Sean Jacobs's Blog, page 207

Okocha, love you. Pass Maradona!

The midfielder Augustine "Jay Jay" Okocha is arguably one of Nigeria's best men's football players ever. It is his birthday today, August 14th.

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Jay Jay Okocha. Image via Wikimedia Commons (CC).

I know Jay Jay, the real Jay Jay. Unlike pop singer (and aspirant politician) Banky W, I don��t think he knows me. There has been much ado about his legacy, as football fans debate on Twitter. Reading the sometimes-savage comments, I remembered that I was at his wedding at Sheraton Hotel, Ikeja when I was still a 10-year-old football obsessive. I remember the French suit with the heavy shoulder pads. It made me look like I had reversed Tom Hanks in Big and shrunk from middle age overnight, but kept the clothes. It was my father��s idea, anyway��the suit and the wedding. An unusual idea, since he hardly ever goes chasing after celebrities. Three of us trooped to the reception to glimpse Nigeria��s most famous footballer, perhaps to see if Jay Jay��s wedding style bore any semblance to his football skills.

Augustine “Jay Jay” Okocha was Nigeria��s best-loved footballer well before Bolton Wanderers fans discovered him and decided why his parents named him twice. Around the time of his wedding, I had an appetite for football history and in the pages of Complete Football magazine, which I collected every month, I learnt that the maestro had borrowed his name from his elder brother, Emmanuel, the original “JJ” Okocha who by all accounts was as gifted as his baby brother. As it turned out, Jay Jay was the one who would go on to dazzle the world with his talent. The first time I watched him play was at the 1994 World Cup when he was a 20-year-old ingenue in Nigeria��s greatest ever team. Before Italy��s Roberto Baggio broke the hearts of Nigerian fans, Okocha had delivered a highlight reel of magical close control and movement that dominated the Round of 16 tie. Throughout the match, I was spellbound. I was just seven years old but I already knew that the things he did with a football verged on sorcery, and also recognized this was not everyone��s cup of tea.

There is a procession of Argentinian number 10s that remind me of Okocha in one way or the other. Incidentally, each of their careers overlapped with his. In build and stride, the similarity between Maradona and Okocha is uncanny to my mind. Strong upper body and legs like supersized mortars. Like Maradona, Okocha had the preternatural gift of foreknowledge to foresee the tackle and evade it. Like Maradona he never chose easy, preferring instead to leave his marker feeling bamboozled by an extravagant touch. Another number 10, Pablo Aimar��mischief maker at the 1998 World Cup��is similar to Okocha in the way he promised much but plateaued at Valencia, one of the lesser lights in the Spanish first division. Yet, it is Juan Roman Riquelme whose playing style most closely resembles Okocha��s.

Riquelme could do almost anything with a football, and he left many defenders wondering what it was that he did do. He could whip, curl or caress the pass, the cross, the shot; could finish his man with a look and a dummy and deceive any goalkeeper with a shimmy. Possessing supreme ability on the feint, Jay Jay once left Germany��s legendary goalkeeper, Oliver Kahn, clutching at blades of grass after he had danced through the defense and scored a magnificent goal. Both men scored spectacular and crucial goals like that throughout their careers. In a fitting parallel, both men were the leading lights for their respective national teams, but never appeared able to will the country on to major championship success.

Riquelme won Olympic gold in 2008, the best he would ever do at international level. On the other hand, Okocha would star in Nigeria��s “Dream Team,” which won the football tournament at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta while he was still on the up and up. At Bolton Wanderers, Okocha seemed content to be the talisman of a middling team, freed from the capital expectations of Paris Saint Germain where he became Africa��s most expensive footballer. Riquelme found the same contentment at Villareal, admired but never winning a trophy��the kind of adornment that earns the respect of European football fans. At Fenerbahce in Turkey, where he actually won things, Okocha thrived, albeit outside the Big 5 European Leagues in Spain, Italy, England, France and Germany. It was the same for Riquelme at Boca Juniors, his beloved club in his Argentinian homeland: plenty of spoils but little respect for his honors outside those shores.

My father once told me that Jay Jay was happy to be the big fish in a small pond. He was a showman and not a general. The comparisons with Maradona stop dead at this capacity for trickery. He could not put a team on his back like Maradona when he led Napoli to their only Scudetto in 1987. You saw it in the fact that Clemens Westerhof, who coached that 1994 World Cup team, did not trust him to start Nigeria��s three group-phase games, not even the second against Argentina. Maradona careened around the pitch high on cocaine with the football world begging for an adversary to embarrass him, searching for another player blessed with his extraordinary gifts but free from the taint of scandal. Meanwhile, Okocha languished on the bench in anonymity.

However, today on the occasion of his birthday, maybe it is time to reconsider Jay Jay��s legacy. There is the suggestion that the kid who made Oliver Kahn blush ought to have risen to the top of the global game. He may not have reached the same peaks as his idol, but Okocha will always be Nigeria��s favorite Super Eagle. He was a model pro, captained club and country and was a champion at the 1994 version of this competition. That is why it is he and not the original JJ whose song will live on:

��Love you pass Maradona ohhhhhh, Okocha, Love you pass Maradona, Okocha!��

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Published on August 13, 2019 17:00

Beyond game day

Ultras or extreme fans of football clubs in Morocco use their collective identity to push for social and political demands.

