Sean Jacobs's Blog, page 295

Many Missing Bodies

Mathare, Nairobi, Kenya. Image via Wikipedia.

Gideon Njuguna’s mother called us in early October 2015 because she needed help following up the case of her son, Gideon, who had disappeared a couple of months earlier on August 4. He was one of the many young men employed in the informal boda boda industry that offers motorcycle transport services at negotiated rates. Gideon was last seen ferrying two passengers to a destination not too far from where he lived. His body was found by boda boda colleagues several days later in the main city mortuary. He had been shot four times, twice in the face.

Through her own investigations his mother discovered that her son and his two passengers were killed on the day they disappeared. She believes that Gideon was shot by the police because the people he was transporting were deemed “suspected gangsters” – a now normal appellation for those whom the police cannot prove have committed any crime except for being young and poor. Although she has managed to find witnesses who confirmed the involvement of police officers in the deaths of the three, all of them fear coming forward.

Gideon’s mother is from Korogocho, but she came to us at Mathare Social Justice Centre (MSJC) because we have a reputation for calling for widespread community documentation of the many extra-judicial executions (EJE) that happen in the poor, and predominantly, eastern urban settlements of Nairobi.

Despite their historical normality in city ghettos like Mathare, where we work, extra-judicial killings are not confined to these spaces and are also widely reported in North Eastern Kenya, Mombasa, Nyeri and elsewhere, as numerous journalists and human rights organizations have documented.

The Independent Medico-Legal Unit (IMLU) reports that between January and December 2015 126 people were killed by the police. Similarly, the Daily Nation Newsplex database shows that the police killed 122 people in the first eight months of 2016. While we are encouraged by these recent statistics, we believe that they are far from being a complete picture of the levels of police killings that happen in Kenya. In fact, they are likely just the tip of the iceberg.

From our own local ongoing research, and I emphasize that the circumstances of these cases are still being verified, at least 60 youth have been killed in Mathare alone this year. The extent of these killings in this one location highlights the impossibility of only 126 executions country-wide by the police in 2015. This wide discrepancy between community and official data is likely because official statistics are gathered, principally, when cases are taken by victim’s family or friends to relevant organizations. Unfortunately the distance of these organizations from the communities where the killings happen makes reporting such executions a complicated task (while also highlighting the classed spatial dimensions of human rights practice).

Furthermore, the “intermittent” success of cases brought against the police and the lack of protection for those who come forward undoubtedly diminishes people’s confidence in following up the cases. As the important case of Willie Kimani, Josphat Mwenda and Joseph Muiruri shows, professional organizations respond much faster to the executions of one of their own than to the everyday killings and disappearances of young poor people in many parts of the country.

Gideon Njuguna’s mother cannot read, nor did she know, until we took her there, where the offices of the Kenya National Commission of Human Rights (KNCHR) and Independent Police Oversight Authority (IPOA) are located. As a vegetable seller in Korogocho, who is now tasked with taking care of the family of her son, she does not always have the bus fare or phone credit to embark on these formal, and usually complicated documentation processes. So, such deaths are more often registered by the missing generations of young men in poor urban settlements who are now only present in family photo albums, and in the weekly funerals of young, predominantly, male citizens around the country.

Elsewhere I documented how the entrance to Huruma ward in Mathare constituency is marked on one side by coffin makers and on the other by a police station. This cannot be accidental.

Many generations have been lost in what are essentially state-sanctioned pogroms motivated by a mixture of colonial and neoliberal hyper-policing and the criminalization of poor youth. The much feted jobs given by the National Youth Service (NYS), the recent state house youth summit, or even the highly publicized 10% of government tenders reserved for youth do not persuade us to believe in the government’s purported youth agenda, especially when these killings go on unabated and are deemed to be merely the infrequent actions of just a few  “rogue” police officers.

To get a more comprehensive picture of the gravity of the situation, we need to look for and listen to the stories of mothers selling vegetables in markets, the classmate who has lost his whole peer group, and the accumulated bodies of the poor in the city mortuary.

We also need to look for the ledgers filled out by the families who are made to pay for the bullets that killed their children, and the fears and traumas of communities who feel under siege. Without a concerted search for these bodies, official statistics will never be enough.

Do informal workers’ lives matter?

Informal fish markets of Soumbedioune. Image credit Aïda Ndiaye.

In February 2008 in Dakar, Senegal, a pregnant fish trader, who remains unnamed, was fatally hit by a police car. The car was attempting to displace her and her fellow fish traders from selling on public roads near the national highway. The story of her death was casually reported in local newspapers, with off-hand commentaries on the brutality of police forces and the poor working conditions of informal workers. There was no significant outrage surrounding her death. A week later, her fellow sellers were back on the road where her death occurred, selling fish as if nothing had happened.

The casual tone used to describe the fish seller’s death was perplexing and alluded to a politics of exclusion, whereby the suffering of some people is acknowledged and mourned while other people’s tragedies remain at the margins. Exclusion is a lived reality for most informal workers in sub-Saharan Africa, many of whom are women who live at the periphery of global and local production systems that have no use for them. In fact, the death of thousands of informal workers would have little to no effect on the global market.

While conducting research on informal fisheries in Dakar, I met Awa, an informal fish trader who has been involved in the business for more than 20 years. Awa dropped out of primary school and started selling fish at the age of 16, to help out her mother who was also a fish seller. Awa’s husband is currently unemployed, and so she is the main breadwinner in her family.

Awa’s average daily income is unpredictable, due to the nature of the fish-selling business. The day I met her she had travelled from Keur Massar, a shantytown in Dakar where she lives, to buy fish in Terrou-Bi Sougui, a beach located in an upscale area of Dakar. But she arrived too late, and found the fish boats docked along the beach empty. It would be a day without income. Days like this happened often, she told me, but giving up selling fish was not an option.

It is tempting to romanticize the work of women such as Awa as a manifestation of the courage and tenacity of third world workers, or under the trope of the courageous African woman, surviving despite poverty. It certainly requires courage and even ingenuity to sustain a family on informal work. However, such narratives tend to obscure the deep historical and socio-economic reasons that compel women to engage in informal trade as a survival mechanism in the first place. Informal trade resulted from the marriage of the Senegalese economic crisis in the 1970s, ill-timed neoliberal policies and weak exploitative institutions inherited from colonialism. The majority of Senegalese, struggling to find jobs in the liberal formal economy, resorted to the informal economy to survive. During the past 40 years, Senegal has been unable to absorb the surplus labour.

Awa describes herself as “banna-banna” a Wolof expression meaning businesswoman or entrepreneur. The women I met in informal fisheries are defiantly proud of their condition, as though implying that pity would infantilize and lessen the value of their work. Women have their own tontines to help each other save in times of needs. They are not waiting for the miracle of a functioning government to save them. While the pride of Awa and her fellow co-workers is admirable, the reality of their suffering cannot be denied. Informal workers do not have access to health care, safety, reliable revenue, and are often victims of police brutality. The Senegalese government regularly sanctions police raids to displace informal workers from public places.

Yet, what is the death of a pregnant informal fish seller in Dakar or Awa’s struggles to the suffering of sweatshop workers in Bangladesh or refugees at the borders of Europe? The magnitude of suffering seems to anesthetize us. But anesthesia is not on option. People like Awa are real. Their lives and struggles are meaningful. It is time as a global community to recognize our complicity in suffering and advocate for global policies that recognize the humanity of those at the margins.

Crisis and the meaning of money

August 3rd protest at the offices of Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa. Image via the author.

Robert Mugabe Junior has the word “melanin” in his Instagram biography. I discovered this when I went to his profile, a little indulgence I allow myself every few weeks to see just how well the eldest son of our 92-year-old leader is living in Dubai. This time, his profile was locked. Maybe someone had told him that it is gauche to floss on social media when your father’s 36-year rule has impoverished an entire country. But “melanin,” appearing in bold capital letters, still struck me. It’s pretty funny, this gesture of owning one’s blackness — popularized by American teens — being performed by the scion of a family that has caused so much actual harm to black lives.

But of course, all sorts of countercultural, even radical signifiers have been ransacked of their meaning in Zimbabwe. In the past 36 years, the language of decolonization and black empowerment has been stripped of its potency, serving to enrich the new black elite rather than benefit the masses. To counteract this, we’ve had to come up with our own vocabulary of struggle: tajamuka, zvakadhakwa, makwikwi.

We do this so well because we are now experts at semiotic rupture. In 2008, Zimbabwe famously went through an economic crisis, experiencing hyperinflation levels at 79.6 billion percent. During this time, the value of money could be extinguished in a matter of minutes. Someone told me the story of a family member withdrawing a sizable chunk of their life savings to buy a car. The next day, the US dollar was introduced as a measure to stop the downward spiral of the Zimbabwe dollar. They still have bags of the now worthless currency in their house.

