-
Politics, Democratization and the Academy in Uganda: The Case of Makerere University
As the oldest (and arguably best-known) university in Uganda and the wider eastern and central Africa region, Makerere University looms large in the history of higher education on the continent. Alma mater to presidents, public intellectuals and pundits of all disciplines, Makerere has attracted considerable scholarly and popular attention, both in respect of its prominence and achievements, and well as with regard to its failures and foibles. The proposed book focuses on a particularly understudied aspect of the place of higher education in the African context, i.e. the relationship between a public university of unique historical importance and the contestations over democratization that have taken place both within campus and outside of it. It is built around the late-1980s struggle by the Makerere University Academic Staff Association (MUASA) for improved living conditions against the backdrop of the early programs of structural adjustment and economic reform that the National Resistance Army/Movement (NRA/M) government adopted soon after taking power in 1986. Although seemingly introverted in focus, in many respects the MUASA action represented the earliest forms of political struggle against a regime of governance that promised a great deal, but disappointingly delivered considerably less.
The focus on MUASA provides a critical entry-point to a wider debate about the place of organized democratic action by academics in a post-conflict context where the traditional institutions of political and civil society, i.e. political parties and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have either been severely compromised or discredited, or where they are too weak and inorganic to provide any form of significant counter-juxtaposition to the government in power. By organizing the first strike by academic staff in the sixty-seven (67) year history of the university, for a time MUASA became the focal-point for democratic organizing against a regime that was yet to fully expose its nefarious and anti-democratic colours. The book examines the broader issues concerning the relationship between organized academic action and democratization; the place of the Media in reviewing these struggles; the position of students as a critical component of academe; “big P” and “small p” politics affecting female academics, and finally, the paradoxical role of the School of Law in both aiding and inhibiting the struggle against dictatorship in a country which has enjoyed (or suffered) its fair share of autocratic governance.
Collectively the chapters demonstrate that there is neither a single narrative nor a textbook formula about the relationship between the academy and democratic struggles. Thus, instead of forcing an unsupported and false consensus on the definitive role of Academia in politics the book seeks to stimulate a robust debate and an enhanced re-exploration of the matter.
1. Introduction: The Academy and Political Struggle in Uganda J. Oloka-Onyango
2. The Role of Academia in the Democratization Process Benson Tusasirwe
3. For whom doth the Academic bell really toll? Unpacking the engagement of Makerere University Academic Staff Association (MUASA) in Uganda’s Democratization struggles Maria Nassali
4. Intellectuals and the Fourth Estate: Analyzing the Coverage of Makerere University Academic Staff Association (MUASA) in the Ugandan Media (1989-2020) Ivan Okuda
5. Between Activism and “Hooliganism”: Civic Engagement and Democratic Struggles in Makerere University Students Guild Dan Ngabirano
6. Juggling the Personal and the Political: The Case of Female Academics at Makerere University Sylvia Tamale
7. Contending with the past and building for the future? The Paradoxical contribution of Makerere University School of Law to dictatorship and democratization in Uganda Busingye Kabumba
8. Conclusion: The Political Economy of University Education: Revisiting democratic alternatives for Makerere and Uganda Frederick W. Jjuuko -
Partisan Universalism: Essays in Honour of Ato Sekyi-Otu
This book is a dedication to Ato Sekyi-Otu, the professor, mentor, and scholar. His students, collogues and admirers have penned appreciation and critique of his writing, theories and extended implications of his decades of work. Sekyi-Otu’s most notable texts that are taken issue in this series are Fanon’s Dialectic of Experience (1996) and Left Universalism, Africacentric Essays (2019). The authors provide commentary and engage in perspectives that Sekyi-Otu provides a foundation for. The paradox of “left universalism” and “Africacentric” becomes a possible strategy in crafting an unrestricted, critically informed conception of recognition in the context of Indigenous, post-colonial African or Asian studies and oppressed groups of people. Sekyi-Otu’s idiosyncratic structural alignment to Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit brings to light other interconnectivities such as Hegel’s undergird to the development of Fanonian ethnopsychiatry and the history of rationality. Sekyi-Otu helps readers better understand the tradition of political philosophy as a praxis for those who draw on his understandings of humanism and the complexities of universalist thought. His teachings impress upon us to think beyond the foundationalist claims of anticolonial theory and practice and the writers of this series have graciously taken his teaching to meet the questions of many contemporary and historical socio-political cleavages of thought.
