The Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) invites the urgent attention of the membership of the Council, the wider African and global social research community, all believers in the democratic ideal, and all persons of good will to the serious developments in Ethiopia bearing on the lives of 38 persons, all citizens of Ethiopia, who had been arrested in the aftermath of the street protests that greeted the manipulation by the authorities of the results of the 2005 general elections. The 38 are part of a total of 111 persons – including 25 persons who had already been forced into exile – initially charged with an assortment of offences arising from the elections.

Wednesday, 28 March, 2007 will go down as a sad day among social researchers all over Africa and beyond: It was the day Professor Archie Mafeje passed away in Pretoria in what was a most quiet exit that has left the very many among us whom he touched directly or indirectly in a state sadness and anger. Archie Mafeje, the quintessential person of science and one of the most versatile, extraordinary minds to emerge from Africa was, in his days, a living legend in every sense: His knowledge was as vast as his grasp of issues – almost all issues - was breathtaking. His discourses transcended disciplinary boundaries and were characterised by a spirit of combative engagement underpinned by a commitment to social transformation. As an academic sojourner conscious of the history of Africa over the last six centuries, he rallied his colleagues to resist the intellectual servitude on which all forms of foreign domination thrive. He was intransigent in his call for the liberation of our collective imaginations as the foundational stone for continental liberation. In all of this, he also distinguished himself by his insistence on scientific rigour and originality: It was his trade mark to be uncompromisingly severe with fellow scientists who were mediocre in their analyses. The power of his pen and the passion of his interventions always went hand-in-hand with a uniquely polemical style that was hardly meant for those who were not sure-footed in their scholarship. This then was the Mafeje who left us on 28 March, 2007 to join the other departed heroes and heroines of the African social research community: A great pan-African, an outstanding scientist, a first rate debater, a frontline partisan in the struggle for social justice, and a gentleman of great humanitarian principles. We will surely miss his thoughtful insights, his strident rebukes, his loyal friendship, his companionship, and – yes, his wit, humour and expert culinary skills that included an incomparable knowledge of foods and wines from all corners of the world.

Archie Mafeje has fought the battle and run the race successfully; for those of he has left behind, especially those of us whom he inspired, the challenge before us is clear: Keep the Mafeje spirit alive by investing ourselves with dedication to the quest for the knowledge we need in order to transform our societies – and the human condition for the better. In the meantime, our thoughts and solidarity go to the members of his family, including his wife Shahida El-Baz and their daughter, Danna.

Since 10 January 2007, the workers of Guinea have been on strike to demand better living conditions, respect for public morality, and the enthronement of democracy. In the face of the demands presented to the Government by the workers' union, CNTG-USTG, supported by the majority of the peoples of Guinea, the government of President Lansana Conté has adopted an approach laden with contempt for the citizenry and the use of naked force against the populace. Dozens of protesters in Conakry, Simbaya, Lambanyi, Matoto, Télémelé, Mamou, Kankan, and Labé have been murdered in cold blood or maimed for life by the security services. And yet, in spite of the ferocious repression unleashed by the government, the Guinean people have, at great personal and collective peril, intensified their self-mobilisation on a scale not seen since the historic defeat of colonialism. Invariably, the response of the regime has been to do even more of what it has always done best: Arrest and torture union leaders and ordinary citizens, impose a state of emergence/state of siege presided over by the military high command, and threaten even more mayhem against the populace.

CODESRIA, as an organisation of African intellectuals who are fully conscious of their social responsibilities cannot remain indifferent in the face of the latest act of naked repression that the Conté regime has deployed against Guineans, repression that has crippled the country, impoverished its peoples and brought the state to the brink. The Council observes that academics in Guinean universities who have been part of the popular movement for change have not been spared the repressiveness of the regime and the principle of academic freedom that is a foundational pillar of CODESRIA has been put at bay in Guinea. The Council would, therefore, like to add its voice to the voices of democrats all over the world who have expressed their solidarity with the people of Guinea and denounced all forms of dictatorship. The Council also joins the Guinean trade union movement and other social movements in the vanguard of the struggle for change in their demand for democratic and equitable management of the Guinean commonwealth.

