As the cultural and political world of the old ruling forces in Nigeria collapses, Horace Campbell calls for the country to look to the work of visionary leaders like the late Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem to create ‘new definitions of independence and emancipation’. Nigerians of all classes should ‘tap into the inherent strength of their linguistic and religious diversity,’ says Campbell, ‘and organise from the grassroots’ to bring about the ‘transformation that the country yearns for’.

Following the tragic killings of predominantly women and children in Jos, Nigeria, on 8 March's International Women's Day, Horace Campbell honours the memory of the victims along with 'the millions of poor women whose lives are devalued everyday'.

In the wake of the rise of the conservative Tea Party Nation (TPN) in the US, Horace Campbell discusses the resurgence of racist, anti-civil rights political sentiment under the support of 'big capitalists'.

A former leader of liberation movement, the Union of the Peoples of Cameroon, Ndeh Ntumuzah was a freedom fighter who devoted his life to the struggle for African independence and emancipation. Horace Campbell pays tribute to a ‘remarkable Pan-African spirit’.

Nelson Mandela was released from prison in 1990, freed by the popular struggle of a network of activists that delegitimised South Africa’s apartheid system, writes Horace Campbell. Campbell celebrates Mandela’s major contribution to African politics, South Africa and the ANC, ubuntu, and honours those who live out this principle – ‘grassroots liberation forces who have continued the struggle for social justice and system change.’

In his tribute to the late Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem, Horace Campbell points out that if Tajudeen could mobilise 7 million people to stand up against poverty in Africa, just think what all of us could achieve in the name of Pan-African unity and reconstruction. Buoyed by an inspirational life, Campbell outlines the tasks before the Pan-Africanist movement, highlighting the need to re-politicise Africa's youth along democratic, emancipatory lines in a spirit befitting Tajudeen's legacy.

cc With the US Senate approving a resolution formally acknowledging the historic injustice behind slavery and the country's 'Jim Crow' laws on 18 June, Horace Campbell asks 'Why now?' Coming in the same week as a call for a new, multi-polar world order from the BRIC countries of Brazil, Russia, India and China, the timing of the apology from a US Senate edgy about the internationalisation of reparations claims is no coincidence, Campbell argues. But with the Senate clear that the resolution offers no scope for any 'claim' against the United States, Campbell situates such action within an established tradition of pre-emptive apologies designed to inhibit further action. With political circles in the US keen to ensure the country's access to Africa's abundant resources, resolutions such as the US Senate's represent an attempt to replace crude conservative tactics with a more nuanced approach to imperial expansion, Campbell contends, an approach which must be countered by sustained will from progressive forces around the world to see reparative justice fulfilled.

cc. As Obama takes over the presidency of the United States, Horace Campbell contextualizes an Obama presidency in the realities of Africa and the ongoing global finance crisis. He argues that “capitalism should not be reconstituted and rebuilt on the backs and bodies of Africans." For Campbell, the crisis is not simply a cyclical crisis of capitalism; it is a fundamental shift in the global political and economic order. In light of this fast changing world, Campbell is also interested in the possibilities and our responsibilities in bringing about change in and for Africa.

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Writing at the end of September 2008, the chief policy adviser to the candidate Senator Barack Obama spelt out the foreign policy goals as they related to Africa in this way:

“Barack Obama understands Africa, and understands its importance to the United States. Today, in this new century, he understands that to strengthen our common security, we must invest in our common humanity and, in this way, restore American leadership in the world.

As a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he has engaged on many African issues. He has worked to end genocide in Darfur, to pass legislation to promote stability and the holding of elections in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to bring a war criminal to justice in Liberia and to develop a coherent strategy for stabilizing Somalia.”

From this broad outline the adviser (who had been trained in one of the elite African Studies Centers in the United States) went on to outline three goals of the candidate:

One is to accelerate Africa's integration into the global economy.

A second is to enhance the peace and security of African states.

And a third is to strengthen relationships with those governments, institutions and civil society organizations committed to deepening democracy, accountability and reducing poverty in Africa.

THE REALITY

The contradictions between the goals and the stated strategic objective of “investing in a shared humanity” brings to the fore the tensions and contradictions between the campaign of Senator Obama and the mindset of the thinking behind achieving goals for the United States and for the peoples of Africa. Between the time of the statement of this adviser in September and the elections in November, the realities of the global capitalist crisis had become very clear for the citizens of the United States. Citizens of Africa were always aware of the exploitation, hunger and death that came with capitalist relations of production. When Julius Nyerere had called for a revolution embedded in the African values of Ujamaa and self reliance, there was a political and ideological war against the peoples of Tanzania and any society in Africa that dared to be independent. Nationalization of the people’s wealth to ensure equal opportunities was rubbished by US policymakers.

Yet, in ten weeks between September and November 2008, the US government moved to nationalize banks, insurance companies and to invest billions of dollars (to bail out) the automobile industry. When the campaign ended and Senator Obama became President-elect Obama, it became clearer that neo-liberalism was dead or was dying. Neo-conservatives and the gurus of market fundamentalism were on the retreat, but in the Obama transition, there was no real break from the old mindset of US policymakers in relation to Africa. From the names and institutions that appeared in the transition process it was clear that the transition to an Obama Presidency will not, in the short term, reflect the kind of change that was promised in the election campaign. Instead of a future of sustainable peace and transformation, one saw a re-emergence and recycling of the same militarists such as Susan Rice emerging as a top official of the US foreign policy establishment. Lawrence Summers, who wrote the memo that it was more economical to dump toxic waste in Third World Countries, emerged as a major economic adviser.

A clear reading of five subject areas with international relations components in the transition team process indicates that Africa in general is likely to be a minor area of focus in their research process. These areas are:

1. State Department and Foreign Policy

2. International Economic Policy (USAID, World Bank, IMF, Treasury, Commerce, US Trade, OPIC, Ex-IM Bank, Agriculture)

3. Health/Human Services (HIV-AIDS)

4. National Security (DoD, AFRICOM and War on terror)

5. Energy (African oil)

In terms of operation, the team took its findings from each department and developed the Obama’s administration’s first internal white papers for each branch of government. Outside groups and entities with long-term interest in African resources were also submitting white papers on individual subjects into the transition team process. Hence, the final papers of the transition represented a product of both internal research and external contributions.

WHO TRAINED THESE POLICYMAKERS?

From the website of the transition process and the that three persons- Valerie Jarrett, Martin Nesbitt and Dr. Eric Whitaker- are the closest advisers of Barack Obama.

While transition team operatives maintained that US policy towards Africa was at present a low priority (insofar as the US is preoccupied with the crisis of the economy and the questions of war and peace in Iraq and Afghanistan) there is no let up on the ground in Africa in the promotion of US ‘national interests’ through the State Department, the Department of Defense, the Treasury Department, the Department of Energy and a multitude of groups who are supporting AID projects. The day-to-day operations of the US bureaucrats continue to promote the neo-conservative and neo-liberal policies of the western imperial ideation system.

Examples of where these policies are being pursued include: The full speed attempt to militarize Africa under the guise of the so called war on terror. This is manifest in the transition pledge to continue the establishment of the US Africa Command and a US led international naval force off the coast of Somalia.

The second area where this is clear is that despite the fact that neo-liberalism and the market fundamentalism has been discredited in the USA, these policies are still being promoted by the IMF, the World bank and the host of US agencies that are now operating in Africa. In September 2008, when this global capitalist crisis was becoming evident to the world, Alan Greenspan testified before Congress. He said, “I have found a flaw. I don’t know how significant or permanent it is. But I have been very distressed by that fact.”

What Grenspan was politely saying was that the thinking behind the neoconservative oriented economic policies that had been promoted in the United States and overseas is wrong. During the hearing, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), was not satisfied by the use of the word ‘flaw.’ Waxman wanted a stronger term. He then asked Greenspan to clarify his words:

“In other words, you found that your view of the world, your ideology, was not right, it was not working,” Waxman said.

“Absolutely, precisely,” Greenspan replied. “You know, that’s precisely the reason I was shocked, because I have been going for 40 years or more with very considerable evidence that it was working exceptionally well.”

This admission that for forty years the underlying assumptions, rationales and thinking which served as the foundation of the economic policies of the United States in the USA and overseas was wrong, must be discussed at every level in Africa. Will African governments be comfortable with accepting this statement that they were being bullied into adopting wrong policies? Or will African intellectuals, trade unionists, policy makers and ordinary citizens redouble the efforts to end the domination of the International Financial Institutions over the lives of the people?

Obama’s policy towards Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) particularly regarding medicines will be important. Already, Democrats in the Congress led by Charles Rangel have said that the USG should not put the interests of IPR holders in US trade agreements, over the human health interests in poor nations.

Will Obama push that position further or will he fight against it?

It now devolves to the oppressed in Africa to join forces with others in the Global South to push for the dismantling of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. The dollar as the currency of World Trade is coming to the end of an inglorious period. It is not in the interests of the people of Africa for the Euro and for the European Union to be the beneficiary of the collapse of US capitalism. It is the task of Africans to work for the overthrow of capitalism in Africa and beyond. Capitalism should not be reconstituted and rebuilt on the backs and bodies of Africans. This crisis is not simply a cyclical crisis of capitalism; it is a fundamental shift in the global political and economic order.

While progressive African peoples at home and abroad were excited about the election of Barack Obama, it was clear that the alternatives to US government policies for Africa had to emerge from the combined efforts of the social forces within Africa who had a vested interest in making a break with the plunder and looting of Africa. From the actions and activities of the dominant groups in the United States that interact with the elites of Africa, the emphasis is on the ‘strategic’ resources of Africa, without a real consideration for the quality of lives of the people. Walter Rodney had identified this class of Africans who were allies of imperialism in the book, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. Since the era of neo-liberalism and IMF structural adjustment, the conception of ‘underdevelopment’ and ‘exploitation’ has been replaced by the language of ‘donor agencies’ partners for development and ‘democratic governance.’ The brightest from the institutions of higher learning were seduced into the multi billion dollar aid sector called the ‘humanitarian’ and ‘non-governmental organization’ sector. Many of these international NGO workers in Africa are now caught at a crossroads where there is fear that ’donor funds’ will be drying up because of the global capitalist crisis.

It is urgent that the progressives on both sides of the Atlantic call for a full exposure of the ‘other flawed’ policies of the United States such as the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act and the Millennium Challenge Corporation. Under the Bush administration the apartheid health policies associated with the conservative ideas about reproductive rights have been trumpeted as a success in Africa. So tenacious has been the propaganda about the health policies of the Bush administration in Africa that even within the Obama transition there is an acceptance that the PEPFAR of Bush has been beneficial for Africa. For those who want to continue to accept propaganda that “the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), holds a unique place in the history of public health for its size and scope,” I would only want to urge a read of the book, Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present.

Health and peace are inextricably linked in all parts of the world, The African traditional healers, cultural workers and caregivers are joining the mass of 6 billion citizens of the planet earth who are calling for investment in caring, not killing. It is a major contradiction to trumpet the support for the recovery of health delivery services in Africa while supporting the remilitarization of Africa.

Will progressives accept that the US policies were’ flawed’ or symbolic of the structural relations of US imperialism in Africa? One of the by-products of the neo-liberal discourse was the reality that the understanding of imperial exploitation and plunder had been replaced by the new ‘humanitarian imperialism’ that was presented behind the international non-governmental infrastructure. Can the Obama administration justify an Economic Recovery program for the United States of over US $700 billion while advocating the use of ‘market forces’ to shelter the plunder of African resources?

OBAMA MUST REPUDIATE THE PLANNED US AFRICA COMMAND

If the economic and diplomatic policies of the USA prior to Barack Obama had been ‘flawed’, then one needs an appropriate formulation to properly describe the US security policies towards Africa. In December 2008, Larry Devlin joined the ancestors. Before he departed this land, Devlin wrote a book entitled, Chief of Station, Congo: A Memoir 1960-1967. This was a book celebrating the role played by Devlin while he was the Chief of the Station of the Central Intelligence Agency in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. There was no remorse in this book about the role of the United States in the destabilization of the Congo subsequent to the assassination of Patrice Lumumba and the support for Mobutu for thirty five years. If anything, Devlin was celebrating the work of the US military and economic agencies. In his logic, everything that the US did during the Cold War was justified in the name of fighting communism.

This logic of Devlin is the same logic of the intellectual institutions of the United States. Peace and conflict resolution centers abound in order to promote the distorted logic of Larry Devlin or other writers who then complain about state failure in Africa. Progressive African Intellectuals must begin to document the criminal actions that perpetuated war and instability in every region of Africa. Not only did the USA support destruction and apartheid under this logic, but today there is support for private military contractors who are operating to protect the oil companies that are polluting Africa’s rivers and communities.

Today the peoples of the Democratic Republic of the Congo are reaping the full harvest of the long term investment in militarism and destruction. Yet, instead of a full retreat from the history of military engagement, the members of the US foreign policy establishment continue to call for the establishment of the US Africa Command. It would appear from the public statements of those around the Obama team that the question of change does not apply to Africa and Africans.

RESIST AFRICOM AT HOME AND ABROAD

This is not to suggest that there are no forces within the United States working to dismantle the plans for the US Africa Command. There is such a force within the broad alliance of activists who are pledged to ensure that the Obama administration abandon the plans for the Africa Command. Thus far, the of one of the most senior lawmakers in the USA there is the declaration that:

In January of 1989, Mr. Conyers first introduced the bill H.R. 40, the Commission to Study Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act. He has reintroduced H.R. 40 every Congress since 1989, and will continue to do so until it's passed into law.

This author is calling on all progressives to join in the call to extend this assertion by Conyers so that, in the short run, the government of the United States re-engages with the process of the World Conference against Racism, when it convenes in Geneva in April 2009.

FAILURE, FLAWS OR CRIMES IN AFRICA

It is now clear from the transition team of Obama that there is no new thinking on Africa. On the web site of the Obama election campaign, the adviser on Africa boasted that Obama:

“As a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he has engaged on many African issues. He has worked to end genocide in Darfur, to pass legislation to promote stability and the holding of elections in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to bring a war criminal to justice in Liberia and to develop a coherent strategy for stabilizing Somalia.”

