo- and from the state and international researchers was selected from a rigorous politics. The major questions are: What relations’ perspective of cost-benefit process, which emphasizes the high does this region represent for itself and analysis through which the real causes quality of the research projects, that of in itself and its peoples in terms of are identified and examined. These the candidates’ publications and the progress? And what does it represent in conflicts can also be maintained for many professional engagements of the terms of global capitalism and the years if preventive transformative candidates in development of the region. imperatives of unipolar global liberalism? measures are not structurally factored in Understanding the context of the region Without sustainable peace and a as part of the agreements. The conflicts is of critical importance in comprehending pragmatic and programmatic collectively of the Great Lakes Region are not the nature of the issues in this project. agreed upon security arrangement in the exceptions from the above reasoning and CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 3 & 4, 2013 Page 56

The context and the issues should be exa- mendations, we might compare the Despite some recent economic growth in mined structurally and historically, thou- political landscape of this region to some countries of the Great Lakes Region gh I am not proposing a historiography scenarios in the Japanese Kabuki Theater and some presidential, parliamentarian here. Many efforts toward peace have in which the actors/dancers come and go and local elections, at large, the region is failed and the social devastation and the on the stage but the songs used are the known for producing some of the dee- degradation of the environment continue, same, originated from the same menu. pest in Africa with the as well as distrust among peoples, go- rise of militia politics that initially produ- Thus, this new CODESRIA initiative is one vernments and militia groups. In short, ced presidents who were not elected by the most important endeavors that it has life continues to be a nightmare for the anyone and regimes that were either to- undertaken, armed with brilliance, social majority of people. What should be done? talitarian with some elements of nationa- commitment for knowledge making, lism or militaristic regimes without any Based on the mission of CODESRIA, I intellectual engagement and leadership national vision. The gross national in- categorize this initiative to be essentially for policy input into solutions to end the come (GNI) per capita has been signifi- a social scientific, interdisciplinary, and tragedy of the Great Lakes’ states and cantly declining in conjunction with all multidisciplinary project to produce peoples. This initiative is founded on the the implied consequences. Thus, accor- socially defined critical knowledge and strong conviction that genuine efforts to ding to the World Human Report of 2013 paradigms. Based on the agendas of the propose any sustainable peaceful and the African Human Development Re- participants, it can also be added that this solutions and physical and social security port of 2012 (the first), comparatively, Afri- project offers an African-centered to the nature of the crisis and post-conflict cans at large have become economically perspective on protracted conflict and reconstruction requires a comprehensive poorer today than they were 30 years ago. post-conflict reconstruction processes. and structuralist understanding of the Social and economic conflicts due to po- In terms of its potentiality, it can also be multifaceted nature of this crisis itself and verty and underdevelopment have been called a grand reconstructive project. that knowledge matters, and finally that deepening. What do all these categorizations mean the truth is socially relevant in rethinking as it relates to bringing real peace, security the Great Lakes Region. These militia politics have been conso- and progress as part of post-conflict lidated in various forms by a combination The selection committee, constituted by developments in the Great Lakes Region? of the power of guns, sporadic and Bernard Mumpasi Lututala, Joseph Ga- Within these categorizations, we have to planned elections and international hama, Rémy Bazenguissa and this author deal with the nature of the actors support. This sub-region with its officially as the Chair, selected highly capable re- involved, the structures of their interests recognized 11 countries, including, searchers based on the high quality of and actions, and the forces behind these Burundi, Angola, Central Africa Republic, their research projects methodologically political and social theaters. Democratic Republic of Congo, Republic speaking, the clarity of their objectives, of Congo, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, This region is one the most politically the feasibility of the research projects, the South Sudan, Tanzania, and Zambia, has unstable, economically unproductive, nature of projected policy implications of produced tremendous violence in the and socially unprogressive subregions in these projects, and the place and the role history of post-colonial state and its Africa. In many cases, the symptoms of of these research projects in their overall political economy. However, not all the this debilitation have appeared over the professional development in their indivi- countries have had similar reasons for, past three decades or so. The people, dual disciplines. and manifestations of, political and especially the poor peasants and farmers All these researchers are faculty members economic instability. For instance, in rural areas, women, and children have with strong research credentials. They are Mwalimu Julius Nyerere of Tanzania was been seriously suffering from the all highly motivated and enthusiastic a noted African leader in the region who devastating effects of wars without any about the continuous role of African believed in self-reliance and in gradual clear prospect for getting out of them. As researchers towards African progress. pan-Africanism. Kenneth Kaunda of discussed below, the rise of militia This project is both a challenge and an Zambia with his African humanism politics, decay and the dysfunctionality opportunity to propose alternatives about produced a vision of combining Africanity of the African political regimes, and changes from the African researchers’ and . Some earlier Afro-Marxist- dominance of a world system that exploits perspectives. It is a challenge partially Leninist experiments were produced in the institutional weaknesses without any because it has to produce new knowledge this subregion as well. pity or apology, have led to paralysis and that ought to be both strongly empirical désenchantement. Most of the bilateral, The dynamics of the Great Lakes Region and interpretative. Thus, a dialogue multilateral and international efforts and of Africa, its layered historical and social between researchers and political regimes agreements toward the establishment of configurations in the pre-colonial, colo- and governments is strongly expressed. a perceived durable peace and consistent nial and post-colonial eras, the power Another challenge is that we have to dialogues have either been truncated, struggles within geo-politics during and imagine, reclaim, or project the new Great failed or remained immature without any after the Cold War era and the uncontrol- Lakes Region based on concrete outcomes collective or individual political will toward led expansionism of the savage capita- of research projects and not based on the production of tangible peaceful lism and the weaknesses of the peripheral generalized speculations and within actions needed in the Great Lakes Region. states have produced major wars, social regional projects. Thus, any reductionism If complex and rigorous analyses of the disruptions, and quasi-permanent politi- to be projected in this work has to be situation and the conditions are not cal instability in this region. measured by the laws of probability based structurally made with complex recom- on the cost-benefit analysis. CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 3 & 4, 2013 Page 57

One country in the region, Rwanda researchers toward the transformation of ding theories, conceptualization, and po- produced a genocide in which the Hutu conflict into peace are thus the ultimate litics and policy outcome and interroga- purposefully massacred the Tutsi and the aims that we pursue in this project. The ted the reviews of the existing literature so-called moderate Hutu of about 800,000 researchers should make a difference in and discourses on the topics. The pre- people in a matter of a few months in 1994. approaching the conflict and the recons- sentation and the discussion on historio- The consequences of this genocide and truction from knowledge based perspec- graphy and scholarship on gender by its impact in the region can be compared tive. Understanding the reality of the Magdalena Rwebangira shaped the epis- with the consequences of the United situation requires questioning the exis- temological foundation of our methodo- States dropping the atomic bombs on ting perceptions of the subject matter, and logies and theories in this workshop by Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan. Biolo- the creation or appropriation of tools to creating a dialogue on the role of gender, gical and medical scientists are still stu- be used for any critical analysis. Resear- women, and men-dominated institutions dying the consequences of such a tragedy chers must deconstruct the perceived rea- in the peacemaking processes. A critical in physiological and psychological terms. lities based on the objectivity of facts and reflection on what remains to be done a combination of the principles of positi- within interdisciplinary framework by F. In 1994, two presidents from Rwanda and vism and empiricism. However, it should E. M. Senkoro, a member of the Executive Burundi were killed at the same time by a be noted that the process of forming so- Committee of CODESRIA, provided ano- plane crash. This also created another cial theories of post-conflict reconstruc- ther key element of our intellectual guide. national and regional trauma. The tion has to be influenced by philosophical Senkoro also commented on the values violence continues in Uganda by the questions about what kinds of state, eco- of indigenous knowledge systems as an militias who have been fighting the regime nomic systems, and cultural choices, asset in this new way of thinking. in Kampala. South Sudanese nationalist despite the imperatives of liberal globali- movements fought the government of This research project is taking another zation, people would prefer or choose and Khartoum. Their negotiations led to the level of critical dialogue