Sean Jacobs's Blog, page 280

An economic strategy for The Gambia

Recently I spent time in The Gambia, a country whose people overthrew a megalomaniacal, authoritarian and vicious President, Yahyeh Jammeh, in an extraordinary democratic moment, due to their courage and the timely supportive action of other countries in West Africa (and very little if at all due to support from major powers, apart from their role in placing some effective limits on prior abuses and eventually supporting a Security Council resolution that helped to legitimize the regional action).

I was able to observe a moving event in which members of the country’s diaspora, from Alaska to Taiwan and from Cape Verde to Sweden, most of whom were active in opposition (and quite a number of whom were highly educated professionals successful in the countries to which they have departed) assembled to meet the new President and to express their pleasure at the New Gambia as well as their sincere hopes for the future. Conversations with ordinary Gambians reveal general relief and enormous optimism. Arguably, the current juncture provides the first opportunity since the country’s independence in 1965 for a broad ranging public conversation on the ends and means of development.

On the agenda of the new and widely welcomed government are now not only the restoration of the rule of law and democratic institutions, but addressing economic and social concerns long severely neglected. Gambians had been among those who are crossing the Mediterranean to Europe, in the hope of a better life, in large numbers relative to their small population.  Many concerns including a population in poor health and insufficiently educated, an undiversified economy vulnerable to downturns in demand for its few exports and unable to generate sufficient employment, especially for youth, must be urgently addressed. The smallness of the country makes it difficult to pursue many strategies available to larger countries, such as those which might accord a driving role to domestic demand (which presumes that the national economy can provide the scale and diversification required for such an approach).

Break the chains of imperialism? Rouse the people to revolution? One wishes it were so simple. The responsible economic analyst must provide prescriptions relevant in the here and now, while not losing track of the broader questions and ultimate concerns. International and national realities – financial, technical, political and social – must all be faced, even as one dreams a dream. Fostering a dynamic and inclusive market economy, able to weather the unforgiving storm of the global economy, even while combatting its constraints and attacking its limitations, is the most proximately realizable utopia.

The dominant approach to economic management for the Gambia and countries like it, coming from the World Bank, IMF and Western governments (who tend speak more or less in unison on such issues) emphasizes ‘sound’ macroeconomic management, interpreted in terms of maintaining manageable debt, low inflation, a realistic exchange rate conducive to avoiding sustained external deficits, and a climate for doing business that is attractive for investors. This is not always wrong, but it is very frequently wholly inadequate. The focus on these priorities reflects the thinking and interests of external institutions, and in particular the perceived desirability of a reliably pro-business (and in particular pro-foreign investor) economic environment. It is based on the idea that such conditions, perhaps complemented by some investment in human capabilities and administrative reforms, are sufficient to jump-start economic growth, as the country specializes in the areas in which it has a comparative advantage. This worldview leads to a concern with lowering costs rather more than it does with raising productivity. Most importantly, it does not directly consider what is needed for the incremental structural transformation of an economy.

Those countries that have successfully developed in any sense have generally pursued a more active strategy. A program of action focused on a country’s own development goals must therefore extend beyond providing economic stability and an institutional and policy environment attractive to business, whether foreign or domestic. In the present delicate transitional situation of The Gambia, sensitivity to a broader range of issues – economic, social and political – as well as a long-term orientation that is strategic, is needed.  (For purposes of this discussion I shall take as given the colonially derived borders of the Gambia, despite the reasons for thinking that it is an important part of the reason for the country’s woes.  The maxim that one might adopt is that the borders may not be abolished but that they can be made less relevant).

One contrast between the different views on economic policy is expressed at the level of high theory by the orthodox view that it can be dangerous and costly for any government to attempt to intercede in ways that aid particular industries, as this involves forms of prognostication of which it is not capable – picking winners.   However, this criticism fails to recognize that interventions can be of very different kinds, and that they do not have to involve costly subsidies – which may be infeasible quite apart from their being ill-advised. They can involve helping to remove infrastructural obstacles (such as in power, storage or transportation), changing trade or tax policies so as to lower the costs of producing or procuring specific inputs, steps to enhance skill development and dissemination of technical knowledge, improving marketing or distribution, organizing industry, workers and civil society to share information or overhead costs better and otherwise solve problems, and many other actions. Some of these measures can be undertaken even by governments with limited capabilities, on the basis of a specific analysis of what is needed combined with a realistic assessment of what it is capable of doing. The idea of growth diagnostics that has been advocated in recent years is in this spirit, as it recognizes that there may be structural obstacles to be identified and removed in order to bring about higher levels of economic growth.  A part of the theoretical grounding for such an approach within the framework of standard economics is the theory of the second best, which clarifies why impediments to the functioning of markets or states that cannot be directly negated might have their adverse effects diminished by introducing other measures, but noting that the right actions can only be identified through a contextually sensitive study of the various impediments that are present.  These impediments may exist either in the national economy or in the world economy and may affect the ability to realize a higher national income presently to enter onto a higher growth path. A set of economic policies and actions that best serve the country’s development must at a minimum sustain livelihoods and generate employment, raise incomes and relieve the country’s foreign exchange constraint (The Gambia is perennially aid dependent and accordingly constrained).

In addition to economic considerations, there may of course also be ecological, social, cultural or political concerns which enter both into the description of the objectives and the constraints.   A program of inclusive growth and development, for instance, might aim not only to achieve sustainable growth but to ensure its adequate distribution across income groups, social groups and regions. Considerations of diverse kinds ought to be integrated into any strategy from the first, as early choices carry consequences as to what will be possible later. A democratic pathway to development requires public discussion and support for the choices made, in order to inform, justify and implement them.

A conversation among Gambians on a development strategy for the country might reflect on the following possible proposals for a realistic development strategy:

What do Gambians wish for their country in ten, fifteen, twenty-five or fifty years? What is the program of action needed to get there? Can The Gambia build new areas of specialization, and not merely further extend existing ones (traditional agricultural exports such as groundnuts, and tourism)? Are there areas of economic activity that are potentially remunerative for the country which can be further developed in the short and intermediate term (floriculture, fruits, medicinal herbs and plants, business process outsourcing, e.g. medical transcription or other niche internet dependent service exports for which the English language, the time zone and sufficiently educated workers are an advantage)? If so, what is the potential role of Gambian government, domestic or foreign businesses, producer or worker cooperatives, or others working together in identifying and providing a spur for such activities, in providing technical knowledge or in certifying quality?   What are the factors that make Gambian activities in certain areas uncompetitive and to what extent can these be addressed through specific actions? (Consider the possibility that high power costs might be diminished by better inducements for solar power – the costs of which have greatly fallen in recent years – or other measures). Very deliberately scanning the field of opportunities nationally and globally is necessary. This process can start immediately, but will require the aid of collaborators outside government and perhaps outside the country.

