Sean Jacobs's Blog, page 242

Zimbabwean Twitter is shifting politics

Fasting and prayer��don't determine election results; and two, social media has profoundly changed the political landscape.





Emmerson Mnangagwa, President of Zimbabwe at the Annual Meeting 2018 of the World Economic Forum in Davos, January 24, 2018. Image credit Sikarin Thanachaiary via World Economic Forum Flickr.

It���s been argued��that��social media proved to be irrelevant and overstated��in��determining��electoral��results��in Zimbabwe,��because Zimbabweans voted along traditional demographic��and party��lines. At face value, the election results suggest that��reading��is accurate. The ruling ZANU-PF won by large margins in rural areas, while opposition contenders only managed to maintain footholds in urban areas. And, independent candidates who ran slick social media campaigns or who relied on the momentum of a large social media following,��largely��failed to make a dent��at all. But, the reduction of politics��simply��to poll performance understates the important role that social media has in��fact��played in the recent re-formulation of Zimbabwean��politics.

Over the last two years, the country has seen the evolution of a digitally-driven, and increasingly vocal and politically active local and diaspora population. Much of��this��socio-political transformation has taken place online, outside a formalized, State-sanctioned political forum. Yes, this transformation has largely fallen��under��the purview of a ���young urban elite��� and critics have��correctly��noted the absence of a distinctly rural voice. Nevertheless,��Zimbabwean Twitter feeds, WhatsApp threads and Facebook walls have��become��digital town halls for expressing dissent and debating the goals, merits and methods of political and social transformation, and more recently even as��spaces��for engagement between citizens and the State.

Just a few years ago, it was close to impossible for ordinary Zimbabweans to engage with state institutions in a way that might result in��both��effective policy change and no danger to personal wellbeing. But, by early 2016, social media platforms��were being used��to obtain and disseminate political information, and to engage in debate and��satire,��changing the tone and accessibility of politics at the level of every day lived experiences. These platforms also became alternative spaces for��activism. Digital��activists calling for increased government accountability,��prompting��a new understanding of��online organizing��as a channel through which people, both at home and abroad, could engage��meaningfully��with politics.��When Mugabe���s government reacted in typically repressive form against an atypical digitally-mediated adversary (by squeezing bandwidth, temporarily��blocking��WhatsApp, raising the rates of data bundles and introducing a��cyber security bill), Zimbabweans creatively circumvented those actions (for example,��by��installing VPNs).

By November 2017, politics as we knew it, was fundamentally altered. A coup/non-coup replaced Robert Mugabe with��Emerson��Mnangagwa, and the military previously feared as the enforcer of Mugabe���s authoritarianism, was instead viewed as the��provider��of liberation. Political change was formally announced by ZBC, the��State broadcaster, but even before the revolution was televised, it was digitalized. In the days leading up to Mugabe���s dismissal as Head of State,��Twitter and Facebook��blew up with images of armored vehicles rolling into Harare, and speculations about their meaning.��Whatsapp��served as the primary means by which Zimbabweans alerted offline family members about the��unfolding��situation. The��military���s��first press conference,��signaling��regime change, was initially streamed on Facebook. In the days after the coup/non-coup, it was again��on��Twitter and Facebook where people chronicled celebrations with��their��soldier baes.

Following��Mnangagwa���s��installation as interim President and his��formal��commitment to holding free and fair elections in 2018, politicians all around the country��formally��launched spirited online campaigns.��The main opposition party, the MDC-Alliance, and its leader, Nelson��Chamisa��crafted a campaign that called for a generational shift in leadership.��Facebook live became a stage for��civic engagement��and��e-rallies. Twitter feeds were used for political deliberation.��In run-ups to previous elections, Zimbabweans had become��accustomed to��receiving food��and other assistance��from the State��in exchange for��attending��political��rallies.��In this year���s run-up to elections,��the MDC-Alliance petitioned��Zimbabweans, not only for support at the polls but also��for��financial��contributions��to��purchase advertising��and campaign��materials.��In the 2008 and 2013 election cycles SMS��� were sent out to mobilize support. This year, politicians and their strategic teams used��Whatsapp��to distribute campaign messaging to previously disconnected semi-rural areas, taking advantage of��greatly��improved internet connectivity in the country.��In response, the��ruling party, ZANU-PF,��also��ramped up its own campaign efforts,��sending��bulk text messages to��all��registered voters, allegedly��colluding with the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission��(ZEC) to access voter contact information.

During the end-days of the Mugabe era, social media��platforms��were monopolized by��activists and the opposition. During the months preceding the July elections, ZANU-PF, usually the least responsive to the public and its varied attempts to engage, became increasingly adept and strategic in its own social media maneuvering. Mnangagwa had his twitter feed refined from one he used solely to send out��compliments of the season,��party propaganda��and��ill-used but weirdly ominous idioms, to a verified platform on which he laid out his political��vision,��agenda,��plans��and��accomplishments.��Under��Mnangagwa���s��leadership,��ZANU-PF brought a new energy to��how��State-run��social media��accounts��were��deployed��to appeal to youth voters and people living in the diaspora.

In March,��Mnangagwa, ever the shrewd strategist, ordered��the��ZANU-PF youth��league to take to social media��to serve as online warriors/ thugs�����kurakasha��� (to hit hard/ batter) the opposition.��It���s been claimed that ZANU-PF paid unemployed, computer literate supporters to flood social media platforms with��attacks and counter-attacks targeted at��overwhelming a��poorly resourced opposition.��The ruling party���s��varakashi��took on��Chamisa��supporters known as ���Nerrorists��� (after��Chamisa���s��nickname, Nero) in a��series of online propaganda battles.��The��marked upsurge in the��tactical��use of inflammatory��language,��and��fearmongering��as well��the distribution of��fake news��and��doctored��images,��arguably buoyed some candidates while bringing others��down.��On election day, all three platforms were used��by��people chronicling��their voting experiences.��And the violent aftermath of the election that left several people dead played out online even as it played out on the streets.

In the post-election period, social media and digital communications platforms have been used to��claim voting irregularities,��contest electoral results, and reflect public opinion.��The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission has��advocated banning social media��for��circulating electoral issues in future election cycles, claiming that these platforms were used to churn out poisonous mis-information during the recently contested��one.��The��newly inaugurated President has continued to use social media platforms to try and��quell public fear and anger, and to disseminate information regarding his��policy initiatives,��political appointments, and��international engagements.

Meanwhile, the MDC-Alliance continues to use twitter to proclaim its stolen victory.��Following��its��expensive and��unsuccessful��challenge of electoral results��at��the constitutional court, it has taken to Facebook to ask the Zimbabwean public for��donations to cover expenses, via mobile money transfers and contributions to a��gofundme��page.��Most recently,��the State has used��social media and communication platforms in a��widely scorned��government-led��crowdfunding campaign��for resources to alleviate the current nation-wide��Cholera crisis. Some Zimbabweans�� have questioned how Mnangagwa had the funds to��pay��for a chartered plane��to fly the now-disgraced former First Lady Grace Mugabe from Singapore��for��her mother���s funeral in��Zimbabwe,��but does��not have resources to fund health care and emergency services. But others couldn���t help noticing the novelty of the government���s request, which points to an alternative use��and acceptance��of��social media��platforms��for��governance.

