Sean Jacobs's Blog, page 154

The soft, patriarchal underbelly of Kenya’s Parliament

Kenya's 2010 Constitution put limits on men's dominance of public institutions, including parliament. Since then, men have done everything to sabotage it, but also to scrap it altogether.





Kenyan Parliament building. Image credit Jorge L��scar via Flickr CC.

Ten years after it was passed, Kenya’s male dominated parliament continues to resist the constitutional requirement that there should be no more than two-thirds of any gender in the August House. Despite widespread support for this stipulation, and the Chief Justice recently ruling that parliament should be dissolved for failing to adhere to this rule, legislators incessantly employ “political chicanery, slothful self interest and duplicitous male chauvinism” to keep women out. This post, originally published by The Elephant, is part of a series curated by Editorial Board member, Wangui Kimari.

A month before Chief Justice David Maraga advised the president to dissolve parliament, legislators were toying with plans to delete the constitutional requirement that would include women in national political leadership.

���You cannot compel citizens to elect either men or the other gender,��� said Justin Muturi. Speaking at a parliamentary retreat, the Speaker of the National Assembly appeared to have lost whatever empathy he previously harbored for affirmative action legislation to promote women���s participation in elected leadership in June 2016.

Following the Chief Justice���s September 21 advice, Muturi mobilized the Parliamentary Service Commission, which he chairs, to mount a court challenge against it. He remarked: ���The clamor to pass legislation to ensure [the] two-thirds gender principle potentially violates the sovereign will of the electorate at least to the extent that such legislation will demand top-ups or nominations of women.���

Jeremiah Kioni, who chairs the Constitution Implementation Oversight Committee, told the parliamentary retreat that politicians only agreed to include the clause on the inclusion of women in elective leadership in the 2010 constitution ���to stabilize the country and cool tempers.���

Unknown to many at the time of the retreat debate, the speakers of the National Assembly and the Senate had received an August 3 letter from Chief Justice David Maraga informing them that he was considering six different petitions asking him to advise the president to dissolve parliament as provided for in the constitution. The letter followed up on a June 25, 2019 one inquiring about the progress made by parliament in enacting laws to increase women���s participation in leadership.

In August, Muturi cautioned members of parliament that there was a real risk of dissolution over failure to enact the law on including women in leadership, but since Maraga delivered his coup de gr��ce on September 21, the Speaker has gone on the warpath.

Although the constitution���which was passed by 68.6 percent adult suffrage in August 2010���gave parliament independence, it contains a suicide clause giving the president the power of dissolution should it fail to enact laws that bring the constitution into application. The clause kicks in if the High Court certifies and declares that parliament has failed to pass a law within the required timelines.

The constitutional provision requiring that no gender should constitute more than two thirds of any elective or appointive body has been successfully implemented in county assemblies, but it has remained a sticking point at the national level. Elections for the National Assembly and the Senate in 2017, and the subsequent allocation of special seats, gave women only 23 percent of the share of legislative leadership at the national level���a 9 per cent improvement on the 2013 elections.

A 2018 National Democratic Institute survey of gender participation in politics found that ���[w]omen who had served in specially nominated positions, for example, were more likely to win an election than those who had never held office at all.���

A combination of political chicanery, slothful self-interest, and duplicitous male chauvinism has repeatedly thwarted efforts to create an inclusive national legislature. The laws required to cash the promissory note given to women when the country passed the constitution have never been passed because neither the National Assembly nor the Senate has been able to muster the two-thirds quorum required to debate a constitutional amendment.

The National Gender and Equality Commission documents the Journey to Gender Parity in Political Representation, noting the four floundering attempts to enact laws that would increase the number of women in national legislatures.

In each instance, the bills proposed to become law had already been developed off-site, complete with a costing of what each option would mean for the taxpayer, and all that was required of MPs was for them to show up and make the quorum for the bills to come under consideration.

The last effort at passing the gender law had been stepped down from the order paper in November 2018 over fears that there would be lack of quorum to consider it since it touched on the constitution. The bill was the product of painstaking negotiation, bargaining, and deal making involving over 50 organizations and President Uhuru Kenyatta, as well as political party leaders Raila Odinga and Kalonzo Musyoka.

When the proposed law was put to the National Assembly in February 2019, the headcount came in at 174 MPs���59 short of the 233 required to consider a law relating to the constitution. Earlier, under the hammer of the High Court in 2016 to pass a similar law, Speaker Muturi innovated a way to get round the requirement for constitutional amendment law proposals to wait 90 days, fast-tracked the bill through the 11th Parliament���only for it to fail because there was no quorum to consider it.

Frustrations over the repeated failure to pass laws that promote women���s increased participation in elective politics have triggered a record number of court petitions. The most consequential of these is the petition filed by the Centre for Rights Education and Awareness, from which the High Court issued a declaration that parliament had indeed failed to perform its duty to enact a law to promote the participation of women in national elective leadership.

The Speaker of the National Assembly lost an appeal against the 2017 High Court decision ordering parliament to enact the law providing for inclusive leadership within 60 days.

Last year, on April 5, the Court of Appeal observed that the repeated failure to get a quorum to pass the law ���does not speak of a good faith effort to implement the gender principle,��� noting that Parliament had already exhausted the option of extending for a year the deadline for enacting the gender law.

That decision confirmed parliament���s failure to perform its duty, and within two months inspired five petitions requesting the Chief Justice to advise that it be dissolved. The Law Society of Kenya lodged its petition with the Chief Justice in June this year.

Ken Ogutu, who teaches law at the University of Nairobi, analogizes the current dilemma to a construction project where the main contractor has completed the main structure of a new house and a subcontractor is then left to do the finishing to ensure the house is completed to the required standards. ���The main contractor gives the subcontractor a schedule of the finishing he must do and by when, and if the subcontractor fails to complete these tasks within the specified timelines, he is fired and a new one hired to do the work.���

Parliament has argued that it has passed all the other laws and should not be punished for not enacting the gender inclusion laws.

The Chief Justice���s advice to dissolve Parliament will likely expose the institution���s hidden weaknesses. Its failure to enact laws to bring women into elected national leadership has only exposed its soft underbelly, revealing a combination of narcissism and incompetence.

Beneath the shining veneer of success, evident in the passage of 47 out of the 48 laws required to implement the constitution as outlined in its Fifth Schedule, there is plenty of evidence that parliament is still stuck in the old constitutional order. Some argue that parliament has been the weak link in turning Kenya into a constitutional democracy.

Since 2011, Kenya Law Reports has documented 48 statutes or amendments to the law that the courts have struck down for being unconstitutional. Eight of the controversial laws struck down by the High Court or the Court of Appeal relate to the management of competition in elections.

Judges sitting singly or in panels of three in the High Court, or in the Court of Appeal, have struck down parliament���s attempts at power grabs by avoiding public participation and making laws that violate the constitution. It is even more worrying that the 48 are only those laws that citizens or organizations have challenged, meaning that there could be a great deal of unconstitutionality hidden in other laws.

For example, commenting on the attempt to sinecure seats for political party leaders in the election law, appellate judges Festus Azangalala, Patrick Kiage, and Jamilla Mohammed wrote in their judgment: ���[F]ar from attaining the true object of protecting the rights of the marginalized as envisioned by the constitution, the inclusion of Presidential and Deputy Presidential candidates in Article 34(9) of the Elections Act does violence to all reason and logic by arbitrary and irrational superimposition of well-heeled individuals on a list of the disadvantaged and marginalized to the detriment of the protected classes or interests.���

Other judges have described some of the legislative attempts as ���overreach��� or ���no longer [serving] any purpose in the statute books of this country.��� Judge Mumbi Ngugi, commenting on the anti-corruption law passed by parliament, remarked: ���The provisions [���], apart from obfuscating, indeed helping to obliterate the political hygiene, were contrary to the constitutional requirements of integrity in governance, were against the national values and principles of governance and the principles of leadership and integrity in ��� the Constitution ��� [and] entrenched corruption and impunity in the land.���

The low quality of laws emanating from parliament since the promulgation of the constitution in 2010 arises from several factors, among them competence gaps and self-interest, and despite the inclusion of an entire chapter on integrity in the constitution, the country���s politics is weighed down by poor political hygiene. Similarly, the law on qualification for election as a member of parliament sets a very low threshold while the one for recalling elected leaders is impossible to apply.

Data aggregated from the parliamentary website shows that 72 percent of all members of the National Assembly are university graduates, but many of the qualifications listed appear to be shotgun degrees from notorious religious institutions acquired in the nick of time to clear the hurdle for election. The modest intellectual heft of members in the National Assembly especially makes the institution unsuited for the task of navigating a Western-style democracy in the design of the constitution.

Some 40 MPs have law degrees, but the Kenya Law Reform Commission, the Attorney General���s office, and various interest groups carry out much of the legislative drafting. Parliament is then often left with the duty of playing rubber stamp.

At moments of national crisis, legislative initiative has tended to emanate from outside parliament, whose members are then invited to endorse whatever deal has been agreed. Cases in point from recent history include the resolution of the stalemate over changing the composition of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission in 2017, and the political d��tente in the aftermath of the putative 2017 presidential election.

In a global first of game-warden-turned-poacher, the Public Accounts Committee, Kenya���s parliamentary watchdog, was disbanded over allegations of corruption. The Conflict of Interest Bill was only published last year and is yet to reach the floor of parliament. It was not the only instance of members of parliament literally feathering their nests. Legislators have been most voluble in defending the benefits they feel entitled to, and clinging onto the control of the constituency development fund, which they have turned into a pot of patronage.

The constitution refashioned parliament as an independent institution with law-making, oversight and budgeting powers. The institution has not acquitted itself in watching over public institutions and spending, often playing catch-up with reports of the Auditor General. Its lax fiscal management and oversight has resulted in the country���s debt stock growing from Sh1.78 trillion in 2013 to the current Sh6.7 trillion. Only this year, the Sh500 billion contract for the construction of the standard gauge railway using Chinese loans was found to have been illegal.

Its review of the annual reports from the judiciary and the 14 constitutional commissions has been lackluster, with the worst case being the parlous state of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission. One of the concerns raised about dissolving parliament is around the readiness of the commission to undertake nationwide parliamentary elections, given that four of the seven commissioners have resigned and have not been replaced, and that the institution does not have a sufficient budget to undertake its work.

Another anxiety around the dissolution of parliament has been that the electorate would not cure the gender imbalance in the national legislature through an election. That anxiety is a misapprehension.

