Sean Jacobs's Blog, page 361

#WhiteHistoryMonth: White settler states and secret police forces

Counter-insurgency strategy is a global business. Such is the story of the ‘flechas’ (arrows). Begun in Angola, the ‘flechas’ became a regional code name for recruiting local intelligence and counter-insurgency troops in the white minority strongholds of Southern Africa: Southern Rhodesia, apartheid South Africa, Angola, Mozambique, and South African controlled South West Africa.

Oscar Cardoso, PIDE (International Police for Defense of the State – Portugal’s secret police) agent and reputed founder of the ‘flechas’ – crack, commando troops – first formed in Angola to fight the liberation movements (FNLA, MPLA, and UNITA) found worldwide sources of inspiration: Jean Lartéguy’s writings, Spencer Chapman’s, “The Jungle is Neutral”; T.E. Lawrence’s, “The Seven Pillars of Wisdom”; Mao Tse Tung’s, “Revolutionary War”; and Sun Tze’s, “ The Art of War.”

In Cuando Cubango, Angola’s southernmost reaches, he met the khoisan/bushmen he’d studied in Lisbon’s Instituto Superior de Estudos Ultramarinos (Higher Institute of Overseas Studies – Gerald Bender called the scholarship produced there “unmitigatedly eurocentric”). Amazed by their hunting and tracking skills, their poor treatment by local chiefs, and their ‘primitive’ condition, he decided to recruit them to form an intelligence collection and counter-insurgency unit to fight UNITA forces in the region. Following on their success, PIDE posts in other provinces recruited ‘flechas’ from local populations, especially from those who’d defected or been captured from the liberation movement armies (thanks to Alvaro Manuel Alves Cardoso, a Portuguese Army Major).

After the overthrow of the Portuguese Estado Novo – it had a cameo in last year’s White History Month – by the Movement of Armed Forces, Cardoso spent two years in prison as part of Portugal’s national reckoning. Once released, he fled the country to escape retribution for his involvement in anti-government activity (he’s an avowed anti-socialist).

Where did he go? Not to Lartéguy’s France, Chapman’s England, or Mao’s China (to be sure). He went to Salisbury (today’s Harare) to work for Ian Smith’s regime, Ken Flower, and the CIO. They needed ‘flechas’ to combat ZANU forces. But he felt he was poorly treated so he headed to Johannesburg. And there, thanks to his links to military intelligence from his PIDE days, he got a gig. Only this time with UNITA (to keep SWAPO out of Angola). Today he’s a decorated South African military coronel who received a 100,000 euro lump sum pension. As he himself notes, many of the Angolan ‘flechas’ used in that campaign, like those from the 32 Battalion, live abandoned, forgotten, and penniless … in Pomfret, South Africa.

Stranger still, as he told Jornal de Angola in 2014, while he was sent by the PIDE to Angola to foil a plot by its local director São José Lopes, working in cahoots with groups in South Africa and Southern Rhodesia, to proclaim settler independence in Angola, his entire post-PIDE trajectory is an exercise in white privilege bouncing around Southern Africa’s independent white settler states, undergirded by the Alcora Exercise, the secret accord between Portugal’s Estado Novo, apartheid South Africa, and Southern Rhodesia to maintain white dominance in the region (just not a breakaway white settler state in Angola). 

Eu Sou Cistac: What the murder of a well known constitutional lawyer and professor means for Mozambique

A murdered lawyer, a Facebook troll, an opposition party once reviled as a stooge of the apartheid government, but now supported by part of the country… No, these are not the elements of a John Le Carré novel, but pieces of a political and personal tragedy unfolding in Mozambique. Last Tuesday, Gilles Cistac, a well known constitutional lawyer and professor, was gunned down in broad daylight on a busy street in Maputo after taking his breakfast at a popular café. His assailants drove away, leaving Cistac face down on the street covered in blood. He died four hours later at the Central Hospital of Maputo just down the street.

The motive for the murder is as controversial as whoever ordered it. Was he… a French spy?… too close to the American Ambassador?… Part of a white conspiracy to discredit the black government of Mozambique? All of these allegations have been made by various sources, including some rogue troll on FB named Calado Calyshnikov (silent Kalyshnikov). Apparently, Cistac felt so unnerved by these threats in the last few weeks that he had complained to the Attorney General.

But there are more compelling explanations for Cistac’s death than Cold War, back to the 1970s, retro diatribes about whites and spies. Cistac may have been gunned down because his opinions were increasingly legitimating a demand made by the opposition party, Renamo, that it should be allowed to govern autonomously the provinces it won in the recent elections. Those of us who remember the Renamo of the 1980s have a tendency to dismiss such demands as misguided, even reckless, efforts by the party’s leader to call attention to himself and his band of aging reactionaries.

