Sean Jacobs's Blog, page 255

Being coloured and Indian in South Africa after apartheid

Where do these debates about the place of coloureds and Indians in South Africa come from?





Image credit Markus Vollmer via Flickr.

Three��recent controversies have brought to the attention of many a politics often submerged by the imperatives of national unity��in contemporary South Africa: The events at��Siqalo��in Mitchells Plain, and the debate about renaming Cape Town International Airport��reminded us of the intensity of the racialized language that��circulates between��Coloured��and African populations in the Cape. And recent comments by the leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters, about Indian racism, has produced a number of responses���polarized by��either their��support��for or��denunciations��of the comments he made.

The��responses to��all three events so far tends��to be divided along the lines of one group���among them��former activists, well known journalists and bloggers,��and educated��elites denouncing��the politics that might be explicit or��lying��in wait in references��to being Coloured or Indian. For��this group, the references to��Coloured��or the new incarnation of��� first nations or Khoi conceals��a racism toward Africans at best, and at worst are identities being instrumentally mobilized by charlatans, chauvinists and political��entrepreneurs��masking��opportunistic��interest in the language of justice. On the other hand,��a more popular view, considers��these��expressions as��the articulations��of legitimate��political problems,��i.e., that��Coloured��populations are being marginalized��in��post-apartheid��South Africa,��or alternatively, that��Coloured��is an identity that should be replaced by more affirming cultural self-descriptions, such as Khoi or Griqua. And in the case of the Indian question, a popular view that insists that there is more than a��large��breyani��pot of truth to the claim that Indians are racist toward Africans.��My aim here is not��necessarily to��argue for, nor refute any one side of these responses. I wish rather to suggest that we put them in a historical context��so that we illuminate where they come from.

The first point I wish to make is that this is not a problem��peculiar��to the Cape,��or��specific to South Africa. What we are witnessing are the ambiguities that have faced certain population groups after decolonization, particularly in Africa. One of the truisms of colonial rule, particularly in the British colonies, and particularly after certain experiences of revolt that they faced in India and parts of Africa, was the lesson that a united native population was an extremely threatening proposition. The result was a policy pioneered first in West Africa, then East and then Southern Africa, of firstly dividing the local population in order to better rule them, and secondly to implement a policy of co-opting local political leaders and refashioning local customs, so that these leaders��become the indirect rulers of the colonial state. If local populations had different cultural identities, these were now transformed into tribal identities. Tribes were ascribed to certain��territories that��would be their homelands, where they would live under customary law administered by chiefs anointed by the colonial administrator. Cultural identity was now turned into political identity.

Europeans on��the other hand, were not a tribe, but��were defined by their racial identity while��black Africans were defined by their ethnic or tribal identities. To be a “native,” classified as “indigenous,” meant that one had to be defined as an ethnic subject of a particular territorial-administrative unit. But some states��went even further. As the Zimbabwean historian James��Muzondidya��has noted, colonial Rhodesia further distinguished between an “aboriginal native,” and a “colonial native.” An aboriginal native was an ethnic subject defined as belonging to that particular territory and therefore having certain rights of access to land and so on. But “colonial natives” were different: they lived on the land but did not belong there.��They were ethnic strangers.

In Rhodesia this��often��meant they were��descendants��of refugees who fled political conflict in 18th��century South Africa, or they were migrant workers. As the Government Notice No. 223 of 1898 put it, colonial natives were “all members of the Zulu,��Bechuana��and Zambesi tribes, all kaffir tribes of the Cape Colony, and any native not being a descendent of an aboriginal of Rhodesia.” Natives belonged in these ethnic reserves, while the city or the town belonged to the racial subject: the Europeans. Hence the Vagrancy Act of 1893 and the��Registration of Natives Regulations of 1895 in Rhodesia was to make it compulsory for Africans to carry a pass if they were to be in an urban area. A native in a town who was not there for the purpose of work was loitering without intent, and a vagrant. These pass laws regulating the movement of Africans between town and countryside��is��a feature of this mode of rule by the colonial state across��British��Africa��not just South Africa.

This��experience of the��colonial world was therefore made up of two main identities: the settler who was racialized as European or white, and the native who was��ethnicized��as a tribal subject. But across the continent there were also categories of populations who did not fit neatly into this division of white settler and black native. They were often categories of populations who were not defined as ethnic, but��like the Europeans,��they were classified��as races under colonial law. Like��Europeans, colonial thinking said��they came��from elsewhere, and��were also��therefore not indigenous.

In Northern Nigeria this ascription was given to those classified as Fulani. In Rwanda, the Tutsi were defined as a non-indigenous race, while the Hutu were defined as the ethnic natives. In East Africa and Southern Africa, the Indians were defined as a race. And in Southern Africa��more broadly, the��descendants��of slaves and mixed populations were defined as coloureds, mestizo, or creoles. These groups have been called “subject races” by the Ugandan scholar Mahmood��Mamdani. They were used as intermediaries between the Europeans and those seen as indigenous; they��were��elevated��above the native but��kept well below the European.��The result was��to produce a��double contempt: they were held in contempt by those��who ruled over��them��and��held in contempt by those over whom��they��held petty authority.

This was a deliberate policy that drew on racial conceptions of who was said to have some European blood in��them��and��was motivated by a political calculation aimed at��dividing an opposition to the colonial state. The decision, for example to co-opt the Coloured population in the Cape evolved along these lines. An Attorney General of the Cape��in the early 1900s was to remark: “I would rather��meet the Hottentot at the hustings voting for his representative than meet the��Hottentot in��the wilds with a gun on his shoulder.” Prime Minister��Herzog���s��policy on��voting for the��Coloured��population in the Cape��in the Pact government of 1924 was motivated by his observation that:

It would be very foolish to drive the��Coloured��people to the enemies of the Europeans���and that will happen if we expel him���to allow him eventually to come to rest in the arms of the native.

This thinking would crystalize most forcefully in the mind of Secretary of Native Affairs, and close ally of Verwoed, the��anthropologist Dr. W. M��Eiselen, who explained the vision in 1955: “Briefly and concisely put, our Native policy regarding the Western Province aims at the ultimate elimination��of the Natives from this region.” By natives, he��meant��of course black Africans, who would be defined as belonging to a tribe, and therefore belonging in a homeland��elsewhere.

In the Cape��a deliberate��policy of social��engineering designed to co-opt the��Coloured��population was put in motion through Influx Control laws:��the��Coloured��Labour��Preference Area Policy.��The policy was systematically implemented over the next few decades. In the first phase, as��Dr��Eiselen��pointed��out,��there would be: “the removal of foreign Africans and freezing of the number of African families, coupled with the limited importation of single migrant workers to meet the most urgent needs.”

In December 1965 Black��Labour��Regulations were introduced, designed to end long term contracts for black African��laborers��in the Cape so that they would not get passes to work in the city. In 1966 an official freeze on building family housing for Africans was declared, with no��state��housing built for the next ten years thereafter. The new��labour��law��stipulated:

if an employer wishes to employ an African, he is required to obtain a��Coloured��labour��preference clearance certificate from the Department of Manpower stating that��no suitable Coloured��person is available to fill the position.

This does not imply that these policies were implemented with the full support of��those classified as��Coloured,��nor��without resistance. But as waves of successive laws��forcefully��implemented by the state, they fundamentally reshaped, and remapped the demographic and spatial��present��of the Cape into what was inherited in 1994.

The predicament for��Coloured��and Indian populations today is not dissimilar to the predicament that subject races��like the Fulani, the Omani Arabs or the Tutsi��faced across the continent after independence: during colonialism they were the beneficiaries of certain policies designed to co-opt them and prevent a united opposition emerging amongst the colonized, but they were also victims of colonial segregation and subjugation. Because the colonial state treated some a little better than others, those who were treated as a little better tended to internalize their relative superiority: Tutsi nationalists thought themselves as naturally superior to Hutu. Indians tended to think of themselves as better than Africans and��Coloureds. And��Coloureds��tended to think themselves better than Africans���but not better than Whites. It is a tragic reality��that the designs of the colonial state have become taken as the��natural order of things by many today still.

Writing in the midst of the��land reforms in Zimbabwe��over a decade ago,��Muzondidya��noted that:

Coloureds��and Indians��[in Zimbabwe]��faced an even more complicated situation. Specifically constructed by the state as an alien, urban people��without rural ancestral homes (kumusha), they could neither acquire nor settle on land in Native Reserves and all other designated African areas, including Native Purchase Areas and African townships in urban areas.

When land reform finally came around in Zimbabwe, designed to undo the legacy of white settler monopoly on land, these “subject minorities” found themselves ineligible to make land claims. To access that��land,��one had to belong to an ethnic or tribal authority.

Coloureds��and Indians,��had no ethnic identity since they were defined��as��a��race,��and��now find themselves betwixt and between. Under colonialism, to have a racial identity was an identity of privilege��whilst having��an ethnic identity��condemned one to severe��marginalization��as a rural subject. After colonialism, in��the name of justice, states tended��to reverse��the order��in the name of��Africanization��and redistributive justice: ethnic subjects are now the most eligible for redress, and racial subjects would be last��in the line.

