Sean Jacobs's Blog, page 319

The Organic Intellectual

I first encountered the late Sam Moyo through his chapter “The Land Question” in Ibbo Mandaza’s seminal edited collection, Zimbabwe: The Political Economy of Transition 1980-1986 published by CODESRIA in 1986. Moyo’s essay was a must-read for scholars and students seeking to understand the varied economic, social, and political consequences arising from the inherited legacy of unequal land distribution in the newly named (and independent) country of Zimbabwe.

The following year, as an undergraduate student at the University of Manitoba, I traveled to Zimbabwe. There, along with twenty-nine other Canadian university students I went to the Zimbabwe Institute of Development Studies (later IDS at the University of Zimbabwe) in Harare to listen to Sam and his colleagues explain the wider political economy of Zimbabwe to us. I recall being both overwhelmed by the wide range of facts and data being presented to us, and how Sam stood out amongst his colleagues with his cool demeanor, pointed and incisive comments, and as someone who chain-smoked throughout the entire meeting. Little did I know that I would get an opportunity to work with, and learn from Sam twelve years later.

In those intervening years, Sam had established himself even more as a leading authority on Zimbabwean agrarian, land, and environmental issues. In a number of academic and policy papers, and books which he wrote or co-wrote with others, Professor Moyo was becoming a crucial authority on all things rural in Zimbabwe.

Geographic space concerns were vital to the livelihoods for the majority in the country. A colonial legacy of race-based land division, into European large-scale farms located in the better soil and rain zones, and African small farms in worse soil and rain zones, haunted and informed much of both national and local politics. Sam’s work dispassionately examined how these land inequalities generated unequal development in the country, and how the ZANU (PF) government’s policies largely exacerbated them. This was particularly true during the 1990s during the ZANU (PF)’s structural adjustment program, where it showed hostility toward land occupiers, and enacted a donor-encouraged re-crafting of its land resettlement program, gearing it more to “commercially-oriented indigenous farmers” rather than to land-poor black farmers.

By the late 1990s, the political scene in Zimbabwe was heating up. There were growing protests against the government’s economic and international policies, and demands for a new constitution and more democratic freedoms by trade unions, students, war veterans (those who fought in the guerrilla armies in the war for independence), and civil society activists. As Prosper Matondi, then Sam’s key research assistant, notes, Sam was not only analyzing this all through a well-honed political economy lens but he was actively involved in an endless series of meetings and negotiations between the government, donors, and other stakeholders regarding land reform.

It was during this exciting and ultimately turbulent time that I first came to know Sam. I met him through his then wife, Dede Amanor-Wilks. I had finished my doctoral thesis concerning commercial farm workers in Zimbabwe, and Dede had been publishing and putting together insightful reports on the conditions of farm workers for Panos and the Zimbabwe-based Dateline Southern Africa. In 1999 Sam asked Dede and I to work with him on writing an article for the Review of African Political Economy relating the situation of farm workers in light of land reform. For several months in the latter half of 1999, I had the intense but enjoyable learning experience of working with Sam. His prodigious knowledge, the opening up of his overflowing library (and reading his publications and innumerable reports, many which were unpublished), and his careful and critical reading of many drafts, taught me much about the political economy of agrarian reform and offered me a glimpse into Sam himself.

Sam’s warmth and humor, even when he was critically dissecting my work, made me realize why he stood out at that ZIDS meeting in 1987, and why he easily forged ties with so many people in Zimbabwe and around the world. Excellent scholarship will attract attention, but the combination of that with a generous scholarly camaraderie is what made Sam a relatively unique intellectual.

We were writing our article while Sam was extremely busy meeting with government officials, donors, and others trying to find a way forward for land reform. At the same time, the newly launched opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change, was gaining momentum and putting more pressure on the ZANU (PF) government.  Our article came out later in 2000 but by then the facts on the ground had completely changed the policy environment for land reform in Zimbabwe, and the position of commercial farm workers within it.

The next decade was a tough but important period for Sam. The highly politicized land redistribution program, which became known as the Fast Track Land Resettlement Program, brought the much needed land reform needed to begin to address the inherited colonial inequalities, the thing for which his scholarship had long been advocating. However, it came at great cost: state policy-making processes and institutions were undermined, violence was unleashed against many (particularly commercial farm workers), and the relationship with the Global North was deeply frayed. In this context, Sam decided to continue advising the ZANU (PF) government, even though they were directing the force of the state against the MDC and its supporters. He and his research team were conducting important empirical studies on the fast-changing rural economies. Yet, his attempt to provide dispassionate policy, technical advice was a tough row to hoe. In this time of hyper-partisanship, old friendships were frayed and suspicion and denouncements were common. Sam’s emphasis that he was not beholden to any political party often was lost in this time of struggle on so many fronts.

Despite the political climate, and the free fall of the national currency and economy, Sam continued to do what he did best: conduct research, publish, and train and mentor scholars. Sam’s already expansive continental and international networks of colleagues and friends expanded even more, as many were keen to learn about Zimbabwe’s ongoing land reform and realized Sam’s extensive knowledge. He found time for all of these relationships, building up his new African Institute of Agrarian Studies research institution and other networks, seeing former research assistants become important scholars and institution leaders. He continuously mentored others, and wrote and co-wrote books, articles, and reports, which provided deep insight into the unfolding agrarian dynamics in Zimbabwe, and the surrounding debates around political economy, social movements, and notions of social justice.

I bumped into Sam in the Oliver Tambo airport in Johannesburg in 2013. I had felt badly having lost touch with him for so long, but he did not seem concerned. He warmly told me of some of his current projects and ambitions, and we talked about trying to work together if I was able to conduct some of my new planned research in Zimbabwe. He was his usual warm, engaging, down-to-earth self, characterized by a humbleness which I found so impressive.

It is hard to imagine not having Sam’s active voice around anymore. His scholarship will long be a defining feature of the understanding and debates concerning agrarian reform in Zimbabwe and the Global South. His influence is carried on through those many Zimbabwean and international scholars he mentored and worked with, and it will continue to be felt for some decades ahead. His presence will be sorely missed by his wife Beatrice Mtetwa, his family, his daughters, and colleagues around the world, including those many of us who may have not seen him for some time but knew he was there in Harare. His untimely passing leaves a gap that will be hard, if not impossible, to fill.

The #ParisAttacks and France’s Long History of Colonialism

In the wake of the #ParisAttacks earlier this month, lots of think pieces emerged that tried to make sense of  the vile acts that took the lives of 130 people on terraces and in the Bataclan concert hall. Two competing narratives emerged: one emphasizes how the French way of life with its universal republican values was attacked, another – less publicized – explanation focuses on the tormented legacy of French colonialism in Algeria. However, it is only by unpacking the complexities that tie both narratives together that we can begin to understand the position of the Paris attacks within the international history of the 20th and 21th century.

