Sean Jacobs's Blog, page 241

The film about nowhere

Invisible City [Kakuma], a film about Kenya's largest refugee camps, seem keen on making a point but is anchored on unsteady ground (with some shitty translation).





Still from 'Invisible City Kakuma.'

���Invisible City [Kakuma],��� a film by Belgian director��Lieven��Corthouts,��begins��with the tagline ���can you build a home in a place called nowhere?��� The thing is, the place in focus,��Kakuma, is not actually called��nowhere.

This may seem like a petty remark to start a review of a film that has won various awards,��but��this documentary is actually��based��on this distinction of��Kakuma, the second largest refugee camp in Kenya, as nowhere���supposedly a��direct translation from an unnamed ���local language��� we are assuming is��Swahili. This is emphasized by��Corthouts��who��continuously stresses��that this place is an invisible city on a ���lost road.��� For me these forced distinctions symbolize, ultimately, what I found the documentary to be: keen on making a point but anchored on unsteady ground (with some shitty translation).

In the��official description��on the��film���s��website, it reads: ���… in a world hit by in-human political decision making, this film wants to draw attention to the ongoing crisis in the Horn of Africa,�����and notes that it�����wants to be an antidote to the growing xenophobia.�����To do so, it��focuses��on the hopes and dreams of three protagonists in��Kakuma��refugee camp:��Nyakong��a beautiful 8-year-old girl from South Sudan who has come to��Kakuma��without her mother; Claude, a 17-year-old from Congo who has left because of violence in his home village, and��Khadijo��who arrived from Somalia with her family when she was two years old and��is consumed by��dreams, so we are told,��of��getting a scholarship to study in Canada.

Images of these characters daily lives are shown. At various times��Nyakong��is��captured��walking to class, speaking to her mother on the phone and cooking with and for her adopted family.��Khadijo��comes to us principally in a classroom and working in her mother���s clothes shop, and Claude is filmed in various locations: doing construction work, getting a haircut, cooking and talking with friends.

Still from film.

It is nice to see the mosaic of life in��Kakuma, and without a doubt the cinematography is striking. But because we hear about and connect these three lives principally through the third-party narration of the filmmaker, one is not convinced that their lives intersect, and may come to the conclusion, as I did, that they are brought together here in the forced pursuit of answers to the following questions provided in the��filmmakers synopsis: ���Can��a camp really offer a future? Or is it just a waiting room, where the only option is to plan your journey to Europe?���

Let us be generous for a moment: for sure it is important that we acknowledge attempts for good in an inhuman world and to use all mediums to counter growing xenophobia. It is also human, beautifully so, to make accessible and value mundane��images of people who have been forced to get refuge in often very inhospitable places.

At the same time, a film about ���nowhere��� that wants to draw attention to unnamed crises in the ���Horn of Africa,��� is probably not going to impact policy change in fortress Europe. And when it includes the experiences of refugees from Burundi, Congo, South Sudan, Somalia and elsewhere collectively in the shorthand phrase ���crisis in the Horn of Africa,��� it gives a pretty crappy geography lesson.

Like the assertion that��Kakuma��stands for ���nowhere,��� this documentary stands on uncertain ground. The characters are too different to reconcile in one theme, especially one that wants to highlight what it views��as the��ultimate��dream of the majority of refugees in��Kakuma���the desire��to go to Europe. Many, if I am not being na��ve, would return home if they could���very far away from the grasp of��Matteo��Salvini��(the rightwing Italian government minister who wants all migrants and refugees deported back to where they came from),��or��as is��the case of��the principal protagonist,��Nyakong,��they��just want��to see their mother/family/friends.

Though many of the images are scenic and well shot, unfortunately, I could not shake the sense that they were also a bit voyeuristic. Related, the dominant third person narration by the filmmaker took away from our deeper grasp of the characters��� experiences: who were they beyond these images and their ostensive need for ���flight?��� What kinships, strong and futile, have they built in this place that may be a reluctant home? Certainly, the privileging of images without accompanying dialogue by the characters works to make��them��mere footnotes in the filmmaker���s tenuous argument.

Still from Film

When we are told that��Khadijo��has disappeared to Europe and is living in a detention center��in Geneva, it happens quite suddenly without any details��of her larger life and why she would, even with her all-consuming dreams of Canada and��a��possible arranged marriage, leave her home so abruptly. Likewise, when Claude (who had been speaking with friends in what seems like a staged conversation about the different routes to get to Europe) hears about��Khadijo���s��success, the film shows him dramatically asserting how he will get there, he swears, with his own two feet. Since there is not much texture and layering provided to show the lives of these young protagonists, the breadth and depth of their lives beyond their need for exile from this place, the narrated images of them arranged here do not concretely uphold the story told by the filmmaker.

In the same vein, perhaps expectedly, the film���s synopsis also wants to remind us that the filmmaker stayed here ���in one of the toughest places on earth;��� a description that gestures towards the lone Marlboro man-esque��Eurocentric narratives of tough white filmmaker/aid worker/explorer going to conquer but also save in the badlands of Africa.

Interestingly, at the same time, and as is emphasized constantly throughout the film,��Corthouts��underscores his likeness to those he meets in��Kakuma. This comes to light more pronouncedly when, in closing the film,��Corthouts��shows us images of��Nyakong��getting her hair washed while expressing how close he is to her, how he will make��sure she finishes school, and how he has come back to see ���a girl [Nyakong] who [like him] is trying to find her place in the world.���

Considering all the hardship and trauma that��Nyakong��has experienced, in Sudan and in Kenya, she most certainly is trying to find her place in the world, but is decidedly (unless your guiding mantra and alcohol of choice comes from the church of ���we are the world���) not like��Lieven��Corthouts. I understand the need to show connectedness across all frontiers, and especially when you want your film to be the ���antidote for growing xenophobia,��� but in no uncertain terms��is��Nyakong��like the filmmaker. Every experience of their lives comes��from a much different script.

And, really, only white dudes will ever get money to make a film about ���nowhere.���

Ultimately, for me, this documentary film misses the mark. While the images are beautiful and its underlying motivation understandable, the lack of a consistent connecting thread between characters��who are��not fully developed to stand by themselves��does not allow for a visible and natural progression. In contrast to its mission, while ostensibly trying to make visible an invisible city, its young people���s hopes and dreams, this documentary succeeds in subsuming the characters into one core aspiration: their dreams to go to Europe. No mention, of course, of how most of the worlds displaced live within the borders of the Global South. As a consequence, for me the question the filmmaker��really��asks, and that we must problematize, is not ���can you build a home in a place called nowhere?��� but rather, ���why would you seek refuge anywhere but Europe?���

Fanon’s fugitive archive

A new, massive collection of published and unpublished works by Frantz Fanon, reveals his intellectual and political motivations, but also proves him enigmatic and inscrutable as ever.





Image credit D��sinteret via Flickr.

Frantz Fanon was born in 1925 on the Caribbean island of Martinique. He died from cancer in 1961 at the age of��36��in a hospital outside of Washington, DC. In between, he lived in France, where he received a medical degree from the University of Lyon;��in��Algeria, where he worked at a psychiatric hospital in Blida, near Algiers; and Tunisia, where he continued his clinical research and wrote for Algeria���s anti-colonial��Front de��Lib��ration��Nationale��(FLN),��a��cause��he joined while in Blida. He spent shorter periods of time in Accra, Bamako, Conakry, Moscow, Paris and Rome. All told, from a biographical standpoint, Fanon���s frequent movements remain a source of fascination. From a research standpoint, however, these movements are something of a disaster.

Alienation and Freedom, a new collection of Fanon���s writings edited by Jean��Khalfa��and Robert J. C. Young and translated by Steven Corcoran, is an attempt to alleviate this problem of documentation���in essence, to create a posthumous archive of his work which thus far has been scattered across the aforementioned places in state repositories, medical libraries, university collections and private hands. This book is therefore indisputably a gift, a cause for celebration. First published in French by La��D��couverte��in 2015,��Alienation and Freedom��is the first major collection of new writing by Fanon to be published in��more than 50��years, since the 1964 release of��Pour la��r��volution��africaine��(Toward the African Revolution), translated into English in 1967.

As such, this volume uncovers a wealth of detail and a revised biographical outline of Fanon. Though it naturally conforms to the life of activism that is well known, this book provides firsthand information about his medical interests, confirms past rumor about his decision-making with evidence, and offers a few surprises, especially with regards to his early writing and personal correspondence. Most significantly,��Alienation and Freedom��shows us the rough edges of Fanon���s thinking, much of which has been worn smooth through decades of scholarship. A fine-grained sense of his views across the fields of psychiatry, philosophy, and politics over a brief, but intense, period of a dozen years is at hand. Indeed, the uneven quality of the collection���a mix of published and unpublished material by Fanon, plus supplementary material by others���imparts an unusual effect that both further explains Fanon���s intellectual and political motivations while also generating new questions that leave Fanon as inscrutable as ever. Fanon is that rare figure who manages to become more enigmatic through further revelation. The wellspring of this elusiveness is undoubtedly due to his personal geography and the contrasting dimensions produced from his unsettled life. This book���s title captures these contrasts.��Alienation and Freedom��in content and form reflects the peregrinations of a restless man whose experience of racism led to personal self-determination, who chose intellectual��commitment over social status, who embraced the risks of political involvement rather than accept a secure middle-class livelihood.

Divided into five sections with��55��chapters��in total, the vast majority consisting of pieces either authored or co-authored by Fanon,��Alienation and Freedom��undertakes a chronological approach that ranges from his early, unpublished work during his student days at Lyon to a posthumous cataloguing of his personal library. In between, the bulk of the book is committed to his psychiatric research, with��27��chapters, nearly half of the volume, spent on this dimension of his writing. In addition to the main introduction, a shorter introduction is provided for each part, along with annotations, photographs, illustrations and a chronology of Fanon���s life. In short,��Khalfa��and Young leave few stones unturned.

It is perhaps entirely appropriate that, given Fanon���s dramatic life,��Alienation and Freedom��should begin with his attempts at writing drama during his time at university. Part I regards this brief corpus of two plays,��The Drowning Eye��and��Parallel Hands, which both date from 1949. The existence of these plays has been known and written about; their inclusion here exemplifies the public archival nature of this book. Despite their brevity, these plays present a distinctly literary side of Fanon���a rare angle in his library of work. As Young discusses in his thorough and insightful analysis that introduces��this��section, this work not only bears the imprint of Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, as often understood, but also Aim�� C��saire, Fanon���s former teacher and intellectual predecessor, whom he would later grapple with in the pages of��Black Skin, White Masks��(1952). These two plays are experimental, philosophical dramas that concern issues of language, recognition, identity and politics. They possess qualities of surrealism and abstraction that foreshadow his later essays.