This is called “fair discrimination” in our current��law, and it is on a sound footing from the vantage point of justice.��But it might also activate��certain political��demands,��such��as��changing from the racial identity of being Coloured to the ethnic identity of being Khoi or Griqua. This��moves one into a different category of eligibility and puts one on a more secure footing if indigeneity is a marker of belonging��in the future.��No wonder��also that��some Indians in Kenya and Uganda campaigned��recently��to��be��classified as��a tribe. After the Asian expulsions of 1972��in Uganda, many realized��that races continued to be��seen as foreign, but ethnicities were seen to be��indigenous;��a��colonial��logic��reproduced by the postcolonial state.

The greater social and political challenges lay in reshaping how��we come��to think about each other and ourselves, the extent to which colonial constructions have come to be embodied and lived in��our dispositions��towards each other, and our��discourses about others. These are amplified by the extent to which market-based��inequalities��breathe��new life into racial and ethnic��stereotypes and prejudices.

That many think it natural that there should be a Coloured or��Khoi��majority in the Cape reflects perhaps badly on a��post-apartheid��education��system that has not made us all more aware of how the��Coloured��Labour��Preference Act worked to expel Africans from the Cape, and what��its��intentions were. Similarly, many Indians think themselves superior to Africans, reflecting a colonial policy of divide and rule, of creating hierarchies among the colonized, and spatially segregating them��so that difference enabled��their domination. Undoing these logics must draw strength from a history of continuous resistance by those few��who mobilized others against the Herzog��Bills for example, and later the��Koornhoff��Bills, and later still against the co-option strategies of the Tricameral Parliament��in 1983.

But there is a key difference that many who come from those activist traditions might have to wrestle with in order to find a politics more appropriate to our moment. Under apartheid,��resistance��movements eventually��emphasized our��sameness over��our��differences. Apartheid��left many progressives with a deep anxiety��towards acknowledging difference of any kind.��The reaction is almost knee-jerk and immediate amongst many of us to denounce those who wish to see themselves��in anything but the race-blindness that a certain variant of non-racialism holds onto��regardless��of changing political context.��Or��the reaction��is��to��denounce those who bring��to��our attention histories or current manifestations of��Coloured��or Indian racism toward black Africans.��Whatever the motivations of those political elites are who are naming this problem,��these are legacies that we have to contend with, more so��because their��effects are not just symbolic; they are also material.

Only by opening a public debate on the problem can we deal with��legitimate issues as well as the stereotypes and��the��prejudices. As both victims and beneficiaries of apartheid���s policies of divide and rule, the predicament of��those��classified��as��Coloured��or Indian��subject��races needs to be��historically located within a colonial practice and seen as a legacy of a��past.��Manifestations of��Coloured��or Indian racism are less causes of a problem than they are consequences of��a��colonial��past.��And we need to attend to making more popular and public how��that��past��has brought us to where we are at, and how history has been written to produce a past that has shaped how��many of us��think about ourselves and��think of��others.��Colonial history produced an understanding of the past that suited settler logics, that politicized the question of indigeneity, and also politicized cultural difference by attaching land and resources to it.

Among the lessons of��the continental��experience has been��that we need both a new concept of justice, and a new concept of difference.��We need a concept of justice that is not simply about��reversing the logic of colonialism. That means breaking with��the��reactive logic that��the last shall be first, and the first shall be last.

We also need a��concept of difference that does not use��one’s��past to decide if one belongs��and has a political future. A difference that��allows us to embrace��the multiple��historical��routes through which all find ourselves in this particular��settler colonial society���as locals,��as��descendants of��slaves,��of��indentured��laborers, of��traders, exiles and��refugees��or��those��who came here��looking to make a better life. It also has to be a pan-African��concept of difference that remains open to inviting new migrants to becoming citizens as well.��The challenge is to imagine a future with difference, with��economic��justice, but without racism.

‘Any way possible’

A Kenyan football fan reflects on a lifetime of World Cup finals.





Image credit Laurence Griffiths via Getty Images.













1986��World Cup Finals

I was only��4��years old��during the��1986��World��Cup finals.��I don���t have many memories of this particular��World��Cup except my dad and my uncle���s animated conversations about Maradona’s infamous�����hand of god.���

My father, a young, very idealistic university graduate,��had moved with my mother to a��rural high school in western Kenya, where he taught��history��to high school students.��My mother taught English. They brought a 14-inch black and white television��that would turn our house into a major community��sports��center��during the World��Cup finals.��I would later learn from��my��father that��our’s was the only television set��in the whole of this rural region. With��no electricity, television sets were��a��rather annoying luxury.��As a back-up, one had to work out elaborate plans to get a hold of lead��acid��batteries. These did not come cheap in Kenya in the early 80s and 90s. The lead��acid batteries��needed��regular��charging, as well as a stock of concentrated hydrochloric acid for topping up.

My uncle��Ben, a��university student��at the time,��ensured that the battery would always be ready for important matches. He would board a matatu��as��early as 5:00 in the morning to get to the nearest urban center, about 40 miles away. He would only come back late in the evening when he was assured that the battery was fully charged.��In the event that there would be a power outage at this urban center,��Uncle Ben��would take a similar trip the following day.��The��World��Cup was important and there was a whole community waiting to watch.

1990��World Cup��Finals

I was old enough to know that my mother hated the��World��Cup. She liked the game of football itself but��was��suspicious of the people��it��attracted��to our house. She also��disliked having to��take all of our family���s valuables and lock them in one��room in our house.��Her��other��nightmare was having to prepare food early, and having to serve it to us before the villagers��started trooping into our ���stadium.��� This was��an opening in front of our veranda, under a big Nandi flame tree.��Football fanatics arrived early and organized themselves on the soft grass in front of our house in some sort of hierarchy based on how familiar they were with my dad and Uncle Ben.��The front row was reserved for our family and my��dad���s colleagues. The front row was a mattress in front of the television perched��on a stool, the stool was delicately��balanced on a table. Selected students, mostly from the high school soccer team filled the second row. In the third row, mostly standing, were random villagers.

The��1990��World��Cup��changed the way I watched soccer. While my young mind had thought that Africans invented soccer,��I��was introduced to another reality. African teams��had not proceeded beyond the last 16.

Now, the entire continent was rapt by Cameroon’s Indomitable Lions. Roger��Milla, implored by Paul Biya to come out��of��retirement to rejoin the national team,��danced around��the Colombian box. He hurdled the Colombian defender���s scything lunge before cajoling a finish past their goalkeeper with his left foot. He quickly dispatched himself to the corner��flag��and unleashed the ecstatic spirit of African dance��on the world.��Cameroon��was in the��quarter-finals,��the preserve of a few special teams. Africa was in dreamland. It was past��1am in the��morning, but the dancing��and ululations��continued into the following day. P��p����Kall����was somewhere in the Congo composing the massive hit ���Roger Milla,��� to forever enshrine this moment in song.

1994 World Cup Finals

I was in a boy���s boarding school with very limited contact to the outside world. We followed the��World��Cup through our teachers, the hip ones. They would come in and update us on a few games if they were in��a good mood. On a few Sundays,��we would chance upon a copy of the��Daily��Nation��with photos of the Super Eagles splashed across its pages. Rashidi��Yekini��was on��everyone���s��lips. Nigeria��would later be eliminated in the��Round of 16 by Italy. My dad��would blame this on��a��myriad��of��issues, including conspiracies to keep Africa down, and lament the��lackluster way the��Super��Eagles played despite the huge amount of talent��at their disposal.

1998 World Cup��Finals

Watching��the World��Cup was banned in my boy’s high school.��Being a library captain, I had unlimited access to daily newspapers. And just like in��the��1994��World��Cup finals,��the Super��Eagles carried the hope of the continent��to proceed��to quarterfinals and beyond.��Nigeria had one of the best African squads at the 1994 World Cup. They were knocking on the door. They had just won the 1996 Olympics, beating Brazil and Argentina with all those stars.��Oliseh���s��thunderous goal against Spain��was a great moment of brilliance, a show of the explosive potential of African teams.��When it��was all done,��we were left with��newspaper cuttings of the ever smiling Sunday��Oliseh��on��our school locker doors.

2002 World Cup Finals

I was a first year��university��student in Nairobi.�� DSTV, a satellite subscription��service from South Africa was already revolutionizing how sports��were��watched across the continent. A��week before the��World��Cup,��our vice chancellor,��Prof.��Eshiwani, visited��common rooms across campus to ensure that all the television sets and satellite subscriptions were working��properly.

The��World��Cup started with a huge upset.��Senegal��beating France, their former colonizer,��was a reminder of��the��possibilities before African teams.��My mother was��visiting, and��together we got��to watch Henri Camara send The Lions of Teranga��to the quarter finals. They were only��the��second team��from Africa to achieve this seemingly impossible feat.

Al��Hadji��Diouf with his eccentricities remains one of most��memorable characters for me from any Cup.

