Sean Jacobs's Blog, page 231

Walter Rodney’s postcolonial vision

Rediscovered lectures Walter Rodney gave in 1978 in Hamburg give the sense of a deeply reflective intellectual, thinking critically about African governance.

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Between April and June of 1978, Walter Rodney, then already an important intellectual for his book,��How Europe Underdeveloped Africa,��was invited to teach a course, ��One Hundred Years of Development in Africa,�� at the University of Hamburg.

His hosts Rainer��Tetzlaff��and Peter Lock, two radical lecturers at the university, recorded the lectures and full transcripts were made in 1984, including the question and answer sessions with the students. The transcripts and recordings of the lectures are kept in the archive��in Atlanta. Reading them now gives one the impression of an activist and thinker in astonishing form �� engaging with challenging and wide-ranging issues, the continent��s history, slavery, independence, and projects of radical socialist development. Frequently interrupted by students to clarify a point, or justify a statement, Rodney deals with complex issues of political economy and Marxist theory with sophistication and clarity, never losing patience, or his narrative thread. The transcripts and recordings also give a sense of Rodney��s own political development, reflecting on his activism, and his current work with the working class in his native Guyana.

The lectures are deeply��thoughtful, referring back to his experiences in Tanzania (where he lived and taught from 1969 to 1974 before returning to Guyana) and the conclusions that he was drawing on the weaknesses of state socialism.

Rodney began by dispensing��with the widely-held notion of the working class in Africa as an ��aristocracy��, in some ways privileged in post-colonial state. As he explains, ��In some parts of the ideological justification of Tanzanian socialism [they] come very close to saying that the worker is an exploiter of the peasantry, that the workers are part of the exploiting classes. Even though the workers earn minimum wage, even though the workers in the towns and in the��countryside��were in the vanguard of the struggle against colonialism��

These may seem like obvious arguments to us today, but they were not at the time. The Algerian revolutionary Frantz Fanon had made the point in 1961 that the colonial working class was one of the major beneficiaries of the settler state. In 1978 Rodney argued that this argument was now being advanced by the ��petit bourgeoisie �� who were trying to disseminate this idea that workers exploit the countryside.��According to Rodney, this was a self-serving point that could be used against wages claims and demands ��for a larger share of the surplus which they produce.�� These were not abstract arguments in an academic discussion, but justifications made in the organization of the Tanzanian state (and ��socialist�� and ��capitalist�� states across the continent). Julius��Nyerere, the radical president of��Tanzania,�� still��in power in 1978 (he left the presidency in 1985), was fond of making such claims himself. Rodney explained: ��if the workers ask for more, the bureaucratic bourgeoisie would reply, ��You are getting that at the expense of the peasants��.��

On the role of the state in Tanzania, which Rodney had previously defended as a vehicle for socialist transformation, his attitude had become much more critical. ��After independence,��the so-called official organization of workers was a farce, a process of co-option by the state �� independent unions were vacuumed up into a state-controlled organization. However, in the strikes and occupations reported by��Issa��Shivji, Rodney��s friend and well-known Tanzanian socialist and writer��in his 1976 book,��Class Struggles in Tanzania, and noted by Rodney, there was a new politics in formation.

Reporting on the ��workerist�� turn in the factory occupations in the early 1970s, in Hamburg Rodney described, ��We as workers are capable of running this enterprise more efficiently than the economic bureaucracy.�� In direct challenge to the management of companies, workers were ��making arguments that went beyond their own immediate material interests. They were carrying the class �� to even higher levels by in fact posing the question who should control production ��

In these struggles from below celebrated by Rodney he saw a direct challenge to a state that had declared itself socialist, and the possibility of a new society based on that class challenge. Yet, there were serious obstacles. ��Even though theoretically the Tanzanian revolution accepted a greater role for workers, when they made an important policy statement in 1973 called��Mwongozo��[a charter of workers�� rights, reviving the radical aspect of the government��s��ujamaa��or socialist policy] �� the workers themselves tried to implement the rights that was supposedly safe-guarded by��Mwongozo��

As has often occurred with initiatives from above, workers themselves attempted to implement the rights that were ostensibly enshrined in the official ��Mwongozo�� charter. Rodney records one of these cases, ��In one very important instance, workers actually took over a factory and they didn��t take it over from the government, they took it over from a private owner �� And they said we can run this factory which was a rubber factory, [Mount] Carmel Rubber Factory �� They locked out the management and they were running the factory. And this caused the greatest excitement and fear on the part of the bureaucracy.��

Rodney draws the vital and obvious conclusion, as did Tanzania��s political elite, ��if workers were running one factory then maybe they will run another and another. And this doesn��t look too good for the economic wing of the bureaucracy �� their whole rationale of production as a class would disappear if there was workers�� control�� so they moved to crush those initiatives.�� In other words, it made no differences what the complexion of the government��s rhetoric had been, the threat of these occupations and the possibilities for real transformation that they contained was the same. The strikes and occupations had to be stamped out.

