Sean Jacobs's Blog, page 245
September 9, 2018
Public funds for private gain
Image: Aikawa Ke (via Flickr CC).
This week in New York, on the margins of the UN General Assembly, discussions will take place about mobilizing resources to support the provision of education by ���non-state��� actors. One proposal, the Education Outcomes Fund, is intended to apply to several countries in Africa and the Middle East.
Beyond openly and exclusively focusing on non-state actors, the Education Outcomes Fund (EOF) for Africa and the Middle East is designed to create markets for ���non-state��� providers while, at the same time, guaranteeing profits for private investors that purchase ���impact bonds.��� In the process, transferring tax-payer funded aid into the pockets of private corporations and individuals. Given the refrain of governments about a scarcity of funds for education, this transfer of taxpayer funds intended for the well-being of children to private investors who seek to profit from education is deplorable.
It has rung alarm bells among the representatives of the teaching profession, member organizations of Education International.
The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including SDG4 which commits governments and the international community to the achievement of inclusive and equitable free quality education and lifelong learning for all, were a tremendous breakthrough for the world. They provided hope, but also concrete commitments to social justice, public services and democratic development. The Education Outcomes Fund is a distortion of that purpose and mission.
The EOF���s preference for non-state actors and schooling models that include Public Private Partnerships/charter schools and fee charging,��so called�����low-cost,�����private schools ignores the evidence, which shows that privatization does not improve access to nor outcomes of education but rather deepens inequality and segregation, denying the right of all children and youth to quality education.
This is also borne out in research commissioned by Education International which looks at the impact of so called ���low-cost��� private schools on access and equity and quality.
Our research, for example in Uganda, Kenya and Nigeria which focuses on Bridge International Academies finds that far from providing quality education at a low cost is unaffordable and inaccessible for the very poor and disadvantaged. The business model implemented by this, and other, for-profit school chains involves a number of measures designed to increase rates of profitability which compromise quality teaching and learning. It is a business model which is predicated on the employment of unqualified staff, delivering a standardized scripted curriculum showing little if any regard for inclusive education and cultural and linguistic diversity.
The EOF argues that its model���s strength lies in the fact that it will only pay for ���outcomes��� achieved. However, results-based financing of education creates perverse incentives to invest in narrow, superficial, short-term ���gains��� rather than sustainable system strengthening and the holistic development of the child critical to social, cultural, democratic and economic development. A quest for outcomes and the involvement of profit-making organizations in education can lead to the further marginalization of the most vulnerable groups in society.
The promotion by EOF of non-state actors indicates a lack of respect and regard for democratic governance of education and will contribute the commodification of education. Education must be universally embraced as a human right and a public good, not a market commodity.
Education is a public responsibility. The SDGs are about assuming those responsibilities. They are essential to the future and cannot be contracted out or sacrificed to the market. And, yes, they require political will to ensure a sufficient and sustainable source of public funding. We cannot rely on charity or��the private sector.
If we believe that all children, regardless of their background or circumstances, regardless of the community, country or continent in which they live have a right to quality education, governments and the international community must invest in the expansion and strengthening of quality, free, universally accessible public education.
September 8, 2018
Twisting pan-Africanism to promote anti-Africanism
[image error]
Kemi Seba, via Wiki Commons.
Those following immigration politics in Europe, especially Italy, may have noticed the appropriation of the words of Marxist and anti-imperialist heroes and intellectuals by the new nationalist��and racist��right��to support��their��xenophobic or nationalist arguments. From��Samora��Machel��(Mozambican independence leader),��Thomas��Sankara��(Burkinabe revolutionary), Che Guevara,��Simone Weil (a French philosopher influenced by Marxism and anarchism), to Italian��figures like Sandro��Pertini��an��anti-fascist partisan during World War II, later leader of the Socialist Party and president of the Italian republic in the 1980s,��or Pier Paolo Pasolini (influential communist intellectual).
The use of Marxist-inspired arguments, often distorted or decontextualized, to support racist, traditionalist or nationalist political positions, is referred to as��rossobrunismo��(red-brownism) in Italy.
In Italy it got��so��bad,��that��a group of writers���some gathered in��Wu Ming��collective���made it their work to debunk these��attempts.��They found, for example, that a sentence��shared��on��several nationalist��online��pages and profiles���attributed to��Samora��Machel���that condemned��immigration as a colonial and capitalist tool to weaken African societies,��was��fake��news.
It also��contaminated political debate beyond the internet: During his electoral campaign, Matteo��Salvini, leader of the anti-immigration party Lega and��current minister for internal affairs in Italy���s government, explicitly mentioned the Marxist concept of ���reserve army of labor��� to frame the ongoing migration across the Mediterranean as a big conspiracy to import cheap labor from Africa and weaken Italy���s��white working class.��As for who benefits from cheap, imported labor (as Afro-Italian activists��Yvan��Sagnet��and��Aboubakar��Soumahoro��have pointed out), Salvini��says very little.
The��typical��representative��of red-brownism��is Diego��Fusaro, a philosopher who first became known, about a decade ago, for a book on the revival of Marxism in contemporary political thought. More recently, he promoted through his social media profiles and collaborations with far-right webzines like Il��Primato��Nazionale (published by neo-fascist party Casa Pound), a confused version of an anti-capitalist critique aggressively targeting not only the liberal left, but also feminist,��LGBT, anti-racist activists and pro-migrant organizations.��Fusaro��has theorized that immigration is part of a ���process of third-worldization��� of Europe, where ���masses of new slaves willing to do anything in order to exist, and lacking class consciousness and any memory of social rights��� are deported from Africa. As if collective action, social movements and class-based politics never existed south of the Sahara.
Yet, the appropriation of��pan-Africanist��thinkers and politicians like Machel and��Sankara��brings this kind of manipulation to a more paradoxical level. What could��motivate��the supporters of a xenophobic party, whose representatives have in the past advocated ethnic��cleansing, used racial slurs against a black��Italian government��minister, or campaigned for the defense of the ���white race,��� to corroborate their anti-immigration stance through (often false) quotations by Machel or��Sankara?
To��make this sense of this,��it is useful to��consider��the trajectory of Kemi��Seba, a Franco-Beninese activist who has sparked controversies in the French-speaking world for quite some time, and has only recently started to be quoted in Italian online discussions and blogs.
Initially associated with the French branch of the American Nation of Islam, Kemi��Seba��has been active since the early 2000s in different social movements��and��his own associations, all positioned across the spectrum of radical Afrocentrism. In the polarized French debate, traditionally wary of even moderate expressions of identity politics, Kemi��Seba���s��radical statements predictably created public outcry and earned him the accusations of racial hatred���for which he has been repeatedly found guilty. An advocate of racial separatism (or��ethno-differentialisme, as he defined it), he has quoted among his sources Senegalese historian��Cheikh��Anta��Diop, from whom he took inspiration for his ���kemetic��� ideology claiming a black heritage for ancient Egyptian culture, and Marcus Garvey, whose ideas he reformulated in his call for all the black people living in France and in Europe to return to the African motherland���while classifying those remaining as ���traitors.���
While��one would expect white oppressors to be his main target, Kemi��Seba���s��vehement attacks have often been directed toward other black activists and personalities living in France,��accusing them��of promoting integration or collaborating with the white system (and often��qualifying them��as��macaques, monkeys, or as��n��gres-alibis, ���negroes-alibis���). In��recent years, however, he has declared he would abandon his initial supremacist positions to embrace a broader pan-African stance, and moved his main residence first to Senegal, later to Benin. Now addressing��a��predominantly West African audience, he has co-opted personalities,��such as the late Burkinabe president and revolutionary Thomas��Sankara���still the most powerful political reference for the youth in Francophone Africa���among his claimed sources of inspiration. He has also endorsed the struggle against the CFA France���an ongoing critical reflection that��was��started by the work of economists such as��Ndongo��Samba��Sylla��and��Kako��Nubupko, well before��Seba��started campaigning about the issue. In August 2017, he burned a CFA banknote in public in Dakar���an illegal act under the Senegalese law���and was briefly detained before being deported from the country.
The ambiguous relationship��between Kemi��Seba���s��ideology and the far right has a long history, especially in France. Understandably, his initial racial separatism and his call for a voluntary repatriation of all blacks to Africa constituted an appealing counterpart for French white racists committed to fight the possibility of a multiracial and multicultural France. Kemi��Seba, on his side, repeatedly hinted at possible collaborations with white nationalists: in 2007, he declared:
My dream is to see whites, Arabs and Asians organizing themselves to defend their own identity. We fight against all those monkeys��(macaques)��who betray their origins. (���) Nationalists are the only whites I like. They don���t want us, and we don���t want them.
Some years later, in 2012, commenting the electoral growth of Greek��neo-nazi��party Golden Dawn in a radio program, he argued:
I want people to understand that today there is nothing to win by remaining in France, and everything to win by remaining in Africa. And the best solution for this��� unfortunately, black people only awaken when they realize that they are in danger, when they are slapped in the face. (���) Black people are unfortunately slow on the uptake, they understand only when there is bestiality, brutality. So, maybe, if we had a movement��similar to��Greece���s Golden Dawn, established in France, and if they threw black people in the sea, if they raped some, then maybe someone would understand that it is not so nice to remain in France and would return to their fucking country, to their motherland the African continent.
His supporters later qualified his statements as simple provocations, but��Seba��continued to be a favorite��guest and interlocutor for far-right groups. For example,��the webzine��Egalit����et Reconciliation, founded by Alain Soral���a well-known personality of French red-brownism who shifted from his juvenile communist engagement to later support for Front National and has been condemned for homophobic and anti-Semitic statements���has often provided a platform for��Seba���s��declarations. In 2006,��Seba��praised young white nationalist activists��in a long interview with��Novopress, an online publication by Bloc��Identitaire. The latter is a white nationalist movement which��works��to popularize the conspiracy theory of the ���great replacement������an alleged plan of ���reverse colonialism��� to replace demographically the white majority in Europe with non-white migrants��and which��inspired anti-semitic��white nationalists in the US. Bloc��Identitaire��recently formed extra-legal patrols in order to��stop��asylum seekers from crossing the border between Italy and France.