Taking an inventory of national capabilities, some of which may be hidden (e.g. in the substantial Gambian diaspora, small in absolute number but a large resource for the country) is another necessary early step.  How will future steps build on earlier ones? Can The Gambia link its strategy to existing areas of robust economic growth in the region and globally (for example, what possibilities exist for taking advantage of linkages to Senegal or other countries in the specific industries in which they have been experiencing robust economic growth)? What obstacles must be removed in order to do so? How should the economic strategy reflect main goals such as increasing youth employment? Crucially, what are areas of tax revenue that can be progressively increased? Taxes, if raised, should be clearly tied, through political commitments if not administrative earmarking, to productivity enhancing investments in physical and social infrastructure. As noted already, costs are not as important an obstacle to investment, foreign and domestic, as is low productivity, which can be improved through appropriate public and private investments, with public investment playing a leading role. A close tie between tax revenues and sensible investments can therefore create a virtuous circle. How should a broad-based educational strategy seek to provide the profile of human capabilities that most conduces to the self-realization of citizens as well as the development of a productive, sustainable, economy? What weaknesses in the educational infrastructure, both in terms of quality and quantity, must be attacked in order to do so? What about health and social services? With limited natural resources, The Gambia must urgently invest in people as its ultimate resource.  Relatedly, what are the demographic opportunities and obstacles that are likely to present themselves?  An irony of modern demography, reflected in the Gambia, is that high fertility rates and the associated boom in the number of youth reflect poor health and educational outcomes rather than good ones. Addressing people’s needs better can therefore both directly and indirectly relieve developmental constraints.  What about the relation between city and country? The country has been experiencing rapid urbanization, with rapid growth in a single ‘primal’ city concentrated along the coast, also the resource that draws international tourists.   As in many other countries, this is a consequence of push from rural areas as well as pull from urban areas, as inattention to sustaining productive agrarian livelihoods or decentralizing high quality social services has changed the calculation as to where to live.

In each and every area, comprehensive scrutiny of the limitations and possibilities is needed in order to create an integrated development strategy.

Although the question is vulgar, one must still ask, in the media-driven world of today, what is The Gambia’s country brand? (This can be different for different purposes, e.g. for attracting investors and tourists) How will it be publicized consistently and powerfully? How will the country’s self-presentation to foreign investors, development bankers, aid donors or others reflect its economic goals and priorities and its consolidation of democracy?

How can the government find strategic partners who will help the country to develop needed competences? Private companies can play this role but so can international organizations and national counterparts, once strategic thrust areas have been identified. Some dialogue with the partners may be necessary to identify what these are (for instance in the case of entirely new export activities, for which reliable demanders are needed). Government can help to develop production of certain goods and services on a national scale to make them more viable than they otherwise would be.

Some social goals may be of special interest to foreign partners (e.g. youth employment for European partners concerned about migration) who should be asked to support specific aspects of the policy regime (e.g. tax credits, wage subsidies or other economic inducements for firms hiring youth, vocational training, and aid for small business development).   Foundations and policy organizations specifically concerned with particular strategic priorities can be invited to advise and participate. The government must take a strategic approach to identifying and inviting partners to work with it in high priority areas that it itself defines.

Crucially, how can the relationship with Senegal be revisited to create new opportunities for both countries (e.g. by improving infrastructural links between Senegal’s volatile Casamance region and the rest of the country, while also enhancing trade links with the Gambia?  The elimination of administrative impediments and the improvement of the infrastructure for everyday commerce as well as other forms of practical collaboration – put on the shelf due to the poor relationship between the previous government and Senegal – is an historical goal that should be again pursued with urgency, taking advantage of the good feeling that has followed ECOWAS’s initiative to support democracy in the Gambia.

In what ways can the consolidation and deepening of democracy in the country aid the economic strategy? Sending a signal that the government intends to value and uphold the rule of law can be important to investors but maintaining the active support of the people for the economic strategy is also essential to provide balance and to ensure its longer-term credibility and success. In order to attain this, measures of different kinds can be helpful. Important among these can be the engagement of citizens’ groups in the development of the economic vision for the country, to ensure its substantive relevance, its social and cultural appropriateness and its legitimacy. A multi-level process throughout the country of envisioning desirable collective futures and determining what are the obstacles to them that must be addressed can help to guide the government’s future actions (some organizations have some expertise in this area, such as the Society for International Development, which has undertaken such work in Kenya).   Initiatives to increase local decision-making power such as participatory budgeting can play a useful role.   A range of administrative reforms can also signal the government’s commitment to enhancing accountability to diverse stakeholders. These can include measures to increase transparency (e.g. instituting a right to information about governmental decision-making processes). However, no closed list of specific reforms can substitute for the open-ended idea of the deepening and widening of democratic participation. There is experience in these different areas that the Gambia can draw upon with the aid of progressive governments elsewhere that have undertaken relevant experiments, international and non-governmental organizations, or other friends and intermediaries.

Like other postcolonial nation states, The Gambia should undertake a comprehensive reassessment of its administrative architecture, inherited from the colonial period, and its appropriateness to support the objectives of a dynamic and developmental state. The relation between state and society also must be reconsidered, with thought being given to creative legal and institutional reforms that might support broader democratic engagement in development processes. In the meantime, here are a couple of modest suggestions to enhance the quality of ideas entering into the public debate and thereby into administrative decision-making:

Friends of The Gambia groups – The Government can benefit from the advice of the ‘think tank’ that has been established domestically by the new government to make proposals on Gambian economic policy but the Government can also benefit from the assistance of friends of The Gambia elsewhere, taking advantage of the goodwill that exists in the wake of the democratic transition. These can include independently-minded internationally recognized economists, public health specialists, infrastructure experts, engineers, lawyers, public officials or others from Africa and beyond (whom it may wish to consult when formulating its strategy or interacting with development partners). Membership of the groups can be made open and flexible, so as to draw on all expertise that might be useful to the government. If they are consulted selectively, the involved experts may be asked to volunteer their efforts.

National Rountables – focused on addressing specific problems and thematic concerns, national roundtables can be formed flexibly as needed, bringing together government, political parties, diaspora representatives, business, professional organizations, labor representatives and media.   Such roundtables need not have any statutory authority but they can be very helpful to share experiences and perspectives and formulate ideas, which can then enter the process of formulating and administering policies. They have worked successfully elsewhere to bring together different groups so as to to solve common problems (in particular in El Salvador, in the aftermath of its civil war, where the roundtables have been brokered by the UN).   The Gambia is a small country, in which there are moreover pressing shared developmental goals that transcend the conflicts that may be present (in the old days this idea gave rise to the concept of a ‘national bourgeoisie’!). Both of these facts make possible such a method of social problem solving.

A deliberative approach is needed to gather together expertise, garner social consensus, and formulate an effective strategy. This is sure to be a multi-year, and indeed ongoing, process but it is better to begin as soon as possible, while there is broad commitment to doing things differently in order to bring about a New Gambia (as it has been called by Gambians themselves).

In light of The Gambia’s status as a small open economy, its import dependence and its present low level of foreign reserves (apparently due in some part to thieving by previous President Jammeh and his clique) a strategy for building a sustainable financial buffer is of high importance. Present donor interest in The Gambia should be capitalized upon, but might also lead to some increase in future indebtedness. One can hope that in the intermediate to long-term, an economic strategy aiming to increase exports can address the problem. In the short-term, other measures may be useful.

To capitalize on high diaspora and world interest in supporting The Gambia at present, the new government could announce a Gambia Development Bond, which might be subscribed in dalassis and select foreign currencies. The bond’s interest rate should be set at a low level to ensure that the financing it provides is at a rate favorable to the government and it should have a long maturity. Returns might even be made conditional on future economic growth. The Gambia Development Bond would be made preferentially available to citizens and members of the diaspora in small denominations so as to encourage subscriptions by the general public on terms favorable to the country. An online purchasing facility could be created for ease of subscription or it could be made available via missions abroad and registered intermediaries.  Since the bond would be aimed especially at members of the diaspora, they could choose the option of receiving their return in dalassis at a higher interest rate. This would benefit the government by providing it foreign exchange in return for a long-term domestic currency liability in exchange.

Proceeds from the bond should be earmarked for developmental investments. Inducement to purchase the bonds could also be ensured by providing them with favorable tax treatment. The bond could be made attractive to foreigners by make any earnings received free of any taxes in The Gambia and with limited or no foreign reporting.