between theory what kinds of mechanisms and institutions comprehensive peace agreement through and practice as scholars interrogate the of peace should be established. which the South Sudanese gained complex roles of political ideology, independence based on a voting yes in a The workshop of August 2013 that brou- economics, ethnicity, gender, legal referendum on the question. Once, the ght together the team in Arusha, Tanza- systems, women, multinationals, political extreme military dictatorship in "Zaïre" led nia, was unique for the following reasons: parties and civil society, labor and the to the near disappearance of the secular (1) The high level of the intellectual com- youth in post-conflict reconstruction state for many years when president mitment of the researchers as reflected in processes in the region and in Africa at Mobutu became himself the divined, their direct involvement in what is taking large. These factors and actors are being individualized and personalized state. place in the region. All the researchers examined from a holistic perspective. This Secular state’s institutions vanished. directly or indirectly have been touched implies structuralist and historical personally or through their research perspectives within the world system as The conflict in this region led to wars in works (teaching, research or policy) by it functions in Africa. which some people have been buried ali- the conflict; (2) All the researchers are ve in some cases. Though he had a long We are examining the nature of these members of teaching and research units history of national revolution, President actors, beyond the identification of their in institutions of higher learning in this Laurent-Désiré Kabila of the DRC came behaviors, in their relationship to one sub-region; (3) The interdisciplinary and to power through the means of a hetero- another, the internal and external base of multidisciplinary nature of their works clite coalition of guerrilla and militia poli- their motivations, the structures of their transcends the parochialism of specific tics, and was killed, adding a new actions, and domestic and international disciplinary approaches; (4) the dialogi- dimension of power struggle and politics sponsorships. Policy recommendations cal relationship between and among the of invasion into the equation of the con- will promote necessary constructive disciplines; and (5) the importance of both flict in the region. The war in the East of dialogues between researchers and policy empiricism and policy implications. DRC with peripheral capitalist dimensions makers. has killed more than 5 million people in The workshop was enlightened by the A conference on peace will be held as the the DRC alone. Militia groups continue brilliant researchers’ specific presenta- first step toward the conceptualization of to kill and terrorize the people in the Cen- tions of their own research projects, par- the implementation of all the aspects of tral African Republic. The movement of ticipants’ comments on the presentation, this advanced research project on peace, refugees has become endemic. The phe- shaped and guided by Joseph Gahama’s security and post-conflict reconstruction. nomenon of the child soldier has explo- presentations from a historian’s compre- Finally, this advanced project addresses ded with devastating consequences in hensive perspective and also commented the issues about the nature of the the society. Furthermore, the victimization and elaborated by critical and practical connectivity and that of progress of of women and level of brutality against views of each presentation with an em- peoples and the states within the females has been alarming in the region. phasis on methodologies and policies by imperatives of the Great Lakes’ cultural, Bernard Mumpassi Lututala. He not only The contributions of researchers collec- geographical, political, and economic commented on each presentation, identi- tively in examining and understanding the borders and their potential and real capital, fying the major elements of the problema- true causes of the conflicts, their social, as well as their constraints. tic, but also insisted on how to go forward local and regional ramifications, and their in connecting research and government. For regional peace to be created, the exis- policy implications cannot be understa- This author had interventions on almost ting borders and their current meanings ted. The policy recommendations of the each major aspect of the project, inclu- both theoretically and practically must be CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 3 & 4, 2013 Page 58 challenged. Furthermore, within a world I project that the final product of our I think that a multipolar peace approach of states with their claimed sovereignty, research be articulated on the basis of a with multi variables base should be the concept of multipolar peace should call and the need for consolidating a new privileged, as it is conceptually holistic in be explored as it opens up a possible dia- Pax-Africana agenda, one that has to be its philosophy and decentralized in its logue between the states, local forces, and regionally, politically, economically and pragmatism within the framework of Pax- the peoples on the question of relocation culturally imagined within the existing Africana. CODESRIA’s initiative can be of the peace base. Peace should not be African objective conditions. The role of considered as a panacea toward the new located only in the state’s institutions and the is significant in this remapping of the Great Lakes Region of appropriated only by these institutions. rethinking as sources of human and Africa. It ought to also be located within the lo- material resources and as citizens in their The expression "progress" as used in this cal peasant and farmer’s institutions and respective countries. The new peace and context is not part of an evolutionary as- their values as well. If 28 European states security can be the instruments of political sumption of "developmentalism" advan- and their internal colonization histories, decolonization and a unifier across trans- ced by so-called modernity on a planetary deep cultural hatred and wars among their national space. Such a project has to be scale, a classification that is predetermi- small political entities and various levels essentially scientific, ideological, and ned, unidirectional and cumulative. Pea- of industrialization, have been finally ca- political before it can become practically ce, like progress, cannot be produced only pable to unite under the European Union economic. Each country and its people through a simple formula of signing agree- institutions, there are many lessons to have more to gain collectively through ments. It can be produced through the learn from this pragmatic unity within cul- the establishment of peace and security understanding and changing of the com- tural and ideological diversities. Where than some individualistic gains asso- plexity of existing relationships between there are a strong will, trust and confi- ciated with peripheral state and capitalism, imagined and invented realities. This is a dence, everything is possible. There is and corporate militarism. In this project, lesson that can be obtained from all scien- no natural law (or physiocratic norm) of we are rethinking the Great Lakes Region, ces and the humanities. gravity that determines the place of vio- a requirement for self-definition and self- lent conflict in the Great Lakes Region. identity.

Archives of Post-Independence Africa and its Diaspora

Introduction ca and the Diaspora. The insights from Seventy participants from Europe, North Peter J. Bloom & these papers along with the commentary America, and the African continent Stephan F. Miescher by the commentators and respondents gathered on Gorée Island for the "Archives University of California, expanded the themes for the Gorée Island of Post-Independence Africa and its Santa Barbara conference. These themes included Ar- Diaspora", 20-23 June 2012. Located off chival Absences and Surrogate Collec- tions of the African State, Performing the the coast of Dakar, Gorée Island is best the International Institute for Social Archive, Post-Independence Media For- known for its infamous role in the Atlantic History, Amsterdam (IISH). Our various mations, Spatialization of Art and the Ar- slave trade, underscoring the Diasporic collaborators included, Ebrima Sall, chive, and Administering the Archive. The theme of the conference. The participants Bernard Mumpasi Lututala, and Olivier discussion to follow provides a brief over- were so immersed in the proceedings that Sagna of CODESRIA; Percy Hintzen of view of how conference participants en- power outages, though limiting, did not CAS at UC Berkeley; Benjamin Soares, gaged with these themes at Gorée Island. diminish the enthusiasm and engagement Mirjam de Bruijn, and Jos Damen of the of the participants.1 2 ASC; and Stefano Bellucci of the IISH. Archival Absences This academic conference was the Thanks to this extended series of mee- In the aftermath of independence, African outcome of collaborative efforts over a tings and encounters, we were able to states were charged with administering three-year period. Originally launched by build an interdisciplinary and transnatio- the colonial archive within the emerging Peter J. Bloom and Stephan F. Miescher nal scholarly network culminating in the context of nation building.3 Intermittent as co-directors of the University of conference. A call for papers was circula- social, political, and economic crises California (UC) African Studies ted in September 2011, and the themes militated against responsible custodian- Multicampus Research Group (MRG), this continued to develop at a roundtable dis- ship. By the 1970s, an array of collections initiative grew out of a series of meetings cussion at the annual meeting of the Afri- had emerged and supplanted the primacy in Dakar, Berkeley, Leiden, and Rabat. The can Studies Association in San Francisco, of national archives. While some well- project soon became a truly collaborative November 2011, and the CODESRIA 13th funded government agencies established endeavor once we began working directly General Assembly in Rabat, Morocco, their own collections, non-governmental with the Center for African Studies at UC- December 2011. In Rabat, we organized organizations, such as Oxfam, created Berkeley (CAS), the African Studies two panels focused on "Archival Practi- archives that continue to serve as "sur- Centre, Leiden (ASC), CODESRIA, and ces" and "Theorizing the Archive" in Afri- rogates of the state" (Jennings 2008). In CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 3 & 4, 2013 Page 59 addition, scholars turned to archival by unearthing the forgotten travel makes possible certain kinds of stories holdings of multinational