The Drowning Eye��is a one-act play with five scenes (one is missing) with the main character named Fran��ois���a variation on his own name, Frantz���who struggles with his identity. Young observes that like Fanon in��Black Skin, White Masks,��Fran��ois is caught ���in an irresolvable dialectical bind between black and white, past and future, body and world, desire and insentience, consciousness and transcendent immanence.��� However, despite��C��saire���s��influence,��The Drowning Eye��is not a N��gritude work per se, with race residing in the background.��Parallel Hands��is similarly allegorical, a four-act tragedy set on a fictional Greek island that presumably serves as a stand-in for Martinique. Written in a formal, faux classical style,��Parallel Hands��concerns a situation of regicide that upends the social order leading to chaos and violence. This work is arguably less successful, retaining a sense of overwrought��melodrama through its elevated archaic pitch. (���Low down, very low down, I looked for the causes of Worlds! Tenaciously I interrogated crystallized beliefs!���) But like��The Drowning Eye, this play also establishes questions, if in rough form, that Fanon would continue to address in his later work, in this instance the antinomies of revolution.

Part II turns to Fanon���s psychiatric writings from 1951 to 1959, including the thesis he submitted to Lyon to graduate���the latter a surprise inclusion. As Jean��Khalfa��writes in his equally thorough introduction to this section, this body of work has long been ignored��due to the availability and stress on Fanon���s political writing, the technical nature of his scientific articles, and the dated nature of his research, with its concern for such treatments as electroshock therapy, which has fallen into disfavor. Nonetheless,��Khalfa��insists on the significance of this scholarship due to its fundamental importance to Fanon���s professional life. It also underscores Fanon���s constant attempts to synthesize the social and the scientific, subjective experience with the congenital mechanisms of human psychology. This sociogenic approach, already present in his student thesis, promised a comprehensive understanding of alienation and therefore freedom���not solely in a psychological sense, but in a social and political sense as well.

His research articles, dating from 1953 and his residency at the Saint-Alban Psychiatric Hospital where he worked with Fran��ois��Tosquelles, the famed Catalan psychotherapist, are undoubtedly academic and can make for hard, esoteric reading, depending on one���s level of commitment to descriptions of how patients responded to certain treatments. Of greater interest are the broader ideas at play. What is ���treatment���? Should ���therapy��� focus on the individual, or can it be scaled to the group or the institution? What kind of relationship should there be between medical approaches, such as electroconvulsive therapy, and social approaches, like group therapy? Put differently, how is psychological ���health��� to be defined in relation to the medical and the social? Fanon���s sociogenic approach to psychiatry was enhanced through his work under��Tosquelles, who served as the lead author on their jointly produced work and himself sought to synthesize Freud and Marx. Fanon���s later research papers, both published and unpublished, from his time at the Blida-Joinville Hospital with titles such as ���Social Therapy in a Ward of Muslim Men: Methodological Difficulties��� and ���Daily Life in the��Douars��� point to the transfer of these methods to the colonial context. These chapters hark back to his classic, first academic article ���The ���North African Syndrome������ (1952), republished in��Toward the African Revolution, as well as prefigure the sociological pieces in��A Dying Colonialism��(L���An��Cinq, de la��R��volution��Alg��rienne, 1959).�� Part II also includes editorials by Fanon from newsletters at Saint-Alban and Blida���casual pieces that nonetheless cast light on Fanon���s day-to-day thinking and routine. Another surprise in this section is the inclusion of a set of lecture notes by Lilia Ben Salem, a former student of Fanon���s, entitled ���The Meeting Between Society and Psychiatry��� based on a course he gave in 1959 and 1960 at the��Institut��des��Hautes����tudes��in Tunis. These notes provide a tantalizing, if fragmentary, glimpse of Fanon as a teacher on such topics as ego formation, racism in the United States, and colonial labor.

Part III returns to more familiar terrain with a collection of chapters consisting primarily of essays drawn from the FLN���s journal��El��Moudjahid. These writings complement those already collected in��Toward the African Revolution��with familiar subjects such as Patrice Lumumba, Charles de Gaulle, and what Fanon called ���the Bandung-Accra axis.��� The writing and editorial process at��El��Moudjahid��was known for being collective and anonymous, and��Khalfa��carefully explains their selection here. Indeed, along with his co-authored��psychiatric��articles, more attention should be drawn to the collaborative nature of Fanon���s writing life. Also included in Part III are the speech Fanon gave at the Accra Positive Action Conference in April 1960 (���Why We Use Violence���) and a brief letter sent to the Iranian revolutionary Ali Shariati, in which Fanon expresses a respectful��disagreement over the use of Islam (and religion generally) as an ideological source for revolution. Parts IV and V make up the shortest sections of��Alienation and Freedom, the former consisting of commentary and correspondence about publishing Fanon���s work in France and Italy and the latter presenting a catalog of Fanon���s personal library. Though cryptic and somewhat predictable���Freud, Sartre, Hegel, et cetera���the listing of books he owned is revelatory in its way. Among Marxist thinkers, Mao predominates���unsurprising given Fanon���s emphasis on the peasantry forming a revolutionary vanguard. But it is also clear that, as a reader, Fanon was firmly situated in a��western philosophical tradition.

At almost��800��pages,��Alienation and Freedom��is a massive text that is difficult to summarize. It is not intended as an introduction to Fanon. It will not displace his classic works,��Black Skin, White Masks��or��The Wretched of the Earth. In fact, one critique that might be leveled is its size. The heft and bagginess of this book does have a certain appeal, conveying in palpable form the sheer weight of Fanon���s writing and the multitude of interests that preoccupied him. I��personally��like this archival approach. But the publisher might consider breaking this book into separate smaller books���a volume of his plays, his medical writings, and so forth���that could be more focused and easier for reading and teaching. Nigel Gibson, the author and editor of several books on Fanon, has a forthcoming edited work that also collects Fanon���s psychiatric publications. Scheduled for��release��in early 2019, it can be presumed that there will be overlap between this book and��Alienation and Freedom. Gibson has co-authored with Roberto��Beneduce��a preceding examination of Fanon���s medical research and his role in developing a critical ethno-psychiatry in��Fanon, Psychiatry and Politics��(2017). This psychiatric approach was also examined��more than 30��years ago now in��Frantz Fanon and the Psychology of Oppression��(1985) by Hussein��Abdilahi��Bulhan.

Yet it is unclear if this renewed emphasis on Fanon���s psychiatric research will lead to a fundamental revision as to how Fanon is treated and understood. Certainly, it is important to restore this dimension to his life as a matter of historical record and intellectual history. Furthermore, his scholarship should find a permanent place in the history of psychiatry, not just the history of decolonization. However, when read alone, much of Fanon���s psychiatric writing appears more limited in potential elaboration and application for humanists���his main audience today���than, for example, the related ideas of Michel Foucault and Georges��Canguilhem. Fanon was a practicing psychiatrist who, in his research findings, wrote for other professional psychiatrists. These academic articles in��Alienation and Freedom��therefore��frequently��contrast with his��radical��innovations at synthesizing different fields of knowledge in��Black Skin, White Masks.

Given the magnitude of��Alienation and Freedom, it should also be stated that some possible avenues are neglected. Fanon���s wartime service with the Free French forces has often been overlooked, even though the experience marked his first encounter with the effects of violence, the possibility of ending political injustice through armed struggle, and Algeria itself. Documents from this period of his life have been absent.

Similarly, Josie Fanon, whom he married in 1952, remains as enigmatic as ever, despite her vital role in transcribing his work while he was alive and promoting his work after he died. She was famously private, and she is primarily known through a handful of published pieces and secondhand accounts, such as one by��Assia��Djebar in��Algerian White��(1995), in addition to indirect reports from various memoirs of Fanon. A project on her life is needed.

These limitations of��Alienation and Freedom��in the face of its comprehensiveness ultimately point to the ways that Fanon continues to elude scrutiny��from critics and admirers alike. This continual evasion should not necessarily be read as a willful choice on his part, but instead as an enduring effect of the conditions of racism and colonialism he confronted and threw himself against. His library of work and the textual fragments of his life outside of his major books constitute a fugitive knowledge, a subterfuge against the conformities of power���state, social, academic and otherwise. These collected writings in��Alienation and Freedom��are therefore not materials for the reconstruction of a life. They are the life.

How many immigrants live in South Africa?

The UN and South Africa's Statistics Service are exaggerating immigrant numbers and playing with people's lives in South Africa.





Downtown Johannesburg. Image credit Kim Davies via Flickr.

The number of immigrants living in South Africa has been hotly contested for many years. Perceptions among the general public of immigrants “flooding” into the country, taking jobs and resources resulted in horrific attacks against African migrants in 2008. When the carnage came to an end, more than 60 people lay dead. Since then, the country has seen other��smaller outbreaks of xenophobic violence.

In an article about xenophobic attacks on foreigners published in 2015, the��New York Times claimed��South Africa was home to five million immigrants.��Reuters��used the same figure.��BBC wrote��that there are between two and five million immigrants in the country. Where did the five million��figure��come from? It turns out the media referenced a plagiarized article published in a journal that does not meet academic quality standards,��as pointed out by Africa Check. In academic circles such publications are known as predatory journals that publish anything for a price.

The��South African 2011��Census��found that there were 2.2 million immigrants in a country of 52 million in 2011.��While it is possible that some undocumented migrants were not counted in the 2011 Census, this was��corrected for by Stats SA��in the final figure using the weighting factor that adjusts for possible undercount. Thus, the 2011 Census figure of 2.2��million��foreign-born people in South Africa is supposed to include both documented and undocumented foreigners.

These remain the only official and credible numbers. Other figures, such as the ones used by the international media in 2015, are grossly exaggerated and not supported by any credible research or data.

In South Africa, where��xenophobia is rife��and��violence��against foreigners��has taken many lives over the years���”such exaggerations��are extremely dangerous, since they give credence to the belief that South Africa is overrun by foreigners who are stealing local jobs and putting a strain on services,” as��Liesl��Louw-Vaudran��from the Institute for Security Studies wrote in 2015.

But the dangerous, irresponsible and unsubstantiated estimates and guesswork are back. And this time, these are the work of the United Nations and its agencies.

According to the��Migration Data Portal���run by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), in 2017, South Africa was home to four million immigrants. This estimate is based on the��work of the Population Division��of the UN���s Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA). UNDESA is suggesting the number of immigrants in South Africa��has��doubled between 2010 and 2017.

Given the widely acknowledged volatility of issues related to migration, it comes as a surprise that the new United Nations statistics seem to be founded on bad statistical methods and sloppy analysis. In any other context this might be overlooked as a matter only of interest to policy wonks. In South Africa, the issue has life and death implications.

The claims by UNDESA are all the more remarkable when put in perspective. Ethiopia and Uganda have seen similar dramatic increases in the same period due to a large movement of refugees from South Sudan and other conflict-ridden countries in the region. Another country that has seen a massive increase of refugees between 2011-2017 is Turkey. Again, this makes sense in light of the ongoing war in neighboring Syria which has forced millions of people to leave their homes.