Once you have gone through something so traumatic, guarding against its reappearance becomes second nature. This vigilance lives in the bones of Zimbabweans. As the signs of crisis reappear, people begin to steel themselves for the inevitable: queues, shortages, endless hustling. In May of this year, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) announced that it would be introducing bond notes, a “surrogate currency” that would only circulate domestically. This was in response to the local shortage of the US dollar, a “cash crisis” that already began to cause panic.

In a beautiful macroeconomic fiction, the RBZ declared that this new currency would exist on a 1:1 basis with the US dollar. “Nothing would change,” they insisted. But people are now wise to these rituals — press statements filled with improbable assertions, denial masked as confidence, and endless clarifications. When they think they have worn you down, there are PR campaigns with catchy jingles to sell the impending crisis. The public received this announcement with a grim knowingness. We were going back to 2008 again. Back to scrambling, back to uncertainty, back to indignity.

Two weeks ago, Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa warned that although the currency wasn’t going to be released for a few more weeks, counterfeit notes were already being printed by “gangs” intent on sabotaging the RBZ’s reputation. This, he claimed was all “in order to confuse the situation.” This confession of ineptitude was roundly met with derision. All currencies rely on a fiction, but Chinamasa had accidentally let slip that ours was going to be backed up by a particularly weak one. After all, how do you counterfeit a counterfeit?

In the months following the initial announcement, people have protested, they have attended Reserve Bank “public consultations,” they have released sharp and hilarious macroeconomic analyses that have gone viral on WhatsApp. But we know that this government will not listen to us.  So we brace ourselves for impact. Mobilities and survival tactics that had lain dormant are now being reactivated. People are moving. Their savings, their bank accounts, anything that can be kept out of the reach of the kleptocratic state. Those who do not have the privilege to move — civil servants, elderly pensioners — sleep outside the banks, waiting to withdraw as little as USD $20 each day.

Even as we are constantly reminded that we already exist in the glorious postcolonial future, Zimbabweans are resisting being thrown back in time. People’s memories of the struggle of 2008 are not romantic things, no one is better off for having experienced it. Our own resilience, a long-praised national quality, has been weaponized against us. For a while now, people have been resisting the narrative that long-suffering makes us virtuous. And yet, it is challenging to disrupt longstanding relationships — to the state, between ourselves as citizens, to our own identities as “resilient citizens.” Resisting requires moving in new ways, and we are constantly improvising the steps. In a final push, a coalition of activists is calling everyone to the streets of Harare later today in a massive anti-bond notes protest. Rambai makashinga.

The myth of Donald Trump’s white working-class support

Donald Trump speaking with supporters at a campaign rally at the South Point Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. Image via Gage Skidmore Flickr.

Whiteness is the biggest single factor that emerges from the US presidential election. The majority of white voters across gender and most income groups who went to the polls voted for Donald Trump, someone who does not hide his white supremacist views, condones sexual assault, and built his campaign on openly anti-immigration, anti-Latino and anti-Muslim themes.

Yet sectors of the Euro-American left adamantly stress the role of the white working classes in facilitating Trump’s victory, and dismiss race as “identity politics”, not completely explaining the Trump phenomenon.

Two leaders of the left, Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn, were quick to frame this election as a kind of “popular revolt” – very much like they did with Brexit a few months ago. For them, progressives should pay attention to Donald Trump’s anti-establishment narrative, so that we can offer alternatives without the “divisive rhetoric”. Sanders went as far as offering to collaborate with Trump on select issues that will help people come out of the crisis, as long as the president-elect does not engage in racism, sexism and xenophobia. Trump has just announced that he will immediately deport three million migrants, but that has not weakened the Vermont senator’s resolve. Influential commentators say that the anti-establishment left alternative to Trumpism should begin from white workers who supported Trump.

This story of an aggrieved “white working class” who joined Trump in huge numbers to rebel against neoliberal elites and neglectful Democrats is less an objective appraisal of working class voting trends, than a reflex of leftist common sense, inflected perhaps by a yearning for the heyday of (white) union solidarity in the Rust Belt.

Add to this the vicissitudes of the electoral college, and it is no wonder that some on the left focused on the behavior of about four hundred thousand voters in the Great Lakes region –Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania – and ignored the rest of the country. Closer analysis reveals that Republican support in the Midwest grew predominantly in rural areas, and in areas where whites are the overwhelming majority – these include both low and middle income areas. From our own data analysis in the three states above, Donald Trump’s growth compared to Mitt Romney’s performance in 2012 is significantly higher in counties with the biggest concentration of white residents than in the most racially mixed ones. This is not surprising, because negative attitudes toward immigration, non-white populations, gender, and LGBT issues are highest when whites live in racially homogeneous communities, and support for racism and anti-immigrant views are the strongest predictors for support for Trump.

Although the ballots are still being tallied, it looks like Hillary Clinton will be receiving the third highest number of votes in the political history of the United States. People of color voted for Clinton. Moreover, Clinton won the support of most voters earning under US $50,000 a year. Far from a popular rebellion against a neoliberal elite, then, a vast majority of voters who have endured structural economic and political disenfranchisement as well as the negative effects of the recent economic crisis, chose Clinton – the “establishment” candidate. Surely, they too have economic anxieties and grievances about the system, but did not vote for Donald Trump.

The gender dimension is also glossed over. The vitriolic sexist rhetoric Clinton has had to face is easily dismissed. Women have suffered from the recent financial crisis too, and like all disadvantaged groups, they bear the brunt of it more than better positioned groups. White women supported Trump by a smaller majority than white men, and women of color voted for Clinton more than men of color, but these trends are largely ignored. Not to mention, an estimated 30 to 40 million US residents are politically disenfranchised and could not vote.

These larger facts are important context for interpreting Trump’s decisive but marginal gains in a few key states. But commentators downplay them both to bolster a tidy narrative of working class rebellion, and to dismiss the importance of race and gender. This story veers dangerously close to the long-standing caricature of the “poor white,” which elites have used to avoid a reckoning with their own complicity with economic and racial inequalities. This dismissal disregards the suffering of groups who have experienced centuries of structural discrimination and marginalization, both in the US and abroad. It reinforces racial, ethnic and gender divisions, and thus undermines the possibility for broader solidarities.

What is also left out is that many whites – many of whom are not impoverished working classes – now feel under attack as “whites.” The election of Barack Obama, the first African- American president, contributed to a feeling that the world is becoming hostile to their very existence. Some believe that a conspiracy of minorities, leftists, feminists, and multi-billionaires, often Jewish, have allied to marginalize the “common white folk.” White racial anxiety is not a new problem in the history of American politics. Even perceptions of economic insecurity are filtered by racial anxieties, which makes race and economics impossible to separate. Racism is neither false consciousness nor mere bigotry, but an ideological and material structure that confers social privilege and material benefits onto a group, and mobilizes that group against any attempt to take away their benefits.

Disregarding the advances made by queer, feminist and critical race theories and social movements, many (mostly white) leftists do not recognize that racism and sexism are structures that regulate the distribution of economic, social, educational and other resources. Instead, they treat racism as rhetorical baggage left-over from the bad old days of colonialism and Jim Crow, allegedly used by elites to “mislead” the working classes. Workers who are white must be included into a wider coalition, but to think that a mere change in messaging will do the trick vastly underestimates the forces that the left is up against. Proposals cannot avoid tackling white and male privilege simply because “that’s our base”.

Nobody doubts that the establishment is in crisis, and something must change.

But why is this becoming common sense only now when it affects white Americans and Europeans? Why should a core of emboldened Trump supporters be the starting point for constructing a broad alliance against the devastating effects of a racial and gendered capitalist world order?

The role of the left should not be to focus its efforts on bargaining with the often misrepresented and caricatured concerns of a small sector of the working classes. It is to mobilize a broader intersectional alliance that can effectively tackle various forms of discrimination, and that addresses the differential levels of exclusion experienced by various groups.

Framing the Trump phenomenon as the wrong response to the right concerns goes in the opposite direction. Knowingly or not, it feeds the growing wave of white nationalism and xenophobia that is taking America and Europe by storm.

Shutting down Dadaab endangers refugees

Faces of Dadaab, image via Riyaad Minty Flickr

Kenya plans to shutdown the world’s largest refugee camp later this month. If the closure goes ahead on November 30, 2016 it will endanger the lives of thousands of people. The initial plans were announced in May this year along with the closure of Kenya’s Department of Refugee Affairs. However, Ethiopia’s recent decision to withdraw its troops from Somalia has allowed al Shabaab to gain ground. As the majority of Dadaab’s refugees are from Somalia, they are expected to return to an increasingly unsafe country.

Kenya’s plans are based on security fears that have been at the forefront of national concerns, since the country invaded Somalia in 2011, and the highly visible attacks on the Westgate Mall in Nairobi and on the Garissa University campus that followed. Frequently, the response has been to conflate Somalis with terrorists. Dadaab has been labelled a nursery for al Shabaab, and the UN has been accused of aiding terrorism. The construction of a security wall along the Kenya-Somalia border has been proposed, and Operation Usalama Watch saw urban refugees in Nairobi rounded up and forcibly relocated to Kenya’s remote camps. In the fight against al-Shabaab, those seeking refuge from them have become a convenient scapegoat.