First of all, on the day of the attacks, French President François Hollande declared a state of emergency. While touted as an ‘exceptional’ measure, Hollande’s decision should be more accurately viewed as an historical reflex. After all, the French state of emergency is intimately connected with colonialism and its effects: it was declared during the Algerian War of independence in 1955, 1958 and 1961, in the course of a secession movement in New Caledonia in 1984 and during the riots of young Parisians of North African and African decent in 2005. The state of emergency was instated once again because a vicious civil war in a former semi-French territory – Syria became a mandate territory after World War I – has provided a fertile ground for terrorist attacks.

Similarity, the French anger about the Belgian inability to control the movement of terrorists on its soil is also not new. As documents from the French foreign archives in La Courneuve show, Belgium was already the place where Algerians had a hide-out in the 1960s and a country where members of the Mouvement national Algérien (M.N.A.) shot F.L.N. supporters in Mons.

At the same time, however, we should not dismiss the feelings of Frenchmen and Europeans who see the values of democracy and the open society violently attacked by men who feel excluded from those societies. Most observer points out with great subtlety that Daesh perverts the values of Islam as it is being practiced today. At the same time there is little attention for the recent history of French Republicanism and the values that have sustained the European integration process.

Instead, Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel and President Hollande have announced tighter security measures, but they fail to spur a debate about what the values are Europeans are supposed to fight for. This is problematic since a key justification for tighter security and more surveillance rests on a major contradiction: the democratic project should be defended, particularly because “we,” Europeans consider the values that came out of the French Revolution to be universal, beneficial for people no matter where they live. At the same time it is also believed that “others” commit terrorist acts because they disapprove of “Western” values despite of their universality.

The key to understanding this paradox lies in the complicated legacy of colonialism, which – particularly in the French context – tainted the democratic values that are so fervently embraced today. As historians, such as Todd Shepard and Frederick Cooper, have painstakingly documented, Algerians and – to an extend – Africans in French West Africa were legally viewed as French citizens, within the longstanding tradition of France’s universal Republicanism. After the Second World War the colonial project was transformed into the modernization project. Colonialism was no longer an economic enterprise, but a technocratic one aimed at increasing the standards of living while strengthening societies through Western expertise. However, once Algeria successfully claimed its independence in March 1962, the colour-blindness of French Republicanism was written out of French history. The so-called “failure” of French modernization in Algeria was blamed on the racial “otherness” of Muslims.

Moreover, the European integration process had imperial overtones as well. Particularly for Charles de Gaulle, European unification was not only a way to keep German ambitions in check, but it also offered a tool to manage the fledgling French empire in Africa. Eurafrica, the supposed “natural” union between both continents remained a powerful idea up until the end of the 1950s when different forms of independence and self-rule seemingly became inevitable. At that point colonialism was written out of European Union history.

As European amnesia about colonialism began to set in, black intellectuals such as Martiniquan writer Aimé Césaire stressed the hypocrisy of the imperial enterprise. French imperialism had carried the promise of economic development and Republican citizenship but instead brought destruction and oppression. In 1955, Césaire attacked the European claims of moral superiority. Europe bragged about its so-called achievements, the diseases it had cured, and the improved standards of living it had delivered, while in fact the Europeans had only taught men to have an “inferiority complex, to tremble, to kneel, despair and behave like flunkeys.”

Finding an appropriate response to the threat of terrorism therefore does not only require a forceful response, exemplified by Manuel Valls’ call to “annihilate” the enemies of the French Republic. It also requires European leaders to acknowledge how millions were excluded from access to what were supposedly universal values. As the decolonization process dragged on and Europe’s paternalist ambitions lessened, Europeans became more explicit about the fact that non-whites were not entitled to the same rights they themselves enjoyed on the old continent.

A good way to come to terms with the fact that both the European project and the political ideologies of Islam have perverse outgrowths might be the universalization of empathy. Devastating terrorist attacks like the one in Paris happen at regular intervals in Nigeria and Kenya, and should therefore – in equal measure – be presented as an attack on “all of humanity.”

Between Rwanda and Mandela

I recently reread “An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness,”  the famous lecture given by the late Chinua Achebe in 1975 and later published in the Massachusetts Review in 1977 (now published by Penguin as one of its Penguin Great Ideas series). It is an excoriating critique of Conrad’s autobiographical novel. Achebe treats Conrad like an overt racist who rendered his African characters as unspeaking brutes, and the African landscape as possessing a virgin innocence as well as an unspeakable darkness. In this way Conrad is shown to be a conventional Victorian racist, and relatedly of deploying some fairly crude gendered tropes to the supposedly African “character.”

Achebe goes on to reflect on the broader European imagination of Africa which Conrad represented. Two excerpts are particularly resonant:

Th[ere is a] desire – one might indeed say the need – in Western psychology to set Africa up as a foil to Europe, as a place of negations at once remote and vaguely familiar, in comparison with which Europe’s own state of spiritual grace will be manifest…

 And:

The West seems to suffer deep anxieties about the precariousness of its civilization and to have a need for constant reassurance by comparison with Africa. If Europe, advancing in civilization, could cast a backward glance periodically at Africa trapped in primordial barbarity, it could say with faith and feeling: There go I but for the grace of God. Africa is to Europe as the picture is to Dorian Gray – a carrier on to whom the master unloads his physical and moral deformities so that he may go forward, erect and immaculate.

Then there’s this quote which opens the historian Helen Tilly’s recent book Africa as a Living Laboratory. Written by Keith Hancock, author of the Survey of British Commonwealth Affairs in 1937, but it could just as easily have been written by any number of critical postcolonial scholars addressing trends in contemporary representations of Africa:

Africa’s modern empire-builders had the habit of thinking in continental dimensions. The historian, by following them in this habit, may find the clue not only to their achievements, but also to their illusions and extravagances.

What Achebe is saying may sound overly generalising, but that is only because mainstream political and cultural representations of Africa tend to be so generalising, flitting from pessimism to optimism, in turn revealing something about metropolitan illusions and extravagances.

As Wole Soyinka has recently written in his book Of Africa, the West is constantly careening between hope and despair, Rwanda and Mandela. It is in this constant flitting that Achebe’s analysis, and that of many others who have critiqued the reductive and racist nature of the ‘dark continent’ Africa discourse, needs extending. For whilst the West’s ideas about Africa can be seen as always having been a process of narcissistic projection, if such a projection is periodically pessimistic and then optimistic, this must involve both the successful transference of deep-seated Western insecurities about its own short-comings onto Africa, thus cleansing them from the Western social psyche (as Achebe argues), as well as the projection of Western insecurities which construct an image of Africa as containing the solution to the West’s problems.