It is highly unlikely that South Africa, with no war raging next door, has doubled the immigrant population since the last time statistics were collected in 2011. And while economic migrants make up a large part of the immigrant population, there is no reason why the numbers would have increased so dramatically in such a short period of time.

When asked to explain the 2017 estimates, UNDESA pointed out that they added 1.1 million refugees and asylum seekers hosted in the country in 2016 to the 2011��Census figure of 2.2 million foreign-born individuals living in South Africa. They also added some 800,000 new immigrants since 2011, coming up with the estimate of over four million immigrants in 2017.

Loren Landau, a leading migration expert from the African Centre for Migration and Society at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg,���notes that while it is likely that the number of immigrants in South Africa has grown since 2011 in line with the population growth, there is no reason to inflate it to four million as UNDESA has done. Landau said that adding more than a million asylum seekers on top of the 2.2 million immigrants counted in the 2011��Census is nothing but bogus. He added that “those are the number of applicants over a decade. There is no good reason to think they reflect a million people still in the country who have not already been counted.” A recent��report��on migration in South Africa by the World Bank confirms that asylum seekers and refugees are “covered by the population census as any other international migrant.”

Africa Check examined��the above-mentioned claim referenced by UNDESA that South Africa was a host to 1.1 million asylum seekers in 2016 and found that the figure was “based on a flawed reading of the available data” and incorrect. Still, this did not stop the UN and its various agencies from releasing the flawed figures.

Another discrepancy in the UNDESA 2017 estimate is the origin of immigrants in South Africa. In the 2018 report on��migration for structural transformation��in Africa, the UN���s Conference on Trade and Development presents a breakdown of the immigrant population in South Africa in 2017. The report claims that about 2.2 immigrants in South Africa are from the African continent and some 1.8 million from outside Africa, based on the data from UNDESA.

According to the��2011��Census, 75% of immigrants in South Africa are from the African continent, with the remaining immigrant population from outside Africa estimated to be about 520,000. UNDESA���s claim that the number of immigrants from outside Africa grew more than three times in a few years is not supported by any evidence.

There is no question that South Africa remains an attractive destination for immigrants,��primarily from the region and the African continent,��and that there has been a significant influx of migrants and asylum seekers��over the past few years.��However, it is highly questionable that the number of immigrants has doubled since 2011.

Instead of questioning UNDESA���s figures, South Africa���s statistician-general,��Risenga��Maluleke, wrote��in a recent piece��in Africa Check that Stats SA “estimates that there are approximately 4 million foreign-born people in South Africa at this point in time.” Maluleke offers no data or evidence to substantiate this figure.

A basic calculation, using the Stats SA���s own publicly available up-to-date figures, shows that this is wrong. The Census 2011 found that there were 2.2 million foreign-born people in South Africa in 2011. If we add a million people who are��estimated by Stats SA��to have immigrated between 2011-2016, minus about��400,000 foreigners��deported from the country by the Department of Home Affairs during the same time period, we get about 2.8 million immigrants in South Africa in 2016. This number is likely to have grown a bit since 2016, but nowhere near 4 million.

For whatever reason, Maluleke and Stats SA have decided to accept the UN figures without questioning the claim of a dramatic doubling of South African immigration numbers since 2011. Even more troubling is the fact that Stats SA does not seem to trust its own hard work, estimates and figures about international migration.

With the national polls slated for 2019, anti-immigrant and��xenophobic rhetoric��and hate-mongering are on the increase as the electioneering heats up. South African political parties are already outdoing each other��by��trying to mobilize voters based on their and voters��� xenophobia. UNDESA���s baseless claim that the number of immigrants has doubled in South Africa since 2011 can only fuel already existing anti-immigrant sentiments.

Foreigners are blamed for almost every social ill and problem in South Africa. Both the government and the main opposition party want to��build higher fences at the border��to prevent foreigners from coming in and undermining South Africa���s security and prosperity. Politicians claim that foreigners are the��main reason for high crime��rates; immigrants are��blamed for the hardships��experienced by millions of poor South Africans and for��overrunning��and taking over South Africa���s cities.

Never mind that the research shows that immigrants��do not steal jobs��from South Africans, or that��foreigners are not responsible��for high levels of crime. Instead of looking at the facts and having to explain their own failures to improve the lives of millions of South Africans who remain trapped in extreme poverty, the politicians keep reverting to the anti-immigrant rhetoric.

The best way to address this is through honest and factual reporting of data. Despite its��possible shortcomings,��imprecision and methodological challenges, the country���s 2011��Census��and the follow-up population estimates��remain the only sources��of credible data about the South African population, including the number of immigrants in the country.

Population and immigration numbers matter. Facts matter. Wild and unsubstantiated figures have no place in national or international documents or media reports. Not only because they are not based on any sound evidence but also because exaggerations are dangerous.

Circulating unsupported claims that South Africa has experienced a dramatic doubling of its immigrant population in only a few years suggests the county has been overrun by foreigners. This can fuel xenophobia and may lead to violence. South Africa has been down this road before. Knowing this, the UN���and Stats SA���must do better.

Meditations on Paul Biya’s re-election in Cameroon

Thanks to Cameroon's October 7th, 2018 presidential elections, the soul of Paul Biya's decaying regime's grip on power has been exposed more than ever before. It is revolting to watch.





President Paul��Biya, right, with IMF President Christine��Lagarde��in 2016. Image credit Stephen Jaffe via IMF Flickr.

It is no longer news that Cameroon is held hostage by an autocracy; a repressive system with tentacles that pry into every aspect of the nation���s being. It is no longer news that this system, headed by an��85 year-old��who has spent more time in power than over half the population has lived, coopts, detains, exiles and when necessary kills its opponents. This is the essence of the ���New Deal�����Biya��announced when he took power. Not even��Ahmadou��Ahidjo, the erstwhile omnipresent first president (1960-1982) who handed over power to the incumbent (after 22 years), has not been spared the paranoia that greases the levers of��Biya���s��New Deal: Ahidjo���s��remains are still buried in a cemetery in Dakar, Senegal.

Cameroonians of different generations have paid a hefty price for having had the French-endorsed��Ahidjo��as its first president. We owe the hyper-centralized system, which is at the root of the marginalization and resentment fueling the secessionist movement in the Anglophone regions of the former West Cameroon to��Ahidjo���s��deceit and mechanizations. It was��Ahidjo��who masterminded the dismantling of the federal structures that was the basis of reuniting the former English and French protectorates. It was��Ahidjo��who created our proto-feudal system of regional barons. We owe Paul��Biya���s��New Deal���inseparable from his unwillingness to relinquish power���to��Ahidjo���s��lack of foresight despite his perceived omniscience.�� And, above all,��Ahidjo��is responsible for the cult of personality, which entrust an entire nation���s destiny and the stability of a region in the hands of an aging patriarch barely able to sustain his stride.

Indeed, the crimes committed by the system��Ahidjo��cultivated, which��Biya��later transmogrified into a self-sustaining��model that enables his grip, are too numerous to enumerate. Ask any Cameroonian and they���ll point to families irrecoverably dispersed by the New Deal; they���ll cite relatives detained for an eternity on spurious charges; they���ll narrate tales of parents broken from unpaid salaries, accumulating arrears and a nebulous bureaucracy. They���ll describe a system that has bitten, chomped and spat out men and women of integrity at its whim; a system that casts, molds and elevates the deplorable to do its bidding.

The recent October 7th presidential elections and the legal proceedings it precipitated were broadcast live on national television and web portals across the globe. The deliberations before the country���s brand new��Biya-appointed constitutional council brought the country to a standstill, amassing a viewership that rivaled even the most compelling EPL games.�� While the public���s involvement in the post-elections judicial drama, in a context where��election outcomes tend to be known beforehand, might seem like an inconsequential performance, it would be imprudent to��undermine the broadcast���s expos�� of the indifference that colors��Biya���s��seemingly impervious regime.�� Yet, Cameroonians know it will take more than flashing media camera lights to overcome the blight and opacity that the regime has cast over the national consciousness.

That the��Cameroon government��paid US based individuals to impersonate election observers from Transparency International��did not surprise��any casual student of the regime���s record. That��Maurice��Kamto��of the Cameroon Renaissance Movement (MRC) might have actually won the polls is certainly not in doubt among those who kept track of exit��poll returns on Election Day. That the opposition’s attorneys��� goal to expose this evil system���s disregard for democratic norms helped demystify a regime that imagines itself as divinely ordained. That the constitutional court ruled in��Biya���s��favor should shock no one despite evidence that the regime left a trail of irregularities on its path. That the regime will use every means at its disposal���violence prominently among them���to quell any opposition to their quest to prolong��Biya���s��reign, is in no doubt.

That is the��Biya��script���and if the masses revolt, blood will spill to keep the people at bay. Lion-men like him tear into their prey���s wound with salty teeth. That is the lesson segments of the country���s Anglophone community who have picked up arms have��learned over the years.

Thanks to these elections, the likes of attorney,��Mich��le��Ndoki��who emerged to represent embers of hope that endured the darkness of��Biya���s��New Deal. Before submitting her brief to the Constitutional Council,��Ndoki, a lawyer for the opposition, pled with the council to treat their gesture as a measure of their commitment to the socio-political construct that is Cameroon, which was once a dream for which many died. The council was unmoved. Following the proceedings, veteran attorney,��Akere��Muna��who withdrew his candidacy in favor of��Kamto, reflected on his Twitter handle that:

our institutions are not prepared for change. The electoral process in Cameroon is not a process at all. It is a script played out by actors; some of good faith and others fully initiated in the scam. The future of our country now hangs in a balance… But there is hope. Always.

I was born in the dusk of the��Ahidjo��era, marked my last year as a toddler at the dawn of��Biya���s��ascent. Hard as I try to distance myself from the putrid system, I realize I am as much an offshoot of the dubious duo���s unflinching hold on post-independence Cameroon as are millions, at home and across all hemispheres, haunted by its shadow. And in as much as I am revolted by its endurance, this system has unintentionally��enrich��our intellectual cannon.

Indeed, we owe novelist��Mongo��Beti���s��collection of essays,��Main��basse��sur le Cameroun��to��Ahidjo���s��willingness to betray Reuben Um��Nyobe���s��vision. Where else but Cameroon would the sardonic vision of playwright��Bate Besong���s��The��Most Cruel��Death of the Talkative Zombie��portray? We owe��Dibussi��Tande���s��Scribbles from the Den, a trove rich in analysis of the country���s recent socio-political history; we owe��Were��Were��Liking���s��satirical novel��Elle sera de��jaspe��et de��corail��to this painful history. Without this history,��Achille��Mbembe���s��On the��Postcolony��would read hollow.

Is this the year we free��ourselves from the hostage taker?

A terrible failure to protect school girls in Liberia

The systemic rape of girls at a school run by a private charity in Liberia lays bare the tragic consequences of outsourcing education to unaccountable, unqualified individuals.





Image credit Ken Haper for Together Liberia via Flickr.