2010��World Cup��Finals

Communal gatherings to watch��the World��Cup on channels provided by satellite��televisions were��in full force��in Kenya and across many African nations.��The government of Kenya had also done��a reasonable job connecting most urban and semi-urban areas across Kenya to the national electricity��grid. Every bar worth mentioning and every little shack in the village center had��satellite TV. We were all trapped in the spirit of Vuvuzelas and the glory of the first world cup��in Africa. This was our chance.��Siphiwe��Tshabalala���s unforgettable wonder goal against Mexico started us on a great trajectory.��Then, Asamoah Gyan,��aka Baby Jet,��roared on stage for the��Black��Stars. We were getting close to the dream.��The much anticipated African magic��moment, where Mandela would rise to award the��World��Cup to an African nation, seemed more and more a possibility.��Then Uruguay broke our hearts.��Suarez, the villain of international soccer used his hands to block an inbound goal from Gyan at the dying minutes of the game. Gyan would later miss the penalty. This is the closest Africa has come to sending a team to the semis.

My��phone��conversation with my��father��about this particular game was very intense. ���The problem with us Africans,��� my dad��started almost in pain, ���is that we want to��win��with raw talent alone.��� He paused. ���You know most these countries are helped by African immigrants, and sometimes unfair referees��and now using their hands… while us Africans, are on our own.��� I listened intently. ���Maybe we should try and win it in any way possible.��� He sighed.�����Maybe we should, Baba.��� I replied and hang up the phone.

It’s time to end the CFA franc

For true independence for France's former colonies in Africa, it is imperative that the current CFA franc monetary system end.





25 CFA necklace. Image credit Emmanuel Dabo via Wikimedia Commons.

The CFA franc, originally the Franc des colonies fran��aises d’Afrique, is an instrument of monetary and financial domination formally set up for France���s African colonies on December 26, 1945 by Charles de Gaulle. Today, having survived the decolonization��struggles,��it operates as a political tool to control African economies and polities��and��also as a device for transferring,��with minimal risk,��economic surpluses from the African continent to France and Europe.��The��mechanisms laid during the colonial era remain��essentially��unchanged.

There are fifteen countries belonging to the Franc zone in Africa. Eight countries in West Africa currently share the Franc de la Communaut�� financi��re africaine��(Benin, Burkina Faso, Cote d���Ivoire, Niger, Senegal, Togo, Mali and Guinea Bissau); another six in Central Africa share the��Franc de la��Coop��ration��Financi��re��en��Afrique��Centrale��(Cameroon, Chad, Central African Republic, Congo Republic, Gabon and Equatorial Guinea); and, finally, the Comoros uses the Comorian franc.

Thanks to the mobilization of many intellectuals and Pan-Africanist movements, the CFA Franc has been trending lately,��especially in French-speaking media. The question being debated is a practical one: How can these countries get out of the CFA franc?��There are two ways for exiting the CFA franc���s logic of domination: the�����nationalist exit�����and the�����Pan-Africanist exit.���

A��nationalist��exit refers to the individual exit of countries that will create and use their own national currency. This was the path followed by former members of the Franc Zone,��such as Guinea, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Madagascar, Mauritania and Vietnam after their independence from France.

The Pan-Africanist exit is the one that initially maintains monetary integration in the two franc blocs,��but excludes France. It, therefore, requires that all African countries in the Franc Zone jointly demand the abolition of the��current��operation accounts conventions with France.��These��are agreements through which��France���s��Treasury accepts to guarantee the so-called unlimited convertibility of the CFA franc and the Comorian franc, provided, among other conditions, that African countries deposit half of their foreign exchange reserves in ���operations accounts��� at the French Treasury!��Following independence, African countries were required to deposit 100% of their foreign exchange reserves; this was lowered to 65%��in��1973 and to 50%��in��2005.

In its current form, the nationalist exit is problematic. It might be financially expensive in the short run. It will take time, could generate��a lot of��uncertainty��and risk, and is not immune to��sabotage. Let us not forget the counterfeit French secret service bills that flooded the Guinean economy after��Sekou��Tour����put in place a national currency in the 1960s. Let���s look at the current fate of former Ivorian President, Laurent Gbagbo, in conflict with France��for wanting to leave the CFA franc at some point.��Or that of Muammar Gaddafi.��Among the reasons for the military intervention in Libya was Paris���s��need to nip in the bud Gaddafi���s Pan-African currency project, one of whose aim was to rid Africa of the CFA franc.

The nationalist exit is unlikely because the current crop of African French-speaking leaders��do not have enough courage to challenge France individually. They pale in comparison��to a figure like the late Thomas��Sankara,��the murdered��President of Burkina Faso��(1983-1987), who openly challenged France.

Given these limitations, the Pan-African exit seems to be the least risky and more interesting scenario. It can take place in two steps. The first step is that of the exit of France (or FREXIT). The African countries collectively will ask France to�����leave,�����by denouncing the monetary cooperation agreements and the operation accounts conventions between France and the countries in the Franc Zone. This demand is all the more legitimate given that France doesn���t actually guarantee the CFA francs convertibility, contrary to the erroneous claim, made by��France���s��President��Macron during his official visit to Burkina Faso in November 2017. The foreign exchange reserves accumulated by African countries themselves have always guaranteed de facto the CFA franc’s convertibility.

This proposal to leave the logic of monetary domination can only succeed if two preconditions are fulfilled. First, a massive mobilization of African populations in general and Pan-African social movements in particular, which will make it possible to cope with the lack of�����political will�����of French-speaking African heads of state. Second, a distancing of Pan-African social movements from��the single currency project in West Africa. This project, which is unlikely to see the light of day, is used by some African heads of state to put the social movements fighting against the CFA franc to sleep. For others, it is an intellectually lazy but politically convenient solution to get out of the CFA franc.��In reality, the West African single currency is a project of monetary integration along neoliberal lines similar to the Euro. Just like the Euro, a single West African currency risks reproducing many disadvantages of the CFA franc system and accentuating the inequalities between African countries. A single currency is always problematic in the absence of political unity and fiscal unity in particular. These are the lessons of the Euro and that of its unacknowledged ancestor: the CFA franc.

Africans must imperatively get rid of the neocolonial relic that is the CFA franc. In doing so, they must also avoid��having to choose between two evils.

Love and life on the flipside of Dar es Salaam

Still from T-Junction.

The Tanzanian film collective Kijiweni Productions, with filmmaker Amil Shivji at the helm, wants to “create a platform for all kinds of stories that do justice to a culture of resistance and resilience. To tell our tales from the continent; those that are either unheard of, only whispered about and/or are told from a ‘single story’.” To that end they released their first feature-length film, T-Junction, in 2017.

The film collective was already making a name for itself in African cinema with the short-films Samaki Mchangani (Fish of the Land, 2014) and Shoeshine (2013). The latter especially brought home a shelf of international awards, including the African Film Development Foundation award for best short film in 2014. Shoeshine follows shoeshine-boy Tambwe, played by Godfrey Augustino. Tambwe sits on the pavement in downtown Dar and shines shoes for people from all walks of life: the loafers of idealistic students, the dusty work-shoes of Indian Chai Wallahs, the hoity-toity cowboy boots of fat politicians with promises bigger than their feet. The film sometimes crosses the line into surrealism as Tambwe dreams of a brighter tomorrow for everyone, with or without shoes.

T-Junction was awarded the European African Film Festival Award at the Zanzibar International Film Festival. Like Shoeshine, T-junction has a distinct local flavor. It tastes like sea salt, dripping mangoes, grilled corn on a cob with chili and sugarcane juice. However, compared to Shoeshine, T-Junction is a much bigger production. It stays within the bounds of what is real, has two female leads, and arguably has a less clearly pronounced political message. 

We meet Fatima Hriji (played by Hawa Ally) who has recently lost her father. Her mother, her father’s former housemaid, is grieving, but Fatima is having trouble letting her feelings show. She appears to be wrestling with the memory of her father and to forgive him for his less savory personality traits. 

The story begins in an immobile line at the hospital. Fatima is there to see Dr. Belinda and collect her father’s death certificate. While in line she meets Maria (brilliantly portrayed by Magdalena Christopher) who is her stark opposite. Fatima is restrained, composed and dutiful, whereas Maria is rebellious, fun, outgoing, flamboyant and perhaps just a little bit mad. While they wait Maria begins to tell her story. She tells Fatima how she ended up in the hospital and about the people and story of her “home” — the T-Junction. She describes Chine (David Msia), the gorgeous newspaper vendor whom everyone makes fun of because his English is trash, about the mango-vendor who each day ends up eating all his mangoes himself, and about Issa, the mysterious man of the mosque with a murky past. Maria transports Fatima away from her own grief and rather drab existence as she paints a vivid picture of a space full of pulsating life and color, but also uncertainty and danger. Through their friendship they both grow and explore their own unique traumas.

One of the features I appreciated the most about T-Junction is its brilliant structure, which is both traditional and modern at the same time. The story-telling format and a side-by-side story-line is both in synch with the founding ideals of Kijiweni and echoes the oral story-telling tradition not exclusive to Tanzania.  

At the same time the subject matter is definitely part of the modern reality; the plight of the marginalized in a growing capitalist urban setting, finding themselves on the outside, rejected by a city that is supposed to protect them. Maria and her friends in the T-Junction are continually harassed by the “city” — city police who are “cleaning up the streets.” The city police go for raids, destroy their stalls, brutally beat the vendors with batons, which in the end has fatal consequences. During a funeral Maria’s utters the heartbreaking words: “We will always be under people’s feet. Alive… or dead. That is just how things are.”