According to the Government of Kenya, repatriation is voluntary and to safe parts of Somalia. However, the Norwegian Refugee Council has recently criticized the returns process as “no longer voluntary, dignified or safe.” Amnesty International has accused the Government of Kenya of coercing refugees, despite their claims that the process meets international standards for voluntary return. In Somalia, returnees face severe food insecurity, an already serious concern currently affecting five million people. It is only four years since the end of the famine that killed more than a quarter of a million people in Somalia and sent thousands of new arrivals to Dadaab. Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) warned last month that Somalia currently has a “dangerous absence of medical care” and that “the conditions necessary for a safe and dignified return are not present” in any part of the country. If the planned closure of Dadaab goes ahead, “hundreds of thousands of lives will be put at risk.”

In July and August 2016, MSF conducted a survey of residents of Dadaab and found responses at odds with the claims of the government and the UN. The Kenyan Government argues that Somalia is safe, while the UN has said that one-quarter of refugees are willing to return. MSF found that 97% of refugees felt the risk of sexual violence was high in Somalia and 86% said they were unwilling to return. The Kenyan government also argued that Dadaab is unsafe for its inhabitants, yet 96% of responders to MSF’s survey said they felt the camp was “very safe.”

Earlier this month the NGO Refugees International released a new field report that called the humanitarian situation within Somalia “dire”. There are more than one million internally displaced people (IDPs) in the country – half that number since the start of 2015. Some refugees have already left Kenya to take advantage of the financial support offered by the UN and avoid being forced across the border later. Government officials have reportedly told refugees that they risk forfeiting financial support if they do not leave voluntarily by the end of November. Many of these people are now struggling to survive in Somalia and have traded Dadaab for the IDP camps in Jubaland. Aside from Somalis, Dadaab is also home to thousands of Ethiopian and South Sudanese refugees. Ethiopia is in a state of emergency and , neither providing safe circumstances for refugees to return to.

There is still the possibility that Kenya pulls back from enforcing the November 30 deadline. A spokesperson for the Government of Kenya has said this week that they now expect to miss the deadline, due to issues in Somali. This is not the first time that the government has claimed it would close Dadaab. In the wake of the Garissa attack in April 2015 it said it would shutdown the camp within three months. Threatening to close it served as a useful means of attracting increased international funding from countries fearful of further migration. It also worked as a way to distract citizen’s attention from other domestic issues, such as widespread corruption. Some commentators questioned if this was just another case of the Government of Kenya engaging in brinksmanship with the UN.

On November 7 a petition was filed by two human rights organizations, Kituo Cha Sheria and the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights. They hope the High Court of Kenya will declare the government’s attempts unconstitutional. This would not be the first time the High Court thwarted anti-refugee moves in the country. In July 2013, the High Court upheld refugees right to reside outside of camps. Kenya has also been reminded that the forced return of refugees would violate its obligations under international law.

The pressure for refugees to leave Dadaab has already had grave consequences. One refugee, quoted by Refugees International, condemned the supposed voluntary nature of the repatriation efforts. “But what is my choice? This is about fear. It’s not about choice.” The closure of Dadaab this month will bring about a humanitarian disaster. Refugees in Dadaab will be faced with the prospect of returning to an extremely insecure country. Last week the UN reported that, “the security situation has not improved in Somalia,” while al Shabaab will exploit the withdrawal of Ethiopian troops. Those born in Dadaab, since its creation in 1991, could be sent to a country they have never known. Others will face the prospect of moving to Kakuma, Kenya’s other refugee camp in the northwest of the country. While Kakuma will remain open for now, it is struggling to support the thousands of new arrivals from South Sudan. Yet more will embark on the dangerous journey inwards towards Nairobi or move elsewhere on the continent. To avoid a new displacement crisis, Kenya must reconsider the imminent closure of Dadaab.

Ramadan in Khartoum

Image from Modern Muslims: A Sudan Memoir book cover.

Mahmoud Mohamed Taha (1909-1985) was a Sudanese religious reformer and leader, who had also played a significant role in Sudan’s struggle for independence from Britain in the 1940s. After a series of spiritual experiences in the early 1950s, Taha converted his political party, the Republican Party, into a social/religious reform movement known popularly as “The Republican Brotherhood.” The movement attracted a small group of dedicated followers from all over Sudan’s vastness, who concentrated on finding a respectable place for women in Islamic society and on moving closer and closer to what Taha conceived, in his seminal work The Second Message of Islam, as the path of the Prophet Mohamed which would lead to universal enlightenment and peace. Taha’s radical thinking lead to his trial on charges of “apostasy” by the Sudan government, and he was executed for this capital offense in 1985.

Steve Howard is a sociologist who directs International Studies at Ohio University and first came to Sudan as a doctoral student collecting data. His bigger Sudan agenda had been to “become a Sufi,” and his quest landed him in the middle of the Republican Brotherhood. The younger brothers lived communally near their teacher, Mahmoud Mohamed Taha, and the book describes Howard’s learning how to think in the Sufi manner while immersing himself in Sudan culture. This excerpt describes Howard’s confronting the challenge of Ramadan in hot, dusty Khartoum—Oumar Bar.

My accepting the invitation to move into one of the houses of the Republican Brotherhood coincided with my learning that the cohesive and consistent body of thought taught by Mahmoud Mohamed Taha was applied every day in the lives of his followers. The most intensive laboratory for this application was the collection of “brothers’ houses” scattered around the southern part of the Omdurman neighborhood of Thawra, and serving effectively as an experiment in democratic living. These houses were where the credo from Mahmoud Mohamed Taha’s book The Second Message of Islam—reconciling the needs of the individual with those of the community—was made concrete on an experimental and daily basis. Men, some single, some married migrants to town, lived communally in these houses to be as close as possible for daily exposure to their teacher. There were brothers’ houses in other towns as well, including Wad Medani, Atbara, and El Obeid. A small group of the sisters had a communal living arrangement in Ustadh Mahmoud’s home. While Ustadh had told me at our first encounter that, unlike the conventional Sufi sects, the Republican Brotherhood did not have an initiation ritual for new members, I felt that my first Ramadan with the Republican brothers and sisters more than served that purpose. Ramadan, the holy month of fasting that is one of Islam’s most fundamental practices, introduced me to a Republican life of discipline in a very physical way. My first Ramadan was also my initial exposure to the seriousness of every element of the Republican message. And Ramadan was a public stage on which the Republicans could demonstrate—in a context well known to all their neighbors and countrymen and women—that the Republican ideology provided the best blueprint for modern life.

I had been exposed to Ramadan’s rigors as a high school teacher in neighboring Chad, where I had learned that it was mighty difficult to keep a class of adolescents focused on my lesson when half its members got up to spit out the window just about every minute. My Muslim Chadian students’ understanding that swallowing saliva constituted breaking the fast was certainly not part of the Republican perspective on spit. But in that torrid Sudan June of my first Ramadan fast, saliva did not go far to make a day without food or water an easy obligation. As the temperatures in Sudan reached 100 degrees or more, I confess that I considered delaying my total embrace of the Republican way of life until after that first Ramadan was over. But after meeting Ustadh Mahmoud and many of the other brothers I was so drawn to the movement and moved by its hospitality that I jumped into my first Sudan Ramadan during Khartoum’s most searing month. While the very young, frail, pregnant, and ill are exempted from the Ramadan fast, I realized that it would not have been possible for a healthy person like myself to avoid fasting in such close living quarters; Islam is an intensely social religion. God in His mercy had made Ramadan a movable obligation, a month in the lunar calendar so its dates moved up eleven days each year in the Western calendar. A cooler Ramadan in Sudan was years away at that point.

Ramadan was associated with fasting before the coming of Islam to Arabia. But the revelation of the Qur’an made Ramadan one of Islam’s five arkan, or “pillars,” that must be followed by observant Muslims, meaning complete abstinence from all food, drink, and sex from before the sun rose to sunset. I found poetry in the scriptural test of when the day begins: when the dawning light allows one to distinguish a white thread from a black one. Like prayer, another one of the pillars, fasting has the dual nature of individual practice combined with the aggregate of community participation, an equation that can give the believer enormous satisfaction. In other words, I eventually learned that it is difficult to sustain either prayer or the fast by oneself, particularly as I moved back to my life in the secular United States. The Sufis who sought refuge for prayer and fasting in isolated spots in rural Sudan believed that they were earning extra baraka for this feat of deprivation.

The sacrifices required of the Muslim during Ramadan were tests of the limits of human physical endurance. If we were waiting for God to come, what better way to prepare? There were many Republican exercises that prepared and expanded the mind for its contests—the lectures, the readings, the discussions among themselves and with men and women on the streets. But the test provided by Ramadan, particularly when it fell in Sudan’s heat, was all about the most basic of human needs: nourishment and water. Belief in Islam is thought of as faith, an exercise of the spirit. But Ramadan shows us how Islam is also about how physical endurance is the essence of humanness. This issue works into Ustadh Mahmoud’s progressive consideration of Islam as well, that Islam evolves with human beings’ understanding of it themselves. With intense prayer, intimate knowledge of God increases, until the desire for food and other animalistic aspects of our nature fade away.