corporations notebooks of David Boilat, a mid- about institutions, knowledge, and care. whose collections frequently straddle the nineteenth-century Senegalese métis The effect of changing institutional prac- colonial and the postcolonial period. intellectual, now held at the Bibliothèque tices in archival settings was described Private libraries and foundations created nationale in Paris. Further, the remarkable by Brenton Maart (University of Cape resource centers, several of which are history of social work in South Africa, as Town, South Africa) in his discussion on located in Europe and North America, but reflected in the African and European the transfer of government documents as others exist on the African continent, settler colonial archives located at the part cultural policies in post-apartheid particularly important Arabic manuscript University of Witswatersrand, was South Africa. In the , the collections in Timbuktu (Jeppie and described by its lead archivist, Gabrielle Mthala provincial archive was reassigned Diagne 2008). Mohale (University of Witswatersrand, as one of the three sites of the Nelson South Africa). She emphasized the nature Françoise Blum (CNRS, France) and Fa- Mandela Museum. Maart lamented the of social work conceptions of identity and brice Melka’s (CNRS) approach to the near complete disintegration of this ar- subjectivity. African archives of French unions draws chive, as it was an important repository on their examination of the corresponden- Two additional papers within this context from the colonial period documenting the ce of Gérard Espéret with various interlo- of archival absences examined the context history of ideological oppression that cutors in Africa. Espéret was head of the for marginalia and rumor in Islamic wrenched apart the Xhosa community. Confédération française des travailleurs archives in West Africa. Susana Molins Instances of the destruction of archives chrétiens (CFTC) [French Confederation Lliteras (University of , South in the figure of absence became an impor- of Christian workers], which became the Africa) spoke about the Fondo Ka’ti tant source of discussion throughout the Confédération française démocratique du Library, a private collection under threat conference given the frequently uneven, travail (CFDT) in 1964. Blum and Melka by radical Islamic rebels in northern Mali or non-existent, archival holdings on the addressed the franco-africain quality of at the time of the conference.5Her continent leading researchers to seek out political activism in the context of unioni- contribution provided an analysis of types of sources but also alternative zation as a universal democratic right marginalia that contains a family methods. through their work as purveyors of the genealogy in a fifteenth-century Qu’ranic collection, known as the Fonds Maurice manuscript. Erin Pettigrew (Stanford Performing the Archive Gastaud, which is held at the French Con- University, USA), whose paper explored Another site of inquiry under discussion fédération générale du travail (CGT) in the context for rumor, focused on included the archival context for Paris.4Describing their working methods accusations of bloodsucking or organ- performance on the African continent. As with a wide array of documents they fo- eating derived from colonial documents a living archive equally spoken and cused on the nature and quality of cor- that she has consulted in the National performed, it is defined by its relevance respondence as an important archival Archives of Senegal and Mauritania. She and immediacy in creating a space for source in understanding the foundatio- described how access to archives, reception and social action.6 A series of nal political debates and figures for the particularly family-managed libraries in presentations that addressed the history late colonial and post-independence era Nouakchott along with her work with of post-independence Pan-African in Africa. healers, led to an examination of how the festivals began with Dominique secrets implied by the history of divination These records of French labor unions Malaquais’s (CNRS) discussion of the practices are handed on to practitioners. emphasize how European corporate and initial stages of a multimedia digital These papers examine alternative traces national archival collections often serve archiving project on the Pan-African within traditional archives. as an important source for social history. festivals of the 1960s and 1970s. The Bianca Murillo (Willamette University, Similarly, Noémi Tousignant, John Man- initiative includes the First World Festival USA) presented aspects of her extensive ton, and Guillaume Lachenal (London of Negro Arts (FESMAN) staged in Dakar research from the Unilever archive at Port School of Hygiene and Tropical Medici- in 1966; the First Panafrican Festival Sunlight in the . This ne, United Kingdom, and Université Pa- (PANAF) held in Algiers in 1969; Zaire ’74 archive includes the files of the United ris Diderot, France) explored questions of held in Kinshasa; and the Second World Africa Company (UAC), one of the major how to read archives "along the grain" Black and African Festival of Arts and European merchant companies in former following their logic of inscription in Ann Culture (FESTAC) held in Lagos in 1977. British Africa. Jean Rahier (Florida Laura Stoler’s (2009) words, when the The project promises to make archival International University, USA) examined grain appears to have crumbled. They sources available through web platforms the archives of colonial ephemera related presented three case studies about the hosted by the South African-based to mixed racial identity in the Belgian histories and archival sites of medical Magazine, along with a Congo by reference to the history of the science and care in Senegal, Cameroon, number of exhibitions, colloquiums, and 7 Bulletin de l’Union des Femmes and Nigeria and examined traces created publications. In addition, Malaquais Coloniales among other publications by scientific, medical and caring practi- screened the film, The First World housed at the Royal Museum for Central ces. These objects and imprints were once Festival of Negro Arts (dir. William Africa in Tervuren and the Catholic animated by the short-term memoryof re- Greaves, 1966, 40’), enriched by University of Louvain, both in . sident staff that enabling these institu- comments from Manthia Diawara (NYU, Toby Warner (UCLA, USA) analyzed the tions to function. The recovery of traces USA) about the depicted cultural style pre-history of the French colonial archive and its political implications of the era. CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 3 & 4, 2013 Page 60

This subsequent discussion was to his preoccupation with the Nyayo jnet al. 2009; Burrell 2012), given the ubi- supplemented by Diawara’s keynote philosophy of peace, love, and unity to quity of mobile communication devices about recent interviews for his film project rule. By distinguishing between "art" and the Internet, while also validating the on the history of the political party music and "traditional" performance, persistence of radio (Gunner et al. 2011), Rassemblement Démocratique Africain Masasabi described how ethnic identities as well as the contemporary resonance of (RDA). have been archived as part of patriotic late colonial and early independence Afri- songs in the service of nation building. can film and radio (see Bloom et al. forth- In his presentation about the 1969 Pan- coming). African Cultural Festival in Algiers, Sam In a similar manner, Nate Plageman (Wake Anderson (UCLA, USA) thematized the Forest University, USA) focused on From this standpoint, Érika Nimis way in which various events became a Ghanaian highlife as a means of (Université du Québec, Montréal, source for postcolonial cultural politics understanding Ghanaian history and the Canada) addressed the stakes of digital both in Africa and within a broader stakes of creating an online archive that access. She demonstrated how transnational context. Brian Quinn seeks to catalogue this important musical digitization has allowed for increasing (UCLA) described the 1966 First World legacy. By foregrounding the prominence accessibility, along with forms of re- Festival of Negro Arts in Dakar by of highlife from the 1950s to the 1970s, appropriation by a new generation of reference to theatrical presentations at the this archive could offer a corrective to the contemporary African photographers event itself. In particular, he pointed to standard narrative of Ghana’s post- from South Africa, Algeria, and D.R. Seydou Badian’s adaptation of the Shaka independence history privileging political Congo. In his presentation, Olusola Isola figure in "La mort de Chaka" as a starting events. Preservation loomed large in (University of Ibadan, Nigeria) celebrated point for understanding symbolic Plageman’s discussion, while also the introduction of new digital complexities implied by the transfer of pointing to methodological questions of technologies, particularly social media, as cultural power through an exploration of how to make a vanishing source a more democratic form of access allied the colonial archive. accessible to a wider public.9 Finally, the with the changing structure of ownership paper by Mhoze Chikowero (University in Nigeria. Social and new interactive The resonance of the colonial archive for of California, Santa Barbara, USA) media, he argued, limits government the post-independence Panafrican addressed how an examination of songs intervention. He asserted that new media, festivals was powerfully analyzed by may form an archive to reconstruct given its presence on the Internet, may Tamara Levitz (UCLA) in her presentation grievances and aspirations of colonized be a more accountable custodian of public of musical stylizations at the 1931 Colonial people in South Rhodesia (present-day archives than a state apparatus that Exhibition in Paris (see also Levitz 2006). Zimbabwe). In Zimbabwe, songs do not merely ignores the archive unless it is For Levitz, the colonial exhibitions were only form a bridge between the first and seen to be a political liability. part of an emerging sonorous atlas. It the second Chimurenga (resistance to became a source for releasing not only Prisca-Nadège Bibila-N’Kouma (Centre colonial conquest and liberation struggle) recorded music, but the presence of d’Etudes et de Recherche sur les Analy- but also offer a "usable past" for nation voices and an expanding context for ses et Politiques Economiques, Congo- building. The notion of usable pasts pace storytelling that has enabled continuities Brazzaville) contributed to an Ranger (1976) was picked up on by Martin with Pan-African festivals since the understanding of the utility of alternative Mourre (Université de Montréal, Canada) 1960s. In a complementary fashion, media archives through her