Reinventing Order in the Congo: How People Respond to State Failure in Kinshasa
By Theodore Trefon (ed.) (2004), London & New York: Zed Books; pp. xii++222; figs., tables, maps, bibl., index, abstracts. ISBN 1 84277 490 5 (Hb), 1 84277 491 3 (Pb). Reviewed by Edward Bustin, Boston University.
Few cities in Africa can match Kinshasa for the swarm of stereotypes (mostly negative), urban (black) legends and fantastic tales that have built up around it, but also for the fascination and magnetism it has continually radiated, and which have surrounded it with a partmythical, part-nightmarish aura, not only in Central Africa but worldwide. In terms of population, Kinshasa may be second to Lagos in sub-Saharan Africa (and, nominally at least, the world's second largest ‘francophone’ city after Paris), but it ranks along with Rio, Mexico, Bombay or Shanghai when it comes to occupying a uniquely identifiable place in collective construction and imaginary representation. Its genesis from a neutral, sparsely populated, but strategically located ‘contact zone’ to a sprawling metropolis of 7 million, its role in the emergence of political consciousness, in the fashioning of Congolese national identity, or as the stage of the country's most dramatic episodes, the schizophrenic way it has been viewed simultaneously as the ultimate seat of modernity and as the parasitical den of corruption or malfeasance have all contributed to make the city a symbol of the country's tortured history, and a focus for its hopes or (more often) despair.
Even though Mobutu often insisted that ‘Kinshasa n'est pas le Zaïre’ (an opinion widely shared by the Congolese, even by those living in the city) he, more than anyone else, fully realised as have so many other leaders in crisis-ridden parts of the world the importance of keeping hold of the capital city as a way of achieving international recognition and, even more crucially, of controlling the machinery through which all rent-generating activities and the revenues of an extroverted economy are processed, even when large parts of the country are effectively outside the reach of state authority. From Lumumba (and KasaVubu) to Kabila père and fils, including all other successful or unsuccessful claimants, every power seeker has recognized the same evident truth.
The editor of this collection of essays may thus be forgiven for choosing the title ‘Reinventing Order in the Congo’ for what the subtitle more accurately describes as a study of the ways the people of Kinshasa have responded to state failure. While this is not the first time that such a study has been attempted, much of the recent literature1 in this field has focused on the ‘informal’ or ‘second economy’ aspects of African urban life, and while this has naturally led authors such as McGaffey and Bazenguissa-Ganga (2000) to study alternative social ‘networks’, this collection is far more decidedly centered on the broader sociological issues raised by the need to devise a set of new social norms from the grassroots up. The contributions are remarkable by the relevance and comprehensiveness of the issue areas they address: the vagaries of water supply or of health care access, the search for alternative food supplies, the instability of family relations, the subculture of street children, the proliferation of opportunistic ‘interest groups’, the survival strategies based on solidarity or reciprocity, the uncertain value of education, the mushrooming cult movements, the ambiguous fame enjoyed by popular musicians are all very much part of what makes Kinshasa ‘work’ against all odds in a way that has been described as a daily ‘miracle’.
This collective work has the additional merit of giving a prominent voice to Congolese scholars, which should make it immune to the (often justified) charges of Western-centricity raised against some of the literature dealing with ‘Africa's problems’: seven of the sixteen contributors are DRC citizens, and the remainder (which includes six Belgians) are European or North American nationals with long records of fieldwork in the Congo.
At its most basic level, what Anastase Nzeza Bilakila (pp. 20-32) refers to as the ‘Kinshasa bargain’ may seem to be nothing more than an African version of Brecht's famous maxim ‘Erst kommt das Fressen, dann kommt die Moral’, but this facile equation falls short on two counts: first, because many of these ingenious survival strategies end up in failure, but also because it overlooks the deepening existential Angst that weighs heavily over the vast majority of Kinshasa dwellers. The Kinois (as they style themselves) are not just a collection of artful dodgers (though many, perforce, undoubtedly are), and their responses to the Congo's ‘unending crisis’ do not invariably fit Mr. Peachum's jocular form of materialistic rationality. The latter certainly accounts for the extraordinary inventiveness shown by the thousands of entrepreneurial interlopers, dealers, facilitators, procurers, backyard farmers, fences, prostitutes, moneychangers, smugglers, petrol retailers, promoters of bogus NGOs, loan sharks – or the more selfless managers of revolving savings and credit unions (likelemba or muziki). At the darker end of – yet not radically distinct from – this brutally rational spectrum stand the rumours, the adventist or millennial expectations, the rush to buy into pyramid schemes and, most chillingly, the paranoid obsession with child witchcraft as told (pp.155-173) by Filip De Boeck.