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Football field in Casablanca, Morocco. Image credit Fredrik Stai via Flickr (CC).

Ultras or fanatical football fans’ activities have always overlapped between football, social and political demands. Such groups have often shown their ability to mobilize and politicize stadiums.

Whether they are aware of it or not, joining a group of ultras allows fans to appropriate a new social identity (an identity opposed to rival groups, public authorities, companies, and so on), a new way of life, and a sense of belonging. Ultra-fans’ hostility is directed towards all symbols of authority. They oppose rival fan-groups but also law enforcement, governments, the rich who exploit the poor and the country. As one fan of��Raja Casablanca, a Moroccan club says:

We do not want to be controlled by the police, the clubs or their associations. The best thing is to take care of ourselves. Can you imagine a young fan surrounded by an organism that symbolizes some authority? Or imagine a fan encircled by a state that does not grant us the slightest rights?

Morocco fans at London Olympics 2012. Image credit Ignacio Palomo Duarte via Flickr (CC).

During the uprisings of the ��Arab Spring,�� political tensions amongst ultras reached their climax. Casablanca fans�� slogans and songs became more political and denounced, as usual, the social status quo. Meanwhile Raja fans sang their attachment to the monarchy and King Mohammed VI. However, Raja fans pointed out that the government and its ministers are getting rich by pocketing taxpayers�� money and looting public funds. The lyrics of the songs have become particularly revealing of the social and political context. For example, ��The south magana curva has sharp and poisonous words, [and] hates the government�� (��Magana messmouma takrahou elhoukouma��). ��We have only one King, Mohammed VI, and the others are thieves who despise us�� (��malikouna wahed Mohamed assadiss�� or ��al baky chefara�� / ��alina hagara��). ��They fill their pockets with the poor��s money�� (��ma��mrin chukara bi fluss alfukara��). Their lyrics show the fans�� willingness to enter political action and to leave an historic trace of the events that shook the Arab world. This willingness to use symbols with political connotation is further evidence of their readiness to defy authorities.

That said, most of the time political knowledge is not very developed amongst football fans. This is not due to a lack of awareness regarding the current situation of their country, rather, it is due to the bad image and reputation of political actors. A fan from Casablanca tells me, ��They come the day of the vote. And after the election campaign, they turn their backs on us and never come back.��

Chefchaouen, Morocco 2018. Image credit Boris Thaser via Flickr (CC).

The recent consumer boycott campaign in Morocco shows that football fans have adopted political positions, taking part in social protests and political activities. A boycott campaign was launched against against costly dairy products from Danone, Sidi Ali (mineral water) and Afriquia��(gas stations). This boycott campaign generated strong reactions.

Football fans showed their support for the boycott through slogans on the stadiums and graffiti on the walls of big cities. Some of them even put graffiti of the name of their ultra-group on the trucks of the target companies. The Fatal Tigers of Maghreb��supporters of Maghreb de Fez��launched and signed a petition, thereby continuing their political activities at the Rif (with the ��Hirak-movement��) and at the Jerada mines. Thirty-two Casablanca fans also voiced their political stances. During a match against the Diffaa El Jadida football team, students working at the OFFPT (Center for Professional Training and Promotion of Work) sang: ��You do not want us to study�� you do not want us to be aware [of our situation] �� you do not want us to work�� this way, we will be submissive, resigned, easy to dominate and to control.�� (��mabghitouna nkraw… mabghitouna nw3aw… mabghitouna nkhadmou… bach tbkaw fina t7akmou��). This chant served as a prequel to the latest popular song Fbladi Dalmouni��(��In my country, I suffered from injustice��).

Insofar as there are no organized structures and platforms for youth who feel excluded in Morocco, and a continual inability of political parties and traditional associations to listen to them, football fans display an ambition to penetrate the framework of public action through street demonstrations, petitions, positions in the public debate, and song. The groups provide a basis to encourage the defense of fundamental civil liberties, assert citizen demands and follow up actions in court. They do so by utilizing the tools from the repertoire of classical public collective action.

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Published on August 13, 2019 06:00

The ghost battalion

On the Sudanese Professionals Association (SPA) the mysterious force behind the revolutionary uprising in Sudan.

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Tuti Beach. Khartoum, Sudan. Image credit Jedrek Burak via Flickr (CC).

The force that drove recent protests in Sudan, known as Tajamoo al-mihanyin al-sudaniyin or the Sudanese Professionals Association (SPA), remains an alliance of independent professionals shrouded in mystery. The Sudanese revolution found its driving force in this mysterious nebula that brought together a group of trade unions and committees, whose internal organization (structure), and the identity of its members, is largely unknown. This trait has been key in helping the group avoid both repression and arrests in a decidedly authoritarian environment.