Mistreatment of the urban marginalized is not restricted to Dar es Salaam. As African cities expand there are increasing numbers of floating, fortune-seeking youth who, in a way are “not really there.” They often end up working in informal sectors, on street corners and T-Junctions, weaving in and out of the law, with little security or predictability in their lives and overlooked or harassed by the powers that be.

T-Junction places the searchlight on this invisible ecosystem and brings us the view of the difficult state of affairs from the street-corners up. Instead of problematizing, T-Junction shows us the human side of the statistics. The focus on human relationships, Maria’s flamboyant character and the aesthetics of the film set a warm and intimate tone. Despite the precarious position of most of its characters it is full of affection, humor, passion, comradery and love. In short, T-Junction shows us the human life that quite literally falls by the wayside.  

I am oddly reminded of Dubliners by James Joyce, where the point is not so much the story-lines in and of themselves as it is creating a portrait of life in a time and a place. As far as I am aware this is a pretty unusual format in African cinema. It is a fresh outlook and accentuates the emphasis on the human-aspect of life in marginalized spaces.  

The film is doubtlessly gender-aware. One refreshing choice in T-Junction is the focus on gender and power, not only through the presence of women but also through the absence of abusive men. We never see these men and their destructive ways. Rather we are encouraged look at the aftermath of their destruction and how it affects domestic life and the women in their lives. 

It is too easy to sit comfortably reviewing this type of movie to start talking about the film “making a statement.” The film has two strong female characters. Is this a statement? Is making an African film with two female leads even a statement anymore? Does the #MeToo campaign extend to African cinema? Or are the issues there realer, so that we must start a separate Swahili-coast twitter campaign — hashtag EvenMe2? What I do know is that it is nice to see two female leads in an African film that are not doing hair, casting some sort of ju-ju curse or throwing vases at cheating husbands.  

T-Junction is much more than worth a watch; it should be mandatory viewing for anyone interested in Tanzania, East Africa, Africa or just human relations. It is a beautifully told story, marrying tradition with modern day subject matter. It has bags of local flavor, it is funny, warm and strangely uplifting. It trains the camera on people often forgotten, who fall into the background in the urban African landscape — the scenery one might pass by while in a Land Rover on the way to an air conditioned shopping mall cinema to indulge in Wakanda.

Addressing the genocide in Namibia

Image by Antoine 49. CC via Flickr CC.

The past is never dead. 

It’s not even past.

– William Faulkner

Colonial rule in “German South West Africa” (1884-1915) was a relatively short period during the final stages of the so-called Scramble for Africa. But in even a shorter period of time (1904-1908) it marked a military encounter, which today is termed the Namibian War. The consequences for the colonized communities living in the eastern, central and southern parts of the territory were devastating.

It took almost 110 years until the German government was willing to accept the classification as genocide. As a result, this chapter of German-Namibian relations became by the end of 2015 a matter of bilateral negotiations between special diplomatic envoys of both states, tasked to find an adequate recognition of such history. While these negotiations continue, an amicable solution is nowhere in sight. This also regards the hitherto inadequate involvement of the representatives of the descendants from the mainly affected groups, which remains among the contentious issues.

The historical record

Much has been researched and published on German colonial rule in the Republic of Namibia. As a result of the war, an estimated two-thirds of the Ovaherero (including the Mbanderu) and one-third to half of the various Nama (denounced as “Hottentotten”) were eliminated. The Damara (in German derogatorily called “Klippkaffern”), living among and in between the various Nama and Ovaherero communities, became victims too. They were in today’s euphemistic jargon a kind of “collateral damage”, since the German soldiers could not (or did not want to) make a difference. Settlers also organized hunting safaris on Bushmen communities, tantamount, in the words of Mohamed Adhikari, to a “genocide in slow motion.”

The survivors among these local communities were denied their earlier social organization and reproduction. While concrete figures of the numbers killed remain a matter of dispute, there is clear evidence of the “intent to destroy” their established way of life. This is the core definition of genocide. According to this understanding, the “Whitaker Report” presented to the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) in 1985, lists the German warfare in 1904 as the first genocide of the 20th century. 

In her seminar work on “A History of Namibia” (2011), Marion Wallace puts this chapter in its appropriate perspective:

The atrocities in Namibia can be understood as standing at the extreme end of a continuum of violence and repression in which all the colonial powers participated. Nevertheless, it is important to name what happened in 1904-8 as genocide, not least because those who deny this continue to foster a debate that is really ‘a constant exercise in denial of historical evidence’ (quoting Werner Hillebrecht, then head of the Namibian National Archives; H.M.). Because of the tenacity with which they make their arguments, it needs to be restated that the way in which they minimize African suffering is contrary to the weight of historical evidence and the conclusion of most recent research.

Genocide is genocide  is genocide

Since the turn of the century, genocide studies have internationally emerged as a new field, adding to and transcending the former exclusive focus on Holocaust studies. Despite ill-motivated accusations of questioning the singularity of the Shoa (at times mounting to blames of being anti-Semitic), genocide scholars thereby added important perspectives to the domain. The contextualization of genocides (in the plural) also included and promoted engagements with the South West African case. Within a short period of time since the end of the 20th century aspiring young (mainly German) scholars produced a variety of new insights on matters related to the genocidal warfare in South West Africa. 

Although German governments of all party-political combinations remained in denial, a turnaround finally happened in 2015, after the German Bundestag, on occasion of another centenary, recognized the Armenian genocide. This provoked havoc by an enraged Turkish president Erdogan, who pointed to the hypocritical dimension of such selective perspective given the unacknowledged German colonial genocide. Many established German media also questioned the double standards and voiced long-articulated views of the German community of postcolonial initiatives. For the first time, the genocide in Namibia became a wider public issue. Last but not least, the social democratic Foreign Minister Walter Steinmeier could not escape the fact that his party while being in opposition had tabled a (dismissed) parliamentary motion on Namibia jointly with the Green party, which had introduced the term genocide. At a press conference in July 2015, the spokesperson of the Foreign Ministry confirmed that the term genocide is now applicable also to what had happened in South West Africa. As a consequence, by the end of 2015 the German and Namibian governments had appointed special envoys to negotiate how to come to terms with such recognition and its implications. 

Neg otiating genocide

The German side entered the negotiations without offering any apology. Rather, it declared that finding an adequate form of apology would be one of the agenda items. But admitting genocide as a precursor to negotiations over the implications of such an admission should require an immediate apology as a first sign of remorse. In the absence of such a symbolically relevant gesture, the point of departure for negotiations based on mutual respect seems at best dubious. Not surprisingly, the meetings since then have not produced any concrete results, but created some embarrassing moments due to the lack of German diplomacy. Much to the frustration of the Namibian government, the German side was at times setting the agenda unilaterally and making its views public on pending matters discussed behind closed doors. It also tried to influence the schedule according to domestic German policy matters.

Both governments have so far also not offered any meaningful direct representation to the descendants of the affected communities. While these do not speak with one voice and some smaller groups cooperate with the Namibian government, their main agencies have remained marginalized. For the Namibian government this is an affair between two states and the German counterpart gladly complies. Such understanding, however, also ignores those who as a result of the genocide live in the diaspora and are therefore, by implication, denied any representation. 

On January 5, 2017, the Ovaherero Paramount Chief Vekuii Rukoro, together with Chief David Fredericks, the Chairman of the Nama Traditional Authorities Association as the main plaintiffs, together with the Association of the Ovaherero Genocide in the USA Inc., filed a federal class action lawsuit in a US federal court. The plaintiffs claim “the legitimate right to participate in any negotiations with Germany relating to the incalculable financial, material, cultural, intellectual, religious and spiritual losses suffered.” Their complaint submitted under the Alien Tort Statute asks for the award of punitive damages and the establishment of a Constructive Trust. Into this the defendant (Germany) should pay the estimated “value of the lands, cattle and other properties confiscated and taken from the Ovaherero and Nama peoples.” They refer among others as a substantial new dimension to the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, adopted on September 13, 2007 with the votes of Germany and Namibia by the United Nations General Assembly. Its Article 18 stipulates that, “indigenous peoples have the right to participate in decision-making in matters which would affect their rights, through representatives chosen by themselves.”

International media follow the German-Namibian negotiations with great interest — so do the governments of other former colonial powers. After all, despite its degree of violence, the German colonial adventure was relatively limited. Putting the likely material reparations in relation to the size of the German state coffers, a compensation for damages could solve a problem and might even be an investment into Germany’s reputation. But it would not only open a can of worms for other claims against the German state, relating to its other colonial territories and — more importantly — to not yet compensated crimes during World War II among civilian populations in Eastern Europe, Greece and Italy. Over and above such relevance this would create a precedence other states with a colonial-imperialist past would certainly not want to see happen. These implications turn the negotiations into much more than an affair between two countries. One does not need to entertain any conspiracy theories to assume that the German-Namibian negotiations have in all likelihood already been a matter discussed by foreign ministers in Brussels.