examination who argued for the archival resonance of Sheron Wray’s (UC Irvine, USA) of mobile phones as a privileged site of Thiaroye, the site of the 1944 massacre of examination of dance improvisation communication in Brazzaville, enabling Senegalese troops outside of Dakar accented the historically intertwined new kinds of virtual archives. Her discus- (Senegal), by presenting various artistic nature of West African performance sion, among others, supported the argu- expressions of this historical event in traditions as a series of bodily techniques ment that disarray in a number of African Senegalese high schools and other embodied by various kinds of African archival settings may be addressed throu- venues to foreground a context for a American dance performance that is part gh new communication technologies that contemporary "ethnographic reception" of her own performance practice.8It is the circumvent state control. among local audiences. intersection between music and dance as Another example of how political featured in a festival setting that fore- Post-Independence Media prerogatives over determine questions of grounds how the staging of performance Formations preservation and access was addressed has become an integral part of the post- by Jennifer Blaylock (University of independence African state. In the independence era, film, print, and radio were conceived as an extension of California, Berkeley, USA) in a Three papers focused on the role of song state power. Several papers examined the presentation that described the and music as an essential dimension to multi-directional quality of post-indepen- deteriorating state of the 16mm film state power. Nancy Masasabi (Maseno dence media challenging established archive of the Ghana Information Services University, Kenya) presented her work on practices of "mass media." New digital Department. Politically sensitive films the significance of patriotic song in techniques in particular may reposition remain hidden in this archive. Such films, Kenya after the death of Jomo Kenyatta. the relationship between intellectual pro- marked with an "X," denote that they were She described how these songs perty rights holders and citizens. Recent not for public viewing. In her discussion functioned as a resource for nation scholarship has begun to examine the of one of these films, Freedom for Ghana building during ’s context for new media in Africa (De Brui- (dir. Sean Graham, 1957), she explores the presidency, particularly their relationship CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 3 & 4, 2013 Page 61 logic of the archive and censorship Gorée Island as a commemoration of the In Awasom’s analysis of King Sobhuza’s restrictions relative to successive Atlantic slave trade. Taking as examples statue, he described the regal predators government administrations. the well-known Maison des Esclaves included by his side, that of a bull and (House of Slaves) and the Musée de la lion, which serve to reinforce his role as By the same token, Francis Fogue Femme Henriette Bathily with its empha- the symbolic father and, nearly in the (University of Ngaoundere, Cameroon) sis on the role of the signares, Gueye sphere of the uncanny, the biological presented a fascinating account of his pointed to the creation of a tourist imagi- parent of the nation. Awasom contrasted archival research at Radio Garouain in nary organized in relation to the history the centrality of Sobhuza’s role as founder Northern Cameroon, established in 1958, of the Atlantic slave trade. of the nation with the collapse of the and provided insight into this Fulani Cameroonian Mungo Reunification region along with attendant national In similar fashion, Melanie Boehi Bridge in 2004 following the explosion of political tensions. In the 1980s, rivalries (University of Basel, Switzerland) a fuel tanker. The bridge was first between President Biya and his connected two territorial landmarks as constructed in 1969 to commemorate the predecessor, , resulted part of a differential tourist imagery: the unification between French Northern and in the destruction of archival holdings at Adderly Street flower market and the British Southern Cameroons. Its current Radio Garouain. Some documents remain Kirstenbosch National Botanic Garden state of disrepair, Awasom contended, in private collections, allowing for that became monuments constitutive of demonstrates how independent contemporary reconstructions. identity in Cape Town, South Africa. Cameroon continues to be contested by While tourist brochures have celebrated Within the realm of popular sports, rival communities (see Awasom 2000). the "colored" female sellers of the Susann Baller (University of Basel, Finally, the spatialization of politics Adderly Street flower market, Boehi Switzerland) examined the history of through national monuments, tourist showed how flower sellers were subjected football (i.e., soccer) in Senegal focusing attractions, and the refashioning of to apartheid policies. Moreover, these on an archive of match reports. This type communities are shown to serve political women have been engaged in the of research addresses the nature of narratives moored to state power. production of their own history by informal and formal archives as a widely declaring their market a heritage site. popular public attraction, which has Physical Archives Boehi suggested that floral spaces can contributed, she argued, to the be studied as material manifestations of There has been a growing need to professionalization of football. Sporting the past and may serve as archives of the preserve local collections across the records as an archival context lead us to urban sphere. African continent. These may include reconsider the relationship between archives of professional organizations, popular attractions and the significance Monuments such as Heroes Acres in genealogical imagery, personal photo of the archive. These contributions, along Harare, Zimbabwe, completed in 1996 to albums and manuscripts (tin-trunk with Ferdinand de Jong’s (University of commemorate the Chimurenga struggle literacy), customary regalia and court East Anglia, United Kingdom) paper on against settler colonialism, have served records, vinyl records and other recording the negative archive of Cheikh Amada as sites of contestation. As Norah Makoni formats.10 Bamba as a postcolonial saint in Senegal, (University of Science and Technology reveal how film and social media are , Zimbabwe) explained, In the Zambian National Archives, as captive to government prerogative. It is controversy about the monument emerged Marja Hinfelfaar (National Archive of the private sphere, including the NGO because of its partisan nature, given that Zambia) and Miles Larmer (University of sector, which may be the most reliable it mainly served as burial grounds for Sheffield, United Kingdom) explained, source for reawakening an archival men, and a few women, closely affiliated systematic record collection and archiving consciousness. with the ruling ZANU PF party. As a result, was interrupted with the introduction of this national shrine has polarized the the one-party state, under the United Spatialization of Art and the collective memory and national identity National Independence Party (UNIP), in Archive of Zimbabweans. Along a similar 1972. Since then, documents from ministries have only been collected In the independence era, public monu- trajectory, Arsène Elongo (Université haphazardly, kept in a transit facility, and ments, temples, cemeteries, and other edi- Marien Ngouabi, Congo-Brazzaville), remain unavailable to researchers. fices have served as important sites of described the legacy of French colonial Historians of postcolonial Zambia have nationhood and state power that speak and postcolonial Congolese national been forced to become archivists by to a reterritorialization of the public sphe- monuments of various figures that creating their own archives of private re. The broader context of monumentali- provide an ideological context as living papers by former politicians, other zing the state addresses the effect of archive directly moored to contemporary autobiographical writings, and most branding and creating a context for tou- political realities. A comparative prominently the UNIP archive.11 Such rism both within Africa and from without. discussion of King Sobhuza II Memorial initiatives, laudable as they are, are mainly Several papers accented how public heri- Park in the kingdom of Swaziland and the driven by the research interests of foreign tage sites function as selective archives Mungo Reunification Bridge in Cameroon scholars, and may not address the of memory, which aestheticize and assert by Nicodemus Fru Awasom (University concerns of Zambians seeking to learn contested narratives allied with national of Swaziland, Swaziland) brought to light about their own history. identity. In her keynote address, Sokhna founding national figures and unresolved Guèye (IFAN, UniversitéCheikh Anta ethnic conflict. Diop, Senegal) examined monuments on CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 3 & 4, 2013 Page 62

A similar case was presented by Olutayo brary in Basel, Switzerland, where he cur- between the global North and Africa. Adesina (University of Ibadan, Nigeria). rently serves as head archivist. While this Ogbechie also pointed to the emerging Since the 1970s, the National Archives of archive systematically collects published digital divide within Africa itself, as the Nigeria has experienced a continuing de- works in and about Namibia, recent initia- vast majority of donor initiatives, such as cline due to lack of funding and poor ma- tives have consisted of acquiring private those sponsored by the Carnegie nagement. This situation has led to an papers of colonial European academics Corporation, have focused on digitizing officially approved commercialization pro- and journalists, as well as visual epheme- archival holdings of institutions based in ject to generate funds for maintaining the ra of post-independence origins. The lat- South Africa to the exclusion of others institution. Moreover, the commercializa- ter contains a large collection of posters, parts of Africa. tion has created a "black market" of ar- dating from the emergence of the libera- On the African continent, there have been chival material. If users are willing to pay, tion struggle, and everyday objects in- a number of significant digital archive archival files will be delivered to their cluding shopping bags.13 initiatives. Khadidiatou Diallo (UNIVAL doorstep. For Adesina, there is no doubt Two papers addressed private West and ISRA at Institut Fondamental that African national archives are an en- African collections of photographs. d’Afrique Noire [IFAN], Senegal) dangered species. The current crisis mi- Walter Gam Nkwi (University of Buea, examines recent