Who will be able to educate the Obama Presidency that the road to peace in Darfur and in the DRC is linked to demilitarization globally? Obama cannot continue the duplicity of the Bush administration that continues to have security and intelligence sharing with the government of the Sudan while maintaining that it is working to end the genocide in Darfur. Peace in Africa and demilitarization in the United States are two sides of the same coin.

Barack Obama is the son of a Kenyan immigrant. His father met an early demise from the deformed politics of division and manipulation in Kenya. Obama is going into the White House with a keen sense of the realities of the impoverishment of the people of Africa. It is the same Obama who understands that change can only come through organization. After all it was Senator Obama who campaigned on a pledge:

"I don't want to just end the war," he said early this year. "I want to end the mindset that got us into war."

Africans at home and abroad must inspire a new mindset so that all of the differing agencies, foundations and academic institutions in the USA can move to a new vision of relating to Africans as full human beings. By every measure, the victory of Obama is historic. Obama will either be a great President moving the society beyond the traditions of militarism and support for dictators or be another imperial President who happens to have a father from Kenya. The choice is not up to Obama. The choice is dependent on the extent to which the progressive forces use the opening provided by the election of Obama to bring about the change we want.

*Horace Campbell, is professor of African American studies at Syracuse University, and author of .
* Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/

cc. Concerned scholars should revitalise their opposition to Zimbabwe’s Mugabe regime, writes Horace Campbell. While being against any form of opportunistic, external intervention in the country, Campbell argues that scholars must come to offer an effective challenge to ZANU-PF’s persistent retreat into spurious anti-imperialist discourse. Heavily critical of writers like Mahmood Mamdani for echoing ZANU-PF’s claims around the effects of economic sanctions levied against Zimbabwe, Campbell argues that blocking international payments would prove a far more efficacious means of tackling Mugabe’s misappropriation of funds.

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/387/49363betweenrock.jpgAt the summit of the African Union in Ghana in July 2007, Robert Mugabe was given a standing ovation. Later he went outside the conference to deliver a roaring anti–imperialist speech at a huge public rally. At the Nkrumah square Mugabe was hailed as one of the most steadfast revolutionary leaders in Africa. One year later, at the African Union Conference in Cairo, Egypt, Robert Mugabe was shunned by most leaders and condemned by those who opposed the authoritarian and dictatorial methods of rule. One day prior to the conference Mugabe had been sworn in as President after a non-election where he was the only candidate. This was a far cry from his initial inauguration in April 1980 when he was sworn in as Prime Minister before a throng of hundreds of thousands. Bob Marley had led the popular anti-racist and anti-imperialist forces to this celebration and had sung, Africans a liberate Zimbabwe. By June 2008 Robert when Mugabe was sworn in his regime had degenerated from a party associated with the legacies of Patrice Lumumba and Kwame Nkrumah to an organization associated with the militarism and repression of Mobutu Sese Seko and Hastings Banda. Working peoples all across the region led and inspired by the Congress of South African Trade Unions opposed the Mugabe government and called for its isolation. Nelson Mandela was moved to declare that one was witnessing a “tragic failure of leadership in Zimbabwe.”

It is this failure that needs to be contextualized not simply as a Zimbabwean phenomenon, but as one of the forms and content of politics and political engagement in an era of economic depression and discredited neo-liberalism. All over the African continent the poor and oppressed have borne the brunt of the food crisis, the energy crisis, the health pandemics, and the crisis of the financial markets. This is the cataclysm that is being termed the worst capitalist crisis since the depression of the 1930’s. While spokespersons for capitalism such as Alan Greenspan have noted the depth of the contradictions between capitalist wealth and the impoverishment of the peoples of the globe, the G8 discourse on increasing aid flows block serious analysis of the impact of the capitalist depression in Africa and other parts of the downtrodden world. Food riots and other forms of spontaneous expressions of resistance have been taking place in the absence of clear organizational forms to respond to this capitalist depression. It is in South Africa where the workers are organizing against the high food prices with marches.

Inside a country such as Zimbabwe the internal political contradictions and the dire economic conditions serve to compound the oppression of the Zimbabwean peoples. It is this oppression that calls for both clear analysis and action on the part of those who want support the oppressed and are not accessories to their oppression by overt and covert support for the Mugabe regime. The Zimbabwean working peoples have been well organized and it is in part the quality of their organization that exposed the Mugabe government and the ZANU-PF party. These organized workers and human rights activists exposed a clique of political careerists and militarists that represented itself as an anti-imperialist force in Africa. From among the ranks of the working peoples emerged various political organizations. The political party that emerged out of this alliance of working peoples is the Movement for Democratic Change. (MDC).

March 2008, the President of the African National Congress of South Africa, Jacob Zuma, led a high level delegation of South African parliamentarians to the site of the victory of the forces of liberation at Cuito Cuanavale in Angola. This visit was linked to the numerous ceremonies in Angola to commemorate the victory Angola, Cuba and the forces of SWAPO and the ANC over the apartheid army. What was significant was that while the leader of the ANC took this much publicized visit to Angola, the present ANC government has not moved decisively to carry out far more public education on what happened at Cuito Cuanavale in 1988. Thousands of youths in Southern Africa do not know what happened at Cuito Cuanavale and the linkage between the decolonization of Southern Africa and this historic battle.

In this essay, Horace Campbell looks at the importance of Africa Liberation Day, its changing relevances as Africans are betrayed by the architects of first independence and how, through struggle, we can reclaim and fulfill its promise.

INTRODUCTION

On May 25, 2008, peace loving peoples all over the world will celebrate African Liberation Day. This will be the fiftieth anniversary of the setting aside of a day to commemorate those who sacrificed for the liberation of the African peoples at home and abroad. In 1963, the Organization of African Unity was established in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Then, the main emphasis was on the liberation of territories from colonial rule. At the end of apartheid in 1994 new ideas of liberation were placed on the agenda for Africa. Questions of health, food security, environmental justice, decent education, the rights of women, the politics of inclusion and cultural freedoms were placed as the core of the liberation of Africa. African women at the grassroots are campaigning for a new form of popular power where African peoples will have the voice to intervene in the political process where they live and where they work. These men and women at the grassroots seek to give meaning to political participation and realize the dream of C.L.R. James who envisioned that ‘every cook can govern.’ This form of politics elevates the political participation of the people beyond periodic voting. African youths at home and abroad are looking forward to new institutions and new sites where the ideas of peace, love and human dignity will prevail.

THE ORIGINS OF AFRICA DAY AND AFRICAN LIBERATION YESTERDAY

At the All African Peoples Conference, held in Ghana, in 1958 it was agreed that one-day would be set aside as a national day of remembrance for African freedom fighters. Ghana had achieved its independence in 1957 and one year later Kwame Nkrumah called a conference of African workers, freedom fighters and champions for justice. Nkrumah who had been inspired by Garveyism and the self mobilization and self organization of the people took up the idea of African Liberation day and successfully promoted the idea to the leaders who formed the Organization of African Unity. The first celebration of Africa Day had begun in Harlem, USA by the followers of Marcus Garvey who had called for African Unity from as far back as 1919.

When Ghana achieved its independence in 1957 Nkrumah maintained that the independence of Ghana would be “incomplete without the independence of all of Africa.” Together with the principal freedom fighters within Ghana, Nkrumah established a Pan-African Secretariat within the Ghanaian government and appointed George Padmore to run the secretariat. The task of the secretariat was to act as the coordinating point for the establishment of links with freedom fighters on the African continent and for the secretariat to be a center for information to support those fighting for freedom.

At that historical moment freedom was conceived of as freedom of the peoples and freedom of the states from colonial rule. To carry forward this task the Ghanaian government deployed the resources to support freedom fighters, trade unionists and political activists for independence. This was the spirit that inspired the calling of the All-African Peoples’ Conferences in 1958. It was at this meeting where Patrice Lumumba was introduced to the wider Pan African struggles. In tandem with this people-centered activity, Nkrumah also convened the conferences of Independent African States to establish a diplomatic framework for the political union of Africa.

Because most of the present governments in Africa are opposed to the liberation of the peoples and the Union of the peoples of Africa the detractors of African Union present the struggle for the United States of Africa as a Gadaffi Initiative. Instead of Africa Day becoming a day to honor and celebrate those who struggled for independence, the day has been taken away from the people and the officials use this as another opportunity to organize embassy parties and dinners to seek assistance from the imperialists who are today called ’donors.’ Nowhere is the idea of Pan Africanism more devalued than where Pan Africanists seek to use the name of Pan Africanism to establish NGO’s to seek assistance from the very same forces that undermine African independence. Yoweri Museveni has used the current Secretariat of the Pan African Movement in Kampala as political football.

AFRICA DAY AND THE OAU IN PRACTICE

Fifty years after the start of the celebration of Africa Day in 1958 there are still colonial territories in Africa. The most well known is the case of the Western Sahara. The military invasion and occupation of Iraq by the USA demonstrated clearly the reality that the days of colonial occupation are not yet over. In North Africa and in Palestine the legacies and problems of military occupation reinforce and support the dictatorial rule of the Egyptian ruling elite.

At the time of Kwame Nkrumah, Nasser and the peoples of Egypt represented one base of support for freedom fighters. Today, the leaders of Egypt seek to establish a dynasty and hinder the full support for those fighting against occupation whether in Palestine or in Iraq. Peace activists in North Africa like peace activists in the other parts of Africa oppose occupation and genocidal violence. It is this reversal for the peoples that ensure that the politics of retrogression thrives. With the absence of committed leadership, militarists seize the discourse of liberation to establish movements for emancipation and liberation to foment genocidal politics. Genocidal politics thrives when the politics of exploitation, exclusivism, racism, militarism, religious dogmatism, extremism, and patriarchy intersect in a nested loop to oppress the people. Sudan is one society where the recursive processes of genocidal thinking, genocidal institution, genocidal politics and genoicidal economic relations are reproduced to perpetuate war and the wanton destruction of human lives.

There is a new peace movement across the globe and the celebration of Africa Day is one component of the struggles against genocide and genocidal thinking. This peace movement in Africa must link up with the global movement for peace so that liberation in Africa will be associated with emancipation, peace, social justice and the well being of the people.

THE OAU LIBERATION COMMITTEE

It was very significant that it was in those states that supported African liberation with moral, material and political support that this day was observed at the national level as a public holiday. After imperialism killed Patrice Lumumba and orchestrated a military coup d ‘etat against Nkrumah, Julius Nyerere of Tanzania and the Tanzanian people stood out in the ways in which the idea of African Liberation was respected and the society made tremendous sacrifices for the liberation of Africa. Julius Nyerere established a tradition of self-sacrifice that was followed by those committed to ending all forms of exploitation. The Tanzanian society could not have supported liberation and hosted the OAU Liberation Committee to spearhead liberation without the mobilization and politicization of the ordinary people.

One can compare the sacrifices of the Tanzanian peoples with the present Xenophobia in states such as South Africa and Angola where former freedom fighters have used the history of the liberation struggles to hold on to political power, to enrich themselves and diminish the meaning of independence and liberation The attacks on African migrants in South Africa and the violence unleashed against poor workers in 2008 represented one example of how the former leaders of the African liberation process have become obstacles to the further emancipation of Africa. Robert Mugabe and the ZANU-PF leadership in Zimbabwe represents the extreme example of freedom fighters who started out on the side of the people but used state power to enrich a small clique while shouting about imperialism. Robert Mugabe, Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia and Isaias Afewerki of Eritrea represent leaders who once used the language of liberation while setting up militaristic states to oppress the people of Africa.

WILL THE PEOPLE PREVAIL?

The momentum and energy of the poor ensured that the OAU through the liberation committee supported the process of decolonization in Africa despite the fact that the generals constituted the majority at the summit. The formation of the OAU in 1963 had been a compromise among member states that could not agree on how to respond to the clear external manipulation of the Congo after those representing the interests of Western mining capital murdered Patrice Lumumba in 1961.It was in this Congo where the traditions of militarism, corruption and genocide had taken deep roots.

Those who yesterday opposed African liberation and supported dictators such as Siad Barre (Somalia), Arap Moi (Kenya) Félix Houphouët-Boigny y (Ivory Coast) and Hastings Banda (Malawi) now write books on failed states in Africa. This language of corruption and notions of Africa representing a breeding ground for ‘terrorism’ is one component of psychological war against Africa. The objective of the propaganda is for the young to forget the imperial crimes in Africa. In this way the dream of the young is to escape Africa to Europe.

The imperialists who orchestrated and planned the assassination of Patrice Lumumba have reframed their role in the destabilization of Africa and now write books celebrating their role in the destruction of African sovereignty. Larry Devlin who was the Chief of Station of the Central Intelligence Agency in Leopoldville (now Kinshasa) has written a book (Chief of Station) to cover up the crimes of US imperialism in Africa. Mobutu represented the biggest obstacle to African liberation and unity and for thirty five years Mobutism supported genocidal politics and genocidal leaders in Central Africa from Rwanda to Burundi and Uganda under Idi Amin. The clause of non-interference in the internal affairs of states was the expedient to protect the confraternity of dictators. Despite these setbacks, the people prevailed and are now placing the question of the union of the peoples of Africa as the urgent task of contemporary liberation.

The formation of the African Union in 2001 was a conscious effort to transcend the traditions of violence and militarism. Defeat through victory Just as how at the end of slavery in the British territories 1834 the slave masters were compensated, so in the period at the end of apartheid the West intensified the neo-liberal agenda of privatisation, liberalization and de regulation so that the architects of apartheid and their black allies could enrich themselves.

Firstly, through IMF and the World Bank the basic rights to education, housing, health care and decent wages have been eroded. This has meant that the African poor have borne the brunt of the world capitalist depression. When Alan Greenspan, (former head of the Federal Reserve in the USA) noted that this capitalist depression has been the worst since 1920, he neglected to note that the poor and the exploited in Africa bore the brunt of this capitalist depression. Food riots in Senegal, Ivory Coast, South Africa, Egypt, Somalia and the Cameroons are the outward signs of the stirrings of a new liberation movement where the peoples of Africa are demanding food, clothing, shelter and access to proper health care.

