Sean Jacobs's Blog, page 325
October 23, 2015
We Are Called Those Who Have Come*
It was never just about Afrikaans.
They wore school uniforms in Soweto in June 1976, and they held signs. Many declaimed against the state’s mandate that classes previously taught in English be taught in Afrikaans. Thus did the popular mythology coalesce around the story that the Soweto Uprisings were only about Afrikaans. They never were. Soweto was about a changeover – the announcement of a generational shift in political practice. It was about a generation of students who, as another sign put it, were fed up with being beaten, fed up with be denied their dignity, fed up with being slaves to Bantu Education, the South African political economy and the apartheid state. It was never just about Afrikaans. It was about the future.
Image Credit: Nicholas Rawhani
It was never just about a statue.
#RhodesMustFall was never just about a statue. At UCT earlier this year students tore through an earlier generation’s boundaries of the possible, to articulate a political vision situated in, and responsive to, the specific dynamics and needs of their time. The current generation of university students have, for the most part, grown up and been educated under democracy. The realities of continued poverty for most, growing inequality, and the resilience of white supremacy in South Africa have made the politics of liberalism less seductive for this generation. It was never just about a statue. Students have been, and are continuing to, call for the radical restructuring of political, social, financial and knowledge economies to reflect the lives and satisfy the needs of all. The political freedom won by earlier generations has allowed for an intellectual freedom that imagines politics beyond the party and is not afraid to make demands on the government and Constitution that has been so hallowed in our collective public life – just as the Class of ’76 imagined a politics beyond liberation movements and instead positioned themselves only as students, committed to the future, committed to the lives that they hoped to live.
The fact that the university was the birthplace of recent student action is essential to understanding the the character and form of these movements. Before Rhodes fell, students and professors sat and learned together in the Archie Mafeje room – named for a towering African intellectual – until the early hours of the morning. Professors from disciplines across the campus lectured and taught in the evenings and debate continued for hours. #RMF committees circulated texts by scholars from around the world, helping to frame analysis of past movements’ and regimes’ successes and failures and how best to integrate these lessons in the present. By militantly rejecting the dominant curriculum and teaching models that continue to put Europe and white South Africa at the centre of UCT’s academic life, students created the space in which they wanted to learn and explored a wealth of academic material that spoke to their realities and aspirations. The unique beauty of this process was the way that through this resistance and creative engagement they artfully produced new knowledge and fostered a new political consciousness. The statue, like Afrikaans, was a symbol. It was never just about the statue.
Image Credit: Nicholas Rawhani
Now, students hold signs again. One, questioning, reads “1976?” Another, troubling, asks “Is my future my mother’s past?” Another, optimistically, promises, “my grandfather was a garden boy, my father is a garden boy (won’t happen to me) I wanna be a vet.” Most read simply #feesmustfall. It’s not just about fees; it’s not just about a hashtag.
Recent student action has captured public attention and the popular imagination because of how it has demonstrated the materiality of its theory. In public statements, student have shown how their experiences of financial exclusion, debilitating university debt and responsibility for extended families link to broader issues of political leadership, the organisation of the economy and the economic legacies of apartheid that haunt students trying to use education to escape poverty. By seamlessly moving between individual and structural analysis, and locating specific voices and narratives in the broader landscape, these movements have been able to animate the statistics to which the public has until recently seems desensitised. Through such analysis students in these movements, and their allies, have demonstrated the relationships between the financial exclusion of university students, universities’ outsourcing of ‘non-core’ workers, the gross under-representation of black academics in senior positions, and the massacre of mineworkers at Marikana.
Image Credit: Nicholas Rawhani
In this political moment students are finding and developing a theory to suit their times, capable of holding the contradictions of ‘born-free’ life, just as their parents practiced their theory of opposition to the realities of their lives. The fearlessness with which the world has watched them confront these contradictions, facing head-on violence reminiscent of a bygone era, is sparking the idea that much more than fees may fall. So even as we salute Friday, 23 October 2015, when the fees fell, just as we cheered when Rhodes fell, just as we jeered when the National Party fell, we need to be with the students, reading, learning, thinking, practicing, planning for the struggles yet to come. It was never just about apartheid. It was about the future. Stay tuned.
*The title of this piece comes from the South African Student Movement newsletter, 1975.
Instagrammer Fati Abubakar takes us beyond Boko Haram in Nigeria’s Borno State
Since its inception, Africa is a Country has been challenging parochial notions of African representation across a wide range of mediums. However, it could be argued that among the different communication channels, photography in particular has the most powerful impact to shape audience opinions about the people and places it reflects. It is photography that burns images into our minds as viewers, images which serve as reference points and endure over time, even when we close our eyes.