On April 20, 2017, in deciding a case filed by Katiba Institute, Justice Enock Mwita ordered that political parties formulate rules and regulations to bring to life the two-thirds gender principle during nominations for the 290 constituency-based elective positions for members of the National Assembly and the 47 county-based elective positions for members of the Senate within six months. He added that if they failed to do so, the IEBC should devise an administrative mechanism to ensure that the two-thirds gender principle is realized within political parties during nomination exercises for parliamentary elections.

The August 2017 High Court judgment requires the IEBC to ensure that party lists contribute to the realization of the gender principle. The decision has not been appealed or vacated. Given the parliament���s proclivity to pursue the interests of its members in increasing their pay even when not allowed to do so, it is not unlikely that MPs, detained by their own fear of political competition, have refused to see how affirmative action legislation would increase women���s participation in politics.

For now, the Chief Justice���s advice to the president to dissolve parliament has been challenged in court by two citizens, with Judge Weldon Korir certifying that the case raises constitutional questions that need to be adjudicated by an uneven number of judges. It is not unlikely that the matter could go all the way to the Court of Appeal, meaning that the earliest a final position could be settled is February next year.

The dissolution saga will likely highlight the distance yet to be covered in realizing the parliament Kenyans wanted to establish through the constitution. Although parliament has a five-year term, it can be extended in times of war or emergency for a period of one year each time, for a maximum of one year. The corollary is that its term can be shortened if it fails to live up to constitutional expectations.

Bereft of any real power or competence and unable to cut the umbilical cord binding it to the executive, parliament will be President Uhuru Kenyatta���s poodle waiting on his charity. And as the president concludes the political calculation of the costs and benefits of dissolving parliament, the country will be assessing its legislature���s performance not just on gender but on everything else.

Johannesburg cannot police its future

South Africa���s biggest city is ground zero for debates about the long-term effectiveness and constitutionality of militarized urban policing and how we imagine the post-COVID city.





SAPS Training College in Tshwane. Image via GCIS on Flickr CC.

On June 29 this year, amid the generalized panic and concern about rising COVID-19 infection and police brutality both locally and globally, the South Gauteng High Court, in Johannesburg, issued a judgement with potentially major implications for the future of policing in Johannesburg and South Africa more widely.

The judgement related to a challenge lodged by the Socio-Economic Rights Institute of South Africa (SERI) regarding the constitutionality of a series of raids catalyzed by the then Democratic Alliance (DA) mayor of Johannesburg, Herman Mashaba, on so-called ���hijacked buildings������unlawful occupations���in Johannesburg. The raids involved the South African Police Services (SAPS), the Johannesburg Metropolitan Police Department (JMPD), and immigration officials, among other state actors, from June 2017 to May 2018.

This year under a state of disaster, President Cyril Ramaphosa, of the ruling African National Congress (ANC), deployed the South African army, from late March until end September, to support police in enforcing a phased national lockdown aimed at slowing the spread of COVID-19; the lockdown is presently in its final phase. Crime dropped drastically in the first three months of lockdown, though cases of police brutality rose.

The implications of the court judgement, coming at this time, raise questions not only about the raids during Mashaba���s period as mayor from August 2016 to November 2019, but also the long-term effectiveness and constitutionality of militarized urban policing, and how we imagine the post-COVID city.

Militarized policing is characterized not by a single strategy but broadly encompasses a spectrum of heavy-handed, war-like policing tactics oriented around raids; the targeting of buildings, neighborhoods, and borders; profiling groups rather than individuals; and coercive crowd-control.

Mashaba���who on August 29 launched a new party, ActionSA���made these police raids a centerpiece of his strategy, while mayor, of crime prevention in inner-city Johannesburg, pronouncing the inner city a ���battlefield.��� In particular, he framed, and continues to do so, undocumented migration as central to crime in Johannesburg. Mashaba cast his leadership as a new beginning for a city free of ANC rule for the first time; in fact, his policies represented more of a continuity than a break���a culmination of a decade���s failed attempts to police poverty, and an un-reflexive belief that challenges around unlawful occupation and migration are best resolved with force.

The June 29 judgement by a full bench of the High Court was scathing. It found that ���the raids on the applicants��� homes were carried out in a manner that was cruel, humiliating, degrading and invasive���, and that ���the police searched the applicants��� homes, without a warrant, regardless of whether they were involved in, or suspected of being involved in, any crimes.��� The city���s intention to use the raid to ���audit��� residents of ���hijacked buildings��� was found to be unlawful. Neither was it permissible for them, the JMPD or immigration officials to participate in raids under section 13 (7)�� of the South African Police Services Act, which only authorize SAPS to do so.

The judgement found that there was no strong evidence either to justify the raids on grounds of a ���breakdown of public order���, required by section 13 (7), or to demonstrate that they were effective. Out-of-date, template-based and erroneous statistics were repeatedly used. The judgement found that ���save for the arrest of a handful of undocumented migrants, police found no evidence of illegality at the applicants��� homes. The intelligence on which the raids were based was obviously flawed. SAPS and JMPD officers arbitrarily detained those of the applicants who ���looked too dark��� to be South African.���

The Court also found article 13(7)(c), which allows for the warrantless invasion of homes, vehicles and neighborhoods, unconstitutional. The declaration of unconstitutionality was suspended for two years for parliament to address the invalidity. SERI is appealing to the Constitutional Court to make the whole of 13(7)���applied to cordon off of entire areas��� unconstitutional. In addition, they are seeking damages for the nearly 3,000 residents of the eleven targeted buildings, and for there to be an interdict on future raids in the buildings. The Constitutional Court also needs to confirm the High Court���s order.

The judgement may have major implications for policing in South Africa. Throughout the COVID-19 crisis the police have been led by a Minister of Police, Bheki Cele, who in his previous role as Police Commissioner promoted police militarization and shoot-to-kill policies. He has boasted of major drops in crime during the lockdown period. Yet militarized approaches towards policing urban spaces have, over the past decade, both locally and globally, been brutal, ineffective, and anti-poor. All the same, they have been supported across the political spectrum both in South Africa and internationally.

How is it that militarized strategies of policing, aimed at securing public order, can be effective, if brutal, under a state of disaster, and yet, in the long run, ineffective and socially corrosive?

Raids, whether by public police or private security, have been a primary strategy for dealing with urban informality and housing in the post-apartheid city. While a series of Constitutional Court cases from the so-called Grootboom judgement in 2000 to Blue Moonlight in 2011 have made evictions that lead to homelessness unlawful���forcing the city of Johannesburg to commit to expanding low-cost housing and emergency accommodation���militarized strategies and evictions have continued. The ANC responded with hostility to the Blue Moonlight judgement, requiring Johannesburg municipality to provide temporary emergency accommodation to a community to be evicted by a private developer. Housing minister at the time Tokyo Sexwale responded by saying that ���illegality or unlawfulness cannot be made legal��� and that the case was encouraging ���hijacking.��� This would become a common refrain.

Mpho Parks Tau, elected the ANC mayor in 2011, presided over Operation Clean Sweep in October 2013, which sought to clear out informal traders from the streets of Johannesburg. The operation worsened the conditions of inner-city residents by taking away a vital source of employment. The Constitutional Court, in December 2013, ordered the city to allow the traders to return to their spaces. In April 2015, after xenophobic violence broke out nationally and spread through the city, Tau effectively mobilized police to quell the violence and responded with a very public anti-xenophobia campaign, supported by public protests. Yet, soon after, in the same month, Jacob Zuma, president at the time, launched Operation Fiela, or ���Sweep out the Dirt���, in which the military were deployed on the streets, and police and the army raided hostels, unlawful occupations, and an inner-city refuge for migrants; undocumented migrants were rounded up for deportation.

Where Fiela represented an intensification of raids, these have been a recurrent strategy. From my own research on unlawful occupations, since 2011, I have found that the police raids radically corrode trust between occupiers���mostly households that can���t afford decent accommodation���and police, and make the reporting of violent crimes (including rape and murder), and assistance with investigations, less likely.

Mashaba, in fact, knows the experience of poverty and the ruthlessness of raids first-hand. As an adolescent, as he recalls in his autobiography Black Like You (a play on a hair products company that made him rich), he worked as a dagga (cannabis) dealer to support his family, and his family were repeatedly raided by the zealous apartheid-era police:

It was humiliating to be at the mercy of the police, and yet we had to tolerate these invasions in silence. They carried out their raids under the pretext that they were checking to see who was sleeping in the house���looking in particular for men who should not have been there, men who were in transgression of the pass laws. The rough police officers commandeered the living room or the kitchen, their blue bulk dominating the room, their gruff voices barking out orders for the occupants of the house to present themselves and their passbooks. We despised those intrusions, but we grew used to the invasions.

Yet, decades later, it was Mashaba himself promoting and leading the raids���waking sleeping families, invading their privacy, and looking not for passbooks, but for passports, IDs, and asylum documents. In addition, Mashaba adopted a ���war on drugs��� rhetoric (though, in a typically contradictory gesture, also expanded rehabilitation centers in the city).

Mashaba, whose wealth was significantly grown, prior to his becoming mayor, through expanding the hair products of his company Black Like Me into Africa, also adopted a strongly nationalist rhetoric. Again, there was nothing particularly exceptional about this���nationalism and securitization are standard fare for the ANC government, who have constantly promoted anti-immigrant rhetoric while feeding into violent, privatized, and allegedly corrupt immigration policies.

For over two decades, until scandal broke in 2018, the Department of Home Affairs supported the renewal of the security company Bosasa���s contract for the Lindela Repatriation Centre used for deportees, allegedly corruptly after the contract was reviewed in 2007 (the allegations are still being probed by the Judicial Commission of Inquiry into Allegations of State Capture). The DA, for their part, were happy to try and capitalize politically on the ANC���s corruption scandals but for years have been promoting increased deportations to Lindela even while civil society and academics had been pointing out its abuses and maltreatment of inmates, to little effect.

Nor are South Africa���s capitalist classes immune: Johannesburg generates significant wealth�� as a gateway for foreign investment into African markets���the latent philosophy being free movement of capital, while policing the movement of the poor. Racial inequality of course underpins this���it is overwhelmingly the Black poor, both South African and foreign nationals, who bear the brunt of violent and displacing policing while the wealthy are protected by private security.