Secondly, African liberation now requires that the people control their governments and that issues of financial planning and budgeting are discussed in the villages, townships and cities of Africa. In Africa, the politics of retrogression has become the norm, and the leadership has taken – to cultural proportions - the tendency to turn their backs on the people as soon as they take office. Hence, though the African Union has stipulated that no leader can come to power through military coup leaders now resort to electoral theft as evidenced recently in Kenya and Zimbabwe. There is now an urgent need to create new democratic institutions to strengthen popular participation and representation. Parliamentary democracy on its own is not enough; it must be supplemented with and strengthened by other popular institutions and associations like the local governments, cooperative movements, independent workers, women, student and youth organizations, assemblies or organizations for the environmental concerns and for minority rights, and so forth A new leadership must ensure that this is the dominant political culture, with enough flexibility to allow for changes when changes are needed to strengthen and further consolidate that culture.

This new political culture will eventually shift power from the current corrupt and unrepresentative political groupings, to local communities whose chosen representatives will be accountable to the interests of these local communities first not those of a small center that monopolizes power in the national political groupings.

Thirdly, in the midst of the millions dying from the AIDS pandemic the African governments are being coerced to cut delivery of health care. The provision of health for the masses of the people represents one of the fundamental goals of liberation in this era. All across the continent the requirements for a healthy life are pressing when the poor are seeking environments with clean air, clean water, and neighbourhoods cleared of mosquito holding areas and homes that are not dilapidated.

LIBERATION AND ENVIRONMENTAL REPAIR

Environmental repair and environmental justice form the fourth link in the chain of liberation in this new century. All across the continent the present leaders glorify the extraction of petroleum resources without regard for the health and safety of the peoples. From the North of Africa down to the Namibian coast petroleum companies are looting African oil while destroying the environment. Nigeria represents an extreme example of where environmental racism abounds and where a small clique is enriched while the majority of the peoples are exploited.

As much as 76 per cent of all the natural gas from Petroleum production in Nigeria is flared compared to 0.6 per cent in USA, 4.3 per cent in the UK, 21.0 per cent in Libya. The flaring is one of the most severe of the numerous hazards to which the peoples of the Delta and the Rivers States are exposed. At temperatures of 1,300 to 1,400 degrees centigrade, the multitude of flares in the Delta heat up everything, causing noise pollution, and producing CO2, VOC, CO, NOx and particulates around the clock. The emission of CO2 from gas flaring in Nigeria releases 35 million tons of CO2 a year and 12 million tons of methane, which means that Nigerian oil fields contribute more in global warming than the rest of the world together. (Claude Ake, 1996)

It is in Africa where the petroleum companies are engaged in crimes against Africans and crimes against nature. Many of the gas flares are situated very close to villages, sometimes within a hundred metres of homes of ordinary citizens. Petroleum companies have been flaring at some sites for 24 hours a day for more than 30 years. Despite this record, the standard view of environmental management, is that the basic rights of private property and of profit maximization, come before the health and welfare of the peoples of Nigeria in general, and in particular, the peoples who live in the Niger Delta.

Concerns for environmental justice are kept subservient to concerns for economic efficiency and capital accumulation. Successive governments in Nigeria have been willing accomplices to this degradation, the oil companies are protected while the health and welfare of Nigerian society suffers irreparable. The cuts in the social wage of the population make it impossible for local communities to support health clinics and there is an absence of drugs in most rural hospitals. The oil revenue is recycled to prop up the political class. Since 1958, Royal Dutch Shell has extracted billions from the lands of the Niger Delta. It is in this situation where a movement has developed called Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta.

Should African freedom fighters be supporting the armed struggles in the Niger Delta when we are presented with the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta? Acts of militarism even in the face of the keenest oppression can only be supported in the present era when all other forms of popular political mobilization have been exhausted. This is the concrete lesson from the wars in Sierra Leone and “the revolutionary forces of Foday Sanko.” We have also learnt the limits of armed revolutionary struggles from the wars of liberation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. From the military campaign of Kabila, the intervention by Wamba dia Wamba, the senseless wars between Angola, Rwanda, Uganda, Zimbabwe and Namibia along with prolonged fighting in Eastern Congo there are clear lessons for liberation.

These acts of militarism and war force revolutionaries to grasp the meanings of liberation and liberation movements today.

The legacies of the defeat in the Congo The Congo stands at the heart of Africa and peace in the Congo will have a tremendous impact on social reconstruction and transformation in Africa. Regional cooperation between truly democratic states will change the African Union and there will be a quantum change in the politics of Africa when the ideas and principles of African wildfire spread to all parts of the continent. In order to forestall the full operation of the Peace and Security Council of the African Union, the United States has established the US Africa command to remilitarize Africa at the moment when the driving force behind African liberation is the peace and social justice movements. It is this peace and justice movement that inspired the continent wide opposition to the Africa command so much so that the US government has to resort to covert agreements to shore up the allies who are secretly colluding with western militarism.

Potentially were countries such as Angola, the DR Congo and the Sudan democratic states, they could collectively put together a major program of self-development, funded entirely by them for the whole Eastern and Southern Africa region. The West understands this and it is for this reason that the European Union and the USA are not supporters of peace and demilitarisation in Africa. In the face of the crisis of US capitalism the Chinese have emerged as a major force in the political economy of Africa. This new engagement has been significantly different from the period when the political leaders of China had supported the decolonization of Africa and provided support for Tanzania to build the Tazara railroad.

From liberation to emancipation As we come to the end of the first decade of a new century this moment provides one other opportunity to reflect on the tasks of liberation in the last fifty years and to assess how far the tasks and goals of liberation were realized. The crisis of the nature of human existence is manifest in all spheres of social relations; in the relations between humans (men and women), in the relationship between humans and the environment and in the forms of economic organization. It is now clearer that African liberation is not possible within the capitalist mode of production. When Walter Rodney wrote the book, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, he had stated unequivocally that capitalism stands in the path of further human transformation. Now this is even clearer with the nested loop of environmental crimes, food crisis, economic terrorism, pandemics and the absence of representative democratic forms.

African women are leading the call for a new definition of liberation beyond one where African males occupy the positions of power of European and send their children to schools to be educated in European languages and in the ideas of patriarchy, domination over nature and private property. Since the period of the anti-apartheid struggles there has been a deepening of the understanding of liberation to encompass issues that are common on both sides of the Atlantic such as regional economic integration, democratisation, the end to genocide, reparations, the emancipation of women, the end to sexism and heterosexism, the humanization of the male and the humanization of the planet. The African Liberation Struggle of Tomorrow How can Africans be validated as human beings and lay the foundations for a new sense of personhood? This question has been sharpened by the major turning point in human transformations with the revolutionary technological changes that carried potential for healing as well as the potential for destruction. Books on Apartheid medicine have pointed to the ways in which Africans are being used as guinea pigs. The questions of the worth of the value of African life, of human life will be contested in the 21st century.

Millions are dying from preventable diseases and the health infrastructure has deteriorated while health workers leave Africa in droves. Where Information technology and robotics are changing the nature of work, education and leisure and the traditional understanding economics, the advances in gene splitting technologies are changing the very ways in which plants and animals are produced. The information revolution is bringing telecommunications technology to most communities across the continent and the peoples are now able to keep in constant contact with their village communities. African youths are using this technology to bring knowledge and information to others in order to break the control over information. Imperialism seeks to tap into the cognitive skills of the peoples while the governments look to Europe for models of education.

Africa is the home of the richest biodiversity on the planet. While some leaders are struggling for land, the biotech and pharmaceutical companies are patenting African medicinal plants. The threat of the major biotech companies to patent life forms along with the new rules of the World Trade Organization relating to intellectual property rights contain the seeds of undermining all of the gains that were made in the context of the struggle for self determination. By presenting life as an “invention” the biotechnical companies and the food corporations seek to eliminate the African farmer altogether. It is against this background that Africa is providing the lead in the World Trade Organization against the patenting of life forms. In the book, the Liberal Virus: Permanent War and the Americanization of the World, Samir Amin has warned of the dangers to the pauperization of the majority of farmers in Africa if African government follow the model of agriculture of Europe and the United States.

AFRICAN LIBERATION AND THE CENTRALITY OF GRASSROOTS WOMEN

Whether it is in the area of food production, health care, care for the sick or the education of the youth there is a disproportionate burden that is carried by women of the grassroots. One of the most important new development in the debates on revolution and transformation in the 21st century lies in the centrality of the place of the black women of the producing classes in the struggle for social transformation. This discussion which is going on in Africa and in the Americas emanates from a long tradition of struggle by black women and the determination that the black woman would never be again be marginalized in the African revolution.

The ensuing debates on women’s rights, racism, class alliances, environmental racism, gender and social reproduction hold the seeds of the most profound understanding of the limits of the concentration on productive forces that was the hallmark of radical politics for the generation after 1917. The question of how the understanding of the oppression of women is linked to the household as a site of politics brings home the point that one cannot be politically progressive and support any form of domination or intolerance. The women's movement successfully challenged the labor theory of value and influenced our understanding of the centrality of household production in the capitalist labor process. These revolutionary women have deepened our understanding of the importance of care and that the discipline of economics will remain one branch of capitalist ideas unless it takes into consideration care and reproductive capabilities of women.

Female labor power was never calculated in the economic models of nineteenth century revolutionaries. Black women such as Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman yesterday and women such as Angela Davis and Nawal El Saadawi today placed the question of the liberation of women on the political agenda. Throughout the twentieth century the women’s movement internationally made great strides in placing the gender, care and housework as fundamental questions of revolution. However, in the main, this mainstream movement was dominated by conceptions of progress and reason that emanated from Western Europe.

It was the radical black feminists who have reflected on how the growth of emancipatory ideas has contributed towards the project of our collective emancipation. By framing and ending the separation of the woman question from the other sites of struggles and making gender transformation the central question of the struggle, the progressive women inside the left movement and in the radical formations have taken the political lead in the fight for justice. Hence in Africa today, the combined energies of the women from all parts of the Sudan are seeking to place the issues of rape, sexual terrorism, violation and gender oppression at the center of the debate on the future of the Sudan. Fundamentalism of all forms represents one component of the counter revolutionary period in which we live.

UBUNTU

There is need for a new orientation on liberation to conceptualize the values of ubuntu as the basis for liberation. The concept incorporates values of sharing, cooperation and spiritual health. Ubuntu, emancipatory politics and reparations are the key concepts for liberation tomorrow. The attainment of ubuntu is bound up with the political union of Africa. The concrete understanding of the cultural unity of Africa and the contributions of the African peoples towards human transformation are being refined every day through day to day struggles. Cheik Anta Diop who has studied the linguistic basis of African Unity emphasized the importance of African languages in the push for continental unity. African Liberation will be meaningless if it is not rooted in African languages and in the genius of the African woman. The aspirations of Diop, which were outlined in his book on the Economic and Cultural Basis for a Federated State, form the core of the African Union of tomorrow. Diop was clear that his idea on industrialization and regeneration of Africa was not based simply on the development of the productive forces without reference to the working people of Africa. Diop wrote clearly of the requirement of effective representation of women at all levels of governance.

The future of African liberation will be informed by a new mode of politics where ordinary African men, women and children will be able to revel in the idea of Africa for the Africans at home and abroad and tear down the borders of oppression and control which were created in 1885. The future of Pan Africanism and the AU must reinforce the traditional respect for the elders and should raise up a new tradition, respect for young people. This new tradition calls for Africa to lead the world in the use of all means to support the emancipation of African women and girls and to end all forms of oppression.

This is the essence of reparations, peace and justice!

*Horace Campbell is the author of the well known book, Rasta and Resistance: From Marcus Garvey to Walter Rodney. His latest book, Reclaiming Zimbabwe: The Exhaustion of the Patriarchal Model of Liberation is published by David Philip of Cape Town, South Africa.

**Please send comments to or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/355/46809obama.jpgIn a nuanced article that borrows from various disciplines such as philosophy and physics, Horace Campbell argues that Barrack Obama would only be trapped by a conservative and anti-people social and economic system if those "who are being drawn into the audacity of hope do not build their own political movement and political organization." He argues that only "only a bottom up movement can prevent Barack Obama from becoming a racial decoy for the Wall Street forces."

INTRODUCTION

The new force of the youth has now made itself felt in US presidential politics in 2008. This force is manifest in the tremendous outpouring of the collectivities of different races, classes, genders, sexual orientation and ages coming forward to support the candidacy of Barack Obama. Barack Obama was born of an African father from Kenya and a mother of European extraction from Kansas in the heartland of the United States. Obama is drawing on both heritages and is campaigning to make a break with the binary categories that perpetuates divisions and the politics of exclusion. This break is a fundamental concept in fractal theory and opens up questions of the laws of unintended consequences in politics. It is the combination of the new energy and light that emerges from the Barrack Obama campaign that sparks questions on the need for a new framework for analyzing politics. This is the framework based on truth, justice, peace and a new mode of politics. In South Africa, the term emerged to point to the ways that in which we share a common humanity.

This short statement will argue that after nearly thirty years of traditional republican and democratic politics there is a desire for hope. It is hope that goes beyond the audacity of the campaign of Obama or the kind of balancing which is inscribed in his book, The Audacity of Hope.

This hope cannot be quantified and this absence of quantification bears positive and negative possibilities. The positive possibilities can emerge from the intentionality of those forces who can build on the new self organizing tools for self emancipation and for moving the politics of this society to a new level. Without the involvement of a new constituency in politics, the Barack Obama campaign can only go so far to ignite the imagination of the youth but this fire will burn out if there are no self similar processes being developed in spaces of peace, spaces of hope and non racialized spaces.

Even if Obama were to be elected to be the President of the United States, the conditions/realities for the overwhelming majority of the citizens (especially blacks, browns, and First nation peoples) will not change overnight. The economic recession, the joblessness of millions and the massive military machine will expose whether this election discourse on change can be transformed into setting in motion a new mobilization of popular forces to struggle for a new mode of politics and economics. In the conclusion we will note that though Obama is no revolutionary, he is caught in a revolutionary moment and his message of hope has tapped into the desire for peace, reconstruction and justice…

Barack Obama is campaigning on the basis of change. In this campaign, his ideas may not be totally formed in relation to the fundamental questions facing the society, but what is clear is that his movement has tapped into a force, energy force that at this moment is unstoppable. The same youths who have grown up in the era of the information revolution and the platforms such as Face book/ My Space are using new social networking techniques that baffle the political pundits reared in the universities that taught the physics of Isaac Newton and the derivative mechanical concepts of Adam Smith and John Locke. Polling and the laws of predictability that emanate from this mechanical era has fallen short of grasping the new energy as thousands of new actors and actresses surge on to the stage of politics to identify with the break from the old politics of fear and so called War on Terror.