In 2008,��Seba���s��association organized a tiny demonstration against French military presence abroad with Droite��Socialiste, a small group whose members were later involved in shootings and found guilty of illegal possession of weapons and explosive material. Their hideout was also full of Adolf Hitler���s books and other neo-Nazi propaganda.
Relatively unknown until recently on the other side of the Alps,��Seba��has made his appearance on Italian websites and Facebook profiles in��recent months. Since Lega���s��promotion��to national government��in coalition with the Five Star Movement, the country has become the avant-garde of an attempt to connect different reactionary political projects���rossobrunismo, anti-EU and anti-global��sovranismo��(nationalism), white nationalism, neo-Fascism and others���and has attracted the attention of globally known ideologues,��such as Trump���s former counselor Steve Bannon��and��pro-Putin populist philosopher Alexander��Dugin��(who, not by chance, organized a meeting with��Seba��in December 2017). Small webzines like��Oltre��la Linea��and��L���Intellettuale��Dissidente,��which��following��Dugin���s��example��mix pro-Putin positions with an anti-liberal critique and��traditionalist nostalgia,��inspiring attacks against feminism, anti-racism and ���immigrationism.��� Collectively, they have dedicated space to��Seba���s��ideas and interviewed him, profiting from his visit to Rome in July 2018.
Invited by a group of supporters in Italy,��Seba��visited a center hosting asylum seekers and gave a speech where, amidst launching broadsides against the EU and African elites who are impoverishing Africa (thus forcing young people to try their luck as migrants in Europe), he slipped in a peculiar endorsement to Italy���s xenophobic minister of internal affairs:
Matteo��Salvini��[he then asked people in the audience who started booing when they heard the name to let him finish]��defends his people, but he should know that we will defend our people too!
He repeated this sentiment in an interview published later on a nationalist blog.��Seba��basically endorsed the ongoing anti-NGO campaign voiced by representatives of the Italian government. The interviewer suggested to��Seba:
Salvini���s��battle against boats owned by NGOs, which transport migrants from��Lybian��shores to Italian harbors, sometimes funded by Soros��� Open Society, reflects your��[Kemi��Seba���s]��same struggles for the emancipation from those Western humanitarian associations that operate in the African continent and enclose you all in a permanent state of psychological and moral submission.
���Yes, I realize this very well, we have the same problem,��� replied��Seba.
Attacks against the NGOs organizing rescue operations in the Mediterranean��have multiplied in the Italian political debate since last year. The Five Star Movement started a campaign against what they called the ���sea taxis��� and the previous government tried to force them to sign a code of��conduct imposing the presence of police personnel on their boats. NGOs have been alternatively accused of complicity with Libyan smugglers (but neither the investigation of a parliamentary committee, nor judges in different Sicilian courts, could find evidence for this allegation).
More��broadly, a dysfunctional regime governing migration flows, and the bungled reception of asylum seekers, allows such positions to take root in the Italian political sphere. What is often obscured, though, is that such a dysfunctional regime was originated by the restrictive policies of the Italian government and the European Union, through the abandonment of a��state-sponsored rescue program and the externalization of border control to��Libya��(where media reported the dehumanizing treatment reserved to Sub-Saharan migrants) and other third countries.
Echoing��Seba, Italian right-wing bloggers and opinion-makers make��increasing use of anti-imperialist quotations���for example, by Thomas��Sankara���to fuel this anti-NGO backlash and denounce the plundering of Africa���s wealth and resources by multinational corporations in consort with venal governments, abetted by the����development industry. By the right���s bizarre logic, stopping migration flows to Europe would be a part of the same coordinated strategy to reverse Africa���s impoverishment by Europe. This use not only overlooks the fact that African migration to Europe is a tiny portion of the massive migration flows taking place across the whole planet,��but also that��intra-African migration��is��significantly��more common.
It also distorts Thomas��Sankara���s��critical views of development, which he formulated at a time when aid mainly consisted of bilateral contributions and loans from international financial institutions, rather than��NGO-sponsored interventions. And, ultimately, it generates confusion between the critique of the classical development sector���which is fundamental and has been developed for a long time by dependency theory and other schools of critical scholarship���and an analysis of the rescue sector: indeed, most NGOs currently operating in the Mediterranean are associations created in the last few years with the explicit goal of reducing mortality along the Libyan or the Aegean routes.��They��have never participated in development projects in��sub-Saharan Africa.
What would��Samora��Machel and Thomas��Sankara��think today of the so-called ���refugee crisis��� and of the populist and xenophobic reactions it��has��provoked all over Europe? White nationalists think that they would be on their side. But what we know from their writings is that their revolutionary politics was never based on an exclusionary form of nationalism, let alone on racial separatism. Rather, it was associated with an analysis of the production of material inequalities and exploitation at the global level, and with class-based internationalism.
This is clearly articulated in many speeches pronounced by��Sankara, for example in his frequently quoted intervention on foreign debt at the African Union summit in July 1987 (a few months before��he was��murdered), where��he declared��that�����by refusing to pay, we do not adopt a bellicose attitude, but rather a fraternal attitude to speak the truth. After all, popular masses in Europe are not opposed to popular masses in Africa: those who want to exploit Africa are the same who exploit Europe. We have a common enemy.���
While many representatives of red-brownism and the new right would probably declare that they subscribe to this principle on paper, most of them are currently engaged in defusing any possibility of a class-based critique of capitalism, to which they prefer��sovranismo��and its emphasis on renewed national sovereignties. Furthermore, they are more or less directly legitimizing the action of a government that capitalizes on the anxieties of the white majority and of the impoverishment of��middle and lower classes, building a consensus around xenophobia, racial discrimination and policies of strict border control, no matter the consequences. The creative use, made by the African youth, of��Sankara���s��thought in reclaiming and obtaining political change, such as in the Burkinabe revolution in 2014, is a demonstration of��the��legacy��of his thinking��as an effective tool for emancipatory struggles���a��precious legacy that anti-racists should protect from the re-appropriation and manipulation attempted��by the European racist right.
I am German when we win, but an immigrant when we lose
Mesut Ozil in the colors of his club team, Arsenal.
Image Credit: Kieran Clarke via Flickr cc.
The mainstream media narrative following Germany���s woeful performance in the recent Fifa World Cup in Russia goes something like this: Mesut ��zil���s failure to explain himself following a controversial photo-op with Turkey���s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was not only a source of distraction, but also destroyed team spirit, and undermined his own performance. There���s no debate the photo-op demonstrated a lack of judgment on ��zil���s part given Erdogan���s open embrace of authoritarianism, but reading through some of the commentary in tabloids such as Bild, the German version of English red-top, one could have easily forgotten that Germany���s 22 other players, and the team���s coaching staff could have also had something to do with Germany���s early-exit.
Continued media provocation, and perpetual backstabbing by the German Football Association, eventually led ��zil to resign from the national team. In a resignation letter posted on his Instagram page, ��zil focused his attention on certain media pundits, and in particular on the head of the German Football Association Reinhard Grindel, who publicly criticized him. ��zil suggested Grindel���s behavior was not out of character by pointing to a 2004 Bundestag speech, when Grindel was still a conservative MP, and called multiculturalism a ���myth��� and a ���life-long lie��� and said there are too many ���Islamized��� spaces in ���our cities.��� Added ��zil: ���I am German when we win, but I am an immigrant when we lose.���
More than just a rebuke of Grindel and Germany���s football establishment and media, ��zil���s letter is rightly viewed as a more profound critique of Germany���s failure to treat all of its citizens equally. It is also reflective of a wider debate over national identity in Europe. A few weeks earlier, the Belgian striker, Romelu Lukaku, made a similar comment about being an immigrant when he loses and Belgian when he scores and wins.
Instead of taking ��zil���s resignation as an opportunity for self-reflection, a substantial proportion of both the German media and football establishment doubled down on its bigotry. Unsurprisingly, Bild failed to engage with ��zil���s actual criticism and dismissed him as whiny and unpatriotic. Meanwhile, German football stalwarts such as Uli Hoene��, who was recently reinstated as Bayern Munich���s president after serving a prison sentence for tax evasion, claimed that ��zil���s resignation is welcomed, since in Hoene����� words ���[��zil] hasn���t won a fucking tackle since the 2014 World Cup.��� Somehow, despite this, ��zil still managed to win the German national team player of the year award in 2015 and 2016.
More importantly, the debate surrounding ��zil���s retirement sparked the German version of #MeTwo on social media; the name played on #MeToo, the American movement against sexual harassment of women. The German #MeTwo signifies the struggle of dealing with dual heritage and racism as an immigrant. Ali Can, a German anti-racism activist born in Turkey, who initiated the hashtag, was inspired by ��zil���s letter, and said the conversation is ���long overdue.���
In less than 48 hours more than 3,500 posts detailed the frequent instances of ���everyday racism.��� These ranged from the well-intended but deeply-troubling ���Oh, how come you speak such good German. I would not have expected that���, to the never-ending ���Can I touch your hair?��� chorus, to more overt bigotry, othering and racist violence. My personal contribution��to #MeTwo, one of many, detailed a teenage experience, in which the parents of a rival basketball team in the city of Niederkassel decided to erupt in monkey screams every time I touched the ball.
Of course, many trolls and conservative pundits quickly dismissed #MeTwo as indulging in hyperbolic victimization. Meanwhile, others responded with the hashtag #GermanDream�� (as you can tell German social media movements lack a bit of creativity) to point to positive experiences and ���successful cases of integration.���
Both responses are, however, inadequate and misguided.
As Mohamed Amjahid, one of the most prolific writers on racism in Germany, points out: #MeTwo is not a debate, but an opportunity to listen, because for once, Germans of color are the subjects and authors of their own experiences with racism and bigotry. Part of the German Left has criticized #MeTwo on the grounds that it is really an elite movement, which prioritizes narrow identity politics over more fundamental ���material��� questions. Such critiques, which sometimes appear to simply relitigate a crude reduction of the 2016 Democratic Party primaries in the German context, ignore the intersection and frequent interaction of identity and class in Germany, and ultimately play into a much publicized but deeply flawed ���identity politics or class politics��� dichotomy. Interestingly, the new left ���national��� movement, initiated by a faction of the leftist Die Linke movement under Sahra Wagenknecht, defines itself as ���the materialist left,��� not the ���moral left��� to attract white working class German votes. This group is highly critical of migration and plays precisely into this dichotomy.