The SPA emerged in 2013, in the aftermath of heavily repressed protest movements. It reappeared, taking part cautiously��in strikes over teacher salaries in 2018 against the backdrop of Sudan��s recession, and again in the aftermath of the uprisings in the town of Atbara in northern Sudan in mid-December of the same year. The movement��s roots, however, are decades old. The SPA arguably represents a sign of a ��past in the present�� with links to two similar political bodies that appeared under circumstances of ��insurrection�� in 1964 and 1985. It follows the example of the Revolutionary Committees Front of October 1964 (jabhat el hayaat el thawriya), a group of trade associations that emerged in the wake of the 1964 uprising. This group initiated general strikes and a broader movement of civil disobedience and decisive negotiations that eventually ended General Ibrahim Abboud’s military regime. They would go on to become part of the fragile civil power that was ultimately replaced by a coup d��tat in 1969.

In 1985, the Trade Union Assembly (altajamoo al-naqabi) played a similar role as initiators of the protest and as a central driving force in the fall of Jaafar El Numeiry. Trapped by internal disputes and infighting, the group (allied with other opposition political forces) failed to hold its own against the military government of the time, which was able to hold onto their monopoly of political and state power. These two ��antecedents�� succeeded in removing two regimes but could not ensure more than an uprising, followed by a new regime, followed by a military coup d’��tat.

Described as the ��ghost battalion�� by the now-deposed president Omar al-Bashir, the contemporary movement led by the SPA has attracted a large audience. It has exerted influence on mobilizations and protest movements through sustained appeals, and has reactivated the unfinished uprising of January 2018. These ��masked entrepreneurs of mobilization�� have built broad appeal and demonstrated a know-how of protests, drawing from a fresh and dynamic repertoire that is applied within the movement across the country. They have initiated civil disobedience, rallies and marches focusing on women, the displaced and exiled, social justice and life on the margins. Moreover, they have taken the call to protest beyond the limits of major cities like Khartoum and across sectors��from resignation marches in outlying towns and provinces to the mobilization of dock workers in Port Sudan. Their work is reinforced by the neighborhood resistance committees, a sort of pacifist vigilant group that counters the so-called neighborhood popular committees, local forces used for surveillance. The resistance committees have continued to improvise, ensuring night rallies have taken place, counting the damage caused by repression, and also preventing infiltration attempts.

This sustained activity culminated in a sit-in in front of the army headquarters, which led to the dismissal of Omar al-Bashir. The SPA continues to mobilize under the transitional military council and its members, ensuring that pressure for effective and meaningful change is sustained.

The language of resistance has been captured and creatively appropriated by the SPA. ��Tasgot bass!�� (��Fall, that��s all!��in reference to al-Bashir) and ��Lam tasgot baad!�� (��Not fallen yet��in reference to the Transitional Military Council). Calls to action have become watchwords of the revolution��whether in Arabic, local dialects, or randouk��(the urban slang) they are now embedded lyrical motifs. The ��ghostwriters�� who compose these calls/hybrid statements are still the best kept secret in Sudan, but they have captured the imagination of citizens across the country. So much so that ��Eltajamoo youmathilouni�� (��the SPA represents me��), has become the rallying call for many.

What is the reason behind their ascent?

Speaking directly with demonstrators in Khartoum in April, the reasons behind the ascent of the SPA differ. Some praise the SPA��s clarity. Other more pragmatic types stress its power to weaken the regime still in place (the Transitional Military Council), or to limit the influence of Kizans (a slang term for the regime��s acolytes).

For F (29), from Niyala (Darfur), the SPA represents him politically only in terms of ��action, nothing more,�� because it remains associated with the center of power and does not fully represent people at the margins. Although the slogan ��We are all Darfur�� is a leitmotiv of the movement, F is not yet convinced. Indeed, the attempts by the SPA to negotiate with the Transitional Military Council in April discredited it amongst some.

For most of the respondents, it has certainly brought another way of doing and undoing the political field in Sudan, something unprecedented in the past 30 years. Yet, to say it is a political vanguard, as some commentators claim, is perhaps misplaced.

Y, a young Sudanese activist is categorical. Y contends that talking about political vanguard is a little ��old school�� they are just really different.�� Ultimately, the SPA is a political body that has very quickly bypassed and blown up the traditional political leadership��the ��dinosaurs�� and other armed factions historically trapped in the compromise and interminable negotiations with the regime. With its growing importance, the SPA has joined the political game, vying for power, along with the Transitional Military Council.

On April 21st, the SPA declared the suspension of all dialogue and negotiations with the Transitional Military Council, contesting their legitimacy, and thus categorically refusing any compromise with men who perpetuate the confiscatory nature of the regime. It also called for mobilization based solely on the legitimacy of the street. In this climate of renewed intensity, the visibility of the ��professionals�� in the public space after the removal of al-Bashir was a gauge of its role and relevance going forward. It demanded the creation of a transitional civilian government with the list of members of this government to be made public immediately. It called for accountability from the various actors in the country��s complex security architecture: the popular defense forces, the Rapid Support Forces, paramilitary forces, the NISS (Sudan��s infamous intelligence and security services), along with the regime’s senior officials.