The changes in Zimbabwean political culture that have resulted from the cumulative effects of all��these varied digital actions, cannot be ignored.��From being used for calls for change to calls for funding, it is clear that social media has played a key role in reshaping political life in��in the country.��The ways that��ideas and identities��flow��and��are modulated, has shifted. Throughout��this process,��various��tensions, contradictions, inclusions and exclusions have been exposed, and in some cases pre-existing social, cultural and political asymmetries have been amplified.��These��wide-ranging��interactions have��also��resulted in never-before-seen multi-vocal and multiply-situated political dialogues among citizens,��and between the State and its citizens. These alternative forms, mediums and modes of communication have redefined the parameters of��political engagement in online and offline public discourse and point to key shifts in the performance of politics in Zimbabwe.

Zimbabwean Twitter is shifting the country’s political landscape

There were two key take-aways from the recent elections and their aftermath in Zimbabwe: one,��fasting and prayer��don't determine election results; and two, social media has profoundly changed the political landscape.





Emmerson Mnangagwa, President of Zimbabwe at the Annual Meeting 2018 of the World Economic Forum in Davos, January 24, 2018. Image credit Sikarin Thanachaiary via World Economic Forum Flickr.

It���s been argued��that��social media proved to be irrelevant and overstated��in��determining��electoral��results��in Zimbabwe,��because Zimbabweans voted along traditional demographic��and party��lines. At face value, the election results suggest that��reading��is accurate. The ruling ZANU-PF won by large margins in rural areas, while opposition contenders only managed to maintain footholds in urban areas. And, independent candidates who ran slick social media campaigns or who relied on the momentum of a large social media following,��largely��failed to make a dent��at all. But, the reduction of politics��simply��to poll performance understates the important role that social media has in��fact��played in the recent re-formulation of Zimbabwean��politics.

Over the last two years, the country has seen the evolution of a digitally-driven, and increasingly vocal and politically active local and diaspora population. Much of��this��socio-political transformation has taken place online, outside a formalized, State-sanctioned political forum. Yes, this transformation has largely fallen��under��the purview of a ���young urban elite��� and critics have��correctly��noted the absence of a distinctly rural voice. Nevertheless,��Zimbabwean Twitter feeds, WhatsApp threads and Facebook walls have��become��digital town halls for expressing dissent and debating the goals, merits and methods of political and social transformation, and more recently even as��spaces��for engagement between citizens and the State.

Just a few years ago, it was close to impossible for ordinary Zimbabweans to engage with state institutions in a way that might result in��both��effective policy change and no danger to personal wellbeing. But, by early 2016, social media platforms��were being used��to obtain and disseminate political information, and to engage in debate and��satire,��changing the tone and accessibility of politics at the level of every day lived experiences. These platforms also became alternative spaces for��activism. Digital��activists calling for increased government accountability,��prompting��a new understanding of��online organizing��as a channel through which people, both at home and abroad, could engage��meaningfully��with politics.��When Mugabe���s government reacted in typically repressive form against an atypical digitally-mediated adversary (by squeezing bandwidth, temporarily��blocking��WhatsApp, raising the rates of data bundles and introducing a��cyber security bill), Zimbabweans creatively circumvented those actions (for example,��by��installing VPNs).

By November 2017, politics as we knew it, was fundamentally altered. A coup/non-coup replaced Robert Mugabe with��Emerson��Mnangagwa, and the military previously feared as the enforcer of Mugabe���s authoritarianism, was instead viewed as the��provider��of liberation. Political change was formally announced by ZBC, the��State broadcaster, but even before the revolution was televised, it was digitalized. In the days leading up to Mugabe���s dismissal as Head of State,��Twitter and Facebook��blew up with images of armored vehicles rolling into Harare, and speculations about their meaning.��Whatsapp��served as the primary means by which Zimbabweans alerted offline family members about the��unfolding��situation. The��military���s��first press conference,��signaling��regime change, was initially streamed on Facebook. In the days after the coup/non-coup, it was again��on��Twitter and Facebook where people chronicled celebrations with��their��soldier baes.

Following��Mnangagwa���s��installation as interim President and his��formal��commitment to holding free and fair elections in 2018, politicians all around the country��formally��launched spirited online campaigns.��The main opposition party, the MDC-Alliance, and its leader, Nelson��Chamisa��crafted a campaign that called for a generational shift in leadership.��Facebook live became a stage for��civic engagement��and��e-rallies. Twitter feeds were used for political deliberation.��In run-ups to previous elections, Zimbabweans had become��accustomed to��receiving food��and other assistance��from the State��in exchange for��attending��political��rallies.��In this year���s run-up to elections,��the MDC-Alliance petitioned��Zimbabweans, not only for support at the polls but also��for��financial��contributions��to��purchase advertising��and campaign��materials.��In the 2008 and 2013 election cycles SMS��� were sent out to mobilize support. This year, politicians and their strategic teams used��Whatsapp��to distribute campaign messaging to previously disconnected semi-rural areas, taking advantage of��greatly��improved internet connectivity in the country.��In response, the��ruling party, ZANU-PF,��also��ramped up its own campaign efforts,��sending��bulk text messages to��all��registered voters, allegedly��colluding with the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission��(ZEC) to access voter contact information.

During the end-days of the Mugabe era, social media��platforms��were monopolized by��activists and the opposition. During the months preceding the July elections, ZANU-PF, usually the least responsive to the public and its varied attempts to engage, became increasingly adept and strategic in its own social media maneuvering. Mnangagwa had his twitter feed refined from one he used solely to send out��compliments of the season,��party propaganda��and��ill-used but weirdly ominous idioms, to a verified platform on which he laid out his political��vision,��agenda,��plans��and��accomplishments.��Under��Mnangagwa���s��leadership,��ZANU-PF brought a new energy to��how��State-run��social media��accounts��were��deployed��to appeal to youth voters and people living in the diaspora.

In March,��Mnangagwa, ever the shrewd strategist, ordered��the��ZANU-PF youth��league to take to social media��to serve as online warriors/ thugs�����kurakasha��� (to hit hard/ batter) the opposition.��It���s been claimed that ZANU-PF paid unemployed, computer literate supporters to flood social media platforms with��attacks and counter-attacks targeted at��overwhelming a��poorly resourced opposition.��The ruling party���s��varakashi��took on��Chamisa��supporters known as ���Nerrorists��� (after��Chamisa���s��nickname, Nero) in a��series of online propaganda battles.��The��marked upsurge in the��tactical��use of inflammatory��language,��and��fearmongering��as well��the distribution of��fake news��and��doctored��images,��arguably buoyed some candidates while bringing others��down.��On election day, all three platforms were used��by��people chronicling��their voting experiences.��And the violent aftermath of the election that left several people dead played out online even as it played out on the streets.

In the post-election period, social media and digital communications platforms have been used to��claim voting irregularities,��contest electoral results, and reflect public opinion.��The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission has��advocated banning social media��for��circulating electoral issues in future election cycles, claiming that these platforms were used to churn out poisonous mis-information during the recently contested��one.��The��newly inaugurated President has continued to use social media platforms to try and��quell public fear and anger, and to disseminate information regarding his��policy initiatives,��political appointments, and��international engagements.

Meanwhile, the MDC-Alliance continues to use twitter to proclaim its stolen victory.��Following��its��expensive and��unsuccessful��challenge of electoral results��at��the constitutional court, it has taken to Facebook to ask the Zimbabwean public for��donations to cover expenses, via mobile money transfers and contributions to a��gofundme��page.��Most recently,��the State has used��social media and communication platforms in a��widely scorned��government-led��crowdfunding campaign��for resources to alleviate the current nation-wide��Cholera crisis. Some Zimbabweans�� have questioned how Mnangagwa had the funds to��pay��for a chartered plane��to fly the now-disgraced former First Lady Grace Mugabe from Singapore��for��her mother���s funeral in��Zimbabwe,��but does��not have resources to fund health care and emergency services. But others couldn���t help noticing the novelty of the government���s request, which points to an alternative use��and acceptance��of��social media��platforms��for��governance.