This helps explains why the Western reproduction of Africa swings so wildly between optimism and pessimism. When pessimistic, Africa is constructed as a place of violence, religious conflict, disease and despair, all features of Europe’s not so distant past, but which get emptied out of Europe as a current issue of concern and projected onto Africa. But what of Afro-optimism? We are, indeed, in a time when Africa’s stock in the West has rarely been so high. Celebrations of African culture proliferate (film festivals, literary festivals, and so on), whilst a whole industry of policy and investment guides proclaim Africa’s ‘rise’ as an economic, political and demographic powerhouse.

For those who can cast their minds back 20 years, to the coverage of Somalia, Rwanda, and the breaking of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, such proclamations seem curious. Indeed, whilst current commentators celebrate the ‘demographic dividend’ of Africa’s population boom, in 1994 Robert Kaplan could uncontroversially argue in his infamous piece in the Atlantic Monthly that Africa’s coming anarchy was in danger of not simply engulfing just the African continent, but the whole world, based in large part on yes, Africa’s population boom. More famously still are these two front covers from the Economist Magazine. The first, from a 2000 edition, the second, from 2011. Beyond the colonial imagery in which both covers are embedded (dark continent in the former, childlike and unspoilt in the other), what is striking about these front covers is the absolute about-face they represent in a period of little more than a decade.

Time Magazine pulled a similar stunt albeit over a near 20 year period: First, in January 1984 (“Africa’s Woes”) and the second in December 2012 (“Africa Rising”).

And yet this turnaround is not a straightforward acceptance of Africa’s internal diversity, and sameness vis-à-vis anywhere else in the world, but is in fact yet another staging post in the narcissism which has historically informed Western and specifically metropolitan representations of Africa. Indeed, optimism about certain aspects of African culture, history or politics (when such things were ascribed to Africans, an admittedly rare occurrence) have always accompanied and constituted the imperial encounter with Africa. To claim that imperial imaginations of Africa have been straightforwardly derogatory is to miss the huge optimism about Africans with which 19th century missionaries and humanitarians approached the continent. Once we recognise this we have two options: one, to accept such attitudes as reflecting a perspective on Africa distinct from more mainstream perspectives of the period, or two, to delve into these perspectives and explore their relationship to conventional forms of racism and paternalism. For whilst missionaries were hugely optimistic about African morality, this was only because they expected Africans they encountered to appreciate God in ways which the European Christian ‘flocks’ from whence the missions were sent, with their drinking, gambling and fornicating, seemed increasingly immune to. Missionary optimism about Africans then was almost solely based on a collective narcissism regarding moral decay in Europe, and disappeared pretty quickly once Africans turned out to be quite fond of their own belief systems, and not so different from anyone else in the attention some of them paid to, well, drinking, gambling and fornicating.

What this means for now is that we need to question contemporary narratives about Africa’s economic rise, which have emerged in the context of a Euro-American economic crisis, or about Africa’s ‘demographic dividend’, which have emerged in the context an aging European population with under-funded social welfare provision. This is not to say that (some of) the things these narratives are describing aren’t true, but to question the timing of these analyses, and relate them to a longer history of quite violent swings between optimism and pessimism which have characterised the imperial relationship to and representation of Africa. Over the next couple of years then I hope to be able to return to Africa is a Country with more detailed commentary on particular episodes of Western optimism about Africa, exploring the degree to which the emergence of various movements optimistic about the continent, or certain parts or agents of it, were embedded in metropolitan anxieties which revealed very little about continental Africa, and far more about both Western realities and mythologies. These episodes will include the early 19th Century missionary project in Southern Africa, early 20th century campaigns for African rights, and liberal settler campaigns in the 1950s and 1960s for inter-racialism. By exploring the narcissism of these moments it should be possible to highlight the degree to which contemporary debates around Africa’s ‘rise’ are similarly embedded in Western anxieties about the vitality of state, society and economy.

Is Africa rising? This is a bit of a silly question for a continent which spawned the human race, but by contemporary socio-economic measures, a hugely qualified yes, for some people, in some parts of the continent, depending on who you ask, and when. Was Africa on a precipice of barbarism 20 years ago? Of course not. It is the narcissism of a metropolitan commentariat which has changed in the meantime, far more so than conditions for many of the people living in Africa.

*This is the first in a series of occasional posts by Gabay for his UK Arts and Humanities Research Council funded project, “‘Africa Rising’ in historical perspective,” which we will publish here.

Mahmood Mamdani remembers his friend and comrade Sam Moyo

I no longer recall when exactly I met Sam. Maybe it was in the late 1970s at CODESRIA, or in the early 1980s at the Zimbabwe Institute of Development Studies. The late 1990s, though, was the time we truly got to work together, closely and intensely. The two of us were at the helm of CODESRIA’s leadership, as President and Vice President. The next two years were a time of deep and sharp differences in policy, and it often seemed as if there was no end in sight.

I remember a particularly difficult episode a year down the line. We had an emergency meeting in Dakar but Sam said he could not be there because he was to have a delicate operation in a few days. I explained what was at stake and asked if he could postpone the operation by a week. He warned me that he would not be able to sit for long in his current state. But the next day, he was in Dakar. During the meeting, he kept on shifting the weight of his body from one side to the other, now leaning on one buttock, then on another. He was obviously in great pain, but it never showed on his smiling face.

That was Sam, selfless, committed to a fault, totally reliable. He was the person you would want by your side if you expected hard times ahead. But no matter how difficult the times, as during those years, I never saw him turn vindictive against anyone. Later, we would look back on that period as something of a crossroads in the history of CODESRIA. Then, however, it was hard and painful. It was the kind of ordeal that can forge enduring friendships. Sam was that kind of a friend.

In those years, I also learnt that Sam was a mathematical genius. As soon as we would land in Dakar, he would head for the Accounts office, take charge of all the books, and go through them meticulously. No matter how long it took, 12 or 24 hours, Sam would work until he would have a report ready for discussion between the two of us. Soon, word went around that it would be foolhardy for anyone to try and pull a fast one on Sam.

Students and scholars came to CODESRIA for different reasons, some for the thrill of travel, others to be part of a Pan-African conversation on issues of the day, and yet others to access otherwise scarce resources for research. Sam shared all those motives but, above all, he was among the few who unfailingly gave more than he received. When it came to facing temptation or intimidation, his was a towering presence. Sam stood for integrity and steadfastness, a calm intelligence and a cool deliberation, a level head in a crisis situation, and a free spirit in a party that was sure to follow every difficult episode.

Sam was one of the few who presented a seamless blend of this capacity for sobriety, integrity and joy that marked the CODESRIA crowd – all with a cigarette in one hand no matter the time of day, and a glass of beer at the end of the day. The ground on which this companionship was nurtured was the city of Dakar. We came to it from different corners of the continent, all marginal in one way or another, all looking for freedom, most of all the freedom of expression, as if gasping for oxygen. Out of that common endeavor were born close associations and lasting comradries.