Mashaba, then, represented continuity with ANC strategies. He did adopt policies for the expansion of low-cost housing, but these were in fact initiated under Tau���although unlike Tau, and contradicting his own advisors and the housing department, he insisted that no foreign nationals would have access to state-subsidized accommodation. Enabled also by a tacit coalition with the supposedly radical Economic Freedom Fighters (who were kingmakers as no party received an outright majority), Mashaba���s time in power made explicit that an ideology of militarized and nationalistic policing, targeted to address social and economic stress, migration and housing shortages, underpins South African politics across the political spectrum.

As the High Court judgement pointed out, such policies were based on no evidence that they were effective in reducing violent crime. The recent release of national police statistics affirms and fills out this picture.

On July 31 of this year, the SAPS released its reported annual crime statistics. The statistics���measured in the financial year prior to reporting, from April 1 to the following March 31���indicated a national increase in contact crimes. Contact crimes, indicating a direct encounter between perpetrator and victim, are the best general measure of personal safety and include murder, attempted murder, sexual offences, assault with the intent to inflict grievous bodily harm (GBH), robbery and carjacking, among others.

The data, collated by the Institute for Security Studies��� (ISS) Crime Hub, however, allow us to view crime statistics trends over a longer perspective.

The attribution of causality in crime rates is notoriously hard to pin down given that many social, economic, and political factors play a role in addition to policing, and statistics, even when collected more reliably than is the case with the SAPS, only ever roughly approximate life on the ground. However, there is no evidence that intensified raids have had any effect in decreasing violent crime, nor that stronger protections against eviction have worsened crime, in Johannesburg.

From 2013 onwards total contact crimes, both nationally and in Johannesburg began to rise, reversing a downward trend, and this rise continued during Mashaba���s tenure. The expansion of raids in Clean Sweep and Fiela, and later Mashaba���s raids, hence correspond with an increasing rise in violent crime.

If one compares the reports immediately prior to and post Mashaba���s leadership in the city of Johannesburg, there was an increase of reported contact crimes (covering the previous financial year) from 71,484 reported in 2016 to 74,692 in 2020 (an increase of around 4.5%)���between these years contact crimes in Johannesburg slowly rose, while there was a fractional reduction in contact crimes nationally. In other words, in the period encompassing the intensification of the raids, and over the duration of Mashaba���s governance, Johannesburg did noticeably worse off than national figures in terms of changes in violent contact crimes.

Michael Beaumont, who was Mashaba���s former chief of staff while mayor�� and now the Interim National Chairperson of ActionSA, writes in his book The Accidental Mayor, that Mashaba pushed through ���nearly R200 million in the 2017 adjustment budget��� to increase the Johannesburg Metropolitan Police Department by 1,500 posts, to be trained over 18 months. In addition, in 2018, in order to make the JMPD, a ���serious crime-fighting force���, Mashaba launched Operation Buya Mthetho or ���bring the law.��� Beaumont claims that ���more arrests [took] place in a single year than in the prior five years put together;��� he doesn���t state the year.

But there is an obvious sleight of hand here: more arrests neither automatically equate to more prosecutions, nor to decreased levels of violent crime���there are no indications that the city���s residents were made safer as the national statistics show. Increased arrests, may, however, target undocumented migrants and low-income households and place a heavier burden on correctional services and state resources.

The most radical changes in crime statistics have occurred, however, across the country during the COVID-19 lockdown, including an alcohol ban. Quarterly statistics covering April to June 2020, showed that the lockdown had the effect of reducing violent contact crime significantly; for instance, in comparison to last year, murder fell by 35.8% and assault GBH by 41%. Even reported gender-based violence has dropped, although this may be a result of lower levels of reporting.

Researchers from the Institute of Security Studies (ISS) have argued that the lifting of the lockdown is a ���double-edged sword��� with regards to crime���on the one hand, it may lead to increased crimes, on the other, the exacerbation of inequality during lockdown is also a causal factor relating to crime. They call for more ���evidence-based��� policing. Andrew Faull of the ISS has pointed to international evidence that shows that more police do not necessarily equate to less crime, but that there are evidence-based methods that do: hotspot policing and improving respect between police and communities.

However, these two can work against each other. Hotspot policing���policing which targets a particular area���can include large-scale police raids on targeted neighborhoods which can significantly corrode trust between police and targeted communities, as they have in Johannesburg. Furthermore, raids, as international comparisons show, have limited impact as a long term strategy of deterring crime, but are effective, primarily symbolically, as political theater.

Faull has also argued, based on a study of the lockdown, that improved regulation of firearms and alcohol may be valuable in the post-lockdown period���while the former is important, the latter, rather than dealing with the structural causes of addiction, is less convincing.

The solutions to violent crime may lie outside policing altogether, and rather in improving social and economic equality. Which brings us to the significance of the Defund the Police movement for the conversation on policing in South Africa.

With the mass mobilization of the Black Lives Matter movement in the US and globally, the Defund the Police philosophy has become a central aspect of resistance to police violence. These debates have acute local relevance as, during the lockdown in South Africa, police brutality, though a long-term issue, increased, with several publicized cases, recently including the killing of a disabled teenage boy Nathaniel Julius.

A basic message of the Defund the Police movement (distinct from an absolute abolitionist approach) is that many police forces are a source of persecution of poor Black, and other economically marginalized, communities rather than protection. Public resources could be reallocated from oppressive and ineffective police units and operations into other social services such as housing, healthcare, education, addiction rehabilitation, and employment creation��� interventions that may also improve public safety over the long term by addressing the deeper structural causes of crime.

As the academic, journalist, and activist Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor has shown in relation to the US, immiserating housing policies have gone hand in hand with heavy-handed policing tactics. Those most excluded from housing markets���those living unlawfully or in dismal conditions, evicted, and red-lined���are frequently those groups most subject to police persecution and offered the least protection. In South Africa, too, we see how those excluded from formal housing and rental markets are often those targeted in indiscriminate police action.

The issue, however, speaks to the very foundation of contemporary policing. Alex S. Vitale, in his book The End of Policing, documents how modern police forces were created to maintain social order and control rather than improve public safety. With their origins in colonial police forces, modern police were geared towards protecting private property, repressing protest, and controlling dissenting colonized and working-class groups. In South Africa, this logic is patently clear: the police and military were oriented towards reinforcing a racially exclusionary and totalitarian social order with little concern for public safety (beyond that of whites in control).

Upon these colonial foundations have been introduced a host of policies (many of them introduced in post-apartheid South Africa in some form) aimed at policing social order: so-called ���broken windows��� theory (the idea that policing minor infractions reduces violent crime), the ���war on drugs���, the policing of sex-work, and the securitization of borders. These are all socially and politically popular, but, as the growing evidence that Vitale documents shows, either ineffective or harmful. What underpins the assumptions of the militarized policing model is that crime is a result of the breakdown of public order rather than something more pervasive: inequality. Defund the police speaks directly to these issues.

Of course, in South Africa we cannot argue that the police should be defunded if that leaves the wealthy to increasingly rely on private security and the poor with little protection, as William Shoki has cautioned against. But present policing policies frequently do not protect the poor, but widely persecute them; police are not effectively addressing high levels of sexual and gender-based violence, and are sometimes perpetrators. Violent private security forces like the Red Ants operate with impunity, in spite of numerous allegations of brutality, and have continued even during the COVID-19 lockdown when this has been unlawful in terms of the state of disaster regulations. These are not merely issues of bad individuals, but the inheritance of institutional violence.

In spite of all the damage done, Johannesburg���s past decade has not been wasted. A series of Constitutional Court cases have made significant ground in protecting the poor against homelessness and eviction, even while conditions in temporary accommodation sites are often dismal, and, without adequate low-cost accommodation, they become de facto long-term or permanent homes. Subsequent administrations have recognized���or been forced to recognize���that the urban housing problem needs to be addressed and low-cost accommodation expanded. Yet, they have still to recognize unlawful occupiers as legitimate residents of the city and provide them with basic services and protections.

Intersectional feminist movements like the #TheTotalShutdown campaign have mobilized against gender-based violence and highlighted the need for the greater protection of women, along with transgender and queer communities. There have been large protests against xenophobia, and the Inner City Federation, founded in 2015, has emerged as a broad-based movement representing low-income inner-city residents and unlawful occupiers.

But there has yet to be a major ideological shift regarding policing, even with the change of parties. Mashaba resigned from the DA at the end of 2019 on the basis that the party was too regressive in terms of race reform even for his pro-business stance; yet his new party ActionSA just shows a doubling down on the same policies. It is too early to judge the new ANC Mayor Geoff Makhubo, now gifted the post by the EFF, and the signs so far have been mixed.

Even while lockdown strategies appear to have been provisionally successful in reducing COVID-related mortalities (though the World Health Organization has recently questioned their long-term justification), the municipality has continued to support evictions during the lockdown. The impact of the lockdown has been born disproportionately by the poor. Migrants have been widely excluded from state social and food support. However, the civil society response to COVID-19 in particular through networks like the ��COVID-19 People���s Coalition has been inclusive. State and civil society relations have also deepened in addressing issues of access to basic services like water. These offer the ground from which a post-COVID city could be shaped.

I write this from Brazil, where I have been based during the COVID-19 period. The response to COVID-19 under President Jair Bolsonaro, in comparison to South Africa, has been inept, chaotic and ineffective; as of October 13, Brazil had more than double the deaths as a proportion of the population, although underreporting is likely high in both countries. This suggests that a proactive and clear state response to COVID-19 in South Africa was, in part, justified. However, the police and military brutality and evictions were not. Brazil also offers a longer-term lens into the dangers of militarized police.

The Military Police in Brazil���organized into battalions along military lines���are frequently excessively violent, and corrupt. In Rio de Janeiro state in the first four months of this year police killed over 600 people. As a result of continued police violence during the pandemic, the Supreme Federal Court suspended police operations in Rio favelas, except in exceptional circumstances, at the beginning of June this year. Over June, deaths as a result of police operations in the Rio de Janeiro municipal region fell by over 70%, compared with June averages kept since 2007; other lethal crimes fell 48%. The expansion of a military model of policing may not only fail to address criminal violence and insecurity, it risks actively worsening it and increasing social repression and violence.

Johannesburg, and South Africa more widely, should not go further down the path of militarization. Unless there is an injection of new ways of thinking, both in the ideology of policing, and regarding the just redistribution and allocation of public resources, the crises of the city will only deepen.

The radical politics of women’s bodies

Women in southern Kaduna recently marched clad and unclad to demand an end to deadly violence. Suddenly, the customs surrounding the repression of the female body no longer mattered.





Image credit Swat Afengbai via The Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE) on Flickr CC.