But if what I witnessed during a Renamo rally in Maputo last July was any indication, then this party and its claims are not relics of a bygone era. It and a smaller opposition party, the Mozambican Democratic Movement (MDM), have attracted a new generation of supporters who are sick of corruption, inequality, and elite privilege concentrated in the south of Mozambique and in the ruling party, Frelimo. These supporters see Renamo and the MDM as the only organizations capable of confronting Frelimo’s utter monopolization of power.

Talk about decentralizing power and granting more local autonomy has gone on at least since Frelimo and Renamo agreed to settle their differences at the ballot box rather than on the battlefield by signing a peace accord in 1992 to end 17 years of civil war. Since that time, the Frelimo government has devolved a certain degree of power to local municipalities and provincial assemblies, but it is the President who appoints provincial governors. Renamo holds no governorships.

Renamo’s continued complaints are finally getting some traction. In the recent elections, the party gained seats in the National Assembly and performed well in the elections for provincial assemblies. The Renamo presidential candidate outpolled the Frelimo candidate in five provinces in the center and north of the country demonstrating that although it won the Presidency and holds a majority in the national and provincial parliaments, Frelimo is not invincible.

The recent election results have given new life to the opposition and reignited a persistent debate over local autonomy. And the conflagration has erupted at the very moment when Mozambique is on the brink of being a major mineral producer. The location of the resources? Tantalizingly close to those provinces in which Renamo polled well. Coal is already being mined in Tete province in the north, where Renamo just won a majority in the provincial assembly.  Contracts are now being signed to exploit gas reserves off the coast of Mozambique — from Frelimo’s stronghold in Cabo Delgado all the way to Renamo’s base in the center.

Scorching a black border around this emerging economic geography was Cistac’s recent declaration that the current Mozambican constitution makes provisions for autonomous provinces. This pronouncement by a reputable lawyer has given Renamo supporters the legal opening to connect the political dots. If the expected revenue from resources were managed by autonomous provinces rather than by the central government then a whole new cast of characters would reap the benefits of Mozambique’s newfound wealth. Frelimo political elites with linkages to the energy sector would suddenly have to share.

Are the implications of Cistac’s legal pronouncements so threatening that he suffered the same fate as the famous journalist, Carlos Cardoso? Cardoso rattled powerful ruling party members by exposing evidence of high-level corruption over a decade ago. He paid for it with his life.

A spokesperson for Renamo has alleged that the Frelimo party ordered Cistac’s assassination. Just as vehemently, Frelimo denies the charge, pointing instead to criminal elements as responsible for Cistac’s murder. In the court of public opinion, the case has already been heard: Cistac died because he supported freedom of speech, human rights, and democracy. On Saturday, those who mourn him will dress in black and march on the street where he was killed. Ironically, the street is named for Eduardo Mondlane, the first leader of Mozambique’s liberation movement, who was also assassinated for his beliefs.

Digital Archive No. 14 – Digitizing Ferguson

On March 4th, the Justice Department released an 86-page report of its investigation of the Ferguson Police Department.  Though the report cleared Darren Wilson, the officer who shot Michael Brown last August, of any wrongdoing, this report represents a valuable composite of oral testimonies of antecedents of and proceedings of the events that resulted in months of protest in Ferguson, Missouri and around the country.  This week’s Digital Archive will focus on two projects that both contextualize and preserve, respectively, those events.

A lot of the projects that I have focused on thus far in this series have been historical in nature, compiling primary source documentation into a digital repository.  While this is absolutely an important use of digital technology for scholarly ends, there are so many possibilities out there, including scholarly activism.  The two projects that I chose for this week show how scholarly and activist interests can intersect and interact.

Mapping Police Violence is a collection of interactive maps and data visualizations chronicling over 300 police killings of black people in the United States in 2014.  The data for these maps and visualizations was pulled from three main sources:  FatalEncounters.org and KilledbyPolice.net.  The project also says it pulled data from the U.S. Police Shootings Database, but provides no link to this specific repository.  So when looking at this data, especially if analyzing it from a scholarly standpoint, it’s incredibly important to assess it critically, but it’s hard to deny the power of the visualizations that this project provides.

Click to view slideshow.

The main focus of the site is on the interactive map of police violence in 2014.  You can view the map through four different layers: (1) by an animated timeline of the lives lost; (2) by the locations of the killings; (3) by likelihood of a black person being killed by police; and (4) by proportion of black lives lost by state.  There also several interactive data visualizations (built using Tableau) that allow you to compare police departments by various factors or analyze national trends in police killings.  All of these different tools provide powerful depictions of police violence in the United States; the kind of violence that resulted in the Ferguson uprisings last year.

Documenting Ferguson is a project of a partnership between Washington University in St. Louis and a number of local libraries that “seeks to preserve and make accessible community- and media-generated, original content that was captured and created following the killing of 18-year-old, Michael Brown by police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri on August 9, 2014.”  The project is completely accessible and intended for use by students, scholars, teachers, and the community in general, with the “ultimate goal of providing diverse perspectives of the events surrounding the conflicts in Ferguson.”  Integrating images, video, audio, and stories related to the memorials, community meetings, rallies, and protests occurring in Ferguson and the surrounding area, this collection of over 500 items that capture this important moment in the history of racial politics in this country.