One visible member of the movement, Naji al-Assam, noted in a video posted online on April 21 that this period was probably the most ��sensitive and dangerous�� of the entire mobilization, given that ��negotiations with the military council that is obviously trying to buy time.�� He added that ��there have been some victories but the real battles continue.�� Al-Assam has been there from the start��his video posted on New Year’s Eve 2018 was a turning point as it was the first time a face of a ��professionals�� member appeared publicly. He expressed the need to bring down the regime, denouncing, among other things, the repression of demonstrators and lauded the importance of women in the protests. He read the ��Call for Freedom and Change�� which brought together the movement��s first clear demands. A few days later he was arrested.

In the last few months the negotiations with the TMC have gradually been imposed as a last resort, with no other alternative for political action. The Sudanese professionals have merged slowly into the largest coalition in the history of Sudan. The Forces of Freedom and Change has emerged as a Noah’s ark of an organization, bringing together the country’s different political sensitivities, historical ��dinosaurs�� parties, civil coalitions and armed factions.

F, a youth, cynically notes that this is not about to be unanimously accepted by all Sudanese:

It is as if the professionals and the FFC were still negotiating with Omar al Bashir, but now with the unnecessary loss of life and missing since the beginning of the movement and after the massacre of June 3, they remain in Addis to self-negotiate power between them.

Y expressed similar concerns:

The rush to negotiations is a mistake from the beginning, it was necessary to find another way of putting pressure on the TMC, whose members are responsible for war crimes and crimes against revolutionaries over the last two months and its responsibility in the June 3 offensive in the sit-in dismantlement.

The Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, has now become the stage for this group ��lost in transition�� after the signing of the “political deal” between FFC and TMC on 17 July in Khartoum under the aegis of Ethiopian and African Union mediation.

For J, the political deal is an “agreement in principle” that organizes at least the transitional political life; “it is a minimal political compromise that carries with it some success but innumerable dangers of failure.” It can be viewed as a memorandum of understanding already carrying with it a set of flaws��especially its absence of a constitutional declaration.

New, parallel negotiations have since played out between public figures of the “professionals” like the young Naji El Assam, other representatives of the FCF and the revolutionary front that brings together a set of leaders from the armed groups who were excluded in the signing of the original deal.

For Y:

The SPAs have moved from the camp of mobilizations, from the street and revolutionaries to the opposite camp of the transition and political calculation. It would have been preferable for them to withdraw definitively from the negotiations without necessarily positioning against the FFC.

Y argues that the most dangerous issue is:

The SPAs are no longer the “engine�� of the revolution. Taking part in the negotiations puts them under the influence of other political forces, and keeps them further away from the street, without considering other alternatives to exert pressure on the military government. It would have been better to stand on the side of the street, guarding the original spirit of the call for freedom and change instead of being part of the forces of freedom and change.

The ��real battle�� indeed continues for the SPA, and challenges to its survival are many. Will the original spirit of the ��professionals�� continue to protect it from being weakened and eventually exhausted? Will it cement itself as the guardian of this transition? Will it mutate into the political watchdog of Sudan, haloed with revolutionary credit, or be reduced to a set of revolutionary songs, slogans and incantations��a symbol of the indelible law of politics in Sudan, where everything changes so nothing changes?

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Published on August 12, 2019 09:00

Fathers of the nation

Some of the mythologies about Nelson Mandela don't line up with actual histories.

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A film of Nelson Mandela addresses at the United Nations presented during of the Nelson Mandela International Day, July 2013. Image credit Jean-Marc Ferr�� via UN Geneva Flickr (CC).

Nelson Mandela, the first black and democratically elected president of South Africa, lived a thoroughly narrativized life, the intimacies of which are widely captured in biography and memoir.

While it is tempting to believe that what Mandela offered his audiences were the impromptu musings of a benevolent elder, historian Raymond Suttner reminds us that ��Mandela��s gestures were never random and ad hoc.�� Mandela, says Suttner, was aware of his ��symbolic importance,�� and mindful of ��how he represented himself and how he was understood by others.��

I am inclined to believe that part of that awareness entailed being alert to and weighing the measure of his historical significance. He surely must have been conscious of just how tightly welded his life��s story would be to the officialized narrative of the nation��s path to liberation. He had to have been cognizant of the possibility that his ��long walk to freedom�� would be superimposed on the nation��s arduous journey to democracy, his trials and triumphs sutured into its mythology. Such, after all, is the fate that befalls all fathers of nations.

A man whose specter haunted the world for more than two decades; a phantom kept alive in the public imagination by sustained local and international activism, Mandela was already a figure of popular mythology by the time of his release in 1990. The world��s media waited for him with bated breath and heightened speculation. So much so, that any man who claimed to bear communications from the colossus immediately seized the attention of journalists the world over. Such would be the fate that befell Mandela��s old friend, Richard Maponya who commanded newspaper headlines on the morning following his visit to Mandela��s prison holdings in the months leading up to his release.

A consummate businessman, Maponya had raised himself to millionaire status by the time of Mandela��s release in 1990. He had skillfully circumvented the strictures of apartheid legislation. He amassed enough financial muscle to be counted among the men who would lead whatever economic arrangement negotiations resolved for the new nation.