CONTENTS
Preface by Ato Seyki-Otu
• Introduction
• Fanon for a post-imperial world: On universals and other human matters – Stephan Kipfer
• The Sea Menagerie: Esi Edugyan’s Atlantic – Patrick Taylor
• Reconsidering Fanon’s language of recognition in Indigenous studies – Sophie McCall
• On Fanon and Lacan: Continuities and structural psychiatry – Gamal Abdel-Shehid
• Aimé Césaire’s Two ways to lose yourself: The Exception and the rule – Jeremy M Glick
• Universality: Notes towards rethinking the history of philosophy – Esteve Morera
• Husserl and Tran Duc Thao: Crisis, renewal, and the ontology of possibility – Tyler Gasteiger
• Can Kwame Gyekye’s moderate communitarianism take the individual seriously? – Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò
• Speaking for, speaking through, speaking with – Jeff Noonan
• ‘Innocuous Nihilism’, social reproduction and the terms of partisanship – Susan Dianne Brophy
• Universalism and immanent critique in ’The End of Progress and Left Universalism’ – Christpher Balcom
• About the contributors -
Extracting Profit: Imperialism, Neoliberalism and the New Scramble for Africa
A piercing historical explanation of poverty and inequality in African societies today and the social impact of resource-driven growth, Extracting Profit explains why Africa, in the first decade and a half of the twenty-first century, has undergone an economic boom. Rising global prices in oil and minerals have produced a scramble for Africa’s natural resources, led by investment from U.S., European and Chinese companies, and joined by emerging economies from around the globe. African economies have reached new heights, even outpacing rates of growth seen in much of the rest of the world. Examined through the lens of case studies of the oil fields of the Niger River Delta, the Chad-Cameroon Pipeline and the East African infrastructure boom, this period of “Africa rising” did not lead to the creation of jobs, but has instead fueled the extraction of natural resources, profits accruing to global capital, and an increasingly wealthy African ruling class.
Extracting Profit argues that the roots of today’s social and economic conditions lie in the historical legacies of colonialism and the imposition of so-called “reforms” by global financial institutions such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. The chokehold of debt and austerity of the late twentieth century paved the way for severe assaults on African working classes through neoliberal privatization and deregulation. And while the scramble for Africa’s resources has heightened the pace of ecological devastation, examples from Somalia and the West African Ebola outbreak reveal a frightening surge of militarization on the part of China and the U.S.
Yet this “new scramble” has not gone unchallenged. With accounts of platinum workers’ struggles in South Africa, Nigerian labor organizing and pro-democracy upheavals in Uganda and Burkina Faso, Extracting Profit offers several narratives of grassroots organizing and protest, pointing to the potential for resistance to global capital and fundamental change, in Africa and beyond.
-
Role of African People in World Development
As African people most of us are brought up to believe many myths about ourselves. One of these is that we are poor because we never grew out of the dark ages. Another such myth is that we will always need European guidance because of our backwardness. Not only has there been a lot of research done within the last few decades disproving these myths but the constant forward and backward motions of various societies in the world proves that a new beginning is always “in the cards” when a forward-looking vision and a determined set of energies are released.
However, to be properly understood, all this must be put into historical perspective. This is what the author has done: starting from the early days of Egypt down to present day Southern Africa, he has analysed the long journey from development to underdevelopment and back towards development. The fact that European/North American domination has played such a large part in influencing the direction of this path, this manuscript is about both the history of African and European people as well as an economic analysis of foreign domination.
Given the extensive nature of this task the author has deliberately downplayed statistics as most of the empirical details stated are taken from the research work of reputable scholars, reference to which is constantly engendered, so that the reader could independently pursue the documentation of all aspects of the work.
Frederick Engels, the classical socialist philosopher, reflecting on the nature of scientific thinking stated:
“The analysis of nature into its individual parts, the grouping of the different natural processes and objects into definite classes, the study of the internal anatomy of organic bodies in their manifold forms, these are the fundamental conditions of the gigantic stride of our knowledge of Nature… But this method of work has also left us as legacy, the habit of observing natural objects and processes in isolation, apart from the connection with the vast whole; of observing them in repose, not in motion; as constants, not as essential variables; in their death, not in their life.”[i]
Most of the facts and events have been documented in numerous scholarly writings. But one item of his concern is that most of these works have in one way or other fallen prey to Engels’s criticism, either on grounds of limited geography or of limited history (tackling only a short period). However, what is more usual for the more bourgeois–influenced scholars is to limit their scope to one or two of the arbitrarily imposed “disciplines” of Economics, Anthropology, Sociology, Political Science, Psychology, etc.