Sam’s major scholarship was in the field of agrarian studies. Always unassuming, he seldom talked of his own scholarly work unless someone raised it first. For me that occasion came in 2008 when the London Review of Books invited me to write a piece on Zimbabwe. The land reform was the big issue at the time. I pulled together whatever studies on the subject I could lay my hands on. Three sources stood above all others as original and reliable: one from the Institute of Development Studies at Sussex, another from the University of Western Cape and then Sam’s work at the African Institute of Agrarian Studies in Harare. As I read these sources, and the press reports on their findings, I learnt something about the politics of knowledge production and its recognition in the public sphere. Two facts were crystal clear to me: one, that Sam had been several steps ahead of the others; and, two, that his work was the last to be recognized. It was almost as if the press went by a rule of thumb: when it came to ideas, the chain had to originate in a Western university, and the link go through a South African institution, before it came to an African researcher.

I discussed this with Sam. He smiled, as if to say, what’s new? At home, his critics were at pains to paint him as partisan. If he showed that the land reform had improved the lot of a large number of the landless, those in the opposition discounted it as the claim of someone with the regime. But if he refused to give blanket support to the regime, those with it said he must have hidden links to the opposition. When it came to public policy, Sam took the cue from his research, always fearless, unafraid, and hopeful. He was a voice listened to by all, especially when he was the target of criticism. Whatever their disagreement, all knew that Sam was not susceptible to corruption, and that he would not offer an opinion unless it was informed by deep research.

The last time I saw Sam was at the CODESRIA General Assembly in Dakar in June. Only two months before, we had been together in the city of Hangzhou in China at a conference organized by the Inter-Asia School to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Bandung. The hospitality was overwhelming. Every meal was like a banquet; every plate on the table was renewed before it could be empty; wine and drinks flowed. Sam was relaxed, as he reminisced of our efforts to build CODESRIA over the past decades, and reflected about future plans for the African Institute of Agrarian Studies. I recall this as if it was yesterday: Sam, smiling, trusting, reassuring, strong, purposeful, and thoughtful, yet again doing what he was best at, charting a road none had travelled before, but at the same time taking you along.

This is one journey, dear Sam, that you take alone. You leave this world as you came into it, alone, but this world is a better place, and we are better off, because we had the privilege of being part of your world. The loss is great and the heart is heavy, and it is hard and painful to say good-bye. As we grieve for our loss, we also celebrate your life.

Farewell, dear friend, brother, and comrade.

Is one continent, one country a viable strategy for Africa-China relations?

Three top executives of state-owned China Railway Construction Corporation Limited were fatally shot in the Radisson Bleu Hotel Attacks in Bamako. The victims add to a worrisome set of attacks involving Chinese nationals abroad. Interestingly, a preliminary study points that over half of these attacks occur across Africa with South Africa topping the list.  It is also South Africa that will host the Forum of China Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) this December where talks about closer security cooperation between China and African states are on the agenda.

FOCAC is China’s main multilateral platform of cooperation with African states. This will be the sixth edition of the Forum, held successfully every three years for the last fifteen years and alternating between China as a host and an African country (2003 in Ethiopia, 2006 in China, 2009 in Egypt, and 2012 in China). In December, over fifty state and government leaders are expected at the forum in Johannesburg.

Despite the fact that official relations between PRC and South Africa were established as late as 1998, China became South Africa’s largest trading partner, and South Africa is home to one of the continent’s oldest Chinese communities. The two countries enjoy strong relations and South Africa’s strategic and geopolitical position as the gate to Africa’s market and as a BRICS member make it the best fit to host this summit.

This summit will also be the first one under Xi Jinping’s presidency, and will take place amidst an environment where Chinese foreign policy is focusing attention to regional integration by advancing the “New Silk Road Initiative.” This initiative, also known as the “One Belt One Road,” is a platform for enhancing China’s regional trade relations. It connects China to Central Asia, Russia, and parts of Europe, effectively shifting quite a bit of attention and investments away from China-Africa.

Yet, another source of anxiety facing China-Africa relations is China’s economic slowdown and the Yuan devaluation policies, which had caused African-made goods and commodities to become more expensive and less competitive in China’s market. Additionally, the sharp decrease in Chinese investments in Africa (down by 84% in the first half of this year) is another challenge that has to be addressed.

The actual meetings during the Summit this December, have more of a symbolic appeal than actual work and bargaining done. Policy points are largely agreed upon prior to the Summit’s launch. The relevance of bringing together as many heads of state is of a soft power nature. In terms of what to expect at this summit, it is fair to assume there will be more of a continuation rather than a disruption of previous editions. There will be announcements of cooperation on fronts that parallel past FOCAC actions plans. A special attention on security cooperation and countering violent extremism (CVE) is expected.

Something else to expect to see in this Forum is the willingness to step up Africa’s agency and role in FOCAC. This is already evident in naming the theme of the Forum: “Africa-China Progressing Together: Win-Win Cooperation for Common Development”. The focus here is flipped from the usual ‘China-Africa’ to ‘Africa-China’ signaling an emphasis on promoting Africa’s proactive role(s) in this cooperation platform.

Yet, there are several lingering issues, which will need a solid political commitment from both sides. Ivory smuggling, animal poaching, and environmental damage are some examples. Recently, Tanzania’s authorities arrested Yang Feng Glan on the allegations of being involved in a network of ivory smuggling between 2000 and 2014. The case of Yang, who is referred to in the media as “The Ivory Queen,” is likely going to bring to light the need for proactive measures to put an end to this trade. Another big elephant in the room is the controversy behind Sam Pa’s Queensway Group and the intricate webs of corruption that are span around Africa’s energy sectors. These issues can no longer be silenced or ignored at such big events as FOCAC summits; they will likely be addressed in some format.

Regardless of the proliferation of the one continent-one country summits lately, with India-Africa summit, and US-Africa summit as examples, I believe that China is one of the most decisive trading partners for Africa. Competition from other emerging or traditional powers is not going to threaten the centrality and increasing interdependence in the China-Africa relations.

However, the main challenge for the continent remains that there is a lack of consensus building in terms of African strategies towards India, the US, or China. Necessarily given the diversity across the 54 countries, it is hard to think about one African platform but this should not overshadow the need for more internal collaboration and consensus building within the continent to strengthen, collectively and with the AU, the bargaining power of the African parties.

*For FOCAC developments follow, among others, the China-Africa Reporting Project (@witschinaafrica), Daniel Large (@dantmlarge) or the hashtags #SinoAfrica, #FOCAC

We’ve been asking the wrong questions about Bill Cosby

From the moment the accusations of sexual assault by Bill Cosby gained new purchase late last autumn, commentators have been focused on two issues: Did he do it? And, what will the impact be on Bill Cosby’s legacy? The answer to the first, based on the evidence, is obvious. The answer to the second, is a more complicated one. The question becomes fraught with concerns around respectability politics, nostalgia, the loss of reputation, and the disproportionate criticism often faced by black public figures compared to their white counterparts.  But still, it is the wrong question to ask.