Rejoicing at what the ��bureaucratic��bourgeoise�� despised, Rodney goes on to explain to his audience, ��What in English we call wild-cat strikes, [are] not strikes which the union initiates but strikes which come from below. The workers themselves decide on direct action.�� The ��unorganized�� strike, not prearranged by trade union leaders, becomes the center of Rodney��s focus in these reflections. Yet it was not simply a strike, rather what the strike portends. Out of the action, away from the immediate material interests of the workers themselves, were the seeds of another society and power.

Yet these strikes raised important��political questions and organizational issues and posed an uncomfortable dichotomy. So, the��organized��working class and the strategy of organizing workers was central but conversely, the action of��unorganized��workers with their spontaneous protests was vital to a genuine project of transformation. In Hamburg, Rodney was busy thinking through these issues.

Rodney argued that some sort of rehash of national liberation advocated at the time by the ruling party, TANU, in Tanzania was not enough.��Nyerere, who attempted to revive the politics of liberation and ��to reassert [the] liberation movement,�� was likely to fail. Rodney was clear about this, ��my feeling is that in spite of all the rhetoric, TANU has not been transformed, that it remains a nationalist party under the control of the petit��bourgeoise�� incapable of providing the basis for sustained socialist transformation.��

In other words, socialist change required pressure from��outside��the ruling party and in opposition to it, much as Rodney��s��Working People��s Alliance (WPA)��was working against��Forbes��Burnham��s regime in Guyana. The regimes were profoundly different, but the essential class component was not. If working class struggle from below (in occupations and ��wild-cat�� strikes) was necessary in Guyana, it was also indispensable for the construction of socialism in Tanzania. To those who declared that there was something unique about Tanzania, Rodney was equally dismissive, ��it is important to recognize that it fits within the general pattern, which we have been discussing so far by which the colonization process ended through an alliance of classes �� but within this alliance the workers and the peasants never really had hegemony.��

What we see in the Hamburg lectures is a shift in Rodney��s work toward the self-activity �� the occupations and ��wild-cat strikes�� of the working class, not as��one��of numerous players in the revolution, but as��the��central organizing force. A new state would not come about by an enlightened leader, but through the frenzy of a class in the process of knowing itself, and through what it alone was capable of creating. In this scenario, the existing national bourgeoisie, in Rodney��s words, and ��their whole rationale of production as a class would disappear.��

Tragically the full development of this politics and its realization, with the coordination and leadership of Rodney and the WPA, was broken by his murder on 13 June 1980. In circumstances still not fully investigated, Burnham decided that Rodney must be eliminated, the unity he had helped forged between the Indian and Black working class, and the struggles he had led were simply too great a threat to Burnham��s hold on power.

A close friend in Tanzania, the radical lawyer, Joe��Kanywanyi, describes the unique, unusual quality to Rodney��s character, ��he was on some kind of a mission �� that he was ready to die for. Grounding with his people, living their life, eating their food, speaking their language, taking their concerns �� His commitment was distinct for the cause of the poor �� Rodney��s turn to the working class, recorded in his Hamburg lectures, was an important moment in an extraordinary life.

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Published on February 18, 2019 17:00

Who’s reporting Africa now?

NGOs and freelance journalists are increasingly filling the vacuum being left by a declining Western media presence. It's not all good.

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Image Michiel Pols.

NGOs have responded swiftly to widespread cost-cutting in Western media organizations by recruiting former journalists as communications officers, who regularly commission and produce��video, audio, and photographs for placement in mainstream news. The effect of this shift on the coverage of sub-Saharan countries is a particular cause for concern because such news has long been believed to be dreadful,��overly sporadic, negative, and riddled with stereotypical imagery and over-generalizations about ��Africa.��

Some scholars and practitioners are not thrilled by the prospect of��NGOs��becoming news producers, arguing that this allows them far too much editorial control over��sub-Saharan��coverage. They point to the problems already caused by��journalists being ��embedded�� with��aid agencies��on field trips, including the simplification and decontextualization of complex events, such as��the��1984 famine in Ethiopia.��But other��scholars and journalists��stressed that times have changed, awareness of the risks of imperialistic rescue narratives is greater, and aid agencies now have the resources and extensive cross-border networks to empower local people to��tell their own stories��.