The changes in Zimbabwean political culture that have resulted from the cumulative effects of all��these varied digital actions, cannot be ignored.��From being used for calls for change to calls for funding, it is clear that social media has played a key role in reshaping political life in��in the country.��The ways that��ideas and identities��flow��and��are modulated, has shifted. Throughout��this process,��various��tensions, contradictions, inclusions and exclusions have been exposed, and in some cases pre-existing social, cultural and political asymmetries have been amplified.��These��wide-ranging��interactions have��also��resulted in never-before-seen multi-vocal and multiply-situated political dialogues among citizens,��and between the State and its citizens. These alternative forms, mediums and modes of communication have redefined the parameters of��political engagement in online and offline public discourse and point to key shifts in the performance of politics in Zimbabwe.

Silent Aid

The time is ripe to ask not "does aid work," but "how does aid work?"





Sam waters lettuce at his farm in Gyinase, Kumasi, Ghana. Image credit Mwangi Kirubi via Flickr.

Last week, Ghanaian journalist��Godfred��Akoto Boafo sat down with Mark Green, the administrator of the US Agency for International Development (USAID). Green was in town with First Lady Melania Trump, who toured Accra���s Ridge Hospital, just a day after massive rains overran the capital���s dilapidated infrastructure, flooding many parts of the city.

Boafo��began the interview��by asking, ���USAID has been in Ghana for a while, but you don���t make too much noise. What are some of the things you���ve been engaged in?���

I am not quite sure what Boafo meant, as any visitor to Accra, and certainly anyone involved in the development sector will tell you about the omnipresence of red, white and blue USAID signboards and USAID funding of health, sanitation, agricultural, educational and governance initiatives across the country.

And yet, in the area I am most familiar in, agricultural development and technology, I can understand why it might be easy to miss USAID���s presence. Since 2013, I have been researching research, design and activism around genetically modified seeds in Ghana, or ���GMOs��� as they���re often called in Ghana and the US. The story of GMOs in Ghana is a controversial one, and one that is deeply entrenched with USAID funding, programming and personnel. Yet, as Boafo suggests, USAID does not place itself at the forefront of these efforts, but behind the scenes.

Rather, USAID, along with other major GMO proponents and funders���namely the Rockefeller Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation���create broker organizations to mediate between government officials, scientists, and major agribusiness companies. These��mediaries���the Program for Biosafety Systems (created under George W. Bush���s��Initiative to End Hunger in Africa), the African Agricultural Technology Foundation and its communications arm, the Open Forum for Agricultural Biotechnology���operate at the country-level in Ghana and half a dozen other target African countries.��

In the post-Structural Adjustment world, in some cases donors have opted out of direct, public lobbying (presumably worried about the PR mess it could create) and instead create organizations to do their bidding. And it is these broker organizations, not the Ghanaian government nor the Ghanaian scientific council, who brought GMOs to Ghana,��who fund their research and lobby to liberalize the seed sector, establish regulatory law and implement exclusive intellectual property rights for plant breeders.��

These relationships are messy and complicated, and policy reforms that are coupled with development agendas deserve scrutiny.��

In Ghana, a social movement called the��Food Sovereignty Platform��has been agitating against donor-introduced agricultural policies (those I describe above) for the past five years. In response, some of these same broker organizations have described activists as�����anti-science��� and ���pro-poverty,�����overlooking the crux of their concern: the liberalization of the Ghanaian seed sector at the request of international donors, including USAID.

Similar policy reforms are happening across the continent. As Americans worry about the influence of a foreign power on their own elections and governing institutions, the time is ripe to ask not ���does aid work��� (as Boafo asked Green), but ���how��does aid work?�����

By doing so (the AIAC archives��are a good place to start, as are reading anthropologists of development), and by taking seriously the concerns of activists such as those in Ghana, we may begin to dismantle structures of aid that continue to marginalize and instead build up programs in solidarity, not apart, from those we wish to serve.

Why we’re losing the fight against TB

The global response to a disease that largely effects the most marginalized populations of poorer countries shows a basic lack of respect for human rights on the part of international institutions.





South African President, Cyril��Ramaphosa, at a��high level��meeting on TB at the UN General Assembly��in September 2018. Image credit the Government of South Africa via Flickr.

On��September 26, 2018, the United Nations General Assembly approved a��Political Declaration��that sets out the first globally coordinated response to one of the greatest public health crises of our time, tuberculosis (TB). Two days previously, the UN unveiled at its headquarters in New York a��new statute of Nelson Mandela, who��had��TB in Cape Town���s infamous��Pollsmoor��Prison, a facility that has been the subject of��repeated��litigation��for many years due to the��wildly high rates��of TB that persist in the prison still today.

Just as homage to��Madiba��stands in contrast to the persistence of the rights violations he suffered and fought, so too does language that embraces human rights in the UN���s new Political Declaration stand at odds with the reality on the ground.��New research��on 20 of the 30 countries with the highest TB burdens shows that, more often than not, laws related to TB have little to no regard for the most basic��human rights such as liberty and privacy. The truth is that the TB response has never aligned to human rights���and��most countries that endorsed��the��new Political Declaration have not yet understood the dramatic change to law and policy needed��to create a ���human rights-based response��� to the disease.

TB kills close to 2 million people a year��and almost��all of those people��are��poor and from��poor countries. TB thrives on and perpetuates poverty and inequality;��it is not coincidence that��70%��of the��over 10 million��people who fall ill with TB every year live in Africa and South East-Asia.

If TB is a disease of inequality, drug-resistant TB is doubly so.��New data��shows that the extent of the drug-resistant TB crisis is far worse than what we once thought, with over half a million cases in 2017. The common treatment for drug-resistant TB is torture by poison; the drugs are so toxic that they leave more people with psychosis and disabilities, like��permanent hearing loss, than they cure. The treatment takes��two years��and many people spend much or all of that time in mandatory isolation.��Despite this data, only��two new TB drugs have come to market in the last 50 years and patents, high prices, and slow policy change hamstring access to them. To date��under 30,000 people��in total have received the drugs, compare that to the more than 500,000 people who get drug-resistant TB every year. As many as��83% of households��affected by drug-resistant TB suffer ���catastrophic expenditure,��� meaning they lose at least 20% of their annual household income���further entrenching the poverty that rendered them vulnerable to TB in the first place. And, after all that, the prevailing treatment only works about��half of the time.

Hence, it is undeniable that efforts to eradicate TB have been a complete and shameful failure. While the World Health Organization plans to ���End TB��� by 2030, evidence shows that we will only get there by��2182��at the current pace. Hope is powerful, but it should be distinguished from delusion.

Paradoxically, TB isn���t the most complicated infectious disease. In fact, it���s preventable and for the most part curable. The failure of the��world���s��TB response stems largely from a misguided loyalty to old tactics that have remained essentially unchanged since the discovery of the first TB treatment in the 1940s.

These tactics were first imagined and touted by scientists and doctors then embraced by the World Health Organization and governments. For example, the WHO continues to champion a failed��strategy��known as��Directly Observed Treatment, which requires people to travel to a clinic or hospital every day in order for a health authority to watch them swallow their pills.��Because TB affects the poor, people often travel long distances by foot and then waiting in��long queues at the clinic.��Such paternalism and disregard for autonomy is rare in most of modern medicine yet the prevailing norm for TB.