Each of the eleven sections that compose this volume contains an impressive amount of information that includes a surprisingly large sample of carefully collected statistical data, transcripts of personal interviews, excerpts from the local media, analytical chronicles of key events, and the occasional dash of theoretical flourish. No single work of comparable scope can boast of offering a picture as detailed and complete of this, or any other major African city and while the approaches used by the different contributors inevitably reflect some methodological variations, the overall tone shows a remarkable degree of consistency – for which we probably have to thank Trefon's editing, translating and coordinating skills.
Despite the comprehensiveness of the range of issues covered, some might argue that the ‘exceptionalism’ of Kinshasa limits the relevance or exemplary value of the coping mechanisms developed by its long-suffering denizens. In his excellent introduction, Trefon addresses this matter, and convincingly argues that Kinshasa can legitimately be viewed as paradigmatic for the understanding of the continent's urban centres, all of whose problems it shares and exemplifies. He makes it clear that the case of Kinshasa (or the DRC) is not an isolated one, but the contrary, an emblematic instance of the way that people throughout Africa – most especially in the continent's fast-growing urban centres – have responded to the general phenomenon of ‘state failure’ or ‘collapse’ repeatedly diagnosed over the past twenty years or so. Kinshasa may not be the Congo, but paradoxically, it stands as an appropriate, if paroxysmal paradigm for much of urban Africa's problems. For all its contradictory features, the new ‘order’ being ‘reinvented’ on a daily basis by the people of Kinshasa –and by others in Africa– may be understood within the broad parameters of the literature on ‘state-society relations’ or ‘popular agency’. It can also be read, however (perhaps more accurately), as a grassroots version of the ‘instrumentalization of disorder’ analysis offered by Chabal and Daloz.2 Yet, for all that seems to position them as diametrical opposites, both approaches share an implicit faith in the Africans’ survival skills and capacity to cope with disaster. While illustrating these features, the essays being reviewed here avoid, for the most part, falling into easy populist traps, whether naïvely optimistic or cynical. For all the talk of the ‘Kinshasa miracle’, the silver lining is tenuous, the gains few and precarious, the damage abysmal and pervasive. Yet, calamity sometimes has a way of bringing out not only the worst, but also the best in human nature, as argued long ago by émigré Russian sociologist Pitrim Sorokin.3 The cases covered in this collection offer sufficient evidence of this seeming paradox to offset unqualified despair. What, if any, order may emerge from catastrophe, remains to be seen.
To avoid closing on a somber note, however, I should also mention that, for those who are not familiar with the urban culture (and subcultures) of Kinshasa, this collective volume provides the additional bonus of offering a glance at the extraordinary luxuriance of lexical innovations which this repellent yet mesmerizing city generates on a daily basis: mwana quartier, shege, khadafis, sapeurs, ambianceurs, phaseurs, mamans manoeuvres, lupemba, likelemba, muziki, chayeurs, groupeurs, drogadeurs, creuseurs, tradipraticiens, maquis, hiboux, fioti-fioti, baguesta, mwana ya kilo, bana Luunda, radio trottoir – not to mention the ever-popular ndumba – are only a brief sample of the unbridled linguistic inventiveness that the irrepressible Kinois display in the appropriation or creolization of French, Lingala, Kikongo or Swahili. Should readers need an additional incentive to study this pioneering work, discovering the meaning and context of these terms will surely reward their curiosity.
Citizen of Africa: Conversations with Morgan Tsvangirai by
Stephen Chan, Cape Town: Fingerprint Co-operative; 106 pp. Reviewed by David Moore.
Most of the results of March's Zimbabwean parliamentary elections were announced on April Fools’ Day. The early ones were released on the statecontrolled radio and television broadcasts in batches of ten, separated by forty minutes or so of vacuum-packed analysis. As has always been the case since the Movement for Democratic Change gave the ruling ZANU-PF (Zimbabwe African People's Union-Patriotic Front) the scare of its life in 2000, the first results – mostly urban or in Matabeleland – favoured the MDC. Harare's townships were cheering en masse as the 6 a.m. tally was revealed.
Everybody's rational self knew, however, that ZANU-PF's carefully calibrated machine would never allow a victory to those seen as Tony Bliar's (sic) puppets. But elections like these, as a seasoned South African observer put it, are just temporary suspensions of disbelief. (She was a critical, unofficial one, not to be confused with the invited guests whose president – Thabo Mbeki – had declared previously that he had ‘no reason to think that anybody in Zimbabwe will act in a way that will militate against elections being free and fair’). Within the day, the toll turned the other way. ZANU-PF ‘won’ once again, and everybody who had opposed the perpetually ruling party wondered ‘why did we bother?’