Debate on the issue has been heated, but until now it wasn��t based on much evidence.��Aid-workers, journalists��and researchers were at least talking with one another: but they tended to do so on the basis of their hopes, personal experiences, or isolated case studies.�� That��s not a lot of use if you are trying to create detailed ethical and editorial policies for a news or non-governmental organization. What is even more problematic is that the whole debate has been framed in terms of some widespread assumptions which, frankly, do not stand up to scrutiny.

First, what do we��actually��know about the nature of Northern news organizations�� coverage of sub-Saharan countries?��Media scholar,��Martin Scott,��recently knocked long-standing beliefs out of the park by analyzing the corpus of academic studies and ��grey literature�� about media representations of Africa. He found that researchers have been guilty��of��the same overly selective and negative attitude that they accuse journalists of: creating an overgeneralized ��myth�� about ��media representations of Africa�� on the basis of a remarkably narrow range of media, genres and topics, such as the Rwandan genocide and the Darfur crisis.

Secondly, most of the research into the effects of ��NGO journalism�� has focused on rapid-onset disasters, like famines or earthquakes. But we can��t really generalize about the effects of NGOs on journalism based on these kinds of news-making periods alone because international aid agencies, rather than other kinds of NGOs, are always going to come to the fore during rapid-onset ��emergencies.�� Usually, these organizations are beneficiaries of��agreements between news organizations and umbrella bodies of aid agencies, like the��Disasters Emergency Committee��in the UK, and other members of the��Emergency Appeals Alliance��around the world.

Much as we might wish otherwise, decontextualized and stereotypical imagery are likely to predominate in the media content provided by aid-workers to journalists in these kinds of circumstances. The reason for this is quite simple:��starving babies still bring in the cash.��Focusing on��complex��political struggles and armed��conflicts,��sadly,��tends to deter��donors, as well as creating problems for broadcasters committed to journalistic impartiality.��Of course, this is highly problematic,��but we can��t extrapolate much about NGOs�� involvement in the coverage of Africa beyond that.

For my new book, I decided to try and find out what happens outside of these kinds of emergency appeals.��Might NGOs other aid agencies have a better chance of��placing��their material in international news about Africa then?��How might��journalists use��NGO material in these quieter news periods?��Were there significant differences between news outlets?��After all, the Western news media is not monolithic. Fox News is not Al Jazeera. The Washington Post is not The Daily Mail.�� Heart FM is not the BBC World Service, and so forth.

What I discovered was both less, and more, troubling than I expected. The good news is this:�� journalists who use NGO material in African news are��not the mindless drones that some would have you believe, uncritically and speedily��reversioning��any content that comes their way for the sake of saving time and money. They think about it, agonize, and argue over it internally. There are some surprisingly heated spats��between journalists and��NGOs over editorial control, and when journalists do use NGO material they are quite picky: only choosing material which they believe helps them meet their statutory, professional or moral obligations as journalists.

Although major aid agencies continued to dominate other NGOs when it comes to getting their work accepted by news organizations, their communications officers were far from being mercenary, money-grabbing spin-doctors. Even the work of the most highly commercialized agencies was characterized by protracted, and often profound, debates over the principles of dignity and the politics of voice.��So outside of emergency appeals, NGOs didn��t��usually��place material in news outlets which perpetuated demeaning, decontextualized and stereotypical images of ��Africa��.

In fact, few news items containing NGO content mentioned ��Africa�� at all, and some of the most negative news stories had important, progressive effects. Western journalists also used NGO content to tell more ��positive�� stories about sub-Saharan countries, including material offered by African NGOs. Yet because they were so aware of critiques of Western news about ��Africa��, Western journalists had a worrying tendency to oversteer: failing to properly research seemingly light, ��positive�� news stories from sub-Saharan NGOs which were fake.

Meanwhile, international aid-workers were so persuaded by their own rhetoric of empowerment and ��giving voice�� that they failed to see the ways in which they (and the local fieldworkers they collaborated with), severely limited what vulnerable people could say, and sometimes even endangered them.�� Whilst journalists remained convinced that they were maintaining their critical independence by making relatively minor editorial changes, such as altering straplines, or refusing to take material straight from NGOs with an obvious advocacy��agenda. But this didn��t stop them from readily accepting it from the small pool of well-known, well-respected Western freelancers who regularly worked for both NGOs and news organizations.

Oddly enough, this short-sighted insularity tended to be exacerbated by the deliberative processes which journalists and NGO-workers used to legitimize their exchanges with each other. Over time, both sides start to alter what they thought of as ��good work�� in their respective fields, in ways they didn��t fully recognize or reflect upon. This created a kind of dovetailing effect, in which international news organizations tended to��favor��the same kinds of NGOs over and over again, growing gradually closer in their world views and daily practices.