To make sense of Cosby’s fall from grace requires distinguishing questions of legacy from questions of individual reputation. But does loss of reputation automatically lead to a destruction of legacy? More importantly, can or should fear of a legacy’s destruction lead to a defense of the person and his actions? Affection for the man audiences thought they knew, combined with nostalgia for The Cosby Show in particular, have led many to fret over the impact of these allegations on Cosby’s legacy. Such rear-guard actions have long proved popular defenses for famous men accused of violence, and in themselves reflect a minimization of that violence, as if to say that the abstract, ambiguous concept of Cosby’s legacy is more important than the lives he affected through his actions.

The impulse to see the person and the impact of their work as one and the same is, of course, a common one – and a defining characteristic of celebrity culture. Bill Cosby provides the archetype for that conflation.  After all, three of his most popular shows, The Bill Cosby Show (in the 1960s and 1970s), Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids (in the 1970s and 1980s), and The Cosby Show (in the 1980s and 1990s), bore his name in their title. In my own research on the impact of The Cosby Show in South Africa, it was more common than not for people to refer to Dr. Heathcliff Huxtable, the character played by Bill Cosby, by Cosby’s real name rather than the character’s name. Audiences have long mistaken Brand Bill Cosby for Bill Cosby the person. This allowed him to write Fatherhood as “America’s favorite Dad” based on the popularity of the Huxtable character, and to peddle Jell-O and Coca-Cola as a trusted parent figure. Indeed, much of his personal wealth stems from his ability to leverage Brand Cosby as if it were autobiographical.

So the fact that legacy has become the defining term of the Cosby debates should come as no surprise. It’s a legacy that Cosby himself has closely guarded through a variety of means. Both he and his close advisor, Alvin Poussaint, have been fond of making claims for The Cosby Show’s positive influence on dismantling racist attitudes in the United States, South Africa, and elsewhere. The Cosby family actually commissioned a book to examine the show’s impact on race by media scholars Sut Jhally and Justin Lewis, though the result (Enlightened Racism; Westview, 1992) was more critical than the Cosbys might have hoped.

To talk about someone’s legacy is to talk about their social impact rather than their personal character and intentions. As much as we may be drawn toward a narrative of social change driven by great ideas purposefully enacted, the reality tends to be far messier and more contingent on a volatile mix of cultural context, technology, and agency.

My own book, Starring Mandela & Cosby: Media and the End(s) of Apartheid (Chicago, 2010) is sometimes misinterpreted as claiming that The Cosby Show, through its content, changed racist attitudes among white South Africans. Rather, the power of The Cosby Show stemmed from its resonance with a political and cultural moment, generating immense popularity across social divisions that were enabled by contemporary communication technologies, more than the content of the program itself. Though the show broke new ground by centering on the lives of upper-middle class black Americans as never before, it also reflected a vision of separate development that fit quite comfortably within apartheid ideology. And while the show famously featured Miriam Makeba, a “Free Mandela” poster on Theo’s bedroom wall, and baby twins named Nelson and Winnie, Bill Cosby was simultaneously hired as the advertising face of Coca-Cola during the boycott against the company for its refusal to divest from apartheid South Africa.

The mistake, here, is to take The Cosby Show out of its specific social and political contexts. These contexts were local and global (as a worldwide popular phenomenon) as well as temporal. The power of The Cosby Show cannot be separated from the context of the 1980s in which it became immensely popular. In the United States, this meant Reagan, welfare queens, and the culmination of the Southern Strategy. In South Africa, it meant the States of Emergency, the failed attempts to regain legitimacy by the apartheid state, and the popular politics of the United Democratic Front. Audiences in both locations (and many others as well) therefore read the content and meaning of The Cosby Show in equally varied ways according to their own contexts. While the show allowed viewers to imagine – some for the first time – a political, cultural, and economic world in which someone like Dr. Huxtable could co-exist with white privilege and power, it did so within a distinctly neoliberal American worldview. Cosby’s intervention into the culture wars and respectability politics in the 2000s – scolding young black men and women for sagging pants, listening to hip-hop and having too much sex – was hardly inconsistent with his earlier stances.

Yet part of the desire to discuss and protect Cosby’s legacy seems to be driven by a powerful nostalgia for the feel-good portrayal of black family life in The Cosby Show. Whether this idealized version of talented-tenth success was mobilized for anti-apartheid or pro-Reagan arguments, for a hopeful or cynical politics of the time, it represents a remarkable social moment – when people of many different races and many different geographical locations derived similar pleasure from a single cultural product, and were aware that they shared that enjoyment across social differences. As such, the global phenomenon of The Cosby Show’s popularity marks both the peak and the last hurrah of broadcast television as a shared cultural experience – after television had become ubiquitous in almost every corner of the globe, but before the fracturing effects of cable, narrowcasting, and the internet. This legacy is secure, regardless of current revelations about Bill Cosby, because it is grounded in the experiences of the time period, and in the many resultant changes that have occurred in the ensuing 20 years.

The comedian Hannibal Buress’ desire “to just at least make it weird for you to watch Cosby Show reruns” need not be seen as contradictory to recognizing the (albeit ambiguous) historical impact of the show. That legacy does not require protection; it should certainly not be used as an excuse for wrongheaded defenses of Bill Cosby as an individual.

In the same way that The Cosby Show became one of the last widely-shared cultural passions of the broadcasting age, the exposure of Cosby’s violence toward women also marks a significant shift in cultural and media production. As has been noted by the accusers themselves, social media provided a platform through which they could respond to both the silencing of mainstream media and the personal attacks by Cosby’s agents and supporters – a platform that wasn’t available at earlier moments when accusers came forward. The accusers are also thinking about issues of legacy, both Cosby’s and their own. In the words of Joan Tarshis, one of Cosby’s accusers:

I think [Cosby’s] legacy is going to be similar to O.J.’s legacy. When you hear O.J. Simpson’s name, you don’t think, Oh, great football player. That doesn’t come to mind first. I’m thinking it’s not going to be, Oh, great comedian. It’s going to be, Oh, serial rapist. And that will be our legacy.

While Tarshis is using Cosby’s legacy and reputation interchangeably here, she is also importantly laying claim to her own legacy, her own impact – and that of her fellow accusers – in challenging the silence and complicity that has surrounded their sexual assault. Ironically, then, while the legacy of Bill Cosby’s work with Fat Albert, Jell-O, and as Cliff Huxtable remains – for better or worse – secure within the time periods in which they found their meaning, the final element of his legacy may indeed be moving the needle toward an increase in the seriousness given to accusations of sexual assault against famous men. That it comes at the expense of Bill Cosby’s reputation should be of little concern.