Of course, it is understandable that the two types of limitations (geography and history) are not made without reason, as no one person could hope to cover a broad enough scope in a detailed and rigorous manner especially within easily readable limits. However, the need of scientists especially when covering as important a topic as the development process, to produce a work covering the broadest possible perspective.
Given limited resources, the author has attempted to do just that – albeit in an introductory manner. It is his hope, however, that more people start viewing development as a broad, holistic process and not just a phenomenon limited in space and time to economics or even political-economy. In this regard, the annual compilation of The Human Development Index by the UNDP whereby countries worldwide are ranked, not merely by GDP per capita – as is usually cited in classical bourgeois economics – but by Life expectancy, Fertility and Under-five Mortality Rates, Combined School Enrolment, Adult Literacy Rate, Urbanisation, and (generally) by a Human Poverty Index. This approach can only be viewed as a step in the right direction.
An extra bonus for readers is that I have included quotes from a cross-section of classical scholars on the development process. Hence, readers can follow up on these references to further edify themselves.
[i] Frederick Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific (London: Swan Sonnenschein & Co., 1892), 406.
-
The White Savior Complex in International Development: Theory, Practice and Lived Experiences
Uniting scholars and practitioners from around the world, this book will address white saviorism as one of the perennial underbelly challenges of the global development aid industry. The introduction by Kanakulya and Sondarjee will first develop the conceptual building blocks to understand white saviorism in international development. Section 1 will then address various theoretical issues such as false consciousness of white saviors, epistemological marginalization of black expertise, Islamophobia, and the links between whiteness and patriarchy. Section 2 will present personal accounts of how practitioners in the Global South have experienced white saviorism first-hand. The conclusion, written by Themrise Khan, will explore the implications of white saviorism for the future of international development practices. Overall, this book will analyze how development practices can undermine voices in the Global South and perpetuate a harsh myth of white superiority. The innovative chapters it encompasses will serve as a basis for more empirical work on white savior practices in international development.
CONTENTS
Section 1: Sociological and Philosophical Perspectives on White Saviorism in International Development
Chapter 1. False Consciousness and the Phenomenology of a White Savior Dickson Kanakulya, Department of Philosophy, Makerere University
Chapter 2. Islamophobia as a White Saviorism Leila Benhadjoudja, Assistant Professor, School of Anthropological and Sociological Studies, University of Ottawa
Chapter 3. Generous but Exploitative: Exploring White Saviorism, Neo-colonialism and the Right to Natural Resources in Uganda Robert Karuru, Lecturer, College of Humanities and Social Sciences, Makerere University
Chapter 4. The Matriarchy Complex. White Western Women in Development Themrise Khan, Independent Development Professional
Chapter 5. Smoking White Saviorism Out of Development Theoria and Praxis: Epistemological underpinnings and Emancipatory Insights Kizito Michael George, Lecturer, Department of Religious Studies and Philosophy, Kyambogo University
Chapter 6. Parallel Planet Destination for Donor and Recipients Interests Vianney Ahumuza, Lecturer, Department of Foundation Studies, Uganda Christian University
Chapter 7. Illicit Financial Flows and the Corrupting Effect of White Saviorism on International Trade Donald Omong Mark, Researcher at CED4, Systems Dynamics Group, University of Palermo
Chapter 8. White Saviorism in Aid Campaign, or how #KONY2012 Centered Western Experience Maïka Sondarjee, Assistant Professor, School of International Development and Global Studies, University of Ottawa
SECTION 2: “We Don’t Need to be Saved” An Anthology of Voices and Experiences from Development Practitioners in the Global South
Chapter 9-16. Contributions from South Asia, the Middle East and Africa (TBD upon approval of the concept note by the publisher)
CONCLUSION
How to dismantle the White Savior Complex? Themrise Khan (ed)
-
Transforming ourselves, Transforming the World: An open conspiracy for social change – Second Edition
This is a new edition of the book originally published by Zed Books in 1999. The book includes an Introduction written by David Austin and an Afterword from the author, Brian Murphy.
In every single country around the world, there are millions of women and men, young and old, who continue—in the face of setbacks, political alienation and the shadow of despair—to dedicate their lives to a profound and hopeful activism. These activists continue to come together to promote healthy communities where they live and work, struggling to create democratic economies and accountable government, fighting for economic and social justice for all citizens, and demonstrating for peace and human rights in their own countries and internationally. They struggle together to improve their lives and the lives of their neighbours. They struggle to keep alive a dream of a world based on the human values they have defined for themselves—a world which, at the very least, promises to strive continually towards one standard of dignity and opportunity for all, regardless of who they are or where they live.