Despite the absence of obvious forms of��poverty porn, the use of NGO material in news about sub-Saharan countries remains suspect, partly because it does not supplement other, varied sources of news about sub-Saharan countries. Instead, NGO content risks replacing other sources, at least in some international news outlets, which offered little other African news. Yet this colonization of African news by NGO content is invisible to��Western��audiences because it was only attributed half of the time.

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Published on February 17, 2019 16:00

Entry-level misogyny

A Nigerian rapper is trending on social media because he felt compelled to reveal, in an utterly unprecedented move, that he "detests transactional sex."

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Still from "Falz Talk"

Multi-talented, and born into enough privilege to build an entire career off of mimicking the English-speaking accents of Yoruba people with low-quality formal education,��Falz��the��Bahd��Guy has a lot going for him. He has a distinctive sound and lots of originality (except for that��one Childish Gambino “cover”, but that��s��a conversation for another day); a sense of adventure; a remarkable ability to appeal to various demographics across age, language and class differences; and, apparently, a huge problem with women doing things he doesn��t approve of.

I��m not a big fan of pop music and don��t seek it out, but I know some of��Falz�� work because it��s simply everywhere. His success and work ethic are undeniable��and so is his misogyny. Now, his fans on social media have mentioned that he actually loves women (whatever that means), so it is important to note that contrary to what many people believe, misogyny has little to do with hating women. Rather, it is about closely regulating women��s behavior through fear, shame and abuse, in order to prevent them from challenging male dominance. Like Cornell Professor Kate Manne says, ��most misogynistic behavior is about hostility towards women who violate patriarchal norms and expectations, who aren��t serving male interests in the ways they��re expected to.��

Falz, with some of his music, has made it his business to address issues that negatively impact all Nigerians, like violent crime, insecurity, and the corruption of the political elite. But I wonder why he feels the need to comment so often and so vehemently on, of all things, the private sexual activity of consenting adult women? To hear him tell it, it is simply because he is a vanguard of a forgotten morality; the beacon at the top of a dangerously eroded hill; the gleaming North Star guiding wayward Nigerians home.

Yet, far from being the North Star��which we experience as fixed and unwavering��Folarin��Falana��is a pendulum, swinging predictably back and forth depending on how long it��s been since he last said something gratuitously derogatory about women who have explicitly transactional sex. Today, he raps on a song called “Sugar Daddy” and casts himself as a lead character; tomorrow he derides sugar babies. The day after, he puts out a song that defines the value of men in heterosexual relationships by their willingness to deplete their bank balances for women, then on Sunday he vilifies women who choose male romantic partners based on their wealth and generosity.��Why so much waffling, bro?

The thing with men like��Falz, in a society like Nigeria, who go out of their way to decry sexual relationships that hinge on��transactional��exchanges, is that they think they��re being useful��possibly even original. But their shallow understanding of economics, capitalism, labor and the politics of gender makes itself evident every time they open their mouths. It is impossible to��sincerely engage��Falz�� claim of an “epidemic” of transactional sex without discussing our social context and the inequalities it produces, and his denouncement of runs girls�� “self-objectification” stops far short of any kind of meaningful analysis of the forces that produce and sustain either women��s dehumanization in general, or the sex industry in particular.

Sex work is work. By definition, labor is the production of goods and services that have exchange value, and sex work puts a material value on consensual sexual interactions in much the same way as consulting puts a material value on knowledge or professional sports put a material value on athleticism. Moreover, within patriarchal capitalism, women��s��labor��is systemically under- or de-valued in favor of men, whether that labor takes place in the private sphere (cooking, cleaning, schedule management, etc. which are all feminized economic activities that people get paid for outside the home), or in the public sphere, where women are routinely paid less than men for equivalent or even harder work. Also, capitalism tends to disproportionately drive wealth towards the owner of the means of production, regardless of how “hard” the person works��see, for example, every mega-rich person in the world.

As a result of all this, voluntary sex work (thanks to the radical ownership of the body that it entails) can be one of the most lucrative kinds of labor available to women, especially when their femaleness is combined with other kinds of��patriarchally-defined privileges like conventional attractiveness. Survival sex work/transactional sex is also one of the few routes to economic compensation that is available to women who are routinely discriminated against and excluded from the formal labor market, such as poor, uneducated, undereducated, queer, or trans women.

In a heteronormative society like Nigeria, we are socialized into believing that men��regardless of their age, class, marital or other status��are interested in and entitled to sex with any and all women. However, women are supposed to have no independent sexual desires and are expected to spend their lives either abstaining, or as passive receptacles for their eventual husbands�� sexual impulses. This creates an automatic imbalance that makes heterosexual sex an unprofitable activity for women, even married ones, since men have no incentive to be good or loyal sexual partners, while women have no non-material incentive to be any man��s sexual partner, as they are believed to lose social and sexual value every��time��they experience sexual contact with men, willingly or not.