An ode in memory of Chimusoro Sam Moyo

An unimaginable loss has happened. Our phenomenal intellectual pan-African giant on land issues, Professor Sam Moyo, has died following injuries sustained during a terrible car accident in New Delhi, India. We are in disbelief. We are waiting for him to come home. We feel ripped apart with pain.

We grew up following you in our townships. We nicknamed you Sekuru “Chimusoro”, the one with the very big head. All our parents wanted us to be exactly like you. At the end of every school term, you would come home with a report card full of number ones. Your arms would be laden with trophies and certificates for best student in this subject; outstanding record in that.

Your mother, Gogo Mavis Moyo’s face would beam with enough joy to light up the whole continent. She was a woman of her own accolades, a pioneer black female broadcaster at a time when radio was segregated by racism. But somehow your achievements made her glow in the way that only a mother can do.

We always marveled at the shiny silver cups with your name on them. Playfully, you would fill them with cherry plum juice and serve us to drink along with candy cakes. The pink icing would crease between our fingers. Domestic chores, serving those around you, never bothered you. You had such a deep sense of the hospitality of food, and the power of sharing drinks with those you loved, that we always felt welcome to your side. You were our great tree that bore so much fruit. Yes we would laugh, but you would steer us to talk about the thing that mattered most to you; and even if we did not know it then, to us. How to fully reclaim the land that was stolen by the colonial forces.

Throughout your life, you carried your intellectual smarts with so much ease. In your later years, when your trophies had turned to degrees, you would seek us out so we could sit in your seminars. At that time I think you were at the Zimbabwe Institute of Development Studies (ZIDS). Later on you moved to SAPES and taught the SARIPS Masters Program with radical feminists like Dr. Patricia Mcfadden you made our brains sweat. In the beginning we would all look at each other unable to write down some of the big words and theories you used.  And yet you persisted. Sharing your knowledge with us, crafting an epistemology around land and agrarian rights. Together you showed us why land was a critical resource for women to have ownership and control over.

When we tried to call you Prof, you would smile and say, “vafana vangu, ndinonzi Sam – my youngsters, I am just Sam.” It didn’t matter that you had “eaten many books” as the saying used to go. You would listen to our elementary theories, nurture us with love and suggest, “let’s write a policy brief on this subject. That’s how we will change the world.”

You lent your brilliance to the environmental think tank Zero, pulled us into the Senegal based Codesria and introduced us to people who wore Dashiki shirts as a form of political expression. People whose papers you had photocopied for us to read. This was before computers. It was the time of type-writers. Your scrawl was impossible to decipher, but we knew that if we didn’t figure out your handwriting, there would be trouble. You could not abide intellectual laziness.

On Boodle Road, in Harare’s Eastlea suburb you set up the African Institute of Agrarian Studies (AIAS). It was nothing short of a bold move. This was Zimbabwe in the early 2000s when land invasions were at their apex. Nothing could deter you. Not physical threats, nor slurs to your name. And who can forget the raid of your home office in Borrowdale. You put your ubiquitous cigarette to your mouth and shock your head. “why did they have to mess my papers up? I had order here.” I would look at the piles and piles of papers you had and wonder what kind of order you meant. Your office was a project for a near freak.

Last year, we danced until dawn in your front garden. Your lawn groaned underfoot of our stampede. It was your 60th birthday party. Food, music, friends and land politics. The delicious chocolate cake was a creative meme of your desk. Cellphone, books on land with the spine carrying your name. And of course your friends from all over the world filled your yard. Or Skype feed.

By your side was your sweetheart and partner, the top human rights lawyer Beatrice Mtetwa. We marveled at how possible it was for two wonderful, strong and brilliant human beings to love each other so much. It made us feel good to see you dancing. It was as if no one else was around as you smiled at each other and twirled each other to Hugh Masekela’s trumpet. Power couples that publicly show each other affection and validation are so very rare in our activist civil society worlds. We were hoping for a huge international African wedding and had decided we were going to be in the bridal party. I don’t know how we will comfort you Beatrice. I don’t know how we will comfort Gogo Moyo. How will we hold Sibongile and her sisters?

On the days I forgot to call to check on you, you would ring. And demand our company. “Is Nancy (Kachingwe) around? Where is Saru? Let me make you Oxtail. Bring your over friends.” You always offered your home to us, whether you were there or not. You were our shade. Cajoling us into studying further. Promising to supervise doctorates.

Thank you for giving us so much of you Sekuru Chimusoro. Siyabonga Moyondizvo. We will forever carry you in our hearts. Broken as they are by your untimely and devastatingly painful death. Alone, so far away from the homeland you fought so hard and so long for.

*I was raised in the black working class townships of Pelandaba, Bulawayo and Highfields, Harare. That’s where I met Sam Moyo. I was mentored by Sam’s mother, Mrs Mavis Moyo, who was amongst the cohort of first black women journalists in Zimbabwe and is a co-founder of the federation of African Media Women (FAMWZ). Famwz pioneered the Radio through development venture which enabled women across Zimbabwe to share their life experiences through radio. My parents were affiliated with the movements that supported Liberation nationalists for Zimbabwe’s independence from colonial oppression.  I was defended by Beatrice Mtetwa, Sam’s partner, during my court case in 2006/7 when as a Trustee of Radio Voice of the People, I, together with other Trustees and staff were persecuted for their collective press freedoms activism. 

Why I had to leave the most beautiful place on earth

I moved to South Africa to help open a hostel in the small, coastal, conservation village of Scarborough, just a few miles from the Cape of Good Hope. Scarborough sweeps elegantly from mountain to white sand beach, the curling waves of which have kept many a local boys from venturing off to consider life elsewhere.

No matter what happens in the rest of the world, Scarborough is always peaceful and beautiful. It reminds me of R.R. Tolkien’s Shire, with its inhabitants living in ignorant bliss, or perhaps apathy, and relishing in their freedom to “live off the grid”—a freedom that many take for granted and don’t recognize as a privilege, but I’ll get to that.

In Scarborough, there is no sense of urgency. Stepping into that village is akin to entering a parallel universe where life moves abnormally slow. People, conversations, and moments all seem to move at a weaker pace, providing time to check each one out with leisure. To add to this dreamlike state, my morning runs were peppered with sightings of ostriches, springbok, bontebok, baboons, and on one occasion, an elephant seal. And baboons are such a problem in Scarborough that men are hired to patrol the streets with paintball guns and shoot them when they try to break into homes for food.

Much like in the Shire, people in Scarborough are often barefoot and can acquire a majority of their needs from the homes of neighbors. If you want beer, you go see Franz, a local man with dirty painters pants, shaggy hair under a forward baseball hat, and a knowing, childlike smile. Franz brews and bottles several different kinds of craft beer. If you want bread, you go see Hein, who is not only the baker but also directs the town choir and is an accomplished composer and musician from the Netherlands.