efforts of digitization of ght be addressed by fully digitizing Cameroon), as relayed by Mirjam De Bruijn early historical collections at IFAN collections in order to make them newly (ASC and University of Leiden, The including the BIENS CULTURELS and accessible. A more encouraging assess- Netherlands), elaborated on the role of FACT IST projects with international ment of ongoing state practices in main- memory in relation to family photos, kept funding structures. Larmer and Hinfelfaar taining and developing archival in albums or hanging on walls, from the presented another example of digitization. collections was presented by Mwayi Lu- Bamenda Grassfields. These photographs With the support of British grant, they saka (National Museum of Malawi, Ma- are not disembodied images of the past succeeded in digitizing the Zambia UNIP lawi) in her discussion of the history of but refer to inscriptions of their sense of archives, now accessible from London. the Malawi National Library and Museum self and the past along with social Based in Paris, Anaïs Wion (CNRS, Centre as bulwark of nation building. relations. Sylvester Okwunodu Ogbechie d’Etudes des Mondes Africains, France) Jean Allman (Washington University, (University of California, Santa Barbara) presented the ongoing collaborative USA), in her presentation, asked whether described an archive project documenting international Ethiopian archives the postcolonial archive simply reprodu- the photographs of the Ezechime clan, manuscript project in which historians and ced its colonial predecessors. In Ghana, who hail from nine towns in mid-Western philologists have been digitizing a wide the national archives housed in the cen- Nigeria. As this multi-ethnic clan has used array of Ethiopian manuscripts since the tral repository of Public Records Admi- iconography to mediate questions of twelfth century. As a member of this team nistration and Archives Department in philosophy and identity, its archive of researchers, Wion described the history Accra are fragmentary, accidental, and consists of thousands of family albums of how these documents have been dispersed, as systematic record manage- with over 300,000 photographs dating scattered as a result of historical events.14 ment ceased with the coup against Nkru- back to 1900. For many African archives located in mah in 1966, and many government Finally, Jamie Monson (Macalester Europe, digitization has been a priority in agencies under subsequent military and College, USA) presented alternative order to make collections more widely civilian regimes failed to release their fi- archives that commemorate the construc- available, especially to researchers on the les. For the period of Nkrumah’s rule, All- tion of the East African TAZARA railway African continent. Guy Thomas man identifies a "transnational shadow by workers from China, Tanzania, and (University of Basel, Switzerland), head archive" that points to new history wri- Zambia. Her contribution addressed the of archives and library at mission 21 (Basel ting opportunities that are less determi- diverse meanings of photo albums Mission), referred to the open archive ned by the archiving of the colonial state. containing the same photographs among initiative, which seeks to make archival Based on the example of the surprising retired workers in China and in East Africa, collections about Africa more accessible relationship between Nkrumah and the as well as how Chinese-made machines by digitizing their finding aids. Mission former Nazi test pilot Hanna Reitsch who form a material memory of technological 21 has been a pioneer in digitization, as had established a flight school in Ghana, mobility across the global south in the its rich collection of historical photo- Allman shows how this shadow archive Cold War context. graphs now includes more than 30,000 allows a reconstruction of this crucial images, which is currently available period in Ghanaian history that it quite Digital Archives online.15 different from one drawn from official re- cords.12 Conference participants reflected on the An early attempt to collect and preserve challenges faced by archives on the African newspapers, serials, and epheme- Some papers dealt with archival collec- African continent in relation to the digital ra has been the Cooperative African Mi- tions located outside the African conti- revolution. This transformation implies croform Project (CAMP), founded in 1963 nent. Dag Henrichsen reported about the shifting scholarly practices and questions as a result of discussions between the challenge of simultaneously rectifying who benefits from the structure of these U.S. African Studies Association, the existing colonial archives and building up digital innovations. The extent to which Midwest Interlibrary Center (now the new post-independence collections at the these efforts have privatized African Center for Research Libraries), and Afri- Basler Afrika Bibliographien, the Namibia archives was also evoked. Many cana libraries. In 2012, due to the rise in Resource Centre and Southern Africa Li- commented on the growing digital divide CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 3 & 4, 2013 Page 63 digital information and preservation for- emerging digital archives in his discus- that are ultimately aligned with a hege- mats, CAMP renamed itself Cooperative sion of a proposed Ghanaian highlife monic alliance of state and private inte- Africana Material Projects. Jason Schultz music web-based archive. rests may simply be a diversion of (University of California, Berkeley) exa- detailed scholarly effort. His interest in Finally, Jos Damen (ASC) and Stefano mined recent capacity building efforts thematizing the archive through an epis- Bellucci (IISH) organized two workshops between CAMP and African archives. He temology of power and the invisible, ci- about the role of non-state archives and argued that issues concerning access, ting the interventions by Manthia Diawara new archival methods such as encoded collection, and preservation of African and Duncan Yoon (UCLA), drew a caco- archival description. They emphasized the archival material reflect the legacy of co- phonous response among participants importance of cultural heritage preser- lonialism and capitalism, as ultimately precisely because of his challenge to pro- vation. Workshop participants addressed African archives form a commodity ex- cesses of verification and the integrity of numerous case-specific examples that changed unequally between the global the archive itself as index of scholarly in- included the preservation of a Senegalese North and South. Schultz noted that ad- tervention. His emphasis on the point that prison archive, also discussed in illu- vocacy by CAMP librarians and scholars affect, identity, and the political may in minating detail in the contribution by Ibra must continue to challenge the rising tide fact contradict the logic of archival traces Sène (Wooster College, USA), privacy of commodification of African archival was then taken up by Ebrima Sall in his issues related to medical archives as holdings. Similarly, Francis Garaba (Uni- final remarks. Sall expressed the need for comple-mented by the research reported versity of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa) future collaborative efforts beyond the by Tousignant et al. described above, and warned that current initiatives in digiti- dint of an archival reckoning as part of a how the context for digitizing archives is zing the archives of the liberation strug- collective form of action on the African subject to significant political and cultural gle in Southern Africa have led to the continent itself with its international par- variations. commodification of a cultural heritage that tners. The final conference dinner was 16 mainly benefits the global north. Once Conclusion held in a restaurant overlooking Gorée digitized, institutions in the global South Island harbor. Those planning to return tend to lose copyright control. Finally, Lastly, a central theme of the conference to Dakar at the end of the proceedings digitization is not the solution for preser- focused on how more democratic and were serendipitously delayed because of vation as digital resources remain fragile, open forms of archival access remain an the overreaction by police to disperse a vulnerable, and in constant need of at- elusive goal but is being taken up as a small protest by Gorée Island residents tention for long term storage. priority in the international academic for the ongoing power outages leading community. Two sets of closing remarks to the suspension of the ferry for a few Jonathon Cole (University of California, were presented by Anne Hugon hours. Berkeley) offered an overview of digital (Université de Paris I, France), in French, humanities initiatives that show the and by Percy Hintzen, in English, marking Notes potential application of Internet tech- the bilingual proceedings for which there 1. Two previous conference reports have been nologies for rethinking the African was intermittent simultaneous translation published Jos Damen and Benjamin Soares archive. These technologies provide provided by CODESRIA. avenues for increased collaboration http://www.ascleiden.nl/?q=content/ through tools such as Google Docs, and Hugon’s discussion accented archival conference-report-archives-post- for participation in the archival process methods of contravention through stra- independence-africa, as well as by Brenton through online collections such as tegies of counter politics and an ethics of Maart http://www.apc.uct.ac.za/gazette/ Voyages, which is the trans-Atlantic slave contamination (which are described in current/?id=72&t=int. Further, a complete set of abstracts and the conference program trade database, and Slave Biographies, greater length in her publication included may be found at https://sites.google.com/ which maintains information on slave with this report). Percy Hintzen’s closing site/archivesconferencedakar/alphabetized- lives in the New World, along with open- remarks, on the other hand, revolved links-to-papers. access platforms such as Omeka and around unpacking the syllogistic reaso- Kora. Omeka, Cole suggests, could be ning structure of "How can we know what 2. We are grateful for financial support from used to hold private collections of letters, we know." Intended as a provocation with CODESRIA; University of California African cards, photos, as well songs, poems, and regard to understanding the underlying Studies Multicampus Research Group; other "tin-trunk literacy" materials. But structure of state power and the political University of California, Santa Barbara: there are questions about copyright uses of the archive, Hintzen drew on Do- Office of the Executive Vice Chancellor, infringement, cultural imperialism, heritage nald Rumsfeld’s ignominious 2002 dictum College of Letters and Science, and Division plundering, and equitable access to used to fabricate the threat of Weapons of Humanities and Fine Arts; Center for African Studies, University of California, Internet sources. A related initiative of Mass Destruction. It was the power of Berkeley; African Studies Centre, Leiden; introduced by Francesco Correale (CNRS) the so-called "known knowns" that Hint- International Institute of Social History, was the BiVIOS project, a virtual library zen pointed to as the maligned logic of Amsterdam; WOTRO Science for Global of unpublished Western Sahara sources nation states to withhold and selectively Development, The Netherlands; Royal that seeks to make accessible archival interpret evidence from the archive. Hint- zen’s remarks focused on the ultimate Netherlands Embassy, Dakar. The following access in Europe and Africa thus individuals provided invaluable adminis- circumventing dominant representations manipulative potential of the archive as an instance of the concentration of power. trative support: Marie Ndiaye, CODESRIA; of this region. Plageman has also been Kate Purdy UC African Studies MRG; Martha concerned with similar issues about No matter how complete or competently digitized, Hintzen contended, archives Saavedra CAS, UC Berkeley; and Kim van access, power, and control of these Drie and Gitty Petit, ASC, Leiden. CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 3 & 4, 2013 Page 64