Historically, the power to control African visual narratives was largely flowing through the cameras of cultural outsiders from other regions of the world. Though with the rise of social media and specifically image sharing via Instagram, an important counter-narrative has emerged to showcase a new locally-driven vision of African identity and space. That is why we’d like to initiate a new series here on Africa is a Country: #InstantArchives. As a means of sharing different visual perspectives, we will highlight photographers who use Instagram to offer unique windows into their communities. We’ll hear from them about what they are striving for when they take and share photographs.
Kicking off the series is Nigerian photographer Fati Abubakar. Fati’s account @bitsofborno offers a look through her lens into the vibrant world of Maiduguri in Borno State, Nigeria. In a region affected by the activity of Boko Haram, Fati is actively reclaiming the narrative of the area with her images and text. In her own words:
I love photography and love what it can do as a medium to tell a story. Hence, I’ve decided to use that to document my home state of Borno simply because the religious crisis that has ravaged it showcases only the trauma and despair while forgetting that there are survivors trying to lead normal lives and go on every day despite the insurgency. It is as vital to show resilience as it is death and destruction. Hence my need to capture this aspect of our lives.
In my opinion a good photograph is what speaks to your soul. There is something in a photo that tells you to frame that moment. A story unfolding before you. It could be joy or pain, but it wants you to eternalize it. And that’s what I do with my photos. Stories, lives, buildings, scenery, photos of nostalgia. That is what I want when I take a photo. An assurance that for eternity, I have a memory of that moment.
What I hope to achieve with the photos is to help people see that we are thriving, living, moving on and help rekindle memories of old glory.
More #Maiduguri #Eid #fashion #bitsofborno #colorful #children #happysallah #photojournalism #travelphotography #documentaryphotography #travel #everydayafrica #checkoutafrica #dynamicafrica #ankarafashion #style #leadersofafrica #bitsofborno #unicef #natgeo A photo posted by Yerwa (@bitsofborno) on Oct 5, 2015 at 3:36am PDT
A photo posted by Yerwa (@bitsofborno) on Oct 13, 2015 at 5:13am PDT
New #trains. Old train tracks. A challenge for our railways. #photojournalism #Borno #photography #checkoutafrica #everydayafrica #dynamicafrica #documentaryphotography #natgeo #yourshot #vscogood #vsco #vintage #vscocam #afrovsco #africa #Nigeria #colors #bitsofborno A photo posted by Yerwa (@bitsofborno) on Sep 30, 2015 at 4:44pm PDT
Are we promoting local businesses? Caps from Borno locally made, intricately hand stitched by the IDPs need a national audience to help empower such talent. #Maiduguri #Borno #talent #locallymade #idps #everydayafricanfashion #checkoutafrica #dynamicafrica #africanfashion A photo posted by Yerwa (@bitsofborno) on Oct 10, 2015 at 4:37pm PDT
A photo posted by Yerwa (@bitsofborno) on Sep 21, 2015 at 9:56am PDT
Classic Kanuri beats. #vsco #Maiduguri #Borno #Nigeria #Africa #Travel #travelphotography #photojournalism #canondslrphotography #checkoutafrica #justgoshoot #passionpassport #dynamicafrica #onlyinafrica #onlyinnigeria #culture #tradition #drums A photo posted by Yerwa (@bitsofborno) on Sep 14, 2015 at 2:11pm PDT
*** This post is part of our #InstantArchives series. To see more of Fati Abubakar’s work, follow her Instagram account @bitsofborno.
Instagrammer Fati Abubakar takes us beyond Boko Haram in Borno State
Since its inception, Africa is a Country has been challenging parochial notions of African representation across a wide range of mediums. However, it could be argued that among the different communication channels, photography in particular has the most powerful impact to shape audience opinions about the people and places it reflects. It is photography that burns images into our minds as viewers, images which serve as reference points and endure over time, even when we close our eyes.
Historically, the power to control African visual narratives was largely flowing through the cameras of cultural outsiders from other regions of the world. Though with the rise of social media and specifically image sharing via Instagram, an important counter-narrative has emerged to showcase a new locally-driven vision of African identity and space. That is why we’d like to initiate a new series here on Africa is a Country: #InstantArchives. As a means of sharing different visual perspectives, we will highlight photographers who use Instagram to offer unique windows into their communities. We’ll hear from them about what they are striving for when they take and share photographs.
Kicking off the series is Nigerian photographer Fati Abubakar. Fati’s account @bitsofborno offers a look through her lens into the vibrant world of Maiduguri in Borno State, Nigeria. In a region affected by the activity of Boko Haram, Fati is actively reclaiming the narrative of the area with her images and text. In her own words:
I love photography and love what it can do as a medium to tell a story. Hence, I’ve decided to use that to document my home state of Borno State simply because the religious crisis that has ravaged it is showcases only the trauma and despair while forgetting that there are survivors trying to lead normal lives and go on everyday despite the insurgency. It is as vital to show resilience as it is death and destruction. Hence my need to capture this aspect of our lives.