International funders��working on TB��such as the Bill and Malinda Gates Foundation and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria continue to��focus��primarily��on��interventions that are��purely��biomedical���well under��1% of TB funding from��the��Global Fund, for example, goes to addressing human rights issues. This is colonial thinking���it imagines the problems of the poor as simple, like the poor themselves. This type of thinking and the policies it births define the ���public health approach��� that has driven the TB response for decades.��But��it is precisely��this��approach��that��has failed because it has never recognized that the ���public��� is made up of people with human needs, emotions, and rights.��Our guiding angels cannot be clad in hazmat suits and neither will salvation fall from the heavens in the form of a messianic biomedical intervention. Real progress in the fight against TB requires that we think of people with TB as people. Such thinking leads to focus on law and policy reform to create health systems that foster trust and dignity rather than fear. This is why only human rights can chart a successful response to TB.

In most��countries,��from Bangladesh to Zimbabwe,��TB-related public health laws��are��a cruel matrix of radical police powers, incentives to fear the healthcare system, criminalization of conduct that cannot reasonably be avoided, and obligations to turn over to the state family members suspected of having TB. For example,��some of��these laws give health officials essentially unconstrained powers to detain and isolate people for indefinite periods without a hearing in the name of preventing TB transmission. They also empower��officials to enter and search homes and��then��medically examine people��in those homes��without their consent.

It is entirely reasonable��to��fear and hide from a��public health��system that takes away rights without cause or due process and then subjects people to��nightmarish��medical treatment��that is as likely to fail as it is to work. We shouldn���t be surprised��these conditions foster a culture of secrecy that drives TB underground where the system is unable to reach it.

TB is a human problem and for too long the fight against it has been inhumane. The September 26 announcement of the United Nations Political Declaration on TB is a major development in the global response to the deadliest infectious disease. The��UN���s��Political Declaration should mark a turning point in the global TB response. But if the new era is to be effective, we need radical action to align TB-related laws to basic human rights. This means that funding should support urgent law and policy reform to do away with failed strategies like Directly Observed Treatment and to introduce protections for basic rights like liberty, privacy, and dignity in order to create humane health systems that cultivate trust and hope rather than fear.

The school hairstyle protest in Soweto

When black students at an elite school in South Africa's capital protested over how teachers treated them over their hair, everyone noticed. It's not the same in township schools.





Nali'Bali Story Bosso Launch at the Soweto Theater 2017. Image credit US AID via Flickr.

Standing at school assembly under a chilly winter sun on a Friday morning in August 2017, the learners are listening to the pastor. He is barely audible, preaching from the balcony without loudspeakers. The learners are also not quiet: a palpable excitation animates them; something is brewing. They cannot wait for him to end his speech. The principal is absent today, allegedly attending some funerals. Today he will not address them about the need to improve their pass rates or the imperative to make informed career choices as he usually does after the sermon. As soon as the last ���Amen��� is said, a group of older girls starts whistling and yelling ���Hayi-Hayi!���

Within seconds, they form a compact jumping mass: the protest has begun. Some girls are proudly brandishing a pack of hair extensions. The message is clear: allow hair pieces at school! The deputy principal is the only one chasing them. He is holding his folders with a disturbingly confident attitude, as if he has everything under control. The teaching staff is carefully observing, from a distance, this seemingly undisciplined, volatile mass of young women. As the deputy principal walks towards them, they quickly encircle him. Hundreds of girls take over, discovering how easily they are winning the courtyard battle. They then run towards the gate and are soon outside, marching towards the��neighboring��school with whom they had planned the protest. Unable to mobilize them, some of the learners slowly return. No teaching can happen today. ���The learners have won a longer weekend,��� the school security guard cynically puts it. A policeman discreetly leaves the school management building. Things did not appear so unruly to necessitate his team���s intervention. Representatives of the education district enter the building to initiate the independent revision of the code of conduct.

This is not happening in isolation, Indeed, in July 2017, protests over electricity and housing service delivery were flaring in Soweto and scandals about racism spread across Johannesburg���s schools. The provincial MEC for Education,��Panyaza��Lesufi, was��forced to respond. He visited a variety of schools, from the elite private��boys��college, St Johns, to a middle-class private school in Kempton Park and also��Klipspruit West High School��in Soweto, the site of some contention between parents and the Gauteng Education Department over the appointment of a Black principal. Considering the national and global coverage and the highly political handling that a similar protest at Pretoria Girls High School earned the year before, the lack of coverage of the hairstyle protest in��Soweto����appears��unsettling. By contrast, at Pretoria Girls, schooling was never disrupted by the mobilization which took a much more disciplined form during a Saturday school fair. It was then carried further outside the school, among others by university students then in the thick of protests over decolonizing campuses.

Natural hairstyles in the form of afros, dreads or braids is associated with anti-conformist, cosmetic consumption and aesthetic performances of antiracism and anticolonialism against the white canons of beauty. In South Africa, this claim for capillary liberation has had an especially high political resonance as it led to learners��� collective mobilizations in a context of school desegregation. The emblematic protest at Pretoria Girls fits within these interpretations, drawing attention to the gendered aspect of��institutional racism at school.

August 2018

It���s been one year since the eruption of the hairstyle protest in a Soweto high school where I was doing research on discriminations at school as part of my PhD, and the code of conduct has not been profoundly amended. Parents did not approve the desired hairstyles, and even less so the schooling disruption. As if copied from a formerly whites-only school���s policy, it states that ���ethnic hair��� is allowed for girls if ���neat and tied up��� while ���no dreadlocks, no braiding��� is permitted. It also explicitly emphasizes that ���when [freedom of expression] leads to a material and substantial disruption in school operations��� this right can be limited as the disruption of school is unacceptable.���

In practice, the code is never referred to; it is almost irrelevant. Boys��� soccer player-style cuts are still tolerated, while few, albeit increasingly numerous, cool girls dare to go against the rules. Their expensive hairstyles��are perceived��by the school staff and learners as remunerations for sexual��favors��for their ���blessers��� or ���sugar daddies,��� in a context where learners get sponsored for their uniforms and can hardly afford to buy pen and papers. For the staff, hairstyles are��valuable assets��which puts the girls at risk to be ���kidnapped or raped.���

The policing of hair has not changed much despite this seemingly forgotten protest. Although it erupted at an opportune time,��the hairstyle protest in Soweto��attracted neither media nor political attention.

Black hairstyles at school are unquestionably a political and contentious issue in many countries. Reports of learners ill-treated at school have mostly led to outbursts in middle to upper-class white-dominated schools in the US, UK or South Africa. Black hair has been read, according to by cultural sociologist Shirley Anne Tate as ���personal surfacing��� subjected to antiblack institutional racism operating through the schools��� code of conducts and��the����micro-aggressions arising from its enforcement.

However, the sole gaze at a politically-charged elite single-gender school filtered through the lenses of (de)racialization does not enable us to see how the policing of learners��� appearances, fits within a broader construction of the imperative for schools to produce employable, respectable learners. Paradoxically, it is in low-income contexts���where arguably learners and educators have more serious challenges than to fix hairstyles���that the fabric of scholar respectability tends to most strongly rely on appearance.

The hairstyle protests cannot be simply analyzed as��a proxy battle underpinned by deeper generational, gender and class divides. If things appear neat and disciplined, educators can at least save face. They play an academic strictness game to cope with the continuous failure of the school to produce social upliftment through education for the majority of learners. Hairstyle policing is also a way to regain control in a traditional and highly patriarchal fashion over the brash born-frees, and reaffirm the fragile authority of educators, often traumatized by too many years with too little support in harsh teaching environments. For learners, the humiliating suppression of their looks is even more unbearable as the school expands its record of broken promises, while their parents might have no choice but to maintain their faith. While the policing of appearances could be seen as the tip of the iceberg of institutional racism in elite settings such as Pretoria Girls, in low-income schools, it is core to the teaching ethos and is experienced as a deep, symbolic violence against learners��� dignity.