3. For critical assessments and alternative Apter, Andrew. 2005. The Pan-African Nation: Jennings, Michael. 2008. Surrogates of the State: approaches, see Hamilton et al. 2002; Barber Oil and the Spectacle of Culture in Nigeria. NGOs, Development, and the Ujamaa in 2006; Stoler 2009; Peterson and Macola Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Tanzania. Bloomfield, Conn.: Kumarian 2009. Press. Awasom, Nicodemus Fru. 2000. "The 4. For an important formulation of l’état Reunification Question in Cameroon Jeppie, Shamil, and SouleymaneBachirDiagne, franco-african, see Dozon 2002a, 2002b, History: Was the Bride an Enthusiastic or a eds. 2008. The Meanings of Timbuktu. 2003. Reluctant One?" Africa Today 47, no. 2 Dakar: CODESRIA. (Spring): 90-119 5. The political events in Mali were also taken Lalu, Premesh. 2007. "The Virtual Stampede up in an impromptu session in which Barber, Karin, ed. 2006. Africa’s Hidden Histories: for Africa: Digitisation, Postcoloniality and Susanna Molins Lliteras, Benjamin Soares, Everyday Literacy and Making the Self. Archives of Liberation Struggles in Southern and Mirjam de Bruijn discussed the current Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Africa." Innovation: Journal of Appropriate situation in Timbuktu given their familiarity Librarianship and Information Work in Bloom, Peter J., Takyiwaa Manuh, and Stephan with the region. Benjamin Soares later Southern Africa 34: 28-44. F. Miescher, eds. Forthcoming. Spectacles published a New York Times editorial entitled, of Modernization in Africa. Bloomington: Larmer, Miles. 2010a. "Chronicles of a Coup "Mali’s Tomb Raiders," 8 July 2012. Indiana University Press. Foretold: Valentine Musakwanya and the Manthia Diawara offered commentary 1980 Coup Attempt in Zambia." Journal of about the situation in Mali during his Burrell, Jenna. 2012. Invisible Users: Youth in African History 51, no. 3: 391-409. keynote address, but also published two the Internet Cafés of Urban Ghana. articles in the online journal Slate Afrique, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Larmer, ed. 2010b. The Musakwanya Papers. : Lembani Trust. see http://www.slateafrique.com/auteur/531 De Bruijn, Mirjam, Francis Nyamnjoh, and Inge (accessed 1 June 2013). Brinkman, eds. 2009. Mobile Phones: The Levitz, Tamara. 2006. The Aestheticization of 6. See Ebron 2002. new talking drums of everyday Africa. Ethnicity: Imagining the Dogon at the Musée Leiden, The Netherlands: African Studies du quai Branly," The Musical Quarterly 89, 7. For FESTAC, see Apter 2005. In fact, Centre; Bamenda, Cameroon: Langaa no. 4: 600- 42. Malaquais’s article "Anti-Teleology: Re- Research and Publishing Common Initiative Mapping the Imag(in)ed City" has served Malaquais, Dominique. 2011. "Anti-Teleology: Group. as an important point of reference relative Re-Mapping the Imag(in) ed City." In to the conference theme (Malaquais2011). Dozon, Jean-Pierre. 2002a. "L'Étatfranco- African Cities Reader II: Mobilities and africain." Les Temps modernes (Afriques du Fixtures, ed. Edgar Pieterse and Ntone 8. See her article "Misnomer: Reflections on Monde), nos. 620-621 (August-November): Edjabe. Vlaeberg, South Africa: Chimurenga: Dance Performance," in Bloom, Manuh, 261-288. African Centre for Cities, pp.7-23. and Miescher 2009/10. Dozon, Jean-Pierre. 2002b. "L'État français Mobdj-Pouye, Aïssatou. 2013. "Writing the Self 9. Plageman’s recent book on the history of contemporain et son double, l'État franco- in Rural Mali: Domestic Archives and highlife (2013) includes links to the website, africain." Cahiers du Centre de recherches Genres of Personal Writing." Africa 83, no. www.ethnomultimedia.org, which features an historiques 30 (October): 21-27. 2: 205-26. archive of audio, video, and still images. Dozon, Jean-Pierre. 2003. "Les États contem- Peterson, Derek R. and Giacomo Macola, eds. 10. For tin-trunk literacy, see Barber 2006; porains africains dans l'épistémè africaniste 2009. Recasting the Past: History Writing Mbodj-Pouye 2013. française." Journal des anthropologues and Political Work in Modern Africa. 11. See Larmer’s work on the former Zambian (Actualité politique dans l'étude des societies Athens: Ohio University Press. politician Valentine Musakanya (Larmer contemporaines), no. 92-93: 13-29. Plageman, Nate. 2013. Highlife Saturday Night: 2010a, 2010b). Ebron, Paula. 2002. Performing Africa. Popular Music and Social Change in Urban 12. See Allman 2013. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Ghana. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 13. See Henrichsen et al. 2009. Gunner, Liz, Dina Ligaga, and Dumisani Moyo, eds. 2011. Radio in Africa: Publics, Cultures, Ranger, Terence O. 1976. "Towards a Useable 14. Some of these records are now available at: Communities. Woodbridge, Suffolk: James African Past." In African Studies Since 1945: www.cn-telma.fr/publication/zekra-nagar- Currey. A Tribute to Basil Davidson, ed.Christopher ema/. Fyfe. London: Longman, 17–30. Hamilton, Carolyn et al., eds. 2002. Refiguring 15. See www.bmarchives.org. the Archive. Cape Town: David Phillip. Stoler, Ann Laura. 2009. Along the Archival 16. The Aluka project on the history of the Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Henrichsen, Dag, Giorgio Miescher, Lorena liberation struggle in Southern Africa has Common Sense. Princeton: Princeton Rizzo, Jeremy Silvester. 2013. "Posters Act: triggered some important debates. See: University Press. Namibian Poster Action and the Isaacman, Premesh, Nygren 2005; Premesh Photographic Archive." Kronos 35: 160-74. Wray, Sheron. 2009/10. "Misnomer: Reflections 2007. on a Dance Performance," in Ghana Studies Isaacman, Allen F., PremeshLalu, and Thomas 12/13. Special Issue: Revisiting References I. Nygren. 2005. "Digitization, History, and Modernization, ed. Peter J. Bloom, Stephan Allman, Jean. 2013. "Phantoms of the Archive: the Making of a Postcolonial Archive of F. Takyiwaa Manuh, 249-63 Kwame Nkrumah, a Nazi Pilot Named South African Liberation Struggles: The Aluka Hanna, and the Contigencies of Postcolonial Project." Africa Today 52, no. 2: 55-77. History Writing." American Historical Review 118, no. 1: 104-29. CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 3 & 4, 2013 Page 65

Post-Independence Archives in Africa : A Summary

he task entrusted to me – to dating from 1946, my heart beats: I am in prepare a summary concluding front of a treasure. For all that, am I in the note, after three days of intense Anne Hugon presence of an archive? I am not T Université Paris 1, exchanges on post-Independence convinced, because this isolated archives in Africa – is both a great honour Panthéon-Sorbonne document, which survived relocations and a heavy responsibility. So I would and other vagaries of personal or national like to thank the organisers of this seminar history, was not preserved voluntarily but for the confidence they placed in me. I will first ponder over the status – and fortuitously. However, as I will expand on even the nature – of archives. Let us briefly this later, the archive is established as I would like to insist on the proliferation recall the polysemy of the word which, in such, while the document can be of examples provided here, which are cha- French at least, refers both to the services fortuitous. racterised by a diversity of scales (natio- and the places devoted to their nal examples, bi-national comparisons, Of course, for social scientists (historians preservation. and transnational experiences with archi- but also art historians, sociologists, ves) but also a diversity of perspectives Concerning post-independence Africa, it political scientists, demographers, town (case studies presented by researchers, is salutary, even essential, to depart from planners, anthropologists…), all is archival holdings presented by specialists the exclusive and reducing notion of material, as social science research can in the design or management of archives). archives as production of state power, feed on any substance. But it is not One of the interests of this seminar was intended for its own reproduction. automatic that any material can become to make it possible to compare several Because this meaning suggests that the an archive. If I may be allowed this wink different approaches and to establish sole archives are national archives; to a famous phrase,1 I would say ‘on ne communication between archives’ mana- however, in the post-independence naît pas archive: on le devient’, meaning gers and users, professionals working in African states, there are complex relations that archives are not born such, but rather the archives and research fields. Mea- between postcolonial states and can become archives – sometimes. Hence ning, between people who do not hold production or preservation of archives. the absolute need to clarify, to reflect both the same position in the "archives chain" Many papers thus evoked public on our relations with the archive and what which goes from the production to the indifference towards the storage of we mean by this word. For three days, we use of a document through multiple sta- documents, as well as the frequent will of "juggled" various more or less broad ges that have been described here (pre- the state to destroy certain records. meanings of the archives. Did we make servation, cataloguing, digitisation…). It is therefore necessary to broaden the progress in our definition of an archive? Personally, I will express