While the millionaire shared little of the revolutionary zeal common among Mandela��s inner circle, their friendship had a long history. It had blossomed in the 1960s within the tight social circle of Johannesburg��s black elite, when Mandela the young lawyer became legal counsel to Maponya, the rising entrepreneur. The two men also shared a bond of kinship by way of Maponya��s marriage to Mandela��s cousin, Marina Maponya.

Given this familial connection and the many years of friendship, Mandela��s comrades asked few questions when Maponya the millionaire was invited��ahead of many comrades��to be among the first of Mandela��s visitors in the sensitive months preceding his release. What shocked the comrades was what Maponya had to say to media after the visit.

Maponya told journalists that Mandela was no longer interested in nationalization as the cornerstone of South Africa��s economic policy should his liberation movement take over governance upon his release. As he delivered the news to the press, Maponya intimated that Mandela had kept the decision from his fellow comrades in the ANC because he knew that they would not be pleased with his embrace of the free market. It would be too radical a break from the socialist vision that had informed the struggle. Even in its most important document, the Freedom Charter, the ANC spoke of visions of a society in which wealth would be ��shared by all those who live in it.�� For Mandela to abandon that creed would be a great betrayal.

For much of the rest of the world however, the idea that Mandela could embrace the superiority of capitalism��s open markets would have been welcome news. Just then the world had made a decided break, reveling in the fall of the Soviet Union and the ascendance of forces of the market. News that Mandela would be easily swayed to adhere to the principles of the free market and ensure the continued supremacy of liberal democracy over socialism, would have been very welcome indeed.

However, the very next day, following Maponya��s announcement, the ANC affiliated United Democratic Front (UDF) issued a concisely worded letter, contradicting the headlining revelations. The UDF claimed the letter was written in Mandela��s own hand in his efforts to distance himself from the ��rumors�� about his thinking on the matter of nationalization. In two decisive lines, Mandela��s letter informed the media that:

The nationalization of the mines, banks and monopoly industries is the policy of the ANC and a change or modification of our views in this regard is inconceivable. Black economic empowerment is a goal we fully support and encourage, but in our situation state control of certain sectors of the economy is unavoidable (Mail & Guardian 1990).

In interviews that followed his release, Mandela would elaborate on those two sentences, consistent in his efforts to walk back the claims Maponya had made on his behalf��invariably depicting Maponya as no more than an overzealous cousin and dismissing him as ��a wealthy businessman�� who had over-reached in his account of their conversation.

For his part, Maponya was not disgraced by Mandela��s corrections. In fact, he maintained the veracity of his message, convinced that Mandela��s denials were gestures of political expediency. Maponya is quoted in the Washington Post as saying; ��The man [Mandela] is here now trying to establish himself in the ANC fold��he definitely has to be seen supporting the ANC line.��

The truth of the words that were exchanged between the two men during Maponya��s visit is immaterial. Not least because it has since become clear that their public disagreement did not affect their private relationship. Only a few months after the incident, Mandela drove away from his prison holdings in a BMW��a car belonging to the only black owned BMW dealership in the country��the property of one Richard Maponya.

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Published on August 10, 2019 17:00

The age of the influencer

One African feminists's view on how social media clout chasing has derailed progressive political movement.

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Image via Max Pixel (Public Domain).

Let��s face it. Social media is built for show offs. People who feel no way about rebranding themselves as the avant garde of a movement they spend almost no time giving unscripted or unselfied labor to. People who are happy to be their own PR machine and remind us endlessly about how enviable they are, how many influential people they are able to squeeze into the frame of their smartphone cameras, how well their book/product/blog/hair is doing and that they are #grateful for the follows, reminding you that they are, like all people with followers… the leader.

They may not have been show offs at birth, but the social engineers of contemporary online culture have succeeded in tapping into that deep narcissistic place in the soul and here we are��hashtagging random expensive pleasures as feminist #selfcare, Instagramming the inane minutiae of our daily routines, and self-promoting the hell out of life.

We are not really sure how they came to represent us, but there they are speaking about us (or is it for us?) on Africa policy platforms, mingling at events with dubious heads of state and other representatives of the ruling patriarchy and requesting us to “like” it because, well, proximity to mainstream power. Their citational practice is slick though. The dead and the far older make their appearances, but so do smart swerves to avoid citing anyone of their generation lest they get noticed and win out in the Top ten leading Africans under�� lists they have sought permanent residency on. It helps if you are good looking. People do after all have to stare at your face all day, in selfie after selfie talking, apparently, about the inner workings of capitalist patriarchy or Africa��s continued epistemic colonization. The deluge of online information also helps, because while some claim that the internet never forgets we know that it really does forget. Exhibit A: that impassioned Twitter thread that absolutely contradicts the position you just took in a show down with another influencer you think is stealing your shine.

Well so what, I suppose. I mean, we only live once. So might as well insist that the world knows you are the best thing since instant fufu. (In fact the resemblance is striking. Someone else has done a lot of the labor��the “grind”��but you probably won��t credit them, and we won��t ask either).