You can contribute your own web content or media to Documenting Ferguson via the links provided.  Projects like these grow and develop based on user contributions, so pass the word along to help build this critical archive.

As always, feel free to send me suggestions in the comments or via Twitter of sites you might like to see covered in future editions of The Digital Archive!  We’ve been getting some good suggestions from readers that will be reviewed soon!

(Many thanks to Jill Kelly for letting me know about these awesome projects!)

#WhiteHistoryMonth: Dr. Pierre Messmer, France’s Dirty War General

In the late nineteen-fifties, a brutal but secret war unfolded between French colonial authorities and the maquis, pro-independence nationalists, in the forests of what was then the French administered territory of Eastern Cameroun. The uprising was one of sub-Sahara Africa’s lost independence wars.

Most of the fighting, and the ensuing atrocities committed in the name of “decolonization” unfolded in Bassa and Bamilike villages in the region’s plantation belt. Though the figures vary, different reports point to tens of thousands being killed in what is often described as France’s dirty war. And given its outcome, it is no surprise that not a lot has been written about it. Yet the ghosts of that war loom over that chapter of the country’s history, its plantation belt an unexamined crime scene.

What had begun as a legitimate demand for self-rule quickly spiraled first into protests in Douala followed by repression, and ultimately guerrilla warfare. Soon the call for independence, initiated by the Union des Populations du Cameroun (UPC) — the Marxist-leaning party led by the charismatic Reuben Um Nyobe, spread from the region’s towns to surrounding villages like a raging fire.

Already under pressure from US president F.D. Roosevelt to grant independence to its colonies, France’s General De Gaulle’s response to the nationalistic trend in Cameroon, was to appoint an alumnus of the Ecole Nationale de la France d’Outre-Mer, and trusted envoy, Dr. Pierre Messmer.

Dr. Messmer, whose mission was to oversee the “decolonization” process and ultimately pacify Cameroon, was more than just an old colonial hand on another routine administrative duty in the tropics. He was a pillar of the French empire, a man of the system.

During World War II he had served as sous-lieutenant of the 12th regiment of the Senegalese tirailleurs, and later as a member of the13th Demi-Brigade of the French Foreign Legion. Messmer had participated in the Eritrean campaign against the Italians, and the defense at fort Bir Hakeim in Libya. He was with the Allies in the Suez Canal in Egypt, and in the battle against the Vichy in Syria.

Dr. Messmer even landed on Normandy and witnessed the liberation of Paris. Later captured in Tonkin by the Viet Minh  in the outbreak of the war in Indo-China, Messmer managed to escape after two months, but was left deeply impacted by the experience. Traumatized, Dr. Messmer was nonetheless impressed by how Mao had succeeded in leading revolutionary war using a civilian-military-intelligence apparatus.

Initially unable to quell the raging rebellion, in 1957, Dr. Messmer created the Zone de Pacification du Cameroun (ZOPAC), and began implementing the counter-revolutionary measures, which had been theorized in Indo-China, and tested in Algeria. In other words, he reversed Mao’s methods, creating a civilian-military-intelligence apparatus, fencing the villagers in a 7,000 km square area controlled by the French military and local civilian militia, isolating them from the guerrillas. Under Messmer’s direction, the colonial forces employed what amounted to a scorched earth policy during which entire villages were displaced. Measures allegedly included the use of napalm.

Even though pockets of resistance would outlast Dr. Messmer’s tenure in Cameroon, his measures not only crushed the nationalists, they dictated the country’s political succession. And for the first two decades of the country’s existence, the country’s political life would be dominated by the counter-revolutionary, and Dr. Messmer’s favorite, Ahmadou Ahidjo. Cameroon, as it is today, is as much Dr. Messmer’s creation, as it is the nationalists.

#WhiteHistoryMonth: Njabulo Ndebele on the heart of whiteness, South African edition

Teaching a graduate seminar on South Africa this semester at The New School (to help prepare a small group of students who will travel to South Africa in the summer) has meant revisiting a number of older (in some cases, “old” means published a decade or so ago) and seminal texts that unpack the South African condition or what used to be called “the South African question.” This has resulted in rediscovering, and critically reassessing, both familiar and relatively obscure books, book chapters, articles, primary documents, sound files and videos, like Mamdani’s Citizen and Subject, Steve Biko’s I Write What I Like, Come Back Africa, Mandela’s “Statement from the Dock” in 1964, Mapantsula, Allan Boesak’s speech at the launch of the United Democratic Front in August 1983, Njabulo Ndebele’s “The Rediscovery of the Ordinary,” Albie Sachs’ “Preparing ourselves for freedom,” the RDP (we’re currently reviewing the legacies of the political transition), and finally, Ndebele’s “Iphi ‘indlela: Finding a way through confusion,” which the professor delivered as a Steve Biko Memorial Lecture in 2000, and where he spoke at length about whiteness in South Africa. It is worth cutting and pasting liberally from that talk, as I do below:

(The events around Steve Biko’s murder in September 1977) lets us go deep into the ethical and moral condition of Afrikanerdom, which not only shaped apartheid but was itself deeply shaped by it. It strikes us now just how terribly unreflective Afrikanerdom became once apartheid had wormed its way into the centre of its moral fibre. When apartheid culture became both a private and public condition, defining a cultural sensibility, Afrikanerdom significantly lost much of its sense of irony. In this situation, the combination of political, economic and military power, validated by religious precept, yielded a universal sense of entitlement. Afrikanerdom was entitled to land, air, water, beast, and each and every black body. At this point, the treatment of black people ceases to be a moral concern. Speaking harshly to a black person; stamping with both feet on the head or chest of a black body; roasting a black body over flames to obliterate evidence of murder (not because murder was wrong, but because it was an irritating embarrassment); dismembering the black body by tying wire round its ankles and dragging it behind a bakkie; whipping black school-children; handing to, in the words of Biko himself, ‘an illiterate [black] mother presenting her ailing infant for treatment… a death certificate in order that the [white] doctor should not be disturbed in the night’ when the infant died… These are things one who is white, in south Africa, can do from time to time to black bodies, in the total scheme of things. No wonder the death of Steve Biko left the minister (of justice) cold, and that Magistrate Prins (who presided over the Biko inquest) could admit to having witnessed another ordinary death, just as he would have had another glass of water. In all this there is a chilling suggestion of gloating that borders dangerously close to depravity. Suddenly, ‘the heart of darkness’ is no longer the exclusive preserve of ‘blackness’; it seems to have become the condition of ‘whiteness’ at the southern corner of the African continent. Its expression will take on various degrees of manifestation, from the crude to the sophisticated. That is why such instances of the desecration of the black body have yet to evoke significant expressions of outrage from the education, religious, cultural, and business leadership of this country, caught in the culture of ‘whiteness’ which they built. Certainly not to the extent of anything that signals an historic movement towards a new social and moral order. Indeed, the quest for a new white humanity will begin to emerge from a voluntary engagement by those caught in the culture of whiteness of their own making, with the ethical and moral implications of being situated at the interface between inherited, problematic privilege, on the one hand and, on the other, the blinding sterility at the centre of the ‘heart of whiteness’ …

… I am bothered by the tendency that, when a black body is dragged down the road behind a bakkie, we see first proof of racism rather that depravity and murder. When we give racism in Africa this kind of centrality of explanation, we confirm the status of the black body as a mere item of data to be deployed in a grammar of political argument, rather than affirm it as a violated humanity. The inherent worth of a black body does not need to be affirmed by the mere proof of white racism against it. The black body is much more than the cruelty to which it is subjected. If we succeed in positioning ourselves as a people above this kind of cruelty, we deny it equality of status. We can then deal with it as one among many other problems in our society that needs our attention.”

… (W)hite racism in South Africa no longer exists as a formalised structure. We conjure in our minds the continued existence of such a structure to our perceptual peril. There is no evidence of a Ku Klux Klan that is regrouping somewhere in the far-flung corners of the country. On the contrary, with the disintegration of apartheid as a formal structure, white racism has reacted in a number of ways. In some cases it has simply died. In other cases, particularly where strong pockets of white power remain, such as in commerce, industry, and in higher education, it has either mutated and assumed the colour of change while retaining a core of self-interest, or has genuinely struggled with the agonies of embracing necessary change. In other cases, racism also continues to exist as individualised pathology, frequently exploding into acts of suicide or desperate acts of brutality against any black bodies in sight. In almost every case, we witness a crisis of identity with various degrees of intensity. But what these various forms of reaction do show is the danger inherent in a singular approach. That is why the black majority carries the historic responsibility to provide, in this situation, decisive and visionary leadership. Either it embraces this responsibility with conviction or it gives up its leadership through a throwback psychological dependence on racism which has the potential to severely compromise the authority conferred on it by history …

What is the connection between the project development so essential to our finding the future and this critique of ‘whiteness’ and what our response to it has been? Of course this question has to be considered alongside the hegemonic growth of a black consciousness (not in the sense of a philosophy or movement associated with Steve Biko, although it may not exclude it, but rather, in the more fundamental sense of the inevitability of a particular kind of social process). It will be obvious that the flow of social influence is not going in one direction from the black to the white community. There is a two-way process setting itself up as a critical stabilising factor as we negotiate change. Because the process will not always be smooth, it will require a number of negotiated positions. On the balance, though, white South Africa will be called upon to make greater adjustments to black needs than the other way round. This is an essential condition for a shift in white identity in which ‘whiteness’ can undergo an experiential transformation by absorbing new cultural rootedness. That is why every white South Africa should be proud to speak, read and write at least one African language, and be ashamed if they are not able to.