just one (let me notion of archive, and the specialists of Collectively, this is not certain. But each specify minor), regret: no specific paper African history know it well: often faced of the contributions provided food for was presented on oral sources, while we with a more or less organised lack of public thought to each and every one of us on would have expected many contributions archives, we are compelled to invent new what he/she meant precisely by that – and on their collection and on the establish- sources, to diversify our research places if the seminar only served that purpose, it ment of archives based on these sources. and methods. However, it seems to me would already be a lot. This should be The researchers who use the collections counterproductive to use a very broad understood less as criticism – because of oral sources in Africa contribute to the definition of the notion of archives. During once again, a broad definition is production of documents (audio and/or those three days, the word was used with stimulating – than as a proposal of written, when there is transcription), great flexibility, often as a casual requirement for the intelligibility of what which are themselves liable to become synonymous with documents, sources, we talked about. archives if they are subsequently entrus- materials, traces, photographs, images, Second, I will consider the political ted to a centre in order to be used by artefacts, monuments, work of art, places dimension or rather dimensions of others. How these documents are deve- of memory, an expression of power and archives. Here, I take the political term in loped, stored and processed? This ques- even of body language… This loose its broader meaning, i.e., the expression tion was dealt with in one or two sense, however, risks a lot of ambiguity of power relations, but also in the dual contributions, but was not the subject of and misinterpretation. Indeed, that each English meaning of politics and policy. specific papers, and I must confess I was of these terms has to do with the notion a bit disappointed on this. of archive seems to me quite doubtless; Firstly, the links between archives and politics are readily apparent, as the call However, the grounds for satisfaction however, that everything can be considered as archive seems doubtful. I for papers reminded. Archives as state outweigh – and by far – this regret, as the production (or production of governing seminar effectively made it possible to am working (among others) on the history of midwives in Ghana, and when I find, in bodies) are eminently political both in deepen the reflection on the status of their nature and use: what is stored as archives. a midwife’s bag that has remained unopened for 50 years a pharmacy note well as what is destroyed obeys the raison CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 3 & 4, 2013 Page 66 d’État and denotes the logic of power. example for a judicial procedure, are also woman who, having many children, had Many interventions have thus insisted interested parties. given birth successively at home, in on the instrumentalisation of archives by hospital and in a midwife’s private clinic. Regarding the political dimensions of the the powers, whether for propaganda or Enthusiastic about this providential usage of archives, I would like to come to destroy them in order to reduce the encounter, and convinced that I had the back to the compared destinies of two expression of counter-powers. Others ideal witness who would give me museums in Gorée: the Slave House have addressed the use of documents of information on her different experiences, (Maison des Esclaves) and the Museum the past, or even, literally, archival I wanted to hear what she would say for Women (Musée de la Femme). In documents, in a more or less openly about the delivery position, the effect, these two museums, exactly facing militant meaning: by artists or curators, instruments, objects, people… However, each other but having different degrees like the curator of the Slave House on I was quite surprised when she said of success in terms of visitors, perfectly Gorée Island, Joseph Ndiaye. Similarly, we basically: there was no difference. bear witness to the political nature of the could see that the failed states and their Somewhat destabilised, I reformulated my usage of a "built heritage" (indeed, a inability (or indifference) regarding the questions to make them clear: the position museum is not, strictly speaking, an production of archives could was the same, your family circle’s archive). The anticipated disappearance paradoxically turn out to be a blessing, in behaviour was the same, their actions of the Museum for Women cannot be allowing (under certain conditions) were the same? She said no, of course, all understood as happening by accident, access to alternative archives that give that was different; but in each case, mother but rather, as the result of political another idea of the state… Besides, we and baby had survived – and that was dynamics: all pupils in Dakar make a visit can assume that power and counter- the essential element. I understood then or several visits in their lifetime to the Slave power are not necessarily diametrically how deeply I was influenced by the House; not the Museum for Women… opposed, as confirmed by the fate of the thinking that shaped the documents to (this is also true for tourists). African Slave House whose militant dimension which I had access: like colonial doctors, women and slaves: two subordinate eventually becomes the official history, I was obsessed by change, when my categories, obviously. But clearly, some with figures that are indeed fanciful, but interlocutor could only see similarities; subordinates are "trendier" than others, nowadays resumed, stamped, in sum because I was thinking in terms of as a consequence of political dynamics officialised by UNESCO. modalities, while she was reasoning in which make the market of the history of terms of results. Secondly, more related to economic reali- slavery more promising than that of the ties (which are themselves political reali- history of African women – and this Thus, the need imposed on me, in our ties), to North-South imbalances, to regardless of their respective degree of post-independence era, to decolonise the power relations between the West and the staging, instrumentalisation and spirits, including mine – something I Rest, a number of papers dealt with the fetishization. thought was already granted… But the challenges of preservation, promotion or archives have sometimes an unexpected To conclude, I would like to say a few digitisation. Several participants presen- power which, while contributing to the words on the impact of archives on our ted, pictures to prove it, telling examples "goût de l’archive",2 should encourage own research, on how the archives we of challenges which are not necessarily us to constant and careful detachment. use shape – sometimes insidiously – our peculiar to Africa, but are widespread on questioning. The criticism of colonial To conclude, I think that as far as archives the continent. Some presentations consi- archives, as well as the "colonial library", are concerned, it is not improper to say dered digitisation as the solution to all is not anymore to do. However, I would that they are all about politics: from their problems was rather a technicist illusion, like to share one of my experiences and making to their utilisation, through their as technology progresses faster than our the lessons I drew from it. I have been conservation and promotion. This is capacity to anticipate it, thus creating dif- working for long on motherhood in the probably what distinguishes archives ficulties not only upstream (financing, colonial period in Ghana, and I have from simple documents. But also what machinery, personnel…) but also downs- studied the archives of the colonial makes them interesting… and determines tream. Finally, the examples showing that medical administration. In these their limits? archivists also implement or follow speci- documents, they only deal with the issue fic policies for the creation or manage- of replacing the harmful methods of Notes ment of their collections were many. Thus, African birth attendants with the modern there are no archives without politics. 1. Translator’s note: Reference to the best- and safe methods of European doctors. known sentence of Simone de Beauvoir in Thirdly and lastly, we had a lot of However, at some point, I realised that Le Deuxième Sexe (The Second Sex): On exchanges on the issue of the use or imperceptibly, I had (at least partly) ne nait pas femme: on le devient— usage of archives, their users, their embraced the ideological bias of these translated as "One is not born, but rather purposes, their methods… and of course, sources. Of course, I was concerned to becomes, a woman". on the political dimension of these complement or rather, to compare them 2. Translator’s note: See Le goût de l’archive, usages. Although there were many with interviews and so, I had conducted a short book by Arlette Farge, a specialist historians attending the seminar, I would thirty interviews with Ghanaian midwives of 18th century French social History. The like to note that they do not have the trained during the colonial period, as well book is a wonderful methodology lesson on monopoly of their use: we know that as twenty interviews with women whose how to treat archives. artists, researchers of other disciplines, children were born during the same but also citizens in search of proofs, for period. Among the latter, I interviewed a CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 3 & 4, 2013 Page 67

Managing African Commons: Defragmenting management and Responsive Forest Governance Policy Forum