Liberia is reeling from a��documentary and report by ProPublica, a global investigative journalism group,��which�� shows��that a private Academy run by the charity��More Than Me��in West Point, Monrovia was the setting for the systematic rape of school girls by the organization���s co-founder and local administrator.

According to the report, the administrator, Macintosh Johnson, who died in jail of AIDS, raped a third of the schoolgirls, many at the school. Some of these girls have tested positive for HIV.

It goes without saying that the Liberian government must leave no stone unturned to ensure justice is done for the schoolgirls and their families in and around West Point, where More Than Me���s predator co-founder recruited his victims. The authorities must also detail the apparent cover-up of the crimes by the leadership of More Than Me in Liberia and in the US, and seek compensation for the physical and emotional effects of the organization���s negligence. This goes for the national government too: if the authorities in Liberia knew about the reported crimes and failed to act to remove the perpetrators and protect and support the victims, that also must be revealed and prosecuted.

School-Related Gender-Based Violence��is a violation of human rights and one of the most serious barriers to education for millions of children all over the world, especially��girls.��Accountability��for what happens to girls when they are trying to get an education matters, and must be systematic.

The day after the ProPublica report was released, More Than Me��released a statement, in part apologizing to the victims, and acknowledging ���the enormous complexity of being responsible for the care of children and that previously we were naive to believe that providing education alone is enough to protect these girls from the abuses they may face���strong institutions, safeguarding policies and vigilance are needed to do that.���

Institutions, policies, vigilance. Each was more absent than the next as Liberia ceded the education of some of its poorest and youngest students to private operators on the basis of a consistently disproven theory that privatizing education increases opportunity for students or their families and communities.

Starting in 2016, Liberia outsourced close to 100 of its primary schools to seven educational providers under what it called the��Partnership Schools in Liberia��program. By September of that year, the number had grown to 200, and the new government extended PSL for yet another year under a new name ��� the��Liberia Educational Advancement Program.

Under either title, the defining feature of the outsourcing of primary education in Liberia was “experiment.” From the very beginning, the Liberian government “rigged” the trial privatization of primary schools with new operators and their schools being showered with resources the likes of which have never been seen in public schools. It���s little wonder that the government���s own commissioned��review��of the trial described it as failing ���to demonstrate it can work in average Liberian schools, with sustainable budgets and staffing levels, and without negative side-effects on other schools.���

The Liberian government must reclaim responsibility for the provision and administration of its��schools for the educational well-being of students, and it must resume its duty of care to children. The tragic consequences of outsourcing that responsibility to unaccountable, unqualified individuals has been laid bare before us.

But the Liberian government could and should go further.

A thorough review of��laws, regulations��and policies aimed at dealing with the scourge of violence against women and girls is clearly warranted. Where these do not exist, or are found to be inconsistently or not at all enforced, immediate action should be taken to remedy the situation. Implementing sound policies and programs aimed at redressing school-related gender-based violence is a big step towards securing the right to education for all of Liberia���s children.

Finally, let all actors, domestic and international, including intergovernmental agencies that have promoted and celebrated Liberia���s primary school “experiment,” think very hard about��the meaning of accountability.��This is particularly relevant given their support for amateurish non-state actors, whether they be acknowledged profiteers or sweet-sounding NGOs,��who in the end care more about��likes��than��rights��in the provision of education.

In places like West Point, Monrovia, where the majority of people live in abject poverty, girls are the most vulnerable community members.��“Leaving no-one behind”�� means every girl in West Point, and other places like it around the world, must always be protected. When they are not, we are all accountable for that terrible failure.

Africa rising? A historical perspective

African demographic growth is expected to continue unabated over the next century. How should poverty reduction be addressed on the continent?





Somali man carries a large sailfish in Mogadishu. Public domain image, credit Stuart Price via AU UN IST Flickr.

Since the dawn of the 21st century, Sub-Saharan Africa has experienced two decades of virtually uninterrupted economic growth. For many development specialists and influential Western public opinion outlets, this growth revival has��displaced��a deep sense of ���Afro-pessimism��� that dominated the closing decades of the 20th century. The new��optimistic��and at times even ���Afro-euphoric��� outlook, has fostered hope in the development community to reduce poverty at a faster pace. In reality,��however, the poor African masses still feel little from aggregate growth.

Sure, the decline in global poverty rates has been spectacular, falling from about 42% in 1981 to 10% in 2015. But this drop was to a large extent driven by Asia, and by China in particular. The world���s remaining ���bottom millions��� are more and more concentrated south of the Sahara. The��percentage share��of Africans living under the poverty line declined modestly over the last three decades, dropping from 54.3% to 41.1% in 2015. More concerning, however, is the fact that the��absolute number��of��the��poor has been on the rise over the last three decades, as rapid population growth rates (2.7% per year) have outpaced the decline in the poverty rate (-0.53% per year). Whereas a total of 276 million Africans��were��living on less than $1.90 a day��in 1990��(2011��Purchasing power parity or��PPP), this number had grown to 398 million by 2015.��Considering that African demographic growth is expected to continue unabated over the next century, what are the chances to shift the gear of poverty reduction on the continent?

A basic trend simulation paints the following picture:��If relative poverty rates continue to fall at the average pace that was achieved between 1990-2015 (-0.53%), full eradication would only be realized in 2093. Meanwhile, the total number of people living in poverty would continue to rise for at least two more decades, reaching a peak of 497 million in 2044 according to the��medium-fertility scenario. To realize the UN���s Sustainable Development Goals��� priority target of full poverty eradication by 2030, poverty rates in Africa would have to accelerate to the record pace that was achieved in China, where the share of people living extreme poverty fell from 88% in 1981 to less than 1% in 2015. And although the pace of poverty reduction in Sub-Saharan Africa has climbed to an average of 1.1 percentage points in the last five years, this is still less than half of the rate that would be needed to replicate the Chinese path.

Development specialists widely agree that a more spectacular poverty alleviation record requires the growth of a dynamic manufacturing sector that can absorb the region���s rapidly-expanding pool of underemployed youth. Silent hopes that Africa may replicate China���s accomplishments in combining rapid industrialization with accelerated poverty alleviation are founded on the idea that Africa is��getting ready��to embark on a path of export-led growth, centering around labor-intensive light manufactures such as textiles and apparel, leather and wood products,��Agro-Industrial products, and a range of basic metals, electronics and chemicals. The premise here is that global industrial development follows a so-called “flying geese” pattern, in which lesser developed economies with lower wage levels gradually take over from industrial leaders who experience upward pressure on wage costs.

In a recent��article��in��African Affairs, we scrutinize these hopes for industrial growth by reviewing the promises and pitfalls of historical development analogies. We zoom in on three questions: how likely is it that economies that long specialized in the production of land- and resource-extensive primary export commodities will��make a quick transition to labor-intensive industrialization? What historical evidence exists that shows such transitions result in a rapid improvement in the standard of living of the poorest income groups? And what are the chances for Africa to replicate Asia���s “growth miracle” in a world where Asia has just obtained its competitive edge?

We tackle these questions by comparing the historical growth experiences of three countries that can be seen as regional economic frontrunners: Britain, Japan, and Ghana. Where Britain���s Industrial Revolution set the stage for a rapid diffusion of capital-intensive manufacturing in 19th��century Europe and North America, Japan was the first Asian country to industrialize under a labor-intensive path. Ghana���then the Gold Coast���also saw substantial economic dynamism in the 20th��century, but this occurred under a different and more volatile path of economic specialization: land-extensive growth. Although Ghana���s ���cash-crop revolution��� was exceptionally successful in raising living standards, the general path of economic specialization was exemplary for larger parts of 20th��century Africa. Our comparison of these long-term growth trajectories yields four major insights that are relevant for present-day development policies.

First, a big industrial ���push��� usually does not translate into rapid poverty alleviation (China was a historical exception for a variety of reasons). In both Britain and Japan real wages of lower income groups responded slowly to industrial growth; much slower, in fact, than real wages responded to land-extensive growth in Ghana. The quick pace at which welfare gains trickled down in Ghana until the late 1960s, were to a large extent rooted in Africa���s high land-labor ratios. Low population densities meant that labor was relatively scarce compared to land, thereby exerting upward pressure on the price of labor. As we have shown in��earlier work, in places where colonial interventions in land and labor markets were relatively ���mild��� (which was the case in the Gold Coast and other parts of British West Africa, but not in many other parts of colonial Africa), labor scarcity translated into comparatively high wages.

However, the current demographic boom implies that the historical conditions of land abundance and labor scarcity are now irreversibly disappearing in Africa. This is not only closing the door to the earlier path of land-extensive growth, it also erodes the possibilities for relatively quick poverty reduction through rising rural and urban wages.��Even if��Africa will follow a path of labor-intensive industrialization in the near future, which we do not foresee (see below), we should worry about the time-lag between labor productivity growth and labor income growth.

Second, rapid industrialization in Japan was facilitated by a large wage gap with the West. The ratio of Japanese (real) wages relative to those in Britain in the early stages of Japan���s industrialization was about 1:8, giving Japan a significant labor cost advantage to undercut global markets that were dominated by the West. The wage gaps between most African economies and late industrializing countries in Asia today are not nearly as large (1:3 at best). This suggests that labor-intensive export-led industrialization is harder to realize for Africa in a world where Asian manufacturing is still gaining prominence than it was for Japan and other Asian countries a while ago. Only in Ethiopia is the wage differential with China in the order of 1:8, and it is exactly there that a burgeoning path of export-led industrialization is becoming most pronounced. Reflecting our first point though, there is so far��little evidence��that these manufacturing jobs are significantly raising the incomes of unskilled factory workers.

Third, the economic policies pursued by the most successful industrializers, including Britain, Japan, China, and arguably now by Ethiopia, were backed by strong central governments that were willing and able to sacrifice human freedoms for national glory. These states had the (geo-)political power to manipulate external markets and to suppress domestic labor incomes for decades to secure international competitiveness. Even though their political weight can be expected to grow in the 21st��century as a result of the impressive shift in world population towards the region, African governments do not possess similar powers to manipulate external markets as Britain or Japan had when they experienced their industrial revolutions.

And finally, the long-term specialization of African economies in land-extensive and resource-rich primary commodities, has eroded many of the proto-industrial roots of pre-colonial rural African economies. As argued by global economic historians��Gareth Austin and Kaoru Sugihara, such proto-industrial roots have played an important role in the labor-intensive industrialization path of East and Southeast Asian economies. While it is difficult to know how quickly these roots can be restored, it puts more weight on the issue of ���infant industry��� protection than neoliberal policy agendas allow for.