Since mid-2017 the German ambassador to Namibia, Christian-Matthias Schlaga, has presented the current German position. There are three core issues guiding the German approach: a) To find a common language for the events of 1904-1907, suggesting in tendency to revert the terminology from “genocide” to “atrocities”; b) a willingness to apologize for the crimes committed, assuming such apology is accepted as a clean break of the political-moral discussion; c) to establish a common memory culture and to support financially initiatives for the development especially of those regions in which at present the then most affected communities are living. Schlaga emphasized further, that attempts towards a judicial clarification would not be adequate. The German government sees no legal basis for demands for financial compensation. It maintains that claims in court with a focus on judicial terms such as “reparations” would lead astray.

According to the German special envoy, Ruprecht Polenz, the term reparation is a legal category, while the matter is a political-moral but not a judicial question. He does however not elaborate why this would exclude adequate forms of compensation as a political-moral consequence (tantamount to, though not necessarily declared as reparations). Polenz had earlier on stated that the efforts to come to terms with this past are about healing wounds. The Namibian special envoy, Zed Ngavirue, pointed out in an interview that such an approach seems to suggest that the medical prescription is issued by a doctor in Berlin. But from a Namibian point of view, he added, a medical practitioner in Berlin cannot alone decide on an adequate treatment. It should be added that a medical practitioner based in the Namibian capital Windhoek is not necessarily able to prescribe the recipe which most adequately treat the wounds of the descendants of the most affected victim communities. Ngavirue insisted that the matter of reparations will remain on the table.

This touches on the issue of perspectives. Postcolonial theory has since the late 1990s strongly advocated a fundamental change in the narratives to critically deconstruct colonial formations of knowledge and history. As a consequence, it is doubted whether colonial discourses are adequately transcended or abandoned even in Western anti-colonial counter narratives and their norms of presentation. Academic writing remains largely (and often uncritically) confined to the standardized modes anchored in western traditions, often without being aware of and self-critically reflecting on these limitations. But looking at the world through the eyes of others is not only a huge challenge. It borders to a mission impossible. Eagerness to comply with such a shift of perspectives might even risk becoming patronizing or paternalistic again by claiming to speak on behalf of those who continue to remain either silent or unheard.

Few studies so far intentionally include oral history and local perspectives on the subject. But this does not transcend their work as one created within certain parameters. Scholarship might have to humbly accept its limitations in representing the “other” views. Marion Wallace already expressed concerns that “the genocide debate can also be a hindrance to inquiry, and, above all, to situating the Namibian War as an event in Namibian, rather than German history.” While this is a necessary caveat, it should certainly not prevent those confronted with the consequences of such history in Germany and those descendants of German colonialists in Namibia, from addressing them in an effort to come to terms with such past. After all, it has been an event that would have not taken place without German colonial intervention with long-term implications not only for the colonized. Decolonization (especially when including the mindset) requires engagement by the descendants of those involved on all sides.

This must include space for the voice of those who represent the experiences that western perspectives and forms of communication cannot articulate. Post-colonial initiatives in the former colonial states can provide such platforms. But scholars and activists there will have to accept that their engagement is limited to their own voices and perspectives, which confront other narratives seeking to downplay the trauma of colonialism and its devastating effects on colonized societies and generations of colonized people. After all, we are addressing matters through our views, which relate to a shared history with others. But we cannot replace our upbringing by an upbringing of someone else. We can only engage in our own way. This also means to fight not mainly for the adequate recognition of humanity for others, but for one’s own humanity and human values, shared in the general conviction that humanity has a common ground and bonds reaching beyond the existence of otherness.

In the case of the Namibian-German history and its treatment in the present, it therefore seems appropriate to end with a quote from Rukee Tjingaete’s “The Weeping Graves of our Ancestors” (2017):

We cannot free ourselves from the past until both the victims and villains are atoned with Germany’s imperial past in Namibia. The past is like the shade of a thorn tree that covers a pile of thorns for those stepping on it… It is like a weeping grave of an angry ancestor.

* This is a slightly modified, short version of an article published with “Stichproben. Vienna Journal of African Studies,” freely accessible here.

The shadow networks that govern migration across Africa

PTP camp for Ivorian refugees outside of Zwedru, Grand Gedeh, Liberia. Photo by Ingunn Bjorkhaug.

The global refugee crisis has resulted in over 65 million forcibly displaced people worldwide, with 20 people displaced every minute as a result of conflict-related violence. Currently, 26 percent of the world’s refugee population resides in Africa. This constitutes an alarmingly high 18 million. These multitudes of displaced often find themselves positioned in ambiguous spaces that blur formal and informal economies, institutions, and regulatory arrangements.

Special types of informal networks that merge the public and private, political and economic, emerge from situations of conflict-related displacement.  These fluid formations can meld cross-border areas into an interconnected economy, presenting alternative sources of economic livelihood and political governance, but may also maintain regions of prolonged instability. Characterized by a lack of central authority, the conflict networks can mobilize grassroots institutions and leadership, as well as perpetuate violence and disempowerment in the borderlands. The emerging shadow networks comprise shifting and fluid nodes of authority that creatively build on informal and formal norms and institutions, and have profound implications for security. The recent OECD report (2018) indicates that criminal economies generate significant illicit financial flows that undermine development, livelihoods and ecosystems on the continent. In these illicit networks, politics, business and crime often converge, complicating governance and reinforcing inequality and violence.

Inside a church in Kitgum, Northern Uganda, where refugees sought shelter from LRA who fired rocket-propelled grenades to break into the church. The images of two crucifixions were added after the attack. Photo by Morten Bøås.

The central role of land in the new economic and social spaces and relations produced by conflict and displacement has frequently gone unnoticed. Several recent studies from West as well as East Africa illuminate the dynamics of land as defining economic livelihoods, political governance, as well as personhood and identity in the proliferating displacement economies.

Land was central in the emergence of trans-African networks of illicit trade and trafficking in northern Mali. Its once dominant Tuareg ethnic group had suffered increasing marginalization during the country’s authoritarian regime of the 1980s-90s, resulting in massive insurgencies. The Tuareg rebellion originated in local grievances over the loss of pastoral land and traditional cattle-keeping livelihoods in the region. The rebel leaders who were co-opted to formal governance systems with the 1992 peace agreement between Mali’s government and the insurgents, gained new access to political and economic resources. The resulting administrative decentralization led to the consolidation of Tuareg leaders and paramilitary “big men” around regional and cross-border illicit trafficking of contraband, drugs and migrants — occurring along the centuries-old trans-Sahara trade routes. New economic resources in these shadow networks have altered traditional power configurations in Tuareg society, leading to competing informal regimes who struggle to control illicit global commodity chains — further exacerbating conflict in the region.

PTP camp for Ivorian refugees outside of Zwedru, Grand Gedeh, Liberia. Photo by Ingunn Bjorkhaug.

Land relations emerge as central also in the displacement economy of northern Uganda, East Africa — albeit in somewhat different and contrasting ways. The internally displaced people’s camps in northern Uganda that were established during the Lord’s Resistance Army uprising (1986-2006) constrained people sometimes in a plain view of their abandoned homesteads. The resulting “prison economies” that lasted for decades were violent worlds of inactivity, with limited livelihood activities and little room for agency and creativity. The conflict saw over a million people relocated into IDP camps by the Ugandan government army, isolating them from the rest of the country and restricting their economic options and political participation. In the course of post-conflict return of the displaced, land became a central means of not just economic livelihood but also identity and belonging. The complexities of post-conflict landholding were reflected in its material and symbolic dimensions. To highlight the permanence of land property and through that one’s ethnic and territorial belonging, the use of cemented graves and cement pillars as land markers became rapidly widespread in Acholiland and Ikland of North Uganda.

The recent exodus of Gueré refugees arriving in Grand Gedeh, Liberia from western Côte d’Ivoire shows land as a central mediator in integrating refugees in the economic and political lives of local communities. In the aftermath of the political crisis resulting from the Ivorian election of 2010, large numbers of Ivorian refugees crossed the border to Liberia. Land access and other economic interactions between the refugees and local residents were mediated through the customary Liberian institution of “stranger-father” that traditionally regulates the allocation of land resources to newcomers. Although this constitutes an efficient mechanism of inclusion of outsiders, it also subjects them to a pre-existing social and political hierarchy, preventing newcomers from participating in substantive decisions regarding land and labor.

PTP camp for Ivorian refugees outside of Zwedru, Grand Gedeh, Liberia. Photo by Ingunn Bjorkhaug.

As a consequence, despite close historical and ethnic affinities between Gueré refugees and Krahn hosts, the former remained at the margins of political and economic life in Grand Gedeh border communities. The customary institutions at work here served both a as mechanism of inclusion and systematic exclusion on broader levels, and in the contexts of displacement, these power dynamics were increasingly mediated through land relations. Even though as the refugees of Gueré origin were seen as special guests — persons of a different social status from that of any other stranger — they were still guests among the local people. And any guest, no matter how special, eventually has to leave.

The new issue of the African Studies Review contains a Forum on “Land and Displacement in Post-Conflict Africa” (co-edited by Daivi Rodima-Taylor and Lotte Meinert) that explores the role of land in new social ties, informal networks, and modes of governance that are produced by displacement, and the impact of land property and exchange to agency and coping strategies. The ASR Forum brings together ethnographic articles from Uganda, Zimbabwe, Liberia, Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire and South Africa that analyze various forms of forced mobility and their impact on social hierarchy, political authority, kinship, and personhood. The Forum highlights the issues of scale in land disputes — ranging from intimate levels among generations, neighbors and kin to broader inter-ethnic or national levels. The discussions offer novel perspectives on how the chaotic and uncoordinated processes of decentralization resulting from displacement affect local power configurations and produce new ways of relating — both to people and the ground below that sustains them.