Millions are no longer deterred by the fear mongering of the Bush/Cheney leadership or the imagery of Islamic peoples as terrorists. Decent Christians are now seeking the gospel of peace and love instead of hate and religious fundamentalism.

UBUNTU AND THE AUDACITY OF HOPE

Barack Obama is opposed to the hierarchies of the whites over blacks and browns and uses his own life as a metaphor for calling on citizens to come together to save the planet earth. Obama has gone on record to register his opposition to the structured existence that places humans as atomized individuals without responsibility to family or society. Atomized individuals are open to manipulation by the media and are open to the Hobbesian thinking that society must be based on conflict and confrontation or ‘war of every man against every man.’ This manipulation is one form of psychological warfare against the citizens of the United States…

The idea of change that echoes from the Obama campaign has been calling for citizens to place themselves at the center and to empower themselves, firstly with their positive thinking, “Yes we can,” and more importantly by organizing to intervene in the political process. In response to this call, a cross section of the citizens of the United States from Iowa to Nebraska, from Idaho to Georgia and from Washington to Louisiana have come forward to seek the new ideas of twenty first century change. In the process there are new constituencies that have found their voice. This has led to a level of spontaneity that one could see in the muchwatched video- Yes we can.

Can the old media and the old ideas blunt the quantum leap in the consciousness of the youth that is taking place at the moment? This is the question that emerges from the discourse of the political talking heads on the same television stations that were enthusiastic cheer leaders for the illegal war against the peoples of Iraq.

These political commentators who were brought up to reproduce the misinformation of the media that tormented young people and led them into depression and isolation cannot fully understand the call of the Obama campaign to the youth that the change must begin in the youth themselves and that that have to believe in their capacity for change.

The political pundits of the mainstream media have been in the main brought up within the context of the hierarchies of Newtonian physics have been confounded by the bottom up, responsive, plural and holistic message of the Yes we can campaign.

These hierarchies have been at the base of the faulty democratic traditions of the United States that did not recognize native peoples as humans and rendered African Americans as three fifths of a human being. The same democratic tradition did not recognize women as citizens. Obama is not calling for this deformed reference to be the basis for change, he is exhorting all classes and all ages to be part of the solution, by drawing from a different tradition, the progressive traditions that sought to enrich and enlarge the meaning of democracy…

The unique experiences that Obama learnt when he was an organizer on the South Side of Chicago taught him the humility to listen to the ordinary person and it is this methodical organizing like the repetition of self similarity that one can discern in the organizational skills of Obama. The political victories in Idaho, Nebraska, the Virgin Islands and Missouri followed the scaling pattern of Obama that built up a profile in every district and in every part of the country so that he could not be pigeon-holed. After the land slide victory in South Carolina, Bill Clinton sought to compare Obama to Jesse Jackson and to limit his appeal to African Americans citizens. But the citizens of Washington State, Missouri, Louisiana and Maine voted with their heads and their hearts in response to new organizing thrust that is making the quantum leap in US politics a possibility. This leap has been reinforced by the nested loops of new social networks wired through the spaces of the information revolution.

After these victories the momentum began to build and citizens in Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia signaled that they were another link in the chain of this momentous political intervention. Young people have organized themselves into new formations and have been energized by the promise that Obama would want to move in a new direction. In the past forty years the established parties benefited from the demobilization of the youth and unlike most liberal democratic states the numbers of citizens voting in the USA has been consistently below the numbers of other western democracies. Apathy and withdrawal from the system have been the outcome of the absence of realistic alternatives for the majority of the poor in the United States. This absence of participation by the youth has benefited the corporations and special interests to the point where there had been no incentive for the two parties to remove the restrictions that deter young people from participating in politics. The advent of Barack Obama is generating the long sought after alternative, hence the unprecedented turnout for the caucuses and primaries…

New experiences are being created in the midst of a new kind of political campaign that builds on these networks. The traditional media (newspapers, radio and Television stations) and the campaign of the Clintons have made clear statements about the organizational experience of the team around Hilary Clinton (Madeline Albright, Richard Holbrooke, Sandy Berger, Bill Clinton etc). Yet, it is this same experience rooted in the mechanistic hierarchies of Newtonian physics that is becoming the albatross of the political campaign of Hilary Clinton. Her experiences are very similar to the leader of the Republican Party, John McCain. John McCain is proud of his support for the wars against the peoples of Iraq and the merchants of death. Hilary Clinton has sought to demonstrate to the club of militarists that she would oil the war machinery while millions are without basic jobs.

Without fresh ideas when US citizens wanted a clean break with the militarism that brought the quagmire and fiasco in Iraq, Hilary Clinton could not understand that she had to tell the people that she was wrong in supporting the unjust war in Iraq. This is politics of truth that is now needed in the society. But from the position of Hilary Clinton on a possible military strike against Iran and more importantly, her base in the constituency of the financial speculators of New York State exposed the fact that thought she is campaigning to change conditions for women, she has not broken with the militarists of the society. Decency would require that Hilary Clinton rewrite her texts on her responses to war and genocide during the Presidency of Bill Clinton. In this campaign her character has emerged especially in the case of the primary in Florida. Hilary Clinton’s willingness to claim a victory in Florida when she had said she would not brought out her true character to all peoples, black and white, women and men…

The Obama campaign has been able to draw on the organizational capacities of those who want to turn truth into a political force so that the society can turn from war to peace. This is the basic force behind the momentum of Barrack Obama and his experiences of Chicago has been able to translate this (peace thrust) in order to build up the electoral profile, bringing new teams in every part of the country and creating new training spaces for the energetic to donate, participate and learn the possibilities for change. Yet, because of the limitations of the electoral system that mitigates against direct participation of the citizen beyond voting, it is urgent that those who have understood the need for a new politics build new organizations at new sites of politics.

This new urgency is especially the case in the peace movement that has been unable to build on to the aspirations of the masses of the people for justice. Five years after the illegal occupation of Iraq, the activists for peace yearn for new forms of expression and hence there is a slow learning curve that demonstrations without follow up will only frustrate those who want new organizations. In 2003 at the start of the war against the peoples of Iraq there were millions of peoples on the streets.

Yet the established leadership of the peace movement was not able to take the question of the illegal war to the court of international opinion to that the immorality of the war could be brought before the International Criminal Court in The Hague…

Momentum means that when a person or object is moving, regardless of what it is - the harder it is to stop that person or object. When one consider "momentum" in terms of politics, this means that if a presidential candidate, such as Obama, sees and/or experiences a gain and/or surge in his message of peace, hope and change with millions singing, Yes we can, there could be nothing, not even bullets that can intervene in this momentum. This is the basis for a possible quantum leap in US politics to bring a new mode of politics for the 21st Century.

Obama is not a revolutionary but he has been caught up in a revolutionary moment in world history. The electoral campaign of Obama is riding on a wave of peace and change desired by ordinary Americans. There are limitations to the electoral project insofar as the task of restructuring US society is a gigantic one that cannot be done overnight. Obama may not be the solution, but is a small step in the direction of making the break with the old binary conceptions that dominated enlightenment thinking. It is the laws of unintended consequences that will emanate from this break that can lead to a new direction with the new positive bottom up organizing for transformation to a democratic society where all can live in peace.

A clear understanding of the nature of US politics and limitation of the structures of the in-built conservativsim of the system means that Barrack Obama would only be trapped by this social system if those who are being drawn into the audacity of hope do not build their own political movement and political organization. It is only a bottom up movement hat can prevent Barack Obama from becoming a racial decoy for the Wall Street forces. Self mobilization, self organization and emancipatory ideas will create new spaces so that the political space will be expanded beyond the media, the lobbyists and the ritual spaces of the White House, Congress and the Senate Chambers. Safe and clean neighborhoods, children who are reared to respect all human beings and a society that support repair of the planet earth awaits these new self organizing forces.

The campaign of Barack Obama is the story of hundreds of thousands of ordinary people. These are the people who are participating because they believe that politics can mean something again. It is apt to conclude with the words of Martin Luther King Jr.:

“Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism and militarism.”

* Horace Campbell is Professor of Political Science at Syracuse University.

** Extracted by the author from "Barack Obama, Fractals And Momentum In Politics”

*** Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

For those wishing to watch/listen to Obama's speech, you can do so at:

Horace Campbell look at Bush's visit as an attempt to further militarize the continent and consolidate US holding.

One year after the announcement that he United States government was going to accelerate the militarization of Africa, President George Bush is embarking on a journey to Africa to coerce African societies to align themselves with the neo-conservative agenda of the present US administration. President George Bush will visit five African countries between February 15 -21. The countries are Benin, Ghana, Liberia, Rwanda and Tanzania. George Bush is a lame-duck President who cannot visit real global players so this visit to Africa is an effort to shore up the credentials of the neo-liberal forces in Africa while promoting the conservative ideas of abstinence as the basis of the fight against the HIV –AIDS pandemic.

Exactly one year ago, in February 2007, President Bush of the United States of America announced that the Defense Department would create a new Africa Command to coordinate U.S. government interests on the continent. Under this plan all governmental agencies of the US would fall under the military, i.e, USAID, State Department, US Department of Energy, Treasury, and Department of Education etc. Already within the US academic community, the interests of the Pentagon has been placed before all other interests.

In pursuance of the plans for the militarization of Africa, the US Department of Defense announced the appointment of General William “Kip” Ward (an African American) as Head of this new Military command. On September 28, 2007, Ward as confirmed as the head of this new imperial military structure and on October 1 2007, the new command was launched in Stuttgart, Germany. The major question that is being posed by African peace activists and by concerned citizens is, why now? Why is a lame duck President seeking to gain more support in Africa?

One answer may lay in the diminished power of the United States in the aftermath of the Fiasco in Iraq and Afghanistan. I will maintain in this reflection that it is urgent that peace activists who want reconstruction and transformation in Africa oppose the plans for the remilitarization of Africa under the guise of fighting terrorism in Africa.

Why Now?

At the end of World War II the United States had emerged as a leading political, economic and military force in world politics. It was in this period when the US established unified military command structures such as the European Command, the Pacific Command, the Southern Command, the Northern Command, and Central Command. Each command covers an area of responsibility (AOR). When this command structure was being refined, Africa was an after thought in so far as the United States had relegated the exploitation of Africa to the former European colonial exploiters. Hence, Africa fell under the European Command with its headquarters in Germany. Africa had not been included in the geographic combatant commands in so far as it was expected that France, Britain, Belgium, Germany, Spain, Portugal and other colonial powers would retain military forces to guarantee western ‘interests’ in Africa. The collapse of the Portuguese colonial forces in Mozambique, Angola, Guinea and Sao Tome and the collapse of the white racist military forces in Rhodesia gradually led to a rethinking by the US military. During this period the US had labeled all African freedom fighters as terrorists. When the US was allied with Osama Bin Laden and Jonas Savimbi, Nelson Mandela had been branded a terrorist.

Central Command

After the Iranian revolution in 1978-1979, the US established the Central Command. CENTCOM based in Florida, USA was responsible for the US military activities in East Africa and the Horn of Africa (Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Seychelles, Somalia and the Sudan). The Pacific Command based in Hawaii was responsible for the Comoros, Diego Garcia, Madagascar and Mauritius. Added to these commands in six continents are the logistical command structures such as the Joint Forces Command (JFCOM), Space Command (SPACECOM), the Strategic Command (STRATCOM), the Special Operations Command (SOCOM) and the Transport Command (TRANSCOM).

At the end of the era of formal apartheid, the US military had established the Africa Crisis Response Initiative (ACRI) with the goal of supporting humanitarianism and ending genocide. It was this same US government that had lobbied the United Nations to withdraw troops from Rwanda in the midst of the fastest genocide in Africa. Two years later, the US supported the militarist forces in Burundi even while publicly renouncing the genocidal violence and the war in Burundi.

Throughout this period, the US military had been cautious about involvement in Africa in the aftermath of the experience in Mogadishu/Somalia in 1993. This caution changed after the events of September 2001. In the next year the USA updated its ACRI “plans” to organize the African Contingency Operations Training Assistance (ACOTA). Under ACOTA, African troops were supposed to be provided with offensive military weaponry, including rifles, machine guns, and mortars. The Africa Regional Peacekeeping Program (ARP) was also established in order to equip, train, and support troops from selected African countries that are involved in “peacekeeping” operations. Additionally, the US government launched a Pan Sahel anti-terrorism initiative (later called Trans Sahara Counter Terror Initiative). Behind these grand mutations lay one clear fact. The USA wanted to control the oil resources from Africa. Presently Africa supplies more petroleum to the USA than the Middle East and US corporations wanted the US military to guarantee the dominance of US oil conglomerates.

Exposing US militarism and the failures in the Middle East

After launching two major wars from the United States Central Command, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq pointed to the reality that high technology weapons cannot guarantee military superiority in battles. It was in the face of the quagmire that the US faced in Iraq when the United States government announced the formation of a new command structure called, Africom.

What did we learn from the visit of George Bush to the Middle East in January 2008? Even the friends and allies of the USA (such as the leadership of Saudi Arabia and Egypt) warned that the US could not get anywhere as long as the issue of the Israeli occupation of Palestine does not end. And, lo and behold, the people of Gaza took matters in their hands a few days after the visit of Bush to Egypt to bring home to the world the reality that there can be no peace in Palestine when there is illegal Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands along with the expansion of Jewish settlements in Palestine. By breaking out of the blockade of Israel and breaking through the walls that divided Gaza from Egypt. The citizens of Gaza were literally breaking the silence in the international community over the crimes against the peoples of Palestine. In the process these citizens placed the Egyptian leadership on the defensive and clarified the true alliance between Israel, Egypt and the United States. In the face of the protracted struggles of the Palestinian peoples, the future of US domination in the Middle East remains unclear, hence the political leadership in the USA is seeking new bases of support in Africa to base US troops and to strengthen the US oil corporations. In other parts of North Africa there are leaders who proclaim support for the rights of the self determination of the peoples of Palestine yet, covertly and overtly work with the government of the USA.