But my test in the heat was in the here and now, and was not to be joined alone. And when there are young men involved, there will be a competitive element. Perhaps not as crude as the Ramadan spitting contests of my Chadian students, but certainly one that stimulates our endurance. My residence, the beyt-al-akhwan, the “brothers’ house” resonated with the question all through Ramadan: Saim wala fatir? saim wala fatir? (Are you fasting today or not?). And conversation among the brothers often moved toward how many days one has fasted this Ramadan versus how successful one had been the previous year. Improving on one’s performance of faith was another Republican hallmark.

Of course, I stumbled myself a number of times in my own pursuit of Ramadan perfection. I remember that my first trip to visit brothers in Wad Medani took place during Ramadan. In Wad Medani I stayed as a guest in the home of Medani’s Republican leader, Ustadh Saeed. There was less commotion in that family home in the morning—no early communal prayer or meeting—so I slept through the morning’s call to prayer. The first thing I did after waking was to take my antimalaria medication (a precaution eventually abandoned as I gained more baraka). A brother in the room saw me swallow the little pill and asked, “So Steve, you’re not fasting today?” I replied that of course I was. And he quickly provided the new information that taking medicine broke the fast, God’s point being that one takes medicine if one is sick. And the sick were excused from fasting. I did observe the fast the rest of the day out of solidarity, but was disappointed to have my record spoiled so early in the fasting month.

The spare cuisine that accompanied the sunset breaking of the fast for the brothers from the houses in Ustadh Mahmoud’s neighborhood suited the Republican/Spartan design of the whole month. Plenty of baraka for everyone. That June, my first attempt at fasting, was also the time of school holidays, which meant that Republican schoolteachers from outside of Khartoum: the Gezira, Kordofan, maybe from the East or the North, came to spend the holidays near their teacher, which meant that they would lodge with us in the already cramped brothers’ houses. As the hour of sunset approached, the brothers would ready themselves for the evening by bathing and dressing, activities that often followed a late afternoon nap. Then, from each of the four houses a procession (masira) of brothers would march—chanting the name of God—through the neighborhoods to the home of Ustadh Mahmoud. They would form a half circle in front of the house, joined by the sisters who grouped to one side, and thirsty, hungry, and hot they would continue the chant for the forty-five minutes to one hour before the sunset azan signaling the end of the day’s fast. Brothers and sisters who lived outside of the network of ‘brothers’ houses’ would also start to arrive and join the dhikir. The standard expectation of practicing Muslims during Ramadan was that the fast should not be an excuse for lightening one’s daily load of work, but I did find this late-in-the-day dhikir an additional test of membership in this intense community of believers. The heat and my intensely dry mouth would sometimes force my willing spirit to just sway with the chant with my mouth closed. It was perhaps a test—within the limits of the fasting day—of our potential to forget about food and just focus on God. It was a practice for the time that Republicans were waiting to come.

But not yet. This world was still hot, and many hungry people had just chanted to bring the sun down. So labor was divided and tasks shared to get ready for the meal. Some of the brothers would bring the long straw mats out from Ustadh Mahmoud’s house and lay them in rows ready for prayer in the empty lot just west of the house. Other brothers would bring out the heavy aluminum pans filled with a large mound of asida (sorghum or millet porridge) and many spoons. The dozen or so pans were placed here and there on the mats, and brothers crouched around them, perhaps eight to ten to a pan. The tin pan descended from the ancient gada wooden bowl, still used by many good Sufi communities around the country for their communal meals. Then, a third group of brothers would come out of Ustadh Mahmoud’s kitchen—where the sisters had been fasting and cooking—with large pails of mulah, a meatless okra-based sauce to be poured over the porridge. Everyone would then dig into the porridge with the spoons provided, while some of the brothers would go around with the sauce pail to try to replenish the dish until there was no more. Off to the side brothers could help themselves to lemonade or karkedeh, the popular Ramadan drink made from dried hibiscus petals that had been prepared in large plastic barrels to quench the brothers’ thirst. If a particularly large crowd came for this simple meal (everyone was welcome, so the numbers were not necessarily predictable), a garden hose would find its way into the barrel in order to serve more guests. Loaves and fishes, Sudan style.

I found this sunset scene at once warm and overwhelming. In order to eat from the pan I had associated with what we were using in the brothers’ house to washing clothes by hand, I had to squeeze into the circle of brothers gathered tightly around it, all crouched on one knee, and balance like that while stabbing at the wobbly porridge mass in the pan—if I had been lucky enough to find a spoon! Those with more fortitude than I (or longer arms) could eat this steaming hot concoction with a bare right hand. I admired those who saved space around the circle by looping their free left arm over the shoulder of the next brother. In my weakened state—new to fasting and to the heat—I often was able to get only a spoonful or two before the dish was gone. The multitasking required—crouching and balancing while scooping asida—was beyond my skill set at that point. I did receive a great deal of encouragement from around the pan, but the brothers were hungry, too.

*This is an excerpt from Steve Howard’s new book, Modern Muslims: A Sudan Memoir (Ohio University Press, 2016)

Trump’s America

Image via Wikipedia

The world and many Americans are reeling in shock and anxiety at the election of Donald Trump as the next president of this mighty, but deeply disunited and disoriented country. All but a handful of opinion polls pointed to the victory of the incomparably experienced Hillary Clinton, to the historic possibility of electing America’s first female president. But they were utterly, unforgivably, embarrassingly wrong. They couldn’t pick up Trump’s ‘silent majority’ of ordinary white voters, not just the unapologetic alt-right that quietly cheered on the boisterous candidate, who openly said in public what Republicans and racist whites say in private.

The postmortems will be brutal on the other failures of America’s collective imagination that resulted in this stunning election result: on the rapacious role of the media in selling Trump for ratings and earnings; on the shortfalls of the candidacy and campaign of Hillary Clinton; on the relative turnout rates of the Trump and Clinton supporters; on the perfidious role of Russia, Wikileaks, and the FBI. In this popular American political sport of endless punditry and second guessing, few will take real responsibility for having enabled Trump, few in polite circles will own up to having voted for Trump, much as many whites in South Africa denied ever having been ardent supporters of Apartheid as the noxiousness of the system attracted international opprobrium.

Americans chose Donald Trump, a dangerous buffoon, ill-prepared and ill-tempered for any serious job, let alone the presidency of a superpower, even if it’s one in decline. It is no prediction to expect that America’s slide into global ignominy will accelerate under Trump’s predictably inept leadership and the country’s apparently irreconcilable tribal polarizations. What does it say about a country that could elect such an unsavory character; that could turn all three branches of government to the stewardship of the Republican Party; a party that should have forfeited its right to rule for its glaring political sins of bigotry, obstructionism, myopia and incompetence.

Countries get the leaders they deserve. Only a racist electorate could vote for such an unabashed racist candidate. Only misogynists could find such an irredeemable misogynist appealing. Only xenophobes could go for such a dangerous xenophobe. Only those who don’t realize American citizenship is premised on allegiance to an idea, not common bloodlines, can vouch for a proponent of racialized notions of citizenship. Only enraged and deranged white nationalists could pick such a frighteningly enraged and deranged white nationalist. Only nativist bigots and bullies could endorse such an insecure nativist bigot and bully. Only narcissists could show preference for a tax-dodging conman with no history of public service. Only unethical people could be attracted to a pathological liar and serial philanderer. Only those who don’t believe in the rule of law could support such a lawless man. Only deplorables could elect such a deplorable leader.

Clearly, Trump’s victory is a horrible reflection to the country itself and the world at large the tragedy and farce that is America. The tragedy that such an unfit man could succeed America’s first black president, a man of such remarkable talent and uncommon integrity, decency and commitment to public service. In a revolting twist of fate President Obama will be replaced by the godfather of birtherism, the racist lie that Obama was not American-born, a real American. Obama’s legacy will be dismantled by his nemesis. The tragedy is evident in the country’s inability, and in the Euro-American world more generally as illustrated recently most graphically with Brexit, to deal effectively with inclusion, integration, and inequality; the inclusion of racial, ethnic and religious minorities; the integration of nations under rapid social change; redressing the inequalities engendered by the economic injustices and inanities of neoliberalism, the dangerous dogma that has reigned supreme since the turn of the 1980s and robbed tens of millions of people of decent livelihoods and even their lives, of opportunities and the promises of democratic society.

And so the increasingly pauperized and neglected social classes left behind by the draconian injunctions and destructive interventions of neoliberalism turn to demagogues adept at riding on the misguided fantasies of the common man; demagogues who rail against the establishment and old or new marginal others; demagogues molded from the same cloth of neoliberal zealotry that have wrecked the lives of working people and the middle classes; demagogues who are least able to resolve the crises of well-being for their fellow citizens.