Communities in southern Kaduna���in Nigeria���s Middle Belt region���have long clashed with bandits, who have reportedly killed more than 178 people this year alone. On July 23, a group of women���dressed in black, solemn, and enraged���accompanied a number of unclad elderly women marching on the town of Samaru Kataf, pleading for an end to the relentless attacks.

On the day of the protest, the women told ThisDay newspaper: ���Our husbands, children and relations are being slaughtered like rams on a daily basis, and this government is just watching. Our lives don���t matter to this government.��� The last sentence was the most pivotal and is an old, common refrain among most Nigerians.

In a history class in high school, I learnt about the Women���s War of 1929���a nude protest against colonial dominance. Last year, I also read When Women Go Naked by Pat Obi. Similar to the Women���s War, it exposes patriarchy in Igboland, and how women gathered and stripped naked to protest the oppressive policies of the communal chief. The recent rebellion by the women of southern Kaduna refocused my attention on this controversial tactic of protest.

Nude protests began in pre-colonial Africa. While we can cull examples from Nigeria���s Women���s War, Kenya���s Thuku protest, South Africa���s topless protest, and the 2002 threat by Niger-Delta women, the protest in southern Kaduna says one thing: the bodies of women are potent, and can be used to demand justice and reinforce bodily integrity. For centuries, mothers and grandmothers���the sentinels of societal rectitude���have used nudity to curse defaulters. Their bodies possessed the power to give as well as take lives whenever they deemed it fit. Titilope Ajayi writes that the older the women protesting unclad, ���the stronger the sense of fear and reverence.��� The spiritual grandstand of nudity still contributes to its impact as a means women use to render justice, punish offenders with unseeable curses, and wield the power they have been denied by society.

Nudity is often used as a last resort. As Fallon and Moreau write: ���Using nudity to shame targets is a last resort to make clear to onlookers that women will no longer tolerate certain behaviors…��� thereby employing its shaming capabilities. The women in southern Kaduna, therefore, were at their wit���s end. Their bodies transmuted into weapons. Suddenly, the customs cascading the repression of the female body no longer mattered. And at this moment, the roles of these women were upended from dispensable members of the community, to overseers. The women were no longer shamed for their nakedness, rather the offenders were shamed for failing in their functions.

Society teaches us to see nude protests as demeaning, immoral, and primitive. Due to the proliferation of extraneous religions in Africa, the female body has been so politicized, so sexualized, and sanctified that it no longer belongs to the woman but the man. Both Islam and Christianity regard the female body as a temple for God and the husband. Thus, they revoke women���s rights to bodily integrity.

However, only the women could decide to protest nude or not. In this decision, the realization of physical autonomy dawns. In a society where sexual abuse, rape culture, and entitlement thrives, no one could prevent this occurrence. Author Sisonke Msimang has written that the women���s topless protest in Grahamstown, South Africa, ���insisted that South African society look at and listen to them rather than simply gaze upon their bodies.��� The protest in southern Kaduna is symbolic because it attempts to expel���in a nonliteral way���the entitlement, the harassment of female bodies by men, and the injustice perpetrated by an inactive government. Desperation leads to new forms of request that perhaps will spur an indifferent government to take action.

The women of southern Kaduna, like the rest of their counterparts, understand the potency of their bodies as instruments of justice and liberation. In a society as sexually repressed as ours, nude protests are among the most important, the last resort for women when other means have failed.

How to build Palestinian solidarity internationally

Addressing antisemitism in anti-Zionist politics and what Africans can do about the occupation.





Photo by Ahmed Abu Hameeda on Unsplash

Ran Greenstein is an associate professor of sociology at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. He has written extensively on the differences and similarities between South African and Zionist settler-colonialism and among his publications are Zionism and its Discontents: A Century of Radical Dissent in Israel/Palestine (Pluto, 2014), and Identity, Nationalism, and Race: Anti-Colonial Resistance in South Africa and Israel/Palestine (Routledge, forthcoming). Ran recently spoke to the South African BDS Coalition in a wide-ranging interview that covered the political landscape in Israel, the occupied territories, and the international arena. (This interview was conducted on August 21, before the recent completion of deals between the UAE and Bahrain.) The analysis Greenstein provided both highlights how seemingly intractable the situation is, but critically he offers a range of strategies and tactics to build Palestinian solidarity in the region and abroad. This is an excerpt from a longer interview.

Bruce Baigrie

Moving on to international solidarity���there have clearly been some significant gains, some of which you���ve mentioned already. However, there have been some big defeats as well. Jeremy Corbyn’s loss is the most obvious example, where the leader of one of the largest political parties in the world was openly critical of Israel. Whilst Brexit was the major reason for that loss, anti-Semitism was clearly a significant component and there have also been smears against Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib in the US. These can be characterized as sort of counter-campaigns based on cynical accusations of anti-Semitism. Unsurprisingly the targets are exclusively left-wing politicians who are critical of Israel. In the past these accusations hardly held much water, but it seems the intersection with modern identity politics has given these accusations an uncritical acceptance from various progressive quarters who would otherwise be natural allies to the Palestinians. Even AOC indirectly reprimanded Omar and her response illustrated this process where she said ���Lots of people here proclaiming to be ���woke��� trying to police communities on what they are/aren���t allowed to be upset by.��� The implicit message here is that if there are accusations of bigotry that come from individuals from a marginalized group, they are deemed unquestionable. This might explain why Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests did little for building Palestine solidarity outside of its usual quarters. Leaders of BLM even had to backtrack on certain statements of theirs. The additional danger of course is that whilst this reactionary partnership between the right and center develops, actual violent right-wing anti-Semitism rises. What���s your take on these developments and how should the left handle these disingenuous attacks whilst not ignoring the sporadic, but actually existing anti-Semitism in its ranks?

Ran Greenstein

I think there are a number of issues here. First of all, we have to careful about our language to avoid this kind of reaction. There’s no doubt that Ilhan Omar is not anti-Semitic, but there are sensitive issues like the association of Jews with money. She didn’t even really say that or mean that, but you have to be careful. It���s the same thing with Corbyn. But these are minor technical issues because that’s not really what’s behind it.

In my opinion the focus [of solidarity activists] should be not on what Israel does or does not do, whether it trains police officers or not, but rather on the similar ways in which Palestinians and various other populations are or have been oppressed and that all of us deserve freedom, equality, and justice. The Palestinian struggle is about these basic demands: access to land, equal rights, and access to a physical homeland, particularly for the refugees. If you focus on these general human demands that cannot be denied, I think you can make some progress. It is about the humanity of Palestinians, their quest for justice that is similar if not identical to that of many other groups that no one thinks twice about supporting. There is universal support for these kinds of demands, but this is not the case for the Palestinians. Why? Because as Edward Said said, they are the victims of the victims, and Jews still retain this image that they are the eternal victims, even if they are the ones in the case of Israel, not as Jews, but as Israelis, who are the oppressors.

It is very difficult to fight this, and in some cases you can’t. So I would always speak to the issue in a way that abstracts from all the specific Jewish components of the conflict except when it comes to Jewish groups such as JVP and IfNotNow and so on. For other organizations in solidarity with Palestinians such as the BDS movements in South Africa and elsewhere, I would try not to talk about Jews at all. I mean it’s not a Jewish issue���it���s a relationship between an oppressive state and an oppressed population where the personalities, the structure, and histories may be linked to the notion of Judaism, or Jews, but there is nothing specifically about Jewish identity that has anything to do with the oppression. To some extent you will always be criticized for being antisemitic because the target of your activism is predominantly Jews even if you don’t target them because they are Jews. You can’t avoid it completely, but try to use a universal language of oppression and freedom, of equality and justice, as much as possible. Don’t talk about the legacy of the Holocaust and that Jews should know better because of their own.

This is my personal Jewish perspective: I don’t think there are specific values that make Jews any closer to notions of justice and redress than any other group because Jewish history is internally diverse. Of course, there are important Jewish voices for justice, equality, socialism, but there are also important reactionary voices. Judaism today is as divided as it’s always been historically, so personally I don’t want to relate to that past at all as a guide for the present because it can lead us in many different directions. Rabbi Meir Kahane was the most outrageous racist in Israeli history and he was a legitimate representative of Jewish tradition just as much as Noam Chomsky or Naomi Klein are.

This goes for any specific political arrangements���one-state or two-state solutions, don���t focus on these. I want to deal rather with universal principles that are applicable everywhere and then ask, why should we make an exception for the Palestinians? If the answer is because there are Israeli Jews who have rights as well, well let’s find a way of reconciling these rights, but without denying the humanity, the justice, the rights, and cause of the Palestinians themselves. They demand no special rights, only what is enshrined in international law and UN conventions.

Bruce Baigrie

I think it���s important to point out that there is a massive amount of money involved, or aid given to Israel and that there are very powerful lobby groups invested in Israel. However these lobbies are not particularly “Jewish” in how they operate. Just like there’s a powerful lobby group for Saudi-Arabia, there are lobby groups for various interests, but the Israeli one is powerful. I think it’s important for us to make this clear within our movements and dispel the misnomer that it is an entirely Jewish lobby. Think of the evangelicals in the US, the military establishment there, where Israeli’s interests coincide with American imperialism in the region. Whenever you raise the fact that Israel has powerful well-funded networks on its side, one gets accused of anti-Semitism but I think it’s important to stand up to the accusations. However, that seems to be much harder now. For example, the left seemed to trip over itself in the UK in almost capitulating entirely to what’s being thrown at them. Take the case of Rebecca Long-Bailey being fired from the shadow cabinet for retweeting an article that had a sentence or two about Israeli special forces having trained US cops. Of course, it was false that the knee on the neck tactic is an Israeli one, but it���s an objective fact that Israel has trained US cops.

Ran Greenstein

Take this example, you saw a lot of cartoons, or memes, showing the equivalence between George Floyd and Palestinians on the ground. In the same way that black Americans have had physically and metaphorically American police on their necks, Israeli soldiers do the same thing to Palestinians. I think this is a powerful point without needing to discuss whether they were trained or not by Israel. So, we need to be strategic and think in advance even if it’s a correct point factually, and even if it makes a good political point, can it create a backlash? Try to anticipate the real or imaginary ���tropes��� that will be used in order to criticize you as antisemitic. This is why I hate this Twitter culture that is always about an immediate response. We need to plan knowing full well, as you say, that there will be a backlash; people are looking out precisely for the kind of responses that could be used against the movement. Let’s try to eliminate that as far as possible. Look at what happened to Achille Mbembe: he said something about the equivalence between apartheid in South Africa and Israel, and then he said something different in a different time, in a different publication, about the comparison between apartheid in South Africa and the Nazis. Of course, he never compared the Nazis to Israel, but through the mediation of South Africa it somehow became linked and then he was accused of denying the Holocaust. To some extent you can’t avoid it and you will be tainted with the antisemitic slur regardless of what you say, but let’s try to minimize the opportunities for that and to act pre-emptively as far as possible.