The potential gains from such an issue might be sizable. If forty thousand Gambians resident abroad and foreigners make an average investment of two and a half thousand US dollars each, it will result in one hundred million dollars of soft financing, which is not an insignificant amount for The Gambia, whose foreign exchange reserves are on a similar order.

The Gambia might also consider exploring agreements at the political level to settle its external payments obligations to ECOWAS partners, OIC countries, or others in dalassis or other soft trade financing terms (e.g. in terms of deliverable agricultural commodities) in order to take advantage of their willingness to support it at this time.

State funds have very likely been misappropriated and misdirected by the previous President and perhaps his inner circle. We know from efforts to recover funds in other cases (e.g. the Philippines) that the process can take many years and be only partially successful at best, and thus of little value for the short-run needs of the country. To identify the links between existing assets and previous financial misdeeds and to lay claim to them in court are painstaking processes. Nevertheless, it may be desirable to begin such efforts. A forensic audit of financial accounts is of more than historical value, as it can help to establish a principle of accountability and moreover to help diagnose where there are institutional gaps that led to the resulting failures. More importantly from a forward looking point of view, although very speculatively, if the proceeds of foreign loans were systematically stolen this might provide a basis for a claim for debt relief under the doctrine of ‘odious debt’ or similar ideas which have been much mooted in discussions of international law but never applied.   The Gambia may be able to work with relevant non-governmental organizations or work with foreign law firms on a pro bono or contingency basis to pursue such claims.

However, the resolution of such claims cannot substitute for a development strategy.   Happily, Gambians have already started to take advantage of an historical opportunity to begin a conversation on what they want and how best to achieve it. Such a conversation must extend from politics to economics, lest the former does not run aground on the shoals of the latter.   Better still, in this moment of a fresh start, good economics can gain its spur from good politics.  Although they face the headwinds of a harsh world, the next steps are, as they should be, up to The Gambia’s people.

*This is an edited version of a post that appeared on Reddy’s blog, Reddy Reads.

The benevolent great power

China’s president Xi Jinping. Image via APEC 2013 Flickr.

In Mid-May, world leaders gathered at the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation in Beijing to learn about what could possibly be the most ambitious economic mega project in human history: China’s One Belt One Road Initiative (OBOR).

According to some estimates, the OBOR will encompass “4.4 billion people, 64 countries [with] a combined economic output of $21 trillion – roughly twice the annual gross domestic product of China, or 29 percent of global GDP.”

OBOR – launched in 2015 with an initial funding of $40 billion – is not only a foreign policy initiative, but also addresses some of the vulnerabilities of China’s political economy. The returns on investment-led growth in China are diminishing. Reforms of state owned enterprises (SOEs), which dominate the Chinese economy and face overcapacity in the labor-intensive steel sector, are politically sensitive. And, China still has vast foreign exchange reserves.

According to the Chinese government, 50 Chinese state-owned companies have invested in nearly 1,700 OBOR projects since 2013. In terms of financing, several state-owned, and multilateral players are involved in OBOR, including the Silk Road Fund, named for the land and maritime Silk Road, which has historically linked China to trade in Southeast Asia, the Middle East and East Africa. Other players include the Export and Import Bank of China, the China Development Bank, and the BRICS-founded New Development Bank.

The most interesting player, however, is the recently founded Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), which in 2016 already approved  $1.7bn in loans for OBOR. The AIIB is a direct challenge to the US-led international economic establishment, and through OBOR, aims to establish the Yuan as a true international currency. It is actively recruiting African countries. Three countries have so far been invited to be members of the AIIB: South Africa, Egypt and Ethiopia.

As Howard French emphasizes in his new book “Everything Under The Heavens”, it is crucial to understand the history of China’s relationship with the rest of the world to be able to grasp its contemporary worldview and ambitions. Imperial ambitions often go hand in hand with historical revisionism. With its deep, complex and contradictory historical archive, China is able to wield history against competitors and instrumentalize it in order to promote the myth of itself as the only exceptional and benevolent “Great Power.”

The figure of Zheng He exemplifies this. Zheng He was a Chinese imperial explorer and diplomat during the early Ming dynasty (1368-1644). He sailed an expeditionary armada, which according to French was equal in size to the “the combined fleets of Britain, France and Spain that fought the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805.” Zheng He’s legacy is now being portrayed as the embodiment of China’s foreign policy of “harmonious co-existence” by Chinese historians and intellectuals. Chinese diplomacy has used Zhen’s legend to further its soft power throughout the Horn of Africa, where He’s expeditionary missions are said to have reached in the early 1400s.

African countries said to benefit most from the contemporary OBOR proposals include Egypt, Kenya and Djibouti, where China recently constructed its first overseas naval base, as well as a port, and a railway to neighboring Ethiopia.

As economist Branko Milanovic emphasizes, OBOR is a return to “hard stuff” in development assistance, referring to critical infrastructure such as ports, railroads, economic corridors and gas pipelines. One of OBOR’s flagship initiatives is the China-Pakistan Corridor (CPC), a $55bn project involving power plants, rail and infrastructure. It has caused regional rival India to boycott OBOR and snub the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation, calling China’s plan “imperial”, and a “direct threat” to its “territorial sovereignty.”

For Chinese policymakers, OBOR signifies a return to “non-ideological development assistance,” which separates politics from “mutual self-interest,” according to Milanovic. Though it is true that China generally does not engage in conditionality, OBOR is still deeply ideological, and is shaped by a legacy of “foreign policy as asymmetric transactions,” which dates back to the tributary system of the Middle Kingdom. This is crucial given that other than a recent policy document published by China’s central planning body, OBOR largely remains a skeleton that still has to be filled with substance. As bargaining and negotiations over substance continue, China might employ this asymmetry bilaterally to assert its dominance and deter opposition. For instance, despite Singapore’s prominent support for OBOR, it’s Prime Minister, Lee Hsien Loong, was explicitly not invited to the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation, a snub which is widely believed to stem from Singapore’s vocal support for US rebalance in the region.

Western critics, on the other hand, have warned that OBOR resembles Britain’s old colonial trading network, and could exacerbate African countries’ subservient commodity supplier relationship with China. Even Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta, who was one of the two African leaders to attend the Belt and Road Forum (the other one being Hailemariam Desalegn of Ethiopia; Egypt’s Trade and Industry Minister was also present), has decried China’s large trade surplus with African countries in a recent interview, and has called on China to “open itself to African goods.” Though these views highlight important characteristics about the asymmetric bilateral relationships that characterize some of China’s involvement in Africa, they also trivialize the agency of African stakeholders. This includes paying attention to crucial negotiation details, such as debt terms, quality standards, and local content/labor requirements. In a series of tweets recently, Kenyan political scientist Ken Opalo, responding to a New York Times article portraying China as the world’s new colonial power, emphasized the agency of African policymakers and called on them to get those critical infrastructures built, and “ignore their self-appointed guardians.” In the context of Kenya’s trade deficit with China, Kenyans might also want to ask the Kenyatta administration why Kenya isn’t in a better position to take advantage of the relocation of labor-intensive industries from China. Potential African beneficiaries of OBOR should be neither naïve nor dismissive, and seek the best possible deal.

Media and citizen scrutiny can go a long way: Pakistan’s leading newspaper, Dawn, recently leaked documents of China’s original proposals in the CPC negotiation, putting pressure on Pakistan’s political class to show that China hasn’t taken them for a ride. As Opalo rightly emphasizes, given that lacking energy and infrastructure remain one of the key binding constraints to productivity growth in several African countries, opportunities such as OBOR cannot simply be ignored, but should also be engaged critically.