All of this is happening at a crucial juncture in German politics. The Alternative f��r Deutschland (AFD) has evidently shifted the entire political spectrum and content of political debates to the right, normalizing xenophobia, islamophobia and racism in the process. Recently, the center-right CDU���s Bavarian sister party CSU almost dealt a fatal blow to the current ruling coalition over its stance on migration and refugees. Some of its senior figures, such as Markus S��der, Alexander Dobrindt and Horst Seehofer have engaged in anti-migrant bigotry that would ��make the likes of Boris Johnson in the UK and Viktor Orban in Hungary blush. Some examples include S��der referring to asylum seekers as ���asylum tourists,��� Dobrindt claiming that an ���anti-deportation-industry��� is threatening the rule of law, and Seehofer celebrating the fact that on his 69th birthday, 69 ���rejected��� asylum seekers were deported to Afghanistan. This rightward shift is increasingly at odds with demographic dynamics and realities, which have already made Germany a de facto multi-cultural society. According to recently released figures by DESTATIS, Germany���s national statistics agency, 19.3 million, or 23.6% of the country���s 82 million inhabitants have a foreign heritage (a 4.4% increase compared to the previous year). These dynamics, and the experiences of other countries make one thing very clear: Germany���s future as nation in the 21st century will to a large extent be determined by its ability to reconcile itself with the reality of multiculturalism.
Similarly, to proponents of ���color-blindness��� in France, and to a certain extent in Belgium, there are some who fear that debates about racism and identity in Germany risk opening a Pandora���s box of polarization, challenging the German perception of citizenship and nationhood and denting Germany���s international standing. Of course debates surrounding identity and race require difficult conversations about issues such as islamophobia, imperial history and the politics of memory, access to public services, and the lack of inclusion of Germans of color in positions of economic and political power.
According to a survey by the Brost Foundation, there has been a significant increase in Islamophobia over the past two years with marked numbers of respondents stating that ���Islam is not part of Germany.��� In terms of representation, according to a government questionnaire, only 6.7% of public administration employees have an immigrant background. Karamba Diaby (SPD), the first German MP of African descent, was briefly denied service in the parliament cafeteria, and is frequently racially profiled by police and security. Following a series of racial slurs directed at him on social media, Diaby responded: ���To all racists, I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO!���
As #MeTwo powerfully demonstrated, racism is an every-day issue for many Germans of color and German society risks ignoring this issue at its own peril.
September 7, 2018
The president’s footballers
Samuel Eto'o penalty. Image credit Jason Bagley via Flickr.
Earlier this year, French language pan-African monthly��Jeune��Afrique��published an April Fool���s joke in the form of an imaginary��interview��with Samuel��Eto���o��entitled ���Why I am contesting Cameroon���s presidential elections,��� in which the striker claimed of dreaming of Cameroon���s��Etoudi��presidential palace like Caesar dreamed of Rome.
In what turned out to be a parody, the veteran striker��imagined��himself in the third person: ���Samuel��Eto���o��can be the striker or provide assists to the striker. Samuel��Eto���o��can play both left and right wings. When I was with Inter Milan and we played Bayern Munich in the Champions League finals I played��arri��re��lateral��and we won. So I don���t see why I can���t be president of my country.���
Despite a preemptive disclaimer meant to underscore the interview���s mimicry, hours after it was published,��Eto���o��released a terse��droit de r��ponse��in which he castigated the authors for their bad humor, but also for its ill-timing, which undermines Cameroon���s political discourse during a presidential election year.
Like any Cameroonian familiar with the Paul��Biya��regime,��Eto���o��knows that expressing presidential ambitions���context notwithstanding���is no laughing matter, and if the authors thought they could make a joke (and go viral) at the expense of the highest office in Cameroon, the striker made it known that he wasn���t laughing along,��but regarded the joke as an attempt to tarnish his reputation during a sensitive time in his country���s history.
In his response to the publication,��Eto���o��argued
as a Cameroonian who respects the institutions of his country and those who embody them, it is unquestionable that anyone will treat crucial issues like our supreme office and upcoming presidential elections in jest. Even more appalling is the authors��� insensitive attempt to ridicule the ���Anglophone crisis,��� an issue that has caused both strife and grief in my home country.
In the parody, when the interviewer pressed the fictive striker on what steps his presidency will undertake to address��the two-year old crisis��that has gripped the English-speaking regions��Cameroon, he invoked his brief spell with English Premier League club Chelsea as proof of his familiarity with the English mindset:�����they [Anglophones] can be rough and edgy, but my trajectory has afforded me the ability to adapt to different circumstances.��When one has played with John Terry, it will take more than a handful of secessionists to scare me.���
Two months after��Eto���o���s��indignant response��to��Jeune��Afrique��and French news channel, France 24, which had broadcast the parody interview as part of April Fool���s Day, it was��reported��in Cameroon that��Eto���o��had been summoned by the country���s authorities to embark on a goodwill trip to secondary schools in the Anglophone regions, which have been the targets of arson attacks��by secessionist fighters.��As of June 2018, Amnesty International reports that at least��42 schools��have been torched in the affected areas since the fighting began.
���We cannot build Cameroon if we do not have peace,�����Eto���o��said.
Notwithstanding the striker���s intentions, the response from Anglophone Cameroonians on social medial platforms and WhatsApp forums ranged from casual indifference to outright hostility. Some critics hurled outrage at the striker after reports and images of his��meeting��with Minister of Secondary Education,��Dr. Pauline��Nalova��Lyonga, a native of the English speaking South West region and prominent figure in President Paul Biya���s ruling Cameroon People���s Democratic Movement (CPDM), about the planned tour, which they argued was, at best insensitive and at worst an underhanded endorsement of the regime���s scorched earth approach to the crisis. Meanwhile,��those on the radical fringe,��who viewed the planned visit as an act of provocation, all��but called for bodily harm against the striker as a way to bring attention to their plight.
In the end,��Eto���o��did not��make the trip across the Mungo River to the English-speaking regions, yet it is difficult to discern whether his decision was a result of better judgement on his part, or in response to the threats of violence against his person. Nonetheless, beyond the symbolism of goodwill and photo-ops it might have elicited, it is unlikely his peace mission would have had any significant impact on the Anglophone crisis given the complexity of its causes, and the trauma of the past two years.
When one considers the affinity��Eto���o��has shown for the ruling family over the years it is easy to see why his peace mission engendered allegations from segments of the critical mass���Francophones and Anglophones���that he was merely a pawn in a self-serving��PR stunt by a cynical regime. They recall how leading up to the last presidential elections in 2011, the striker was among local celebrity guests at the presidential residence in��Mvomeka���a��dancing alongside the presidential couple.
But politics aside, it is difficult to contest that the bulk of really good strikers will have to reincarnate themselves several times to accomplish a fraction of what��Eto���o��has accomplished in one lifetime.��At this point,��Eto���o���s��legend has assumed mythological status in both the African football cannon and beyond.��A generation��of strikers��is��coming of age with his image adorning their walls. In the New Bell neighborhood of his hometown of Douala, the grounds where he played have acquired landmark status on slum tours.
This distinction is deserving of someone who has been named CAF African player of the year more than any other player in the category���s history; a player who at��the age of 19��was part of the Cameroon squad that won gold at the 2000 Olympic Tournament in Sydney, Australia. Though his descent in recent years from European football club royalty to second tier leagues is ill-fitting of an otherwise glorious legend,��Eto���o��can always brag that before his��30th��birthday, he was the first player to ever win two European trebles during spells with Barcelona and Inter-Milan.
In 2014��Eto���o��retired from international football after an ill-fated tenure as captain of the indomitable lions of Cameroon, but his likeness still graces massive billboards on the streets of��cities like Douala and Yaound�� where��his��brand remains unblemished, and still possesses the kind capital relished by apparatchiks of the Paul Biya regime.
Thus, it��would be a mistake��to assume that the striker���s failure to accomplish his peace mission was a result of a fading appeal rather than Cameroonian authorities��� continued unwillingness to address the root causes of the crisis. The spectacle of the striker���s�����mission unaccomplished�����follows a pattern of denial��that��the authorities have often employed to placate against its political shortcomings.
In��his��36th��year at the helm, 85-year-old President��Biya��announced��in October��his candidacy for another seven-year term. Given the deteriorating security situation in the English speaking regions, the war against Boko Haram in the��northern��regions, and the country���s hosting duties for next year���s African Cup of Nations tournament slated for March, it is not surprising that��Eto���o��would��distance himself from any attempt���whether done in jest���to insert him in the midst of his country���s unravelling tragedy.
Football stars have not been spared��being deployed as bait by Cameroonian authorities in their populist charm offenses. Therefore it is no mystery why legendary striker, Roger��Milla,��who serves as a��roving goodwill ambassador,��has never been shy about his unrelenting support of the political status quo.
But��perhaps most illuminating is��the story of��Joseph Antoine Bell, the former Marseille goalkeeper.��In the late��1980s, while Bell was solidifying his position as Cameroon���s leading��goalkeeper, he also established himself as a reliable straight-talker unafraid to confront the federation hierarchy, which��never seemed short of excuses when it came to organization and bonuses. He also became a critic of Cameroon���s political class, who did double duty at the country���s football federation. His reputation for candor not only made him a regular and fan-favorite of sports page headlines, but also a splinter in the soles of football authorities; which in itself was a difficult balancing act to sustain in a country where politics and sports often intersect at the nexus of backdoor power deals.