In my opinion a good photograph is what speaks to your soul. There is something in a photo that tells you to frame that moment. A story unfolding before you. It could be joy or pain, but it wants you to eternalize it. And that’s what I do with my photos. Stories, lives, buildings, scenery, photos of nostalgia. That is what I want when I take a photo. An assurance that for eternity, I have a memory of that moment.
What I hope to achieve with the photos is to help people see that we are thriving, living, moving on and help rekindle memories of old glory.
More #Maiduguri #Eid #fashion #bitsofborno #colorful #children #happysallah #photojournalism #travelphotography #documentaryphotography #travel #everydayafrica #checkoutafrica #dynamicafrica #ankarafashion #style #leadersofafrica #bitsofborno #unicef #natgeo A photo posted by Yerwa (@bitsofborno) on Oct 5, 2015 at 3:36am PDT
A photo posted by Yerwa (@bitsofborno) on Oct 13, 2015 at 5:13am PDT
New #trains. Old train tracks. A challenge for our railways. #photojournalism #Borno #photography #checkoutafrica #everydayafrica #dynamicafrica #documentaryphotography #natgeo #yourshot #vscogood #vsco #vintage #vscocam #afrovsco #africa #Nigeria #colors #bitsofborno A photo posted by Yerwa (@bitsofborno) on Sep 30, 2015 at 4:44pm PDT
Are we promoting local businesses? Caps from Borno locally made, intricately hand stitched by the IDPs need a national audience to help empower such talent. #Maiduguri #Borno #talent #locallymade #idps #everydayafricanfashion #checkoutafrica #dynamicafrica #africanfashion A photo posted by Yerwa (@bitsofborno) on Oct 10, 2015 at 4:37pm PDT
A photo posted by Yerwa (@bitsofborno) on Sep 21, 2015 at 9:56am PDT
Classic Kanuri beats. #vsco #Maiduguri #Borno #Nigeria #Africa #Travel #travelphotography #photojournalism #canondslrphotography #checkoutafrica #justgoshoot #passionpassport #dynamicafrica #onlyinafrica #onlyinnigeria #culture #tradition #drums A photo posted by Yerwa (@bitsofborno) on Sep 14, 2015 at 2:11pm PDT
***
This post is part of our #InstantArchives series. To see more of Fati Abubakar’s work, follow her Instagram account @bitsofborno.
October 22, 2015
Uganda, now you have touched the women… again!
In April 2012, Ingrid Turinawe, then leader of Uganda’s Forum for Democratic Change Women’s League, was on her way to an FDC rally when police attacked her. They dragged her out of her car, groped, mauled, and tore off her top. Ugandan women responded with protests where they stripped off their tops. That was then, and this is now. In the looming shadows of upcoming elections, police attacked, mauled, groped and stripped Zainab Fatuma Naigaga, FDC Secretary for the Environment, on her way to a rally. It was all caught on video. Inspector General of Police Kale Kayihura first tried to explain that Ms. Naigaga had actually stripped herself. No one bought that explanation, but many started using the hashtag #SomeoneTellKayihura.
Many have expressed outrage at the combined police brutality and shallowness. Repeatedly, people asked, “Why can’t police officers engage Ugandans with civility?” “Why are the police determined to hurt Ugandans?” Many see the police actions as an assault on dignity, while others see it as a consequence of the ongoing, intensifying militarization of the police force: “Ugandan police officers do not use handcuffs because they are trained to act in packs; they are not empowered as individuals to take action on their own. Therefore, a simple arrest turns violent because their attack instincts kick in!” Part of the outrage stems from the partisan nature of police violence, and part of it emerges from too many years of immunity raining down on police who were only following orders.
Many recognize that the police assault on Zainab Fatuma Naigaga was an assault on all women: “Some women (and men) should never be seen naked, however willing they are, but no woman (or man) should be seen naked against their will. The police owe Naigaga and the dozens of women before her an apology. All Ugandans should watch that footage and imagine Naigaga was their mother, sister or wife. We are all naked and in our silence, we should all be ashamed.” The dozens of women before her.
Once again, Ugandan women responded. The Women’s Democracy Group organized a protest. Sarah Eperu, FDC Women’s League spokesperson, explained the gender divide-and-conquer politics of the police response, “The police spokesperson, Mr Fred Enanga, said Ms Naigaga was a harlot who stripped on her own. The question we are asking is, if a person is a harlot, does it make her less of a woman?” An attack on one is an attack on all. Former Minister of Ethics and Integrity Miria Matembe understood the attack as specific to the Uganda and a general assault, “Women across East Africa should join us as we fight this.”