This activism is driven by necessity, and by the personal integrity, dignity and courage of millions of individual citizens working together to make their world a better place. But at the same time this activism is increasingly inhibited, and too often extinguished, by the inevitable conclusion that change, fundamental change, will never be achieved in the face of the globalized power and greed and authoritarianism of the elites who have come to control the planet and its resources.
This book examines, and attempts to transcend, this conclusion. It focuses on human capacities and the possibility of bringing about substantive change in ourselves and the world we share. Most political theorists do not deal with the psychosocial, whereas this is where this book begins. The book deals with the significance of action, and the fundamental question of whether and how progressive change is possible. And in particular, it situates the role of transformative knowledge as a critical factor in the change process.
The book provides an analysis of the essential qualities and capacities that embody the potential of each of us to transcend the conditions of our lives and change the world—to be the ‘missing link’ between a deterministic past and an intentional and conscious future. The qualities of consciousness and ‘vision’—our capacity to see what is, and imagine what is not, but could be—are highlighted as central to activism and change. The book also explores the potential for legions of socially-conscious and engaged people empowered within an ‘open conspiracy’ for social change—an open, concerted, visible and broad-based proposition to transform elements of the prevailing social order to bring about an increasingly just and equitable world.
Table of Contents
Introduction to Second Edition: David Austin
Preface and Acknowledgements
The Challenge
1 The Courage to Be
2 The Dilemma of Action and the Psychology of Inertia
3 Confronting the Dilemmas: Beyond InertiaPossibilities in Process
4 The Missing Link
5 The Individual, the Visionary
6 Challenging the Established Rationality
7 Imperatives for Modern EducationThe Open Conspiracy
8 The Open Conspiracy: Allies for Health and Action
9 Theatres and Strategies: Embracing the Future
10 Education and the Open ConspiracyConclusion
Eclectic Notes on Knowledge and Action
Afterword
Afterword to the Second Edition – Brian Murphy
Related Reading
Further reading -
Insurrectionary Uprisings: A Reader in Revolutionary Nonviolence
A collection of both historic and new writings on the nexus of strategic unarmed resistance, radical ideologies, and the long struggles to build movements for justice and liberation. Beginning with the work of Gandhi, Arendt and Thoreau, the volume grounds the theories which undergird nonviolent resistance to capitalism, colonialism, white supremacy and heteropatriarchy.
The volume includes two sections exploring nonviolence in the long Black freedom struggle within the US. From Ella Baker to Martin Luther King, Jr. and Fannie Lou Hamer, from Vincent Harding and Grace Lee Boggs to Colin Kaepernick, the two sections on the Black liberation movement highlight the theory of nonviolence in direct and indirect ways and foreground the relevance of these historic texts for the present moment of political uprisings on both the left and the right. Black strategies for survival and power are analyzed in terms of the ongoing US economic and epidemiological crises as well as the global climate crisis and ecological collapse. A section on revolutionary nonviolence in Africa presents a previously unpublished piece on the role of armed struggle by Franz Fanon, as well as essays by Amilcar Cabral, Barbara Deming, Graca Machel, Kenneth Kaunda, and Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge This section clearly contextualizes the continent’s anti-colonial struggles with the practical thinking about military and unarmed tactics which those movements faced over the course of a half century.
The section on nonviolence and feminist struggle highlights the work of Grace Paley, Audre Lorde, and Arundhati Roy, along with a little-read piece by Johnnie Tilmon, a leader of the 1960s welfare rights movement. The section on resistance against empire tilts toward Latin American scholars/activists with essays by Maria Lugones, Anibla Quijano and Berta Caceres. This section includes pieces that draw from current debates about the role of state power in building towards radical change and the push to build holistic perspectives on what liberation means for all peoples. The final section on social change in the 21st Century reflects on specific aspects of organizing which are facing campaigns and movements of today and tomorrow. Our goal is to provide challenges and insights for building effectively against all forms of oppression!
Though primarily compiling key texts not often seen or contextualized together, the book also provides new strategic commentaries from key leaders including Ela Gandhi, Ruby Sales, ecofeminist Ynestra King, Africa World Press’ Kassahun Checole, and Palestinian Quaker Joyce Ajlouney. With a mix of past and current commentaries, from both academic and activist points of view, we uncover fault lines which have prevented mass, global movements of movements from solidifying over the last fifty years. Through this narrative, the book ends with visions of how best to use all that we know to bring about deeply rooted transformations in ways that will lift up not traumatize people as they move toward liberation.