Bruce Baigrie

Closer to home, it seems to have been a while since Palestine solidarity has gone beyond lobbying the ANC and the government. The strategy of working with ANC, seems too often to be more advantageous to the ANC, allowing them to easily co-opt the emotion around the Palestinian struggle. A while back you had the blatantly corrupt and reactionary Kebby Maphatsoe being given a platform with Leila Khaled. This seems to be the net result of this strategy rather than building pressure on the ANC for their own role in the current position of the Palestinians. On the flip-side, there is not much by way of solidarity across the continent. SA has been one of the few African countries prepared to take a stand in international forums like the UN and feels very isolated. Israel���s lobbying efforts in Africa seem to have been quite effective. So how do we adequately pressure the South African government, whilst both supporting their efforts and being aware of the massive challenges they face in isolating Israel?

Ran Greenstein

About a month ago I was invited together with Na���eem Jeenah to speak to the Foreign Affairs committee in parliament on international solidarity with Palestinians, and I avoided saying anything specific about what South Africa should do. What I said was quite mild: that there were two steps that could be taken immediately and shouldn’t be controversial. The first is to extend the labelling of all products from the OPTs���that was won by Open Shuhada Street many years ago���to an outright ban of all settlement products from the occupied territories. The second step is to stop all security related cooperation with Israel. Not all trade, which would be a more radical step for now, but anything security-oriented because that has inevitably an oppressive implication. So, these are two somewhat limited but realistic goals that solidarity movements can campaign around and use in order to put pressure on the South Africa government.

Na���eem was more far reaching and spoke of breaking off all relations���in fact, some people in parliament were under the understanding that relationships were broken off, but that���s not the case. This is a more radical step that I don’t think you can actually expect South Africa to take now, breaking off formal diplomatic relations with Israel. You can campaign around it, but I don’t think it’s realistic. So I would go for more limited but very clear steps that are linked to oppressive policies. Even the government shouldn’t have great difficulty in accepting such steps. Another issue has to do with South African citizens who serve in the IDF. Again, you can see the clear rationale for that campaign. My preference would be to strategically choose kinds of campaigns that admittedly are limited in scope but have the potential of mobilizing large number of people who don’t have to be so committed to this cause to see the oppressive implications at stake.

Bruce Baigrie

Finally, and I completely agree with your point about not getting involved in one state versus two state debates so in that sense let me apologize for this age old question but it does seem things have shifted enough for it to be more than a form of ritualistic catharsis. Five years ago, Norman Finkelstein said that one state is “Man on the Moon stuff” whilst the international community is still for two states. Was he right, is he still right?

Ran Greenstein

There is definitely a growing recognition that there is not going to be a two state solution, so in that sense, things have changed. You will know about Peter Beinart who wrote in the NYT (New York Times) of all places about moving towards a one state solution, and I think this represents important changes, but they are not necessarily positive. The move to a one state solution is a recognition that you can’t remove Israel from the OPTs, therefore you have to talk about the entire geographical space that is controlled by Israel. It’s not a victory; it’s a sign of recognizing the earlier struggle failed.

For me the important question, linked to an earlier point, is how do you get the different forces in the Palestinian space, to work together. That it’s a unified country is no longer in dispute. What are the practical political implications of that? How do we organize to ensure democracy? We must organize as one movement, but how do we do it practically? This raises again the question of how different political forces that agree on a platform, but are physically separated, can work together in a joint movement. It’s difficult to speak yet about a unified movement. For the time being anyway, the more realistic way forward is to continue to work on the three core demands but in different geographical spaces and different political arenas. You can’t unify these struggles immediately, not in the short-term, so in this sense the one-state is indeed a reality on the oppressive side, as far as Israeli domination is concerned, but it’s not yet a reality on the emancipatory side, as far as oppositional forces are concerned.

We have to work on the practical application of this concept, to work towards greater coordination, pooling together of resources, joint mobilization on shared concerns. That’s the future direction. Whether it will eventually lead to a unified movement like the UDF [United Democratic Front] is too early to tell, but I think that while different movements operate in their own spaces, at least part of their energy and efforts should be directed towards working together. So, continue to operate in your own space, with its political realities, but try to pay more attention to the need to unify your efforts. Whenever you campaign on an issue that is specific to your part of the overall situation, think how other people, other Palestinians in particular but also Israelis, can take part, physically and symbolically, through solidarity or direct action. We need individual localized campaigns that mobilize people on the basis of their immediate concerns and, without losing the local specificity, to try and also build a broader framework.

The myth of South African nationality

Growing nationalism in South Africa is a danger to African people across the continent. As the country crumbles, what are the alternatives?





Photo by Pawel Janiak on Unsplash

Post-apartheid South Africa finds itself at a moment where a worrying number of its citizens currently consider a nativist ideology as one of the determining factors in a party���s electability. New political organizations firmly root themselves within a space developed through years of growing national antagonisms towards the African other. These parties include the African Transformation Movement (ATM), that won two seats in parliament from their first contested election, as well as the freshly founded Action SA, the party of former Johannesburg mayor and Democratic Alliance member Herman Mashaba. The ATM is led by Vuyo Zungula and Mzwandile Manyi, the former head of government communications during Jacob Zuma���s tenure as South African President. Manyi is now ATM���s head of policy. The argument presented by both parties is that South Africa���s ���porous borders��� burdens its people with undocumented immigrants and that the state, led by the ANC, chooses to deny actual citizens their social and economic rights because of this. Then there���s the larger #PutSouthAfricansFirst movement, promoted by both the ATM and Action SA.

Though the hashtag itself is recent, #PutSouthAfricansFirst���s politics is older, dating back to May 2008, with the first wave of deadly attacks against��foreign, especially African, nationals. This became a regular occurrence since, with headline making clashes���as opposed to the daily unmitigated violence that is unreported���taking place again in 2015 and in 2019, resulting in further casualties, but also criticism of South Africa at home and abroad. The violence, while classed as ���xenophobia,��� should rather be understood as Afrophobia, rooted in anti-blackness (as the victims of this kind of violence are never white). It is accompanied by anti-foreigner policies from the ruling party as well as official opposition, prejudiced statements from state officials, and the reoccurring flashpoints of extreme violence in peri-urban communities.

What has become clear is that #PutSouthAfricansFirst is no longer just a digital threat alone. Its fans and supporters have organized offline protests, like those at Nigeria���s embassy in South Africa.

One of #PutSouthAfricansFirst���s prominent spokespeople on social media is��Vusi Thembekwayo, a figure known primarily for his business commentary and motivational speaking, but who now seems to be transitioning into a thought leader for those who happen to be interested in or share his views on what is the supposed ���real��� issue in this country. Thembekwayo is one of South Africa���s most recognized venture capitalists and public speakers, and more recently became a sort of political commentator on his own social media platforms as well as on mainstream news channels.

According to Thembekwayo, and others like him, patriotism has wrongfully been conflated with xenophobia in South Africa: the media and the public are guilty of misjudging the passionate calls to tighten South Africa���s borders with more security, to crush undocumented immigration, and prioritize South African workers over foreigners. These positions are not based on bigotry. No, they���re grounded on the love for one���s country and a desire to see it moving forward. Thembekwayo, Mashaba, Manyi and other likeminded public figures represent a few of the most popular proponents of this nationalist trend.

The platform that arguably has the biggest influence on this movement is the��infamous Lerato Pillay Twitter account, which has only being in existence for less than a year, but which is credited for shaping the viral discourse surrounding #PutSouthAfricansFirst.

The anonymous account managed to amass thousands of other social media users who support the vitriol expressed by the account holder and share with the account its impatience with the ruling party���s supposed pussyfooting regarding the alleged illegal presence of nationals from other African countries in South Africa. With the origins of #PutSouthAfricansFirst having been linked to @uLerato_Pillay, the real identity of the person behind the account has recently become a subject of inquiry, and some startling revelations have come out from investigations dealing with this matter.

The Black American Marxist theorist, Cedric Robinson, once argued about his own country that ���Birth deposes judicial citizenship in the nation-state, but this mythical nationality requires a confirmation bestowed by culture, the culture of the majority or the most powerful ethnic group.��� Robinson���s 1996 essay,�����In Search of a Pan African Common Wealth,��� deals with the need to confront the idea of the nation-state, which he judged as a by-product of European modernity. For Africans on the continent, what Robinson���s critique of statehood compels us to do is to question the nature of national identities in Africa���concretized by the groundless argument coming out of the Berlin Conference of 1884 and 1885���and to recognize its role in upholding the colonial project.

The parallels between #PutSouthAfricaFirst and Afrikaner nationalists, who ruled South Africa for much of the 20th century, combing a mix of racism and xenophobia, are eerie. J.B.M. Hertzog, South African Prime Minister from 1924 to 1929, came to power pushing a ���South Africans First��� policy, by which he meant whites. It is ironic that Black South Africans are promoting a version of the same politics today.

It is even more depressing that the nationalist agenda of #PutSouthAfricansFirst mirrors the xenophobic rhetoric which has driven US President Donald Trump���s ���America First��� campaign. Thembekwayo, Mashaba and others like them have more than once suggested their own admiration for Trump���s insouciant approach to immigration in the United States. They excitingly share news of his latest executive orders against immigrants, adding that Trump is an example for dissatisfied South Africans to look at for how to manage unemployment by scapegoating immigrants.

More powerful than #PutSouthAfricaFirst in promoting xenophobic South African nationalism, is the largely unquestioned framework of South African exceptionalism which has somehow managed to co-exist with the overwhelming despondency in the South African polity over the on-going failures of the South African state.

A persistently dominant view since the first democratic election in 1994 has been that South Africa is a leader of the ���developing��� world generally, and of the African continent especially. This notion arises from specific elements of our history and present, like the much-idolized transition, having a constitution that is one of the most progressive globally, or the supposed European chic of our ���world class��� cities. These elements helped lay the foundations for the superiority complex vis-��-vis other Africans to the north. It grips the imagination of countless South Africans, many of whom struggle to recognize that this brews an arrogant and ultimately contemptuous attitude towards the African states across our borders.