What is behind the economic crisis in Sudan?

In October 2017, the Sudanese public was thrilled after the decision by US President Donald Trump to lift economic sanctions against the country, in place since 1997. Sudanese social media buzzed with great expectations. This enthusiasm was legitimate given the drastic impacts of two-decades of sanctions on Sudanese society, but how realistic was the Sudanese public in their hopes for a brighter future?

The US imposed restrictions on Sudan in 1993 listing it as one of the countries that supported “terrorism.” In 1997 the Clinton administration imposed the embargo on the country claiming that it hosts terrorist groups, and in 1998 it bombed a pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum. In 2016, the Obama administration announced that the sanctions would be lifted as a response to a campaign against the sanctions led by Sudanese individuals. Obama stipulated five conditions and gave six months to the Sudanese government to fulfill them.

Sadly, the hopes of revitalizing the Sudanese economy and boosting social and economic development were negated within a month after the decision to lift the sanctions. Drastic inflation has hit the Sudanese economy causing near implosion. This is the result of three major factors that underpin Sudan’s political and economic entanglements with the West.

Demonstrations in all Sudanese cities have been ongoing since the beginning of January, protesting the high prices of commodities, specially bread. Many Sudanese families have reported that they are eating only one meal a day. And many people claim they cannot afford to buy medications. The increase in commodities was not an ephemeral episode.

The first factor is what the Sudanese government’s “Altamkeen” (empowerment and solidification) policy. This policy was meant to empower the affiliates of the Islamist party, led by Dr. Hassan Alturabi, that came to power in a military coup in 1989. The policy promotes objectives of the Islamist political project by all economic, social and political means available. It translates into using the state and its institutions as tools to serve party goals. The Altamkeen policy is better understood by linking it to the history of the Islamist group with the West.

Islamists in Sudan, like other political Islamist groups in the region, were nurtured by the West during the Cold War to combat leftist parties. The West had been maneuvering to influence the policies of Sudan since its independence in 1956, pushing it to take right-wing positions through a series of events that included coups, interventions in parliamentary politics and assassinations. In the mid-1970s Islamists’ influence was particularly powerful and the party imposed the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) policies of lifting subsidies, liberalization and privatization. It also worked to impose Sharia Law. The IMF policies created a climate of profiteering and corruption that benefited the Islamist group through the creation of multiple businesses, banks, and companies. However, in 1985 the Sudanese public rebelled against the IMF policies and its social impacts, and also against the Sharia Law toppling the dictatorship through a popular uprising. The election of a democratic government jeopardized the economic power of the Islamist group and threatened its political goals. It then moved to retake power, and eventually did so through a military coup in 1989.

The Altamkeen policy is a continuation of the project the Islamist group started in the mid-seventies with the support of the US. The Sudanese government adopted neoliberal policies: privatization, lifting subsidies and a free-market economy. It sold major enterprises that were owned by the public and the government. Selling those enterprises was accompanied by major corruption, and profits from these businesses were reaped by a minority of stakeholders.

The second factor is the economic sanctions against Sudan. The sanctions have affected the technological and social development of the country. Travel restrictions on Sudanese people have drastically affected an exchange of skills, education and training in the country, and negatively impacted economic development.

The third factor contributing to the current economic debacle in Sudan is the austerity project of the IMF, which has resulted in the staggering accumulation of debt, stunted economic growth, and social and political destabilization. For instance, in 2001 the IMF praised the economic performance of Sudan — despite the sanctions — and announced it would facilitate debt relief if the government followed its lead. The independence of South Sudan in 2011 caused a loss of 46% of the national income, causing a major shock to the Sudanese economy, which the government, expectedly, did not prepare for. The IMF intervened again in 2013 and 2017 and pushed for further austerity measures and liberalization. This caused commodity prices to soar and the frustrated population took again to the streets. In November 2016, the Sudanese public organized a successful civil disobedience campaign for a week, which led to massive arrests. Since the beginning of January 2018 civil society demonstrations have been constant in Sudanese cities leading to massive arrests.

The Altamkeen policy could be considered a recipe for corruption and nepotism, yet the IMF policies have emboldened it, giving it international legitimacy, while the liberalization of the economy has been shouldered by the masses. Every time the government announces austerity measures it appeals to the public to be thrift and asks them to be patient, attributing the economic difficulties to the sanctions. At the same time the government spends munificently on its security apparatus. The government also relies on high taxes and other tricky means of collecting money from the public thereby hindering production and victimizing the ordinary Sudanese.

The lifting of sanctions without political reform will only exacerbate the current economic crisis of the country. It would have been a golden opportunity for economic growth and social development if it was accompanied with the right political reform to reinforce transparency and accountability. It would have stimulated an economy, potentially drawing thousands of Sudanese in exile to return and participate in the development of the country. It would have arrested the brain drain that has been taking place for three decades. The need is ever pressing for major political reform that addresses endemic corruption and encourages political and economic participation.

With a weak and divided opposition that lacks a comprehensive plan for a political transition, the only option for young activists and youth movements will be to continue demonstrating. 

When Rex Tillerson toured some of Africa’s “shithole” countries

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson checks out a traditional Ethiopian coffee ceremony at the US Embassy in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on March 8, 2018. He is on a tour of Ethiopia, Djibouti, Kenya, Nigeria and Chad. Image Credit: US State Department.

“Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?” “Why do we need more Haitians?” “Take them out.” –  these words, allegedly uttered by U.S. President Donald Trump, referred to the immigrants from Haiti, El Salvador and African countries to the United States.

These comments garnered various reactions from U.S. lawmakers, Africans–both on the continent and in the diaspora, including their governments– as well as from the international community. Many of these reactions expressed the anger and hurt caused by these comments and included the sharing of beautiful images  that directly challenged this perpetuation of negative stereotypes. Most notable was the reaction on the part of the African Union (AU), the continental body, and the African ambassadors serving the United Nations. In an unprecedented challenge to the U.S., the AU expressed its “shock, dismay and outrage” stating that it “strongly believe[d] that there [was] a huge misunderstanding of the African continent and its people by the current [Trump] Administration.” Not only did the AU denounce these comments but it demanded a retraction and an apology to all Africans and people of African descent in the diaspora. In addition, the African ambassadors issued a statement that strongly condemned “the outrageous, racist and xenophobic remarks” and echoed the AU’s calls for a retraction and apology. This statement went on to highlight that these remarks illustrated the “continued and growing trend from the US administration towards Africa and people of African descent to denigrate the continent and people of color.”

Prior to the 30th AU summit in January 2018, Trump wrote a letter to the African leaders that emphasized the US’s deep respect for the people of Africa and that it “profoundly respect[ed] the partnerships and values [it shared] with the African Union, member states, and citizens across the continent.” Some viewed this as an apology for his earlier remarks but U.S. ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley’s position that “Africa is very important for the United States” fell short of that. Now, U.S. Secretary of State (basically the country’s foreign minister), Rex Tillerson, is on a five-country visit of Africa and it appears that all is forgiven.

On the first stop of his official tour of Africa, ahead of visits to Djibouti, Nairobi, N’Djamena, and Abuja, Tillerson paid a visit to the AU headquarters in Addis Ababa. In a joint news conference with Tillerson, AU Chairperson, Moussa Maki Mahamet, stated that the “shithole” incident was behind them and that Tillerson’s visit was “proof of the importance of relations between the different parties.” When asked about Trump’s comments, Tillerson added that the U.S. commitment to Africa was clear and that, in recognition of this relationship, Trump “himself wrote a personal letter to [Mahamat] reaffirming the importance of this relationship.”

Wait, what? Where is the anger that prompted the AU’s reaction in January? If anything, why was this conversation between the two of them not shared with those that were offended, i.e. the African people?

There is much at stake during this visit considering the United States’ need to regain favor on the continent as evidenced by Tillerson’s critiques on China’s role in Africa. At the onset of his trip, Tillerson argued that China’s involvement on the continent was increasing African debt. Further, at the AU in Addis Ababa, he implied that, by trading with China, African countries were at risk of undermining their sovereignty. However, in making these comments Tillerson is also telling sovereign nations how to manage their affairs raising questions as to how the AU will negotiate this stand-off between China and the U.S.

While this tour focuses on matters concerning counterterrorism, democracy, governance, trade and investment, there is a clear emphasis on security as essential to stability. In a speech given at George Mason University prior to his departure, Tillerson highlighted the need to prevail against terrorist groups and importance of regional cooperation to “disrupting [these] attacks and denying [terrorist groups] the capability to plan and carry them out in the future.” This position is not surprising given the video recently released by the Islamic State that purports to show the attack of three U.S. soldiers in Niger. As Tillerson stated in his remarks, “terrorism knows no borders” and the reality is that the U.S. needs African countries to serve as its staunch allies in this “war on terror.”