On October 12, Ruth Sebatindira, President of the Uganda Law Society, condemned the police action, calling it a violation the Constitution which “grants full dignity to women… Uganda Law Society treats these events as an unacceptable, unfortunate and a backward assault on Ugandans by those supposed to protect them … We believe that a cowered population can not give back to a democratic nation.”
The next day, women’s groups released a statement: “The Women of Uganda recognize that these brutal acts are continuously perpetrated by State Organs under the guise of procuring a lawful arrest… As women of Uganda, we strongly denounce these violent acts which seek to intimidate and limit women’s full participation in active politics and political leadership. These attacks in our opinion are deliberate and pre-planned against women interested in leadership.”
Women know that the assault on Zainab Fatuma Naigaga is part of a general pattern that emerges from fear, some say terror, at the prospect of women’s leadership and power. They know that there will be a reckoning, maybe not in this election but some day. You strike a woman, you strike a rock.
October 21, 2015
Dr Mbembe goes to Potchefstroom
On Monday I spent the afternoon at the Potchefstroom campus of the University of the North-West.
I was invited by a group of colleagues in the Humanities to give a public lecture on the question of the ‘decolonization’ of knowledge. A little more than 100 people showed up and the exchange was very fruitful. The lecture was followed by four structured responses from faculty staff and the usual question and answer session.
The University of the North-West has three main campuses – Mafikeng, Potchefstroom and Vaal Triangle. For the time being, Potchefstroom campus is relatively insulated from the ongoing turmoil in some of the main South African campuses. It is predominantly white and recruits most of it students from Afrikaner urban communities in Gauteng and the Western Cape. The current Vice Chancellor is black.
From what I was told and the little I could see, the campus is the epitome of the apparently intractable contradictions that saddle South African higher education twenty years or so after the end of Apartheid. On this mostly white enclave fenced off by color and privilege, many black students are made to feel as interlopers. The perennial issues of language, white ethnicity and identity are ripe. How they will be dealt with is not clear.
As I was leaving campus at around 8pm, I was taken to the main square, in front of the Administration Building, where a sizeable group of young white students were protecting a colonial statue – that of an Afrikaner poet-cum-theologian known for his justification of Apartheid on divine grounds. Apparently during the day, some black students had gathered around that statue and engaged in toyi-toying (a renowned protest dance familiar to those who have followed the cultural history of this country). In response, these young white students had now come to gather around the statue, shielding it and hoping thereby to protect it from the kind of desecration Cecil Rhodes had been subjected to at UCT recently. We know what followed.
A small group of enlightened staff from the Humanities is trying to carve out a space for a criical reflection on how to ‘decolonize’ knowledge in such a setting. I was invited to contribute to that effort and was thoroughly impressed by what I heard.
Otherwise, in today media, there are more comments and opinion pieces on the students uprising. Most political parties, including the ANC, have now openly declared their support for the movement. The last two days have been marked by scenes of extraordinary police brutality and intimidation against black students in the Western Cape. Some have been arrested, taken to police stations, then released.
The big question (and fear) in the ANC is whether, in what is going on, one might identify the seeds of an “Arab Spring”. Thus ANC Secretary General Gwede Mantashe’s warning against those he calls the “pseudo-revolutionaries” in the movement.
The Dream and the Illusion of South American Unity
It is a grandiose idea to think of consolidating the New World into a single nation, united by pacts into a single bond. It is reasoned that, as these parts have a common origin, language, customs, and religion, they ought to have a single government to permit the newly formed states to unite in a confederation.
–Simón Bolívar, Kingston, Jamaica, September 6th, 1815.
Ever since the countries of South America became independent, the illusion of a great South American nation has been ever-present. The discourse was revived by late Venezuelan ex-president Hugo Chávez, who self-proclaimed himself as the heir of the project of Bolívar, another Venezuelan, who is hailed in many South American countries as their liberator from the Spanish.
This discourse did not occur in a vacuum, but responded to the historical moment: Venezuela’s ability to distance itself from the United States influence, and the emergence of regional blocks elsewhere, like the EU, NAFTA and ASEAN, that are ever more relevant.
There is potential for economic and (eventual) fiscal integration in South America. Culturally, the countries in the region are relatively similar, sharing languages, religions, colonial histories and relatively stable governments in the past few years. Besides, there are not many countries, only twelve (plus French Guyana, which is a province of France), which should make potential agreements more likely.
With a population of more than 400 million people, a GDP per capita of more than 15,000 USD, huge reserves of petroleum in Brazil and especially Venezuela, the environmental wealth of the Amazon rainforest, this hypothetical South American Nation would have the potential to become a global economic player. The process would also include tearing down borders within the continent, and exploiting the domestic markets to increase economic output.