CONTENTS
Foreword by Joyce Aljouni, Secretary-General, American Friends Service Committee
Section 1: Contemporary Roots of Radical Nonviolence: Before and Beyond Gandhi (Intro by Ela Gandhi, Former Member of Parliament, South Africa
o Henry David Thoreau, “On the Duty of Civil Disobedience”
o Hannah Arendt, Excerpt for “On Violence” o Gandhi, “What is Satyagraha” o Pyarelal, “Gandhi’s Communism”
o Matt Meyer, “Total Revolution: Resistance, Blass and the 21st Century Relevance of JP Narayan and Narayan Desai”
o Milan Rai, “Taking Gandhi with a Pinch of Salt”
o Arundhati Roy, “When the Saints Go Marching Out”
o Starhawk, “Reclaiming Nonviolence from Gandhian Puritanism”Section 2: So-Called “Civil Rights”: True Roots of the US Black-led Freedom Movement (Intro by Ruby Sales, Founder of Spirit House and Original SNCC Activist)
o ML King, Jr., “Beyond Vietnam” o James Cone, “Martin and Malcom on Nonviolence and Violence”
o Vincent Harding, “So Much History, So Much Future”
o Ella Baker, “Bigger Than a Hamburger” o Grace Lee Boggs, “The Beloved Community of MLK”
o Fannie Lou Hamer, “Testimony Before the Credentials Committee, DNC 1964Section 3: Self-determination, Self-defense, and the Rise of Black Power (Intro by Barbara Smith, Kitchen Table Women of Color Press and Co-Author of Combahee River Collective Statement
o Ragland, Meyer and Jeffers, “Refusing to Choose between Martin and Malcolm”
o SNCC, “Black Power: A Position Paper” o Simmons, “Truly Human” o Dellinger, Williams, King, “Are Pacifists Willing to be Negroes?”
o Paisely, “Bayard Rustin: A Unique, Clandestine and Enduring Queer Leader of the CRM”
o Sally Bermanzohn, “Violence, Nonviolence and the CRM” o Pulley, “We will Create our Freedom: The Importance of the Movement for Black
Lives Platform”
o Colin Kaepernick, “Amnesty International Speech”
o Maroon Shoatz (with Steve Bloom), “Rage”Section 4: Revolutionary Nonviolence in Africa: Playing Between the Cracks (Intro by Kassahun Checole, Founder and CEO of Africa World/Red Sea Press)
o Graca Machel, “Impact of Armed Conflict on Children”
o Franz Fanon, “Why We Use Violence”
o Barbara Deming, “On Revolution and Equilibrium”
o Amilcar Cabral, “Message to the People of Portugal” o Bill Sutherland and Matt Meyer, selections from Guns and Gandhi in Africa
o Nozizwe Madlala Routledge, “Ubuntu and the World Today”
o Kenneth Kaunda, “The Riddle of Violence”Section 5: “Combative Pacifism” Against Patriarchy: Feminist Critiques of Movement-Building (Intro by Ynestra King, Ecofeminist Author)
o Skolkin-Smith, “Grace”
o Women’s Pentagon Action Unity Statement o Arundhati Roy, “Come September”
o Audre Lorde, “Uses of Anger” o Barbara Deming, “On Anger”
o Johnnie Tilmon, “Welfare is a Woman’s Issue”
o Beth Ritchie, “How Anti-Violence Activism Taught Me to be a Prison Abolitionist”
o Nazan Ustundag, “The Wounds of Afrin, the Promise of Rojava” o Leslie Feinberg, “Trans Liberation: A Movement Whose Time has Come” o Andrea Smith, “Heteropatriarchy and the Three Pillars of White Supremacy”Section 6: Resistance Against Empire (Intro by Wende Marshall)
o Wende Marshall, “Tasting Earth” (excerpts) o Anibal Quijano, “Coloniality and Power”
o Martin, Johanson and Meyer, “Nonviolence Against Imperialism”
o Maria Lugones, “Towards a Decolonial Feminism” o Berta Caceres, “Goldman Prize Acceptance Speech” o Hillary Klein, “A Spark of Hope: The Ongoing Lessons of the Zapatista
Revolution 25 Years On”
o Aimee Carillo Rowe, “Queer Indigenous Manifesto”
o Haunani-Kay Trask, “Notes of a Native Daughter”Section 7: Revolutionary Nonviolence in the 21rst Century (Intro by Wende Marshall and Matt Meyer)
o “People’s Strike and the Uprising Open Letter” (and PS Demands) o “Jackson Rising Redux”: A Dialogue with Kali, Saki, Joshua, Rose, Wende and Matt
o John Holloway, “A Cascade of Angers…Along the Road to Hope” o Hilda Lloréns, “From Extractive Agriculture to Industrial Waste Periphery: Life in a Black-Puerto Rican Ecology”
o Jai Sen, et al, “On Removing the Black: International Perspectives on the Movements of Movements”
o Nick Estes, “The Empire of All Maladies: Colonial Contagions and Indigenous Resistance”
o Wende Marshall, “To be Black, To Simply Live: The Burden of Revolutionary Nonviolence”Conclusion: “Why Outrage is Not Enough,” Wende Marshall and Matt Meyer
-
Can agroecology stop COVID-21, -22, and -23? Moving Beyond Capitalist Agriculture
COVID-19 has circled the planet several times the first year into the outbreak, reshaping nearly all aspects of human society.