This is to suggest that some of the biggest losers from the dangerous infatuation with Trump will be his most ardent followers. African Americans have never been major beneficiaries of America’s largess, not even under President Obama, nor have the millions of Latino immigrants who toil in the underbelly of the American agricultural and service economy. Trump will not “make America great again”, but will make it hate again with impunity. He will not bring back factory jobs that assured high school educated white men middle-class lifestyles. He will not restore their racist supremacy and deformed masculinities in a world so transformed by civil rights, feminist and gay rights struggles and victories in popular culture and imagination. Indeed these struggles will be given a new lease of life by the antediluvian values, attitudes and policies of the Trump coalition in the White House, Congress and the judiciary.

For the world at large, Trump’s looming presidency elicits different fears, perspectives and expectations. There are fears that post-war internationalism will be appended by isolationism as the United States, its champion, wallows in rabid white nationalism in a world where the ‘colored nations’ are on an inexorable rise. International trade agreements, the structural face of neoliberal globalization, are under threat from a potentially protectionist administration. The recent global compact on climate change, upon which the very future of humanity and our fragile little planet rests, will face renewed obstacles from one of the world’s greatest polluters. Some predict apocalypse that the Trump presidency will lead to the demise of the West as we have known it. Some even doubt the future of the NATO alliance under President Trump with his “America First” doctrine.

Rightwing populist forces will be emboldened, especially in European democracies already rocked by Brexit. Dictatorships will cheer the triumph of Trump, the admirer of dictators and an aspiring autocrat. Putin’s Russia that has done its best to influence the US elections through cyber destabilization will be especially enchanted. The shambolic and invective-ridden US elections have been godsend to Chinese propagandists about the bankruptcy of American democracy and superiority of the Chinese system.

The same sentiments will find expression in African and other democracies and dictatorships around the world. The structural and ideological underpinnings of US-Africa policy will not change much from the swings of the humanitarian and security paradigms that have been dominant over the past half-century. However, the developmental and democratic inflections that sanitized these policies in the last three Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations are likely to lose their currency.

Overall, the loss of the US democratic model may be a good thing for democrats and democracies in other parts of the world especially in the global South including Africa. The Trump conjuncture detoxifies democratic theory and governance from the intertwined tyrannies of American universalism and exceptionalism. It demonstrates the hollowness that there exist ‘mature’ democracies that African countries should import as turnkey projects. It opens up space for serious and creative construction of African modes and modalities of inclusive, integrated, innovative democratic developmental states and societies. With Trump’s election, everyone now knows if they didn’t before, that the American democratic emperor has no clothes. Let’s proceed to make our own democratic clothes befitting our histories, struggles and desired futures.

On a more personal note, I found the election of Trump shocking but not entirely surprising. Shocking because like many people I believed the polls. Unsurprising because having lived in the US for two decades I came to realize how deeply racism, sexism, and xenophobia are entrenched in American society and imaginary. That is why I was so relieved to relocate to Kenya when I was fortunate enough to get a university leadership position where I could do my job and live without the debilitating psychic costs of always defending my humanity and professionalism as a black person. But when I lived in the United States, whose citizenship I carry, I also came to value, and will always do, the traditions of struggles for a more inclusive union by the marginalized minorities and women. These struggles are likely to be rekindled and reenergized by the retrogressive and historically renegade Trump presidency.

History is indeed a house of many mansions, where tragedies open new avenues of struggle and possibility. The Trump presidency won’t be an exception.

 

Feet & Cars

All images taken by author in Fond Tie Tie, a suburb of Pointe Noire, Congo, in the year 2015.

Growing up in 1980s Congo-Brazzaville there wasn’t a lot of technology going around. Computer games, cellphones and tablets were alien concepts and we spent our days in the streets playing, when we weren’t at school or doing homework. The streets of Pointe Noire were safe; we turned them into soccer fields, racing tracks, a place to test drive our (handmade) cars with friends. It was a lot of fun; we went from being soccer players one day to car or house builders the next. All in the mud and sand. Life was good.

Today is different.

All the cars we built as children are now being bought already made of plastic. Running around with friends all day is replaced by sitting in front of the television to watch cartoons. The soccer games are now played sitting on the couch in front of the computer or a console.

I now live in South Africa, but go home every winter season to visit my mother, eat Congolese food, and meet childhood friends. I bring my camera along. This year was very special to me. Children who live in the vicinity of my mom’s house in a neighborhood called Fond Tie Tie, gave me a gift: They had designed and made their own cars  complete with sound system, red lights or flowers. I was back in my childhood. I was eight years old again.

The children are poor and the cars are usually made of recycled materials such as food cans, old sandals, metals and wood. I was quickly introduced to the community of young car designers. As they got to know me, they showed me the new designs they had created. The “feet & cars” project was born. Amazed by the creativity, designs and joy of life the children exhibited, I started photographing just their feet and the cars.

The world has become a new playground, not quite the same as when I was growing up, however these children really reignited my hope for this new generation as one seldom sees such enthusiasm, joy and creativity in kids these days like I saw this year in Congo. They still live in a world where technology hasn’t robbed them of their creativity and joy in playing.

All you need to know about Ghana’s December 7, 2016 elections

“At elections, Ghana wins.” That is the common sense rhetoric employed by outsiders about a country which has a reputation as one of Africa’s strongest democracies. But for Ghanaians inside the country, it is a much more complicated than that.  Exactly one month from today, Ghanaians go to the polls and some have real concerns about the legitimacy of the poll, including allegations of corruption against the electoral commission itself.  Some challenged the results of the last election, creating a tense environment. The results were only certified after the Supreme Court’s dismissal of the case. There is also sense of deja vu. The major candidates are the same people: incumbent President John Dramani Mahama (of the National Democratic Congress or NDC) is seeking a full second term and the opposition’s Nana Akufo-Addo (New Patriotic Party or the NPP) is making a his third bid for the presidency having already lost in 2008 and 2012. We emailed a series of questions to a group of people with intimate knowledge of Ghanaian politics and history, to help us make sense about what’s at stake on December 7. They could answer which questions they wanted to. This is an edited version of their responses.

The participants are:

Billie Adwoa McTernan, writer and Art and Life editor for The Africa Report.

Malaka Grant, writer and blogger.

Dennis Laumann, historian of West Africa (author of Colonial Africa, 1884-1994) professor at the University of Memphis.

Ben Talton, an associate professor of African history at Temple University and author of the book Politics of Social Change in Ghana (2010)

Kuukuwa Manful, an architect and researcher.

Sean Hanretta, associate professor of history at Northwestern University and author of the book Islam and Social Change in West Africa.

Does it matter who Ghanaians elect as president?

Billie Adwoa McTernan: It does matter. The country needs development and a good president should lead the way so that the people are inspired to work and contribute towards that development.

Malaka Grant: It only matters in the sense that Ghanaians need a face and a name to associate with the nation’s successes or failures. The position of president has become largely ceremonial. The current president’s performance in office is proof of that. He cuts sod, he commissions projects, and he poses for photo ops. However, he can only point to a handful of projects that have gone from concept to completion during the two years that he served as acting president and the four in which he was elected to the office. The real power of the presidency lies in the executive team he or she assembles. A mediocre executive team will inevitably result in a disappointing presidency, and vice versa. The performance and expectations from the top serve as a template for performance in every other area of governance beyond the presidency. This is why Ghanaians ought to take interest and be vested in [who gets appointed to the president’s team] as well as the outcomes of local elections. Unfortunately, this is not the case.

Local government has more power to affect positive (or negative) change for the ordinary citizen than the president does or ever can. However the average Ghanaian citizen does not hold their local representative(s) accountable to their duties because of ignorance. Most people don’t know who their MP is or what their function is. Most Ghanaians are not taught civics. An overwhelming number of Ghanaians haven’t a clue about what their constitutional rights and guarantees are or what the responsibilities of their elected officials are beyond campaign promises. But everyone knows that the president is supposed to oversee the welfare of the nation–like a king–which is why so much importance (really, much more than it deserves) is placed on the position.

Ben Talton: The individual and party that hold the office of president in Ghana matter a great deal. The president possesses a broad range of power that allows him or her to define the country’s domestic and international political agenda. Included among these powers is allocating funds for public services and development projects. Every four years in the buildup to national elections, we have seen work on development projects slow down and in some cases stop, and members of the business community table plans to pursue government contracts, as stakeholders anticipate which party will prevail. In the aftermath of an election, funds for a project may dry up entirely if the opposition party wins the election, so pursuing investments or development projects is risky during an election year. From the standpoint of resource allocation, for the business community or small-scale traders and farmers, it matters who has executive powers in Ghana.     

…

A traveler through any of Ghana’s metropolitan areas encounters large billboard after billboard displaying President Mahama’s image. That same traveler will be hard-pressed to locate similar billboards promoting Nana Akufo-Addo. One encounters a similar disparity on television and radio. Mahama has been airing long commercials styled as documentaries on local television.  Meanwhile, the NPP’s exposure has been limited to the occasional radio ad. The NDC is not unique in exploiting the power of incumbency. In 2008, when the political tables were reversed, the NPP’s campaign was similarly extravagant and the NDC’s campaign exceedingly minimalist by comparison.   