The struggles of the people of Guinea remind us that freedom is not given but won – often at a high cost. This we know very well as members of an institution which produced the Kampala Declaration on Academic Freedom and the Social Responsibility of Scholars (see the CODESRIA Website: to prevent the wanton abuse of freedoms in the African higher education system. I would, therefore, like to invite all members of the Council to take a moment to remember the people of Guinea and to solidarise with them, doing so in the settled knowledge that their victory will be another important step towards democracy and development in Africa - just as it was when Guinea's historic 'No' against Charles De Gaulle's project of a French federation to perpetuate colonial rule emboldened and accelerated the African independence project.

Members of CODESRIA wishing to express their solidarity with the people of Guinea and their struggles are invited to send their messages to: [email][email protected] and they can rest assured that the messages will be forwarded to the trade union and academic staff leaderships in Conakry. We have a duty at this time to let the people of Guinea know that they are not alone!

Adebayo Olukoshi
Executive Secretary, CODESRIA

The Great Iroko has Moved On: Joseph Ki-Zerbo, 1922 – 2006

The Council for the development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) regrets to announce the death in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, on 04 December, 2006, of one of Africa’s most illustrious citizen-intellectuals, the incomparable Joseph Ki- Zerbo.

Academic historian of the very first order, life-long pan- Africanist by instinct and by choice, unrelenting crusader for social change and justice, untiring advocate of African collective self-reliance, teacher to at least three generations of African social researchers, an unflagging source of inspiration to many who were lucky to encounter him, a great example in selfless service to the community, the giant Iroko, king of the tropical rain forest, standing tall in dignity and majesty: That was the quintessential Ki-Zerbo who, after 84 years of sojourn amongst us, has now moved on, leaving his indelible foot prints in the sand of time – all time – and challenging us, in honour of his memory, to take the baton with courage and commitment until Africa is truly liberated.

Born to a father who was reputed to be the first convert to Christianity in the area that was known at the time as Upper Volta, Ki-Zerbo was to define an early and unambiguous trajectory for himself as a committed historian with a deep and abiding interest in the twin projects of democracy and development in Africa. As a young academic, he invested himself in the study of the history of Africa, helping through his original works both to enrich the historical method and to challenge the fallacies of the day about Africa, not least among them, the widespread racist discourse of the period that Africa had no history. Together with other nationalist historians of the time, they were to build a corpus of literature that came to constitute the core of African History as a field of knowledge, complete with its methods and tools.

An important part of that effort was to be synthesized into the UNESCO General History of Africa of which he was a directing editor. But his role as a doyen of African historians also included the dedication of his time to the construction of the institutional basis of the production and reproduction of historical knowledge in and about Africa. His paramount role in the building of the African Association of Historians was but one of his engagements in this regard.

For Ki-Zerbo, retrieving and documenting the history of Africa may have been an important pre-occupation to which he applied himself completely. But in and of itself, it was not sufficient if that history – its high points and low moments – did not serve as a point of departure for the creation of an autonomous foundation for the political, economic, social and cultural emancipation of Africa and its peoples. And it was in this pre-occupation that he came to immerse himself as scholar and activist, in the struggles for national liberation, democracy, social justice and development, doing so without any apologies to those who might have felt that he went too far beyond his scholarly calling to immerse himself in local and global political contestations.

Thus it was that he was to assume various roles at the same time: prolific university professor, indefatigable activist in various social movements, party leader – mostly in opposition – and, ultimately, conscience of the African nation: That was the inimitable Ki-Zerbo, a man who was passionate about his convictions and who was prepared to pay the price when it became necessary, including leaving his professorial post in France to volunteer in the newly independent state of Guinea under a Sekou Toure who had successfully mobilized the populace to reject Charles de Gaulle’s neo-colonial project of an enlarged French federation; he was also to spend time in exile from Burkina Faso in the 1980s.