Even though an officer in Zimbabwe's Central Intelligence Organisation told MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai that his party had actually won 91 seats, by the end of the day the ruling party's ‘independent’ electoral commission had counted and/or created 78 seats for the rulers, 41 for the MDC (down from 57 in 2000), and 1 to the now Independent but once Minister of State for Information and Publicity in the Office of the President and Cabinet Professor Jonathon Moyo (whose previous title indicated not only hubris, but the fact that he was appointed by the President, not elected: Zimbabwe's constitution allows its leader to choose 30 members in addition to the 120 ‘elected,’ thus making it easy for him to pack the deliberative hall with those inclined to speak his voice). Mugabe could choose the rest of the 150 parliamentarians, so he had the 66% needed to craft a constitution to facilitate a few more years in power. By then, he hopes, his fractious party will be patched up for another generation of rule. Sometime between the initial happiness and the inevitable disappointment (combined with the overt coercion in the past years, and the comparatively covert intimidation amidst a small window of glasnost in the few weeks preceding the election, the pre-planned counting tricks and gerrymandered constituencies made victory a sure thing) a gaggle of foreign journalists traipsed towards the MDC's second press conference since the election, up the well-trod stairs in the party's Harvest House headquarters. They were undoubtedly more frazzled than usual by the fear of working while unaccredited, and having heard news of their imprisoned Sunday Telegraph mates as well as the deportation of a young Swedish TV reporter. They muttered unkindly about poverty stricken parties with non-working elevators in their buildings, and hurriedly erected their tripods in front of colleagues seated in the wall-side chairs.
A young camera man's response to the complaints of the woman behind him about his making a better door than a window was indicative of their mood. He turned to tell her that he'd rather not be there. When asked where he would rather be, by someone näively surprised to learn that anybody could possibly prefer to be elsewhere than this particular site of democracy's awakening, he glared: ‘Montana.’ To do what? ‘Play tennis.’ Aside from the chilly prospects of tennis in a Montana spring, that encounter made one think that these types of organic intellectuals were clearly not missionaries for peace and democratic good governance (at best: or enthusiastic liberal imperialists at worst). Nor were they excited by Zimbabwe any longer. There weren't as many frenzied land invaders as five years ago, and it didn't look like a working-class firebrand was going to rally his troops. Mugabe was getting boring, but at least his anti-British tirades could be parodied. But Tsvangirai was wearing the journalists thin, too. His unvarnished nature could be cynically satirised as well. And so they went for the kill.
The room, already hot, was crowded, and people had not had much sleep the night before. Morgan Tsvangirai was flanked by Lucy Matibenga, MDC's national chair for women and a key actor in the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions, still the MDC stalwart. She was citing statistics from constituencies with huge discrepancies between the announcements of first and final polling counts. The night before, she had reeled off the vast numbers of ‘assisted ballots’ for illiterate people. But it was Tsvangirai's carefully ambivalent words that set the journos off. It was already clear that the election was fraudulent, he said. In past years all the efforts to regain stolen seats through the courts had failed, so that would not be tried this time (a week or so later, this decision was reversed). He advised Zimbabwe's people to ‘defend their right to the vote’ in a free and fair environment.
The journalists took up their chorus. ‘Are you telling your people to go out on the streets?’ ‘Will you be calling for demonstrations?’ ‘Are you demanding mass action?’ Tsvangirai repeated his words, a little testily, revealing only that the party structures would be discussing the next steps. William Bango, his spokesman – even testier – said that Tsvangirai had answered the query. The journalists were disappointed, still. Could there have been something more than the fact that their prey did not jump to the bait that led to their choreography of contempt? London and Washington pundits say that Tsvangirai has lost these capitals’ favour. They say he is considered a ‘buffoon’ in imperialism's senior and junior centres. The USA's ‘professionals’ had decided to co-operate with the Zimbabwean security forces in the wake of Al Queda's New York adventures, to keep the fundamental fanatics out of ‘failed states.’ There are high hopes that ZANU-PF's desires to reenter the IMF-World Bank fold will result in successful monetary reform and titled land deeds for the 120,000 or so recipients of the bits and pieces of formerly commercial farms: to see the source of those dreams all one has to do is read the Reserve Bank governor's newspaper, the Financial Gazette. Like Mbeki to the south, the leaders in the north now prefer to see change come from within ZANU-PF: if the MDC serves to push the process, so be it, and so be it dispensable. The powers that be in the ‘west’ do not really want a working class and social democratic party to win elections in southern Africa. Could ‘western journalists’ so easily fall into such a seamless disenchantment?