It’s now clear that the virus worsens the underlying forms of violence that capitalism imposes upon everyday people. Unemployment remains through the roof. Public health is damaged beyond the outbreak itself, with, for instance, riskier childbirths and failing campaigns in malaria elimination.1 In contrast, massive public bailouts are being handed over to the more politically connected industrial sectors, including, in the U.S., fracking companies, cruise ships, and airlines, as exploited frontline workers and whole communities go uninsured and unprotected.2 We see the impacts in the rise of racist, fascist rhetoric broadcast across countries. From street vigilantes to neoliberal and authoritarian governments, the coronavirus is painted as an exotic aberration originating in “other” people,
The pamphlet works through how recent analyses of the connections among urbanization, industry, and agriculture have been used to argue for more of the kinds of surveillance and population displacement that help bring about many of the world’s current crises, this time “updated” in the name of controlling disease. The commentary details a recent high-profile report by global change ecologist Rory Gibb and his colleagues in Nature on the interconnection between land-use change, biodiversity, and zoonotic diseases—diseases that emerge out of nonhuman animals. The authors highlight the importance of the group’s findings while also pointing out the perils of the way in which this work has been mapped onto policy and intervention. If followed through, the expectations and conclusions of the Gibb group are likely to further reproduce the very kinds of social and ecological damage that the study supposedly addresses. They finish up here by introducing agroecology, an environmentalism of the peasantry, the poor, and indigenous, long in practice, that treats agriculture as a part of the ecology out of which humanity grows its food. They present the approach as both a pathway forward for the world and as an alternative that folds in the insights of the Gibb study without falling into the worst of its traps. -
-
Revolutionary Hope vs Free-Market Fantasies: Keeping the Southern Africa Liberation Struggle Alive – Theory, Practice, Context
This book is the second of a roughly-hewn trilogy of books that represents some kind of a culmination of my own writing over 50 years on the global struggle from below against both the overweening structures of globalized racism and those of globalized capitalism. In particular John Saul has concentrated both his scholarly work and his own political work as an activist on the liberation struggles in southern Africa that were mounted, historically, against white rule and capital’s local economic control, especially during the 30-plus years of war for southern African liberation (1960 to 1994). Since he first went from his native Canada to Africa (to live and to work in Tanzania) in 1965 before returning to Canada via Mozambique in the 1970s, he has written and/or edited over twenty-five books on related themes. Now, as suggested above, he seeks in his 80th decade to pull this work and this practical experience of struggle together in a final trilogy. He has already published a first volume of this trilogy under the title On Building a Social Movement: The North American Campaign for Southern African Liberation Revisited, published by Africa World Press globally and in southern Africa and by Fernwood Books in Canada in 2017. He is now completing a third volume entitled Race, Class and The Thirty Years War for Southern African Liberation, 1960-1994: A History for Cambridge University Press in the U.K that is to be published in 2022 (it will completed by spring, 2021). The present volume fits between these two and is a book that both locates my work theoretically (in Section I: “In Theory: A Moralizing Science”) and in relationship to my own personal experience of the struggle under examination (section II: “In Person: From Theory to Practice”). Then a third section allows for some deeper (and more recent) examination – on a country by country basis of certain key aspects of regional developments (Section III: “In Context: The Paradox of Liberation in Southern Africa”), aspects touched upon on but not explored as deeply as they might have been in my Cambridge volume in preparation. And the book concludes with an envoi entitled “For Want of a Conclusion – An Envoi: On Writing and Acting on the Premise that the Struggle Continues.” In one book, then, the analytical premises and the practices of participant observation that mark my work are set out and are then exemplified in case-studies of both the period of active liberation and the period of the victories and defeats of hopes for a genuine liberation in succeeding decades in Tanzania, Angola, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Namibia and South Africa. As we will be reminded, the region has come to know “false decolonization” and “recolonization” aplenty but the book also provides evidence that the struggle for a more effective liberation continues!