Furthermore, patriarchy generally socializes men out of their ability to feel or express affection, care, vulnerability, compassion, tenderness and other emotions which make romantic interactions worthwhile, such that women who partner with men often end up in emotionally inadequate or even empty relationships. Add to this the fact that patriarchal societies equate men��s value to their economic power and women��s value to their sexual purity, then layer on our cultural inability to see women as full human beings until they marry and marry “well” (i.e. marry a rich man). The end result of this dysfunctional framework is that heterosexual sex becomes a bargaining chip, a tool of exchange, and most crucially, a site of absolute dominance for men. And men love it. Many men, innately understanding the nature and consequences of this sexual inequality, leverage it as a weapon to manipulate, control, terrorize and exploit women, whether for grades, jobs, housing, or any other resources the patriarchy gives them control over.

The structural imbalance of sexual power and agency inherent in male-female sexual relations results in all heterosexual sex being transactional, with women generally foregoing their own pleasure to exchange sex for male approval, the possibility of life-long companionship, or even safety from emotional or physical violence. Within marriage, as it is constructed in our post-colonial culture, women exchange their sexual and reproductive capital for the social, economic and other benefits afforded them by the status of being wedded to a man. Even the various historical meanings of the “bride price” have been flattened by colonial notions of monogamous marriage as the only legitimate avenue for sex between men and women. The payment of a bride price is therefore now understood as the completion of a purchase contract. As such, it is often used to justify marital rape, with many men invoking the bride price as an economic guarantee of sexual consent that is valid in perpetuity, regardless of the bride-cum-wife��s desires or feelings on the matter.

So, within patriarchy, men are always having transactional sex, and they are fine with it as long as they are the ones setting the terms of the transaction. Even��Falz, at least going by his own music, is no exception to this. His intellectual dishonesty is glaring, as he himself regularly plays into transactional tropes in his songs, often trying to convince the anonymous, presumably female love interest, to enter into a relationship with him on the basis of his ability to fund her lifestyle, give her money, and generally improve her economic and social status.��Falz�� claim to detest transactional sex, expressed by his repeated and almost exclusive denouncement of runs girls, is therefore exposed as entry-level benevolent misogyny; the low-hanging fruit of Nice Guy paternalism that decides that men can and should have a say over the kinds of choices that women make, especially when those choices deviate from patriarchal norms.

It is rather telling that, rather than grappling with the harassment, assault and violence that capitalist patriarchy and sexual inequality force women to navigate in their daily lives,��Falz��chooses to castigate the women who manage to outwit a sexual system designed to devalue and exploit them. But this is because people like him, regardless of how they treat their sisters, daughters, mothers, and other women they deem “respectable,” remain invested in a patriarchal order that is maintained by women��s suffering.��Whorephobic, classist people like��Falz��claim to hate transactional sex, yet will generally make exceptions for female survival sex workers because, despite their deviation from the norms of sexual propriety, these women��s labor is still being exploited. They��re still poor and female in a capitalist patriarchy, i.e. relatively powerless, which makes their sexual practices less of a threat, and thus comparatively acceptable. But runs girls��women who drive nice cars and who walk past��Falz��in the business class lounge with their sponsors��are unacceptable because they dare to beat capitalist patriarchy at its own game, via the bodies that they have been taught belong, not to them, but to any and all men.

Runs girls�� blatant exertion of sexual power and agency in a world that insists women should have neither, and their resulting ability to bypass the subjugation that is supposed to be women��s lot in life, is an endless source of bitterness for men who want to control and shame them, as well as for women who rely on the idea of (relative) sexual purity to define their own value. The obvious but mostly unspoken truth is that what people like��Falz��resent is women��s audacity to determine the terms of engagement in transactional sexual situations that are designed to exclusively benefit men. After all, the Nigerian public, who are loudly broadcasting their agreement with��Falz�� position on the evil of runs girls and transactional sex, are the same ones who lauded the patriarchal display of male economic power as a reward for female romantic and sexual submission, in the incident we all remember as “Assurance.”

Unfortunately, far too few Nigerians are able or willing to develop either critical thinking skills or a thorough understanding of structural forces and how they reinforce one another to produce behavioral patterns, particularly the behavioral patterns of marginalized groups. Nor can they be blamed; this problem is due in large part to the State��s refusal to improve the abysmal quality of education available to the majority (which I hope��Falz��denounces on his latest album, now that he no longer needs to mimic poorly-educated people to be relevant). But if we were honest, we would admit that our casual denigration of sex workers simultaneously stems from and sustains our collective misogyny, since runs girls��exist at the nexus of femaleness and sexual agency which Nigerians believe is the junction of the road to hell. Newsflash:��Buhari��is our President. We��re already in hell.