It is easy to romanticize a place like this. I had grand ideas of creating a hostel where travelers and artists could find inspiration amidst the ocean views and “lekker” vibes (lekker translates to “tasty” in Afrikaans). I thought we could engage with the nearby township—generating a positive influence on the stark socioeconomic inequality here. But those ideas were thwarted by casual racism and the realization that perhaps I’m not capable of living “off the grid.”

The appeal of living in a small, hippy bubble on the tip of Africa is what drew me to Scarborough, but the reality of it is what drove me away. It took living in the antonym of a city to realize that I thrive off of, and need, the pace and energy that cities offer. Additionally, I cannot live with people whose senses of morality and reality I find disturbing.

On the day I arrived to South Africa, the #FeesMustFall movement began. Students all over the country were uniting and mobilizing to fight unequal access to tertiary education. It was exciting and important and I wanted nothing more than to talk about it and ultimately be a part of it. Yet while I saw it as one of the most important movements to happen in my lifetime—addressing both economic inequality and unequal access to education—my hosts saw it as a nuisance.

When the topic came up at dinner, the mother said, “Now they want free university. Who do they expect is going to pay for that? The government has no money.”

“It’s actually not that crazy of a concept, several countries offer free higher education,” I replied.

“Like where?”

“Norway, Sweden and Germany,”

“Yeah but they don’t have black people.”

This was essentially the beginning of the end of my relationship with this family.

A few days earlier we had a campfire with their neighbor, a 45 year-old white South African man who explained to me that, “Black people like sleeping on top of each other in a room with their entire family, with their heads and feet on each other.”

I tried to reason with him, to say that perhaps black people in South Africa live like that because they have to, because they don’t have the means to live otherwise.

“Sure they do, but they like living like this man, they really do.”

It was possible to stomach these remarks from the mother and neighbor by reminding myself that we just have to wait for these people to die out. Hearing it from the son, on the other hand, rattled me.

You see, he really likes the colored guys but thinks the black Africans are “kind of dumb.” He also told me once that if it weren’t for the “white man,” there would be no jobs for black Africans. Right now the unemployment rate is around 25% and the poverty rate is over 40%, so where exactly are these jobs? Over our time together, this same guy would ask me if the US was funding ISIS, if I really believed we landed on the moon, and how soon until the US became a militarized state. Needless to say, I couldn’t continue living in this environment.

These people are not a fair representation of Scarborough, but their apathy is. While I met plenty of kind-hearted, wonderful individuals during my stay in Scarborough, the majority of them don’t waste much energy worrying about or discussing what’s happening beyond the safe, little world they’ve created. It never occurred to those in the Shire that the wars of Middle Earth could reach them, but they did. It doesn’t occur to those in Scarborough that anything at all could reach them, from the wars of the Middle East to the riots in neighboring townships.

Part of growing up is learning to respect how other people choose to live their lives. I’m moving into Cape Town because I need to be in a fast paced environment where people will challenge me and share my sense of curiosity and urgency. People live in a place like Scarborough so that they don’t have to rush their lives and can thus fully appreciate things like nature, spirituality, or simply surfing. I cannot make Scarborough my home, and that’s okay, because I’ll always love it for what it taught me and for what it offers.

*This piece first appeared on Adam Warwinsky’s blog.

Beauté Congo wonderfully represents Congolese contemporary art, yet fails to completely evade European colonial baggage

Beauté Congo-1926-2015-Congo Kitoko has been on view at the Cartier Foundation in Paris since July. The international press has showered the exhibition with the kind of attention many museums can only dream of, but reviews demonstrate how difficult it is to disassociate Conradian imagery from public perceptions of the Congo. Reviewers have hailed the exhibition as “brightly coloured and musical” (le Monde) with “luscious” art “leaping” from the walls (New York Times). The Wall Street Journal, however, takes the proverbial Conradian cake by noting “only the most fleeting sense of Conradian heart of darkness”. Although the exhibition represents a laudable attempt at reframing the representations of Congo through the history of its modern art, it nonetheless fails to fully escape the archetypes that burden us when it comes to Congo.

The course through the exhibition takes visitors backward in time, from contemporary artists to the ‘origin’ of modern art in Congo. The first space is dedicated to a group of young Congolese artists training their attention on the historical and environmental dimensions of Congolese city and landscapes and the people who populate them. The heart of the exhibition lies in the next section which presents the popular painters, active since the 1970’s. The paintings in these aisles are the works the visitor is most likely to be familiar with: bright, often large paintings that focus on subjects including Kinshasa’s flamboyant street life, the politics of personal relations and wealth, and the position of Congo in the world. The exhibition hinges on this section, with the work of the young artists positioned as the legacy of the popular painters and the downstairs rooms—with sections on Congolese photography of the 1950’s and ’60’s, the Academy of Indigenous Art in Elisabethville and the so-called ‘pre-cursors’ to modern art in Congo, positioned as historical predecessors.

While the exhibition has much to recommend it (seeing many of these works in person alone is worth the trip to Paris) it also serves as a reminder of the difficulties of dismantling colonial narratives about modern art. Although visitors are encouraged by staff to follow an ‘anti-chronological’ course through the exhibition, it in fact affirms a particular colonial story about the origin of modern Congolese art, one that places the starting point with the ‘discovery’ of local artists Albert and Antoinette Lubaki and Djilatendo by colonial official Georges Thiry and their promotion in Europe by Gaston-Denys Périer, an employee of the colonial ministry in Brussels. Predictably, the exhibition situates the Academy of Indigenous Art in Elisabethville, where Congolese students were encouraged to create works that were ‘African’ in inspiration, as the next step in this development. This particular genealogy repeats a narrative about Congolese modern art that emerged during the colonial era: Thiry and Périer saw themselves as the discoverers of Congolese modern art, and by the late 1950’s the colonial establishment attributed to the Academy of Elisabethville a similar influence. Beauté Congo does nothing to dismantle these assumptions; instead it endorses them. Not only does the exhibition’s narrative about the origin of modern Congolese art privilege the influence of European actors, spaces and contexts, it does so to the detriment of other possible genealogies.

An alternative narrative of Congolese modern art would include spaces and actors that typically fall outside of (Western) origin narratives of fine art, such as commercial activities like sign painting and so-called ‘tourist’ or ‘airport’ art. New research acknowledges the latter as a field of production driven by significant creative change. In Congo economic conditions forced modern art and commercial applications of artistic practices to go hand in hand. The role of Congolese autodidactic artists in the 1940’s and 1950’s is also likely to be important (particularly given the fact that many of the popular painters are autodidacts) although their activities and work, given our current historiographical perspective, are harder to track.