Few were the intellectuals of Ki-Zerbo’s generation who emerged to become a living encyclopedia of human history, including detailed recollections of many landmark events in the 20th century history of Africa and the world which he himself witnessed first hand or participated in directly. He had formal and informal sessions with many of the leaders of the African independence project, including Kwame Nkrumah, Sekou Toure, Frantz Fanon, Modibo Keita, Amilcar Cabral, Jomo Kenyatta, Tom Mboya, and Julius Nyerere, to cite a few.

He shared in all the key debates on the future of pan- Africanism as independence dawned, as well as in the reflections that occurred on the development alternatives that the continent could explore. But through all these experiences, he never sullied his reputation for intellectual integrity and personal honesty, a fact which earned him a moral high ground to reproach – publicly and privately – the first generation nationalists as many of them began to abandon the ideals of nationalism in pursuit of personal projects of power maximization. His voice was the voice of authority and throughout his life, as the first generation leaders gave way to succeeding generations, he reserved his right, exercised in his uniquely magisterial manner, to counsel, to remind, to criticize and to condemn as the need arose.

The membership of CODESRIA was fortunate to enjoy glimpses of the rich experience embodied in Ki-Zerbo when he delivered one of the three keynote addresses to mark the grand finale conference of the
30th anniversary celebrations of the Council in December 2003 in Dakar, Senegal. It was also an occasion at which, in recognition of his contribution, he was honoured by the African social research community with a life membership of CODESRIA, alongside Archie Mafeje, Ngugi wa Thiong’o and Ali Mazrui.

None amongst the nearly 500 African scholars who were assembled in Dakar for his speech left the venue of the conference without feeling inspired as much by the richness and clarity of his message as by the coherence and lucidity with which, despite his nearly 82 years, he delivered his message: That was our Joseph Ki-Zerbo, the ageless Iroko who, for the African social research community, was the mentor for all seasons. But, beyond Africa too, he was also celebrated as a rare gift to humanity as evidenced by the many laurels he won, including the Alternative Nobel Prize awarded by grassroots social movements to distinguished world figures.

We can only be grateful as an institution that in the last month of his life, and with the support of his widow, Josephine, and children, CODESRIA was given the privilege of recording interviews with him on his life, his work, his times as part of the Council’s initiative documenting the contributions of leading African scholars in a digital format that could become a veritable pedagogical tool for present and future generations. Ki-Zerbo and his family could not have given the CODESRIA membership and the wider African social research community a better gift to bequeath to the world.

And now, as we express our regret that he has had to move on, we also feel inspired to celebrate his life and to rejoice that while he lived, Joseph Ki-Zerbo, was among us and we were the happier for it. For, truly great scholars of his standing are rare - and human beings do not come better than him.

Long live Joseph Ki-Zerbo.

Members of CODESRIA interested in sending messages of support and solidarity to the Ki-Zerbo family are invited to do so by e-mail to:[email protected] and the Council will arrange to have their messages delivered.

The news of the sudden death on Sunday of our esteemed colleague and comrade-in-arms, Professor Chachage Seithy Loth Chachage came to us in the CODESRIA Secretariat as a rude shock that will take us a while to come to terms with. During the last two weeks of his life, he had numerous telephone exchanges with us in the CODESRIA Secretariat both concerning the on-going struggle for academic freedom he was helping to coordinate at the University of Dar-Es-Salaam and CODESRIA programmatic matters centring on medium-to-long-term institutional personnel strategy. During those exchanges, we had a full glimpse into the full agenda which he was running and the usual selfless commitment with which he was attending to his assignments. We also noted that he was, in spite of his time pressure, his usual witty self, delivering his critique of all that was wrong with contemporary African higher education with his uncommon, trademark punchlines that sent us both thinking and cracking with laughter at the same time. What we did not see, nor even had a possibility of guessing was that we were witnessing the last moments of his sojourn with us. And when the news of his death reached from his mentor, colleague and friend, Professor Issa Shivji, a numbing sense of disbelief prevailed among us. And now, we have the onerous duty of informing all members of CODESRIA, on behalf of the Council´s Executive Committee, of the loss of a titan of African social scientists.