To Yoruba��demons��I mean Nigerian men��like��Falz, who cut their teeth on the idea that women are ultimately subordinate to them, the notion of sexual and bodily autonomy for all people��regardless of gender or sexual practices��has little or no resonance.��And��why would it? Nigeria is a country that prides itself on the legislation of consensual sexual activity, having criminalized sex work and homosexual sex. Yet, we continue to lack either the legal framework or the political will to criminalize sexual violence committed by men against the women who marry them, or even to protect children from the lecherous desires of entitled perverts. Our national priorities, like those of��Falz��the��Bahd��Guy, are painfully obvious.

In the final analysis,��Falz, for all his ostensible intellectualism, is just another predictable product of a patriarchal nation. He only passes as a progressive thinker thanks to his prestigious education, pedigree, and ability to make people laugh��especially by punching down at groups with less social power than he. But Nigerians deserve better than the tired posturing of self-styled intellectuals with loud opinions on subjects they know little about and do not care to educate themselves on. If��Falz��really feels so strongly about the objectification and dehumanization of women that he��s willing to spend his entire career addressing it, then he would do well to read, listen to and learn from��the feminists in the building��, and most crucially, keep his underdeveloped analyses of grown women��s choices to himself.

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Published on February 16, 2019 16:00

The Zambian farmers who are suing a mining company in a British court

In January 2019, a group of Zambian farmers brought their fight for justice to the UK Supreme Court, in a case with far-reaching implications for multinational companies.

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Farmer with his livestock, Zambia. Image credit Felix Clay/Duckrabbit, 2012 via WorldFish Flickr (CC).

Zambia��s economic development since the 1920s has been heavily dependent on copper mining.��60% of the country��s export earnings come from copper,��amounting to 10% of GDP, and last year it was on track to export one million tons of the metal, much of it destined for electric cars.

When the Zambian government privatized the mining industry in the 1990s following��economic decline and pressure from foreign donors,��a steady stream of investment started to flow in. But rather than��being swept up in a tide of prosperity, Zambians living around the mines have experienced a deluge of toxic chemicals, discharged into the air and water.

When��Mufulira��District Commissioner��Beatrice Mithi died after inhaling sulphur dioxide released by Glencore subsidiary Mopani Copper Mines,��her widower sued the company.��In September 2016, he was awarded 400,000 Zambian kwacha (��30,000) in damages by the country��s highest court.

Previous similar cases against other firms have been less successful.��In 2011, the high court in Lusaka ordered mining giant Vedanta and its Zambian subsidiary KCM to pay about ��1.3m to 2,000 people, after the Chingola mine discharged sulphuric acid and other chemicals into a tributary of the Kafue River in 2006. When the company appealed the ruling, the Zambian Supreme Court��upheld the judgement but��reduced the compensation order to almost nothing.

As the problems continued, farmers from the��Shimulala Hippo Pool, Hellen and Kakosa villages-who say that their water source was turned into��a river of acid when mining chemicals spilled into it-decided to take their legal battle to London.

Vedanta v Lungowe

In 2004, London-listed Vedanta Resources plc. acquired a 51% interest in Konkola Copper Mines (KCM), one of the most important Zambian state companies sold��off��to private investors. Vedanta now owns 80% of KCM and has��invested heavily in increasing copper output.��KCM is��now��one of Africa’s largest integrated copper producers��with��mines at three sites.

The UK��case against Vedanta��was brought in 2015 by 1,826 people��(“Lungowe and others”)��from the��three villages, represented by law firm Leigh Day. These communities have fought for justice for years following devastation to their land and livelihoods through water pollution from KCM��s Nchanga copper mine.

In 2016, the UK High Court rejected Vedanta��s argument that the farmers should not be permitted to bring their case in London. The judge found that,��despite recent reforms to the Zambian justice system,��the claimants would not obtain justice if they pursued a case against KCM in Zambia. Two years later, following a further appeal from Vedanta,��the Court of Appeal upheld the High Court ruling. Vedanta appealed again and on 15-16 January the case was heard at the Supreme Court.

A pivotal test of parent company responsibility

The outcome of the Vedanta hearing hangs on��whether the company arguably owes a duty of care��to the Zambian claimants.��The British courts have dealt with several similar cases over the last 25 years. In��2012��the Court of Appeal held that, under certain circumstances, a parent company could owe a legal duty of care to employees of its subsidiaries.