But so far the story of economic and political intercourse has been one of polarizing ideologies and regional disagreement. ALBA is an alignment of the most left-leaning countries, while Mercosur members all hail from the southern cone.
The Organization of American States, or OAS, which has members from Central America, North America and the Caribbean, has been met with limited success due to the historical influence the United States has had over it.
CELAC includes countries from South and Central America, but it has not been useful as a diplomatic channel. Finally, Unasur has had limited success due to its limited power of action in mediation and lack of authority.
Having such a bundle of organizations with unclear purposes and similar mandates, has served to divide allegiances. Due to the overlap in the functions of these organizations, countries go to the one that serves their interests the most, or wherever they find the most political backing. This has served to stagnate processes and prevented consensus.
Individual countries exploit these organizations for their personal interests, and in doing so they reflect the still prevalent culture where a lack of collaboration towards common goals prevails.
An illustrative example could be the recent case where Venezuela forced out more than 1,700 Colombian nationals (another 20,000 Colombians have returned to their country because of Venezuela’s crisis), arguing that they were part of a paramilitary effort to destabilize president Nicolás Maduro’s government.
Besides the absurdity of the decision, the silence of other countries, as the Venezuelan government systematically violated the rights of these people, was shocking.
In a vote held to decide whether there should be a discussion in the OAS to find a solution to the conflict, Ecuador, Bolivia and Venezuela voted against, while Brazil and Argentina abstained from voting. The latter’s neutrality, particularly, was not conducive to engage in fruitful dialogue to solve the situation. Neutrality serves the status quo, while supporting no positions serves as no basis for dialogue.
The argument that Unasur would be a better mediation channel was trumped by the fact that no country sought its mediation after the vote, with Maduro going on an international tour and Santos rejecting it as a mediation channel.
The most active third party was president Rafael Correa from Ecuador, who sponsored talks between Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos and Maduro in his territory. This series of events discredits the socialist narrative of the South American left, as they remained passive in this process of social unrest.
Furthermore, the conflict between Colombia and Venezuela went against the idea of breaking down borders and creating brotherhood. On the contrary, it was a nationalist reaffirmation of limits and a distinction and “othering” of Colombian people in Venezuela’s territory.
Some months ago, the appreciation of the dollar vis-à-vis other currencies lead the Ecuadorian government to increase import duties on goods coming from Colombia and Peru into their territory, curtailing the flow of goods across borders and creating mutually harmful market inefficiencies.
A step towards regional integration would be price equalization between countries, which would mean both the gradual mitigation of trade barriers and of the local subsidies that distort trade flows and prevent competition, such as the one Ecuador is trying to implement on natural gas, and Venezuela has had with their oil.
And this makes us return to the aforementioned regional organizations, which lack a proposal on commercial and economic integration. Their mandates and constitutions made them weak from the time of their conception, taking away the tools they could have used as leverage in their transactions.
The frequent disavowals from presidents make the organizations lose their authority, causing often-irreparable damage. But this damage is also self-inflicted, by taking decisions that lack tact, like appointing a secretary with a dubious past in both the realms of governance and legality. Bolívar concluded:
…But this [single nation] is not possible. Actually, America is separated by climatic differences, geographic diversity, conflicting interests, and dissimilar characteristics.
One would think that South America is readier than before to achieve this long-sought political unity. But now the obstacles towards its implementation are the misadministration of organisms, lack of trust and political will, and the role of ideology—overambitious South Americans, poets of ideas, and fumblers in action.
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The student uprisings in South Africa
Waves of still ongoing protests (it has morphed from #FeesMustFall to #NationalShutdown) have brought to a halt several universities in South Africa – Wits University, University of Cape Town, Fort Hare, Rhodes and Stellenbosch have all been affected and students from other universities are joining the movement every day. At last count fourteen campuses were closed. (The protesters have now moved to South Africa’s Parliament and at the time of writing had broken through Parliament’s gates, marching with hands up before being shot at with teargas and stun grenades) The issue of student fee increases, and more generally the exorbitant cost of higher education for the average South African, have become the catalyst for the unrest. Demands for racial justice and concerns about economic inequality are coming together in a powerful call for change that cannot be ignored or easily dismissed.
Protesters draw on sustained efforts in recent months to build a national movement committed to transformation of university staff and students, and widening access to higher education. The current system continues to exclude most black South Africans and other historically disadvantaged groups.
On social media, Wits University’s Professor Achille Mbembe, who has written critically as well as publicly engaged with the student movements, has made an important point about the need for protesters to focus their attention not just on universities’ management, but also the state, envisaged as a key locus of decision-making in these crucial areas.