Biafra–nostalgia as critique

It was past midnight in a sleepy suburb of Guangzhou in southern China, and the loudspeakers of a restaurant were blaring highlife, upbeat but mournful:

Ojukwu has died, people of Nigeria

Ojukwu has died, people of Biafra

Ikemba [Ojukwu] has died

About one hundred young Nigerian men were celebrating the 2014 launch of an Igbo-language highlife music album, released by one of their own — one of the thousands of Nigerian businessmen making their livelihoods by connecting factories and markets in Asia to West African consumers.

Otigba, the Nigerian highlife singer based in China, dedicated his album to “all his people living abroad” and opened the party with a light, rippling number. The song narrated a cascade of shout-outs to fellow Nigerian businessmen and the markets they work in across Asia and Nigeria, encouraging them to jisie ike, stay strong. Men “sprayed” bills into Otigba’s face or slapped thick stacks of bills one by one onto his head, where they stuck momentarily on his sweat before falling to the ground.

Closing the album was a song entitled “Ojukwu,” which combined a eulogy of Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, the military leader of the failed 1960s secessionist state of Biafra, with praise singing for the Nigerian community in China. One young man with an “I LOVE BIAFRA” t-shirt walked proudly around the party while table conversations escalated in excitement. Obinna, an Igbo Nigerian merchant in his thirties, smiled as he told me that the increasingly loud table next to us was debating about Biafra and how it will soon return.

Otigba’s album evoked two themes of contemporary Igbo political critiques of the Nigerian nation-state: diasporic hustling and Biafran secessionism. But how does rhetoric of a 1960’s failed secessionist state in Nigeria flow into a sleepy industrial city in southern China? And how does it take hold amongst young Nigerian merchants, none of whom lived through the war themselves?

Since the 1990s, markets across the Asia and the Middle East have seen an uptick of these young, Igbo Nigerian men who carve out livelihoods by sourcing goods and importing them to Africa. While Igbos in Nigeria are generally stereotyped as a business-minded minority, many Igbos themselves narrate their entrepreneurialism as a creative and necessary response to historic discrimination and systematic exclusion from access to oil and government sectors by the post-civil-war nation-state.

Refrains like Otigba’s song appear across the towns and markets of the Global South where young Igbo Nigerian merchants congregate; small Biafran flags hang alongside Nigerian flags in shops in southern China and Dubai, banter on slow market days in Lagos often turns to political debate. Photoshopped images and memes of Biafra circulate on social media, and illegal Radio Biafra (a pirate station based in London) broadcasts crackle over the radio waves on public transportation in eastern Nigeria. Some of the most vivid mass demonstrations in Nigeria have been through massive market closures by predominantly Igbo traders in commemoration of Ojukwu’s burial in 2012 and the 50th anniversary of Biafra’s secession earlier this week.

Yet while many of these globally-mobile Igbo Nigerian merchants are clearly moved by Biafran rhetoric, they always simultaneously express hesitation (and often straight up rejection) of this as a concrete militant movement through war. Unlike many migration paths towards the West, migrations across the Global South are largely temporary, with few to no paths to naturalization across Asian and Middle Eastern countries. Nearly all merchants expect to return to Nigeria and subsequently maintain intensive material and social commitments across Nigeria through practices such as frequent remittance, construction, and house-building from afar.

None of the young Biafran commemoration demonstrators lived through the Nigerian Civil War in the 1960s, yet Biafra as a concept is alluring in its power as a counterfactual history of Nigeria: the thinking goes, if Biafra had successfully seceded in the 1960s, young Igbos today would be living a completely different material reality. Redrawing the past has implications for the present: it re-inserts a devastating war back into the national historical narrative and calls the Nigerian state into action concerning the war’s legacies of political power and resource distribution inequalities. As Nigerian columnist Emeka Obasi wrote earlier this week, “Let there be justice and you may not hear much of Biafra.”

Evoking Biafra, either as a nostalgic homeland of the past or as a messianic polity of the future, perhaps can be read as a provocation that a different material reality for Nigeria is necessary, possible, and just within reach. Otigba’s closing song continually addressed the diasporic crowd, interchangeably hailing them as Nigerians, Igbos, and Biafrans. At least in Otigba’s rolling highlife refrains, it is possible to be all three at the same time.

*Translation of song lyrics assisted by E. Nwosu.

Biafra, nostalgia as critique

It was past midnight in a sleepy suburb of Guangzhou in southern China, and the loudspeakers of a restaurant were blaring highlife, upbeat but mournful:

Ojukwu has died, people of Nigeria

Ojukwu has died, people of Biafra

Ikemba [Ojukwu] has died

About one hundred young Nigerian men were celebrating the 2014 launch of an Igbo-language highlife music album, released by one of their own — one of the thousands of Nigerian businessmen making their livelihoods by connecting factories and markets in Asia to West African consumers.

Otigba, the Nigerian highlife singer based in China, dedicated his album to “all his people living abroad” and opened the party with a light, rippling number. The song narrated a cascade of shout-outs to fellow Nigerian businessmen and the markets they work in across Asia and Nigeria, encouraging them to jisie ike, stay strong. Men “sprayed” bills into Otigba’s face or slapped thick stacks of bills one by one onto his head, where they stuck momentarily on his sweat before falling to the ground.

Closing the album was a song entitled “Ojukwu,” which combined a eulogy of Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, the military leader of the failed 1960s secessionist state of Biafra, with praise singing for the Nigerian community in China. One young man with an “I LOVE BIAFRA” t-shirt walked proudly around the party while table conversations escalated in excitement. Obinna, an Igbo Nigerian merchant in his thirties, smiled as he told me that the increasingly loud table next to us was debating about Biafra and how it will soon return.

Otigba’s album evoked two themes of contemporary Igbo political critiques of the Nigerian nation-state: diasporic hustling and Biafran secessionism. But how does rhetoric of a 1960’s failed secessionist state in Nigeria flow into a sleepy industrial city in southern China? And how does it take hold amongst young Nigerian merchants, none of whom lived through the war themselves?

Since the 1990s, markets across the Asia and the Middle East have seen an uptick of these young, Igbo Nigerian men who carve out livelihoods by sourcing goods and importing them to Africa. While Igbos in Nigeria are generally stereotyped as a business-minded minority, many Igbos themselves narrate their entrepreneurialism as a creative and necessary response to historic discrimination and systematic exclusion from access to oil and government sectors by the post-civil-war nation-state.

Refrains like Otigba’s song appear across the towns and markets of the Global South where young Igbo Nigerian merchants congregate; small Biafran flags hang alongside Nigerian flags in shops in southern China and Dubai, banter on slow market days in Lagos often turns to political debate. Photoshopped images and memes of Biafra circulate on social media, and illegal Radio Biafra (a pirate station based in London) broadcasts crackle over the radio waves on public transportation in eastern Nigeria. Some of the most vivid mass demonstrations in Nigeria have been through massive market closures by predominantly Igbo traders in commemoration of Ojukwu’s burial in 2012 and the 50th anniversary of Biafra’s secession earlier this week.

Yet while many of these globally-mobile Igbo Nigerian merchants are clearly moved by Biafran rhetoric, they always simultaneously express hesitation (and often straight up rejection) of this as a concrete militant movement through war. Unlike many migration paths towards the West, migrations across the Global South are largely temporary, with few to no paths to naturalization across Asian and Middle Eastern countries. Nearly all merchants expect to return to Nigeria and subsequently maintain intensive material and social commitments across Nigeria through practices such as frequent remittance, construction, and house-building from afar.