The claimants��point to company documents, such as��Vedanta��s��sustainability reports, that they say show the parent company��exercised an unusual level of control, direction and knowledge over KCM and��should therefore be held legally responsible for the damage arising from the pollution. Vedanta��s lawyers, on the other hand, argue that the company��s UK headquarters is a separate legal entity with insufficient control over the Zambian subsidiary to be held liable.

The case demonstrates the structurally unequal distribution of power that makes it particularly difficult for��people in lower-income countries to hold multinational corporations to account.��Firms such as Vedanta use complex corporate structures to operate globally, garnering vast profits, while financial returns remain limited for the majority of the population in resource-rich countries.

These same structures enable companies to shield themselves from liability for the negative impacts often experienced by communities living around mine sites. Those affected��face an uphill battle for justice, exacerbated by unequal access to information and financial resources.

A finding by the Supreme Court in the claimants�� favor would be a��highly significant legal development.��It would��expand the scope of parent companies�� potential duty of care��to communities neighboring their subsidiaries�� operations. The judgement,��expected in three to six months,��will��have implications for multinationals globally, and could open up this route to justice for others who have been adversely affected by corporate operations.

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Published on February 14, 2019 16:00

Donald Trump’s Africa policy

The involvement of far right and conservative think tanks in developing Trump's Africa agenda.

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USAID Administrator Mark Green in New Delhi. Image credit US Embassy New Delhi Flickr (CC).

“Well first off,�� said Mark Green, the administrator of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), ��You will not hear me use the term ��public-private partnership.�� I despise the term because it’s, in my opinion, devoid of meaning. [P]ublic-private partnerships, which USAID and others have done for a long time, are largely about contractual grants, contracting [sic].”

Green, the former Congressman from Wisconsin and former US Ambassador to Tanzania, was speaking that day on USAID��s newly released��Private Sector Engagement Policy. The policy, Green suggested, had come about because ��the relationship between American business and the developing world has fundamentally changed in recent years.��

In front of a room full of suits seated at white tabletops, Green explained how the new policy instructed USAID to ��turn to the private sector, private enterprise, for … development solutions��:

So, as an example, we’re partnering with MasterCard in refugee settings in Africa,��Uganda, and Kenya, to provide a��microgrid��electrical power and to provide some internet connectivity. So our goal is to help displaced families sort of connect with the outside world so that, God-willing, one day, the fence comes down, or the gates open; they’re connected to the world around them.

Green offered another example; a memorandum of understanding USAID had just signed with��Corteva��Agriscience, which is the agricultural arm of Dow-DuPont, characterized by Green as an ��American agribusiness giant.�� Yet Green offered few details about the agreement, with the exception that��Corteva��planned to market seeds and storage facilities in Kenya and Uganda.

What could a modestly-funded development agency offer one of the largest agribusiness firms in the world? According to Green, USAID saw itself increasingly working as an intermediary between US-based multinationals and African governments. It��s easier, Green said, for USAID��to ask for foreign countries to change policy than for the private sector to do so, an area USAID was happy to assist in:

What we do [sic] for them is we did de-risk some of the investments. What we get from our side is those farmers get access to the technology that our farmers have had for a long time.��Corteva��will make a buck; we actually think that’s a good thing that they make a dollar from this process.

Private sector development: Conservative and far-right influence

Following the election of Donald Trump, policy wonks and development folks, or at least those we spend our time with on Twitter, wondered how the administration would approach the African continent. Between��Melania��s��trip to the continent and Trump��s ��shithole country�� remarks, Trump��s first two years in office featured Africa mostly in the way of spectacle but not policy.

That changed in December, when, as the nation hurdled towards a government shutdown, the Trump administration released two new policy documents. The first, dubbed the ��Trump Administration��s New Africa Policy,�� was unveiled by Ambassador John Bolton on December 13, 2018.

Media coverage of the event focused on Bolton��s Cold War-ish��remarks about what he described as the ��predatory practices�� of China (and Russia as well), which he argued impeded African growth��as well as��US military and economic interests. Trump��s policy, Bolton described, sought to counter Chinese influence via the advancement of US trade and commercial ties with African countries. Bolton also mentioned that the Trump administration would continue to counter terrorist groups on the continent while reducing US aid to US and UN-backed development projects. As Alex Park��argued��in��Africa is a Country, there wasn��t much new about this ��new�� policy.

While hype over China dominated headlines, an important aspect of Bolton��s speech was largely overlooked: that Bolton��s speech took place at the far-right think tank, the Heritage Foundation.