Tillerson’s visit to Djibouti, home to Camp Lemonier, made it clear that the U.S. military prioritizes its ability “respond to threats of terrorism towards the U.S. and African region.” Kenya is also a critical U.S. ally in fighting terrorism in this region but has been dealing with a number of internal issues since its flawed elections last August. However, shortly before Tillerson’s arrival in Nairobi, President Uhuru Kenyatta and opposition leader, Raila Odinga, vowed to begin the process of reconciliation as “brothers,” a development which Tillerson lauded as “a very positive step.” As with the AU’s shift in attitudes following Tillerson’s visit, this sudden call for reconciliation raises a number of questions. Why is now the right the time to resolve their differences after months of violence and appeals for the leaders to address these divisions? Tillerson’s visit might be the answer considering the strategic partnership that exists between the two countries. It appears that the maintenance of strong, stable relationships with the U.S. provides greater incentive for leaders than the assurance of accountability to their citizens.

As a critical point of contact for the continent, the AU, and its leaders, is often challenged for its apparent inability to clarify its position on key political issues. One can understand as financial relationships are a serious consideration for an organization that still depends heavily on external support. For example, the AU’s partners still fund significantly more of its budget than its member states, which causes a serious conflict of interest. What does this mean for the organization and its agency? How can the AU continue to be, as Tillerson called it, “a force of good” on the continent? How can citizens hold these same leaders accountable to this?

Tillerson’s visit could serve as an opportunity for African countries to negotiate their position on the global stage but we will have to wait and see how the next stops on this “shithole” tour go.

Tanzania, Black Power, and the uncertain future of Pan-Africanism

Between 1964 to 1974, the East African nation of Tanzania was seen by peoples across Africa and in the diaspora as a nation deeply committed to African liberation and in solidarity with black people worldwide. As a result, many hundreds of African American and Caribbean nationalists, leftists, and Pan Africanists visited or settled in Tanzania to witness and participate in the country they believed then led the struggle for African liberation. From the South African liberation movements, the African National Congress and the Pan-Africanist Congress, to Mozambican freedom fighters and intellectuals like the Guyanese Walter Rodney. Seth Markle, an associate professor of history and international studies at Trinity College, recently published the fascinating and important A Motorcycle on Hell Run: Tanzania, Black Power, and the Uncertain Future of Pan-Africanism, 1964–1974 (Michigan State University Press, 2017), which examines this pivotal time.

W hy  did  Tanzania and its founding president, Julius Nyerere, became touchstones for Pan   Africanism in the 1960s and 1970s ?

If you look at the history of the black radical tradition, you’ll see that certain African independent nations emerge as political symbols and representations of the homeland among African diaspora peoples. I’m thinking of Ethiopia and Liberia during the colonial period and Ghana and Tanzania after 1945. Tanzania’s place in the pan-African movement had a lot do with Nyerere, both the person and head of state. Black folk in the diaspora, especially the United States, were attracted to his principled leadership and his belief and commitment to African unity, expressed in actual foreign and domestic policies—from solidarity with African liberation groups, to official regional unification between Tanganyika and Zanzibar in 1964, to the Arusha Declaration in 1967. These were all hopeful and inspirational signs that placed Tanzania at the vanguard of pan-Africanism. For African Americans, it is also important to remember that this was a time when Africa was “on the mind,” so to speak. When African Americans started to crave information about all things Africa. Nyerere also spoke out against racial oppression in the United States and invited African Americans to live and work in Tanzania. The fact that African Americans were a racial minority denied full citizenship rights in the United States, made migrating to a black-ruled nation led by a visionary African leader all the more appealing.

Especially after declaring for African Socialism in the Arusha Declaration of 1967 (in Kiswahili, Ujamaa na Kujitegemea), Tanzania inspired many African Americans and other blacks in the diaspora to find their way to Dar es Salaam in the 1960s and 1970s. Malcolm X, Robert Williams, Queen Mother Audley Moore, Stokely Carmichael, and a legion of less well-known made their way there. Give us an example of one such person from your book.  

Like you mentioned, there are so many personal stories to choose from, and there were people who did not make it into the book. For personal reasons, though, Malcolm X is one such person explored in my book. I came of age during the “Golden Era of Hip Hop” (mid-80s to mid-90s), an era marked by politically conscious, Afrocentric-inspired rap music. As a teenager, I listened to songs that referenced Malcolm X or sampled from his speeches. Rap artists and groups like KRS-One, Lakim Shabazz, Public Enemy, X-Clan, Big Daddy Kane, Paris, and 2Pac memorialized Malcolm X and made him relevant to the post-Civil rights, hip hop generation. You also had the Spike Lee Joint films Do The Right Thing and Malcolm X. I was that kid wearing a baseball cap with the ‘X’ on it along with an African leather medallion proudly draped around my neck. Rap music provided me with that introductory education on the civil rights and Black power movements, especially about leaders like Malcolm X. It really sparked my interest in learning more about him because, believe me, he was not being taught in the schools I attended. The Plot To Kill Malcolm X by Karl Evanzz, which looks at the role of the CIA and FBI in Malcolm’s assassination, blew me away as a 15-year old kid. Ever since, I’ve been researching Malcolm X, especially drawn to the last year of his life after he left the Nation of Islam. Malcolm X is such an important historical actor in this book because his visit to Tanzania in 1964 signaled a shift in the Black Freedom Movement in the US. He brought Tanzania to the attention of the Black Power generation of activists I address in the chapters that follow. These young men and women in their mid to late twenties really took to heart Malcolm’s message of connecting with Africa–Tanzania specifically–culturally, politically, psychologically, and spiritually. He laid down this useful model for African Americans to follow in terms of how to internationalize their struggle against racism.

One of the chapters I found most powerful focused upon the career of Guyanese historian and activist Walter Rodney, who taught for five years at the University of Dar es Salaam (UDSM). He literally wrote  How Europe Underdeveloped Africa  (1972) while on the faculty. While there, he also inspired and worked with the University Students African Revolutionary Front. These were radical African students—not just Tanzanians—who wanted to push the country into a more avowedly socialist and Pan-African direction. In this chapter and others, you explore the contradictions of promoting a transnational ideology in a single nation. Will you discuss that further?

This story is indeed a cautionary tale about the African postcolonial state and its capacity to liberate, its capacity to collaborate with the grassroots (including the diaspora) against a common foe, its capacity to meet the expectations of its own citizens and its “racial citizens” of the diaspora. In the case of the Africans students, their Marxist interpretation of postcolonial Africa, Tanzania especially, ruffled the feathers of the ruling government and party. Through Walter Rodney’s mentorship, radical African students believed they were helping the government with their criticism of class struggle, socialism and imperialism. The government and party thought otherwise. Due to its promotion of a transnational ideology, the University African Students Revolutionary Front was forced to disband. This chapter essentially tries to illustrate the constraints the Nyerere government imposed on student and diaspora activism within Tanzania as much as it tries to highlight the agency of Walter Rodney and the African students he mentored. This tension is a recurring one that also manifests in the book publishing, anti-apartheid solidarity, and technical skills assistance initiatives explored in the book.

Related to that, talk more about the challenges that Nyerere and his supporters had in carrying through on the Arusha Declaration, on building African Socialism, in Tanzania.  

“You can’t build socialism without committed socialists.” That’s what a lot of Tanzanians told me when doing field research for this book. I interpret this to mean that the development of leaders within the government and party was easier said than done. Moreover, the internal class struggle made it difficult to stem the tide of government corruption. Breaking free from the economic legacies of colonialism during the height of the Cold War presented challenges as well. So did the oil crisis of the 1970s followed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank intervention of the 1980s. All of these forces and events contributed greatly to Tanzania becoming one of the poorest countries in Africa by the mid-1980s. The Cold War really wreaked havoc on the African continent, I can’t stress that point enough.

PC: It begs the question, what role democracy in a one-party nation? Tanzania was hardly alone, meaning that in many postcolonial nations, liberation movements immediately became the one political party leading their new nations. What did Nyerere think about multiparty democracy and was this subject a touchy one for blacks coming from the United States or elsewhere outside of Africa?

That’s an interesting question when thinking about what’s happening right now in Tanzania where the party that has been in power since independence is slowing losing the people’s trust and confidence and increasingly throwing their support behind the main opposition party. While Nyerere, no doubt, saw the value in a multi-party system, he took a gradualist approach to its implementation. He believed a democratic culture and ethos could be fostered within a single mass party framework. I do think he also saw the dangers of multi-partyism for newly independent nations, seeing the political-ethnic violence that arose in other countries as warning sign of sorts. If you look at Tanzania’s political history since the 1960s, it not a history colored by extensive political violence, which brings us back to Nyerere and how he viewed nation building in gradual steps and stages. The transition to muti-partyism in Tanzania in the mid-1990s was relatively a smooth one—not a coincidence, I think. At the same time, political violence has erupted during the last two election cycles. 

One party rule in Tanzania was not a touchy subject for African Americans. It bothered the moderate civil rights leaders who saw a link between single party rule and communism. But for the people I examine in my book, this issue was not a deal breaker or anything like that. The banning of soul music and the wearing of mini-skirts, and the ways which the government and party policed these polices, were particularly jarring to some. One African American living in Tanzania back then relayed to me a funny story about how Tanzanian youth clandestinely visited his home just to listen to James Brown! The main issue with the ruling party had more to do with a faction within the party comprised of conservatives who were not big fans of the Black Power movement. This faction was largely responsible for the mass arrest of African American expatriates in Tanzania in 1974, which was pretty much the beginning of the end.  