None of the young Biafran commemoration demonstrators lived through the Nigerian Civil War in the 1960s, yet Biafra as a concept is alluring in its power as a counterfactual history of Nigeria: the thinking goes, if Biafra had successfully seceded in the 1960s, young Igbos today would be living a completely different material reality. Redrawing the past has implications for the present: it re-inserts a devastating war back into the national historical narrative and calls the Nigerian state into action concerning the war’s legacies of political power and resource distribution inequalities. As Nigerian columnist Emeka Obasi wrote earlier this week, “Let there be justice and you may not hear much of Biafra.”

Evoking Biafra, either as a nostalgic homeland of the past or as a messianic polity of the future, perhaps can be read as a provocation that a different material reality for Nigeria is necessary, possible, and just within reach. Otigba’s closing song continually addressed the diasporic crowd, interchangeably hailing them as Nigerians, Igbos, and Biafrans. At least in Otigba’s rolling highlife refrains, it is possible to be all three at the same time.

*Translation of song lyrics assisted by E. Nwosu.

Biafra and other ghosts

Lagos traffic. Image by Nick M on Flickr.

In the 1980s, I lived in Ajegunle, a working-class area of Lagos famous for its status as a “slum.” It is more appropriate to describe Ajegunle as a complex community of people from all parts of West Africa, but principally from the south of Nigeria. Sometime in 1986, Newswatch, a leading newsmagazine, ran a cover story on the issue of abandoned property. It coincided with the battle that Chief Odimegwu Ojukwu, former leader of the Biafran secession, waged to regain ownership of Villaska Lodge (in Ikoyi), belonging to his father. I sat in front of a drugstore at a popular hangout near Cemetery Market where teenagers often gambled on boiled guinea fowl eggs, reading the magazine. The pharmacist, a balding man with grave manners, asked to see what I was reading. After skimming the feature, he wondered if I knew why the building had a deck.

“Because you intend to add another floor,” I answered.

“Yes,” he agreed, “but that is not all the story. This decking has been that way since 1968.”

The war, he said, the war stopped everything.

Waving the periodical in the air, he said: “This thing will solve many problems.”

Encounters such as this gradually helped to collapse the borders that distanced Biafra from my world. Reading the literature of the war revealed the episode to me as an important part of the national psyche. Whenever my classmates and, later, colleagues (from the East) talked about the war, they did so in an emotive manner, an attitude that invariably confused the matter with the corporate status of the Igbo people within Nigeria, and with relations between the Igbo and the Yoruba, for instance. In such a circumstance, objectivity was hard to achieve; it seemed practically impossible, before and after the fact. After nearly fifty years, the real impact of the war remains to be measured, free from political gamesmanship.

In an essay on Pan-Africanism published in 1976, C. L. R. James, the Trinidadian political thinker, pointed to global imperialism as a major factor in the war. He wrote that the imperial powers “would have divided Nigeria if they had the chance, but the people said not a bit of it and they finished up with Ojukwu.” James ignored the immediate local contexts for the secession bid. In his 1995 memoirs, Under Three Masters, Chief Jerome Udoji argued that the Biafran War was an ego-trip for Ojukwu. The soldier’s sense of himself drove the campaign, Udoji wrote, and he used the war condition to foster a personality cult.

Perhaps. But so did many soldiers of fortune on all sides of the war. Besides, a strong sense of identity was reinforced among the Easterners, particularly the Igbo, from the experience of solidarity and shared loss. Ojukwu might have been interested in his own image, but the events got wiser than him. The crucial point is that Nigerians have done pretty little with this traumatic episode. It is fair to say that the Civil War was fought not to keep Nigeria one, but to further divide it.

Postscript

The foregoing is excerpted (and revised) from an essay first published in early May 2001 as an intervention in the debate among Nigerians over the political values of the Justice Oputa Panel (“on truth and reconciliation”), set up in the wake of the return to democratic rule. A few months later, in September 2001, an online group of Nigerian writers and academics came into being. At one point or another, virtually every Nigerian-identified writer or intellectual, including some of the most famous in the world today, belonged to that group. Thinking back to discussions on the listserv, one is struck by how they often degenerated into ugly fights over ethnic identity in Nigeria — routinely, tiresomely between the Igbo and the Yoruba, with scant regard for those of other ethnic groups. Long before its members began to yield to the attractions of other platforms on social media, these fights and the controversies arising from them did much to undermine that group. There were active efforts to destroy what had emerged organically as a community of writers, most of them friends of long standing, and those efforts rode on the back of ethnic preference or prejudice, alias tribalism.

Ultimately, the efforts succeeded. One by one, loudly or in silence, members took their leave. Now those still signed on to the listserv receive monthly notices about “house rules.” A community no longer exists, but the rules supposedly governing its existence do. One could respond to the current Biafran agitation in Nigeria by saying, cynically, that no one interested in understanding anything about Nigeria need look any further that this example of mutually assured destruction. One could respond in another way, though. Nigerians need to acknowledge Biafra as one of their inescapable traumas, and honoring the memory and the courage of individuals from the “enemy side” who identified with and suffered for the cause before, during and after the war depends on such an acknowledgement.

‘Winnie’ — a portrait of South African masculinity and its discontents

Remarkably, given its subject, the documentary film Winnie tells a story that has not yet been told.  It isn’t that Winnie Mandela’s version of the events that led to the death of Stompie Sepei haven’t been part of the public record.  Anyone who followed the news in the early 1990s knows about the case.  In 1991, Mandela was convicted of kidnapping and being an accessory to Sepei’s assault.  The young man was fifteen when he was killed by Jerry Richardson who was both a member of the Mandela Football Club – an entourage of body men who surrounded Mandela in the late 1980s – and an informer reporting to the apartheid Special Branch.  The following year Winnie Mandela faced charges of ordering the murder of Dr. Abu-Baker Asvat, her family physician and a popular community doctor.  After Seipei had been abducted but before he had been killed, Dr Asvat had examined Seipei at Mandela’s house.  While no criminal charges were ever laid in this case, later both matters were the subject of interest by South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in 1997.

Winnie tells a different story however.  The film provides a feminist context for the events that ultimately neutralized Winnie Mandela’s potency and undermined her leadership: her personal relationships, the murder of Stompie Sepei, her separation from Nelson Mandela and her testimony at the TRC, which prompted Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the commission’s chairperson, to “beg” her to “say sorry.”

While others have defended Winnie Mandela on how she relates to internal ANC politics and made the case that other comrades were scrutinized less because they were men, Winnie provides an in-depth look at the life and times of Winnie Mandela largely in her own words and in the words of people with tremendous respect for her.  Spanning fifty years, and using archival footage, extensive interviews with Mandela herself, her daughter Zinzi, and a range of confidantes and experts, the film provides a lucid and sympathetic portrait of Mandela.

In many ways, Winnie is a feminist ode to Mandela; a cinematic undertaking that places the foibles and insecurities of men firmly at its center.  The decision to center a feminist analysis – and this sort of no-holds barred feminism – is prescient.  There are scenes in Winnie that will be familiar to viewers – not because they have seen Mandela’s fury in full flight before –  but because it is evocative of the rage Lebohang Mabuya demonstrated when she challenged an obnoxious white racist in the Spur video that went viral earlier this year. Some of the most compelling scenes in the film, involve Winnie’s raw rage and her absolute fearlessness.  In one scene, she physically pushes a white policewoman and berates her for trying to take away her grandchild.  Watching her chastise white male officers who are attempting to arrest her –  it is impossible not to recognize Winnie as the forbearer to this generation’s impatience with authority. And it is this the film captures so well –the ferocious, unapologetic spirit of a woman who refused to back down not simply towards the end of apartheid, but for the thirty years that preceded the transition to democracy.