Other questions however seem to be less debated. Are we sure that it is just a matter of channelling demands to the ‘right’ institutional structures? Why would the state be any more effective than university executives in addressing the root causes of the unrest? Government elites’ collusion with big capital and white interests can hardly be disputed. After all, this was the basis of the negotiated transition to a post-apartheid order in the early 1990s.
There is a great potential in these protests, which might or might not be harnessed by the participants. It is the opportunity to bring together people from different sectors of society who feel the brunt of discrimination and disadvantage. On the whole, they have been unable to break through a sophisticated governance system that privileges ‘divide and rule’ tactics, and fosters fragmentation along racial, ethnic and class lines.
Protesters’ requests include the end of outsourcing of all university personnel – cleaning staff is one such example, fetching very low pay under precarious contracts. Outsourced workers have already started to join, showing that a broader convergence of interests is a real possibility. (For example, 3 of the 23 people arrested at UCT on Tuesday where workers. At some point campus security and a bus shuttle service drivers also joined the protests)
This alliance would give university students the role of ‘spokespersons’, articulating demands for racial and economic justice coming from across the country. From informal settlements and townships to disenfranchised rural areas, people have been expressing discontent with their conditions in their own specific ways and contexts, and are calling for change. Their voices remain largely unheard in a national debate dominated by a strong bias towards university-educated citizens – that’s why university protests attract widespread media attention and can have a significant impact on policy-making.
A narrow path focusing on representation in current state structures is certainly desirable as a first step towards systemic change. But it is not enough to address the root problem. The vast majority of South Africans are excluded from meaningful participation in the national economy and society, through a mix of racial and class discrimination that is often covered up under the guise of apparently democratic and inclusive processes.
The student movement can contribute to the formation of grassroots participatory structures that would form the basis of a new dispensation emerging from the ashes of the apartheid system, and its neoliberal post-apartheid successor. The ongoing economic slow-down in the country will increasingly expose the inability of the current state-capital deal to deliver for most people.
It might be time to bring together debates that mainstream media have conveniently kept separate – land reform, public control of the mining sector, and access to and transformation of higher education, to name a few. Ideas about resource nationalism could be easily extended to the realm of higher education. A new agenda for an ‘intellectual’ resource nationalism that brings universities under public control would be one way out of the current impasse.
This cannot however be reduced to top down intervention by a state dominated by the same private interests that hinder transformation and access at the level of universities’ management. Efforts at transforming higher education need to work in parallel with a sustained transformation of state structures. Such a wide-ranging programme of action can only be carried out by a broader social movement that pursues the interests of the excluded majority, and is willing to stand up to the attempts by big capital and the upper-middle classes to keep things as they are.
Neoliberal policies and principles around black economic empowerment have clearly failed to deliver change and cannot be the blueprint for future higher education policies. It is time to rethink the relationship between state and capital, and to reclaim the space for a participatory democracy that puts public control and regulation of markets and services above private interests.
The student uprisings in South Africa and wider political-economic change
Waves of still ongoing protests (it has morphed from #FeesMustFall to #NationalShutdown) have brought to a halt several universities in South Africa – Wits University, University of Cape Town, Fort Hare, Rhodes and Stellenbosch have all been affected and students from other universities are joining the movement every day. At last count fourteen campuses were closed. (The protesters have now moved to South Africa’s Parliament and at the time of writing had broken through Parliament’s gates, marching with hands up before being shot at with teargas and stun grenades) The issue of student fee increases, and more generally the exorbitant cost of higher education for the average South African, have become the catalyst for the unrest. Demands for racial justice and concerns about economic inequality are coming together in a powerful call for change that cannot be ignored or easily dismissed.
Protesters draw on sustained efforts in recent months to build a national movement committed to transformation of university staff and students, and widening access to higher education. The current system continues to exclude most black South Africans and other historically disadvantaged groups.
On social media, Wits University’s Professor Achille Mbembe, who has written critically as well as publicly engaged with the student movements, has made an important point about the need for protesters to focus their attention not just on universities’ management, but also the state, envisaged as a key locus of decision-making in these crucial areas.
Other questions however seem to be less debated. Are we sure that it is just a matter of channelling demands to the ‘right’ institutional structures? Why would the state be any more effective than university executives in addressing the root causes of the unrest? Government elites’ collusion with big capital and white interests can hardly be disputed. After all, this was the basis of the negotiated transition to a post-apartheid order in the early 1990s.
There is a great potential in these protests, which might or might not be harnessed by the participants. It is the opportunity to bring together people from different sectors of society who feel the brunt of discrimination and disadvantage. On the whole, they have been unable to break through a sophisticated governance system that privileges ‘divide and rule’ tactics, and fosters fragmentation along racial, ethnic and class lines.