The governments of Morocco and Algeria, in particular, stand out as military allies of the USA while posturing that they oppose Israeli occupation. The government of Algeria is an accomplice in fabricating terrorism in the Sahel in order to justify its military alliance with the USA. Similarly, the government of Libya projects itself as a progressive government but is seeking to ingratiate itself with the neo-conservative forces in Washington. Both Algeria and Libya are important producers of petroleum and natural gas.

African Oil -The real objective

The invasion of Iraq, the instability on the border between Turkey and Iraq (with the threat of a Turkish invasion of Iraq), the stalemate over the future of Lebanon and the continued struggles for self determination in Palestine has sharpened the contradictions between imperialism and the peoples of the Middle East. In the face of this situation there are scholars who have argued and presented evidence that the government of the United States has been “fabricating terrorism” in Africa. This fabrication of terrorism carries with it racial stereotypes to support US military action in Africa. The hypocrisy of the US government in this region is manifest in the fact that while there is a major campaign against genocide and against genocidal violence in Darfur, the government of the USA cooperates with the government of the Sudan on the grounds of “intelligence sharing to fight terrorism.” It is in the Sudan where the neo-conservatives are stoking the fires of war in order to get access to the oil resources of the Sudan.

Under the guise of fighting terrorism the government of the US has been involved in many illegal activities such as kidnapping citizens in the so called extraordinary rendition.

Challenging the European Union and China in Africa

The changed realities in the Middle East and in Africa have been accompanied by a new activist posture of China in Africa. Outmaneuvered in Asia by China and challenged by the rising democratic forces in Latin America, the spaces for the accumulation of capital by US capitalists are dwindling.

In the past, when there was a crisis such as the period after the Vietnam War, the USA could transfer the crisis to other countries via the IMF. But the European Union has challenged this calculus and created the Euro as an alternative to the US dollar.
It will not be possible for the IMF to transfer the crisis to Asia, Europe, India, the Middle East or Latin America.
This means that there is only one area of the world where the US imperialists will have free rein. This is in Africa. It is also in Africa where there is a movement against the economic terrorism of neo-liberalism and the unjust conditionalities of the IMF and World Bank.

African responses

Thus far the majority of African states have refused to host the Africa Command. Despite the aggressive military and diplomatic efforts by the US government, not even the closest “partners’ of the imperialists have supported this call for the Africa Command. There is only one state (Liberia) that has openly called for the basing of the US Africa command on African soil. Though the United States has 5,458 “distinct and discreet military installations around the world there are pressures from the military-industrial and oil complex for the USA to have more effective resources in Africa to defend US capitalism.

For the past twenty years the US government had been building political assets in Kenya to pave the way for ‘security cooperation.” Kenya would have been one of the stops on this visit but the political struggles in Kenya made it impossible for George Bush to visit Kenya. It is this country that has participated in the so called extra-ordinary rendition.
More than 90 persons were captured with apparent U.S. involvement after they fled fighting in Somalia. The prisoners were rendered on a plane chartered by the Kenyan government into secret detention in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Uganda would have been another stop on the visit, but the continued war in the North and the clear dictatorial character of the Museveni government made this stop undesirable.

One other undesirable ally is Ethiopia. The government of Meles Zenawi has joined in the efforts to fabricate terrorism in Somalia and has invaded Somalia. Yet, despite this alliance, Bush and the planners in Washington did not deem it safe for Bush to visit Ethiopia.
Bush could not go to South Africa at this time because Jacob Zuma is the President of the ANC. He could not go to Nigeria because the Nigerians are opposed to the so called war on terror. So Bush had to find a country where he could go to. The US settled on Tanzania and Rwanda.

In West Africa, the US President is going to Benin, Liberia and Ghana. It will be the task of the political activists and democratic forces in these societies to demonstrate against the US and the plans for Africom in West Africa.

Peace loving citizens must oppose the militarization of Africa.

In 1980 when the US Central Command was being debated the citizens of the Middle East and North Africa did not sufficiently engage the full meaning of this new military structure. After the militarization of the Middle East, five major wars and millions dead, it is urgent that peace activists oppose the plans to bring Africa closer into this arc of warfare.

The quest for peace in Africa has been sharpened by the crude materialism of the present period and the intensified exploitation of Africans in the era of plunder and looting. Contemporary looting is hidden behind the discourses of liberalization, privatization, the freedom of markets and the Global war on terror. Racist images of war and “anarchy” and “failed states” are mobilized by the international media to justify the launch of the US military command structure for Africa. Those who support real cooperation, solidarity and anti racism must oppose the US Africa command.

We should remember the statement of the columnist of the New York Times, Thomas Friedman who had written, ‘The hidden hand of the market will never work without the hidden fist – McDonald’s cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the designer of the F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley’s technologies is called the United States Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.’ [1]

[1] Thomas Friedman, ‘A Manifesto for the Fast World’, New York Times Magazine, March, 1989.

* Horace Campbell is Professor of Political Science at Syracuse University.

** Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

Yesterday I heard a commentary on the BBC on genocide and today I read with interest Mukoma's intervention. It is good that the discussion on revolution and revolutionaries has begun. (http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/45291) There can be no revolution without revolutionary theories and it was good that Mukoma went back to Cabral.

But we must remember that Cabral told us that when the revolution breaks out it would be like a seed that has long awaited germination. Kenya has a long tradition of progressive organizing and revolutionaries from the period of Dedan Kimathi. Revolution may break out in Kenya but revolutionary intellectuals must be sure that they are on the side of the people who want change.

While this discussion on revolution is taking place, we must seek ways to stop the theft and manipulation by those in power. My biggest worry is the role of the US. If we remember that after the Ethiopian fraud in 2005, the US and specifically, Jendayi Frazier worked to rehabilitate Meles and supported their incursion into Somalia. All of the evidence of the alliance between the US and the present Kibaki regime should alert us to the ways in which Kenya is being used as a based to subvert peace and transition in all parts of Eastern Africa. Jendayi and the US representatives on the ground are up to no good. I can agree with Mukoma on the call for fresh elections between Kibaki and Raila.

WE must exhaust constitutional, legal and political means to ensure that war of the kind that broke out in the Ivory Coast does not break out in Kenya. This is not far from the surface and while we are critiquing Raila and the ODM, we have to be aware that there are forces at work bigger than Raila. Progressive and if need be revolutionary Pan Africanists cannot be on the side of the killers who are now in power. All lives of the poor are important.

The Rwanda genocidaire (living in Nairobi since 1994) is being protected by the present group in power. The "rebel" leader from Burundi who is subverting the peace process in Burundi is hiding in Kenya. Both the Tanzanian and South African governments has requested that the Kenyans hand over this killer, but to no avail. Both the US and the Kenyans are holding these forces (Rwandan and Burundi) in reserve for their long term plans. Kenya is also the rear base for the war that is being planned in the Sudan. This does not even bring us to the fabricated terrorist campaign against the people of Somalia. We cannot compare Raila to the Ukrainian movement and overlook these realities.

So, at this moment we have to be very careful about revolutionary language. WE do not want any kind of armed confrontation between the poor in Kenya. All forms of non-violent political struggles must be exhausted. This means that we have to be responsible. We cannot point to Raila's potential alliance with imperialism while overlooking the current clear alliance between the Kibaki regime and the US military. Look at the base that was recently built in Wajir for use by the US military.

Mukoma has rightly pointed to the fact that the police have killed over 500 innocent young people. Brother Mukoma should rightly identify these persons as Mungiki. This was a terror group that was being held in reserve. It is the kind of militia that was organized to terrorize poor men and women. And to give them the necessary, resources, they placed them into the pyramid schemes of the Nairobi Stock Exchange. The past Ministry of Internal Affairs and the thugs who mobilized Mungiki killed members of Mungiki that they could not control. Hence, there should be a call for an investigation into the police killings of these 500 young men. This is to ensure that those who want to turn on and off these young people for their purposes will be exposed before the poor Kikuyu workers, trades and youth. This is especially the case for poor Kikuyu women.

These terrorists would terrorize poor women about cultural practices yet not say a word of the imperialist culture of the settlers in the Rift Valley. All sections of the Kenyan ruling class are against the rise of the political consciousness of the workers, poor peasants and itinerant traders. The rise in consciousness will be a potent force for the revolution. Revolution needs revolutionaries. If we are looking toward the future organization of the poor in Kenya toward revolution, then we must identify those in power at the moment as the enemy of the poor. One cannot criticize Raila as a capitalist owning the molasses company and overlook those who currently dominate the Nairobi Stock Exchange. This criticism of Raila without a concomitant criticism of Trancentury and those behind Vision 2030 will not go over well for those who are thinking of revolution. For the moment, there are no revolutionary leaders in the mainstream political parties. But while those of us who are organizing for the break are engaged with this recent spontaneous combustion, ponder the nature of our involvement, let us target the primary contradictions (Kibaki, the leaders of the Nairobi Stock Exchange and US imperialism.

We can place this group on the defensive by calling for the enactment of the UN Stolen Assets Recovery Initiative. Bring back Goldenberg and Anglo Leasing to the front pages by implicating the British government as collaborators. This means that Moi and the allies of Kibaki in the Anglo Leasing scandal will be further exposed. And in the process, any future government will know that they cannot steal with impunity. I found it odd that the criticism of Mukoma were directed at Raila and not at the capitalist class in general.

Struggles over transparency and the use of the Public Accounts Committee of the Parliament will in the short run act as a way to educate the poor in Kenya. Ethnic manipulation is running its course. It can only survive by the use of intellectuals to support one-sided analysis. Those of us who supported the struggles for liberation in the Congo in 1998 understand the long-term consequences of the talk of revolution without real revolutionaries. After more than 2 million dead in the Congo, as intellectuals we have not done a proper summing up of that debacle. Philippe Wamba died while thinking through ways to reach the youth for a new revolution. He went to the source to be with the youth. War and partisan analysis will not do at this time. Our platforms must be different from the imperial media outlets.

Peace.

National elections were held in Kenya on December 27, 2007; the results of the Presidential election were announced three days later. Within minutes of the announcement that Mwai Kibaki had emerged as the winner, there were spontaneous acts of opposition to the government in all parts of the country. The opposition was especially intense among the jobless youths who had voted overwhelmingly for change. A ruling clique that had stolen billions of dollars in a period of five years had stolen the elections. This was the verdict of the poor. However, this verdict was obscured by ethnic alienation and the constant refrain by local and foreign intellectuals that the crisis and killings emanated from deep ‘tribal’ hostilities. This tribal narrative was intensified after the burning and killings of innocent civilians in a church, in Eldoret, in the Rift Valley region of Kenya. But while these killings had all of the hallmarks of the genocidal violence of Rwanda and Burundi, more importantly, they heightened the need for Kenyan society to step back from the brink of all out war. Violence and killings provided a feedback loop that threatened to engulf even the political leaders of the society.

This analysis argues that the calls for peace and reconciliation by the political and religious leaders will remain hollow until there are efforts to break from the recursive processes of looting, extra judicial killings, rape and violation of women, and general low respect for African lives.

This short commentary on the elections and the aftermath seeks to introduce a unified emancipatory approach: liberating humanity from the mechanical, competitive, and individualistic constraints of western philosophy, and re-unifying Kenyans with each other, the Earth, and spirituality. This analysis draws from fractal theory and seeks to place Africans as human beings at the center of the analysis. Fractal theory is founded on aspects of the African knowledge system and breaks the old tribal narratives that refer to Africans as sub humans needing Civilization, Christianity and Commerce.
Those who condemn the post-election violence in Kenya have failed to condemn the traditions of killings and economic terrorism in Kenya. It should be stated clearly that using African women as guinea pigs for western pharmaceuticals is just as outrageous as burning innocent women and children in churches. Rape and violation of women, and exploitation of the poor and of jobless youth have been overlooked by the commentators who focus on one component of the matrix of exploitation in Kenya -- ethnicity.

In tandem with much of the current discourse on fractal theory, this commentary is addressed to progressive intellectuals from Kenya and calls for a revolutionary paradigmatic transformation- one that is intrinsic to African knowledge systems and can be witnessed in practice in the everyday activities of African life. Revolutionary transformations are necessary to break from the processes that have been unleashed in Kenya and East Africa since British colonialism and the British Gulag. This break requires revolutionary ideas in Kenya, along with revolutionary leaders and new forms of political organization. Thus far, neo-liberal capitalism and neo-liberal democratic organizations, along with the focus on party organization have created leaders who organize for political power. These leaders are not even concerned about forming lasting political parties. Far more profound transformations are required in Kenya, beyond the winning of elections. However, until new ideas and new leaders emerge, the current struggles will serve to educate the poor on the limitations of the old politics and ethnic alliances that privilege sections of the Kenyan capitalist class.

The analysis is presented as a drama of three acts. The first act was played out in the form of the election campaign. The second act involved the drama after the announcement of the results and the violent reactions from all sections of the society. The third act of this drama continues to unfold with the call for a fractal analysis that will place revolutionary transformation as the central question on the political agenda in Kenya and East Africa.

Act One – The Struggles over the election and the campaign for the Presidency.

The Scene: Kenya had been the epi- center of imperial domination in East Africa from the period of British colonialism. Caroline Elkins in the book, Britain’s Gulag, has documented for posterity the extreme violence and murders bequeathed to the Kenyan political culture by the British government. At independence in December 1963, Britain handed over power to people who, in essence, agreed to act as junior partners with British capitalism in Eastern and Central Africa. This partnership included an acceptance by the ruling class in Kenya of the western European forms of land ownership that stated that Africans had to be modernized from their “tribal” and “backward” ways. For forty years, Kenya was presented as a success story where a parasitic middle class and a thriving Nairobi Stock Exchange (composed of foreign capital) sought to prove that capitalism could take root in Africa.