This all came to a head in��1990,��leading up to Cameroon���s historic run at the Italy hosted world cup, when during an interview with��France Football, Bell criticized the team���s preparedness for the competition while predicting their annihilation by cup holders Argentina, and their other rivals.��His��frankness was too untimely and defeatist for a team that did not have a��shortage of alternatives. Five hours before the opening match against the Diego Maradona led team, the equally competent Thomas��N���kono, then playing in goal in La��Liga��for��Espanol, was announced as Bell���s replacement.
Upon his retirement and return to Cameroon, Bell joined the ranks of Biya���s ruling CPDM, which he justified in these terms; ���whether Cameroonians belong to the CPDM or not, unfortunately, so far we have proven that they are somewhat incapable of managing their own affairs.���
These days, even though he is��preoccupied with his role as traditional ruler of his ancestral village of��Mouand��, age doesn���t seem to have stifled his flippancy. Last year, not only was the 63-year-old nominated to world football controlling body FIFA���s��Dispute Resolution Chamber��for a four-year term, he has taken a forceful role in defending Cameroon���s preparedness for next year���s African Nations Cup tournament.
Decrying the pessimism of Cameroonians about next year���s competition in a recent interview, the former��keeper��said, ���Cameroon is the only country I know which has agreed to host the CAN against the doubts of its own citizens.��I have never seen that anywhere.���
September 6, 2018
‘Why should we speak with you?’
Image from the cover of Illegality Inc. Image via the author with permission from the publisher.
Ruben Andersson is an anthropologist and associate professor at Oxford University who works on migration, borders and security with a focus on the West African Sahel and southern Europe. His book, Illegality, Inc.: Clandestine Migration and the Business of Bordering Europe, is an ethnographic account of Europe���s efforts to halt irregular migration along the Spanish-African borders. He spoke with Keren Weitzberg, author of the book We Do Not Have Borders: Greater Somalia and the Predicaments on Belonging in Kenya for Africa Is A Country.
Keren Weitzberg
Tell us a bit about yourself, your book Illegality Inc., and your latest project.
Ruben Andersson
I have been working for many years on border security ethnographically, looking at how Europe is dealing with irregular migration. I have focused particularly on migration from West Africa towards Spain and on border security in West and North African countries, where Europe has invested heavily in controlling migration. To do this work, I traveled along migration-control trails from Senegal and Mali to Morocco and the Spanish coast and visited European and African policing headquarters. I also followed border guards and aid workers, and listened to migrants themselves and the stories they told about the ���business of bordering Europe.���
More recently, I have been working on another book, which is coming out next year, called No Go World, which also addresses the question of migration. No Go World examines how Western interveners are focusing their attention on ���trouble spots��� and ���danger zones��� in areas like the Sahara Desert, which are seen as focal points for problems of migration, terrorism and instability. These areas may be on the margins of our map, but they are becoming more and more central to our politics and to how Western interveners engage with the poorer parts of the world.
Keren Weitzberg
Illegality, Inc. is an incredibly timely book, which you began long before the so-called European ���migrant crisis��� of 2015. In that year, there was a marked increase in the number of migrants trying to enter Europe both overland through Southeast Europe and across the Mediterranean Sea. The numbers have since dwindled considerably, but the issue of migration still dominates politics and headlines in Europe. Can you explain what originally drew you to the topic of irregular migration? And to the route between West Africa and Spain, which is increasingly in the news of late as other channels into Europe are cracked down upon?
Ruben Andersson
More than a decade ago, I became interested in this particular route, partly because I knew Mali quite well and already had a strong interest in that part of the world. It is also easy to forget that there was a European ���boat crisis��� (as it was called) back then. In 2006, more than 30,000 West Africans arrived among sunbathers to the Spanish Canary Islands in wooden fishing boats. Even back then, in other words, migration from Africa was in the news and very much sensationalized. (30,000 people is not much considering overall migration flows into Europe, which are counted in the millions per year.) As I was watching the news, I wanted to know what was going on and felt there was a need to see the issue from another point of view���the point of view of the people traveling along these routes. So that was my starting point, ethnographically: to join these migrants and try to understand their journeys from the inside out. Though my project ended up being much more about control efforts, border security and what the Europeans were doing in this part of the world than about the migrants per se.
Keren Weitzberg
Could you tell us more about your methodology? Why did you end up focusing more on European actors rather than the migrants themselves?
Ruben Andersson
Usually, as an anthropologist, one tries to understand a certain social world from the ���inside.��� As I started my fieldwork in coastal Senegal in 2010, I was confronted by migrants who had been deported from Spain having arrived in fishing boats onto the Canary Islands. They had a very acute understanding of the various sectors [working on migration], including us, as academics, who they saw as making a livelihood from their misfortune. They would confront me and say: ���Why should we speak to you? We���ve seen so many researchers already. There have been so many NGOs coming here. There have been EU and Spanish politicians. What do you have to offer us?���
Their perspective encouraged me to shift my gaze away from the migrants themselves (whom everyone seems to be obsessing about, even though the number of people arriving on these routes to Europe is relatively statistically small most of the time). Instead, I began to focus on a much wider and more powerful set of actors who had invested heavily in controlling migration to Europe: the border guards, the media, the aid sector and the defense industry. So, to me, working ethnographically on this issue meant taking seriously the analysis of the migrants themselves, who were on the receiving end of these controls and this attention.
Keren Weitzberg
And based on this research, what do you think are the most misunderstood aspects of ���illegal��� and subterranean migration flows from Africa?
Ruben Andersson
Where to start? There is such a range of misunderstandings and such a lack of knowledge both within media debates and within policy-makers��� framings of the issue.
First of all, we cannot simply apply the label ���illegal��� to various kinds of movement within the continent. At the crossroads of Niger and Libya, for instance, the EU and its member states have invested heavily in migration controls. They have pushed the government of Niger to put in place draconian anti-smuggling laws, sending in soldiers and so forth. But Niger is a country where West Africans are legally free to move under regional ECOWAS protocols (much like the EU Schengen agreement). The label of illegality places all migrants from West Africa under suspicion and can negatively impact highly productive and positive forms of mobility.
Another example is the coastal West African country of Mauritania, which has long attracted itinerant workers from countries further south who work in fishing, mining, service and other sectors. From 2005-2006, the country came to be seen as a hotspot for boat departures towards the Canary Islands and became the focus of European border-policing efforts. Yet, as the number of migrants headed for Spain eventually dwindled, Mauritanian law enforcement began rounding up people who had been working in the country for years. Government forces were trying to bulk up their quotas in the fight against ���illegal��� migration in order to show they were worthy of more funding and support from the Spanish government.
Another misunderstanding, as this Mauritanian example shows, is the idea that all Sub-Saharan African migrants in countries like Libya and Algeria are on their way to Europe. For years and years, we���ve been hearing that these migrants need to be blocked through joint EU efforts with North African countries. However, countries like Libya and Algeria have long been important migrant destinations in and of themselves. Many migrants have no clear idea where they will end up when they set about their journeys. Many simply want to go to, say, Libya and work. And then they find themselves in impossible scenarios (facing repression, criminality, etc.) and see no other option but to continue on to Europe. In other words, we cannot assume that everyone traveling along these routes, which are now being cracked down upon, are going to European countries. Yet it is often politically expedient���both for organizations with a stake in migration control (international organizations, law enforcement, etc.) and for European politicians���to play up the numbers.
So, we have a much more complex regional and historical picture of mobility, which policymakers risk undermining through a very short-term and blinkered idea of fighting ���illegal��� migration.
Keren Weitzberg
In Illegality, Inc., you focus on border guards, the media, the aid sector, and the defense industry���those with power over border security. Did you envision this as a project aimed at ���studying up���?
Ruben Andersson
Yes, that���s exactly what I was trying to do. And that���s what I���m continuing to do in my most recent project studying international interveners involved in the enforcement of peace-keeping, counter-terrorism and migration controls.
Keren Weitzberg
Tell us a bit more about this new project, No Go World?
Ruben Andersson
This project was inspired by what I was observing in Mali. Mali had long been a focal point for European attempts to control migration onwards to Europe. With the start of the conflict in 2012, Mali was becoming (in the eyes of interveners and the media) a ���hotbed��� of terrorism and instability, even earning the label ���Africa���s Afghanistan.��� I wanted to understand how interveners were grappling with the various risks and problems, as they saw it, in conflict zones like Northern Mali, which saw a large French military intervention followed by a UN peace-keeping operation.
Much like my first project, however, I faced an obstacle to actually doing the fieldwork. In the case of my first book, this obstacle came from migrant deportees confronting me, asking me ���Why should we speak with you?���, which led me to reformulate my project. In this case, the obstacle stemmed from the security risks involved with travel to Mali. The Foreign Office advised against any travel to this part of the world. There was a lot of university discussion of risk management and whether researchers such as myself could actually go to these areas at all. And I thought: Well, this obstacle to access is, in fact, interesting in itself.
Keren Weitzberg
So you made that (the obstacle to access you faced) into the object of ethnographic study?
Ruben Andersson
Yes. The dilemma I was facing was the same dilemma that international actors were facing. Peacekeepers were bunkering up, staying away from the front lines (at least the more well-equipped Western forces). Military forces were intervening via drone technologies and proxy forces. Media organization were keeping their core staff away from the front lines, sending instead under-equipped freelancers. Aid organizations were using West African workers rather than sending staff from further afield. Everyone was dealing with the dilemma of how to enter these seemingly remote, marginal areas. Yet, these regions were increasingly seen as key to controlling perceived transnational threats to the West (whether from migration flows, terrorism, political instability, or the drug and contraband trade).
No Go World, my forthcoming book, examines Mali comparatively, also looking at other areas, such as Libya, Somalia, and Afghanistan. There are forms of remote control developing in these ���no-go��� areas, which often amounts to little real control at all. And I think this says quite a lot about the current geo-political moment. Western powers are reconfiguring their relationship with poorer and formerly colonized parts of the world around the fear of transnational threats of one kind or another.
Keren Weitzberg
And one of those fears is migration, as you point out. To conclude, what would you recommend that researchers who are interested in migration and refugee issues in Africa focus on? What topics do you feel merit greater attention?