All these factors combined make a quick transition to labor-intensive industrialization in Sub-Sahara Africa quite unlikely. Even if a few countries, such as Ethiopia or Rwanda, are about to achieve it, this will not reduce poverty rates at a Chinese-style record speed. A more realistic route for Africa���s��rise��out of poverty��in the 21st��century��must include industrialization, but of a different type than observed among the Asian ���model geese,��� and it will take well beyond 2030 to materialize. That route is predicated on the growth of domestic consumer markets as a result of Africa���s rapid population growth. Urbanization and increasing infrastructural investments will make it more attractive to invest in the local production of consumer goods that are costly to transport. These investments will create jobs and spur the demand for local services. The lesson learned from our exercise in comparative history suggest that we need to rethink development policy advice: to create new and better paid jobs in manufacturing industries, major trading partners such as China, India and the EU will have to be generous by allowing African economies to substitute imports for local produce, and by granting time to have them achieve equal production quality standards.

The longer version of��this��argument, complete with graphs, is laid out in a longer, academic article in in��African Affairs, which can be accessed��here��free of charge.

Has Africa’s May ’68 been forgotten?

How do Morocco and Senegal, the two African countries that had a May '68 of their own, commemorate or debate that legacy 50 years later?



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Demonstrations of May 1968 in Bordeaux. Image via Wikimedia Commons.

It is, of course, dangerous���if not ludicrous, in some cases���to compare national histories, especially post-colonial ones, and see abusively not just similarities but symbiotic, even underground connections between key political events.

This is as true of the way in which we look at May 1968 in Europe (especially France, Italy and Prague); as it is how we look at the fiftieth anniversary commemorations of May 1968 today, in both Europe and Africa. They are not going to be the same, neither then or now. Indeed, the interesting conclusion to draw from a glance at the debates in two African countries that “had” a May 68 of their own���Morocco and Senegal���is that they, separately, avail themselves of two very different but linkable attitudes: marginalization and recuperation.

In Morocco, more��press ink��has been spilled this year, it would seem, on how Moroccans had an important role in the May 1968 events��in��France: rather than on the extraordinary events��in��Morocco itself. It is true that May 68 in Morocco does not follow at all the time-line of its former colonial master France. If the Casablanca riots of 1965 mark the start of a ten-year period of deep unrest in Morocco���during which world-renowned novelist��Tahar��Ben��Jelloun��was punished for his role as a young student in those bitter street battles and radical trade-union leader Mehdi Ben��Barka��was disappeared by French and Moroccan intelligence services���then Morocco���s ���68 starts in October 1968 and reaches its height across 1969, 1970 and 1971.

The creation of the��Parti��de��Lib��ration��et du��Socialisme��by former Moroccan Communist Party leader Ali��Yata��in October 1968 and his subsequent prison sentence in February 1969 then led to school strikes in March 1969; these were followed by further arrests of members of the Union��Nationale��des Forces��Populaires��(UNFP); and the widespread boycott of elections by the UNFP, Union��Marocaine��du Travail (UMT), and the��Parti��de��l���Istiqlal��in October 1969. Morocco was marked in 1970 by medical students��� strikes and a state of emergency decreed by Hassan II. Clashes also occurred in the��Gharb��region where agricultural communities battled against land-grabs by industrial farmers, followed by miners��� strikes in��Khouribga. So, the first of a number of coup d�����tats against King Hassan in 1971 was a but a culmination of the widespread and growing unrest in cities and rural areas.

And yet, there is a suggestion in today���s press in Morocco that May 68 in Morocco��did not even take place. It is true to say that some of the current coverage of May 68 is hidden beneath a more important event for the Arab world in the second half of the 1960s, namely��the heavy defeat of��Arab armies��in the Six-Day War with Israel in June 1967.�� Nevertheless, the years of protests, state-repression and political instability in Morocco between 1965 and 1975���the so-called “ann��es��de��plomb” [years of lead]���have been largely overlooked in the 50th��anniversary. This is partly because��in 2004��Hassan II���s successor, Mohammed VI, instituted��a wide-ranging but deeply flawed, process of reconciliation that did nothing to bring justice to those who were punished for their part in Morocco���s May 68.

Contrast the relative silence in Morocco around its 1968, then, with Senegal���s approach today to its 1968 uprising. Here, the Senegalese state has used the old (post-68!) technique of recuperation. Far from ignoring, downplaying or belittling May 68 (as in Morocco today), the Senegalese political class and press have placed the commemoration of its May 68��at the heart of its ideological strategy.

There is even talk of a devoir de��m��moire��[a duty to remember], an expression normally reserved for more important events such as the Holocaust or��the trans-Atlantic slave��trade.��Indeed, one of the rare people to write on Senegal May 68, Omar��Gueye, has been��interviewed, alongside others��keen to share their memories. The state-sponsored commemoration has led to official events, lectures, debates,��in and around Dakar. And��a panel of experts��has helped digest what happened and why.

But nowhere do we see any stark criticism of L��opold Senghor���s presidency during 1968. Luckily, there has been much more sober and critical coverage in the international francophone press, especially about Senghor���s cruel and bankrupt response to Senegal���s May 68, which, to the more discerning Senegalese population,��now looks��like a panicking leader happy to do deals with France, its army and its continued meddling in African affairs.

As well as marginalization and recuperation, Africa���s ruling classes are always keen to stymie the domino effect of social uprisings (1968 saw��significant social uprisings also in Congo-Kinshasa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania and Tunisia). Indeed, one of the most heartening events in Senegal���s history of 1968 is the��protests��against��Senghor when he visited the Frankfurt book fair in September 1968. The protests were��organized by German students (including Daniel Cohn-Bendit) angry about Senghor���s vicious repression of Senegalese students.

Morocco and Senegal in 1968���not to mention the Mafeje��Affair in the fight against Apartheid in South Africa in 1968 quietly commemorated by the University of Cape Town this Summer���show that��all��revolts have their international dimension. For this reason,��May ’68 in Morocco and Senegal today, and elsewhere in Africa,��needs��to be marginalized and/or recuperated by the African ruling class, for such is the level of anger building up, from the��Marikana��debacle in South Africa to��Tahrir��Square in Egypt, from the recent Rif uprisings in northern Morocco to the militant strike wave across Nigeria. Africa���s leaders today can handle the Fire Next Time that James Baldwin (1963) wrote about by controlling the Fire Last Time that Chris Harman (1988) described in his book on May 68; but what they do most fear���and rightly so���is��the fire any��time.

Two trips to Juba

Youth activism and the politics of violence in South Sudan.





UNMISS welcomes release of hundreds of former child soldiers in Yambio. Image credit Isaac Billy via UNMISS Flickr.

The South Sudanese political activist and Cambridge PhD candidate in Politics, Peter Biar��Ajak, was arrested as he boarded a plane in Juba, the capital of South Sudan, on his way to attend a youth conference in July 2018. At the time of writing, he is still detained without charge in a prison run by South Sudan���s National Security Services. He has not been granted access to legal representation nor has he been allowed much communication with the outside world.

His arrest is part of an ongoing effort by the ruling Sudan People���s Liberation Movement (SPLM) to repress dissident voices in the��seven-year old��country. The SPLM was spun off from the Sudan People���s Liberation Army (SPLA) in 2005 following the signing of the comprehensive peace agreement. The agreement ended the��twenty-year��war leading to the country���s independence in 2011. Though ostensibly independent, the party remains closely linked to the army which retains the SPLA name. The current president, Salva��Kiir, was the former military head of the rebellion who ascended to the presidency following the mysterious death of Dr. John Garang, the SPLA/M founder, in a helicopter crash.

The campaign to #FreePeterBiar��has generated considerable support with tens of thousands signing a petition calling for his release. Framing Peter as the brave advocate for reform that he is, the international campaign simultaneously elides his more complex relationship to the ruling party responsible for much of the country���s woes. Peter, a former ���Lost Boy,��� the name given to some��forty-thousand��youth��displaced by the war for independence, is a founder of the Red Army Foundation, the former youth wing of the SPLA/M.

Though it claims to be working for political reform in South Sudan, the Red Army���s relationship to the violence that has ripped the country apart since 2013 is unclear. According to a recent report, over 380,000 people have perished in the fighting, a number comparable to the death toll in Syria though with far less international outcry. Peter, the son of an SPLA general, is on record calling for a generational shift in the leadership of the ruling party. His efforts to mobilize the Red Army and South Sudanese youth more broadly to take power has never rejected the violent politics that have brought the country to its current malaise.

A few weeks prior to his arrest he unleashed a scathing critique of the SPLA leadership on his public Facebook page:

our so-called leaders are too corrupt and morally bankrupt. They���ve forgotten why we fought for so many years. They are now ready to betray the ideals of our liberation in order to simply remain in power, which they used to loot our resources and terrorize our people.

Though never openly calling for violence, at least publicly, he made his intention to oust��Kiir��explicit: ���The way forward is for us���the great people of South Sudan���to mobilize and organize ourselves and reclaim our country from these traitors masquerading as leaders!���

His arrest brings to the fore difficult questions about the legitimacy of violence in bringing political change, especially in a context in which non-violent activists have little space for action. Is violence necessary when seeking to overthrow a brutal autocracy? What is the relationship between violent and non-violent activism? And how should outsiders engage with political actors whose commitment to non-violence is less than sacrosanct?

For those of us outside of South Sudan, the question of how to interact with political figures inside the country is especially pressing. The country���s creation would not have been possible without the efforts of an unholy alliance of War on Terror apparatchiks, pro-Israel advocacy groups, Evangelical Christians, anti-genocide activists, and African-American political figures who supported the country���s independence bid while painting the SPLA/M as a liberal and inclusive party despite clear evidence to the contrary. With the limits of militarized nationalism now revealed, outsiders have largely abandoned the country at precisely the moment we should be questioning how so many of us got it so wrong.

In 2011, South Sudan declared independence after almost 50 years of almost constant warfare. The peace would not last. Just two years later, violence erupted again, this time between two factions that have long vied for dominance. President��Kiir, a Dinka, responded violently to a challenge to his presidency by his long-time rival, former Vice-President��Riek��Machar, a Nuer. Though a recent peace deal has brought the two rivals together again, the intermittent fighting since 2013 has left the country in a state of ruins.

National independence has done little to restore faith in government, or indeed, humanity among South Sudanese. The country is being destroyed in fits and starts. The effect is a slow-motion devastation leaving an already worn populace exhausted and racked with anxiety about the timing of the next flare of violence.

The foremost cause of the country���s troubled path is the profound failure of the state, and hence the SPLA/M, the rebel group turned ruling party which now dominates life in the country. It does not provide security for the population���more often, it is��the��threat. It does not generate sufficient resources to cover its own expenses despite its vast state-controlled oil reserves. Few public goods are provided. Corruption is omnipresent. The military is riven by divisions and a lack of a discipline.

Second is the almost complete breakdown of South Sudan���s social fabric, a sense that the incipient nationalist dream that animated the country���s secessionist fever is already dead. Having chosen independence just seven years ago, a high point in national unity for a population long defined by its divisions, ���South Sudanese��� as an inspirational, or even aspirational, identity is increasingly meaningless. Instead, mistrust pervades social interactions and the notion of a desirable and unifying South Sudanese identity has been stripped of all dignity. In its place, ethnicity, religion and regions��contest for primacy.