Act 1 Scene Two of this drama took the form of a campaign for the tenth Parliament of Kenya. The drama of the struggle for change in Kenya was played out before the world in the form of an electoral struggle that gripped the society for many months. At the end of Scene Two one of the principal props of this drama – the local media - reported that the results were like a “blood bath.” The headline screamed “ energized voters sweep out Vice President, Cabinet Ministers and seasoned politicians as wind of change blows across the country.” But the newspapers were not yet aware of the implications of using language like “blood bath” in their headlines. Every one awaited the final results of the news of who would be President. The results were being delayed while the votes were being cooked. As news of the parliamentary routing of the incumbent President and his allies in the Party of National Unity (PNU) splashed on the streets, on the screens and on text messages while the principal actors and actresses of the drama, the people of Kenya, sought spontaneous actions to ensure that they were not silenced by the power brokers who had placed themselves at the head of the movement for change. These central actors and actresses (wananchi) had enthusiastically participated in the election campaign articulating their demand for peace, reconstruction and transformation of Kenyan society.

By the time of the third scene of this drama, those from the den of thieves around the incumbent Mwai Kibaki sought to silence the media. In order for this scene to be played out without an audience, international observers and the media (both national and international) were ejected from Electoral Commission of Kenya (ECK) election center at the Kenyatta International Conference Centre. The Chairperson of the ECK went to a small room and announced the results of the elections naming Mwai Kibaki as the winner of the election. Three days later, the same chairperson of the ECK said in the media that he was not sure if Kibaki won the elections.

Earlier in the drama Raila Odinga’s team of regional barons and aspiring capitalists argued that the true results of the elections showed that Raila Odinga had been chosen by the majority of the main players to be the leading man on the Kenyan stage. How was it possible for his Movement to win over one hundred seats in the Parliament (when Kibaki’s den of thieves had won less than thirty parliamentary seats) and still lose the Presidency? Local and foreign observers cried foul. The elections had been rigged. Ballot boxes had been stuffed. Results were being announced that did not correspond to the votes from the constituencies. The integrity of the process was flawed. These voices were soon drowned out by the might and power of those with strategic control over the military and media sections of the performance. Neo-liberal politics include rigging, so that the international observers used ‘measured’ language of “irregularities,” “anomalies” and “weighty issues” to conceal the reality of outright theft. Raila Odinga termed the process a “civilian coup.” But international capital became confused, because, after all the precedent of election rigging in Florida,U.S.A in 2000 had given the green light to electoral fraud internationally.

The Swearing in of President Kibaki

Act One Scene Three of this drama was performed within the guarded confines of State House where parastatal executives, mostly defeated cabinet members and a small section of the media were invited. In this scene, Mwai Kibaki was sworn in as the Third President of the Republic of Kenya. The stage and setting of this scene was markedly different from the previous swearing in at the Uhuru Park (in Nairobi) where an enthusiastic audience had cheered on the President on December 30, 2002. The 2007 swearing in scene had to be played out without the audience because the principal actors and actresses did not endorse this new act. Minutes after the announcement of the victory of Kibaki, there were spontaneous demonstrations all over the country, especially the urban areas. Popular outrage at the theft of the elections brought violence and the killings of innocent civilians in Kakamega, Kisumu, Mombassa, Nairobi, Nakuru and other centers. The police killed innocent demonstrators as the foreign media portrayed the demonstrations in ethnic terms. The gendered, class and ethnic dimensions of the opposition to Kibaki began to be played out in the poor communities that were called slums, but the media focused on one dimension, the ethnic alienation of the poor and exploited.

Hundreds of dead brought home the reality that the elections and vote counting were simply one site of struggle in the quest to break the old politics of exploitation and dehumanization in Kenya. However, because so much of the old politics of exploitation had been masked by the politicization of ethnicity, poor members of the Kikuyu nationality were targeted in some communities, with the killings in Eldoret bringing home the long traditions of ethnic cleaning that had been going on in this region during the Moi regime. The same media neglected to report that poor Kalenjin also torched the home of former President Arap Moi.

Would there be a break from this recursive process of killing of the poor?
Odinga and members of the Pentagon condemned the killings of members of a particular ethnic group but the anger was too deep for the youths to listen. Unfortunately, the ODM did not have structures to properly mobilize the youths away from looting.

Raila Odinga and the Orange Democratic Movement

In order to avert the possible war that could emanate from this new act of the drama there was the need for fresh if not revolutionary ideas to harness the pent up energies of the people for change. The radicalization of Kenyan politics had merged with the anti- globalization forces internationally to the point where in 2007 Kenya hosted the World Social Forum. The radical demands of the Bamako appeal of the Africa Social Forum (for profound social, economic and gender transformations in Africa) could not be carried forward by the old Non Governmental Organization elements allied with international NGO’s from Western Europe. What the World Social Forum had demonstrated was the reality that new revolutionary ideas with new revolutionary forms of organization were needed to realize the goals and aspirations and appeal of the Africa social forum. Raila Odinga and his group of regional ethnic barons had tapped into the radical sentiments of the youth all across the ethnic divisions. Calling his team, the Pentagon, Odinga mobilized the popular discourses about youth, women and disabled to speak about ‘poverty eradication’ and “corruption.”

Absent from the platform of the Orange Democratic Movement was a clear program for reconstruction and transformation. Raila Odinga had been a major political actor on the Kenyan stage for four decades. He had participated in every major political party and formation since his father, Odinga Odinga had emerged as the opponent of the Kenyan form of neo-colonialism. The 2007 elections exposed the reality that there were no real political parties in Kenya. Leaders on all sides were not interested in building a lasting movement for change. They were interested in parties as electoral vehicles to capture state power. There were more than 300 parties registered in Kenya and over 117 participated in the elections in December 2007.

Local and international writers who earlier had been voices for the poor enthusiastically supported the enactment of the first scene of the drama (the election and voting). Some of these writers moaned and groaned that the script had been changed when those who controlled the state machinery unleashed violence against the poor. In order to unleash state violence against the poor, the Minister of Internal Affairs banned the broadcast of live images. The state also toyed with the idea of banning SMS messaging in Kenya. But
Kenyans simply tuned in to the international media to confirm what they knew, that the recursive processes of killings and revenge were spiraling out of control.

Without enacting an official state of emergency (in the fear of further hurting the tourist industry) the majority of poor Kenyans lived under curfew-like conditions as the military, the police, and General Service Units were deployed all over the country and new forms of censorship were implemented. The political leadership that stole the elections had to be careful with the use of the police, military and the intelligence services in so far as the divisions within the security forces challenged the authority of those who stole the elections. Raila Odinga sought to tap into this division of the coercive forces by calling a demonstration of a million Kenyans to oppose the stolen election results.

The International media and international capital

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and other cultural voices of imperial power were from the outset one of the props of this drama. The British were particularly active because the interests of British capitalism were very much an important part of narrative of the drama. During Act 1 scenes two and three, this foreign prop had been condemning the “irregularities’” and “anomalies” of the drama and carried the press statements of the International Observers of the European Union and the Commonwealth. The head of the European Union observer mission issued a statement declaring that, “the Presidential poll lacks credibility and an independent audit should be instituted to rectify things.”

This clear statement led the US government to reverse its earlier recognition of Mwai Kibaki as the winner of the Presidential elections. There had been concern in Washington over the future of Kenya in so far as the US authorities sought to mobilize Kenyans in the war against terrorism. During the period of Kibaki, Kenyan citizens were shipped out of the country to be tried as terrorists under the US policy of kidnapping, called rendition. The ODM signed a memorandum of understanding with the Islamic community during the election campaign and members of the ODM condemned the rendering of Kenyan citizens by the government. It was argued that if these citizens acted contrary to Kenyan law, they should be tried under Kenyan law.

The propaganda war had been virulent and since Raila Odinga held the moral and political high ground, sections of the international media began to retreat from endorsement of the electoral coup. However, the occupation of the moral high ground was shaky. Would the government and opposition be more concerned with the lives of the poor than with political power?

In the face of the absence of resolute moral leadership to condemn these killings, the international media had a field day portraying the struggles for democracy in Kenya as primitive “tribal” violence.

Act Two – Stalemate and brinkmanship in politics

Raila Odinga and his team called the Pentagon had entered the drama seeking to play on the terms of those who had seized power from the time of colonialism. The very naming of his team as the ‘Pentagon’ had shown an insensitivity to the international revulsion against military symbols. The five leaders of the Pentagon were, (i) Vice Presidential running mate M Mudavadi, (ii) Charity Ngilu, (iii) William Ruto, (iv) Bilal Najib and (v) Joseph Nyagah. These regional ethnic barons had emerged from multiple political formations and many had family and business linkages with capitalists inside and outside of the government. During the campaign these regional leaders had campaigned on a pledge to devolve power from central government. The poor believed this would bring power closer to the village and communities so that health care facilities, water supply systems, road and pathways in the villages, education, sanitation and other services could be delivered so that the conditions of exploitation are ameliorated. These localized services were interpreted by various local communities as job creation avenues for the jobless youths. For the regional barons, the devolution debate was carried out to ensure easier access to the treasury. The word ‘majimbo’ re- emerged in the political vocabulary of Kenya to reignite the memory of the alliance between the ‘home guards’ and settlers at the dawn of independence.

Youths all across Kenya had transcended the ethnic identification and wanted real change in the quality of life in the society.

Entering the drama without a real party and without a real organ to bring the majority of the actors and actresses to the center of the drama, it was easy for the team around Mwai Kibaki to stall so that the spontaneous anger would peter out. Would the Orange Democratic Revolution learn the lessons of popular power in the streets of the Ukraine Orange Revolution and shake the old power with new bases of alternative power? This provided the setting for the central aspect of the drama, the stand off between the forces of orange and the forces of the defeated power. Kibaki came across as an imprisoned leader, surrounded by politicians and financiers who argued that Kibaki must enter any negotiation from a position of strength. Odinga countered that negotiations could only begin when Kibaki accepted that the elections had been stolen. The hardening of positions ratcheted up the tensions in the country as regionally countries such as Uganda, Rwanda and the Southern Sudan began to feel the effects of the shutdown of the transportation system in Kenya.

Mwai Kibaki and the neo-liberal regime in Kenya

Mwai Kibaki had been associated with the ruling class in Kenya for over fifty years. Starting his career as a representative of Shell Oil Company in Kampala, Uganda, Kibaki moved from an academic position at Makerere University to the top echelons of the independent government of Kenya after independence. In the book, The Reds and the Blacks, William Atwood, then-US ambassador, had identified Kibaki as one of the steady ‘reformers” who would guarantee the interests of foreign capital. Kibaki emerged as a stable force in the ruling circles serving both Jomo Kenyatta and Daniel Arap Moi as Minister of Finance. It was under the leadership of Kenyatta and Moi that the forms of theft by the ruling elements in Kenya were refined. Extra judicial killings and accidental deaths of prominent trade union leaders and politicians were papered over by the foreign press that labeled Kenya a ‘stable’ democracy.

Arap Moi and international capital.

After the death of Kenyatta in 1978, Daniel Arap Moi moved decisively to cement an alliance of foreign capitalists and local political careerists to loot the society and spread divisions and ethnic hatred among the poor and oppressed. British capitalism had been the dominant force in Kenya with British companies such as Unilever, Finlays, GSK, Vodafone, Barclays and Standard Bank becoming leading names on the Nairobi Stock Exchange. Britain had made a deal with the independence leaders and awarded a small sum to enhance this new class of African yeoman farmers to join the British settlers in the exploitation of Kenya and indeed, East Africa. Molo, in the Rift Valley (one of the constituencies at the center of the row over the rigged elections), represented one of the places where Kikuyu settlers had been relocated after independence.

Moi during his Presidency remained at the center of the alliance between British capitalists, Asian capitalists and Kikuyu entrepreneurs from Central Province. By the time of the electoral defeat of Moi in December 2002, the Moi family and cronies in the ruling party, Kenya African National Union (KANU) had become junior capitalists in the game of exploitation. It was under the leadership of Moi that imperialism used Kenya as a base to subvert African independence. A report commissioned by the Kibaki administration, (called the Kroll Report), had named Moi and his sons as billionaires with assets in banks in Britain, Switzerland, South Africa, Namibia, the Cayman Islands and Brunei. The 110-page report by the international risk consultancy Kroll alleged that relatives and associates of former President Moi siphoned off more than £1bn of government money. This documentation placed the Mois on a par with Africa's other great politicians-cum-looters such as Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire (now Democratic Republic of Congo) and Nigeria's Sani Abacha. The Kroll report of the levels of theft when presented to the Kibaki government was never acted on. The alliance between Moi and Kibaki forces became clearer during the election campaign when Moi and his sons fiercely campaigned for the re –election of President Kibaki. The sons of Moi were decisively defeated in the elections.

The documentation of the level of theft by Moi was exposed before the public in what to became known as the Goldenberg scandal. This scandal brought to the fore the alliance between Moi, KANU and Asian capitalists in Kenya. These capitalists had looted the country with such impunity that Kamlesh Mdami Pattni (an Asian capitalist named in the Goldenberg scandal) took over one party Kenda to contest the 2007 elections.

Prior to the 1992 multi-party struggles, Kibaki had sought to distance himself from this group of capitalists. These were the capitalists involved in settler agriculture, manufacturing, transport, services, old forms of banking, insurance, real estate, construction and engineering and the health and education sectors. These capitalists from inside and outside the political arena provided cover for looters all across Eastern Africa. In the Kenyan economy money from oil in the Sudan (especially Southern Sudan), commercial interests in Somalia, gold and diamond dealers from Rwanda, Burundi and the Eastern Congo circulated with the resources from the exploited Kenyan working poor so that in the past ten years there has been a growth of the Kenyan economy. Felicia Kabunga, wanted by the International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda (ICRT) for crimes of genocide in Rwanda was the kind of looter and money spinner who found safe haven among the money launderers in Kenya.

Kibaki and the rise of new capitalists.

Although Mwai Kbaki had campaigned on an anti-corruption ticket in 2002, his tenure as President of Kenya was marked by an explosion of new schemes for accumulation. The rise of the telecommunications, information technology and banking sectors boomed with new enterprises such as Equity Bank and a number of communications companies (Safaricom, Flashcom, Telecom etc) rivaling the old capitalists. The floating of new shares n the form on an Initial Public Offer (IPO) for the Company, Safarcom, became a central question in the election campaign in so far as those who got access to the shares at the time of the issuing of the IPO became instant millionaires.