Ruben Andersson
One thing that we should be wary of is the intense media and political focus on certain kinds of migration, which risks redirecting our research. Maritime migration from Africa to Europe is a case in point. Do we need more studies on this kind of migration? This is what policymakers are focusing on, and this is, to some extent, what policy-relevant funding calls are asking for. But should we follow their lead? I think not.
I think we should instead pay much more attention to the kinds of mobility that are important to people���s everyday lives, such as habitual cross-border movement and trade. We need to arrive at a much deeper understanding of the role of movement in people���s lives, including how dreams and desires for mobility interact with immobility of different kinds. In this way, we can turn the table on the official gaze and on public debates surrounding African migrants, who are often seen as ���problems��� in official European discourse and policy.
And finally, we must keep shifting our gaze, to not look simply at migrants themselves, but at the powerful sectors that work on migration and the actors who shape our understanding of migration. Researching these actors, which is a way of ���studying up,��� is also very important.
September 5, 2018
The contested legacy of Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana
Kwame Nkrumah with John F Kennedy, President of the United States, n the early 1960s. Image: Wiki Commons.
In late 1961, a group of Czechoslovakian engineers commissioned by Kwame Nkrumah��and the��Convention People���s Party��traveled about western Ghana searching for the ideal site to establish a tire factory.��Eventually, one evening, they arrived at Bonsaso, a small village just south of Tarkwa on the Bonsa River, where the chief, Nana��Atakora��Koi III, offered land free of charge for the sake of the��state���s��industrial development project.��The government��aimed��to use rubber produced locally��on state farms��and��electricity��generated by��the hydroelectric dam at��Akosombo��to manufacture��car��tires that would keep Ghana moving ���forward ever, backward never.�����As the Ministry of Industries worked out plans for the factory��at Bonsaso,��the State Farms Corporation planted thousands of acres of rubber��trees��in��southwest Ghana.��The agro-industrial project fit perfectly with the government���s objectives to diversify Ghana���s cocoa-dependent agricultural sector and��industrialize its economy, all for the sake of shoring up the country���s sovereignty��and��reclaiming��its��potential and��prosperity,��as��per the promise of Nkrumah���s self-proclaimed title, ���Osagyefo,��� the redeemer.
Instead,��the plantations have enriched the upper echelons of those controlling the industry, and rubber has become yet another commodity exported��in a��minimally-processed��form��to countries that ultimately reap the lion���s share of profits from finished goods.
Today,��the tire factory in Bonsaso lies defunct, as it has for nearly two decades.��The��rubber��plantations��originally established by the State Farms Corporation are��controversially��controlled by Ghana Rubber Estates Limited (GREL), a company incorporated in 1967��when the National Liberation Council sought to liquidate state investments per the advice of the International Monetary Fund.��GREL is now��owned by the French firm��Societe��Internationale��de Plantations��d’Heveas��(60%), the Ghanaian government (25%), and a Ghanaian investment firm, Newgen Investments Limited (15%). Newgen, in which the former first lady Nana Konadu Agyeman Rawlings is a primary shareholder, acquired its shares��amidst��corrupt��divestiture��procedures from��1995-8.
The plantations and factory alike are engulfed by tangled outrage and nostalgia, ubiquitous reminders of unfulfilled potential and the uneven dividends of economic growth.��People in the vicinity of these relics of��Nkrumah���s��modernizing mission, however,��have not given up��all��hope that they may�����redeem�����the fruits of his��development visions.��What efforts are people taking now to stake claims to��rubber���s rewards? What does it mean to seize the future of a hurtful past?��What would��substantive��decolonization of��Ghana���s��rubber industry look like?
Like too many state-led development projects, the integrated agro-industrial rubber scheme,��particularly��its state farms,��involved the autocratic expropriation of land from rural farming communities. Under the State Lands Act of 1962, the government seized vast areas of land, on much of which farmers were already cultivating foodstuffs and cash crops.��Communities actively protested the land grab,��but their complaints��fell on��deaf ears, and after the 1966 coup��that��overthrew Nkrumah, none of the ensuing regimes supported the villages��� efforts to reclaim any��of the dispossessed��land. Presently��GREL���s rubber��holdings��encroach upon the land of��86��communities across southwestern Ghana.
Still, many people old enough to remember the Nkrumahist era fondly uphold Osagyefo. The very people whose communities became tightly encircled by a seemingly alien crop, whose livelihoods the state deemed backward, who have lived with the legacies of developmentalist authoritarianism etched across the landscape ever since,��nevertheless��champion Nkrumah���s efforts to uplift Ghana. They cling to his memory not out of��a recognition��of the value now being earned by Ghanaian farmers from rubber, but out of a yearning for the hypothetical������what could Ghana have become if Osagyefo hadn���t been overthrown so soon?�����After all, by 1966, the rubber trees planted during Nkrumah���s incumbency had not even begun to produce latex; the factory was still in its early stages of construction.�����If only the CPP had more time��������But��ensuing��governments, the prevalent opinion goes,��squandered Ghana���s potential, allowing its wealth to be skimmed by avaricious elites, corrupt politicians��and multinational corporations.
Nevertheless, people in western Ghana have cultivated tactics to make this situation work for them to some���albeit limited���degree. Thousands of men and women from the area and��throughout Ghana have been employed by the industry over the years, with the payoffs thereof ebbing and flowing depending on the strength of their unions and the state of the economy. Workers have access to a company health clinic, and some live in company housing quarters with their families. People in the area can send their children to primary schools constructed by GREL, and the Association of Chiefs on whose Lands GREL Operates (ACLANGO) has for the last decade negotiated community improvement projects, such as��bridges,��soccer��pitches and��water tanks,��sponsored by the company as part of its corporate social responsibility agenda and in an attempt to mitigate land litigations. Of course, these measures��really only offer a bandage��for��a wound that has festered for nearly��60��years.
The��extension of rubber state farms��in the 1960s��also served to��eclipse��the growth of the��budding private rubber sector��at that time. Before the launch of the State Farms Corporation, the CPP had in fact promised technical assistance and generous subsidies to farmers and cooperatives interested in planting rubber, and��in the late��1950s/early��1960s, people���s requests for rubber seedlings and subsidies far outstripped supply.��The rubber trees would not begin producing latex for another seven years,��but��farmers were playing the long game.��The future of the rubber industry looked bright,��yet��the CPP���impatient and��doubtful that small farmers could expand agricultural output quickly enough���made other plans.
Ghanaian��farmers��would not��attempt to plant rubber again��until the mid-1990s, when the government of Ghana launched a��program for individual rubber farmers��similar to��that of the��post-independence years.��Since then, thousands of people have planted rubber farms in western Ghana, and for the last several years, small- to mid-scale farmers have produced more than half of Ghana���s rubber output.��Despite��diminishing support from the government, people are scrambling to acquire land to plant rubber, which farmers swear is��much��more lucrative than any other crop, including Ghana���s long-time lifeblood, cocoa���a fact��that��the government of Ghana has yet to take seriously.��However,��GREL���s��massive��concession tightly constricts the acreage��available for��private��development��near the GREL��natural��rubber��processing facility��(the only facility of its kind in western Ghana), leaving rubber farmers to seek out hilly plots far removed from roads and communities.��No��soccer��pitch or borehole well offered by GREL can make up for this fact.
Statistically, Ghanaians are producing more rubber than GREL, but��functionally,��the company still dominates the industry.��What��then��are people in southwest Ghana doing about it?��Some people in western Ghana found hope in the��campaignese��of Nana��Akufo-Addo.��The New Patriotic Party candidate promised ���One district, one factory��� and free secondary school for all. When he was elected,��some mused��this could mean the re-opening of Bonsa Tyre Factory.��But despite a smattering of media articles over the last many years calling for the government���s support of the tire factory��at Bonsaso, former factory workers and people living in the vicinity of Bonsaso hold out little hope that, if the factory is ever revived, it will be the government���s doing. Many only wish that the Divestiture Implementation Committee will authorize a foreign corporation to take over the enterprise��and��inject some life back into the local economy.��The son of Nana��Atakora��Koi III��(who��originally��gave the land for the factory site to the CPP)��even tried to recruit Bridgestone, a multinational tire giant,��to take over the factory. He and many of his neighbors effectively see neocolonialism as preferable to unemployment��and marginality.
Meanwhile, rubber farmers harbor fundamentally different attitudes toward corporate power from those who dream of bringing back Bonsa Tyre Company���s bygone golden years via foreign investment. Instead, working- and middle-class individuals are looking to etch their own legacy into the��industry���s future���a dreamscape they refuse to leave to the state or Newgen or foreign investors.��In early 2016, hundreds of farmers��in southwest Ghana��marched from the town of Agona Nkwanta��to��GREL���s��processing facility,��nearly three miles away.��Together, the��farmers��protested the low producer prices for��raw��rubber offered��by��GREL.��Although��GREL technically pegs its buying price��to the world market standard,��farmers only��receive about half that value (or less) after deductions for marketing and transportation expenses, processing/packing/purchasing/service fees,��contaminant and wetness devaluations,��and��loan payments.��To protest the terms, farmers took to the streets, yet��the company did little to address their complaints.��Not long thereafter,��some farmers��began��protesting in a new way, by��refusing��to do business with the factory��and��instead selling their yields to incipient traders who export raw rubber into the C��te d���Ivoire and to destinations as far as Malaysia.��GREL has argued this jeopardizes��Ghana���s whole rubber industry, but farmers will likely continue to�����side sell��� their yields as long as GREL��otherwise��holds a monopsony.
Other��people��are imagining alternative options: rubber farmers could form cooperatives and purchase small-scale rubber processing machines, or maybe even the rubber farmers��� association could purchase the old Bonsaso site and fund its own processing facility. Less grandiose ideas���indeed, actions now being taken���entail keeping track of the rises and falls of the world rubber market to hold GREL accountable for their monthly price fluctuations, and collectively calling for fairer and more transparent valuation terms. Still others think rubber farmers should contribute a percentage of their profits to a fund that would pay for the establishment of feeder roads and bridges, so that more people can expand more farms throughout the region.