CSL Chachage, a completely self-educated and self-made person was unique among his peers. An original thinker who had no time for intellectual fads, he contributed some of the most interesting insights into the roots of the crises of post-colonial development in Africa. He left no one in any doubt as to where his commitment lay: with the working people of Africa whose toils he identified with as defining the purpose for his scholarship. His versatility was also unmatched. Apart from bestriding the social sciences in his writings, at once addressing historical, philosophical sociological, political and economic issues, he was also a keen novelist who combined his passion for creative writing with an equal commitment to supporting African scholarly publishing. The last five years of his life were easily among his most prolific; it was as if he knew, somehow, that time was no longer on his side. But the stream of works that flowed from his pen did not prevent him from maintaining his love for teaching. He was elected head of the Department of Sociology and a member of the deanage at the University of Dar-es-Salaam during this period. He also resumed a frontline leadership role in the University of Dar-Es-Salaam Academic Staff Assembly. Furthermore, after a period of time as the Chair of the CODESRIA Scientific Committee, he was elected into the Council´s Executive Committee at the 1General Assembly held in Maputo, Mozambique, in December 2005.

To say we shall miss Chachage will be an understatement. But as our comrade transits to join other frontline CODESRIA militants such Claude Ake and Guy Mhone, we must, as a community, seize the moment to rededicate our commitment to Africa and humanity. For, when the epitaph of our Chachage is written, it will surely be highlighted that he was a foremost gentleman driven by the greatest humanitarian principles of all: social justice and freedom.

Members of the African social research community wishing to send messages of condolence to the late CSL Chachage´s family may do so through this e-mail address: [email][email protected]

It is with the deepest regret and a profound sense of loss that I write to inform you of the death in Johannesburg, South Africa, on 01 March 2005 of our colleague, teacher and friend, Professor Guy Mhone. Born of Malawian parents, he spent most of his professional life outside of his native country, mostly in Zimbabwe and South Africa. He was elected into the CODESRIA Executive Committee representing Southern Africa at the 10th General Assembly of the Council held in Kampala, Uganda, in December 2002. Those who knew him socially attest universally to the fact that he was a gentleman who had great humanitarian principles and a quiet sense of humour. For those of us who were privileged to work closely with him, we will remember him as one of the brightest economists produced by the African continent and with an abiding commitment to the progress of Africans.

Professor Mhone gave no hint of the imminence of his departure from us when the CODESRIA Executive Committee had its 61st meeting in Algiers in December 2004. Indeed, even at the meeting of the Sub-Committee on Governance held at the end of January 2005 to review the Council's Charter ahead of the 11th General Assembly scheduled for December 2005, he was full of cheer. Little did we realize that it was his way of telling us goodbye. His death has robbed the Executive Committee of a highly valued and perceptive member; for us in the Secretariat, and for the membership of the Council across Africa and the Diaspora in general, and in Southern Africa in particular, his untimely departure has robbed us of his wise counsel. And now, helpless, we can only scribble our lines of sorrow to convey our condolences to his family, praying that they will find the courage to bear the heavy loss which death has so cruelly and suddenly inflicted on them. Our thoughts go particularly to his wife and children. May the gentle soul of Professor Mhone should find eternal rest.

Colleagues wishing to send condolence messages to his family are strongly encouraged to do so using the following e-mail address: [email][email protected]

(Letter from CODESRIA to all members of CODESRIA and of the African Social Research Community)

The accelerated processes of globalisation that have characterised the last decade and a half in world history and the forces and interests that have emerged to dominate and propel them have brought to the fore a broad range of issues and concerns that touch directly on global and local-level equity and justice both generally as they pertain to the developmental experience and more specifically as they are being played out in the social sectors of which health and education occupy a place of prime importance.

Although, at one level, globalisation appears to promise a great deal of opportunity for progress and advancement, the process, in the way in which it has been shaped in the contemporary period, has also been accompanied, at another level, by a sharpening of socio-economic disparities and inequalities among nations and within countries. Evidence suggests that the main winners from globalisation represent a small and diminishing minority even as millions, including many who once formed part of or aspired for the middle class, have been pushed to the bottom of the social ladder into poverty and misery.