Introduction Emerging issues from the forum The International Association for the Stu- J. Murombedzi A number of issues emerged from the dy of the Commons (IASC) Africa Region CODESRIA, Dakar three-day policy forum. These are meeting was held in Cape Town from 9 to L. Magole around: uptake and communication; 11 April 2013. The meeting was organized University of Botswana, Maun policy ownership and insertion level; and jointly by the Defragmenting Resource M. Hara governance and policy. Management in Africa (DARMA) project University of the , Bellville (an EU funded project under the ACP S. Turner Communication and uptake of Science and Technology Programme) and Independent Consultant, Manchester research in policy process the Responsive Forest Governance J. Ribot There is still evidence of poor communi- Initiative(RFGI) of CODESRIA, UIUC and University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign cationand low uptake of research by poli- IUCN (funded by SIDA). The objective cy. This is of great concern and requiring of the meeting was to bring together mul- action and innovation as it gives a sense needs and aspirations. Natural resources, ti-disciplinary researchers, academics, of déjà vu, especially in relation to mee- especially forests, play an important role policy makers and users working on Afri- tings and conferences like the IASC Afri- in these decentralizations. They provide can commons and forest governance to ca regional meeting which target policy local governments and local people with present their work and discuss issues re- engagement as their focus. For many de- needed revenue, wealth, and subsisten- garding integrated commons management cadesmeetings like thisone have highli- ce – that government needs in order to and democratic (responsive and locally ghtedtheimportance of communicating function and that people need to survive. accountable) forest governance in Afri- effectively into the policy process, Responsive local governments can pro- ca. Over eighty people from across Africa writing usable policy briefs and other ap- vide forest resource-dependent popula- and beyond attended this three-day fo- propriate materials and means of commu- tions the flexibility they need to manage, rum. This Policy Brief summarises the key nication. The lingering question is; ‘why adapt to and remain resilient in their chan- issues emerging from the forum ging environment. To date, however, en- is it that we really learned or achieved so vironmental and natural resource little in this respect’? One of the reasons Rationale management professionals from govern- for poor communication and take up is Research has shown that success in dea- ment and civil society have rarely worked probably the level and type of language ling with problems facing African com- through representative local government. used. Most presentations by scholars still mons management may lie in addressing This avoidance is a travesty since local came through in deep and complex lan- fragmentation of the knowledge base, governments are institutionally sustaina- guage that is still used by the social and policy, legislation and institutions. Con- ble (being permanent) and have full geo- political scientists to transact their trade. ventionally, management has been under- graphic coverage (essential for scaling The communication keynote address taken by government agencies that focus up). Environmental professionals often pointed out that thereis a huge gulf on their particular mandated sector, e.g. lack the technical and organizational ca- between this kind of language and the fisheries, agriculture or forestry, using pacities or capabilities to assess the po- way governments speak and act. It may knowledge from scientists that specialize tentials of democratic local government, be argued therefore that even if the re- in that sector, sometimes working with to structure forestry decentralization to searchers can manage to link into the po- community groups to create and enforce deliver equity and efficiency benefits, to licy process, they normally should not be rules developed for that sector. With the meet implementation challenges, and to the ones writing the policy! advent of the ecosystem approach to na- identify and take advantage of the op- Policy ownership and insertion level tural resource management, there is portunities it presents. There are exam- growing appreciation of the dynamic in- ples of success in many countries, yet It is important to be clear about the nature terrelatedness between all components of decentralization in forestry remains far of policy and whose policy is being an ecosystem as a Social Ecological Sys- from achieving its promise. referred to in policy dialogue. Policy tem (SES). This calls for inter- and multi- The RFGI assesses whether decentralized comes at many levels, from that of disciplinarity in sustainable management local government decision making of community decision-makers to that of of natural resource complexes for liveli- interventions in the forestry sector such national governments and also trans- hoods and development – the research as the Reduced Emissions from boundary policy. Before researchers theme that DARMA focused on. Deforestation and Forest Degradation attempt to make their research useful in (REDD+), Climate Change Adaptation, the policy process therefore, there is need Nations worldwide have introduced de- Payments for Environment Services (PES) to understand the relations between centralization reforms aspiring to create and similar schemes are supporting or different levels of policy and decide where representative local governments that are undermining local democracy. research inputs are likely to be most useful responsive and accountable to citizen and effective.This links to the issue of CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 3 & 4, 2013 Page 68 the role of law in the implementation of choice may be made to bypass policy and gnise and facilitate subsidiarity; for na- policy - whether local by-laws, national ‘sponsor’ or support practice through tional policy to tolerate and promote lo- legislation or international conventions social movements. cal policy; and for policy to be built on, and/or treaties. In this context, reference and give effect to, a genuine commitment was made in some of the presentations Link between governance and policy to decentralization. A practical policy re- about ‘absence of the state’, especially Despite the formal decentralization of lo- commendation is for policy to to support in far flung rural contexts.If the state is cal government, the RFGI research de- local demoratic decision making on natu- indeed absent, which we must acknow- monstrated that natural resource ral resource use, monitoring and manage- ledge as being the casemore or less across governance decisions tend to be made in ment roles of local resource users. It was great swathes of the continent, is there a predominantly undemocratic ways that stressed that governments must walk the role for policy at the level of the state? do not represent local aspirations and walk of their democratic decentralization Reference was made to no policy; unkept needs regarding the resources in ques- and local participation policies, not just policies; policy somersaults; policy tion. Moreover, the decision-makers in talk the talk. fluidity; and good policies. The implica- both local governments as well as natural tion is that policy matters because the resource governance sectors tend to be Conclusion state is not entirely absent.It was argued upwardly accountable rather than respon- Two main conclusions can be drawn from that in some circumstances it may be sive to local needs. Higher-level organi- the policy deliberations at the meeting. 1) necessary to bypass the notion of policy zations design and implement A lot of (mostly well-intentioned) policy and focus more on social movements. interventions through non-representati- for natural resource governance, aimed However,sustainable progress may ve institutions with many adverse impacts at empowering the local level and poor/ require thatthe social movement sooner – such as social fragmentation, elite cap- disadvantaged people in NRM, has failed or later define the policy goals to which it ture, and the reinforcemtn of undemocra- to achieve its intended objectives, and aspires, and explain how these will be tic local institutions – on local citizenship has instead only empowered elites or achieved! As usual thereforethe policy in natural resource governance. Thus for reinforced existing power structures and ‘industry’ is confrontedby the yawning decentralization to result in substantive relations. (2) Researchers remain largely gap between theory (which we may too democracy, it is necessary that discretio- unsuccessful in communicating their easily equate with policy) and reality/ nary authority be devolved to local go- findings and recommendations intelligibly practice (or lack of practice) on the vernments in order to make them and effectively to policy makers. ground.In general two sets of reasons responsive and accountable to the cons- Ownership of policy and the level at were given why policy may have no effect: tituencies that they represent. Most fo- which policy applies are key issues for (i) the state may be absent, lacking the restry and project profesionals are not improved communications and uptake of competence and/or resources to put it into aware of these simple facts – they do not policy. Also the nature and process of practice; (ii) various forces within the understand basic principals of represen- policy are perhaps even more important state may be reluctant to implement, or tation and democracy. Various references to get right if we want to make sure that may actively sabotage it - in which case a were made to the need for policy to reco- policy content is effective.

Values and Development in Southern Africa Edited by Hans Müller, Pinkie Mekgwe and Marvellous Mhloyi ISBN: 978-2-86978-554-0 — pages : 268 p. Development has been on Africa’s agenda for a long time but progress has been both varied and limited, partly due to the diverse levels of the discussions on the challenges and the interventions for tackling them. Africa’s greatest challenge is the uneven development within and between its countries, and the pressing issues of extreme poverty in southern Africa, and the continent as a whole. Poverty causes its victims to suffer social exclusion and political repression. In addition, societies that experience poverty are also mostly under continuous threat of ecological disasters and diseases. All poor people are therefore plagued by loss of freedom and dignity, and are often unable to participate effectively in the political, economic, legal and social processes of their countries. This book focuses on the social and cultural dimensions of development dynamics and, in particular, the role of values in shaping development. Values are at the core of the hopes and aspirations of individuals, communities and societies. The book therefore explains the values that motivate and inform African communities and societies, with a view to facilitating a dialogue about sustainable development in Africa among academics, intellectuals, policy and decision makers, and the communities. It also investigates the social and cultural dynamics of development in Africa, as a better alternative to earlier studies that blame African culture for poverty and exclude the people of Africa in their definition of developments in the continent. The significance of this book lies in its provision of a theoretical argument,from empirical perspective, on the role of values in the development of Africa; an argument that is capable of facilitating a dialogue about African development, which obviously proves more useful than either the imposition of a technical process or the announcement of a normative framework.

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