These assorted ideas aren���t guided by any overarching ideology except that things could be better, and that it���s worth the struggle to make them so. Their proponents disagree about the precise path forward.��Visionaries���farmers included���have always debated strategy in the face of colonialisms, new and old.��For all, the very planting of rubber trees is a redemptive discourse in and of itself, a claim-staking to inclusion in an industry that for decades advantaged the��powerful��to the detriment of the plenty.
But��even��these solutions are all��conservative takes on the overarching issues��at hand;��issues that are beyond farmers��� control��and��that only the state can��really��address.��The��GREL has paid the government of Ghana well over $1 million��in rent for its plantation properties in the last two decades,��so��why should farmers have to��fundraise to��construct their own feeder roads?��How is it that��more than��20��years after the rubber industry began rapidly expanding��in western Ghana��that only one processing facility exists��there,��and why has a tire factory��sat��idle since the turn of the millennium?��Given that leaders in the private rubber sector have��for years��lobbied to the government to sponsor Ghana���s membership in the International Rubber Research and Development Board,��why��is Ghana still not a member?��And how,��most��outrageously, does Nana Konadu Agyeman Rawlings��collect��GREL dividends when��local communities��on whose lands GREL operates��only��might,��if they are lucky,��have a��footbridge built��for them?
Today���s rubber farmers in western Ghana recognize the industry���s past is fraught with coercion, marginalization, and disappointment, yet they have fixated on defining its future.��It remains to be seen whether the government of Ghana will��match their��efforts��or continue to dismiss the industry��and��perpetuate��the relegated status��that��rural��western Ghana���s citizens have held��for decades.
The contested legacy of Kwame Nkrumah
Rubber tap. Image via stock-clip.com.
In late 1961, a group of Czechoslovakian engineers commissioned by Kwame Nkrumah��and the��Convention People���s Party��traveled about western Ghana searching for the ideal site to establish a tire factory.��Eventually, one evening, they arrived at Bonsaso, a small village just south of Tarkwa on the Bonsa River, where the chief, Nana��Atakora��Koi III, offered land free of charge for the sake of the��state���s��industrial development project.��The government��aimed��to use rubber produced locally��on state farms��and��electricity��generated by��the hydroelectric dam at��Akosombo��to manufacture��car��tires that would keep Ghana moving ���forward ever, backward never.�����As the Ministry of Industries worked out plans for the factory��at Bonsaso,��the State Farms Corporation planted thousands of acres of rubber��trees��in��southwest Ghana.��The agro-industrial project fit perfectly with the government���s objectives to diversify Ghana���s cocoa-dependent agricultural sector and��industrialize its economy, all for the sake of shoring up the country���s sovereignty��and��reclaiming��its��potential and��prosperity,��as��per the promise of Nkrumah���s self-proclaimed title, ���Osagyefo,��� the redeemer.
Instead,��the plantations have enriched the upper echelons of those controlling the industry, and rubber has become yet another commodity exported��in a��minimally-processed��form��to countries that ultimately reap the lion���s share of profits from finished goods.
Today,��the tire factory in Bonsaso lies defunct, as it has for nearly two decades.��The��rubber��plantations��originally established by the State Farms Corporation are��controversially��controlled by Ghana Rubber Estates Limited (GREL), a company incorporated in 1967��when the National Liberation Council sought to liquidate state investments per the advice of the International Monetary Fund.��GREL is now��owned by the French firm��Societe��Internationale��de Plantations��d’Heveas��(60%), the Ghanaian government (25%), and a Ghanaian investment firm, Newgen Investments Limited (15%). Newgen, in which the former first lady Nana Konadu Agyeman Rawlings is a primary shareholder, acquired its shares��amidst��corrupt��divestiture��procedures from��1995-8.
The plantations and factory alike are engulfed by tangled outrage and nostalgia, ubiquitous reminders of unfulfilled potential and the uneven dividends of economic growth.��People in the vicinity of these relics of��Nkrumah���s��modernizing mission, however,��have not given up��all��hope that they may�����redeem�����the fruits of his��development visions.��What efforts are people taking now to stake claims to��rubber���s rewards? What does it mean to seize the future of a hurtful past?��What would��substantive��decolonization of��Ghana���s��rubber industry look like?
Like too many state-led development projects, the integrated agro-industrial rubber scheme,��particularly��its state farms,��involved the autocratic expropriation of land from rural farming communities. Under the State Lands Act of 1962, the government seized vast areas of land, on much of which farmers were already cultivating foodstuffs and cash crops.��Communities actively protested the land grab,��but their complaints��fell on��deaf ears, and after the 1966 coup��that��overthrew Nkrumah, none of the ensuing regimes supported the villages��� efforts to reclaim any��of the dispossessed��land. Presently��GREL���s rubber��holdings��encroach upon the land of��86��communities across southwestern Ghana.
Still, many people old enough to remember the Nkrumahist era fondly uphold Osagyefo. The very people whose communities became tightly encircled by a seemingly alien crop, whose livelihoods the state deemed backward, who have lived with the legacies of developmentalist authoritarianism etched across the landscape ever since,��nevertheless��champion Nkrumah���s efforts to uplift Ghana. They cling to his memory not out of��a recognition��of the value now being earned by Ghanaian farmers from rubber, but out of a yearning for the hypothetical������what could Ghana have become if Osagyefo hadn���t been overthrown so soon?�����After all, by 1966, the rubber trees planted during Nkrumah���s incumbency had not even begun to produce latex; the factory was still in its early stages of construction.�����If only the CPP had more time��������But��ensuing��governments, the prevalent opinion goes,��squandered Ghana���s potential, allowing its wealth to be skimmed by avaricious elites, corrupt politicians��and multinational corporations.
Nevertheless, people in western Ghana have cultivated tactics to make this situation work for them to some���albeit limited���degree. Thousands of men and women from the area and��throughout Ghana have been employed by the industry over the years, with the payoffs thereof ebbing and flowing depending on the strength of their unions and the state of the economy. Workers have access to a company health clinic, and some live in company housing quarters with their families. People in the area can send their children to primary schools constructed by GREL, and the Association of Chiefs on whose Lands GREL Operates (ACLANGO) has for the last decade negotiated community improvement projects, such as��bridges,��soccer��pitches and��water tanks,��sponsored by the company as part of its corporate social responsibility agenda and in an attempt to mitigate land litigations. Of course, these measures��really only offer a bandage��for��a wound that has festered for nearly��60��years.
The��extension of rubber state farms��in the 1960s��also served to��eclipse��the growth of the��budding private rubber sector��at that time. Before the launch of the State Farms Corporation, the CPP had in fact promised technical assistance and generous subsidies to farmers and cooperatives interested in planting rubber, and��in the late��1950s/early��1960s, people���s requests for rubber seedlings and subsidies far outstripped supply.��The rubber trees would not begin producing latex for another seven years,��but��farmers were playing the long game.��The future of the rubber industry looked bright,��yet��the CPP���impatient and��doubtful that small farmers could expand agricultural output quickly enough���made other plans.
Ghanaian��farmers��would not��attempt to plant rubber again��until the mid-1990s, when the government of Ghana launched a��program for individual rubber farmers��similar to��that of the��post-independence years.��Since then, thousands of people have planted rubber farms in western Ghana, and for the last several years, small- to mid-scale farmers have produced more than half of Ghana���s rubber output.��Despite��diminishing support from the government, people are scrambling to acquire land to plant rubber, which farmers swear is��much��more lucrative than any other crop, including Ghana���s long-time lifeblood, cocoa���a fact��that��the government of Ghana has yet to take seriously.��However,��GREL���s��massive��concession tightly constricts the acreage��available for��private��development��near the GREL��natural��rubber��processing facility��(the only facility of its kind in western Ghana), leaving rubber farmers to seek out hilly plots far removed from roads and communities.��No��soccer��pitch or borehole well offered by GREL can make up for this fact.
Statistically, Ghanaians are producing more rubber than GREL, but��functionally,��the company still dominates the industry.��What��then��are people in southwest Ghana doing about it?��Some people in western Ghana found hope in the��campaignese��of Nana��Akufo-Addo.��The New Patriotic Party candidate promised ���One district, one factory��� and free secondary school for all. When he was elected,��some mused��this could mean the re-opening of Bonsa Tyre Factory.��But despite a smattering of media articles over the last many years calling for the government���s support of the tire factory��at Bonsaso, former factory workers and people living in the vicinity of Bonsaso hold out little hope that, if the factory is ever revived, it will be the government���s doing. Many only wish that the Divestiture Implementation Committee will authorize a foreign corporation to take over the enterprise��and��inject some life back into the local economy.��The son of Nana��Atakora��Koi III��(who��originally��gave the land for the factory site to the CPP)��even tried to recruit Bridgestone, a multinational tire giant,��to take over the factory. He and many of his neighbors effectively see neocolonialism as preferable to unemployment��and marginality.
Meanwhile, rubber farmers harbor fundamentally different attitudes toward corporate power from those who dream of bringing back Bonsa Tyre Company���s bygone golden years via foreign investment. Instead, working- and middle-class individuals are looking to etch their own legacy into the��industry���s future���a dreamscape they refuse to leave to the state or Newgen or foreign investors.��In early 2016, hundreds of farmers��in southwest Ghana��marched from the town of Agona Nkwanta��to��GREL���s��processing facility,��nearly three miles away.��Together, the��farmers��protested the low producer prices for��raw��rubber offered��by��GREL.��Although��GREL technically pegs its buying price��to the world market standard,��farmers only��receive about half that value (or less) after deductions for marketing and transportation expenses, processing/packing/purchasing/service fees,��contaminant and wetness devaluations,��and��loan payments.��To protest the terms, farmers took to the streets, yet��the company did little to address their complaints.��Not long thereafter,��some farmers��began��protesting in a new way, by��refusing��to do business with the factory��and��instead selling their yields to incipient traders who export raw rubber into the C��te d���Ivoire and to destinations as far as Malaysia.��GREL has argued this jeopardizes��Ghana���s whole rubber industry, but farmers will likely continue to�����side sell��� their yields as long as GREL��otherwise��holds a monopsony.