Although many who study Pan-Africanism may believe in its basic premises, that does not mean the ideology and practice is without problems. Your book, especially the last few chapters, are far from triumphant. In various ways, you reveal the many real and deep tensions. Can you elaborate?

I guess it depends on how you define triumphant given what the pan-Africanism movement was up against, but I get your point. This moment was transformative for so many people. It was an important stage of political development in their lives. It shaped people’s racial, political, gender, and cultural identities in many positive ways. I hope readers don’t lose sight of those small victories. This is why I’m reluctant to look at this movement as a complete failure or pan-Africanism as a problematic ideology and practice. The problems they encountered provide lessons for future generation of pan-Africanists. The themes and issues I address in my book–like literacy, education, people’s assemblies, international travel and alliance building, and neocolonialism–still hold relevance today. You’re right when you say that some deep tensions are revealed and never get fully resolved but that is something that happens within socio-political movements in general. The people I talk about were trying to build friendships and political alliances across racial, ethnic, national, linguistic, and cultural differences. Despite these differences, they tended to find common ground and build mutually beneficial relationships, and that’s important to keep in mind, when factoring in the reasons for why these alliances were short-lived.  

Tell me about how you conducted your research in Tanzania. I’m especially interested in how you found people to interview and conducted your interviews—there and in the United States.  

I did research for this book all in the U.S., Tanzania, and Trinidad and Tobago, collecting and reviewing personal papers, newspapers, government documents and reports, FBI and CIA files, journal and magazine articles, letters, diaries, interviews, the list goes on. I also conducted interviews like you mentioned. Judy Richardson and Mejah Mbuya helped me connect with people to interview. I met Judy, a former member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), when I did youth organizing work back in the late 1990s/early 2000s. When I started doing research for the book and came to learn of Judy’s role in Drum and Spear Press, a Black Power publishing company that published books in Kiswahili, Tanzania’s national language, I reached out to her. She got me in touch with a lot of the African Americans I interviewed such as Courtland Cox, Charlie Cobb, Jennifer Lawson, among others. Doing oral histories was one of the best parts of putting this book together. It takes a lot of experimentation and persistence. I got the chance to meet and talk with some remarkable people. On the Tanzania side, I was lucky to link up with an activist named Mejah Mbuya. We met through a mutual friend – an African American lawyer living and working in Tanzania when I first travelled there in 2002. Mejah knew a lot of people from the socialist era. He connected me with Tanzanians like the book publisher Walter Bgoya, former radical students and professors of the University of Dar es Salaam like Karim Hirji and Issa Shivji, and politicians like Paul Bomani, the former ambassador to the U.S. There was this one time when I was interviewing a former member of the ruling party’s youth wing at a café in Dar es Salaam. The person sitting at the table next to us was listening in on the interview turned out to be the daughter of Oscar Kambona, the former Defense Minister of Tanzania! She later introduced me to her mother and gave me access to portions of her father’s personal papers, which included the gift Malcolm X gave him when they met for the first time in Dar es Salaam. This is just to say that luck played a role as well. Sometimes they found me instead of me finding them. I do want to say that each year people from this era are passing away which makes capturing their stories through oral history all the more important.

I know you are great ly  interested in hip hop in Tanzania, other parts of Africa, and the United States. This subject is definitely central to 21 st  century Pan-Africanism. Although you did not discuss them in the book, tell us about this subject. What do you find compelling and where do you see hip hop going in Tanzania and East Africa?

In the conclusion of the book, I mention how, for the past twenty years, Tanzanian hip hop artists have memorialized the Black Power and Ujamaa eras in their music. I partially look at African hip hop as an expression of pan-African solidarity because African youth have taken a diaspora-made culture, made it their own to speak back to the African Americans, to state power, etc. If it’s about looking at hip hop in Tanzania and its ability to foment radical social change, like what’s happened in Senegal with Y’en a Marre, then the hip hop movement has a long way to go. This is not to say that the movement isn’t politicized in any way. But what I find compelling is the growth of hip hop as an artistic culture not so much as a political movement. I’m drawn to how hip hop in Tanzania, and East Africa, is growing beyond rap music. At one time, everybody wanted to be a rapper. Now you have young men and women graffiti writers, dancers, and DJs. To see the emergence of these other core aesthetic elements of the culture are what interest me the most. I’ve also been looking into the link between the war in Afghanistan, the international heroin trade, and hip hop in Tanzania. The heroin epidemic in Tanzania is growing at an alarming rate and, tragically, has taken the lives of hip hop artists like Langa Kileo. I knew Langa personally; he was a very gifted rapper. His death, as result of his addiction, really brought to people’s attention the severity of a problem that is not unique to Tanzania – it’s happening all over Africa. Whether this issue becomes central to 21st century pan-Africanism led by young people remains to be seen, but I’m hopeful.

What kind of city is an African architecture for?

Image credit Danny Hoffman.

Children ran up and down the central stairwell as Martin led me and a small group of companions around the Liberia Broadcasting System (LBS) building on the outskirts of Liberia’s capital, Monrovia. It was the start of the rainy season. Martin lived among approximately 80 families in the ruins of the brutalist LBS, one of the largest structures in the city. Most had been in the LBS more than ten years, having fled the countryside for the relative safety of the city during Liberia’s long war.

One could clearly see how the building’s residents orchestrated their own architecture within the huge frame, carving and creating spaces as they negotiated their needs given the limits of the space. Looking down from the stair into the ground floor, pools of standing green water were a reminder of the challenges of these creative reworkings. In the torrential Liberian rains, the building’s inhabitants are violently exposed to the elements.

“A building like this should be productive,” muttered Ibrahim, a young man who had accompanied me on similar walk-throughs of heavily damaged buildings around the city.  Ibrahim and I were touring the LBS in the course of researching a book on Monrovia’s modernist built environment and the urban future.  In each location, he said almost exactly the same thing. It became a kind of mantra he repeated in all the city’s modernist ruins.  “If you leave a building like this to the people,” he said, “it will rot and become useless.”

Ibrahim’s negative assessment of the LBS occupation represents a challenge to some of the most progressive thinking in architecture and urban design today. A good deal of the popular, scholarly, and practitioner literature on the modern city seeks to validate occupations like those of the LBS and to make it the model for new grassroots forms of architecture and urbanism.  In this literature it is the work of squatters and other organic intellectuals re-imaging failed modernist architecture like Caracas’ Torre David — “the improvised home for a community of over 800 families living in an extra-legal and tenuous occupation that many called a vertical slum” — that is the most hopeful and productive for thinking about the urban future. When so much of formal urban design today is geared toward speculative real estate capital and commercial interests, a certain fetishization of the unplanned and improvisatory strategies of the urban poor has taken hold.

That romantic view of the urban future is not one shared by many Monrovians today, and certainly not one they are willing to fight for. Despite a chronic housing and land shortage, Monrovia has not seen the militant urban social movements that have emerged in cities across Latin America, North Africa, and parts of Southeast Asia. In fact, even veterans of Liberia’s war, men who continue to threaten to take up arms in the pursuit of a better future, are remarkably passive on the subject of Monrovia’s built environment. When hundreds of ex-combatants and their families were evicted from the old Ministry of Defense building, a space in which most had lived for more than a decade, they put up no real resistance. Martin said much the same of the LBS. Though they had lived there for years, and though they had few alternatives in the overcrowded city, no one wanted to claim the LBS as their own.

But if Ibrahim and others like him reject the idea of architecture without architects, there is also a disturbing element in what he proposes as an alternative. What Monrovia needs, Ibrahim argued, is someone who can forcefully impose a vision of the city and its built environment from above, rather than below. Africa’s early modernist architectural heritage was overwhelmingly state driven, but (at least rhetorically) it consisted of projects meant to symbolically unify the nation through cutting edge design and grandiose urban forms. By contrast, Ibrahim felt that the city’s infrastructure would be “productive” when it could be used as a tool for making the flow of money more efficient and the generation of profit more fluid.  Ibrahim seemed to feel that the city and its built environment could only serve the nation under an authoritarian figure powerful enough to reclaim spaces like the LBS and make it part of his personalized network of political, economic, and social patronage. It is a disturbingly common sentiment in a city buffeted by years of poor administration, warfare, and, most recently, economic collapse under the scourge of the Ebola epidemic.  To work as a city, according to this line of thinking, what Monrovia needs is not pubic works and infrastructure so much as a return to the crony capitalism (and accompanying state violence) of the Charles Taylor regime, Liberia between 1997 and 2003. (This perhaps makes some sense of the veiled promises of current Liberian Vice-President Jewel Howard-Taylor to restore the brutal order that characterized the rule of her former husband.)

The architectural historian Andres Lepik recently argued that what is presently missing from African architecture, and by extension from a more progressive and appropriate vision of the African city, are high quality reference buildings.  There is no doubt a good deal of truth in that.  But a more important absence may be a serious critical conversation about what kind of city an African architecture is for.