So what. Except that this push, in our activist and literary spaces in particular, is gradually squeezing all those who prefer the considered, the less “spectacular,” the inquisitive, the community-led, to the corners of the room.

Worse still, several recent conversations that I have had with African activists and creatives suggests that the over-occupation of space by “influencers” is starting to undermine people��s sense that their deep, engaged and un-self(ie)oriented work is “worth it.” As one person reflected ��I used to think that if you just did the important work, it would be noticed.�� Another commented how the community of women who taught them everything they know about brave activism don��t matter to the world anymore. Their working class realities are un-marketable in this new opulent culture of influence. Just last week, an older feminist shared with shock about how unsisterly she found the new wave of activist influencers��impatient, confident yet also self-absorbed, and it seems unable to handle the generosity required to build flesh and blood community. The once hallowed space of #afrifem online activism has become in some recent moments its own space of salty remarks and ungracious exchanges. The residues of those battles leave many feeling like a precious collective space for African feminists is slowly being undone.

In all this hullabaloo, what are the quiet ones, the introverts, the communitarians, the beyond-the- surface observers to do? Where and how do we find the space for the deep-thinking and collective thinking that our activism and our imaginations so desperately need? How do we re-constitute our sense of who is valid to listen to? When do we start to flip the camera back around? Or even, put it down?

Some say online culture will inevitably transition. Narcissism, forever seeking but never really finding its own proverbial echo, will fall into the mythical water, and drown. I say that may be so, but in the meantime it is time to devote ourselves again to re-embrace the offline��that leveling reality when we meet face to face with no stage in between, and realize that we can��t let our egos cast their shadows so far. We need to cite again, to read at depth again, and to critique again��not as territorial defense but as a commitment to the rigor that our visions and practices of freedom absolutely require. While privilege is, apparently, under scrutiny in our new “intersectional” everything, we could do better at questioning our own and that of the hierarchies of value we have begun to accept in terms of whose voice matters.

In fact, let��s do this people. Let��s get the collective, self-reflexive, community-serving back #ontrend.

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Published on August 09, 2019 17:00

The manifestation of climate injustice

In the wake of a new UN report on climate change and agricultural land use making headlines, we look at the effect climate changes will have on communities in informal urban areas.

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Quarry Road West informal settlement is located in the urban core of Durban in South Africa. It lies adjacent to a golf course, below (at least in part) a highway, and is intersected by a river. Home to approximately 2,000 people, the majority of its residents came to the area in search of a better life, including improved access to jobs, education, healthcare, and emergency services.

The number of people residing in informal settlements across the African continent is growing steadily. Rapid urbanization combined with the inability of often chronically under-resourced local governments to provide adequate and affordable housing result in the establishment, densification and expansion of informal settlements. Because informal settlements are often located on marginal and precarious land, residents are vulnerable in the event of environmental disasters.

This was the case on Easter weekend of 2019, when Durban received more than 200 millimeters of rain, more than three times the average for the whole of April. Owing to a subtropical climate, Durban is no stranger to heavy downpours. This deluge was so intense however that it precipitated widespread flooding and landslides, leading to distressing scenes not only in Quarry Road West informal settlement, but also across Durban and KwaZulu Natal. News outlets reported the event claimed at least 60 lives, displaced thousands, and caused over R650 million (approximately US$50 million) in property damage.

The ensuing visit to the disaster site by newly elected president Cyril Ramaphosa was accompanied by the words that ��the force of nature is so huge, and this is partly what climate change is about.��Although the instrumentalization of climate change by those in power as an excuse for mismanagement is a concern, in this case it would appear that Ramaphosa makes a valid point. Recently published research shows how, of 39 flooding events assessed, 21 were found to have been made more severe or more likely to occur due to human-induced climate change.

The likelihood of more frequent and more intense flooding events with every half degree of temperature increase is most clearly illustrated in the recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 1.5��C Special Report on Global Warming. The IPCC is a UN body comprised of the most prestigious and decorated researchers on issues relating to climate change. After the Paris Agreement, aimed at limiting the increase in global average temperature to well below 2��C, or ideally to 1.5��C, the IPCC was tasked with assessing the differences between a 1.5��C and a 2��C warmer world. They found that the likelihood of more frequent and more intense flooding events (in addition to droughts and heatwaves) was significantly higher under a 2��C warming scenario than under a 1.5��C warming scenario. This is because higher temperatures lead to more evaporation from ocean surfaces, increasing the amount of rainfall. The IPCC further found that those most severely affected by flooding events will be situated in low-income areas on the African continent.

The unjust nature of this dynamic becomes particularly stark when examining the main contributors to human-induced climate change in the form of Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions. It doesn��t take much detailed analysis to ascertain that residents of informal settlements are responsible for a very small share of GHG emissions. Historically, it is the European Union and the United States who share the dubious honor of being the most prolific GHG emitters. Today, countries such as China and India can compete, in part due to the relocation of manufacturing processes for supporting western wealth, itself dependent on mass over-consumption and an unhealthy obsession with economic growth. The true environmental cost of this wealth has been externalized to those residing in Quarry Road West informal settlement, and various other low-income regions across the African continent and beyond.