Other��people��are imagining alternative options: rubber farmers could form cooperatives and purchase small-scale rubber processing machines, or maybe even the rubber farmers��� association could purchase the old Bonsaso site and fund its own processing facility. Less grandiose ideas���indeed, actions now being taken���entail keeping track of the rises and falls of the world rubber market to hold GREL accountable for their monthly price fluctuations, and collectively calling for fairer and more transparent valuation terms. Still others think rubber farmers should contribute a percentage of their profits to a fund that would pay for the establishment of feeder roads and bridges, so that more people can expand more farms throughout the region.
These assorted ideas aren���t guided by any overarching ideology except that things could be better, and that it���s worth the struggle to make them so. Their proponents disagree about the precise path forward.��Visionaries���farmers included���have always debated strategy in the face of colonialisms, new and old.��For all, the very planting of rubber trees is a redemptive discourse in and of itself, a claim-staking to inclusion in an industry that for decades advantaged the��powerful��to the detriment of the plenty.
But��even��these solutions are all��conservative takes on the overarching issues��at hand;��issues that are beyond farmers��� control��and��that only the state can��really��address.��The��GREL has paid the government of Ghana well over $1 million��in rent for its plantation properties in the last two decades,��so��why should farmers have to��fundraise to��construct their own feeder roads?��How is it that��more than��20��years after the rubber industry began rapidly expanding��in western Ghana��that only one processing facility exists��there,��and why has a tire factory��sat��idle since the turn of the millennium?��Given that leaders in the private rubber sector have��for years��lobbied to the government to sponsor Ghana���s membership in the International Rubber Research and Development Board,��why��is Ghana still not a member?��And how,��most��outrageously, does Nana Konadu Agyeman Rawlings��collect��GREL dividends when��local communities��on whose lands GREL operates��only��might,��if they are lucky,��have a��footbridge built��for them?
Today���s rubber farmers in western Ghana recognize the industry���s past is fraught with coercion, marginalization, and disappointment, yet they have fixated on defining its future.��It remains to be seen whether the government of Ghana will��match their��efforts��or continue to dismiss the industry��and��perpetuate��the relegated status��that��rural��western Ghana���s citizens have held��for decades.
September 4, 2018
Pentecostal penance provides dubious prosperity
Enoch��Adeboye. Image via Wikipedia Commons.
Recent coverage on the BBC about Pentecostal pastors and churches in��South Africa��and��Nigeria��raises a question about the influence that they have in these countries��and across sub-Saharan Africa.
The BBC articles focus on controversies surrounding the wealth of Pentecostal leaders. One features the Malawian pastor, Shepherd��Bushiri, and his church in Pretoria, South Africa. It investigates the links between the money that the church receives from its members and��Bushiri���s��personal fortune:��Bushiri��owns at least one private jet and is rumored to have investments in mines and hotels across South Africa.
Another piece on Nigeria raises similar issues about the way in which Pentecostal leaders obtain and use their members��� money. It quotes critics in Nigeria who argue that poor Christians are being conned out of their hard-earned money through the�����prosperity gospel,�����a doctrine associated with Pentecostalism that holds that if Christians give money to the church God will miraculously provide them with wealth and health in return.
‘It is just to shame us’
Critical, investigative reporting on churches led by figures like Shepherd��Bushiri��or Enoch��Adeboye��in Nigeria is welcome, especially in instances where there appears to be significant evidence of��illegal and exploitative activity. At the same time, it is important not to overstate the degree to which these figures and the kind of Pentecostal churches that they lead dominate the religious landscape of sub-Saharan Africa.
In 2012, before��Bushiri���s��influence had spread much beyond the borders of Malawi, I was doing research in a rural area of the country. Part of��my work touched on the nature of local churches. The church I spent most time in was a Baptist Church, part of a denomination that has not historically endorsed prosperity theology. The majority of the church���s members lived on less than a dollar a day, while the pastor, David, was so poor that he had to sustain his family through subsistence farming.
Despite the church���s history Pastor David spent time with Pentecostal pastors that espoused the prosperity gospel. Their influence was clearly having an effect. From time to time he would say to me, “I work for God, and he gives back to me.” One Sunday a Pentecostal preacher that the pastor had invited to the church invoked the same phrase during a sermon she gave, exhorting the congregation to give their money to the church.
The congregation were however��skeptical. After the service they talked about whether the pastor���s message was right, and how her pronouncements might�����shame�����members of the church, adding indignity to their poverty.
Their reaction points to the fact that poor Malawians are not just the superstitious dupes of prosperity preachers. It also suggests that they��let pronouncements about��prosperity trammel other countervailing ideas in Christian theology, such as��charity and humility.��During the course of��my research I saw Pastor David come in for stiff criticism when he failed to provide support to members of his church short on food or facing expensive medical bills.
The importance of charity and humility is alluded to in the BBC piece on Nigeria, and has been noted��also��in��research on churches elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa.
‘We just let Bushiri be Bushiri’
Back in Lilongwe, Malawi���s capital city, I spoke to another Baptist pastor, asking him what he thought of Shepherd��Bushiri��and his church. I had just encountered��Bushiri��for the first time on Malawian television. All the elements of his ministry that have drawn attention in recent coverage were present in the broadcast, including the promises of miraculous health and wealth. In response to my question the pastor rolled his eyes and commented shortly,�����We just let��Bushiri��be��Bushiri.���
Figures like��Bushiri��and the churches that they lead will likely continue to garner media attention for the foreseeable future. But if research on Christianity in sub-Saharan Africa is anything to go by then there will also be pastors and many ordinary Christians who will remain unconvinced by them. Letting�����Bushiri��be��Bushiri,�����they will participate in churches led by leaders of much more modest means, churches that emphasize charity and humility as much as prosperity.
September 3, 2018
Decolonizing the academy
Kunsth��gskolen i Oslo, Oslo Academy of Fine Arts.
This past June, on the day that the Peace Research Institute in Oslo (PRIO) hosted the first ever academic event on “Decolonizing the Academy” in Norway,��a syndicated media commentator for the Norwegian intellectual weekly��Morgenbladet��unwittingly demonstrated why such an event was needed in the first place. On��a two-page spread in��Morgenbladet��that day, the Norwegian��Labour��Party politician and social democratic think-tank apparatchik��Mr��Sylo��Taraku declared that ���in contradistinction to Germans and several other countries [sic], Norwegians do not have a history to be ashamed of. Norway has never been a colonial power, [and] we have never committed grave war crimes.���
Now consider this statement in light of the following facts: though Norway was itself a Danish colony at the time, Norwegians did take part in the Danish-Norwegian transatlantic slave trade, which involved the transportation of an estimated 100,000 African slaves from West Africa to the Danish West Indies in the period between 1626 and 1825.��Danish-Norwegian Lutheran bishops such as the one-time bishop of my own hometown of Bergen on the West Coast of Norway, Erik Pontoppidan��(1698-1764), defended the Danish-Norwegian enslavement of Africans on the so-called Gold Coast of Africa (present Ghana) on the grounds that it was�����infinitely better�����for Africans to be slaves under Christians than�����merely��� free��heathens.
Norwegian scholars of history and anthropology have in recent years documented the involvement of Norwegians in the high tide of European colonialism, whether as plantation owners on estates with thousands of slaves in Portuguese colonial Mozambique, or as mercenaries in the Belgian King Leopold���s colony of the Congo.��Norwegians may have “hitchhiked their way to the boons of colonial empire,” but they were certainly part of colonialism.
The small state of Norway, which declared its independence from Sweden in 1905, certainly harbored colonial aspirations, and under��a government led by the then Peasant Party, in which the later German Nazi collaborator��Vidkun��Quisling��(1887-1945)��served as Minister of Defense in 1931 formally occupied parts of Greenland, an occupation which was only abandoned when international courts ruled against the state of Norway in 1933. As for the Norwegian state���s policies towards the indigenous Saami population of Northern Norway, the policies of assimilation, deprivation of land and cultural rights and brutal suppression of Saami uprisings until the 1970s bore all the hallmarks of internal colonialism, including the official stigmatization of the Saami as an “inferior race.”
The late Norwegian social anthropologist Marianne��Gullestad who��never tired of pointing out��that the myth of Norwegian exceptionality when it comes to colonialism and racism is part and parcel of a long-standing and��widespread social and political imaginary inside and outside of Norway.��It is by no means limited to the political right, and has the support��or tacit consent of a great��number of Norwegian��tenured��academics. As a case in point, one need look no further than the bestselling popular title of the former militant Maoist-Leninist turned professor of development studies, Prof��Terje��Tvedt, who in his last book presents an image of a Norway that was ethnically and religiously homogeneous until the late 1960s,��and which enthusiastically and unreservedly welcomed immigrants and asylum seekers from the post-colonial world. Given the long and protracted anti-racist struggles against assorted Norwegian right-wing extremists from the 1970s and well into the 2000s, that is, to put it mildly, not��necessarily��how most actual former immigrants and asylum seekers to Norway��remember��it; but it is of course the privilege of Norwegians in hegemonic positions in academia, the media and in politics to leave out any trace whatsoever of their voices and experiences like Tvedt does.
Norway��has since 2013 had the most right-wing government in power since World War II, with the Norwegian Conservative Party and the populist right-wing Progress Party in power. International news media regularly and naively sing the praises of Norway���s traditions of relative gender equality, and so when the Conservative Party Prime Minister Erna Solberg announced her second cabinet in February this year, it barely registered that all of her cabinet ministers and all of her cabinet secretaries were in fact white. Apologists for the government responded to public criticism of this lack of democratic representation by alleging that the government prioritized “competence” over “quotas,” which is a bit of a strange argument to make in the context of the highly educated country of Norway��where��having more than a few populist right-wing cabinet ministers who can barely string together a coherent argument and are much given to political lies and fabrications.