The Kibaki government was in the main dominated by elements who formed a company called MEGA (a regrouping of the old Gema Gikuyu, Embu, Meru Association), and through Transcentury Corporation had elevated themselves to be the among the leading capitalists in Kenya. This group presented a program called Vision 2030 where Kenya would become the leading capitalist country in Africa, becoming the Singapore of Africa. Control of the governmental apparatus was crucial for Vision 2030.

Space does not allow for an elaboration of the individuals of this capitalist clique and their place in the interpenetrating directorates of the Nairobi Stock Exchange. What is significant is that the names of the capitalists and politicians of Trancentury figured in the scandal of corruption that rocked the government of Mai Kibaki. This was termed the Anglo-leasing scandal which involved awarding huge government contracts to bogus companies. One insider, John Githongo, exposed the scandal and repaired to Britain.

No money from the Anglo leasing scandal had been recovered before the elections and although European and US governments made noises about corruption there were no moves to repatriate the stolen wealth back to Kenya. These scandals were very much a part of the election campaign. Three of the four ministers who resigned after the Anglo Leasing scandal was exposed had been reinstated by Kibaki. These ministers along with twenty other ministers lost their parliamentary seats in the December 2007 elections.
The poor of Kenya had used the ballot to send a message to the capitalists in Kenya but those who stole billions of dollars from the Kenyan Treasury were not above stealing an election.

The real test in Kenyan politics was whether the team called the Pentagon was serious about changing the political culture of theft, looting and storing billions of dollars in foreign banks. The people of Kenya had voted for change. Was the Orange Democratic Movement a movement for change or a movement for political power? This was the outstanding question as the cast and the writers got ready for Act three of the drama of the struggle for democracy.

Act 3. A Revolutionary situation without revolutionary ideas and real revolutionaries.

Because the drama is being played out it is not possible to make a presentation of the last act of this drama. This is the act where the peoples of Kenya are torn between two traditions. These are the traditions of the freedom fighters for independence and the traditions of violence, looting and the low respect for African life. The youths of Kenya have been brought up in the period of the aftermath of the end of apartheid and the defeat of Mobutism. These youths have risen above the politicization of ethnicity and along with progressive women want to end the rape and violation of women. These youths have been heard to say that Kenya is in the midst of a liberation war.

While the consciousness of the youth may be high with the thought of a long term struggle, there are very few revolutionary leaders and a poverty of revolutionary ideas in Kenya. If anything, the poorer youths are being mobilized into counter-revolutionary violence where poor and oppressed people burn and kill each other. This was the lesson of the killings, burning and massacre in the Rift Valley. Counter-revolutionary violence of the Rwanda genocidal form lay just below the surface and the same politicians who gave refuge to genocidaires from Rwanda are not above fomenting genocidal violence among the poor. The media images of marauding youths with pangas provide the necessary imagery to represent to the world another version of African savagery. This same media will not prominently carry the news that poor peasants from the home area of Danieal Arap Moi burnt his house to the ground. The prospect of real class warfare in Kenya frightens both the government and the opposition so there is a delicate effort to manage the crisis so that the forms of capital accumulation can return to the business pages rather than the front pages.

Raila Odinga and the Orange Democratic movement are now caught between the aspirations of the regional capitalists of the ‘Pentagon’ and the demand for real change across Kenya. The post election mayhem is a clear demonstration that the ODM did not sufficiently engage their followers on new ideas transcending ethnicity and patriarchy. This demand for democratic change in Kenya will require new forms of organization beyond electoral politics and new ideas about the value of African lives. This requires a break with the European ideation systems that promote capitalism as democracy and genocide as progress.

* Horace Campbell is Professor of Political Science at Syracuse University

* Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/authors/Horace_Campbell.jpgSince independence in 1975, the living conditions of the working people of Mozambique have deteriorated considerably. In 2007 the quality of life of the majority of citizens remains very poor. Mozambique ranks 168th out of 190 on UNDP’s Human Development Index (HDI), the lowest in Southern Africa. At the same time, there is a new class of rich capitalists in Maputo who live in luxury, says Horace Campbell.

In the book, The Liberal Virus and the Americanization of the World (Monthly Review Press, 2004), Samir Amin endeavours to show how the US project for military and economic domination has its roots in the liberal ideas of Western Europe. Amin draws attention to the plunder of the Third World, especially Africa, and the ways in which institutions such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization fostered policies that undermined the quality of life of the world’s poor. Amin predicts the loss of more than 3 billion lives if African countries continue to pursue the West’s neo-liberal agenda, especially if poor farmers emulate the agricultural practices of North America and Western Europe.

Since independence in 1975, the living conditions of the working people of Mozambique have deteriorated considerably. In 2007 the quality of life of the majority of citizens remains very poor. Mozambique ranks 168th out of 190 on UNDP’s Human Development Index (HDI), the lowest in Southern Africa. At the same time, there is a new class of rich capitalists in Maputo who live in luxury. Neo- liberalism prevails at the high levels of the society while at the grassroots the poor remember the pledges of the leaders of Frelimo to provide food, shelter and water for the poor. In 1980, Samora Machel proclaimed that Mozambique would become a developed country by 1990. Yet, 27 years later, the country is becoming poorer as local and foreign capitalists continue to plunder the country.

Mozambique achieved its independence in 1975, after a period of armed struggle led by FRELIMO. Mozambique was among the Frontline states in the struggle against apartheid and colonialism. Despite pressure from the South African apartheid and Rhodesian states the people of Mozambique made tremendous sacrifices to provide a rearguard base for the liberation of Zimbabwe and later South Africa. In the face of the successful revolution in Mozambique, the apartheid government launched a Total Strategy Campaign to destroy the Mozambican society. Through their proxy army the MNR, the South Africans and the US neo-conservatives supported terrorism against the people of Mozambique. Villages were attacked, innocent women and children were massacred, and transportation and communication lines were cut while South African commandos infiltrated Maputo to kill ANC freedom fighters.

Samora Machel and Chissano negotiated with the South African government to end apartheid support for the MNR culminating in Machel and Frelimo signing the Nkomati Peace Accord in 1984. Despite this accord, the apartheid regime intensified its support for the MNR. Samora Machel was killed in October 1986 when his plane was brought down by the apartheid regime of South Africa.
The killing of Machel was the high point of the terror war waged against the people of Mozambique by the apartheid regime with support from the neo-conservative forces in the US. Up to today, the full history of this terrorism unleashed by the MNR (called Renamo) has not been fully documented. Millions were killed and displaced in the war of destabilization. In the book, Mozambique: Who Calls the Shorts, Joseph Hanlon outlines the three forms of destabilization endured by the people of Mozambique. These were (i) Military destabilization and violence by Renamo (ii) Political destabilization brought about by the attempts to impose the band of killers on the people and (iii) Economic destabilization unleashed by the International Monetary Fund and The World Bank.

The Diplomatic Skills of Joaquim Chissano

Chissano had been one of the early leaders of FRELIMO from its days as a guerilla movement in Tanzania. Chissano developed his diplomatic skills negotiating the withdrawal of the Portuguese between 1974 to 1975. At independence, Chissano was named the foreign minister of Mozambique and became known as a skilled diplomat. As long as the party was strong, this diplomacy served the interests of the liberation project in Africa. When Machel was killed in 1986 there was a choice between Marcelino Dos Santos (considered a doctrinaire Marxist by the West) and Chissano. The party chose Chissano.

Chissano proved an adept negotiator who sought to appease the West, especially the US government. By 1990, projects for delivery of health services and clean water to the poor were abandoned and the economy was opened up to ‘market’ forces. IMF-designed Structural Adjustment Policies were adopted and the state rolled back the support for the poor. Market forces meant the opening up the economy to South African and foreign capitalist. The irony of this retreat was that the same forces that had destroyed Mozambique were now being invited to invest in its reconstruction.

Once Frelimo had capitulated before Western and apartheid capitalism, the forces of reaction sought to rein in Renamo. The Vatican (which had been the most opposed to the policies of Frelimo) offered to mediate a cease fire to end the war of destabilization. This was also an effort to give a clean image of Renamo in the face of intensified struggles against apartheid. After the defeat of the South African army at Cuito Cuanavale in 1988, the apartheid regime went on the defensive. The independence of Namibia in 1990 along with the release of Nelson Mandela created a new political dynamic in Southern Africa. The peace talks in Rome to end the war between Frelimo and Renamo were drawn out to ensure that Frelimo made concessions to the forces that terrorized the people.

The United Nations sent a team for the transition to integrate the former murderers into the state structures. Such was the process of counter revolution in Mozambique that instead of arresting those who had carried out crimes against humanity, the leaders of Renamo were given the respected title of leaders of the opposition. Frelimo won the 1994 elections and Chissano became the first President of a multi-party ‘democracy’ in Mozambique.

The second element of the destabilization had been thwarted, the West and the apartheid government failed to impose Renamo with its criminal past as legitimate leaders of the country.

The victory of neo-liberalism in Southern Africa

The third element of destabilization went into full gear in 1994. This was to promote the capitalist mode of production. Mozambique and Tanzania were being punished by the World Bank and the IMF for attempting an alternative to rapacious capitalism Faced with the organized working class and the possible cross-border links between workers in Southern Africa (calling for a Charter for Human and Peoples Rights across Southern Africa), the neo-liberal organizations inside and outside Africa poured millions of dollars into projects to discredit popular forces of the poor.

South African society embarked on a virulent xenophobic campaign against Mozambicans while the media was replete with stories about ’the failure of ujamaa’ in Tanzania and that socialism had failed in Mozambique. Workers in South Africa were mobilized to think of their brothers and sisters from Mozambique as the problem, rather than the system of exploitation and looting. After an initial project of Reconstruction and Development (RDP) with plans for housing, sanitation, clean water and education for the poor, the political leadership of South Africa opted for a World Bank style-project of Growth, Employment and Redistribution strategy (GEAR). Under this policy the social scars of apartheid were exacerbated by the emergence of a new class of black entrepreneurs who had become rich through the ‘black empowerment project.”

The reversal of the gains of self-determination (some would say the counter-revolution) was evident across the region of Southern Africa. In countries like Mozambique and Zimbabwe where the workers had formed trade unions and were in the forefront of the struggle for democratic rights, these same workers were now being oppressed by “black entrepreneurs.” Black empowerment and privatization were the buzz words for the new class of leaders who turned their backs on the struggle for a better life for all.

The tragedy is that it was in the countries where the poor had made the greatest sacrifices (Angola, Mozambique, South Africa and Zimbabwe) where the new black bourgeoisie were most callous in the sellout to international capitalists.
One of the clearest examples of this betrayal is the case of the construction of the Mozal Aluminum Smelter in Mozambique. This project is owned by an international consortium led by London-based Billiton (47%) and includes South Africa's Industrial Development Corporation (24%), Mitsubishi of Japan (25%) and the government of Mozambique (4%). The project to set up this aluminum smelter was the biggest in post-independence Mozambique. The trade union was not allowed to organize the workers to participate in this project worth over US $1.3 billion.
Chissano as a diplomat

This context of reversal of fortunes for the ordinary person in Southern Africa provides a back-drop to understanding the prize given to former President Joaquim Alberto Chissano.
Last week it was announced that the former Mozambican President has won the inaugural Mo Ibrahim award for exemplary leadership in Africa Announcing the award on Chissano’s birthday, former United Nations Secretary General (and the head of the UN Department of Humanitarian Affairs at the time of the Rwanda genocide) and Chair of the Prize Committee, Kofi Annan, said that '''President Chissano's achievements in bringing peace, reconciliation, stable democracy and economic progress to his country greatly impressed the committee.”

Mo Ibrahim is the archetypal successful African entrepreneur and has been lauded as a text-book success story for young Africans. Mr. Ibrahim provides best personifies the neo-liberal propaganda about “hard work, competition and the fairness of the market and new technologies. According to the media, “Mo Ibrahim, a Sudanese-born telecommunications entrepreneur, established the prize as a way of encouraging good governance in a continent blighted by corruption and a frequently loose adherence to democratic principles.” Not a word is mentioned about the living conditions of the people of the Sudan from where Mr. Ibrahim hails.

What is significant about the whole award process is the way in which moral imperatives of service and commitment to the poor and exploited have been overtaken by the neo-liberal discourses and the Liberal Virus. It is true that if a prize were to be given at this historical moment to a former president, none would have been more deserved that former President Chissano. After all, he had stepped down from power in 2005 and was responsible for a smooth transition to a new leader. This point was made by Kofi Annan when the prize was announced. For this Joaquim Chissano should be congratulated. Chissano is also working very hard to negotiate an end to the war in Northern Uganda between the Museveni regime and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). In this regard Chissano can be distinguished from the militarists all across Africa.

But, isn’t this prize also a sign of the political retrogression in Africa? The idea of a President voluntarily stepping down is now so novel in the face of leaders such as Museveni and Mugabe that Chissano indeed stands out. Compared to Robert Mugabe and Thabo Mbeki, and their megalomanic policies, Chissano does look good.

While announcing Chissano as the winner, Kofi Annan may have gone overboard by saying, “leadership should be the ability to formulate a vision and to convince others of that vision. It should be the skill of giving courage to accept difficult changes to make possible a longer term aspiration for a better and fairer future.”

It was also said when the prize was announced that, “the mark of a good leader is one that can inspire people to a higher standard of living, unite diverse interests and ensure subjects live in harmony, despite holding different opinions.”

It is understandable if African leaders want to pat each other on the back, and of those still alive, Chissano stands heads and shoulders above his contemporaries. But, do we have to set the bar so low for African political leadership in this era?

Neo-liberalism and corruption

One of the successes of the neo-liberal project of privatization has been to increase the export of capital from Africa. Despite efforts such as the Stolen Asset Recovery (STAR) Initiative, the role of the Western financial institutions across Africa has largely been to facilitate the export of wealth. Mozambique is no exception and one of the blots on Chissano’s tenure is the privatization of Mozambique's largest bank, Banco Comercial de Moçambique.

Carlos Cardoso is among the stalwarts of the Mozambican revolution . As a fearless investigative journalist, he was committed to the principles of peace, freedom and prosperity for the people. Cardoso was looking into a US$14 million fraud connected with the privatization of Banco Comercial de Moçambique.