Of course, the most prudent measure for the GHG-emitting countries would be to immediately and drastically reduce their emissions to decrease the threat posed to those most vulnerable to climate change impacts. Unfortunately, this is not the reality we live in. The necessary mitigation action is subject to considerable inertia and lack of political will. Even amidst calls from international bodies for more support in adaptation for vulnerable populations, the resources being mobilized are insufficient, and that which is being mobilized is not reaching those most in need.

A new approach would be to foster enabling conditions for participatory governance. This is crucial to support local solutions, which have been found to be most effective at reducing the vulnerability of informal settlements to climate change. Previously marginalized communities need to be formally recognized, and informal settlements integrated into urban development plans. Informal settlements are here to stay, and empowering its residents may just be the catalyst needed for the synergistic improvement of climate change adaptation and sustainable development.

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Published on August 08, 2019 17:00

Kwame Nkrumah’s Cold War

The author on why she felt compelled to write another book on Nkrumah.

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Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Park. Image credit Rowan Collins via Flickr (CC).

After years of request, the British government at long last released its MI5 files on Kwame Nkrumah. So, I rushed to see them, but was immediately disappointed to find that much of it had been withheld, and the files end in 1952. Yet, he was being called a communist again and again, which is why I had to investigate.

While he was studying in the United States in the late 1930s, Nkrumah told his fellow student K.A.B. Jones-Quartey (later the author of a biography of Nnamdi Azikiwe) that his “dream” was of a “Union��the United States of West Africa under African hegemony.” Nkrumah and Jones-Quartey were among the organizers of the African Students Association, which tried to espouse this aim. Did Kwame Nkrumah, now in England, hear about the meeting of the National Council of British West Africa (NCBWA) in Accra on 18 December 1945? The NCBWA had campaigned for African unity after World War II, but had been inactive for many years. Had Nkrumah learned about the aims of the NCBWA before he left the Gold Coast in 1935?

In October of 1945, Nkrumah helped organize and participated in the Pan-African Congress (PAC) in Manchester, which agitated for the decolonization of Africa. The West African delegation��s declaration that “complete and absolute independence is the only solution to the existing problems” in Africa was unanimously supported.

But as there had been no plans formulated on how to achieve this, after the Congress the West Africans debated about how to form an organization together with Francophone activists. Meetings and discussions in Paris and London between West African students, activists, and organization resulted in the formation of the West African National Secretariat (WANS). I.T.A. Wallace Johnson, a Sierra Leonean trade unionist, was appointed chair; Ghanaian journalist and lawyer, Bankole Awoonor-Renner as president, Nkrumah, general-secretary. [By the way, there are no books on Awoonor-Renner; I wrote the entry on him for Dictionary of African Biography��(Oxford University Press, 2011) and Kweku Darko Ankrah wrote about him here. There is now a file on him at the National Archives in London, but obviously much has been withheld.] Mrs Olabisi Awoonor-Renner took over as treasurer when Kojo Botsio, another student, returned to the Gold Coast. The aim of WANS was to:

Realise a West African Front for a united West African National Independence.

To foster the spirit of unity among the West African territories.

To work for unity and harmony among all West Africans who stand against imperialism.

K.O. Larbi, then a barrister working in London, had attended the PAC, and now helped WANS obtain office space for WANS staff to meet, discuss, and plan. The first public meeting was held in February 1946, to call upon the newly formed United Nations, ��To bring about the complete liquidation of the Colonial system.�� Sadly, the UN ignored WANS and others requesting this. Information about WANS was sent to all West African and African-American newspapers which all proved supportive. WANS also distributed a pamphlet on its aim. It ends with WEST AFRICA IS ONE COUNTRY; PEOPLES OF WEST AFRICA UNITE! (It is possible that some mailed to West Africa were confiscated by the local governments.)

WANS organized meetings, conferences, demonstrations, marches. It produced a monthly newsletter, the New African, which sadly did not last long. Could this be because the UK government ensured that it could not be sold in Africa by confiscating copies sent there? There was a well-publicized plan for a conference to be held in Lagos in October 1948 to further WANS�� aims.

Nkrumah is “branded” a communist in both the UK and then the United States files released on him. Why? Yes, Nkrumah had been in touch with the Communist Party in the USA, and then later in the UK. Yes, he had attended a course on Marxism. But that does not make you a communist. So, why? I became convinced that he and his aims and the support he was receiving were seen as a tremendous threat by Britain and other colonial powers, especially France, as he was working with Francophone activists.

After the Second World War ended, the colonial powers were all in desperate need for the materials they obtained from their colonies, produced by sometimes unpaid workers! Or, they were paid next to nothing. Not only did the Europeans have to rebuild their bomb-shattered cities and factories, but they also owed the United States a fortune, as the Americans had financed much of the war. The produce of the colonies was needed by the USA. However, the United States wanted��direct��access to the raw materials in those colonies, not��from European-owned companies.