It isn’t a perfect film.  There are areas where Mandela’s role is exaggerated and pieces where the delicacy of transitional issues are over-simplified.  Indeed, the film initially seems to offer high quality, but standard documentary fare: Beautiful shots of South Africa’s poverty, well-lit images of Mandela and her daughter, and a storyline that takes us through important historical moments we have seen before.

However, half-way through the film it becomes clear that although Winnie Mandela is an important player in the film, at its core this documentary is an examination of the fragility of patriarchal men.  By shining a spotlight on Winnie Mandela’s strength and fearlessness, the film provides a deep and unflinching portrait of South African masculinity and its discontents.

After documenting Mandela’s unstinting political loyalty to the liberation struggle, her husband and the African National Congress, the film addresses three core topics.  Firstly, it alludes to, but doesn’t delve into her personal life and in particular her love affair with Dali Mpofu (then a young lawyer; now a political activist with the opposition EFF).  The film then turns to the murder of Stompie Sepei, before focusing on the assassination of Chris Hani and Mandela’s treatment by the TRC.

I enjoyed the delicate, empathetic and politically grounded treatment of Mandela’s love life.  On several occasions the audience is treated to statements by former STRATCOM operatives – apartheid spies – who cackle in delight about the state of Mandela’s personal life.  We are told it was “in tatters,” or “a mess.”  They informed Madiba, they say, that “there’s a problem with Winnie.”

Each of these attempts to shame Mandela fall flat.  The camera pans onto these old men’s faces.  It lingers long enough to judge them.  They smirk but they are from another era.  There is nothing funny about the slut-shaming they are attempting to sustain–all these years later. The audience knows better.

Instead, director Pascale Lamche shows her hand.  She refuses to be in cahoots with the apartheid spies interviewed in the film.  They are old white men shot in beautiful comfortable back yards.  Lamche is aligned with Mandela and wants us to know it. So, she allows the discredited apartheid spies–the old smirking men who admit to having sent informers to try to ruin our hero, who tell us they taped her and banned her and harassed her children–to do themselves in. She allows them to incriminate themselves, trusting her audience knows better than to shame women for their sexual behavior.  The rumor and gossip and innuendo about Mandela are presented to a modern audience, but they are hollow.  They only make the old men look ridiculous. Even activist lawyer George Bizos – interviewed looking saddened by the heartbreak of his friend Nelson Mandela – seems old-fashioned and unreasonable in the face of what Winnie Mandela endured.

Lamche rightly gambles that not a single soul in the audience would have survived twenty-seven years without emotional or sexual companionship.  So, the allegations eat themselves up.  We are on Winnie’s side. The fragile old men who think somehow anyone still cares who Mandela slept with – they are the sad, terrible joke. Mandela rises above them with her courage and her anger. The joke – with the long view of history as Mandela is reinstated to her place – is on the men who tried to destroy her, and failed.

Indeed, one of the most powerful, respectful and respectable omissions in the film is its refusal to grill either Mandela or Mpofu about their relationship. It is a testament to them both that Mpofu vouches for Mandela’s strength and leadership without alluding to, apologizing for, explaining or excusing whatever it was that happened between them.  It is none of our business, the filmmaker decides. The omission soars and puts the film into a league of its own. The refusal to pry into the affairs of a woman whose affairs have been dragged through the mud is beautiful, important and heartbreakingly rare.

The film then deals with the matter of Stompie Sepei, the young man Mandela is alleged to have killed.  The film makes a convincing case that whatever happened it is evident Mandela did not physically assault Stompie. Given the chaos around her, it is impossible to tell what happened, but there is little doubt Mandela was the subject of gendered double standards.

The matter of the TRC is also addressed.  Again, this section is powerful because it allows Mandela to speak in her own defense so many years later.  It also provides old footage—glorious combative evidence demonstrating Mandela has always been critical of the rainbow nation.  The scene where Mandela is interviewed by US talk show host Phil Donahue (when she accompanies her husband in 1990 on his triumphant US tour) and says she is prepared to go “go back to the bush and take up arms” if the negotiations do not work, is a standout. Winnie shows that if anyone in South Africa has receipts it is Mam’ Winnie.

So, it is then that the final section of the film in which we witness a showdown between Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Mandela is an appropriate end-point. Removed from the urgency of the moment, the scene plays itself out like a skit. Tutu begs Mandela to just say sorry.

“How dare he?” Mandela asks. It is impossible to watch without asking yourself the same question. If you are a woman the question is especially resonant.  How dare he try to shame her, and how dare any of them try to shame women?  How dare they beg us to say sorry for being human?

Many women will like Winnie.  They will find it affirming.  Still, it is men who will need to see it. Above all else, Winnie is a question thrown at men.  The film calls out patriarchy and reminds us that our mothers have been fighting this war for a long time.  The choices Lamche makes force us to look squarely at all the men – black and white – who tried and failed to erase Winnie Mandela.

Go see Winnie; it says important things.

*This review is part of our round up of the films screening at Encounters International Documentary Festival taking place in Cape Town and Johannesburg from 1-11 June. For screening details visit www.encounters.co.za.

‘Winnie’–a portrait of South African masculinity and its discontents

Remarkably, given its subject, the documentary film Winnie tells a story that has not yet been told.  It isn’t that Winnie Mandela’s version of the events that led to the death of Stompie Sepei haven’t been part of the public record.  Anyone who followed the news in the early 1990s knows about the case.  In 1991, Mandela was convicted of kidnapping and being an accessory to Sepei’s assault.  The young man was fifteen when he was killed by Jerry Richardson who was both a member of the Mandela Football Club – an entourage of body men who surrounded Mandela in the late 1980s – and an informer reporting to the apartheid Special Branch.  The following year Winnie Mandela faced charges of ordering the murder of Dr. Abu-Baker Asvat, her family physician and a popular community doctor.  After Seipei had been abducted but before he had been killed, Dr Asvat had examined Seipei at Mandela’s house.  While no criminal charges were ever laid in this case, later both matters were the subject of interest by South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in 1997.

Winnie tells a different story however.  The film provides a feminist context for the events that ultimately neutralized Winnie Mandela’s potency and undermined her leadership: her personal relationships, the murder of Stompie Sepei, her separation from Nelson Mandela and her testimony at the TRC, which prompted Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the commission’s chairperson, to “beg” her to “say sorry.”

While others have defended Winnie Mandela on how she relates to internal ANC politics and made the case that other comrades were scrutinized less because they were men, Winnie provides an in-depth look at the life and times of Winnie Mandela largely in her own words and in the words of people with tremendous respect for her.  Spanning fifty years, and using archival footage, extensive interviews with Mandela herself, her daughter Zinzi, and a range of confidantes and experts, the film provides a lucid and sympathetic portrait of Mandela.

In many ways, Winnie is a feminist ode to Mandela; a cinematic undertaking that places the foibles and insecurities of men firmly at its center.  The decision to center a feminist analysis – and this sort of no-holds barred feminism – is prescient.  There are scenes in Winnie that will be familiar to viewers – not because they have seen Mandela’s fury in full flight before –  but because it is evocative of the rage Lebohang Mabuya demonstrated when she challenged an obnoxious white racist in the Spur video that went viral earlier this year. Some of the most compelling scenes in the film, involve Winnie’s raw rage and her absolute fearlessness.  In one scene, she physically pushes a white policewoman and berates her for trying to take away her grandchild.  Watching her chastise white male officers who are attempting to arrest her –  it is impossible not to recognize Winnie as the forbearer to this generation’s impatience with authority. And it is this the film captures so well –the ferocious, unapologetic spirit of a woman who refused to back down not simply towards the end of apartheid, but for the thirty years that preceded that the transition to democracy.