Despite that fact that the exhibition attempts to develop a presentation of African art that transcends the typical anonymous and muted exhibitions of ‘traditional’ art, it has at least one uncomfortable aspect in common with these exhibitions: the ownership of the objects on display. With seemingly only one exception, all of the works on display are Western-owned. As such, the exhibition serves as a reminder of how little the art economy of the Congo and its patterns of ownership have changed. The late Congolese art critic Celestin Badi-banga Ne Mwine in the early 1990’s lamented that “in the case of modern art, the country knew an exodus equal to that in traditional art. (…) Can we imagine in the future some kind of partial restitution of our modern art works?”. In invoking ‘restitution’, Badi-Banga references the decades-long entanglement between Congo and Belgium over cultural restitution and museum collections of traditional art. This issue appears to have recently found a new protagonist in the figure of Sindika Dokolo—not coincidentally the only non-Western owner one of the paintings in Beauté Congo. I mention this context not as a demand for the immediate return of these works to Congo, but as a reminder of the continued influence of the colonial roots of the African art market.

The commercial market in Congolese art lives right beneath the surface in this exhibition: after all, its organizer, André Magnin, owner of MAGNIN-A gallery in Paris, represents many of the contemporary artists involved. Part of the explanation for the deeply unequal patterns of ownership of modern art lie with the country’s steep economic decline from the mid-1970’s forward. While a domestic market evaporated, the popular painters oriented themselves towards expat and foreign markets. Describing these patterns of ownership only as the holdovers of colonial and neo-colonial structures, however, would be far too easy. Zaire’s own national museum institute was unable to collect much work from the popular painters for political reasons, despite the enthusiasm of its staff. The Mobutu regime, which founded and funded the institute, was none too pleased with the popular painters’ political and societal commentary and their rising popularity, preferring to promote a different, academic modern art as the representative of its national culture. As a result, the museum repository that could have kept some of these paintings in the country, failed to do so.

In this exhibition, we see young Congolese artists who explicitly address and position themselves against and beyond the stereotypical representations of Congo as an exotic place of darkness, violence, and disfunction. The origin narrative presented, however, and the uneven patterns of possession, counteract these messages by yet again placing Congo in a Eurocentric narrative.

الاجئين يحتاجون الحرية لا المساعدات

For English click here*

كأحد الناشطين في مجال حقوق الاجئين وكمهاجر عايشت كل الظروف التي يمر بها الاجئين القادمين الي أوربا، تدور دوما في ذهني أسئلة عاصفة لا تهدا احاول هنا ان أشارككم إياها ! 

هل فعلا نجد في ألمانيا في ارض الواقع  تلك الشعارات التي يرددها الاعلام هذه الأيام وخاصة المستشارة الألمانية. إنجيلا ميركل حين صرحت ( لقد حققنا ذلك ) ! هل فعلا تحقق ما يحب فعله لتمكين ثقافة الترحيب بالاجئين وفي نفس الوقت تمتلئ شوارع مدن ألمانيا المختلفة بالمتظاهرين من حركة المعادين للإسلام والأجانب ( بغيدا) وهل تمكن هؤلاء المعادين للاجانب من حرق اكثر من مئة مركز إيواء مستقبلي للاجئين يعكس ثفافة الترحيب ؟ وهل ذلك يعني ترحيبا حين يتمكن البرلمان الألماني من اجازة قوانين جديدة تمنع وتقيد حرية الحركة للاجئين وتلزمهم بالبقاء مدة أطول في معسكرات اللجوء المتردية وحتي تعيد توزيع اكل معلب جاهز وتمنع دفع مبلغ مالي للإعاشة واستبداله بكبونات ؟ هل تسير في طريق الترحيب ؟ ان سياسة جزء كبير من المجتمع الألماني الذين يحاولون ان ينشروا ثفافة الترحيب  بجعل الاجئين كضحايا يحتاجون المساعدة ويتناسون سياسة حكومتهم التي تدعم كل أشكال عدم الاستقرار في المناطق الآخري ويتناسون ان ألشركات الألمانية مازالت تصدر السلاح لمناطق النزاع علي سبيل المثال صفقات السلاح للسعودية التي تقود النزاع في اليمن تحت مسمي دعم الشرعية ،ودعم أوربا للدكتاتوريات في افريقيا كاتفاقية مايسمي (Khartoum process) الذي وقعه الاتحاد الأوربي مع اكبر ديكتاتوريات افريقيا ( السودان – اريتريا -جنوب السودان ) من اجل إيقاف تدفق الاجئين من افريقيا الذين ياتؤن او يمرون بهذا الدول مقابل دعم مالي سخي وتدريب كوادر لمراقبة اكثر للحدود وحتي انشاء مراكز إيواء خارج أوربا في هذه الدول وما الاتفاقية. الاخيرة بين ألمانيا وتركيا بعيدة عن هذا المجال ! 

ان ثفافة الترحيب فشلت فشلا ذريعا في ألمانيا مع كل هذه القيود الجديدة خاصة اذا علمنا ان من نتائج حركة احتجاجات الاجئين التي بدأت في العام ٢٠١٢ ومستمره حتي الان هي ابطال قوانين حرية الحركة ومنح الاجئين حق الحركة في داخل الحدود الألمانية والذي وافق عليه البرلمان الألماني في بداية العام ٢٠١٥ وسحبه اخيراً في شهر أكتوبر ٢٠١٥ فقط بجرة قلم لهو الضربة القاضية لثقافة الترحيب ، ما يجب ان يفعل من اجل حلول موضعية لإشكاليات الاجئين بجب ان تتعدي القوانين يجب ان يبذل جهد اكبر في إيقاف الحروب ودعم الدكتاتوريات فقط من اجل حماية حدود أوربا ،يجب ان نقاتل سويا كمهاجرين ولاجئين ومواطنين ألمان من اجل وقف نشر مزيد من العنصرية من قبل الحكومة بسنها لقوانين العزلة هذه ، والمهم ان لا نتخذ دوما طريق جعل الاجئين كضحايا يحتاجون فقط للمساعدة  يجب ان يكون التضامن سياسيا فلا يحتاج الاجئ فقط للطعام والشراب بقدر ما يحتاج للحرية والامان من اعتداءات المعادين للاجانب ويحتاج للحماية من قوانين تجعله يعيش دكتاتورية جديدة تشل حركته وتسلب حريته في بلدان يقال انها ديمقراطية .

*The Inequality Series is a partnership with the Norwegian NGO, Students and Academics’ International Assistance Fund (SAIH).

Through writing and dialogue, SAIH aims to raise awareness about the damaging use of stereotypical images in storytelling about the South. They are behind the Africa For Norway campaign and the popular videos Radi-Aid, Let’s Save Africa: Gone Wrong and Who wants to be a volunteer, seen by millions on YouTube.

For the third time, SAIH recently organized The Radiator Awards; a Rusty Radiator Award went to the worst fundraising video and a Golden Radiator Award to the best, most innovative fundraising video of the year. You can view both winners here.