Protesters’ requests include the end of outsourcing of all university personnel – cleaning staff is one such example, fetching very low pay under precarious contracts. Outsourced workers have already started to join, showing that a broader convergence of interests is a real possibility. (For example, 3 of the 23 people arrested at UCT on Tuesday where workers. At some point campus security and a bus shuttle service drivers also joined the protests)
This alliance would give university students the role of ‘spokespersons’, articulating demands for racial and economic justice coming from across the country. From informal settlements and townships to disenfranchised rural areas, people have been expressing discontent with their conditions in their own specific ways and contexts, and are calling for change. Their voices remain largely unheard in a national debate dominated by a strong bias towards university-educated citizens – that’s why university protests attract widespread media attention and can have a significant impact on policy-making.
A narrow path focusing on representation in current state structures is certainly desirable as a first step towards systemic change. But it is not enough to address the root problem. The vast majority of South Africans are excluded from meaningful participation in the national economy and society, through a mix of racial and class discrimination that is often covered up under the guise of apparently democratic and inclusive processes.
The student movement can contribute to the formation of grassroots participatory structures that would form the basis of a new dispensation emerging from the ashes of the apartheid system, and its neoliberal post-apartheid successor. The ongoing economic slow-down in the country will increasingly expose the inability of the current state-capital deal to deliver for most people.
It might be time to bring together debates that mainstream media have conveniently kept separate – land reform, public control of the mining sector, and access to and transformation of higher education, to name a few. Ideas about resource nationalism could be easily extended to the realm of higher education. A new agenda for an ‘intellectual’ resource nationalism that brings universities under public control would be one way out of the current impasse.
This cannot however be reduced to top down intervention by a state dominated by the same private interests that hinder transformation and access at the level of universities’ management. Efforts at transforming higher education need to work in parallel with a sustained transformation of state structures. Such a wide-ranging programme of action can only be carried out by a broader social movement that pursues the interests of the excluded majority, and is willing to stand up to the attempts by big capital and the upper-middle classes to keep things as they are.
Neoliberal policies and principles around black economic empowerment have clearly failed to deliver change and cannot be the blueprint for future higher education policies. It is time to rethink the relationship between state and capital, and to reclaim the space for a participatory democracy that puts public control and regulation of markets and services above private interests.
Why does Nigeria still rely on the UK to deal with those who steal from its public coffers?
Two weeks ago, on October 6th, Nigeria’s former oil minister, Diezani Allison-Madueke, was arrested in London by British police. It’s estimated that over $20 billion went missing on her watch. But how much longer will Nigeria rely on the British police to deal with powerful mega-looters like Diezani Allison-Madueke?
Beyond the celebrations that lit up Nigerian Twitter at the news of Allison-Madueke’s arrest lie two important and interrelated questions: How is it that it is always the U.K. that comes to the rescue of Nigeria? How and why does Nigeria lack the capacity to manage its affairs? Once again, the U.K. has come to act as the ‘savior’ of Nigeria in an attempt to recover stolen commonwealth of the periphery—oil money. Surprisingly, the U.K. is the major beneficiary of these stolen funds often stashed in their ‘safe’ banking vaults and real estate markets.
Two cases exemplify these troubling dynamics. The first case is that of self-described governor general of the Ijaw nation, D.S.P. Alamasiegha, former governor of oil rich Bayelsa state (same state as Madueke), arrested and charged to court in London for money laundering during the Obasanjo administration. Alamasiegha’s escape to Nigeria after his court appearance in London remains as mysterious as the disappearance of several billions of dollars from the oil industry in Nigeria.
Several accounts indicated that he escaped dressed as a woman but the issue is that his escape was celebrated by some in Nigeria and today Alamasiegha has not only been pardoned (by his protégé, Goodluck Jonathan) but until his recent death, remained a political operative in his native Bayelsa (still benefitting from oil loot). What makes Alamsiegha’s case interesting was the fact that in 2005 the British authorities found on him at the time of his arrest a total of $3.2 million cash and bank accounts and real estate investment worth over $18million. While at the time of his death, the case is still pending in a London court (Alamasiegha jumped bail), the frozen assets (cash, bank accounts and properties) are still in the custody of the metropole.
In the second case, James Ibori, former governor of oil rich Delta state. Ibori was not as lucky as Alamasiegha. He was arrested in Dubai, extradited to the metropole, tried and convicted and is now serving 13 years jail time in London for laundering more than $100million. All his properties, cash and bank accounts in the UK were confiscated. Reports have it that some of the stolen funds were returned to Nigeria but (re)looted back to the metropole by the custodians of power in Nigeria. Like Alamasiegha, even in prison, Ibori remained influential in the politics of Delta state and Nigeria. His cousin, Emmanuel Uduaghan, succeeded him as governor and several of his protégés became commissioners and special advisers in the administration of his cousin as well as the administration of Goodluck Jonathan. There were many reports suggesting that he was still calling the shots from his prison room in London.