So how could the colonial masters obtain support from the United States? The fear of the spread of communism was widespread in the western world. So by labeling those struggling for��real��independence as communists, it was necessary for all to join together to prevent this from being accomplished.

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Published on August 07, 2019 17:00

The role of diaspora in revolution

Sudanese living abroad are key to the uprising: raising awareness and support for political and social transformation back home.

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Tuti Bridge. Khartoum, Sudan. Image credit Christopher Michel via Flickr (CC).

The uprising that toppled Sudan��s President Omar Al-Bashir on April 11 is unique in that it is both a national and transnational movement. In previous Sudanese revolutions, the capital Khartoum was the epicenter of protests. This time, however, the protests emerged from all cities, towns, and rural areas in the Sudan. Moreover, many Sudanese living abroad are playing important roles in supporting this revolution and making the voices of protesters heard globally. No longer only an economic force sending remittances back home, the diaspora community is a powerful social and political asset with which Sudan��s rulers have to reckon.

As an immigrant myself and a professor of anthropology, I have studied the connections that immigrants in general make between their new home countries and their former ones. The notions that immigrants constitute a brain drain from their countries of origin, and burden their new host countries can easily be debunked. With vast increases in global connections and fast routes that enable easy monetary and ideological transfers, immigrants have been playing important roles in their home countries from afar. The World Bank consider the remittances immigrants send to their countries of origin an important contribution to development efforts. But the various political, moral and social contributions made by diaspora Sudanese are priceless.

Rising anti-immigration sentiments in the United States and elsewhere are built on nativist conceptions entirely innocent of any knowledge of why immigrants are here in the first place. Nativists fail to recognize how immigrants struggle to make both host and original countries better places. If we take the case of the Sudan as an example, we first need to understand that most immigrants�� choices to leave their home countries were not at all easy. Many Sudanese were forced to leave because of the political instability in the country.��Disagreements among different political elites led to situations of wars and conflicts, as we have seen in the case of South Sudan and Darfur. This political instability created new waves of Sudanese immigration to many parts of the world, including to the US.

In myriad host countries, Sudanese have created unique communities called jalias. Immigrants in general often find solace in these small communities, especially during times of rising xenophobia and islamophobia. In most cases, these diaspora communities also play important roles in the economic and political transformations in their countries of origin.

Sudanese diaspora activism is not new. Such communities mobilized around the civil war in South Sudan before it became an independent nation-state in 2011. They also raised awareness about the Darfur conflict in 2005 on university campuses and among the public in the US and elsewhere. They mobilized many human rights and civil society organizations and engaged various celebrities, politicians, and other political representatives to pressure the al-Bashir government to halt its military offensive and reach a series of peace agreements.

While previous activism was framed around divisive identity politics, ethnic and religious belonging, the current revolution confirms that dealing with questions of equal citizenship rights in the Sudan need not split the nation further along gender, ethnic, and racial lines. These important questions of equal citizenship rights can only be achieved through a peaceful democratic transformation and power-sharing. Such a transformation must also engage armed movements still fighting in Darfur, Blue Nile, and the Nuba mountains to form a new vision of diversity and inclusion in a united Sudan.

Since the beginning of the current revolution in December 2018, protesters in the Sudan and their allies in the diaspora have consistently expressed this vision of national unity.��Diaspora Sudanese have been at the forefront of raising awareness about protesters�� demands in the US and elsewhere. In February this year, for example, Washington, DC witnessed unprecedented demonstrations by Sudanese-Americans, who came in large numbers from different states to make their voices heard and to support their counterparts in the Sudan. After the violent crackdown on protesters�� sit-in in front of the military headquarters in Khartoum in early June, diaspora Sudanese again organized protests in many cities in solidarity with activists protesting at home.

Solidarity cuts across the diaspora and draws people from all sectors and professions to the work of global citizenship. Physicians, in particular, have played important roles��both in and outside the Sudan. A long-time diaspora activist, Dr. Seif Saeed-Elasad, a dual citizen of Sudan and the US, established the Sudanese American Medical Association (SAMA) in 2008.��SAMA is a humanitarian NGO, whose goal is to share medical knowledge with Sudanese doctors. In an interview in late June 2019, Dr. Saeed-Elasad told me:

We donate money to help medical efforts in the Sudan�� Our meetings bring doctors from different states within the USA and sometimes from Europe.��We give medical advice about cases in Sudan where specialists may not be available�� We are also involved in treating victims of rape in Sudan and dealing with the psychological trauma.

More recently, the Sudanese Physician Association became one of the strongest forces under the umbrella of the Sudanese Professional Association (SPA), which is now supported by many branches in the diaspora. When the current revolution began, doctors in the US established the Sudanese-American Physician Association (SAPA), which is also helping on medical fronts in the Sudan.

Diaspora activism has transformed the burden of being away from home into a gift of giving, alliance, and moral support from afar.��The experiences of Sudanese in the United States, similar to the experience of many refugees and immigrants, help us to understand that giving back to both countries is a priority for many.

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Published on August 07, 2019 17:00

Rethinking the role of diaspora

Many Sudanese living abroad are global citizens��raising awareness and support for political and social transformation back home.

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