-
People Resisting Xenophobic Violence: Understanding popular political responses to the South African identitarian crisis
The book is concerned with popular responses to the crisis of xenophobic violence in South Africa. It argues, that xenophobia itself is not primarily a reaction to poverty, inequality, or any other set of social conditions. Rather, xenophobia must be considered to be a collective political discourse which has arisen in post-apartheid South Africa from an exclusionary conception of state nationalism. Where this work may be distinguished from the majority of research on xenophobia in South Africa is in the fact that its particular focus is on instances where ‘ordinary’ South Africans have challenged and resisted xenophobic violence in their communities through collective political mobilisation. I suggest that these sites of resistance deserve careful consideration in their own right. I argue that they may demonstrate a subjective break with the oppressive politics of state nationalism through the affirmation of alternative political conceptions. Drawing on the political theory of Sylvain Lazarus, and his principal thesis that people are capable of thinking politics in ways which can subjectively think beyond the social and the extant (underscored by his political and methodological axiom, people think), the book will argue that these sites of resistance show that people – and especially those who are considered to be marginalised from the domain of legitimate politics – can and do think politically, and it is in the thought of people that new and potentially emancipatory visions of politics may emerge.
The first chapter of the book sets out empirically the rise of xenophobia in post-apartheid South Africa, with a focus on the ways in which state politics and practices have produced a hegemonic xenophobic discourse in the country. Chapter Two situates this discussion within a review of the academic literature, arguing that sociological explanations are by themselves unable to account for the phenomenon.
Chapter Three discusses three sites in which xenophobia has been effectively contested through collective political mobilisation: by Abahlali baseMjondolo (AbM) in Kwa-Zulu Natal, the Merafong Demarcation Forum (MDF) in Guateng in 2008, and in the Unemployed people’s Movement (UPM) in Grahamstown (now Makhanda) in 2015 (where I conducted fieldwork over a year). It is argued that the presence of collective political organisation before the outbreak of xenophobic violence provided the conditions for an effective challenge to xenophobic politics to occur.
Chapter Four is largely theoretical, drawing primarily on the work of Sylvain Lazarus, as well as Alain Badiou and Jacques Rancière. The chapter argues that it is essential to insist on politics as subjective, as it is only in the thought of people that emancipatory modes of politics which exceed socially located interests may emerge and be constituted through collective mobilisation into political praxis.
Chapter Five sets out the methodological approach to my own research with members of the Unemployed People’s Movement in Grahamstown. The aim of the approach is to aid in the investigation of what Sylvain Lazarus has called ‘subjective singularities’, or specific forms of thinking which characterize a political sequence. Put simply, the approach endeavours to try to understand people’s thinking on its own terms, through the categories and idioms which are specific to that subjective singularity, and which cannot be sociologically reduced to external explanatory referents such as class, race, power, or identity. The aim is to be able to identify and elucidate the specific prescriptive thought which may emerge as people think and articulate their own struggles.
Chapter Six sets out my discussions with 18 UPM activists. Based on the methodological approach indicated above, the purpose of this empirical chapter was not to provide any form of ethnography or sociology of the movement, but to try and elucidate, through the activists’ own categories, the subjective singularity which underpinned the movement’s anti-xenophobic politics during a particular sequence. The aim is not to extrapolate from the activists’ statements concepts, cases or types which might have broader application for the study of xenophobia generally, but only to try to understand and elucidate the forms of thinking which characterised this particular sequence in its subjective singularity. These forms of thinking, I argue, are notable and important in their own right.
[Note: Additional material from the interviews with the UPM members, which I was not able to include in the MA thesis, will be incorporated into the book manuscript to extend and develop the investigation into the political thinking of UPM members and to delineate the character of the political sequence].
-
We Rise for Our Land: Land Struggles and State Repression in Southern Africa
In recent years southern Africa has aroused the interest of domestic and foreign investors targeting several sectors. The agrarian and extractive capital has been the most penetrating in the countryside, causing land conflicts, displacement of local peasant communities and in worse cases, deaths. Being mostly neoliberally oriented, SADC states have by and large positioned themselves in favour of capital. This collusion result in State measures that are hostile to the peasantry of their countries.