The bottom-line is that the UK has always been available to help Nigeria ‘recover’ stolen funds laundered in the metropole but the recovery process has not been transparent. For instance, when stolen funds are stashed in British banks or invested in real estate, such funds add value to the economy of the metropole. Even when such funds are recovered by London on behalf of Abuja, only an insignificant part of the funds make their way back and they are never returned with interest. A clear example is the millions of dollars stashed in Swiss accounts by the late dictator General Sani Abacha who ruled Nigeria between 1993 and 1998 (which Switzerland, last March, promised to return to Nigeria).
Leaders hailed as tough on corruption (Lamido Sanusi, Head of the Central Bank 2009-2014; and Nuhu Ribadu, chair of the EFCC) who actually attempt to bring crimes to light and to justice, are accused of ‘playing politics’ and dismissed from their positions.
So, as we await the trial of Diezani Allison-Madueke, if precedent is anything to go by, she may actually have cause to celebrate.
October 20, 2015
How to report on the student protests in South Africa
Following protest action at the University of Cape Town and Wits University in Johannesburg against higher fees, students at Rhodes University (the students prefer to refer to the school as “The university currently known as Rhodes”) came out in protest against the “Minimum Initial Payment” that would require students in Rhodes residences to pay R45,000 (about $4,500) upfront by 15 January 2016. On Monday, 19 October, students barricaded eight of the entrances to the campus and tyres were set alight in several areas. At around two o’clock in the afternoon police allegedly used stun grenades on students at the nearby East Cape Midlands College, where Rhodes students had joined them in solidarity.
A line of journalists stood photographing protestors. A yellow band of police tape separated them, defining the bounds of the protest. “So far and no further,” the line seemed to suggest. Earlier that morning, about three hundred protestors—though that number would later swell—danced and sang while waiting for Vice-Chancellor Sizwe Mabizela, to address them. The police, about seven or eight officers, leaned against their cars and watched the crowd while smoking or checking their phones. Cameras clicked incessantly as the journalists craned or knelt, each trying to capture the protest in a single shot.
Journalists were there every step of the way, as they should be in a transparent society. What is problematic is the way journalists do their work and the kind of photographs that will inevitably come out of the protest. The perfect photograph of the protest, that single shot, will never be an image of the people handing out food to the protestors as the day wore on. It will never be of a black man and his white girlfriend holding hands as they listen respectfully to the speakers. It will never be the crowd quietened to hear what the university leadership has to say. It cannot be these things, because these are not saleable, and they do not fit into the discourse of protest.
Protest reportage takes place within a particular narrative, one that determines who has a voice, and who is a part of the faceless masses otherwise constructed as the ‘angry black mob’. This discourse of protest in South Africa perpetuates a view that protest is always violent, and this perception of violence dehumanizes the very real human beings and disengages the public from their very real problems. The animalisation of the black protestor perpetuates racist representations of people of colour as less than human.
Regardless of the fact that white students were part of the protest, and that the demand for lower fees and a more manageable payment system for the Minimum Initial Payment is relevant to us all, the photographs that will enter the public space will be of angry black men and women, nameless, only their body language (anger) and their fists (black power) speaking for them. As long as hierarchical power structures entangle the media and corporate entities, newspapers will not run stories that reverse the role of aggressor.
And to be clear: it is not the students who are the aggressor. Nor, for that matter, is Dr Sizwe Mabizela, who seems to have been constructed as a scapegoat for much of the discontent. It is the system we are fighting that is the aggressor. All that we can ask of one another is to listen which is what black students in South Africa, and black people all over the world are asking for. For an acknowledgement from power structures, from the judiciaries and from academic institutions that black lives really do matter.
Writing eloquently about the importance of disturbing the boundaries of protest methods, Jonis Ghedi Alasow, a political science student and member of the Black Student Movement at Rhodes, pointed out that protestors cannot voice their concerns within the bounds of the oppressive institution. While the question of whether this gives way to what Adam Habib, Vice-Chancellor of the University of the Witwatersrand, dismissed as exclusionary ‘vanguardist politics’ is a relevant debate, we are still required to question whether process and policy are systems of silencing.
By refusing to acquiesce to calls by government and university authorities to use the “appropriate channels” to voice our concerns, students are simply refusing to be silenced. But are we perhaps silenced in another way, on another platform? Does the media’s representation of protestors as dangerous, violent and almost animalistic not do the same work as that of the government and the university authorities?
By presenting students as irrational, dangerous and animalistic, the media give the public the right to ignore our demands. And that is more dangerous than a few burning tyres. When our population is so desperately in need of a skilled labour force, and our people so desperately unable to finance the education necessary to enter that skilled labour force, the most dangerous thing that can be done is to silence our voices.
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