A plethora of explanations have been advanced as to why the process of globalisation has not been accompanied by social gains and has, instead, resulted in the erosion of some of the achievements recorded in an earlier phase of development. While some scholars point to the fact that the current experience of globalisation is driven by the narrow concerns of international financial investors with a strong short-term, speculative orientation that is inimical to the overall interests of the working poor and the real sectors of economies, others have suggested that the problems that have arisen are traceable directly to the neo-liberal ideological principles and doctrinal foundations on the basis of which the process of globalisation is being governed and which has resulted in the enthronement of a narrow and limiting market logic in the policy process.

There is clearly some truth in the various competing explanations which have been offered as to why the problem of inequality would seem to have worsened on the back of globalisation. But over and above these is the question of the state, particularly in the developing countries, and the erosion and delegitimation not only of its role in the developmental process but also the erosion of its broad policy planning and implementational capacities at the same time as the efforts at supplanting it with the private sector and/or non-governmental organisations have failed to live up to expectations.

When this is taken together with the fact that in the African context, the free market orientation of policy premised on deflationary macro-economic principles has failed to deliver growth and has instead widened the boundaries of poverty, it is easy to begin to understand why the problems of inequality and injustice have worsened. It is here, in my view, that the problem ought to be located in the first place.

The Making of the Post-Colonial African State and Social Policy:

The state, whether in developed or developing countries, played an important historical role as a social actor. The high point of the development of the social state came in the period immediately after the Second World War with emergence and spread of different variants of social democratic and welfare regimes in response both to popular domestic pressures by the working poor in Europe and as a direct response to the challenge of an ascendant socialism/communism most eloquently symbolized by the Bolshevik Revolution and its initial spread across Eastern Europe and Asia.

The post-War context of the consolidation of the social state coincided with the period of late colonialism which also witnessed for the first time in the colonial experience, a deliberate and conscious investment of effort in the promotion of “development” which included greater attention to the promotion of infrastructure, the nurturing of local industrial processing and the expansion of health and educational facilities and expenditure.

At independence, African states were, not surprisingly, invested with broad-ranging social responsibilities which were integral to the anti-colonial social contract on the basis of which the nationalist politicians mobilized the populace for the independence struggle. Central to the contract was the promise of the expansion of social policy in a direction which would significantly improve the health and nutritional status of the populace, expand access to education and offer greater opportunities for employment. African countries succeeded in varying degrees in achieving the goals which they defined: in the period to 1980, the livelihood prospects of the populace were generally improved - life expectancy maintained an upward trend even as child and maternal mortality showed improvements.

The expansionary economic policies which African governments pursued in the 1960s and 1970s had a great deal to do with the successes which they recorded. With growth rates averaging 5 to 7 per cent and star economic performers like Cote d’Ivioire and Kenya clocking up to 9 per cent average growth rates, it was possible to expand the social expenditure of the state particularly with regard to health and education. Policy was geared to promote the inclusiveness of marginal groups and subsidies were employed to improve the reach and coverage of the educational and health targets of the state.

To be sure, the post-colonial model of social policy formulation and implementation was not without its problems and some of the problems were to become sources of dysfunctionality that eventually weakened the effectiveness of policy and, eventually, the onset of socio-economic crises. Still, in comparison to the poor growth records of the 1980s and 1990s, the 1960s and 1970s seemed like golden years.

The Onset of Economic Crisis and the Age of Orthodox

The onset of the African economic crisis at the beginning of the 1980s triggered attacks on the social policies of the post-colonial state. While for most African governments, the immediate, almost instinctive response which they had to the crisis in their economies was to curb social expenditures as the core of the austerity measures which they adopted, this attack on the social sectors was carried further and transformed into a dogma in the context of International Monetary Fund/World Bank structural adjustment which had a deflationary, market-oriented thrust that saw and treated the post-colonial state as the problem and not a part of the solution.