The struggle to democratize schools in��milieux��populaires��(working-class areas) thus involves rethinking the injunction to produce respectability, not only in elite and middle-class schools but also in low-income schools. The compelled performance toward whitened patriarchal respectability has serious consequences on working class educators and learners, especially girls. It is all the more harshly experienced in township schools in South Africa, where dire inequalities are most blatant and brutal.

When Melania Trump went to Africa

Some advice for the First Lady of the United States as she travels across the African continent.





Melania Trump in Ghana. Image credit Ninian Reid via Flickr.

Melania Trump is visiting Africa this week as part of her “Be Best” campaign, to get a first-hand look at some of the education initiatives US government agencies are supporting on the continent. Education is often the ultimate solution, we hear, to the biggest, most pressing problems a nation faces. But often, education programs are offered as an underfunded attempt to ameliorate problems the same organizations are incubating.

So what are the problems facing Africa now that apparently must be solved through education? Reviewing materials from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), you would be led to believe the problems mostly have to do with a lack of something important. There���s a lack of��markets��for farmers, which prevents them from selling their crops, and a lack of��opportunity��for young people, which leads to high unemployment and sometimes crime. Though there���s no easy way to summarize these problems, one of the major factors US officials and others have cited to explain the inadequacies is Africa���s lack of��integration��with the world economy. This is where USAID���s education programs take a starring role. To read about the organization���s education programs in Africa and around the world, it would seem like education is a solution to the biggest overarching problem these countries face today���namely, a lack of connection to the free markets which make up the contours of the world economy.

According to USAID���s 2011 Education Strategy��document, some 70 million children around the world do not go to school. Most, fortunately, do go to school. But merely going to socialize, learn, develop intellectually is not enough. ���Of those who do attend, hundreds of millions [of students] are not being taught the basic skills that they require to be competitive economic actors in a globalized world.��� Acquiring new skills, the document continues, ���is central to building human capital, increasing labor productivity, catalyzing the adoption of new technologies and innovations, and accelerating novel applications of existing technologies.���

In Ghana, USAID��says��its education programs, which are mostly focused on primary education, is intended to support the cooperation strategy between that country and the United States, the stated goal of which is accelerating ���Ghana���s Transition Towards Established Middle Income Status.”

In Kenya, where the focus extends to young adults, USAID��notes��in typically economistic language that ���some 2.5 million young people are unemployed, and only five percent enter the formal workforce each year.��� To help them, ���USAID is helping a new generation of young people make the transition from education to employment and successfully compete for jobs in the economy.��� One��program��USAID funds, called Kenya Youth Employment Skills, or K-YES, has offered ���market-relevant job and business skills��� to more than 146,000 young people, and formed 78 public-private partnerships ���in key sectors, increasing value for both youth employment outcomes and businesses.���

As USAID Administrator Mark Green describes it, young people are not a problem. Properly educated, they will��solve problems. Today, 90 percent of the world���s youth live in developing countries, he said in a��statement��anticipating Melania���s visit. ���Some see this as a challenge to be met, a problem to be solved���not us. We see this as a great opportunity. With each motivated, active, and engaged young mind, we see the seeds of solution, innovation.��� With the right training, young people can be the raw material with which to shape Africa���s future.

But why is it so urgent for Kenyans, Ghanaians, and others to learn skills to compete in the formal economy? Why is becoming an ���actor in the globalized world��� now, apparently, more important than ever? Perhaps we should talk to USAID���s former boss. Speaking at the African Green Revolution Forum in Kigali recently, Raj Shah, who led USAID for much of the Obama administration and now serves as president of the Rockefeller Foundation,��reminded��an audience of development specialists, African agriculture ministers, and financiers about the origins of a concerted effort to industrialize African agriculture that is now the focus of so many foreign organizations��� efforts in Africa.

���A uniquely African agricultural revolution was meant to beat hunger by making food more available and accessible,��� he said. ���But this revolution was also meant to create a diversified, modern economy, where food production no longer dominated how nations deployed the majority of their labor.���

Deployed the majority of their labor. It���s not that people aren���t working���it���s that too many of them are working in the wrong fields. Or, more to the point, it���s that too many people are working in fields and not in factories or tech startups or wherever else people are supposed to work in a ���diversified, modern economy.�����Such a transition is necessary, purveyors of the African green revolution say, not only because work in factories and offices are better, but because agriculture is so inherently backwards. The kind of farming��that the majority of Africa���s rural people still practice, growing food for a small group of people to be processed by hand,����is what people do when they���re not sufficiently integrated with the global economy. If people must farm, they could at least grow raw materials for local industries, or exports for hard currency, with a minimal use of labor and a maximal use of technology. Alas, even that is a job for a mere sliver of the population, preferably something below ten percent of everyone in a given country.

By that standard, Africa is changing too slowly, Shah said. Since 2003, the proportion of Africans employed in agriculture has dropped eight percent, but that drop is ���simply too small to celebrate.��� Still too many people work in agriculture���heaven forbid���growing food for their families and communities. The powers behind the green revolution in Africa need to redouble their efforts and encourage those people to drop their hoes and head to the cities more quickly.

At this point, it���s worth looking again at education. If the millions of African people who have left farming over the last fifteen years could be reliably assigned jobs and livelihoods in some other sector through some process, a plan that deliberately made survival-by-agriculture impossible for a majority of people now dependent on it would have a stronger justification. If such a process did exist, education would surely have something to do with it. But looking at Ghana, to take one example, we can attest that widespread education has not lessened rural poverty, but, by some measures, has actually made it worse.�� In 2001, Ghanaian secondary school��enrollment��stood around 34 percent. After making education a major priority, the government increased secondary enrollment dramatically, to around 60 percent today. Young people are leaving the farms and not coming back, so that now rural Ghanaians are wondering who will take care of their farms. Africa���s green revolution at work! But are these young, ambitious people moving into the well-paying jobs of the global economy? Not really. In 2015, more than 15 percent of Ghanaians with a secondary education were unemployed, according to International Labor Organization estimates, up from around six percent in 2013. More education has led to more people entering cities in Ghana, but it has not led to more jobs���a finding which few of the young, unemployed Americans with a college degree will consider revelatory.

Ghana, like many African countries, is embarking on an agenda of agricultural revolution to push small farmers into cities to become part of a new, modern economy. The same aid organizations and philanthropies which promote this transition also sponsor education programs intended to give young people the skills to work in that new economy. But in reality, these groups are making a concerted effort to undermine one livelihood for millions of people while doing comparatively little to replace it with another one. In Ghana���s case, it might even be said that widespread education has accelerated that departure of young people from the farms, making agriculture less viable for everyone else who still depends on it to survive. Even if we believe that education is a��solution, it���s one that addresses a problem made worse, or even instigated, by the same people promoting it as one.

Looking ahead as Africa���s green revolution takes shape, we should ask, as more people leave their farms, where will they go? How will they feed themselves? What jobs will they take up in the new economy supposedly taking shape? And how, apart from checking the standard metrics like GDP growth and export earnings, will we know the promise of shared benefits are being fairly shared at all? In his speech in Kigali, Shah��refrained from considering such questions, but surely the panoply of education programs, funded by the rich world���s development agencies and philanthropies, in partnership with African governments, will help departing farmers adjust as conditions change below their feet. Right?

Melania, before you ask whether education could solve poverty and unemployment, do everyone a favor, and ask why those problems exist in the first place.

Decolonizing streets

The renaming of streets is an important urban decolonial practice.