And what also did not make headlines was that just two days prior, Mark Green unveiled��actual��new USAID policy at another conservative think tank, the American Enterprise Institute. It was there that he told audiences USAID hoped they could help American ��giants�� make a buck�� while promoting ��development�� abroad.

A week after these think tank pronouncements,��we published an op-ed��arguing that under the Trump administration, USAID��was pivoting even further toward private multinational corporations, hoping to rely on private, rather than government, organizations to provide aid overseas. By interrogating the metrics that make up USAID��s new��Roadmap to Self-Reliance, the agency��s new strategy for determining country-level focus of intervention, we showed how the agency is integrating the work of hardline conservative think tanks��the Heritage Foundation and the Legatum Institute��into official US foreign aid policy.

Who are these conservative think tanks and why does their involvement in US development aid matter? For��the��past 25 years, Heritage has been one of the most influential voices in elite conservative politics, shaping domestic and foreign policy agendas. But its connections to the increasingly radical Republican Party have expanded in recent years, especially after GOP Senator Jim DeMint became the group��s president in 2013. Since then, it has played a major role in staffing the Trump administration. Like its proposals on health care, energy and environment, and especially taxes, Heritage��s proposals on development policy have become grander and more historically unprecedented. The group now calls for a radical defunding and restructuring of USAID. Leading this charge is Heritage��s Executive Vice President, Kim Holmes, who also introduced John Bolton at the December 13th��event.

Key to this coalition��s playbook is the technique of staffing agencies with directors who would dismantle their own offices. Similar to Trump��s assignment of Scott Pruitt to the Environmental Protection Agency, Mark Green and other Trump-administration officials appear to be working toward restructuring USAID away from the letters ��AID.�� To be sure, Mark Green has a long history of using development and infrastructural challenges to support the US private sector. He was instrumental in developing the controversial Millennium Challenge Corporation, a US program that offers aid towards infrastructural projects in return for policy changes.

Under Green��s leadership, new proposals more overtly seek to use USAID��s influence and networks to assist US companies to enter markets abroad. This shift in strategy is outlined in USAID��s��Private Sector Engagement Policy, the document Green launched at AEI in mid-December, which instructs USAID and its partners to, ��every time [they] approach a development��or humanitarian issue��(author emphasis),��ask a series of questions including:

[C]an the private sector solve this problem by itself? Could there be a market-based approach to addressing this challenge? Are there factors constraining the private sector from involvement and investment? Is there a role for USAID to help alleviate or eliminate these constraints?

Thanks in part to long-term efforts from Heritage, USAID��s new mandate is to act as a facilitator for private profit in the name of US development and humanitarian assistance.

Of course, the US private sector is already heavily involved in US development assistance, and their involvement is not unique to the Trump administration. The G8 New Alliance for Food Security Nutrition, for instance, sought to provide inroads for private investment across Africa. The program generated criticism from a wide range of voices, from��African activists��to��European parliamentarians. Many promises were made with little to show: the once-hyped New Alliance no longer exists.

And we know that host countries are not always keen to open doors to foreign companies that are likely to squash local competition. Under President Obama��s��Feed the Future��program, US officials��lobbied��the Ethiopian government to allow DuPont Pioneer (current day Dow-DuPont aka��Corteva) to distribute hybrid maize seeds. Ethiopian officials were initially reticent to grant DuPont permission to operate, as they worried that DuPont��s profit-seeking would result in uneven development and a crowding out of any competition. Ethiopia eventually ceded, and the case rests as a grand example of what Green suggested USAID could offer US private actors: relationships, experience, and persuasion.

However, what��s new, or perhaps elevated under Trump��s USAID, is��that officials like Green and official policy like the��Private Sector Engagement Policy��do not use the language of food security or nutrition: they talk of markets and profits.��In other words,��USAID��s��unabashed,��Trumpified��mission to ��develop�� Africa relies largely on US-based multinational corporations.

But this is a risky premise. USAID contends that it wants to assist countries on the ��road to self-reliance,�� but imagines development explicitly tied to large US firms.��A ruthless brand of international corporate capitalism isn��t likely to result in the end of aid; in fact, it may lead to greater inequality, environmental degradation, and labor exploitation. Multinationals are notoriously difficult to hold accountable, often demanding lax regulatory standards and hefty tax incentives in return for operating in a country.

We know US foreign aid is far from perfect. And we don��t yet know how this policy will ultimately play out on the ground. Will country governments accept these new types of agreements? Will USAID be able to provide the types of concessions US multinationals desire? But what we do know is this: that US tax dollars and USAID should not be used to lobby for��and subsidize the growth of��US-based multinationals abroad.

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Published on February 13, 2019 16:00

What Donald Trump’s Africa policy looks like