The position and measures taken by the States, both in policies and in repressive actions, are by and large endorsed by of high-level government officials, Ministers, Presidents, Kings and traditional Chiefs. As far as traditional chiefs are concerned, even in situations where the presence of capital is frivolous, ‘feudal’-type power relations prevail, oppressing mainly young people and women.
The peasantry and rural people in general have not, however, been passive in this process. Alone or in alliance with non-governmental organisations and activists, they have positioned themselves strongly against such dynamics and have raised their voices questioning developmentalist logics that are imposed on them, but that take away their means of production and violate their rights. In fact, resistance movements to capital are taking place throughout the region, even if the response to this has been repression by the states.
This book, which takes an scholar-activist stance, is written by authors, men and women, who critically study the dynamics of agrarian and extractive capital in southern Africa. In their academic and activist work, they seek to bring useful theoretical, conceptual and practical contributions to the struggles of agrarian and rural movements that represent the ‘subalternised’ rural and urban people. The book brings contributions in forms of chapters from DRC, Namibia, Zambia, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Swaziland, Mozambique, Mauritius and Madagascar.
-
What is to be Thought? The Dialectics of Emancipation and Africa: political theory and political practice
Beginning from the understanding that it is imperative today to develop new concepts for the thinking of an emancipatory politics on the African continent (Fanon), this book proposes to focus on dialectical thought as the core subjective feature of all emancipatory political experiments on the African continent in particular. It traces a dialectical thinking to its origins in Ancient Egypt that arguably influenced Plato, and notes its opposition to the idea of representation in state politics during various historical sequences right up to the present. Starting from the fundamental conception that all people are capable of universal thought, and that an idea of universal humanity is central to popular thought during experiences of collective emancipatory struggle, the argument traces and analyses a number of emancipatory historical political sequences and their attendant contemporary narratives. Currently it is proposed to include
1) the Ancient World: Ancient Egypt (The Tale of the Eloquent Peasant – 4000 BCE) and Plato (as read by Alain Badiou);
2) Pre-colonial Africa and resistance to slavery: the Donsolu Kalikan (in the Manden/Mali, 1222), the Antonian Movement (in Kongo, 1684-1706) and its continuation in the Lemba Movement, and the Haitian Revolution (undertaken by slaves from Africa),
3) The National Liberation Struggles of the 1960s as thought by Fanon and Cabral, and
4) The mass popular struggles in South Africa during the 1980s.
The core of the political dialectic in each case differs and creates, during a limited sequence, what can be called a subjective political singularity that always combines dialectically a particular thought of resistance emanating from its specific social location with one of universal humanity during what is a process exceptional to hegemonic social relations.
It is further argued that whereas the political dialectic is not a given feature of African cultures as such, the latency of universalistic conceptions of humanity is identifiable within many African cultures. This means that rather than having to be invented ex nihilo, conceptions of the human universal in Africa have the potential to be (re-)activated in practice. Ato Sekyi-Otu and Ernest Wamba-dia-Wamba are discussed as major contemporary African dialectical thinkers.
Coming to the present period, the book elaborates a theory of neo-colonial state politics through unpacking the core idea of representation and the absence of popular sovereignty. It is argued that the neo-colonial character of the state must be understood beyond binaries but rather, following Gramsci, as structured by objective dialectical relations characterising fundamentally distinct modes of rule. This objective dialectic is assessed, in addition to Gramsci, through a discussion of a number of well-known contemporary thinkers of the dialectic (Lenin, Mao, Dunayevskaya, CLR James, Carchedi, Anderson, etc).
These modes of rule enable the neo-colonial state to reproduce itself and social relations in conjunction with popular responses to such rule. Differing modes of state rule are identified and the formation of distinct domains of politics corresponding to them and founded on different forms of representation are elucidated. These domains amount to three types:
1) civil society (where the state rules through a relation of citizenship and the right to rights),
2) uncivil society (where the right to rights is inexistent and thus state violence is dominant), and
3) traditional society (where the state rules through custom and tradition itself the object of struggle).
Using various cases from Africa, contradictions and struggles within each of these domains are analysed and the potential to draw on latent cultural conceptions of universality (when in existence) is discussed.In this manner both the dialectic of emancipation and the character of state power are thought conjointly and dialectical thinking is opposed to the idea of representation in politics as well as in social science. The concepts and categories used are explained in a simple manner understandable by all.Finally and as a kind of concluding argument, it is proposed to rethink the idea of representation through a critical engagement with the political practices of what could be called the “heroic figures of liberation”. This will be undertaken via an assessment of the politics of Toussaint Louverture and Nelson Mandela in particular regarding the “colonial question” as identified by Aimé Césaire.