It also must be said, however, that party incumbency does not secure political success. This fact is a testament to the strength of Ghana’s democracy.  Despite the ruling NPP’s glitzy presidential campaign in 2008, Akufo-Addo, in his attempt to succeed President John Kufuor, lost to John Atta Mills of the NDC. We may very well see a similar reversal of fortune on December 7 …  In a country with limited financial resources, the office that holds the purse strings has the capacity to transform local communities and the livelihoods of its residents.  In no uncertain terms, the president matters.    

Who or what has the most impact on shaping the contours of electoral debate in Ghana?

Billie: The media plays a big part, particularly radio. People often form their opinions based on the conversations (which are unfortunately often filled with scandal and sensationalism) on radio.

Does ideology–left or right–matter in Ghanaian elections? How different are the parties from one another or is Ghana’s political system becoming more like the American model?

Dennis Laumann: The differences may not be as stark as they were even 20 years ago, but the ruling NDC espouses a more social democratic politics while the NPP, despite its perennial presidential candidate’s populist and often seemingly liberal campaign promises, embraces a politically and economically conservative ideology. Of course, in the current global neoliberal order, and in a country with limited resources and economic clout, the ability to implement progressive policies (in the case of the left of center NDC) is constrained. Ghana’s two main ideological lineages that originated in the late colonial era — one on the left and primarily associated with Kwame Nkrumah and the other on the right and known as the “Danquah-Busia tradition” — are thus represented by these two major parties in Ghana (though there are a number of very small parties claiming to be Nkrumahist). Whether most Ghanaian voters support either political party for mainly ideological (rather than ethnic or familial) reasons — or even recognize the ideological distinctions — is questionable. I am always struck by Ghanaian-Americans who support the NPP back in Ghana but vote Democrat in the United States and fail to see the ideological inconsistency.

Billie Adwoa McTernan: The line between the two main parties is blurred and I’m not sure there is a big difference in either of their policies. Both talk about encouraging business investment and public private partnerships and both also talk about social development and strengthening the institutions that are supposed to support the most economically vulnerable.

Kuukuwa Manful: No, ideology does not matter. Although the major political parties claim to ascribe to particular ideologies, to even the casual observer this doesn’t play out neatly in the issues they campaign on or how they govern when in power. The NDC fancies itself leftist and encourage public comparison to the American Democrats while the NPP considers itself capitalist, and encourages comparison to U.S. Republicans. On the ground however, the NPP has campaigned on social platforms and instituted massive social schemes while in power, and the big brass of the NDC have not shied away from outright promoting capitalism. The lack of ideological distinction doesn’t mean it’s all about ethnicity though. There are sociological differences between the parties, for example in the kind of leaders they select and how people have moved through the party ranks. Party activists tend to move up through the NDC ranks faster, and a number of ministers and high-ranking party officials in this current government started out as student politicians and community organisers.

Ben Talton: Discerning the substantive ideological and policy differences between Ghana’s two dominant political parties is extremely challenging, because the differences are relatively minor.  Both parties claim vastly different political legacies and ideologies. But once in control of Flagstaff House, neither party has put much in place policy-wise that definitively set them apart from each other. This has been true with regard to both domestic and international affairs. The blurred line between their policies helps explain the personality driven—rather than issues driven—nature of the 2012 and 2016 campaigns.

It would be overly simplistic to describe the NDC as equivalent to the Democratic Party in the U.S., but that has not stopped commentators from frequently making that case.  It’s not a huge distortion, but it is misleading.  The Democratic Party in the United States is tightly wound with corporate interests in ways that the NDC in Ghana has never been.  Members of the New Patriotic Party have compared their party to the U.S. Republican Party, as both are champions of the private sector and of free enterprise as the foundation of social progress.  So simplifying the NDC as the political left and the NPP as right of center, has some merit.

However, we’ve had an opportunity to see both parties in power and the contrast between the NDC and NPP does not rival that between U.S. Democrats and Republicans in substance or form.  The NDC held Flagstaff House from 1992, the start of the Fourth Republic, until 2000.  If we include the PNDC period (when Rawlings governed), beginning in 1982, the NDC had a continuous eighteen-year run.  The NPP had its turn from 2001 to 2009 (presidents takes office the January following the previous December’s election), following President Kufuor.  The current NDC government, under Mahama, won the 2012 election, but the NDC had been in power since 2009, after winning the 2008 election with John Atta Mills as the party’s flagbearer.  These changes in government from one party to another, formally called double alternation, are truly unique in Africa. It has taken place every eight years since 1992 without widespread or protracted violence.

Both parties have largely followed the neoliberal recommendations of international financial institutions. Differences between the two parties have been defined by the outcomes of these foreign prescriptions for the Ghanaian economy. With nearly identical economic strategies, the parties’ approaches tend to boil down to sloganeering and promises of immediate material support for individuals and groups.  

How big a role, if any does regional or tribal politics play in Ghanaian elections? It it does, can you name those forces.

Dennis Laumann: Unfortunately, ethnicity (more accurate than “tribal”) still plays too big a role in Ghana’s elections, though only the NPP can be described as an ethno-centric party. In every election since the return to multi-party democracy in 1992, the NPP has won just the Asante Region, or the Asante Region and one or more surrounding Akan-majority regions only.  Every single one of its presidential candidates has been Akan, too. In contrast, Mahama’s NDC wins Akan and non-Akan regions and its presidential candidates have hailed from starkly different regions (Volta, Central, and Northern) and diverse ethnic groups (Ewe, Akan, and Gonja).

Just look at a map of any of Ghana’s recent election results – you might think you are seeing the United States with its “blue” and “red” states, the latter predominantly white-majority (but in Ghana’s case, Akan).

Supporters of the NPP deny its ethnocentrism, of course, and explain it away by suggesting it is some of the non-Akan ethnic groups that vote en masse for the NDC, singling out the Ewe who live mostly in the Volta Region. But this counter-argument is false, as the Volta Region, where the NDC always receives its highest percentages, is multi-ethnic, comprised of not just Ewe but Akan and other populations, as well. Moreover, since they have backed the NDC in every election, the Ewe have voted for presidential candidates from different ethnic groups from across the country (as opposed to Akan supporters of the Akan-centric NPP).

Sean Hanretta:  Speaking as someone with a professional relationship with Ghana, my experience there makes me conclude that both the NDC and NPP are recruiting support through a mixture of ideological positioning and forms of group identification and that both are trending towards a kind of neoliberal middle. The NDC is keen to preserve its reputation as a more populist and “left” party. But conversations I had in July with some of the neighborhood captains in charge of turning out the Muslim vote in both Accra and Kumasi suggested that even strong supporters are complaining that the NDC has abandoned its traditional commitment to the poor and has simply become a vehicle for advancing politicians’ careers. On the other side, the NPP would clearly love to shed its image as a regional or “ethnic” party and to lay exclusive claim to the long tradition of technocratic liberalism in Ghana, a tradition that dates to well before independence. To that end, NPP supporters will sometimes imply that it is the NDC that is in fact an ethnic party or that its populism is demagogic. But just as the NDC is having a hard time retaining its populist image in the face of growing perceptions of corruption and aloofness, the NPP’s leadership and the default attitudes and networks of some of its core supporters make it difficult to shed its image as the party of “Akan” elites. High levels of migration—both rural-urban and from the north south—have complicated parties’ spatial strategies and efforts to cash in on alliances with local traditional authorities.

It’s important in all of this to distinguish between popular perceptions and the realities of policies and voter response—it was, after all, the NDC that presided over Structural Adjustment in Ghana and the NPP routinely puts forward northern Muslim vice-presidential candidates. But perceptions do matter and will probably matter more and more as the actual policy differences between the parties continue to shrink.

The forces driving the underlying convergence of the two parties—their distinct historical trajectories and, for now, demographic profiles notwithstanding—are not entirely clear, but I’d attribute most of the responsibility to political economic forces. The decade of rapid increase in GDP (roughly 2003-2013) saw a narrow version of the developmentalist discourse gain even more legitimacy than it already had. The last three years have seen a series of changes that have only intensified this attitude among urban elites. As GDP falters, inflation returns, power shortages shape the daily rhythms of the middle class, and the oil sector captures people’s attention, the state finds its legitimacy among the affluent increasingly predicated on its ability to “manage” the economy, attract foreign investment, and restore “growth.” In rural areas, the dynamic has been different with high regional differentiation. Rising fuel prices, erratic commodity prices, increasing environmental spoilage caused by unchecked illegal gold mining, and rampant land grabs have been offset by an expanding (but increasingly privatized) local health system and improved transportation. These dynamics predate the recent economic problems and are not as firmly associated with any particular party. The real difference has been the divergence of the rural north and the rural south. The majority of the decline in rural poverty over the last fifteen years has been confined to the southern half of the country. Overall inequality has increased to around US levels, though it remains far below that of, say, South Africa. But even in the north the prominence of NGO-style interventions seems to have hollowed out the appeal of more transformative politics.