The commonly shared belief that South Africa has the potential to be one of the greatest countries in the world, a first world country, is expressive of a neoliberal capitalist ambition rather than a vision of a world that no longer dehumanizes the majority of the people who live here. The state-sponsored encouragement to be ���proudly South African��� has never just been a benign campaign intended to invest a sense of morale within the people of the republic; it was and will always be aimed at establishing nationalism through a lens of exceptionalism. All of this has been to our collective detriment as African people. Africana Studies scholar, Joshua��Myers, argues that to function as a liberal democracy under a nation-state plays a part in the collapse we���ve seen in several African nations, since ���the nation-state exists primarily to protect the sanctity of capital��� which makes it ���fundamentally anti-human.��� It is inconceivable that any African civilization could thrive fully while working within these rigid conditions.

South Africa is crumbling in every way imaginable, and as a considerable amount of the population became obsessed with the national question, the governing party is more than happy to let these segments sow deeper divisions on the basis of national identity, letting foreigners bear the brunt for the catastrophes of unemployment, crime, and austerity. The economic depression and unresolved hostilities stretching from 2008 are not what has brought us to this current nightmare; this is the direct consequence of the neo-colonial administration���s decision to keep the principles of the nation-state in place and unchallenged. When radical calls and outlines are made for newer ways of life outside of the naturalized systems of violence and dominance, such as statehood, they are regularly met with politically unimaginative responses, suggesting that in reality there are no possible alternatives to the oppressive and undemocratic modes of politics which govern our lives. What does a confrontation against the nation state look like?

In one of the strongest examples of a struggle with the ideals of statism, which has lead to a meaningful difference in the material conditions of a dispossessed people, we can look towards the remarkable contemporary revolution in north east Syria, commonly known as Rojava. The region consists of several multicultural communes that operate under a political theory described as democratic confederalism. It is a concept guided by the principles of communalism, as well as several other social ideologies that reject hierarchal leadership and the centralization of power in favor of a more humane and egalitarian society, for every identity that lives in it. Due to the administration���s defiant opposition towards the statist logic of diversity and difference, it has been able to find ways to accommodate different ethnic and religious groups in a manner that does not allow it to produce cultural hegemony, which always tends to lead to social inequality. The philosophy, conceptualized by Kurdistan Worker���s Party leader Abdullah ��calan, is modelled after the ideas of social ecologist Murray Bookchin. As an anarchist, Bookchin theorized and established ideological foundations that would go on to help an entire region across the world from him gain liberation from the dehumanizing confines of the nation state as well as the modernities entangled with it, all of which limit the chances of living a self-determined life.

To bring it back��home, for those of us who believe in the vision of a unified Africa, it is necessary that we evolve from what Robinson described as a political Pan Africanism, which only works to reinforce the legacy of the nation state while at the same time concealing the ���several alternative modalities of Pan-Africanism.��� A Pan Africanism envisioned by Amilcar Cabral, when he rightfully said the struggle against colonial powers was not solely about gaining a flag and an anthem just for African people to be further imprisoned and subsequently divided by them. It was and is a struggle to ���change radically the economical, social and cultural situation of our African people.��� A Pan Africanism, as Sisonke Msimang once discussed, which encourages us to resist establishing our identity here entirely around the constitutional scrapping of apartheid legislations and the rainbow nation myth.��Unless and until we can return to a place where the validity of nationality is openly contested, with the aims of eventually divesting from it entirely, nationalism will exist���covertly and overtly���to deny Africa of a reality where civilizations truly place every single one of us first.

Oil, protest and mass solidarity in Mauritius

How an environmental catastrophe catalyzed major anti-government mobilizations in Mauritius.





Oil spill in Mauritius. Image via Wikimedia Commons.

This post is part of our series “Climate Politics.”

Mauritius has a reputation for stability and the quality of its democratic politics. Massive protest action is relatively uncommon in the country. But the government���s handling of a major oil spill ���with devastating consequences for the island���s biodiversity, health and economy���has resulted in protests, threatening this consensus. In the most significant of these marches, more than 100,000 people marched in the capital, Port Louis, on August 29. The second march, on September 12 in Mahebourg, the site directly affected by the spill, had 25,000 participants according to police estimates; organizers argue that the figure was twice that number, if not higher. The protesters demanded change and the resignation of the government, especially Prime Minister Pravind Jugnauth.

What resulted in this mass mobilization? On July 25, the MV Wakashio, a Panamanian-flagged vessel travelling from China to Brazil and carrying 200 tons of diesel and 3,800 tons of heavy oil, ran aground on the coral reefs of Pointe d���Esny, on the south east coast of Mauritius. The lagoon off this coast is situated near two environmentally protected marine ecosystems and the Blue Bay Marine Park, which is a wetland of international importance. For 12 days, the nation waited for the government to take action to prevent an environmental disaster. To pacify the worried population,�� the police announced on August 5 that efforts were being made to stabilize the ship and said that it was not sinking, but was resting on a sand bank. However, precipitated by bad weather conditions, the first signs of cracks in the hull were reported that same day. The following day, the ship began leaking and an estimated 1,200 tons of oil spilled into the pristine lagoon. The spill puts numerous species around the lagoons of Blue Bay, Pointe d���Esny and Mahebourg at risk, with dire consequences for the economy, food security, and health in Mauritius.

The government has been criticized for its slow response: Only on August 7 did it declare the incident an environmental emergency. Images of the oil spill���of the polluted beaches, rivers, and mangroves���made global headlines. In a live interview with the BBC, Prime Minister Jugnauth was questioned on the delay in taking action and whether he owed the people of Mauritius an apology. He responded that authorities had relied on the advice of international experts, and said that bad weather conditions had hindered operations to pump the oil out of the ship. This explanation was widely criticized by local environmentalists, civil society groups, and the public at large.

Although Jugnauth has commissioned a formal investigation, his government has been accused of not being transparent in the handling of the clean-up operation, which has angered many. The government appears to be hiding behind the advice of select international advisers while not being open to other offers of support. Anger is also brewing against the Japanese shipping company, Nagashiki Shipping, the insurance industry, and the international community who seem to pay little heed to the plight of ordinary Mauritians whose livelihoods have been compromised. A few measures have now been taken: The captain of the ship was arrested by the Mauritian police and charged with endangering safe navigation. The Mauritian government banned the sale and consumption of fish and seafood caught from the south-eastern lagoon after samples from the area returned positive tests for traces of hydrocarbons. And a large area (125km2) on the south-east and east coast of the island have been declared off-limits. What remains unknown is exactly how much oil spilled into Mauritian waters, the toxicity of the oil, and whether chemicals were used in the clean-up operation.

In the days after the oil spill, civil society groups stepped in and took immediate action to salvage the damage in whatever way they could. Volunteers from all walks of life and across the country arrived to help. While no one had previously experienced an oil spill, they all appreciated that something had to be done urgently. Volunteers created and placed in the ocean makeshift absorbent barriers with dried sugarcane leaves stuffed into fabric sacks, and tubes made out of tights and hair. Given the oil-absorbing properties of hair, a national hair collection effort was organized with hairdressers across the island joining in solidarity, offering free haircuts. The actions of the population defied an order from government asking people to leave the clean-up to the authorities. Jugnauth then went so far as to describe the volunteers as ���nuisible���, implying that their actions were doing more harm than good, angering the public even further.

The marches were led by the social activist Bruno Laurette, and included citizens from all ethnic, religious, and age groups, together with children and the disabled. The march received wide-ranging support from leftist groups, such as Rezistans ek Alternativ, environmental groups like Aret Kokin Nou Laplage and Eco Sud, as well as trade unions. (Leaders and members of opposition political parties participated in the first march, but in their capacity as private citizens.) Both marches mainly comprised citizens who were not affiliated with any particular organization, but who wanted to express their discontent with the government���s handling of the crisis.

For island nations such as Mauritius, the sea and the ocean are interwoven with the identity of the people, as well as being a key determinant of their livelihoods. Inaction at the level of the state, the secrecy surrounding the spill, and the mishandling of such a major crisis served to catalyze public anger and trigger historic anti-government protests that are worth following closely in the months to come.

Where are the flowers for Gilbert?

The drummer Gilbert Matthews was a visionary of South African jazz. The silences on his passing from official quarters are discordant.





Photo by Matthijs Smit on Unsplash

Sometimes, you wait and wait for South Africa���s Department of Science, Arts and Culture (DAC)���and nothing happens. No, for once I���m not talking about the still-problematic artists��� relief fund, but about the failure of the Department to acknowledge the passing of a titan of South African drums, Gilbert Matthews.

Since then, stage artist Mary Twala and director-actor Welcome Msomi have both passed, and DAC has been prompt���quite rightly���to mark their passing.

But for Bra��� Gil, who brought credit to South Africa from a host of international jazz stages, the official silence remains deafening. Maybe the Department doesn���t know who he was? In that case, it���s time to tell them.

Gilbert Matthews was born in Graaf-Reinet in the Cape in 1943. Veteran trumpeter John Ntshibilikwana, his relative, recalled: ���Because of the poverty there, it was virtually impossible for people to acquire instruments. If you wished to play guitar, you had to take an oil tin and make a guitar out of it. That is how Gilbert started���with a paraffin-tin guitar!���

Despite these straitened circumstances, Matthews��� guitar-playing was good enough for him to begin playing professionally, eventually securing work at the first (there have been several successors) Tiffany���s Club in Cape Town, where he taught himself to play drums and switched instruments.��His playing caught the ear of the city���s jazz elite, and in the late 1960s he featured on Ibrahim Khalil Shihab (Chris Schilder���s)�����Spring.���

After those sessions, he travelled to the United States via London.�� He was mentored by both Max Roach and Elvin Jones, secured an 18-month engagement as Ray Charles���s regular drummer, and also worked with Sarah Vaughan.

But home called. By the mid-1970s, he was back in Johannesburg, gigging with the then-Dollar Brand, Kippie Moeketsi and more. He worked in the house band of the�����Black Mikado�����musical staged at Diepkloof Hall in Soweto, and as a session musician on various tours, including what he found a particularly dispiriting series of hotel gigs in Swaziland.

On his return, he began making South African jazz history, calling his��Black Mikado��band-mates and others together to form Spirits Rejoice, named in honor of an Albert Ayler recording. Spirits aimed to create the kind of imaginative, exploratory jazz and fusion music that Earth Wind and Fire, Weather Report, and others were pioneering in the US.