Image credit Markus Mayer via Flickr.

In August 2018 activists, among them some of Berlin���s black and brown communities, gathered in downtown Berlin on��Mohrenstrasse���or M-Strasse as it is referred to by them���for the fifth annual ���street renaming festival.��� They put up banners and hung balloons. There was a panel discussion about the struggle to rename the M-Strasse, which has been on-going since 2004, and the various issues of racism, colonialism and belonging that renaming ties into. There were musical performances and the ritual marking out of the proposed new name,��Anton Wilhelm Amo��Strasse in chalk in the streets.

The festival pointed to Berlin���s contrasts and contradictions, the radical oppositions��the��British-Ugandan��writer��Musa Okwonga, a recent migrant to Berlin,��signaled in his piece��on this site��about this city. How does one make sense of the fact that across this open-minded city there remain street names that are as innocuous as they are racist?��Names like Wissmann Strasse,��that��honors the general known for the violent and ruthless suppression of indigenous people in what is today Tanzania, or the U-bahn stop Unkle Tom���s Hutte��(Uncle Tom���s Cabin)��on the U3 line.

Berlin���s urban fabric is surprisingly richly textured with��colonial traces.��It does not bare repeating that here streets commemorate colonial figures, museums are stocked with��artifacts��from colonized nations, and the basement of the��Charite��Hospital��and other institutions of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation are full of��African skulls��collected for�����scientific research�����(on this,��see��South African��historian��Ciraj��Rassool���s��critique of German museums��� management of human remains��here).

Recognition of Germany���s colonial histories, especially in museum settings, and��their��transformations��have��been��slow and seen as out of step��with other European nations.

Post-colonial critiques���mobilized almost��10��years ago already by activists and scholars��such as��Nikita Dhawan, Noa Ha��and Grada Kilomba���have been slow to gain mainstream traction in Germany. They are usually��dismissed as the false complaints of an annoying minority. As the��German��curator Cornelia Knoll��pointed out,�����the myth of an all-white, Christian German society largely persists. So does the idea that anyone who is black only arrived here in the late 20th century or the 21st as refugees.��� Colonial place and street names therefore contribute to black Germans feeling alien in their own country, to quote the German rap group��Advanced Chemistry��(h/t Adam��Benkato).

Sites and streets specifically, have become important rallying points for highlighting colonial legacies, ongoing racist discrimination and for claiming black histories in the city. The first major victory was for the renaming of the��Gr��benufer��from a colonial explorer to��May-Ayim��Ufer, the black female activist and poet. And after years of agitation and campaigning, activists have succeeded in pushing through the renaming of����named after colonial officials in what is known as the African Quarter, securing��new names of African figures��of esteem and struggles of resistance.

There has been backlash from local street committees and groups resistant to change. Naturally, right-wing ideas and politics about ���culture��� and belonging sometimes also filter into these arguments. In resisting, some groups have cited the cost of street renaming as being prohibitive.��Others indicate that they are against any corrections in memorial culture��and argue that street renaming is historical erasure. They have also argued that the founders of the German colonial empire cannot be judged according to the values of the present as their actions were in line with their colonial and racist contemporaries. Activists have countered that they are not interested in erasing but rather foregrounding racist histories by not simply overlaying them with new names, but by calling attention to their significance using information plaques.

The renaming of streets is an important urban decolonial practice. Names and naming, one of the panelists at the August 2018 street renaming festival pointed out, is fundamental to human communication. To name is to render or revoke dignity.��But if South Africa is used as a barometer of the work����is meant to do, then it is not at all a straightforward process, and one that can surface all kinds of tensions in black communities.

In Berlin, however, where colonial histories are often silently accepted,��the inscription of��new names��is��surely��a��good thing.

Husbands to rent

The difficulties women and young people face in Nigeria when trying to assert their independence is underlined by stubborn social norms.





A Nigerian bride. Image via Wikimedia Commons.

In a��recent article published by the BBC, Abigail��Ony��Nwaohuocha���highlights the difficulties young, unmarried, middle-class women face in Nigeria���s urban centers when they try to move into rented apartments of their own. Her report features several young women who���ve had to deal with landlords insisting that they can���t possibly earn enough money to rent their own flats without the support of men, be they boyfriends, husbands or “sponsors.”

Most urban Nigerians live in rented property, with rents representing as high as 60% of total disposable income. Middle-class renters are generally required to pay rent on an annual basis; some landlords even require two years upfront from new tenants, on top of which the tenants also pay a lump sum to cover legal and agency fees. This initial capital outlay for moving into a new place, which doesn’t even include the cost of making the place��liveable, is enough to deter many young people from seeking to live on their own. Further disincentives are the cost implications of having to provide your own electricity, security, and other public services, as well as the middle-class Nigerian idea���which has only recently begun to very slowly change���that young people, particularly women, ought to live with their parents until they marry. Imagine, therefore, being willing and able to navigate all of these challenges, only to then come up against a brick wall of literal gatekeepers who cannot comprehend female economic and social independence.

This reasoning���displayed by landlords who are���overwhelmingly male���is an unfortunate manifestation of the hostility that Nigeria shows its women in general. Our society, at least on the surface, is ultra-religious, and its norms are extremely conservative and patriarchal. Many Nigerians are incapable of recognizing or respecting women���s full humanity if those women are not in social or physical proximity to a man who can “claim ownership” of them, be he a father, a brother, or most effectively, a husband. Hundreds of millions of Nigerians believe that marriage is not just an important life event, but also a fundamental measure of responsibility, respectability and decency, particularly for women. As such, the social expectation of marriage to a man���preferably by the age of 25���is a heavy burden that Nigerian women are forced to navigate, as it impacts almost all, if not all facets of female life. Girls are groomed for heterosexual marriage from an early age, regardless of their sexual orientation, and women who remain unmarried are often subjected to a wide range of indignities, of which the discrimination that single middle-class women face when house-hunting is only one type.

The control of women���s lives, through strict regulation of their social and sexual activity, is crucial to the maintenance of the Nigerian sense of order and propriety. Misogynistic harm is rampant in our society; generalized abuse such as workplace harassment (male bosses, colleagues and even junior staff often feel empowered to direct sexual and/or romantic advances towards female staff); street harassment (cat-calling and unwanted touching are endemic in public spaces); indecent exposure, and sexist verbal abuse are all normalized, occurring every single day across the country. These kinds of harm are considered unremarkable and treated as “part of what it means to be a woman.” Graver misogynistic violence also occurs in “normal” settings, including physical abuse, sexual assault, or demands for sex in exchange for jobs, grades or positions that women are in many instances already qualified for. Professor��Oluremi��Sonaiya, a retired academic and Presidential candidate who once lectured at the university where 23-year-old Monica��Osagie��recently outed a lecturer named Richard��Akindele��for aggressive sexual harassment, described the pressure placed on students to have sex in exchange for better grades as ���something that happens frequently in our universities.���

Fortunately for them, Nigerian women who are married to men can often interrupt or even end these misogynistic abuses by invoking their status as wives. Many women, married or not, have anecdotal evidence of appreciable improvements in the quality of their social interactions when they wear a wedding band or similar jewelry on their ring fingers. This is because a married woman, taken at face value, fits most neatly into the narrow ideals of acceptable femininity prescribed by Nigerian norms, placing wives at the top of our hierarchy of womanhood. Still, this hierarchy is ultimately a disservice to��all��Nigerian women, as it only grants some women conditional access to respectful treatment through husbands who are understood as being “in control” of them. This logic of husbands-as-overlords is then used to justify the domestic violence, emotional abuse and rampant infidelity that mark far too many marriages between Nigerian men and women.