This matter of rootedness is important. For example, from a black perspective, whatever the economic merits of the case, it is difficult not to see the transfer of capital to big Western stock exchanges as ‘whiteness’ de-linking itself from the mire of its South African history to explore opportunities of disengagement, where the home base is transformed into a satellite market revolving around powerful Western economies, to become a market to be exploited rather than a home to be served. This kind of ‘flight of white capital’ may represent white abandonment of responsibility towards the only history that can promise salvation to ‘whiteness’. ‘Whiteness’ has a responsibility to demonstrate its bona fides in this regard. Where is the primary locus of responsibility for white capital, built over centuries with black labour and unjust laws? A failure to come to terms with the morality of this question ensures the continuation of the culture of insensitivity and debilitating guilt. In the past, ‘whiteness’ proclaimed its civilising mission in Africa. In reality, any advantages for black people, where they occurred, were an unintended result rather than an intended objective. An historic opportunity has arisen now for white South Africa to participate in a humanistic revival of our country through a readiness to participate in the process of redress and reconciliation. This is on the understanding that the ‘heart of whiteness’ will be hard put to reclaim its humanity without the restoration of dignity to the black body. We are all familiar with the global sanctity of the white body. Wherever the white body is violated in the world, severe retribution follows somehow for the perpetrators if they are non-white, regardless of the social status of the white body. The white body is inviolable, and that inviolability is in direct proportion to the global vulnerability of the black body. This leads me to think that if South African whiteness is a beneficiary of the protectiveness assured by international whiteness, it has an opportunity to write a new chapter in world history. It will have to come out from under the umbrella and repudiate it. Putting itself at risk, it will have to declare that it is home now, sharing in the vulnerability of other compatriot bodies. South African whiteness will declare that its dignity is inseparable from the dignity of black bodies.

The collapse of ‘white leadership’ that would spearhead this process has been lamented. On second thoughts, perhaps this situation represents a singular opportunity. The collapse of ‘white leadership’ ought to lead to the collapse of the notion of ‘black leadership’. Where there is no ‘white leadership’ to contest ‘black leadership’, where these descriptions of leadership were a function of the outmoded politics of a racist state, we are left only with leaders to govern this country. There can be no more compelling argument than this to urge for care and caution in addressing the issue of racism at the southern tip of the African continent. The historic disintegration of ‘white leadership’ imposes immense responsibilities on how we frame notions of leadership in the resultant political space we are now inheriting.

* From “Iphi’indlela: Finding a way through confusion,” 2000.

Is this the maturation of politics in Lesotho?

Development, broadly defined, has dominated Lesotho’s political discourse throughout its nearly 50 years of independence. This morning, Pakalitha Mosisili of Lesotho’s Democratic Congress (DC) announced the formation of a new coalition government, replacing the All Basotho Convention (ABC) leader Tom Thabane’s first-ever coalition government in Southern Africa. Despite the fact that Mosisili was Prime Minister from 1998-2012, there is reason for optimism for political transformation and better development for citizens of the Mountain Kingdom—the results were not simply shuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic.

Prior to last week’s elections, multi-party democracy only existed in the period 2012-14 and the immediate post-independence period, 1966-70. Otherwise, Lesotho had single party rule, military rule, or token Parliamentary opposition. All periods have featured stark political polarization and vehement rhetoric, but there has been a softening over time of the view of 1966-70. The late Motsapi Moorosi, Lesotho’s first Olympian, noted that while at the time he thought them incompetent, the ruling Basotho National Party (BNP) “battled,” and “to my surprise they did well” in building “infrastructure and everything.” Key here is not only the historical revisionism, but the emphasis on development outcomes in determining competency.

Basotho voters in 2015 passed similar judgment on leaders of the contemporary period in evaluating conflicting claims in the wake of the August skirmish between army and police that caused Thabane to flee the country briefly. He claimed this was an attempted coup brought about because of his anti-corruption drive, which he deemed a serious effort to root out officials skimming off the top of contracts, and awarding tenders to friends and relatives. Conversely, his former coalition partner, Deputy Prime Minister Mothetjoa Metsing, called the anti-corruption drive, which he has failed to quash, a political witch-hunt hiding behind a veil of donor-friendly terms like “anti-corruption” and “good governance.”

The collapse of the Thabane-Metsing coalition and the resulting 2015 elections were, thus, yet another salvo in the rhetorical ‘development wars’ between politicians in Lesotho, ongoing since independence. The sad reality is that most Basotho have benefitted little from this rhetoric, with Lesotho ranking at the bottom of tables on global mortality and health.