Spirits Rejoice was not only a band, but a symposium and university for a whole generation of South African modern jazz players. Its first incarnation included Bheki Mseleku, Robbie Jansen, Duku Makasi, George Tjefumani, Thabo Mashishi, Sipho Gumede, and Russell Herman; later incarnations included Mervyn Afrika, Khaya Mahlangu, Paul Petersen, Themba Mehlomakhulu, singer Felicia Marion, and later the whole vocal lineup of Joy. For the much younger Mahlangu, it was the innovative approach of Spirits that inspired him: ���It was a beautiful learning experience���, with Gumede, to want ���to do stuff like that���but in a more African context.���

The band released two albums,��African Spaces��in 1977��and the self-titled��Spirits Rejoice��in 1978��and won, according to pianist Mervyn Afrika, nine Sarie Awards: the highest honors open to South African popular musicians at the time.��According to the late Ezra Ngcukana, ���They were a very high-powered band. They made history.���

But despite these accolades, and some residencies���including at Cape Town���s Sherwood Hotel, Beverly Lounge, and Landdrost Hotel in Lansdowne, as well as legendary jazz spot, Club Montreal in Manenberg���respect and the freedom to innovate further were scarce as the 1970s came to a close.

In 1979, Matthews left for Sweden. There, he married and established an extremely distinguished career that let him stretch his innovative vision out further. He worked regularly with the group of��saxophonist Christer Boustedt, and, after the reedman���s death, re-established it as The Contemporary Bebop Quintet. Additionally, he worked with Chris McGregor���s Brotherhood of Breath,��regularly with Archie Shepp, and with Mischa Mengelberg, Roscoe Mitchell, John Tchicai, Albert Mangelsdorff and Charlie Mariano, among others.

He was the drummer on the��SA Exiles Thunderbolt��recording, and on bassist Johnny Dyani���s revolutionary��Born Under The Heat.

Matthews was playing and recording in Europe, always in distinguished company, well into the twenty-first century. But in recent years, ill-health gradually imprisoned him away from the stage.

There can be no better way to end than with Matthews��� own description of the soaring improvisatory fusions that Spirits Rejoice pioneered: ���It���s like a game ��� we play anything that is in our heads and later rearrange it into a meaningful tune. At first, it sounds like some mad musicians just making noise with their instruments. The, later, we remove the noise, and all we are left with is music.���

For the South African cultural landscape, Matthews and Spirits Rejoice did indeed make history. Now, indeed, all we are left with is the music. Hamba Kahle to a visionary of our jazz scene: may his spirit rest in peace and rhythm.

African literature is a country on AIAC Talk

How do we decolonize African literature? AIAC talks about it with Bhakti Shringarpure and Lily Saint. Stream it live Tuesday on Youtube, Facebook, Twitter.





Photo by Eugenio Mazzone on Unsplash

What if you survey African literature professors to find out which works and writers are most regularly taught? Literary scholars Bhakti Shringarpure and Lily Saint wanted to find out. They sent out a survey to their colleagues and found they mostly teach works by Ng��g�� wa Thiong���o, Chinua Achebe, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and J.M. Coetzee. The majority of the writers that make the cut are from Nigeria and South Africa. Basically, only a few canonical ones continue to dominate curricula. First we asked them to summarize the findings for us, which they did in the article “African literature is a country.” Now we have invited them onto AIAC Talk to come and tell us more.

Stream the show Tuesday at 18:00 SAST, 16:00 GMT, and 12:00 EST on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter.

Bhakti Shringarpure is a writer, translator, and academic. She is the editor in chief and co-founder of Warscapes as well as the author of the book, Cold War Assemblages: Decolonization to Digital (Routledge, 2019). Lily Saint is Associate Professor of English at Wesleyan University. Her latest book on apartheid reading cultures was published by the University of Michigan Press in 2018.

Later in the program, they will be joined by Mukoma wa Ngugi, himself a novelist (author of six books) and associate professor at the newly renamed department of Literatures in English at Cornell University.

If you missed last week���s program, we asked what ideas influence the new right and how is it spreading around the world, including in Africa. Guests were Chelsea Stieber, a scholar of French and Francophone Studies, and political scientist Christopher McMichael, from South Africa, the latter who spoke specifically on the spread of right-wing ideas, conspiracy theories, and political movements especially in South Africa where there is a significant white minority. You can watch clips from that show on our YouTube channel, and the whole thing on our Patreon along with all the episodes from our archive.

Good influence

It is unfair to expect coherent politics from Naira Marley or his fans, the Marlians. We should, instead, chastise the Nigerian state for stifling its people and keeping its young perpetually waiting.





Naira Marley in a still from a Youtube video.

Naira Marley may not be a revolutionary like, say, Fela Kuti, who engaged in formal party politics by establishing the Movement of the People and attempting to participate in the 1979 Nigerian presidential elections. Yet, Marley���s seditious music serves a political purpose, with music and a career trajectory practically displaying how young people are subverting a formal political space in Nigeria, traditionally seen as corrupt and ideologically sterile. Marley���s fans, popularly known as Marlians, contribute complex narratives to the discourse on Nigeria���s failed political and socio-economic systems.

Having suffered from the effects of radical precarity and what Alcinda Honwana���a scholar of African youth politics���has termed ���waithood,��� some socioeconomically disenfranchised Nigerian youth have been quick to informally elect Naira Marley as their leader. Since the implementation of structural adjustment policies in Nigeria, young people have remained victims of defective neoliberal economic policies and weak social security systems, which has resulted in a desperation for relief.

Uncertainty and inertia have stalked a large proportion of Nigeria���s urban youth, to the point where they now see an active devotion to what I call Marlianism���a neologism to describe the Marlian way of life���as a means to negotiating their waithood.

Marley���s fans have willingly accepted him as the supreme leader of the Marlian vanguard because he expresses a complex sympathy for their social struggles. Marlians wish to challenge formal laws and redefine principles of economic redistribution through illegal activities, such as internet fraud. The contested moral question over this approach to the redistribution of wealth is another debate worth grappling with altogether. Rather, what I wish to underscore here is Marlians��� need to design and nurture a mode of operation that they feel is necessary for their self-preservation, having been neglected by formal social systems.

In an essay on Naira Marley recently published here, Banwo ���Proficience��� Olagokun claims that Marlians lack the sociopolitical consciousness to be called a social or political movement. Yet Marley often expresses a clear political message. As Marley put it himself in an interview with Yomi Adegoke, ���I was born in Nigeria, where everything is not the way it���s meant to be. I���ve always been against the corruption.��� These words are not empty of sociopolitical consciousness. To most Marlians, Nigeria���s political and socio-economic systems have not contributed positively to their individual development. In his 2019 song, ���Bad Influence,��� Marley highlights the fact that the Nigerian government has little regard for the lives of poor and marginalized youth. He sings, ���But the government don���t have nothing for us […] We want school but they gave us prison; we want education but they taught us lesson.���

Marley���s fans, including Olajuwon Oluwatosin Niniola (commonly known as DonnBlu), clearly share similar ideas. Donn Blu, whose videos on social media usually depict him smoking marijuana, is primarily a comedian and musician but occasionally creates enthralling posts that echo Marlian principles, such as refusing to pay toll road fees and ignoring traffic lights while driving. It is clear that Naira Marley’s music encourages an anarchist lifestyle, which his fans freely emulate. Marlians��� decision to embark on and promote an almost Sadean lifestyle, of practicing sexual freedom and defying state regulations, is in itself a political statement and legitimate form of activism. As Laura Portwood-Stacer states in her book, Lifestyle Politics and Radical Activism: ���lifestyle is a way of gesturing toward a desire for different conditions, the kind that would make different kinds of subjectivities truly possible.��� Marlians, therefore, represent an informal network of defiant actors pursuing an alternative social reality.

By viewing Marlians in this manner, we are able to challenge the false dichotomy between lifestyle anarchism and social anarchism suggested by Murray Bookchin, a political philosopher and eco-anarchist. In the 1970s, Bookchin saw subversive lifestyle decisions as a valid form of revolution but in 1995, he took a U-turn and criticized lifestyle anarchism as egoistic behavior that could never morph into legitimate social action required for challenging state power and capitalism. In his essay, ���Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgeable Chasm,��� Bookchin presents lifestyle anarchism as a ���personalistic commitment to individual autonomy,��� whereas social anarchism embodies a ���collectivist commitment to social freedom��� and is associated with ���the thinking human mind.��� Yet, by drawing such a sharp and rigid distinction, Bookchin undermines the fact that social change is often fueled by individual efforts that have the ability to reverberate and engender collective social action. Moreover, Bookchin���s perception of lifestyle anarchists as irrational in comparison to social anarchists is dubious. In the case of Marlians, they do not lack the capacity to think; they can reflect on social ills and highlight what they feel should change in their society, irrespective of how (un)ethical their desires may be. While lifestyle anarchism and social anarchism may be placed on opposite ends of a spectrum, both forms of action are not mutually exclusive since anarchist lifestyles have social implications. For this reason, it is possible to recognize the socio-political consciousness of Marlians and thus validate the countercultural group as a social movement.

Indeed, the Marlian community lacks organization and structure, which Bookchin claimed are exclusive to social anarchism and thus absent from lifestyle anarchism. The Marlian message seems to be to do whatever you want to achieve self-improvement (including increasing one���s social status) and gratification, even if it is illegal. This can explain why Marlians do not have a coherent manifesto and why they do not deem it necessary to create an elaborate plan for enacting broad-based political transformation in Nigeria. However, the lack of political organization among Marlians might be reflective of their anarchist spirit. The absence of formal organization within the Marlian network can be interpreted as an inadvertent avoidance of the iron law of oligarchy which, according to Robert Michels, is the belief that regardless of a group���s attempt to emerge as democratic and horizontal, it will inevitably develop bureaucratic and hierarchical tendencies that would yield unequal outcomes. Some Marlians may be unaware of Michels���s theory, but their lack of organization can be said to represent an evasion of this iron law and an embrace of flexible and creative participation.

That said, Marlianism is complex. As Olagokun rightly points out, Marley still participates somewhat in the status quo. Like corrupt Nigerian political elites who embezzle public funds to stuff their pockets, Marlians engaging in online advance fee fraud are essentially stealing from others to become richer, even though Marlians do not see their actions in this way. So, where exactly do Marlians fit in the social pyramid? Are they some form of oppressed oppressors? In the end, I believe it is fair to say that Marlians are ���partial anarchists��� since they contest state power and cultural conservatism but simultaneously subscribe to bourgeois economic principles surrounding property. For Marlians, capitalism can remain unvitiated because it is useful in boosting their social status and supporting their journey to social adulthood, which is what Alcinda Honwana has highlighted as a primary desire of young Africans stuck in waithood.