The economic crisis management and reform strategy promoted by the IMF and the World Bank drew heavily from an ascendant global neo-liberalism which was one-sidedly anti-state and which was committed to “freeing” the forces of the market under the banner of “getting prices right”, curbing inflation, and promoting the private and/or non-state sector. The consequences of this crisis management strategy were many and devastating from the point of view of the health sector and the health status of the average Africa.

The shift in the structure of incentives which the structural adjustment framework represented and which consisted of efforts at shifting the locus of developmental activities away from the state to market also triggered a brain drain from the social sectors generally and the public health system in particular even as freshly qualified health personnel roamed the streets in many countries unable to find gainful employment.

The immediate post-colonial health system definitely had many problems but there was also a clear vision which underpinned it and which sought to improve livelihood and well-being. During the crisis and adjustment years, this vision was lost and the alternative that seemed to replace it was preoccupied primarily with winning the battle to roll back the frontiers of the state and enthrone the market.

Little initial attention was paid to ways in which the health gains that had been recorded in the lead up to and immediately after independence could be safeguarded. The consequence was that a chaotic situation prevailed in many countries in which the public health system was in a state of collapse and mired in all-round shortages of personnel, equipment and medicaments while the private/non-governmental health system such as it existed proved to be inadequate in many ways even as its services were priced beyond the reach of the working poor.

The decline which was registered in the health status of the average African was dramatic and alarming: diseases which were previously under control or which were well on the way to elimination resurfaced while life expectancy suffered reversals as maternal and infant mortality grew at the same time as the nutritional status of many households declined. The wider framework of economic reform and structural adjustment which was being pursued had clearly taken a toll on the health sector and combined with developments in the health system itself to send alarm bells ringing. Across Africa and the rest of the world, the case began to be made for adjustment with a human face.

The pleas for the modulation of economic reforms in order to give adjustment a human face led to the introduction of a series of interventions which came under the rubric of the social dimensions of adjustment. Overall, most of these programmes failed to achieve the objectives for which they were introduced and there is no greater evidence of this than the worsening of the problems of growing exclusion that they were supposed to help tackle.

The shallowness of the interventions was brought in sharp relief by the outbreak of the HIV/AIDS pandemic which the social dimensions of adjustment were simply unable to address and which accelerated at a time when the capacity of the state and of the public health system had been severely eroded.

Beyond Structural Adjustment and Towards the Social State:

One of the fundamental lessons from the failure of the social dimensions of structural adjustment to have an effect, and a factor which is equally relevant for the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) which have been put in place across Africa during the last two years, is that no progressive policy of social advancement can be successful if it is treated as a residual category to serve targeting needs even as the “serious” business of macro-economic policy-making is carried on without a clear social objective in mind.

To be truly effective, social policy must be an integral part of macro-economic policy-making, not a residual add-on. This can only be done if there is a conscious effort to avoid the decoupling of social policy from macro-economic policy formulation as has happened over the last two decades. Such an approach will require, as necessary, the harmonization of economic policies and instruments with the goal of social renewal and advancement built on foundations of equity and justice.

For macro-economic policy-making to succeed in advancing the frontiers of social policy in a manner that is equitable, just and inclusive, it would also require to generate growth without which it will not be possible to expand expenditure. The tragedy for Africa is that the structural adjustment years were characterized by a policy orthodoxy which, by its deflationary logic, stifled growth.

The quest for a social state will necessarily, therefore, involve a revisiting of the macro-economic fundamentals that inform policy with a view to effecting a radical shift from a growth-retarding orthodoxy to a growth-promoting heterodoxy. In sum, the rebirth of a social state in Africa will also simultaneously involve a re-thinking of policy in a direction that could promote what some have conceptualized as developmental democracies on the continent.

* Adebayo Olukoshi is Professor of International Economic Relations and currently the Executive Secretary of the pan-African Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA), which is headquartered in Dakar, Senegal. The above article was based on speaking notes for an address delivered at the third Southern African conference on Equity in Health, Durban, South Africa, June 8 and 9 2004.

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* Click on the link below to read this editorial in Kiswahili.