All this is, of course, consistent with broader global trends, and so reflects the narrowing of the kind of politics that will be accepted by the Bretton Woods institutions and other creditors. But changes in the way Ghanaians themselves talk about the state and the economy seem to me fairly significant and to reflect, at least in the first instance, domestic dynamics. These changes have allowed other institutions—the Supreme Court, the Electoral Commission, etcetera—to act in ways that encourage the consolidation of the two-party system. Thus Ghana, like the US, has come to have two parties that increasingly split the vote almost exactly in half (the differences between the first and second place presidential candidates in the first round of last four elections have been 4%, 8%, 1%, and 3%, respectively, with the third party share being 7%, 3%, and 3%, and 1.5%). Such duopolistic parity simply further encourages the professionalization of politics and of electoral strategies and thus the convergence of the parties.

Billie Adwoa McTernan: I do think [regional or tribal factors] play a role, most noticeably outside of the big cities and cosmopolitan areas. People vote for those they feel represent them, whether that is politically or culturally, and they choose which of those two things is most important to them.

How do you explain voting patterns in Ghana?

Ben Talton: Voting patterns in Ghana are influenced by myriad factors.  For example, we have seen palpable ways in which poverty constrains democratic practices. It offers an open window to patron-client relationships.  Both major parties are heavily dependent on foot soldiers, rank-and-file members drawn larger from among low wage laborers, who do much of the grassroots organizing, campaigning, and sloganeering for party leaders. In exchange for their votes and helping to turn out the vote, foot soldiers expect jobs. Patron-clientelism is a highly volatile dynamic in a political system with limited material resources.  

…

Ghana’s smaller ethnic groups have been less predictable than Ewes and Akans.  The Ga in and around Accra, the capital city, are more divided between the two major parties. Mahama hails from the north, but received a lower percentage of the vote from the Northern Region in 2012 than his predecessor Atta Mills, who was a Fante from the south, enjoyed in 2008.  In any case, the NDC is more popular than the NPP among northern communities.  So, ethnicity is factor and has long been a factor, but far from the defining one.    

Dennis Laumann: As a historian, predictably, I argue the voting patterns are rooted in history. It is no coincidence that the electoral divide is largely along Akan/non-Akan lines. The NDC wins all or nearly all of the non-Akan regions in every election since the return to multiparty democracy in 1992 while the opposition NPP wins all or some or only one (Asante) of the Akan-dominant regions.  This is partly attributable to the old splits between Nkrumah’s Convention People’s Party, socialist and multi-ethnic, and various manifestations of what is today the NPP, conservative and Akan-centric. Further back in history, one can argue the divide is partly the result of the slave trade, as various Akan kingdoms, most significantly Asante, generally enslaved members of other ethnic groups, especially from present-day northern Ghana and the Volta Region, for sale to Europeans. It is arguable whether the average Ghanaian voter is influenced by or cognizant of these historical legacies, but the voting patterns are fairly consistent with these pre-colonial and colonial divisions.

In a number of African countries contemporary politicians are measured by how they fare against the legacy of the ‘founding father’ (example, Mandela in South Africa, Nyerere in Tanzania). Is that the case in Ghana? (Is that Nkrumah? Rawlings?)

Dennis: While there are several small, practically insignificant parties claiming to be the true heirs to Nkrumah’s Convention People’s Party, the ruling National Democratic Congress is Ghana’s Nkrumahist party – social democratic, multi-ethnic, and national. Indeed President Mahama, and his immediate predecessor, Atta Mills (both of the NDC), proudly traced their political lineage to Nkrumah. What is intriguing is that even the NPP, whose origins date back to the anti-Nkrumahism, so-called Progress Party and other incarnations, today pays homage to Ghana’s founding father. In the future the NPP will likewise be forced to at least minimally embrace the Rawlings legacy, too, as the former President remains popular, was Ghana’s longest-serving ruler, and deserves credit for kickstarting the country’s political and economic development over the past few decades. Just as supporters of the NPP tradition long derided Nkrumah and denied his achievements but now speak positively about his legacy, Rawlings will become an icon across the political divide in coming decades.

Malaka Grant: Nkrumah is considered Ghana’s most successful president. Many of the public programs and facilities he instituted still stand and are in use today. This likely accounts for why in this election, it appears everyone is scrambling to present themselves as the heir of Kwame Nkrumah’s legacy. CPP (Nkrumah’s party) has the most logical right to claim. The incumbency (NDC) has pointed to the recently completed public works projects as proof to their legitimacy to that claim. The NPP (the main opposition party) has made no such claims – since it would signal hypocrisy at its finest, as the party’s founders were responsible for Nkrumah’s overthrow – instead chastising the other parties for trying to capitalize on the late president’s legacy. Even they know how Nkrumah’s memory captivates the imagination of the young voter. The scramble to colonize Nkrumah’s reputation for the sake of political expediency is on, and it does us all a disservice.

Nkrumah the Pan Africanist was a great man – a visionary. But he was also despotic, or became so during the course of his presidency. He instituted a one party state, oversaw the jailing of political dissidents and quelled democracy in Ghana. This the stain of Nkrumah’s legacy that today’s political leadership do not want to be associated with, and in attempt to buttress their own public image by making comparisons to Ghana’s first president, they rob the nation of a full picture of the man by sweeping his flaws under the rug.

Today’s political elite ought to be able to stand on the strengths of their own achievements, just as Nkrumah did in his day. We can’t move forward if we are always looking back.

Sean Hanretta: I think the fate of Ghana’s “founding fathers”—and we should pause to think about the gender relations, generational structures, etc. implied by the tendency to compare contemporary politicians to an all-male crew of past heads of state from a lost “golden era” very different from today—has been very complicated.

Nkrumah is an interesting example and a more nuanced case than Rawlings, I think. Symbolic appropriation of Nkrumah comes cheap—at least since the 1980s. Few now openly disavow him but few outside of college campuses and some radical intellectual circles deeply study his ideas or projects either. But even as a symbol, his legacy is a delicate issue. The NPP’s efforts to relativize Nkrumah’s contributions by making him simply one of the “Big Six” of Ghanaian nationalism—alongside Ebenezer Ako-Adjei, Emmanuel Obetsebi-Lamptey, Edward Akufo-Addo, William Ofori Atta, and JB Danquah (the last three not coincidentally all relatives of perennial NPP flagbearer Akufo-Addo)—constituted an explicit effort to build a genealogy of anticolonialism that bypassed the simplistic textbook story of Nkrumah’s heroism. This move was prompted not by any intrinsic commitment to a more inclusive history but by the fact that their opponents were always quick to remind people of the NPP’s descent from anti-Nkrumah movements. On the part of the NDC, an easy assimilation of Nkrumah as ancestor is complicated by the personalization of authority around Rawlings and by the fact that some of the more passionate (and informed) keepers of the Nkrumah flame are highly critical of the party. Among Ghana’s various third parties, Nkrumah serves mostly as a convenient emblem that people can appropriate to assert their ethical or ideological purity—a dynamic surely familiar to third party voters in the US.

The consequences of all this are rather mixed. Needless to say, a whole host of other significant political figures with no current champions have effectively vanished from the public narrative, so any really serious coming to terms with the events of the first few decades after World War Two remains a long way off. (But what country can claim it has fully and dispassionately worked through its origin myths?) And one could argue that the thinness of Nkrumah’s symbolic role in contemporary Ghanaian political life reflects the priorities of a population with a more pragmatic, forward-looking attitude. Probably the most important useful legacy of Nkrumah is the growing public awareness of the circumstances of his ouster—an important lesson about the amount of control any Ghanaian government truly has over the direction in which the country moves.

Given the contested results from the last election, are their fears again about post-election violence?

Ben Talton: Every four years, those who have cast ballots for the losing party are disappointed with the results.  But it has not been the practice that they then return home to sharpen their machete.  Political violence tends to be perpetrated by a small minority of members of the NDC and NPP, rather than smaller parties. Violence is not the expected or accepted response to undesirable political outcomes. That said, the government, the Electoral Commission and the Ghana Police must take seriously these relatively low-level incidents, to prevent violence from settling into an expected and accepted aspect of Ghana’s political culture.

Activists from the rank-and-file members of the political parties strengthens Ghana’s democracy and in many ways help to make elections work. They are the ones mobilizing voters, promoting campaigns, and inventing and promoting many of the popular campaign slogans. And they are also the most likely to be involved in incidents of violence. The most obvious sign of durability of Ghana’s electoral system is the change in the party in power in 2000 and then again 2008.

A more tenuous aspect of the political process is that control over public facility must be handed over to activists from the victorious opposing party.  So, it is not only violence, but the destruction of property is a potential problem. It is dangerous to link economic opportunities with political success. Those on the losing side, will invariably be disappointed. This does not necessarily compel violence, and, indeed, we should cultivate a culture in which such violence is not a part of Ghana’s political legacy. There have been acts of violent intimidation before, during and after elections. Foot soldiers steal or destroy property belonging to the opposing party.