Marlianism is essentially characterized by an emotive appeal. It may not represent the kind of politics that is necessary for uprooting colonial legacies in Nigeria and transforming the country into a socially progressive society but as long as Nigeria���s economic and political systems continue to be weak, Marlianism will continue to act as a source of comfort to its members. A tangible and all-encompassing solution is required to alleviate Nigeria���s multifaceted social challenges and it may not come from Marlians but that is mainly because this is not what they seek to achieve. Marlians are victims and participants of a broken system awaiting renewal. Therefore, it is unfair to criticize them for not going further to formalize their activism in order to resolve Nigeria���s weak socio-political systems, of which they are products and producers.

The group ultimately lacking the political vision and coordination required for positive social change is not Marlians, but Nigerian leaders, who for the most part are not united in a necessary effort to provide young Nigerians with substantive freedoms. There has been a glaring failure to understand that the lives of young Nigerians should be carefully invested in, and not through superficial white elephant development initiatives that wind up feeding the egos and pockets of corrupt public officials. Expecting political organization or some form of absolution from the Marlian movement, as Olagokun does, is a misplaced concern. Instead, we ought to chastise the derelict Nigerian state for stifling its people and keeping its young perpetually waiting.

Abolish Kenya’s prison system

Arresting and jailing Kenya's poor isn't working to cut crime or protect people's rights. We need something else.





Photo by Grant Durr on Unsplash

The frequent arbitrary arrest and detainment of the poor prompts a situation where roughly 1 in 5 Kenyans are arrested every two years, and only 6 percent are able to pay their bail fees. This article, originally published by The Elephant and part of a series curated by Editorial Board member, Wangui Kimari, explores why this is the case, and also helps us imagine what a more humane justice system could look like in Kenya.

���Arrest them!��� Across the globe, this is the popular demand whenever someone is accused of wrongdoing. Two weeks ago, the reigning Formula One champion, Lewis Hamilton, appeared before the press wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the words ���Arrest the cops who killed Breonna Taylor������a reference to an incident six months ago in which US police shot and killed the unarmed African American in her own home during a drug bust. In Kenya too, demands for arrests are an almost involuntary reflex reaction whenever vices like murder, rape, robbery, poaching or corruption rear their ugly head.

We rarely give thought to this identification of incarceration with punishment and the consequences of doing this. Especially on the African continent, confinement as a form of punishment was largely unknown prior to colonialism. Jails, which did exist in some pre-colonial kingdoms, were established for the purpose of holding either suspects pending trial or convicts awaiting their fate.

Still, for much of the continent, the experience of confinement was a product of colonialism. Yet there does not seem to have been much resistance to the idea of incarcerating people. It is somewhat strange considering, as historian Daniel Branch observed, ���prisoners were serving sentences in institutions with no historically derived meaning, having been convicted for activities that they would not themselves consider offences.���

Places of incarceration did form sites of activism and resistance���one here thinks of the March 16, 1922 protests at the Nairobi police station against the arrest of Harry Thuku, which were led by Mary Muthoni Nyanjiru and which resulted in the massacre of at least 21 and perhaps as many as a hundred protesters by the police and colonial settlers. However, one does not generally come across tales of attacks on colonial prisons in the same manner as, for example, the Nandi attacks on the ���iron snake���, the colonial railroad foretold, the legend goes, by their fourth Orkoiyot, Kimnyole (who would ironically be stoned to death by Nandi following a sequence of failed predictions).

���There���s quite a lot of evidence to suggest that the removal of ���criminals��� was welcomed���even if they had been convicted by a colonial justice system,��� says Professor David Anderson. ���Colonial goals were certainly sites of oppression, but they also served a social function of which some Africans approved.���

Still, for much of the continent, the experience of confinement was a product of colonialism. Yet there does not seem to have been much resistance to the idea of incarcerating people.

The seemingly rapid acceptance of incarceration as a mode of punishment was perhaps aided by the relatively permeable membrane that was the prison wall���at least for petty criminals who made up the bulk of the inmate population in Kenyan prisons in the early days. Branch documents prisoners hosting their families for tea, being allowed to go for strolls in town or brew their own hooch. And though life on the inside may have been brutal, so increasingly was life under colonial occupation on the outside.

Exceptions were made for individuals whom the colonial government viewed as a threat to their control, in which case incarceration was accompanied by deportation following ordinances enacted in 1923 empowering the governor to detain anybody and deport people from one part of the territory to another. Harry Thuku was, for example, deported to Kismayu following the Nairobi massacre and in the 1930s, as related by Professor Anderson, ���the entire Talai clan was deported from the Kipsigis Reserve and detain[ed] indefinitely in an alien and inhospitable area of Nyanza province in what was, in effect, an open prison.��� This followed attacks on symbols of colonial authority, including Europeans and Asians as well as chiefs and their assistants, including what came to be known as the Kinangop Outrage���the killing of a white settler, Alex Semini, and the assault on his wife during a bungled robbery.

Even as prison conditions deteriorated markedly during the Mau Mau Emergency and after independence, attitudes towards incarceration did not change. Although Kenyan prisons continue to be heavily criticized by international groups for neglect, violence and abuse of human rights within the system, there has not been a popular movement for prison reform. The sporadic attempts at improving prisoner welfare have been led by a few religious and civil society groups and state officials, most notably former Vice President Moody Awori���s reforms in the early 2000s. However, they have yielded few tangible improvements and, more importantly, have not translated into public pressure for reform or even abolition of the prison system.

On its part, the state���s attitudes towards incarceration have barely budged. The recent arrest and detention of two legislators for ���insulting��� the president and his mother were telling. Following a model of harassment practiced against activists, journalists and ordinary citizens, rather than requesting the two to come to the police station and without bothering with a warrant, contingents of cops were sent to haul them in. The courts thereafter sanitized this by allowing them to be held longer as police ���completed investigations���. This abuse of the police powers of arrest and detention continues despite constitutional guarantees of liberty, presumption of innocence, freedom from arbitrary incarceration, and bail.

Tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands of Kenyans who have been convicted of no crime continue to spend days, weeks, months, and even years in police or remand jails. The National Council on the Administration of Justice (NCAJ) points out that the Kenyan police have abused their powers of arrest ���to harass Kenyans, especially the poor, vulnerable and marginalized individuals without sufficient legal knowledge to defend themselves or sufficient resources to either bribe the police officer to be released or to hire a lawyer to represent them in court.��� The scale of arrests is humongous. An audit by the NCAJ found that 145,000 people had been detained in just 15 of Kenya���s police stations between 2013 and 2014. That suggests that a total of 10 million people, or one in every five Kenyans, are arrested by the police every two years. This is in addition to the nearly 30,000 currently being held in remand, who constitute half of the prison population.

There have been recent attempts to decongest the jails by encouraging, for example, alternative dispute resolution mechanisms, plea bargains and non-custodial sentences. However, the efficacy of these are undermined by the fact that Kenyan courts, like the police, continue to treat liberty as a privilege to be earned rather than a right to be protected. Although four years ago the High Court declared unconstitutional the police practice of arresting ���suspects��� and then asking the courts for more time to complete investigations before charging them, judges and magistrates continue to indulge this practice, as we have seen.

An audit by the NCAJ found that 145,000 people had been detained in just 15 of Kenya���s police stations between 2013 and 2014. That suggests that a total of 10 million people, or one in every five Kenyans, are arrested by the police every two years.

Even more egregiously, an audit by the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions revealed that courts routinely issue unaffordable bail and bond terms and that 90 percent of the suspects, who are legally presumed innocent but end up spending an average of one year in pre-trial remand, have actually been granted bail or bond but are too poor to execute them. In a country where nearly half of the households earn less than Sh10,000 per month, and where, as we have seen, the poor make up the vast majority of those targeted by the police, only six per cent of those in pretrial custody had been granted bail amounts below that figure.

In short, in the name of fighting crime, Kenya continues to deprive millions of its citizens of the right to liberty and to hold many of them in inhumane and deplorable conditions for extended periods of time. Yet this has not resulted in a significant decline in the crime rate over the last decade, with the rate of intentional homicides hovering between 4.5 and 5.5 per 100,000 according to the World Bank. So if arrests and incarceration are not working, why do we keep doing them? Are there viable alternatives we can explore?

Clearly, the Kenyan state continues to arrest and imprison Kenyans simply because it knows no better. From its founding in the colonial period, brutal incarceration has been the primary means by which the state has engaged with its citizens. Without fundamentally reforming and rebuilding the logic of the state, changing how it deals with Kenyans will be impossible. This reimagining of what the state could be and its relationship with the people is the work that the 2010 constitution called on us to do but that seems to have barely begun a decade later.

Faithful implementation of the spirit and letter of the 2010 constitution would end the prison state. Arbitrary arrests would be a thing of the past and confinement would be a last resort. If judges took the prohibitions against ���cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment��� seriously, they would stop sending suspects and convicts to violent, overcrowded, unsanitary death prisons.

As for alternatives to arrest and imprisonment, these are legion and would immediately become apparent once we sorted out the state. For one, Kenya could look to her pre-colonial past for ideas on how to deal with crime. At that time, criminal justice systems were more focused on restitution and reconciliation rather than punishment. They ���were victim rather than perpetrator-centered with the end goal being compensation instead of incarceration��� notes Professor Jeremy Sarkin. It was only on the rare occasion when the crime was either sufficiently grievous or the offender had exhausted the society���s patience that severe penalties, including ostracism, banishment or death were imposed.

Brutal incarceration has the primary means by which the Kenyan state has engaged with its citizens. Without fundamentally reforming and rebuilding the logic of the state, changing how it deals with Kenyans will be impossible.

Saying that we could learn from the past does not necessarily mean we need to replicate their methods or that our ancestors had it all figured out. It just means there are lessons and attitudes to be learned about dealing with crime that could be adapted to modern times. One of this would be to discard the idea that all, or even most, wrongdoers and suspects have to be walled off from society and condemned to spaces of unimaginable suffering, humiliation, and death.

Non-custodial sentences, especially for non-violent crimes, should be the norm. Community service orders in addition to having offenders pay compensation to their victims rather than fines to the state could be other innovations we could borrow from the past. Restitution, resolution, and reconciliation should be preferred above retribution.

Granted, even with such reforms, there might still be a place for police cells, jails and prisons. If so, it would be a much smaller place. And one that is more befitting a space for the rehabilitation for habitual offenders than what we currently have.