It isn’t a perfect film.  There are areas where Mandela’s role is exaggerated and pieces where the delicacy of transitional issues are over-simplified.  Indeed, the film initially seems to offer high quality, but standard documentary fare: Beautiful shots of South Africa’s poverty, well-lit images of Mandela and her daughter, and a storyline that takes us through important historical moments we have seen before.

However, half-way through the film it becomes clear that although Winnie Mandela is an important player in the film, at its core this documentary is an examination of the fragility of patriarchal men.  By shining a spotlight on Winnie Mandela’s strength and fearlessness, the film provides a deep and unflinching portrait of South African masculinity and its discontents.

After documenting Mandela’s unstinting political loyalty to the liberation struggle, her husband and the African National Congress, the film addresses three core topics.  Firstly, it alludes to, but doesn’t delve into her personal life and in particular her love affair with Dali Mpofu (then a young lawyer; now a political activist with the opposition EFF).  The film then turns to the murder of Stompie Sepei, before focusing on the assassination of Chris Hani and Mandela’s treatment by the TRC.

I enjoyed the delicate, empathetic and politically grounded treatment of Mandela’s love life.  On several occasions the audience is treated to statements by former STRATCOM operatives – apartheid spies – who cackle in delight about the state of Mandela’s personal life.  We are told it was “in tatters,” or “a mess.”  They informed Madiba, they say, that “there’s a problem with Winnie.”

Each of these attempts to shame Mandela fall flat.  The camera pans onto these old men’s faces.  It lingers long enough to judge them.  They smirk but they are from another era.  There is nothing funny about the slut-shaming they are attempting to sustain–all these years later. The audience knows better.

Instead, director Pascale Lamche shows her hand.  She refuses to be in cahoots with the apartheid spies interviewed in the film.  They are old white men shot in beautiful comfortable back yards.  Lamche is aligned with Mandela and wants us to know it. So, she allows the discredited apartheid spies–the old smirking men who admit to having sent informers to try to ruin our hero, who tell us they taped her and banned her and harassed her children–to do themselves in. She allows them to incriminate themselves, trusting her audience knows better than to shame women for their sexual behavior.  The rumor and gossip and innuendo about Mandela are presented to a modern audience, but they are hollow.  They only make the old men look ridiculous. Even activist lawyer George Bizos – interviewed looking saddened by the heartbreak of his friend Nelson Mandela – seems old-fashioned and unreasonable in the face of what Winnie Mandela endured.

Lamche rightly gambles that not a single soul in the audience would have survived twenty-seven years without emotional or sexual companionship.  So, the allegations eat themselves up.  We are on Winnie’s side. The fragile old men who think somehow anyone still cares who Mandela slept with – they are the sad, terrible joke. Mandela rises above them with her courage and her anger. The joke – with the long view of history as Mandela is reinstated to her place – is on the men who tried to destroy her, and failed.

Indeed, one of the most powerful, respectful and respectable omissions in the film is its refusal to grill either Mandela or Mpofu about their relationship. It is a testament to them both that Mpofu vouches for Mandela’s strength and leadership without alluding to, apologizing for, explaining or excusing whatever it was that happened between them.  It is none of our business, the filmmaker decides. The omission soars and puts the film into a league of its own. The refusal to pry into the affairs of a woman whose affairs have been dragged through the mud is beautiful, important and heartbreakingly rare.

The film then deals with the matter of Stompie Sepei, the young man Mandela is alleged to have killed.  The film makes a convincing case that whatever happened it is evident Mandela did not physically assault Stompie. Given the chaos around her, it is impossible to tell what happened, but there is little doubt Mandela was the subject of gendered double standards.

The matter of the TRC is also addressed.  Again, this section is powerful because it allows Mandela to speak in her own defense so many years later.  It also provides old footage—glorious combative evidence demonstrating Mandela has always been critical of the rainbow nation.  The scene where Mandela is interviewed by US talk show host Phil Donahue (when she accompanies her husband in 1990 on his triumphant US tour) and says she is prepared to go “go back to the bush and take up arms” if the negotiations do not work, is a standout. Winnie shows that if anyone in South Africa has receipts it is Mam’ Winnie.

So, it is then that the final section of the film in which we witness a showdown between Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Mandela is an appropriate end-point. Removed from the urgency of the moment, the scene plays itself out like a skit. Tutu begs Mandela to just say sorry.

“How dare he?” Mandela asks. It is impossible to watch without asking yourself the same question. If you are a woman the question is especially resonant.  How dare he try to shame her, and how dare any of them try to shame women?  How dare they beg us to say sorry for being human?

Many women will like Winnie.  They will find it affirming.  Still, it is men who will need to see it. Above all else, Winnie is a question thrown at men.  The film calls out patriarchy and reminds us that our mothers have been fighting this war for a long time.  The choices Lamche makes force us to look squarely at all the men – black and white – who tried and failed to erase Winnie Mandela.

Go see Winnie; it says important things.

*This review is part of our round up of the films screening at Encounters International Documentary Festival taking place in Cape Town and Johannesburg from 1-11 June. For screening details visit www.encounters.co.za.

Weekend Music Break No.109 – Shameless self-promotion edition

Music Break! Welcome to your weekend. This week we have a bit of shameless self promotion, some new heat from old favorites and some questions.

Weekend Music Break No.109

1) Shameless self-promotion alert! My band, the Kondi Band has a new album out today, check out the video for our song “Titi Dem Too Service.” 2) Drizilik comes to me by way of a Slovenian friend who got it sent to her from Freetown. Too much Salone pride, I love it! 3) Mr Eazi cannot loose. Here is his newest clip. 4) 2Baba presents memory flares from the Biafra war (perhaps?), which began 50 years ago this week. 5) Davido doesn’t want to be a player, but has no qualms about enacting traditional gender roles in his relationships. 6) Brockhampton brings “Heat,” and it really is nice weather out in Southern California. 7) Africa Is a Country favorite Killer Mike appears alongside Big Boi in this exciting collaboration from Atlanta’s older generation. 8) Now for the questions section of our show… First, who is Joss Stone? And, why has she felt the need to insert herself into the audio-visual scenery of every African capital? 9) Second, why are western musicians obsessed with war imagery in Uganda these days? Last Music Break we saw French Montana get kidnapped on his way to the airport in Kampala, and this week, Londoner Jesse Hackett, gets eaten by cannibals in a Wakaliwood homage. 10) Finally, we close out this edition with a dance video from Sacramento soundtracked to the music of Africa Is a Country contributor Delasi.

Have a great weekend!

New film tackles the legacy of the first genocide of the 20th century

Still from “Skulls of my people”

The first genocide of the 20th century took place between 1904 and 1908 when a German force exterminated round 100 000 Ovaherero and Nama people in present-day Namibia, then the German colony of South-West Africa. That mass murder is now the subject of a new documentary, Skulls of My People, by the South African director, Vincent Moloi. The film focuses on the efforts of members of the Herero and Nama communities as they demand that their representatives be included in current negotiations with the German government over reparations as well as an official apology for General Lothar von Trotha’s extermination order.