Permeating both the South Sudanese state and society is the constancy of violence. The violence of the state against its own people, but also the violence of the people against themselves. It is everywhere. In the bullet holes splattered across government buildings. In the snarling pick-up trucks filled with soldiers that roar through town. In the personal stories of harassment and theft spoken in hushed tones. In the mural depicting a child donning a ���I hate war��� t-shirt painted on the side of a building. To be clear, there is nothing normal about this violence. It is the result of choices made by political actors both in and outside of the country. But for young people, who constitute the majority of the population, it means there are few options for political engagement beyond the labyrinthine networks of violence that still determine the country���s future.

I arrive in Juba on New Year���s Day 2017 onboard an Ethiopian Airlines flight from Entebbe. I have a hangover and the sun blazes down on my freshly-shaven scalp with a vengeance. I clear immigration at a makeshift arrivals counter covered in corrugated iron. The airport, recently voted the worst in the world, has changed little since my last visit during the historic referendum in 2011 when 99% of the population voted for independence. A concrete structure arises signaling the development of South Sudan���s first modern airport terminal. But construction is halted and I learn later that the new terminal may be dismantled before it ever opens. The reasons are unclear but stories of corruption abound.

Juba is quiet. The sounds of gunshots that previously punctuated the night have been silenced since Christmas. Residents are wary but appreciate the relative calm. Speculation is that the government, facing pressure from multiple fronts, has reigned in undisciplined elements in the army. But few head out after dark if they can avoid it. Restaurants and bars remain empty and the town has a nervous energy as I venture out for my twilight walks. Despite warnings from the hotel staff about why I should not move around on foot, no harm comes to me. Fear is reserved for the strangers from within.

I am in South Sudan, which I have been visiting since 2004, to do research. My hope is to learn more about the SPLA���s behavior during the war. But stymied by internal travel restrictions, I am unable to leave Juba which only came under rebel control in 2005. Instead, I decide to speak to youth in the city, especially young men, about their views on the violence which has defined their lives.

Nostalgia for the war is a strange but surprisingly common sentiment.��Noone��wants a return to fighting Khartoum. But an external enemy promoted a fragile unity among the divisive populations that call this country home. Without the clear external threat that Khartoum once represented, the guns have turned inward.

Figuring out how far back to trace the current malaise is a common debate among South Sudanese intellectuals. Most agree that the current crisis took root during the prolonged struggle to break free from Sudan, though its precedents go back to the 19th��century when the region was first brought under British control. The war that eventually culminated in secession began in 1983 and continued to 2005 with the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement. South Sudanese are a bewilderingly array of ethnicities drawn from throughout North, Central, East and even West Africa reflecting the country���s location along the White Nile of which it encompasses the greatest portion. Throughout the conflict, the question of what these varied groups were fighting for became as contested as the war with Khartoum itself.

When the Second Sudanese Civil War broke out in 1983, the SPLA/M was led by a charismatic Colonel in the Sudanese army named John Garang. Orphaned at a young age, a teenage Garang joined the Anya Nya rebellion against the government during the First Sudanese Civil War (1955-1972). But southern leaders, recognizing his intelligence, encouraged him to further his education. He went on to earn his B.A. at Grinnell College, an elite liberal arts institution in a small, almost all white town in Iowa. Upon finishing his degree, he was offered admission to Berkeley, but turned it down in favor of a research fellowship at the University of Dar es Salaam (UDSM).

At the time, UDSM was a hotbed for both radical Third��Worldism��as well as its regional corollary, the anti-Portuguese and anti-Apartheid struggles in Southern Africa. Walter Rodney loomed largest on campus having published his historic��How Europe Underdeveloped Africa��while teaching there between 1966 and 1974. Like many young people at the time, Garang joined the University Student���s African Revolutionary Front (USARF) while in Tanzania. Among USARF���s founders and its most revered member is Yoweri Museveni, who departed shortly before Garang���s arrival to start the National Resistance Army/Movement that continues to dominate Uganda today. Museveni eventually became a crucial frenemy for Garang and the Sudanese rebels.

A core belief of many of the young revolutionaries that moved through UDSM at the time was that violence was justified in a war for national liberation. Nationalism, especially in its anti-colonial formulation, has always had a tangled relationship to violence. The faith in violence espoused by African radicalism congealed itself around the emancipatory promise of the modern nation to break with traditional bonds. As Amilcar Cabral, building on Frantz Fanon, put it, there ���cannot be national liberation without the use of liberating violence by the nationalist forces, to answer the criminal violence of the agents of imperialism.��� But Cabral insisted that those who would deploy violence for progressive purposes must recognize it as an exceptional recourse and not allow it to become a defining characteristic.�� ���We are armed militants,��� he famously clarified, ���not militarists,���.

Garang���s exposure to radical Pan-Africanism at UDSM, his experiences in the Sudanese national army and his time in the United States gave him a cosmopolitan world view premised on a form of inclusive nationalism. Until his death in 2005, he worked to promote a sense of national unity predicated on an embrace of difference for Sudan. Despite overseeing the militarization of the region in pursuit of independence, Garang hoped that forging a strong national identity would serve as a bulwark against internal divisions once independence was achieved. His biggest fear was a replication of the ethnic fighting that almost doomed the movement during the 1990s when Machar, at the time Garang���s biggest rival, first broke from the group.

When Garang died, some of his closest followers attempted to inject his pluralist vision into the DNA of the new nation. But lacking the military resources of their competitors, especially now President��Kiir, they were pushed aside. Garang���s message of inclusion never found a viable champion to take his place, though Peter��Ajak��has sought to resurrect it for a new generation through his work with the Red Army Foundation.��Kiir��who��lacks Garang���s pluralist outlook has staked his claim to power on his support among the country���s largest ethnic group, the Dinka. Most of the key players similarly owe their power to narrow, usually ethnic constituencies. Machar emerged as the main challenger to��Kiir��drawing support from his Nuer constituents and other minority communities who resent what is perceived as ���Dinka Domination��� of the state.

On the last day of my first trip to Juba, I head to the airport only to be told that my Ethiopian Airlines flight has been cancelled. I decide to take a car instead. I���m headed to Gulu in Northern Uganda, a region once defined by its seemingly endless war. I haven���t visited since 2005 and want to see how things have changed since the Lord���s Resistance Army fled the region a few years ago. As I wait to depart, a motorcyclist swerves across traffic, snatches my phone and speeds off. I���m stunned, not by the loss of the phone, but by his dexterity and daring.��

The road between Juba and the Ugandan border has been paved. But tensions are high. When Machar fled the city with his army in late 2016, he came this way first before heading west into the Democratic Republic of Congo. Soldiers man an endless series of checkpoints. My fellow travelers are nervous. The vehicle was arranged for me by a member of a local��defense��force, lightly organized groups of young men who are preparing to do battle with what they perceive as the Dinka-dominated government. I���ll call him Joseph. He tells me his story as we speed towards the border.

In Juba, Joseph briefly lived a life of relative privilege as the son of a government doctor. But that changed after independence. As the Dinka and Nuer who controlled the government and army laid claim to much of the city, Equatorians like his family were pushed aside. When the Dinka and Nuer began to fight in 2013 over control of the government, his family kept a low profile and attempted to remain neutral. When the Dinka and Nuer fought again in 2016, this time ending with a Dinka victory and the violent expulsion of Nuer soldiers and civilians from Juba, there was no one left but the Equatorians to confront the increasingly autocratic government.

Like many Equatorians, Joseph had stories of government violence to share. He claims his mother, father and brother were all killed by Dinka soldiers. He spoke about moving his wife and five children across the border to Gulu. Now, he explains, he lives in a house with a group of young men preparing for war. They are stockpiling weapons, he says, and awaiting the return of Machar in March for a final onslaught. ���We will rid the Dinka from Juba,��� Joseph assures me.

An 18-wheeler lies on its side with its wheels spinning and skid marks still smoking. In front is a white minivan with the side door open revealing a woman staring at her phone. We slow down a bit, but do not stop. The woman says her companion has gone to see if the truck driver is still alive. I suggest we pull over but the others in the vehicle shake their heads vigorously. They explain that news will spread quickly about the truck and either bandits or soldiers will arrive. They have no intention of sticking around to see who it is.

Crossing the border into Uganda is like entering a new world. The road, built by the Chinese, is impeccable and the sky, free from the fires that send streaks of black smoke into the South Sudanese air, is incredibly blue. We arrive in the town of��Pabo. Ten years��ago,��during the war in northern Uganda, I passed through aboard a bus in a convoy of civilian and military vehicles. Camps filled with villagers fleeing both state and insurgent violence lined the route revealing conditions that I can only remember as depraved. Now it is almost too ideal. Villagers stream along the road to a market at the edge of town. Music is playing and laughter rings out piercing the evening sky. It takes us all a moment to process the abrupt transition.

Joseph seems circumspect. He lived in Uganda for long stretches including in one of the camps that held displaced Northern Ugandans during the war. The country is like a second home, though he lacks the papers required to apply for a decent job. He decided to accompany me all the way to Gulu to visit his wife and children. After we pull into my hotel, we sit and have a drink���Castle Light for me and a Sprite for him. I���m on edge, rattled by my experiences and the transition to this peaceful scene. Joseph is anxious to see his family but lingers for a while so we can talk. He promises to keep in touch and that by the time I return, Juba will belong to the��Equatorians��once again. He says that it doesn���t matter whether he lives or dies since his family is safe in Uganda. Nothing will prevent him from expelling the Dinka from Juba, he swears. As the weight of what he���s saying sinks in, I search for an appropriate response. ���Be better than them,��� I lamely offer. It feels a bit mawkish but I deliver it with my most professor-like��intonation aspiring to gravity. He considers my thought and for the first time since we met, laughs.

Six months later in August 2017, I find myself back at the immigration counter being shaken down for failing to get a stamp during my previous trip. I try to finagle my way out of a bribe by demanding a receipt. But what I thought was a power move is met with steely reserve. In the end, I���m forced to beg the immigration officer to accept my offering. Receipt-less, I gather my bags and head back into Juba.��

The city is calmer now. Things are returning to normal if normal can be characterized as a city buckling but not quite breaking under the combined strain of poverty, climate change and a��slow-moving��famine unfolding to the north. Refugees stream through Juba on their way south into Uganda where they overwhelm underserved refugee camps.

In the bars and restaurants, new plans are being made and new moves orchestrated. Almost every political and economic elite in Juba owes their position to the former rebel army. Business men openly boast of their ties to the state and even civil society leaders can recount their intimate and often contentious ties to the party. Many come from the Dinka community who continue to dominate the SPLA/M and whose increasing footprint on the city is viewed with overt contempt by the city���s original Equatorian inhabitants.

But inside the SPLA/M, youth are making their mark felt. The Red Army Foundation, founded by former child recruits, is seeking to transform the society, and with it, the party, from within. They openly long for a return to the pluralistic nationalism offered by the SPLA/M founder, John Garang, but are��savvier��about the ethnic challenges such a project would entail.