In addition, this hierarchy is sustained by the further devaluation of unmarried women in relation to married women. The value of “wife” as a social status depends in large part on the derogation of people who are not wives, with the possible exception of widows, who occupy a “special” position due to the manner in which they arrive at��husbandlessness. However, never-married women, divorcees, single mothers, and sex workers a.k.a. the “prostitutes” described in��Nwaohuocha���s��article, are all ranked ever lower in the pecking order of inferiority and undesirability. This pecking order is then socially reinforced in such a way that the sexism and/or misogyny that these categories of women face is considered not just normal, but sometimes even necessary. Tellingly, the idea implied in the BBC article that landlords are within their rights to deny���well-heeled “prostitutes” housing is couched in culturally accepted norms regarding which kinds of women are understood to deserve respect���or, more relevantly, disrespect.

It is also pertinent to note that the problems posed by Nigerian social norms, many of which are informed by religious fundamentalisms and state failures, don���t exclusively affect unmarried women of a certain age. It is unarguable that women are significantly and���disproportionately impacted, but the Nigerian socio-economy, which runs largely on patronage, log-rolling and favors from the government, is incredibly hostile to its young people in general. According to the Nigerian National Bureau of Statistics, youth unemployment is generally high and has only worsened under the current government, reaching 33% in July 2017. Yet, this 33% does not reflect the rates of under-employment, nor does it capture those young people who have jobs but are���regularly unpaid or underpaid by their employers. Irregular or no payment is a much-neglected employment issue which occurs across a multitude of sectors, due to weak labor laws and impunity informed by the desperation of a large, chronically unemployed population. All of these problems are further exacerbated by youth��unemployability, which is also a significant problem stemming from the low quality of education available to the mostly poor Nigerian public.

Unfortunately, instead of recognizing and holding government accountable for these obvious obstacles to economic stability for young people, many Nigerians choose instead to��normalize��these obstacles, and believe that no young person can achieve financial independence through respectable methods.���Thus, young women of means are indiscriminately accused of��� prostitution which, like in most parts of the world, is criminalized in Nigeria; and young men are accused of being fraudsters or, in popular���slang, “Yahoo��boys.” Now, most young people in Nigeria��do��face an astronomical struggle in trying to access wealth or even simple economic stability, and the majority do not succeed. Corruption is deeply entrenched, and access to opportunities and resources is starkly unequal. Thus, an appreciable number of young Nigerians end up engaging in economic activities that are considered criminal or illegal, including activities that are mutually consensual between sellers and buyers, like street trading or sex work���neither of which are limited by gender���and activities that are not, like fraud or trafficking.

Still, the existence of young people doing���”shady” deals does not negate that there are those whose businesses are in synchrony with Nigeria���s conservative ideals. Further, that some Nigerians access��wealth through difficult-to-trace means does not justify discriminatory behavior towards young women and people. This is especially relevant, considering that the majority of Nigeria���s political and economic elite���who are by no means young���generated their wealth precisely through shady and corrupt practices. Contrary to President��Muhammadu��Buhari���s��derogatory assertion at the Commonwealth Business Forum earlier this year, Nigerian youths are not���lazy, and many do manage to achieve economic���independence despite the significant barriers to do so. So, for those youths who are able to overcome the treacherous terrain of Nigeria���s labor market and/or business space���whether due to inherited class privilege, innovation and foresight, dogged hard work, or sheer luck���it can be immensely frustrating to���then be forced to bear the consequences of myopic, willfully obtuse prejudices like those espoused by the country���s��president��and sexist landlords.

It is an���indictment of Nigeria���s economy, political landscape and social norms that young people are often unable to enjoy the benefits of their incomes, including renting an apartment of their own, without facing persistent discrimination. But if we are to evolve past these unfortunate stereotypes, then it is crucial that we recognize the systemic nature of the issues and address the various mechanisms that sustain them. The fact that middle-class Nigerian women are required to portray themselves as being subject to husbands before being allowed to pay their own money for a flat is only the tip of the iceberg. And, like the ill-fated Titanic, this country is doomed to sink unless we address the society-wide scope of problems faced���across all class levels���by Nigerian youths in general, and young Nigerian women in particular.

Nelson Mandela and the racial politics of US imperialism

Why did the CIA want to silence Mandela? And what does this tell us about his political legacy?





Nelson Mandela in his law office in 1952. Image credit Jurgen Schadenberg for the AP.

On��the August��5��1962,��Nelson Mandela was��arrested��at a police roadblock��near Howick��in��KwaZulu-Natal.��Initially charged with inciting labor unrest and leaving the country without permission, Mandela would end up spending 27 years in prison.��Having successfully evaded the South African authorities��after��being forced underground in��the previous year, it��was��long rumored that the CIA provided the information that led to Mandela���s��eventual��capture. However, it wasn���t until 2016, that American involvement in his arrest was��publicly confirmed.

Why did the CIA want to silence Nelson Mandela? And what does this tell his about his political legacy?��According to��Donald Rickard,��the Durban-based��US vice-consul and CIA operative��who��tipped off the South African security��services, Mandela��was a threat��to the United States.��Convinced that he was ���completely under the control of the Soviet Union,��� Rickard asserted that��he�����could have incited a war in South Africa,��� concluding in an interview��that,�����We were teetering on the brink here��[in the US]��and it had to be stopped, which meant Mandela had to be stopped. And I put a stop to it.���

Despite John F. Kennedy���s rhetorical support for African decolonization, the removal of radical black voices,��such as Mandela���s,��from the political scene constituted a cold war imperative for many within his administration. The US had a range of political, economic and military interests in South Africa. The country boasted a vast supply of uranium ore, essential for America’s nuclear arms program, and was a key site of investment for US businesses,��such as the Kennecott Copper Foundation, Ford and General Motors. Crucially, the��Apartheid��regime was also vehemently anticommunist and had passed the draconian��Suppression of Communism Act in 1950,��which��effectively outlawed the Communist Party.��Acutely attuned to the international political climate��of the day, the National Party strategically positioned itself as an important bulwark against the Soviet Union in Southern Africa in its��diplomatic��dealings with the United States.

Mandela was acutely aware of these political and economic connections and was a��vocal critic of the��relationship that��existed between the self-appointed ���Leader of the Free World��� and the��Apartheid regime. As he wrote in a 1958 article for��Liberation��magazine entitled, “A New Menace in Africa“:

Whilst the influence of the old European powers has sharply declined and whilst the anti-imperialist forces are winning striking victories all over the world, a new danger has arisen and threatens to destroy the newly won independence of the people of Asia and Africa.��It is American imperialism, which must be fought and decisively beaten down if the people of Asia and Africa are to preserve the vital gains they have won in their struggle against subjugation.

In his writing and speeches Mandela exposed the��links��between American power, capitalism and racism. He boldly documented how the United States government backed white supremacy��in Southern Africa, undermining America���s self-professed anticolonial credentials by drawing parallels between��Apartheid and Jim Crow.��This��this made him particularly dangerous in the eyes of successive US administrations, all of whom were much��more comfortable dealing with a��fervently anticommunist white settler state than the prospect of black self-determination in South Africa.��It is important to remember that��effects of the Red Scare and McCarthyism were not limited to the United States.��Anticommunism was��a central��part��of US imperial culture, providing the ideological groundwork for the government���s collaboration with the��Apartheid��state and the expansion of American power in Africa more broadly. Operating across national borders, anticommunist politics��facilitated repressive forms of state collusion and��was��frequently��used to legitimize��the hounding of black activists. Ultimately, anticommunism functioned as a global imperial language that circumscribed movements for racial equality and legitimized the actions of the white supremacist state on both sides of the Atlantic.