Equality in��Norway��has for most practical means and purposes come to refer��exclusively to equal representation in public positions of white males and females, and “intersectionality” is hardly a buzzword in public. And so it was no surprise that the PRIO event��on decolonizing the academy, organized by PRIO-affiliated researchers Ida Roland��Birkvad��and Cindy Horst,��should be met with condemnation by tweet��from��the Conservative Party���s Former Minister of Education and now Minister of Trade and Industry,��Mr��Torbj��rn��R��e��Isaksen, who re-tweeted an item penned by a young party colleague which characterized the idea of decolonizing the academy as an “appallingly bad idea.” There was no surprise in any of this from a conservative cabinet minister who uses a picture of Winston Churchill as his avatar on Twitter, and��who as of late has taken to playing white identity politics with��his��Norwegian electorate and recommending the works of one Jordan Peterson. The��liberal-conservative��government supporting��media outlet Minerva��(whose staff are, one need hardly point out, all white), reacted with predictable rage and fury, and��declared that ���dead white men��� should ���still be on the curriculum��� (as if anyone at all had suggested otherwise).
But the situation in Norwegian academia is, for all its talk about the merits of inclusion and diversity (all too often��code talk, again, for equal representation of white women in tenured positions and positions of power), hardly any better than in the Norwegian��government.��As I have myself noted in a recent monograph, my own discipline of anthropology, for all its professed interests in human diversity, is and remains remarkably white in Norway.
The last year has seen an increasing public backlash against the employment of international scholars at Norwegian universities from nationalist-orientated Norwegian senior academics who themselves came of age and into academic power in a time when Norwegian academics did not have to compete at all for tenure with international colleagues, and hardly had to publish so much as a word in English or any other language in order to obtain life-long tenure.��There is relatively little empirical research on the experiences of foreign-born and/or academics of minority background in Norwegian academia. But the little that we do know from research on this suggests that it is by no means easy for academics with such backgrounds.
Add to this that Norwegian university curricula in the humanities and social sciences for the�� most part consists of��academic��literature��written by and for scholars from the Global North past and present, that funding structures as well as the encroachment of neoliberal “audit cultures” in��Norwegian academia and the strong undercurrent of an unthinking methodological nationalism in many academic disciplines in Norway at present mitigates against the use of academic spaces and freedom for the purpose of exercising critical thought.��The retribution from a group of academics at the University of Oslo against the decolonizing the academy-initiative was swift, brutal, and replete with strawmen. The professor of philosophy Jens Saugstad declared the initiative to ���reek of identity politics�����which we all know by now is inherently bad, except when the identity politics in question is white and unmarked.
An associate professor of political science, Tore Wig, opined that��the initiative��represented a ���relativization of knowledge.��� The Kantian philosopher Prof Jens Saugstad for his part teamed up with the political scientist��Prof��Janne��Haaland��Matlary��and the medical scientist��Stig��S.��Fr��land��to up the ante by declaring��that��the decolonizing��ideology represented no less than a��global�����threat to universities�����[sic], and by calling for Norwegian universities to stop funding of student groups whose leaders had declared themselves positive towards��the decolonizing the academy-initiatives��immediately. So much for the value of free speech and critical thought in Norwegian academia.
What has been striking in all these responses, is of course that the irate professors in question have denounced these initiatives in a mode of absolute certainties, whilst documenting to all and sundry that they had��not so much as bothered to read any of the relevant academic literature,��dating back at least to Ngugi��wa��Thiongo���s��seminal 1986��Decolonizing��The��Mind. We can of course be quite sure that few of these Norwegian professors have even heard such names or read anything from them,��but it is as��Erling��Sandmo,��Professor��of��History at the University of Oslo, noted��that here it is��as if postcolonialism never��happened, and as if postcolonial scholars from Franz Fanon, Edward W. Said, Achille��Mbembe, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Gayatri��Chakravorty��Spivak, Stuart Hall,��and��Paul��Gilroy��never even existed. The message to prospective university students in Norway was unmistakable: if you are sure and confident enough about your own lack of knowledgeability and reading of relevant academic literature, there is in other words no need to read up on anything before going on the attack in public either.
As for Haaland��Matlary, a former cabinet secretary of the Christian Democratic Party in Norway and former “scientific advisor” to the Vatican under “God���s Rottweiler,” Joseph Ratzinger, it is no secret where she stands: in a syndicated column in the Norwegian business rag��Dagens��N��ringsliv��in��2017, she referred to ���American liberals��� taking part in the tearing down of statues commemorating Southern white racist generals and slave owners in the USA after the white supremacist��Dylann��Roof���s murder of black churchgoers at Charleston in South Carolina in 2015 as an expression of ���an unprecedented civilizational decline.���
Another line of attack has been to proceed as if the decolonizing the academy-initiatives were not anchored in the humanities and the social sciences,��but were intended to be applicable to the natural sciences too.
In her keynote, Meera��Sabaratnam, chair of the Decolonizing SOAS Working Group at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London and author��of����Decolonising��Intervention: International��Statebuilding��in Mozambique��highlighted��the importance of decolonial knowledge for teaching, research and publication. Decolonizing the academy was, she argued ���about what kind of knowledge gets valued.��� It was linked to a ���positive identification with anti-racism.��� She called for ���subverting the idea that the Global North should be the protagonists��� in research, and move to see ���research as co-production,��� whereby our ���co-producers��� in the Global South get real influence on the questions that are asked, the framing of the questions, and the methodologies used. She also called for a restructuring of the curriculum ���we set��� so that ���every student can be able to see themselves as belonging.���
Whilst these are all noble ideas and sentiments,��in��Norway, where academic scholars who know their postcolonial studies are relatively few and far between, and certainly not in any hegemonic positions in academia, inevitably��raises��the question as to how exactly they are to be put into practice.
The PRIO event Decolonizing the��Academy was for an event of this sort extremely well attended. However, one left the event with a strong feeling that one had born witness to a bit of preaching to the choir, and that it will take much more than this in the years to come to move from theory to practice.��The reactions certainly indicate that institutional structures as well as hegemonic conceptions both right and left in Norway makes even the most modest part of this��program,��relating to an increased representation of scholars of minority and/or immigrant background in Norwegian academia, a fairer representation of past and present scholars from the Global South on university curricula in Norway, and a more equitable approach to co-operation and partnership��with scholars and universities in the Global South a hard sell indeed. Critical whiteness studies will not be coming to Norway anytime soon either.
September 1, 2018
The Ghetto President of Uganda
Bobi Wine campaigning in Uganda. Image via Wikimedia Commons.
Popular Ugandan musician, Bobi Wine (Robert Kyagulanyi), called himself the Ghetto President years before his political success as a member of parliament (MP). He was recently court-martialed on charges of illegal firearm possession, as a pretense for his true crime: reviving opposition politics in Uganda. For years, his songs were openly critical of the President-for-life Yoweri Museveni. Since he was elected to parliament last year, Bobi Wine has given people hope by speaking and singing out even louder against the ruling party, the National Resistance Movement (NRM). The attempt on Bobi Wine���s life during an election rally in Arua, followed by his arrest and 33 other champions of the opposition, dubbed the ���Arua 33,��� ignited protests across Uganda. While the government���s repressive tactics were not unexpected, the people���s response was. What makes the Bobi Wine moment so different?
Bobi Wine is the symbol of a new politics for change in Uganda. This why he and the Arua 33 have the NRM worried. For more than 30 years, President Museveni monopolized the executive office due to his fear of insecurity; he warned of conflict under the opposition���s leadership and threatened to cling to power by force. His regime and the military have also benefitted from continued aid and support of western countries. President Museveni, like many postcolonial African leaders, earned his legitimacy ���in the bush������through war. The loyalty he commands is rooted in past military feats and, increasingly, in repression carried out by the army. Until Bobi Wine emerged, the main opposition leader, Kizza Besigye, shared similar political qualifications to the President. Besigye was a colonel in the same guerilla front that morphed into the NRM.
As an independent and a political outsider, Bobi Wine offers the Ugandan political sphere a fresh perspective. He is everything President Museveni is not: young, energetic and stylish. He speaks the language of the Ugandan youth who are concerned about education, public services and employment. While the war hero was the idol of the previous generation, Bobi Wine���s story of the slum-kid turned popstar resonates with youth. The under 35s, who make up nearly 80% of the population, have grown tired of political corruption, economic stagnation and the cronyism of the Museveni regime. Bobi Wine addresses these themes in his lyrics, as well as encourages Ugandans to organize. He is the fighter of a different set of struggles than the NRM: those that besiege a developing state, not a post-conflict nation.
Bobi Wine draws on a long history of music as political commentary in Africa. Traditional praise singers and popular artists (most notably Nigeria���s Fela Kuti) have used lyrics to convey political messages. In Uganda, music is part of everyday life���Afro-beats sound from the streets of poor and wealthy neighborhoods, in public buses, night clubs and across rural farmlands. Bobi Wine’s politically subversive lyrics are shielded by their catchy tunes and everyday popularity. It makes it hard for the regime to tell if those listening to his songs are innocuous or revolutionary. As an MP, Bobi Wine blurs the line even further between the politician and the performer. He continues to give concerts, which the regime has attempted to ban. As a self-proclaimed ���gangster,��� Bobi Wine further threatens top politicians by inviting ordinary Ugandans to draw parallels between him and them.
In a country where many are afraid to outright criticize the President and others have lost hope that regime change will ever happen, Bobi Wine���s movement has shaken things up. Could his entrance into the political scene mean President Museveni���s downfall? No doubt the wananchi of Uganda think so. The seemingly impenetrable power of Museveni has already begun to crack. In a recent humiliating defeat, the NRM lost an important election���the one that set off the current turmoil���to a candidate who is part of the Arua 33. Only a month earlier, in July, the NRM revealed internal division following confusion and backtracking over a tax President Museveni himself ordered. These events and the release of Bobi Wine and the Arua 33 on bail have demonstrated that dissent may not be easy, but that it is possible. Building on the work of activists like Dr. Stella Nyanzi, jailed for criticizing President Museveni on social media, and protests led by Besigye, Bobi Wine is widening the political opening and inspiring youth to participate actively in politics. If he maintains his courage, Ugandans may no longer dancing to President Museveni���s tune in 2021.
Sean Jacobs's Blog
- Sean Jacobs's profile
- 4 followers