At the Afex River Camp overlooking the Nile, I have a drink with Peter Ajak. Peter is a cosmopolitan and brilliant millennial at the forefront of the party���s budding youth movement.��

The Red Army is the name once given to the child soldiers who were recruited into the SPLA in the early 1980s before the rebels largely abandoned the practice under international condemnation. It was resurrected after independence as a vehicle to promote the interests of the younger generation. Many of its leaders, like Peter, are exiles only recently returned to the country after long stints abroad. For members of the Red Army Foundation, the group represents the best opportunity to transform an aging and sclerotic party from within.��

Peter, a former ���Lost Boy,��� who moves with ease between the rarified halls of Cambridge and dusty remote villages where he recruits new followers into the Red Army, is recounting his latest efforts to challenge the dominance of the party���s elderly elites. His stories are audacious and I struggle to grasp the influence of the incipient youth faction within the crucible of South Sudanese politics. But his bluster is contagious. He is working, he tells me, to build a unified youth movement that would draw together the Red Army, non-violent activists and young men from rural areas who he recruits by organizing wrestling matches, a popular sport in the country. His vision for a youth revolution within the SPLA seems to offer one path for transformation for a movement that has had the same leaders in power for over three decades.

However, what South Sudan needs most is a demilitarization of the political and social space. While the Red Army is calling for a greater voice for youth in the country���s politics, it does not question the SPLA/M���s domination of the country. By��challenging��the leadership without questioning the position of the ruling party itself, the Red Army risks turning itself into yet one more faction vying for control. As��Augustino��Mayai, another lost boy and now a political analyst at the��Sudd��Institute explained to me, ���The war isn���t about ideology. It is about who controls the SPLM, and thus, who controls the country.���

Despite their omnipresence in Juba, non-governmental organizations appear equally stymied. Violence or its potential inhibits their autonomy from state politics, the key criterion for civil society���s political relevance in liberal democracies. Instead, like elsewhere in Africa, civil society organizations are oriented upwards and outwards towards national and global elites rather than towards building the political capacity of local communities. Reliance on foreign funding and the relatively elite backgrounds of activists leads to a large disconnect between the work of civil society and the broader community. Reaching out to the youth, especially young men, is a challenge. They are omnipresent, hanging out on every street, clustered in every patch of shade. Yet conversations with civil society leaders reveal that there is little faith in their progressive potential. As one leader dismissively put it, street youth are ���too illiterate, tribally minded, and lack a political vision.�����

A new youth movement, Ana Taban, is slowly gaining steam and its efforts to galvanize the country���s overwhelmingly youthful population is beginning to show promise. Founded by musicians and artists, many who returned to South Sudan from neighboring countries during the heady days of independence, the movement seeks to raise consciousness about the country���s economic woes through workshops, performances and rallies. But they face tremendous obstacles attempting to conduct political work without appearing too political. Dissent is not welcome in South Sudan and operating outside of the long shadow of the SPLA/M is a considerable risk.��

Manasseh Mathiang is a singer who grew up in Nairobi and like many of the regional diaspora, returned to South Sudan with hopes of building the new nation. ���I grew up in Kenya but I never felt at home there,��� he tells me, ���I always knew I would go back home.��� His initial optimism has been replaced with a steely reserve and it is hard not to sympathize with his vision of grassroots change led by the country���s creative and resilient youth.��

���This conflict that is happening, it is the youth who are fighting,��� he pauses before continuing, ���the youth who are dying.��� Most of the fighters on all sides are young men drawn from rural areas where environmental change combines with and fuels the devastation of war. They are young people with few options. The protracted violence has irreversibly transformed any sort of ���traditional��� way of life, and the country offers little in the way of viable employment opportunities.

He reflects on the challenge of changing youth consciousness in a place where entire generations have only known violence:

They grow up learning that as a man you defend your community. To engage these��youth in unlearning violence is a process. They don���t feel they have much to lose. Developing a vision for the country is a challenge here.

Ana Taban is attempting to walk a tightrope. For bureaucratic reasons, the group chose to register as an NGO and faces restrictions on the types of activities it can engage in as such. For now, that means limiting their involvement to the cultural sphere and assiduously avoiding the perception that they are seeking to challenge the ruling party in any way.

Violence in service of national liberation has long been understood as palatable, even necessary, among a range of ideological positions. Western liberals, Third World radicals and even��right-wing��fascists all share a belief in the acceptability of violence to defend the nation. But there is a paradox that confounds how we think about the merits of violence in service of a justified political objective: Violence by the oppressed in pursuit of liberation may be necessary for strategic and emotional reasons, yet this same violence will produce pathologies that undermine the ability of the oppressed to overcome their oppression.

This raises two questions regarding the use of violence by contemporary political movements in South Sudan and beyond. First, does embracing violence, even if in self-defense, undermine the liberatory potential of political movements? Second, can the legacies of political violence be contained once unleashed? In South Sudan, the answer to the first question seems clear. And the second is the story yet to be told.

Joseph, the member of the local��defense��force, Peter of the Red Army and Manasseh of Ana Taban all represent different perspectives on violence and its relationship to youth activism. Most youth I spoke with are trying to navigate, and upend, the byzantine political tensions that define the new nation. While Joseph���s dream to overthrow the SPLA/M through force may be over with the peace agreement with Machar, Peter and Manasseh represent two different yet intertwined paths.

While the Red Army is currently embraced by the SPLA leadership, any attempts it makes to take over the leadership from within is likely to be met with repression, as Peter���s arrest makes clear. It is a generational reckoning some Red Army members, including Peter, have openly called for.

Ana Taban is the only force that eschews violence, and as such, its path forward is even more constrained. Few outside the country have heard of the movement. It has also yet to prove its own merits in comparison to more confrontational activist groups in Africa like the Democratic Republic of Congo���s Lucha or Senegal���s Y���en a Marre. This has forced it to rely on foreign donors and even build alliances with the Red Army, moves that further undercut its autonomy.

While it is productive that the different faces of South Sudan���s nascent youth movement are talking, there are fundamental disagreements that threaten to undermine their common ground. Should youth activists be focused on the transference of political power to younger faces within the party, as the Red Army would have it? Or, recognizing the limits of militarized nationalism, must the party itself be dismantled in order for a new democratic dispensation to take hold? The answer to these questions will determine whether South Sudan, born amidst so much tragedy, can transcend the paradox of political violence and become the type of nation its youth so desperately deserve.

Arundhati Roy in Johannesburg���An essay on essays

Like her prose, the radicalism of Roy's��essays��is equally as much a function of its rhetorical construction as it is of the socio-historical occasion.





Arundhati Roy. Image credit Jean Baptiste via Flickr.

In��a February 2018��interview��with the American journalist Toure,��the writer��Zadie Smith compares the fandoms of Michael Jackson and Prince in the 1980s. She describes��how listening to and loving Michael Jackson was like drinking Coca-Cola, something��everyone��did, but worshipping Prince was something you did alone in your room, something so otherwise and otherworldly, that every time Smith saw him live she would look around at the crowd like, ���Who the fuck are these guys, what are they doing here?���

That���s how I felt about everyone��geeking��about Arundhati Roy���s recent visit to South Africa. The worst part was that she went to Cape Town before Johannesburg, so the��creatives��(like most coastal towns, Cape Town is loaded with cool kids) got to talk about her first, posting on Twitter and posing in Instagram Stories, flexing their connections to the national literati. An affront, truly. Knowing that there was nothing to do with that jealousy, resentment and FOMO-cocktail but quaff it quickly, I watched��some interviews to temper my impatience and acclimatize myself to seeing the intellectual inamorata in the flesh.

I started with��this��vintage one, which includes an amazing shot of her teaching aerobics; and ended with��this��recent one where she affords violence and vindictiveness the same patient eloquence as she does her��patriotic problematizing��of blind��love for��nation-states.��But I prefer reading to watching and soon found myself submerged in transcripts. My favorite moment was when she spoke about��art critic��John Berger, how he wrote to her after she started publishing essays and said: ���To me, they are like you���re walking on two legs.���

Literary scholar Nagesh Rao��argues that Roy’s essays disrupt the boundaries of the essay canon, first by challenging the hegemony of the ���personal��� essay, and secondly��because they are not easily incorporated into��conventional curricula.��Like her prose, the radicalism of Roy’s��essays��is equally as much a function of its rhetorical construction (its art), as of its socio-historical occasion (being grounded in the very real solidarities of mass movements.)

Media scholar Priya Kapoor,��takes this further and uses the theoretical framework of cosmopolitanism to��explore��Roy���s actions and outrage. While most of��her��essays are almost exclusively focused on Indian politics, these are carefully couched in an awareness of transnational politics. Kapoor describes the author���s cosmopolitanism���understood��as an acquired rootedness to a constituency larger than one���s nation���as�����a consciousness that includes��humanity in its ambit while dismissing any kind of provincialism when it comes to world community issues such as war and peace, child and women���s rights, or human rights.���

She also makes connections between Roy���s career as a writer and the small, but powerful, minority of peace activists who have publicly come out against the Indian government, noting that while there have been other Indian writers to win the Man Booker Prize (see for instance, Aravind��Adiga��for��The White Tiger, and Kiran Desai for��Inheritance of Loss); there are few instances of the press, both in India and internationally, keeping an author as active in the imagination of the news-reading and news-listening middle class as has been the case with Roy. Kapoor suggests that Roy has been able to maintain this exposure because she takes her career as an “activist” seriously, but I suspect it��is more a result of her balancing the acts of collation and communication, marrying methodically researched empirical evidence with emotive expression. In a world of fake news, shallow analysis and torrid pontificating, this combination is what gives her essays those legs.

This is an interesting opportunity to reflect on the word activist.��African studies professor Elisio Macamo��warns against�����words that think for us�����terms so rich in meaning, so versatile in usage, so widely deployed that their presence in any utterance is enough to give sense to it.�����Roy��describes her nonfiction as ���urgent��interventions��� and granted, some of��them��have their origins in speeches for large gatherings of civil society��members��inspired by��her grassroots work, but��as a literary mode, the essay is not a passive one and��itself should��be viewed as��activist too,��vigorously��advocating��a cause. And while this mode might be confining, simply a composition on a theme, the word��essay��also means: ���an effort to perform or accomplish something.���

The difficulty however with investigating how Roy���s essays contribute to public discourse is that, as Rao puts it, ���Roy the novelist was easily welcomed into the liberal multicultural classroom but Roy the essayist has been asked to wait outside.��� This means that outside of Indian scholarship and the upper echelons of the literary firmament, there aren���t many spaces to situate her work. Like, who else��is��into it? Why? For how long? Were they listening to��Diamonds and Pearls��while reading about how ���the bombs have fallen, incinerating and humiliating���?