So what is different about 2015? First, while Thabane lost the office of Prime Minister, his ABC party increased its constituencies won from 26 to 40, becoming a national party on the strength of its anti-corruption platform. Second, the return of ex-Prime Minister Mosisili to office matters because he did so by going into opposition and waiting for the next election to restate his case to voters. Third, voters explicitly rejected Metsing, gutting his party’s electoral support and deeming him primarily responsible for the political turmoil. Fourth, Lesotho recently qualified for a second round of US Millennium Challenge Corporation development funding and started construction on Phase II of the Highlands Water Project. The DC-led coalition needs to retain democratic legitimacy to continue these vital projects.

The key, however, was that voters in Lesotho punished perceived incompetency, and rewarded moves against political corruption, constructive opposition, and calls for community-based development. Political scientists have demonstrated that as competition among parties rises, so do development outcomes. The emergence of two main parties—the governing DC and opposition ABC—could portend more focus on development deliverables to local communities. The DC-led coalition is precarious, with seven parties needed to cobble together 65 of 120 Parliamentary seats. With such a tenuous majority, they will have to govern with an eye toward the next election. The ABC, meanwhile, increased its voting share in every district on the back of perceived competency in government and will be looking to continue its upward trajectory in the 2020 polls by offering constructive opposition. Thus, for one of the first times in its history, delivery of development to ordinary people could lead to electoral victory. Is this the maturation of politics in Lesotho? Only time will tell, but the 2015 polls suggest that despite fractious appearances Lesotho offers an example of positive trends in African governance, as well as hope for ordinary Basotho.

In the Name of Africa: Former President of Chad Hissène Habré will stand trial in Senegal

Five years ago, I wrote, “It is unlikely that Habré will ever have his day in court because of the unwillingness to speed up the process of his trial, and due to the African Union’s reluctance to set up a precedent in transnational justice involving a former head of state.” Since then, the winds of accountability for past crimes have blown stronger across the Sahel-Sahara landscape, like the harmattan.

For the first time in history, a former head of an African state will stand trial in Africa, before an internationalized tribunal, the Extraordinary African Chambers in Senegalese Courts.  The EAC is an ad hoc court which is set up by the African Union under the principle of universal jurisdiction. It focuses solely on crimes of genocide, war crimes, torture, and crimes against humanity committed in Chad between 1982 and 1990. That happens to be the period of Habré’s tenure. The Chambers are made of judges of Senegalese nationality, nominated by Senegal’s Minister of Justice and appointed by the AU Chairperson.

If all goes as planned, the Habré’s trial will start in Dakar, this summer. Habré stands accused of crimes against humanity and torture during his rule in Chad in the 1980s.  His reign was brutal, but he was literally “our man in Africa,” eager and willing to do for the CIA and the Reagan administration what no one else would.

A few of years ago, such a trial was highly improbable. The man that the Human Rights Imperium often refers to as the  “African Pinochet” has been at the center of a saga that spans over two decades of political intrigues, international disputes, and court battles.

Habré fled to Senegal in 1990, after having been deposed by the current Chadian president Idriss Déby Itno. In Dakar, the former dictator-warrior reinvented himself as a discreet and pious grand-fatherly figure amidst the Senegalese upper-class, and sought to be forgotten by history. Following the Pinochet Effect, and with the help of Human Rights Watch, Chadian victims brought charges against Habré before Senegalese domestic courts in 2000. But the cases were dismissed, partly due to Senegalese domestic political maneuvering. 

In fact, Dakar’s Regional Court indicted Habré on torture charges and placed him under house arrest in February 2000. The petitioners invoked Senegal’s ratification of the UN Convention against Torture. But an appeals court dismissed the charges a few months later, declaring Senegalese courts incompetent.  The arrival of Abdoulaye Wade in power in Senegal in April 2000 played a role in the dismissal of the case, given that Habré’s lawyers were members of Wade’s inner circle, including the former Minister of Justice.

When Wade asked Habré to leave Senegal in 2001, the UN Committee against Torture asked Senegal not to allow him to leave, and Wade then agreed to let him stay, until an extradition request was introduced by a third party. But the extradition request came from Brussels, which raised a whole set of questions on the selective application of universal jurisdiction between former colonial powers and African states.

In the face of Senegal’s refusal, Belgium took the matter to the International Court of Justice, which ruled that Senegal has to either try Habré or extradite him. In addition to the obscenity of  the idea of sending Habré to Brussels, African leaders wanted also to put the brakes on universal jurisdiction, which could be used by any “small European judge” to go after them.

Senegal then referred the matter to the AU, which recommended that Habré should be tried by an African court, and asked Senegal to bring Habré to justice, “in the name of Africa.” Subsequently, Senegal changed its law to give its domestic courts universal jurisdiction over crimes against humanity.

However, Senegal still dragged its feet after it received the AU mandate, asking for a budget of $88 million that would include building a new courthouse. After many months of negotiations, the budget was reduced to about $10 million, funded by international donors, including the Chadian government – which provided $3 million, as well as the AU, the EU, the Netherlands and the United States.