Moloi’s film isn’t just moving but deeply intelligent, and politically aware. The film opens with a frame within a frame. This technique reveals specific story elements on screen but also visually expresses the claustrophobic and unsettling tone of the film. It’s a window into the past. One that is often haunting (thanks to a subtle but moving score), refreshing and effective. The camera at times hovers in the sky, at a distance, capturing the vastness of Namibia. It isn’t just an aesthetic choice but it affects the way you think, feel and make sense of this horrific legacy seemingly far removed from the comfort of our armchairs. It proves an effective way to photograph what is one of the driest places in the world. It forces us, as we stare at an endless expanse of desert to consider what it must have been like a hundred years ago for the Herero and Nama who died here fleeing German forces. Throughout there is a tension between veracity and emotion, between the patterns of everyday life and the sense of a larger history. Aside from historical urgency, the court case and the ongoing negotiations, Moloi’s deeply timely Skulls adds weight to the case against the German government.

Still from the film of Utjiua Ester Muijiyangue, chairperson of the Herero Genocide Foundation.

The film, which had its world premiere at the top international documentary festival IDFA in The Netherlands at the start of 2017, drives home the cruelty and double-standardness with which Germany continues to treat its former colony.  At it’s heart is Utjiua Ester Muijiyangue, chairperson of the Herero Genocide Foundation, who we spend the most time with. We see her dressing in her home. She tells us how Herero value cattle and how the dress she wears is styled in ways that resemble the animal that plays such an important role in their culture. It is during such intimate moments that the film is strongest. We see how she negotiates the time and space between past and present, and how her stories reduce the conflict to a human scale. “We want the skulls of our people. They belong here in Namibia. They don’t belong there in Germany” she says.

Utjiua tells of a story about a church on a hill where the Germans said people should come and pray.

My people closed their eyes to pray but they never said Amen. The moment they closed their eyes they were all shot in that church. Even when I pray, I don’t close my eyes. 

Such are the painful memories brought forth in the film. The shocking accounts include the way German soldiers drove the Herero into the desert and then poisoned the waterholes; threw children in the air and bayoneted them; raped women; forced women to scrape the flesh off their husbands severed heads so that the Germans could take the skulls back to Germany; they cut off men’s penises and sent them back to Germany to be studied; and forced the survivors who didn’t flee to Botswana or South Africa into concentration camps. “Only because of land?” Utjiua asks. Her sentiments speak to the broader regional concerns over land issues. Particularly when what she’s describing has led to a situation where 80% of commercial farms in Namibia are owned by Germans.

Still from “Skulls of my people”

The film also displays a couple of post-colonial absurdities. Such as the very prominent German Lutheran church in downtown Windhoek, photographed so as to incorporate Fidel Castro street. Or an interview with Paramount Chief Vekuii Rukoro in the back of a German Mercedes Benz. The Chief figures prominently: “We say we have waited long enough, 111 years is a long period and our patience is running out,” he insists. In a powerful scene Chief Rukoro makes a resistance order in the same spot that Von Trotha performed his famous extermination order.

The film’s passionate insistence on remembrance gives it much moral gravitas. There is still time, perhaps for dialogue but Utjiua’s last words send us a chilling reminder — “it’s a time bomb,” she says. The Herero in Skulls come across as a proud but tired people who if pushed, in the words of Fanon, “ [may] revolt simply because … we can no longer breathe.” Skulls, documents a people whose history has so often been silenced and chronicles the humanity of the Herero and Nama people who continue to take on the mighty and powerful against all odds.

This review is part of our round up of the films screening at Encounters International Documentary Festival taking place in Cape Town and Johannesburg from 1-11 June. For screening details visit www.encounters.co.za.

In ‘Maman Colonelle’ a Congolese policewoman takes on ghosts of the past

In Kisangani, the third largest city of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and the capital of its former Orientale Province, the legacies of state decay and conflict continue to affect the social fabric of society. Women and children, who frequently face abuse and rape, are the main victims of this legacy.

In the documentary Maman Colonelle, which will see its premiere at the Encounters Film Festival in Cape Town this month, Congolese director Dieudo Hamadi shadows a Congolese policewoman, Honorine Munyole, in charge of a special unit for the protection of women and children. Hamadi, a Kisangani native, . He also directed Atalaku (2013), which documented Congo’s dramatic 2011 presidential poll, and Examen d’Etat (2014), which scrutinized Congo’s opaque and rigid educational system.

Munyole was born in Bukavu, the capital city of a province in Eastern Congo, which is known for its notoriously high incidence of rape. The documentary begins with Munyole’s transfer from Bukavu to Kisangani. In Bukavu, her courageous work to protect women and children earned her respect and admiration among the community. But having arrived in Kisangani, Munyole, a widow and the mother of seven, is directly confronted with the challenges of a new context: Her new home in Kisangani is sparsely equipped, some of the officers in her unit do not speak the local lingua franca, Swahili (only Lingala), and as a newcomer, she still has to gain the trust of Kisangani’s residents. Ironically, in front of Munyole’s new police station, officers wear yellow jackets reading “The police is there to protect us” to remind citizens of their purpose.

Maman Colonel trailer

As the case of Kisangani illuminates, many communities in the DRC still have to grapple with unresolved and overlapping legacies of conflict. During the Second Congo War (1998-2003), Rwanda and Uganda were generally seen as allies. However, rivalries surrounding illicit mineral flows and tactical allegiances often caused tensions and confrontations, as documented in Jason Stearns’ book Dancing in the Glory of Monsters. The confrontations cumulated in what is known as the Six-Day War (June 5—10, 2000). Kisangani was the main battleground of the war, and thousands of civilians lost their lives, were injured, and raped.

Following Munyole’s transfer to Kisangani, widows and rape victims of the war finally feel that there is someone to confide in. Almost 20 years after the war, the means through which to seek justice for these victims are limited. In terms of financial support, an underfunded police unit has to rely on community solidarity in the forms of donations to help widows, rape victims, and children. In this context, the “manage to get by yourself” attitude of many residents, which has been fostered by government neglect, and societal fragmentation, is Munyole’s biggest enemy. By addressing public spaces such as the marketplace, Munyole strives to foster solidarity, and inform people about their rights in the context of sexual violence, and the responsibilities parents have towards their children.

She interprets her job as more than merely policing. She also provides food and shelter to several widows and orphans. As a result, she is often confronted with questions such as “But what is the government doing about this?” a seemingly paradoxical question given that she works as a state-employed police officer, but one that illuminates the lack of faith people place in the state apparatus as a whole. Her case challenges many preconceived notions about civil servants in the DRC, as the vital work of her police unit shows that there are civil servants who continue to serve the public despite all the obstacles.

Throughout the documentary, Hamadi manages to place dismaying societal attitudes into a wider context: Envy and disputes about the state-recognized victim-status among the disabled and rape victims, or the propensity of parents to abuse, lock up, or give away their children to prophetesses because they have succumbed to “witchcraft.” Contrary to sensationalism, Hamadi’s style of documentation lets people speak for themselves, while his framing allows for sensitive issues such as memory, solidarity, conflict, and government neglect to come to the fore. The documentary is dedicated to Hamadi’s friend and fellow artist Kiripi Katembo, a brilliant Congolese photographer and documentary film maker, who passed away from malaria in 2015.

As President Kabila’s refusal to organize elections continues to destabilize the country as a whole, Maman Colonelle serves as a powerful reminder of local sources of suffering, defiance, solidarity, and heroism, and highlights what is at stake.

This review is part of our round up of the films screening at Encounters International Documentary Festival taking place in Cape Town and Johannesburg from 1-11 June. For screening details visit www.encounters.co.za.