I thought about asking my friends, but they were either still wading through��The Ministry of Utmost Happiness,��or worse, still goo-goo-eyed for��The God of Small Things. I won���t say that they are ill-equipped��to discuss what it means that her questions circa 1999 about��the Big Dam industry in India��(���What kind of country is this? Who owns it? Who runs it?���)��apply across borders, issues, decades. More like, ill-prepared��to wrest their eyes from her prose to her bare-knuckled politics. So, I went swimming solo, wading deeper and deeper into her sea of studied strikes against the status quo, and this must be what it feels like to know nothing about musical composition but somehow find yourself reading sheet music for the synthesizers on��Purple Rain.

I mean, I now know that nuclear weapons��“bury themselves like meat hooks deep in the base of our brains”. I have a list of countries that America has been at war with since World War II (read:��bombed) in the name of democracy, and I can���t shake the realization that it���s almost as long as my own country���s democracy is old. That the real name of��corporate globalization��is and always will be imperialism. That it���s time to worry when the government begins to talk of��tribal welfare. That the electoral fray is not a very strategic path to alternative politics, because a political party that represents the poor will remain a poor party, and alas, as much as Powers That Be try to convince us of��Madiba Magic, personality politics cannot effect��radical change.

Amid all this gut-wrenching content consumption, there were moments of such radiance that I could only put it down to grace. Like the painful beauty of��Rohith Vemula���s��words��in��Roy���s most recent essay:�����It has become truly difficult to love without getting hurt.�����A��PhD scholar��suspended for political activity, he��hung himself��because he had no other way to support himself. Roy��remembered him, writing:�����He left behind a suicide note of such extraordinary power and poignancy that���like a piece of great literature should���his words ignited a tinderbox of accumulated fury.��� Reading that, I recalled��Teju Cole: ���Writing as writing. Writing as rioting. Writing as righting. On the best days, all three.��� I also remembered reading reviews of��The God of Small Things, and the surprise of��learning that��literary critic��John Updike��didn���t just dub Roy���s debut novel ���Tiger��Woodsian��� for its outsized talent, his review also compared her to William Faulkner, and how his “method of torturing a story mangling it” resonates with those from societies, “that feel a shame and defeat in their history.��� That was like a hole-in-one straight to my heart.

But there were also moments of lonely despair when I felt like a super��Stan��for burrowing so deeply, well-aware that there are very few people willing to engage with her views, reviews and interviews. I do not recommend drilling down into years of depressing subject matter over the course of two days. If you���re interested in exploring these essays, I do however recommend thinking about��how��you read��them.��This��thread about how the magic of prose is a partnership between author and reader certainly applies to nonfiction too: whether the experience is good or not often has as much to do with the reader as with the book. So yes, I agree that the universe would be fair if texts could rate their readers. “He sat on the porch with a glass of wine and devoted his attention to my pages for two hours. 5 stars.” “She skimmed my best parts while on the toilet. 1 star.”

Also, don���t feel bad if the density of an essay is overwhelming or makes you want to cower under��covers watching��a��TV��series instead. In a way, I think that that urge to turn away from long form journalism or political pamphleteering is something that Roy tries to respond to in her efforts to de-professionalize public debate.��This��analysis suggests that the essay���s elusive generic identity is best captured by the ideological function it performs, in other words, what it��does��rather than what it��looks��like. The discursive effect of Roy���s essays has most commonly been controversial, mainly because she writes in new ways about old things. What this means, aside from irking the established know-it-alls, is that her writing is ���not a simple matter of engagement with political issues or a style dictated by political consciousness, rather it is a complex and subversive engagement with��the politics of knowledge formation��itself.���

Nothing could have prepared me for��how Arundhati Roy engaged IRL.

For one, she began by paying homage to the day itself: 16 August 2018 marked both the death of Aretha Franklin and the sixth anniversary of the��Marikana Massacre. As she put it, ���these things live with us.��� My tears welled up then, but��I knew that we were in for a show��when she pointed out that we are lucky that the South African media even reports on those mine-sanctioned murders because in India, massacres happen annually, sometimes twice a year, but the press is silent because they are owned by the mines.

After giving a reading from��The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, she answered questions with all the fervor and elegance I had expected, as well as some personal anecdotes I had not, but at almost every turn, her responses were targeted. She turned casual questions on literary style into opportunities to talk about Indian corporations and dodged vague questions about the global economy to talk about Indian politics. It was a master class in Political Communication. It occurred to me that while she was sharing herself and her beautiful literature with us, generously and sincerely, it was a performance in service of a more deep-seated drive. In the same way that she foregrounds the massacres of Muslims to discuss��Nahendra��Modi as a base leader, and in turn, to discuss capitalism as inherently iniquitous; so too does she present her fiction (the bait) to proffer her nonfiction (the hook).

Whenever she giggled girlishly, the literary salon of Johannesburg buzzed with exclamations about how cute she was, and when she made weighty proclamations on caste or class, there was enthused applause. The bar at Fox Junction (a concert venue, packed to the rafters) teemed with giddy groupies, many of whom were Indian (South Africa has the largest Indian population outside of India). Aside from that, it appeared to be a relatively representative audience. It was a free event, but I won���t push the demographically-correct-description to suppose that it was an economically balanced audience, because this is of course South Africa. Reading is an elite sport.

What I will push though is��writer��Aldous Huxley���s��assertion that the most richly satisfying essays are those that move hither tither from the personal to the universal��because that���s what��Roy did in person, performing her politics on stage.��She brought her essays to the fore by talking about her novels artfully, on par with��When Doves Cry��and in keeping with her declaration that�����fiction is the truest thing there ever was��� and the writer the midwife of understanding it.

Exile, Return, Home?

Many will read Sisonke Msimang's new memoir for its musings on exile and home, but it is also a political telling of the complicated South African transition.





Sisonke Msimang at TEDxSoweto 2014. Image credit Sims Phakisi via Flickr.

Exile, return and the politics of home are deep currents in South African literature. From Lewis��Nkosi��and JM Coetzee to more recent work by��Zakes��Mda,��20th-century South African literature is a not only a product of Apartheid restrictions but the global currents and meanderings that shaped lives, opposition politics��and literary genres.

Sisonke��Msimang���s��Always��Another��Country��is an autobiographical reflection on these themes. From childhood escapades in Lusaka and Nairobi, to finding her way in post-Apartheid South Africa, she reflects on both the personal and political struggles of returning home. Based around a series of narrative reflections, we move between the Zambia of ANC exiles, the NGO-expats of Nairobi, Ottawa���s cloistered suburbs, American��Midwest colleges and, finally after 1994, to South Africa with its hopes and betrayals of freedom.

Msimang���s��father fled South Africa in the early 1960s, joining up with the ANC underground and eventually making his way to Zambia where he met her mother, a Swazi women pursuing studies.��Her��childhood story begins in Lusaka, amidst the ANC exile diaspora, but moves between Kenya and Canada. Reflections from these early years are primarily about family dynamics, playground antics and sibling rivalries. Below the surface, however, are experiences of racism, xenophobia, sexual violence,��and the sense that, as a family, they are a part of something much larger.

Her formative years at university are marked by the tensions between being a good daughter and student, and the allure of rebellion. These are familiar stories, relationships gone wrong and parental conflicts, often told through trans-Atlantic conversations. If the first half of the book is about these movements and the transition from childhood to adulthood, the second is both a deeply personal and political telling of the complicated politics of return and the South African transition.

In a chapter titled ���New��blacks, Old whites,��������Msimang��reflects on the new South Africa taking shape around her. While her family has��moved up through the ranks of business and politics, others remain trapped in an increasingly normalized��poverty.��At the same time, she notices white resentment all around her.��The��lofty��promises of non-racialism and reconciliation are��tested in leafy suburbs and��supermarket��aisles.

The return from exile was imagined as a new dawn. The idea of a free South Africa ���was a castle we built in the air,��� she writes, and ���When we returned from exile the castle stayed firmly in our mind���s eye.��� Soon enough, South Africans confronted a past that was deeply entrenched and uncomfortable truths about its present and its liberators. Xenophobia, violence��and��inequality all made South Africa, in Neville Alexander���s words, an ordinary country. In facing these truths, we also see her deteriorating relationship with the movement she was born into, the ANC. In the wake of the August 2012 massacre of workers at��Marikana��in South Africa���s platinum belt, she wrote:

This time, the ANC doesn���t only have the blood of the sick and the dying on its hands, but also of the healthy and the strong. There were the bullets and bodies, beamed across the world. There was the devastating vulnerability of the black bodies for all to see. They lay strewn���arms and legs akimbo in heart breaking stillness���and if you didn���t see them it was because you chose to look away. The bond of trust between citizen and leader���what was left of it, anyway, after the brutalising [Thabo] Mbeki years [President��of South Africa��from 1999 to 2008]���is broken. In the wake of��Marikana, living in South Africa is like living in a haunted house. There are ghosts everywhere and they seem to be gathering force. They are no longer mournful either. No this time the dead are angry and their spirits are shrieking. It is as though they are preparing to send a war party to those who authored their destruction.

In a deeply personal series of chapters, we also see how this is very much a book about the opportunities and trappings of middle class life. By purchasing a house with her family in suburban Johannesburg,��Msimang��imagines a bucolic family life,��a realization of�����the new South African dream.��� Yet it is the lush suburbs��where�����the obviousness of our privilege begins to eat at us.��� Rather than a suburban utopia, the house reveals a community in which violence is an organizing principle. Worse is that those who live there are unwilling to see their complicity. Black or white, violence is both an organizing principle and constant source of fear. ���This is middle-class South Africa: hoping for the best.��Bringing��home��the bacon.��Buying new cars. Planting hedges. Hoping for the best, but creating the worst.�����In the end, the house and the country, no longer feels like a home.

It is through her reflections on family and relationships that we see the evolution of��Msimang���s��political identity. While a college student she rejects her parents��� non-racialism and embraces a militant Black nationalism. It is through a relationship with a white Australian, though, she questions her political identity. ���I want him to be black, but he is not,��� she writes. A similar episode plays itself out when her daughter is born, more white than black. Her militancy, she admits, takes a toll on her family and relationships. It is in the final few chapters, as her disillusion mounts and she leaves South Africa,��we glimpse how these episodes have shaped her. What matters are not ideologically rigid positions, but the importance of kindness, care and responsibility to others. Ethics which, at one time, presumably underpinned liberatory politics.

Unlike Edward Said, who writes of exile as ���the unbearable rift��� or an ���essential sadness,�����Msimang���s��exile is more ambiguous. Her��experience of school-ground��racism in Canada or isolation in the US are��real and challenging, but part of a protracted process of self-discovery and reinvention. Exile is of course political and shaped by multiple hardships, but at the same��time brings with it encounters that are liberating. Exile, she writes, both ���stole from me,��� and ���exile was my��parents’ greatest gift.���

Exile makes one love the idea of home. Time and space breeds nostalgia that is ultimately tempered by return. Unlike so many memoirs or recollections of the��Apartheid transition, however, this is not only a tale of disappointment. Rather than a search for some essential truth about the post-Apartheid condition,��Msimang��writes of liberation, both personal and political as a journey, and of how movements and places makes us who we are.