However, even as��anticommunist politics��disrupted��antiapartheid��protest, radical black voices mobilized to challenge��the��political ties that��existed between��the US and South African governments.��In the United States, the��New York-based��anticolonial lobby the����led the charge,��repeatedly exposing the ways��in which US foreign policy��and capital worked to��prop up white supremacist��regimes overseas. Chaired by the activist, actor and singer Paul Robeson, and��bringing together black leftists including��W.E.B. Du Bois, and��Alphaeus Hunton,��the CAA��echoed Mandela���s criticism of American imperialism and��actively��forged connections with antiapartheid��activists in��South Africa.��As Hunton��asked��in��his��1953 pamphlet ““:

Can we separate the problem of Jim Crow in America from the problem of Apartheid in South Africa? Can the octopus of racism and fascism be killed by simply cutting off one menacing tentacle? Do profitable investments and strategic raw materials have priority over the freedom, the rights, the very lives of millions of human beings in South Africa whose skins are not white?��Again��we ask, how much of the blood of South Africa’s oppressed black people is on America’s own hands?

African American leftists argued that white supremacy in the United States and South Africa represented two sides of the same coin. Drawing attention to America���s blatant disregard��for��the human rights of people of African descent���at home and abroad���they��showed how strategic��foreign policy��interests and the global flow of capital��underwrote racial oppression in both countries.

Black radicals��were also painfully aware of how��anticommunism��was��used to disrupt anti-racist protest on both sides of the Atlantic. As��Paul Robeson outlined in a letter��to Dr. G. M. Naicker, president of the Natal Indian Congress:

We who are on the side of Peace and Freedom in the United���States can well understand the desperate nature of the struggle in which you in South Africa are engaged. For if you have your��Malans��and Swarts, we have our��McCarthys��and��Brownells. South Africa’s notorious suppression of Communism Act is paralleled by this country���s��� equally notorious Smith Act and McCarran Act.

In conversation across the Atlantic, Mandela,��Robeson,��Hunton��and others,��vigorously��condemned��the US government���s relationship with South Africa.��In their eyes, this was an��anticommunist form of imperial power that resulted in the race and class exploitation of the black population of both countries.��This analysis made them dangerous.

The CIA���s role in Nelson Mandela���s arrest and imprisonment vividly��illustrates��how anticommunist and white supremacist politics worked in tandem to stifle black liberation.��Mandela consistently linked the antiapartheid��struggle to antiracist movements around the world, quickly recognizing how racial subjugation was embedded in both US foreign policy and the expansion of American capitalism. The US government��was��all too��aware of damage this could do to��its��standing in the world, labeling him a threat to their political and economic interests in Southern Africa, and actively working to silence him.

Repression rarely takes place solely at the level of the��nation��state.��Mandela��recognized��this, tracing how��racial subjugation was��reinforced across borders,��while simultaneously��acknowledging��how colonial and imperial power��evolved��over time.��Significantly,��he��also��drew attention to the ways in which racism��enshrined the inequalities that��powered��capitalist accumulation��throughout the 1950s and 1960s White supremacy, anticommunism, and capitalism were three interrelated ideologies that��united US policymakers and the Apartheid��government.

As��a��new generation of activists��in the United States and South Africa grapple with white supremacy, economic inequality and state violence, it is vital that we remember radical anticolonial and��anticapitalist��vision that shaped Mandela���s worldview��at this time.��Ultimately, this��was just as��an important part of��his political legacy as his��more frequently lauded insistence on��reconciliation and forgiveness.

How to remember Jonas Savimbi

Sixteen years after the end of the Angolan civil war, the Angolan state considers how to properly remember and memorialize the leader of UNITA.





Jonas Savimbi 1989. Image credit Ernmuhl via Wikimedia Commons.

“Savimbi Jonas”

���Unknown

The words were scratched��in the bark of��a��tree, somewhat removed from the neat lines of headstone��in the cemetery��in��Luena,��eastern Angola.��In the shade of its branches, a��prominent��mound of earth��marked the resting place of the leader whose UNITA movement had engaged the Angolan government in almost continuous combat since 1975. It was now March 2002. A few weeks earlier, soldiers of the��Angolan Armed Forces, assisted by Israeli surveillance experts, had tracked down Savimbi in the remote woodlands of��Moxico��province,��and shot him dead.

Sixteen years later, the Angolan government��says it will exhume Savimbi���s body from its pauper���s grave and grant him a “dignified” burial.��This may come as a surprise to people outside Angola.��For the past 25 years the MPLA���s consolidation of power in Angola has also included taking control of the international��discourse��about the country: a Manichean good/bad narrative between the MPLA and Savimbi that helped to obscure the increasing venality of the formerly socialist ruling party once the Cold War was over.��During the 1990s, the��MPLA��beamed��its hatred on Savimbi as an individual, as if to isolate UNITA���s founder from the millions of Angolans who identified with the movement.��When Savimbi��died,��western newspapers cooked up stories of celebrations in the streets of Luanda.��(I��was there, and��can confirm��it was��in fact��the quietest evening I can remember in two years��of living in the��generally��noisy city.)

There was no small amount of racism in the monstering of Savimbi, whether in the rumors of witchcraft��that accompanied reports of his death, or in the figure of the barely human African warlord who featured in a video game some years later.��Recently, the��trial of Paul Manafort in the United States has��served to��re-emphasize the most shameful of Savimbi���s political choices:��his��opportunistic partnership with Reagan���s America and apartheid South Africa.

Inside Angola, sixteen years after the war, things look different. President dos Santos, who in 2002 rebooted his fading political career over Savimbi���s dead body, was finally defeated by fading health and resigned last year. His successor, Jo��o��Louren��o, though a soldier and an MPLA loyalist to the last, has displayed a less confrontational style more becoming��of��a peacetime president.��On the one hand,��there���s nothing to stop a reappraisal of Savimbi���s legacy, and on the other, there are two groups of people��who��will positively welcome the moves to rebury the UNITA leader.

One��of these comprises people with historic connections to UNITA: the��people,��mostly from the Central Highlands, who joined UNITA before independence��because it was the political movement with the most rooted presence in their part of Angola.��UNITA was the first movement that��presented to��them the possibility of a free and independent Angola. Their sense of being Angolan was tied up with UNITA. They accepted UNITA���s��self-presentation as��the defender of an authentically African Angola against��an MPLA whose Portuguese and Cuban connections UNITA regarded with suspicion.��Even those who may have had doubts��about some of Savimbi���s choices in later years will insist that he deserves to be remembered��as a symbol of a worthy political project that was never fully realized.��This view of Savimbi will have been internalized too by the children and grandchildren of those original UNITA followers.

But��in the past decade, Savimbi���s��renown��has spread beyond those who have family connections to UNITA. From 2011,��politics in Angola was redefined by a generation of��activists who had come of age in peacetime. The reference point for their street politics��was the corruption and personalization of power that characterized the seemingly endless reign of Dos Santos, in power since 1979.��For them,��the fact that Savimbi had been so thoroughly��demonized by��the Dos Santos regime��only confirmed that he was a historical figure worthy of consideration.

Angola never had a single liberation movement with a unique purchase on the identity of the nation. For over 40 years, rival claims in a zero-sum game have deepened mutual suspicions.��No one is suggesting that Savimbi should be accorded anything like the North Korean-designed 120-meter concrete phallus that commemorates founding president Agostinho Neto.��But simply a��memorial to Savimbi��more��enduring than a name scratched in��tree��bark would signal��a recognition��that the history of the nation��is greater than the history of one��party.