The role of the Chadian government in Habré’s proceedings has been ambivalent: it has gone from being the main funder, to seeking to be a civil party in the trial – claiming a “victim” status, to refusing to fulfill the EAC’s demand for cooperation with the investigation. Furthermore, Déby was the commander of Habré’s forces during the period under investigation. Technically, the EAC can also pursue him for crimes that fall under its jurisdiction, although that is very unlikely to happen.

In any case, the wheels of justice for — or against — Habré are turning fast, and he will have his day in court in a few months. Whatever the outcome of these proceedings, they have already made history and will certainly alter the future of head of state immunity in Africa. In a continent where deposed presidents-cum-dictators often seek refuge in a friendly state and fade away in history, the Habré case is a reminder that command responsibility for atrocious crimes will no longer be confined to rebels and militia leaders.

Dope Saint Jude messes with Cape Town’s head

As trending topics in local pop culture, Gender and Race can be vapid. Tired lambasts of South Africa’s patriarchal, racially oppressive, hegemonic society often make me want to renounce my certified Brown Girl status, and concentrate on thinking like a white man. I imagine that being min gespin about empowerment or transformation is a sweet life.

I was depressed by identity politics in Cape Town before I hung out with artist Dope Saint Jude for the first time, but meeting her gang of mixed-race vegan lesbian activists made me laugh so hard. I had infiltrated a cell of rainbow nation optimism! Everyone had a bicycle, spent Fridays at The Waiting Room, but turned their noses up at Woodstock’s rapidly gentrifying Biscuit Mill and talked feverishly about social justice. It was really sweet.

The dichotomies of the City of Cape Town are not always that sweet. Lethargic apathy is a popular aesthetic, competing with cheery touristy vibes to give credence to this being a place of trippy binary oppositions – super rich kids and Khayelitsha, Coon Festival jubilation and forced removal desolation, the sparkling MyCiti Bus station at the top of Buitenkant Street and the Grand Parade (that smells like pee) at the bottom. As the origin point of the colonial project in Southern Africa, with all its marvels of multi-million wine markets and dop tot systems, it is also the place where binary oppositions most need to be replaced by a multiplicity of new approaches to development. Identity politics, jejune thought they may, is a good place to start.

 

Saint Jude is a nightmare for anyone stuck in the gender/race void of simplified constructions of identity. She unravels assumptions of how individuals can be regarded and socially located. Zero Magazine recently gushed about how she “bares different sides of her personality by seamlessly transitioning from masculine stances, to Queen-like regality and youthful hyper-femininity.” ABC advocated: “listen to her drop gems to twist your wig back and wonder if your world view is indeed in need of updating.” The Yomiuri Shimbunis (the most circulated Japanese publication) also had amazing things to say, but I can’t read Japanese.

There are clearly many layers to Saint Jude’s hype – ranging from praise for her work at The Intombi Workshop to her founding of South Africa’s first Drag King Troupe, Bros B4 Hoes. But in honour of the drop of her latest video – “Keep in touch” featuring Angel-Ho, I have been thinking about the hype she most deserves – as a media innovator.

This is a big thing to say, but there is something Kanye-esque about how she has been consistently working to thrust her medium into a whole new sound with more dimensions than ever imaginable. Already this diligence is paying off and her fans have been steadily increasing, as well as the new slew of female rappers on Cape Town’s cool scene. It is interesting to observe her ‘brown girl power’ performance art at the same time as the hip hop world slays the supposedly diametrically opposed identity politics of white women rapping. (I’d luhhhh to see a collaboration with Push Push, just saying). In this highly politicized climate, Saint Jude’s social commentary is a treat, with fun lines like:

While you fight I’m out of sight/ flipping shit and getting witches/ and I’ve got five boys and they’re all my side bitches!

Lyrical prowess aside, the production of both her music and videos reveal that her ability to flip gendered and racial norms is not the real marvel here. It is the bringing together of disparate dichotomies like “GAYLE” as a valid dimension of Kaapse taal with queer black Voguing as a universal mode of motion. Its like she is simultaneously parodying and parading positions of power.

In the video, Saint Jude showcases an elaborate identity spectrum as a natural connector of masculinity and femininity, like a channel of peace for sexuality manifest as gender. Because that’s really it: gender and race are simply constructions. She is in control of how she lays the foundations of both – working two jobs to support her music-making and NGO-running. It is this sort of can-do attitude that shouts louder than most contemporary activist jargon about youth development in the Western Cape.