Dennis Laumann: I doubt there will be any violence with the possible exception of a very few isolated, localized, and short-lived incidents. But, as always, the NPP will cry fraud if they lose – again. Like their American counterparts, the Republicans, they will fail to recognize their defeat can be attributed to their own ethno-centricism.

Besides the occurrence of elections every four years, what are the other institutions that make you confident (or not) that democracy in Ghana remains relatively stable?

Ben Talton: Conducting free and fair elections is not the only marker of a mature democracy.  The media are the ballast of Ghana’s political system. The press top the list of institutions that reflect the relative stability of Ghana’s democracy. The country remains high on the list of global south democracies. Ghana enjoys a robust free speech political environment.

There are a variety of news programs on television and radio on which guests and hosts, in English and local languages, criticize political figures, including the president and other members of the ruling party. The tone has remained more respectable and issues-driven than the discourse on U.S. television and radio. Journalists, media personalities and everyday citizen express their opinions without fear of government retribution, but does not appear to be a rampant issue. There have been isolated reports of people losing their jobs for expressing their political perspectives.      

Ghana’s activist communities have grown also stronger during the past decade, aided by social media, the internet, and traditional media coverage. Ghana’s ongoing energy crisis has fueled the largest and most sustained protests in 2015 the country. Many activists have insisted that the government’s failure to resolve the crisis disqualifies President Mahama from seeking an additional term. Last year the NPP organized some of the largest protests.

In 2014 various protest groups came together through the hashtag #occupyflagstaffhouse and petitioned the Mahama administration to address an array of issues, including infrastructure, declining economy, and corruption in the government. The government did not shut these protests down and they remained peaceful.

There is also a vibrant political culture at Ghana’s universities, particularly the University of Ghana at Legon. Most recently, faculty, led by my colleague Akosua Adamako Ampofo, protested to demand the university remove a statue of Mahatma Gandhi the university had accepted from the president of India in June. The protesters prevailed and the government agreed to remove the stature. The government was adamantly opposed the position that she and other protesters held, but, in the end, they acquiesced. I highlight this issue as an example of the strength of the vibrancy of civil society and the freedom of protest in Ghana, hallmarks of a strong democracy.  

Dennis Laumann: The obvious answer to this question is the existence of a free, lively, diverse, and contentious print, audio, and visual media, which has steadily developed since the return to multiparty democracy in 1992 and thrives especially during the present administration of President Mahama.

How invested are you in local elections, i.e beyond the Presidency?  Do voters care who the members of parliaments are?

Kuukuwa Manful: Voters do care who the Members of Parliament (MPs) are, because in the way governance has come to be practiced here, MPs are who people go to when they need things – ranging from tarred roads to school fees and attendance at funerals. For many, the MP is the highest governing authority they have access to and thus will tend to vote for someone who they believe will benefit themselves and their community, and this person is not always the candidate put forward by the party they belong to or the party whose presidential candidate they support unconditionally. We see this manifest in what is known as ’skirt and blouse’ voting – where people vote for a presidential candidate from one party, and a parliamentary candidate from another party. The Jomoro constituency (in the Western Region) illustrated this in 2008 when Samia Nkrumah, daughter of Kwame Nkrumah, won the parliamentary seat. She unseated the incumbent NDC MP although the NDC had held that seat for three election cycles. She campaigned very effectively and was a fresh/new voice and face, the daughter of a beloved president and very active in social issues and philanthropic activities in the area. In that case, compared to the incumbent Lee Ocran, the people of Jomoro constituency chose her because she was perceived as more likely to make a difference in their lives. People will sometimes choose an MP from another party because of their wealth, (positive) character traits, history of philanthropy and/or activeness and popularity in the constituency.

Dennis Laumann: One of the fascinating results of the elections four years ago was that many Ghanaians across the nation voted “skirt and blouse” meaning they supported one party’s presidential candidate and another party’s parliamentary candidate. In other words, in a single constituency, the NDC may have won the presidential vote but the NPP candidate may have been elected to parliament. The dynamics of each local race are complex and often independent of issues and personalities dominating the national level.

Billie Adwoa McTernan:  It depends on the what are the issues for voters. If you live in a community that doesn’t have enough schools you might want to vote for the parliamentary candidate that is promising to advocate for that, but if you are student looking towards the job market you might look at which presidential candidate is promising better job creation opportunities.

What would you say are the most pressing issues for Ghana policy wise right now? Can you list three and say why?

Billie Adwoa McTernan: I can list two. Education. Quality education, with well-equipped institutions that is free and for all. There is no point in building several schools if the teachers are just going to read from a book and not engage students. Also good healthcare.

Ghana has a very youthful population. Do they matter in elections?

Malaka Grant: The 2012 Report of the Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research (ISSER) of the University of Ghana notes that youth constitute about 70% of Ghana’s labor force and a majority of the voting population. The youth don’t just matter in elections; they are the whole point of elections.  It’s the concerns of the youth – especially in those that age on the higher end of the age spectrum – that drive the nation’s policy. Those in the 20-35 age bracket are in their marrying and childbearing stages of life, bringing with them all the concerns of this phase. Housing, education for their children, employment and confidence that theirs’ is a government that understands and is concerned for the future is what drives them to the polls. John Mahama ran – and won – on a platform of “youth”. He was the first president young enough to be born in ‘Ghana’, unlike his opponent who was so old he was born in ‘Gold Coast’. He used an iPad to deliver speeches, signaling that he embraced and understood technology and its function in the modern world. Candidate Mahama dressed like the new African Man. He was relatable and his opponent was not. Even elderly voters in 2012 understood the power of his youth and hoped that he would bring an Obama-ish flair and effectiveness to the office of the presidency. The influence of the youth extends much further than their local communities. Youth influence and opinion goes wider and travels faster than older generations of Ghanaians are accustomed to. Politicians understand this, which is why so much time is invested in Kalyppo Challenges and catchy slogans sung by bleached skin Ga boxers, all in an effort to capture youth imagination and hopefully, allegiance.

Billie Adwoa McTernan: Very much. They are potentially starting “the traditions of voting” as it were for their future families. And the parties know, which is why they have taken to use music by popular youthful musicians in their campaigns.

Diego Maradona’s misguided political statement on Western Sahara

The marketing for tomorrow’s match.

Diego Maradona is considered as the greatest footballer of all time and scorer or the “Goal of the Century.” And now, it seems, a willing apologist for the Moroccan occupation of Western Sahara.

According to a number of news reports, as well as posts on Maradona’s official Facebook page and the Twitter account of former Egyptian football great, Mohamed Aboutrika, the two of them are set to return to Morocco along with other former stars of the game—including Brazil’s Rivaldo, Ghana’s Abedi Pele, and Liberia’s George Weah—and former Moroccan players for a so-called “Match for Peace” tomorrow. Organized by the Royal Moroccan Football Federation, the match will take place at Sheikh Mohamed Laghdaf Stadium in Laayoune, the capital of occupied Western Sahara.

The announcement on Maradona’s official Facebook page reads: “Match for Peace in Morocco, next Sunday November 6. With great football stars: Rivaldo, Noureddine Naybet, Abedi Pele, Mohamed Aboutrika and George Weah”

This is all deceiving. Less a match for peace, the game is part of Morocco’s wider efforts to project a positive international image and normalize its occupation. It marks the forty-first anniversary of the so-called Green March, an event orchestrated by the previous Moroccan king, Hassan II, during which hundreds of thousands of Moroccans crossed into Western Sahara in 1975. While it is something to celebrate for Morocco, for the Sahrawi of Western Sahara it marks the invasion and partial occupation of their homeland by Morocco in 1975, forced exile for many, and serves as a painful reminder of the unfulfilled promise of self-determination.

This is not the first time Maradona has done this. (He has a jumble of contradictory politics and associations anyway. See here, here and here.)

In 2015 Maradona participated in a similar match to the mark the fortieth anniversary of the event, along with Aboutrika, Pele, Weah, and apparently others such as Brazilian Gilberto Silva. Maradona even played for free. Yet international criticism was muted at best.

Maradona during the 2015 version of the match.

Following this year’s game, Maradona will reportedly attend the opening of the 22nd Conference of the Parties (COP22) climate summit in Marrakech, Morocco. Sahrawi activists have criticised Morocco’s hosting of the summit as an attempt to greenwash the occupation.

The Sahrawi already have to contend with the overwhelming indifference of much of the international community and a Moroccan occupier steadfastly backed by powerful allies such as France, and to a lesser extent Spain and the United States. And now, at a time of heightened tensions due to growing frustration with the continued postponement of the promised referendum on self-determination, sports events such as the one Maradona and the other foreign stars will take part in do not promote peace. Instead they only serve to help Morocco whitewash the occupation.

A truly exceptional footballer but a truly misguided political statement.