He was shot dead in central Maputo on 22 November 2000.

The truth about those who orchestrated and carried out the murder of this courageous journalist is still unknown. It is the hope of all who want crimes and murders to stop in Africa that those with information on criminality will assist in bringing criminals to justice. Only last week Lucky Dube was shot down while dropping off his children in Johannesburg, South Africa. Street crimes of the sort that took the life of Lucky Dube cannot be fought when crimes of theft in the banking system involving millions go unpunished. We should remember the words of Peter Tosh, “every one is talking about Crime but who are the real criminals?”
The truth is that the criminals are the leading capitalists in Africa along with their allies in the capitalist world.

The prize for the best accountant

When Chissano left office, Mozambique was seen as a country that had retreated from the old socialist model and successfully embraced neo-liberal capitalism. Social democratic ideas of providing services to the people were considered old fashioned among the young who were been fed the anti- socialist line. International non-governmental agencies now traverse the countryside in Mozambique doing the kind of work that should be done by the government. World Bank consultants are very busy ensuring that there is ‘good governance’ and ‘market reforms’. Instead of identifying the capitalists as looters and purveyors of greed, we are bombarded with the discourse on “donors.” Mo Ibrahim has elevated himself into the ranks of the “donors.”

The Mozambican workers and poor peasants remember their long struggle against colonialism. The challenge in Africa is to remember the victories of the Mozambican revolution and not to allow the World Bank discourse on ‘governance’ to erase the memories of mobilization of the people against exploitation. While the workers organize, the prize for rooting out corruption should help us to get to the truth behind the murder of Cardoso.

In the past few months, the UN established the STAR initiative to assist exploited countries recover assets stolen by corrupt leaders. The initiative was to ensure that looted assets are returned to their rightful owners,

For those who still believe in the transformation of Africa, we believe that the next prize should go to the accountant who uncovers the most money stolen from Africa by its leaders.

* Horace Campbell is Professor of Political Science at Syracuse University

* Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

Pan Africanism arose as a philosophy to restore the humanity and dignity of the African person and indeed all humans. The concept of dignity and humanity has gone through many iterations from the period of enslavement to the period of colonialism, segregation and Jim Crow, the periods of apartheid and neo-colonialism to the current period of the HIV-AIDS pandemic when corporations have given themselves the right to patent life forms.

I was in Brazil last week for the second meeting of African Intellectuals when I heard the news of Comrade Brother Chachage from one of our brothers on Tuesday morning. His passing was noted by many of the brothers and sisters at this meeting. It was in settings such as these where one could view the measure of the contribution of Chachage to the African liberation struggle, indeed the struggles against capitalism and imperialism.

I last saw the brother at the Walter Rodney commemoration event in January in Dar es Salaam. His presentation at this fora exposed his continued interest in the intersections of the struggles of the peoples of Africa at home and abroad.

I first met Chachage in 1981 when he was still a young editor at the Tanzania Publishing House in Dar es Salaam. I followed his career closely and remember working with him as a colleague on the sixth floor of the Arts and Sciences building. He was one of the pillars of UDASA (the trade union for academics) and he never compromised with the social science of imperialism. He was impatient with the chauvinism of the South African academic environment and returned to Dar after a short sojourn at the University of Cape Town.

Comrade brother Chachage has left a legacy that should be emulated by many young scholars. I am hoping that the present leadership of CODESRIA will seek to put together many of his unpublished papers so that they will be available to scholars internationally.

To his family I send our deepest condolences.

Guyanese activist and academic Walter Rodney, the author of ‘How Europe Underdeveloped Africa’ was not just a Guyanese figure. He was known worldwide, especially in Africa, where he enjoyed great popularity for his solidarity with the struggles of the working people. This year marks 25 years since his assassination and efforts are underway to commemorate the life of a man who became known as the ‘prophet of self emancipation’.

The year 2005 marks twenty-five years since Walter Rodney was assassinated in
Georgetown, Guyana. Walter Rodney was a tireless champion of the rights of working peoples everywhere and in his short life of thirty eight years he made his mark as one of the pre eminent thinkers of the 20th century.

When one reads his monograph, ‘World War II and the Tanzanian Economy’, (published by Cornell University, African Studies and Research Centre) one can get a sense of the kind of conditions into which Walter Rodney entered this world. This reflection on the war was also contained in a paper delivered by Walter Rodney in London on comparisons between Tanzania and Guyana under colonialism. War and the destruction of human lives by capitalism were constantly on the mind of Walter Rodney.

Secondary Education in Guyana

Walter Rodney was brought into this world in the midst of war, conceived by Guyanese working class activists who were very much part of the anti colonial struggles of the society. Rodney was born on March 23, 1942 in Bent Street, Georgetown, where he grew up and spent his childhood. After attending primary school, he won an open exhibition scholarship to Queen’s College, then one of the elite schools in the colony. Rodney grew up in a time of ferment in Guyana and he paid close attention to what was happening in his society while excelling in every area of life that he participated in. He was involved as a school cadet, as a debater, as a member of the sports team and was known to be a very good bridge and chess player. Rodney came to adulthood when the questions of the centrality of the working people in the future of the country were being debated (with words and with imperial intervention). Both of his parents were active in the Peoples Progressive Party (PPP) led by Cheddi Jagan and were outspoken in their opposition to racism, colonialism and imperialism. Walter Rodney often attended political meetings with his mother and went around distributing anti-colonial literature himself.

Walter distinguished himself in high school and in 1960 won another open scholarship, this time to the University of the West Indies (UWI) campus at Mona, Jamaica. In Jamaica, he was an active supporter of Caribbean Unity and he traveled extensively in Jamaica supporting the West Indian Federation during the referendum of 1961. Three years later, he obtained a degree in history with First Class (top) Honors.

While as an undergraduate he was outspoken in the defense of the poor and his activities were monitored by the Jamaican police, who were afraid of the strident defense of the rights of ordinary people. As an undergraduate, he was already writing and contributing to scholarly journals on the issues of slavery and capitalism. In one particular essay entitled, “The Slave,” Walter brought out not only the humanity of the enslaved African, but the capacity to organize and rebel under the most brutal conditions.

Walter Rodney in London

In 1963, he received yet another scholarship, to study African History at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. At that period, the questions of decolonization in all parts of the world were being debated. The legacies of the post war agitation by Africans who were involved in the West African Students Union (WASU) had inspired a spirit of cooperation beyond national boundaries. In London he deepened his understanding of Pan Africanism and was in contact with students from Africa and the Caribbean. C. L. R. James provided the bridge between these communities. James had been a member of the International African Service Bureau (IASB) and had cooperated with George Padmore, W.E. B Dubois, Jomo Kenyatta and Kwame Nkrumah in placing the decolonization question squarely before the British political leaders and peoples. Walter was a member of the group of Caribbean workers and students who studied and debated with C.L. R. James. These study sessions included the cream of the anti colonial youth who were being trained in Europe at that time.

In 1966, at the age of 24, Rodney received his PhD. His doctoral thesis was published in 1970 as ‘A History of the Upper Guinea Coast, 1545-1800’. Because of the scholarly breakthroughs in this study, Rodney’s work was published in the most distinguished Journals of African History and he made a name for himself as a pre - eminent African historian. It was while in London when he married Patricia.

Rodney and Tanzania

His first job in academia was an appointment as lecturer in history at the University of Dar es Salaam, in Tanzania, East Africa. At that time, Tanzania was the Headquarters of the OAU Liberation Committee. In 1964 the Zanzibar revolution had radicalized the politics of East Africa and in 1967 the Tanzanian government launched the Arusha Declaration. Che Guevara had also traveled through Tanzania on his way to fight in the Congo.

Returned to Jamaica

In 1968, he returned to Jamaica to lecture at Mona campus, his old university. Rodney’s second coming to Jamaica coincided with the rise of mass political activity on the island, activity in which he became deeply involved. He worked closely with poor people and “grounded” with Rastafarians in Kingston and other parts of the country. He was constantly under surveillance by the police but was not intimidated. The scholarly work of Rodney increased while he was publishing for journals, but he found time for working with the ordinary people. In this regard, Walter was the quintessential organic intellectual.

Rodney was very popular with the Jamaican masses, but his activism was frowned upon by the middle classes who felt that he was wasting his time with the Rastafari. At that time, the Rastafari were considered “outcasts” and “criminals.” The influence of Walter Rodney on the lyrics of Bob Marley can be seen from reading ‘Groundings’ and listening to the Album ‘Survival’ by Bob Marley. (See Walter Rodney, ‘Groundings With My Brothers’) In seeking to respect the culture of the people, Rodney participated in numerous sessions teaching the history of Africa in poor communities. For this, he provoked the wrath of the Jamaican government, which claimed that he was a threat to national security.

The year 1968 was historic in the uprisings all over the world. Walter Rodney attended the Black Writers Conference in Montreal in October 1968. On his return to Jamaica, the government banned Rodney from Jamaica. The JLP government sent him back to Canada on the same plane on which he had arrived. The ban resulted in major uprisings in Kingston. This was a demonstration of the love that the people had for him.
Students marched on government offices and ordinary people in Kingston, angry at the expulsion of the beloved “Brother Wally,” joined the demonstration, which eventually turned into a popular uprising. The event, which became known as the “Rodney affair,” resounded throughout the Caribbean. Some of the public presentations Rodney gave in Jamaica were published in a small book, ‘The Groundings with My Brothers’.

After his expulsion from Jamaica, Rodney spent time in Toronto, Canada and in this period traveled to Cuba. In early 1969 he returned to Tanzania, where he resumed teaching at the University of Dar es Salaam. At this time, The University of Dar es Salaam was a magnet for all of those in Africa thinking through the issues of liberation and freedom. These ideas were debated at the University of Dar es Salaam. It was in this intellectual milieu when he published his best-known work, ‘How Europe Underdeveloped Africa’. This book broke with the Eurocentric conceptions of African history and immediately the book became one of the most widely-read and influential books on Africa and the third world in general.

In addition to his scholarly pursuits, Rodney was deeply involved in working with those dedicated to freedom and emancipation. He gave classes to the Workers at the Urafiki Textile Mill near the University and traveled on weekends to communal villages. Tanzania was then undergoing a revolutionary experiment, and it also served as the headquarters for many liberation movements from various parts of Africa. Rodney, who considered study and struggle inseparable, was involved in all of these activities.

He was central to the development of an intellectual tradition that became known as the Dar es Salaam School. His numerous writings on the subjects of socialism, imperialism, working class struggles and Pan Africanism and slavery contributed to a body of knowledge that came to be known as the Dar es Salaam School of Thought. Issa Shivji, Mahmood Mamdani, Claude Ake, Archie Mafeje, Yash Tandon, John Saul, Dan Nabudere, O Nnoli, Clive Thomas and countless others participated in the debates on transformation and liberation in the University. He traveled extensively throughout East Africa and was one of the founders of the History Teachers Workshop of Tanzania. This workshop assigned themselves the task of rewriting the text books for high school students in Tanzania. One of the results of these debates was the effort of the World Bank and western donors to prop up a conservative brand of economic theory in the University. By the end of the eighties, World Bank thinkers and consultants were blaming Walter Rodney for the radical thinking in the University of Dar Es Salaam.

Return to the Caribbean.

Walter was a teacher, a political activist, a father and husband. Two of his children, Kanini and Asha were born in Tanzania. His son, Shaka Rodney was born in Jamaica in 1968.

Walter always wanted to return to the Caribbean and he wanted his children to know Guyana. Hence in 1974 he moved with his family back. Initially, he was appointed as Professor of History at the University of Guyana. The government of Guyana, however, canceled the appointment. Because of his independence and clarity of ideas, the government thought that he would leave. Out of paid work, he refused to leave the country. Instead, over the next six years he threw himself into independent research and political organization. He increased his work as an international scholar, teaching and researching on a full time basis. Many did not understand how he could work full time as an activist in the Working Peoples Alliance (WPA) and remain committed as a serious scholar.

Walter threw himself into the study of the Guyanese working people and brought out a study of Guyanese plantations in the 19th century. He was involved in a three volume study of the Guyanese working people but before it was complete, he was assassinated on June 13, 1980. After his assassination, the first volume, ‘A History of the Guyanese Working People’, 1881-1905 was published by John Hopkins University Press. This book provided the historical foundations for the political movement he played a central role in founding and leading until his death, the Working People’s Alliance (WPA). More than anything else, the WPA was committed to the politics of reconciliation among all racial groups in Guyana, beginning with the working people.

The dominant theme in Rodney’s life and work, intellectual and political, is a deep and abiding commitment to the struggles of the working people everywhere for emancipation from all forms of oppression. It was the principle for which he lived, and the principle for which he died. His last major project was the writing of books for children. It was his view that only when children learnt proper history and respect for others that the struggles against racial insecurity could be overcome. Two children’s books were produced. His legacy remains an inspiration to lovers of justice and human dignity the world over.

Walter Rodney was assassinated on June 13, 1980. He had traveled one month earlier to Zimbabwe in Southern Africa to celebrate the independence of Zimbabwe. He had been under house arrest and the political leadership panicked when they learnt that he had met the Prime Minister and leaders of the Zimbabwean struggle.

From 1979 Rodney was under constant surveillance and close colleagues of Rodney were killed in 1979 (Ohene Kahama) and in 1980 (Edward Dublin). Finally, they killed him on June 13; murdered by a bomb concealed in a walkie-talkie. The man who handed the Walkie Talkie to Walter was whisked out of Guyana and protected by international imperialism until he expired nearly twenty years later.

His death shocked Guyanese of all racial groups, women, men, and youth. He had dedicated the latter part of his life to bridging the divisions between the people of Guyana only to end up paying with his life. Rodney was not just a Guyanese figure. He was also known worldwide, especially in the Caribbean and Africa, where he enjoyed great popularity for his solidarity with the struggles of the working people. It was for this reason Eusi Kwayana termed him as the ‘prophet of self emancipation’.

* Horace Campbell is chair of the Walter Rodney Commemoration Committee (http://www.rodney25.org/) Contact [email protected] to find out more about planned events.

* Please send comments to [email protected]