Sometimes I still roll my eyes at Race and Gender. But while writing this, I realized that identity politics in the arts aren’t always arbitrary indulgences. Coupled with determination to develop talent into technical skills, they can be progressive in the truest sense – a means to focus on future goals. Her namesake Saint Jude, patron saint of Hopeless Causes, only became a saint because nobody invoked him for anything since his name so closely resembled that of Judas. He was so hard up for work he’d jump at the chance to intercede on your behalf. Saint Jude the artist is at once the embodiment and antithesis of this. Last year, she sent me Dropbox link for her first video, as always, shouting in CAPS:

YOU HAVE TO WATCH THIS. I MADE IT IN 3 HOURS WITH MY BRA, JENDRIK. BUT STILL, IT’S THE START OF MY CULT OF PERSONALITY.

2015 marks the further manifestation of this, Saint Jude’s embracing of multifaceted personalities in one blazing identity as a constantly evolving narrative for agency. Watching her delve into herself in this video, one cannot ignore her skill at manifesting intangible things in tangible ways, a joyful middle finger to stiff and stirvy Mother City dichotomies. Boring race and gender binaries must #KeepInTouch.

#WhiteHistoryMonth: Obroni, a History

To kick off White History Month 2015, we have a special inaugural post from Wanlov the Kubolor!

Most Ghanaian parents know the origin of the word “obroni,” but felt it wiser not to tell us.

One day we will realise how stupid how parents were. It will be too late then.

This relatively new Akan word is about a century old in a language that is about a thousand years old.

If you are of a slightly fairer complexion than the average Ghanaian you may be called it quite often, with unmissable gain in frequency soon as your environment becomes more rural. You may also be called “obroni” if you are darker than the average Ghanaian, highlighting the sarcastic side of the Ghanaian.

We have come to accept “obroni” as meaning “white person” or “foreigner”, but the etymology of the word stems from the Akan phrase “abro nipa” meaning “wicked person” which is what our ancestors generally called Europeans based on their general behaviour back then. For those sticking to the “abro akyi” theory (behind the corn) you are doing your own people a disservice assuming we did not already know what was behind the corn we had planted. Did we not know of the ocean? What didn’t “nsuo akyi” (behind the water) or “nsuo no so” (on the water) creating the name “nsuoni” (water person)? The Akan word for the colour white is “fitaa” so Europeans would have been called “fitaani” (white people) if our ancestors could bring themselves to naming invaders who disturbed us so deeply on as shallow a whim as just their external colour. Not to mention a colour which would accurately have been red most of the time from the heat, dodged mosquito self slaps and flustering from seeing “naked” people.

If you know much about the importance Africans attribute to naming, you will know we rarely name someone by their appearance as opposed to their character, ability, or trait. Most of our ancestors saw our people suffer at the hands of Europeans, so they named them according to their general behaviour so that we would also be cautious of them. The Ewe call the european “Ayivu” which means “tricky dog” because they figured out the European’s plan, and were not as infiltrated as others like the coastal Ga who call Europeans “blofonyo” which means “executioner” because of the the number of rebellious Africans that were constantly being beheaded, shot, or hanged by Europeans along the Ga coast. Yes my Ga peers, “blofonyo” means executioner like “obrafuor” in Twi.

Yes not all Europeans are evil, like not all Africans are kind. But, if our parents had any sense they would have handed down this information so we do not close our eyes and open our arms, mouth, and legs wide when welcoming Jesus and his pedophile priests/nuns, Santa Claus, NGO volunteers, IMF… you get my drift. So tell your children, parents & peers that next time they see a European or foreigner they should ask them their name and call them by that. But most importantly, tell them why.

Hipsters Don’t Dance Top World Carnival Tunes for February 2015

One week after the World Carnival holiday, Hipster’s Don’t Dance are back with their first chart of 2015. Enjoy this round of tunes, and remember to visit the HDD blog for all their great up-to-the-time-ness out of London!

Gino Brown x MercyO

SA house guy Gino Brown teams up with Nigerian Mc Pinky Jay, the groove on this is great and Gino really has something going by putting these two styles together. House may have an affinity to powerful divas but now its time for Sh@t talking women.

Martel B x Badda Dan Dem Remix (Feat. Bigz, Frisco & Young Spray)

Martel B’s hit is bubbling up and this year has seen two remixes appear. This is the better one with UK legends Frisco and Bigz hopping on it. Also like Kanye at the Brits you can peep Skepta in the back.The Naija remix deserves a listen as well.

Moelogo x Sweetie

His first release on a major label is a cover/interpolation of Bunny Mack’s classic Let Me Love You. Every family function should have played this, now the kids can now pretend it’s their own.

Yanga X Awuth’Yam REMIX (Feat. KiD & AKA)

This month’s chart is slightly skewed towards SA because we just came back from an incredible trip to the country. Effectively the same combo that came up with Run Jozi are back with this jam. Summertime flows and vibes.

Cassper Nyovest x Ghetto (Feat. DJ Drama & Anatii)

First of all shout out fellow AIAC writers Dylan and Antoinette (as well as Leila) for putting us on in SA. One of the things we were recommended was Cassper. Lo and Behold a week or so later here he is teaming up with DJ Drama for Ghetto.