This could be carrying Chomsky-like conspiracy theory too far. But Tsvangirai might have bolstered the journalists’ faith in feisty politicians (they are, after all, a fickle lot) and shocked them out of their Eurocentrism by asking them if they expected him to order ‘his people’ into the streets as would the African dictators their experience in the continent had led them to expect, and who his party opposed. He might have given them a brief history of how Mugabe's police, army and the new militia of ‘Green Bombers’ generally treat expressions of the general will on the street. (But he would then have been accused of spinelessness. In any case, Mugabe made the repressive upshot of that option clear in front of the journalists the next day in his State House conference, amidst the otherwise reconciliatory and soon forgotten platitudes he offers at similar moments. He also gave willing journalists a free trip to Victoria Falls – a fitting denouement for people ostensibly in Zimbabwe with tourist visas.) Or he might have remarked, ruefully, that he had once fallen into a trap laid by a journalist from Australia and a public relations consultant-cum-spy in Canada. He spent the next few years fighting trumped up treason charges, so he wasn't going to get caught up in the interests of a good story. Tsvangirai could also have divulged the deep angst the party had gone through a couple of months previously around the decision about (re)entering the contest at all. In August 2004 the MDC had ‘suspended’ participation until ZANU-PF implemented the good elections guidelines drawn up by the southern African states at Mauritius earlier that month – hoping that at least some of the restrictions on public meetings (more than five in one place talking about politics is illegal) and the press (it's not easy to get a one of Roy Thomson's licences to print money in Zimbabwe, so aside from a couple of expensive weeklies there is no press independent of the ruling party-state, and from short-wave, DSTV, and websites no alternative broadcast media) would be lifted, and that the chimerical ‘independent electoral commission’ and a host of other good electoral practices might be invented.
He might have revealed that he himself had been opposed to re-entering the farcical fray whilst these conditions remained still-born, but that parliamentarians with no other source of income (and with many high-minded reasons to maintain a presence in the law-making arena, too), grassroots members in areas where the MDC was already entrenched, significant organisations within Zimbabwe's civil society, and pressure from the super-power to the south and its masters in the north (remember, George Bush told Thabo Mbeki in July 2003 that the latter was the USA's ‘point man’ vis a vis Zimbabwe) had ruled that day's decision. He might have queried: ‘should I – or could I – have imposed my wishes on all these forces? Would this tally with a commitment to liberal – or social – democracy? If I could tell ‘my troops’ to man the barricades, like so many SMS messages flashing around now are saying, how could I justify the inevitable deaths? Is liberal democracy worth it? How can I bridge the gap between democratic consultation, in which I believe, and the vacillation of which you and some of my civil society critics accuse me?’
He could have philosophised about the tensions inherent in managing a party and a resistance movement (which has many leaders: some backers might be trying to make a ‘third force’ party out of them). The latter was born of a combination of an ‘anti-Mugabeism’ and the ravages of the neo-liberal economic policies his régime had been imposing enthusiastically throughout the nineties. Its roots are in social justice politics and anti-authoritarianism dating to the late 1980s, when students, unionists and a few politicians – in addition to the disenchanted Matabelelanders who could never abide ZANU-PF's swallowing of the opposition party and covering up the murderous gukurahundi (‘spring storms that wash away the rubbish’) of the mid-eighties, took too opposing ZANU-PF . The party's origins, though also in the unions, came more immediately after the so-called ‘war veterans’ took over Mugabe's mind to resurrect the land issue in 1997, simultaneously washing out the fiscus with their demands for huge pensions (granted, so it is said, by gun point when the vets marched unopposed into State House, and soon diminished by the inflation and devaluation they caused). Demonstrations and deaths in early 1998, when a surtax was imposed (but later withdrawn) to pay the pensions, created fertile ground for the National Constitutional Assembly to rise and combine social movement-style activism with liberal-democratic demands in mid-1998 (just after ZANU-PF's decision to join Laurent Kabila's efforts to maintain the Democratic Republic of the Congo's tenuous sovereignty added more strain to the budget – amidst lucrative opportunities for those able to gain military contracts).
When the Working People's Convention in February 1999 (a moment and a mandate Chan's book revealingly but incidentally ignores) mandated the formation of a new party, the contradictions betwixt thick and thin democratic forms began. They were exacerbated when Zimbabwe's commercial farmers (rather, the white ones: the black élite who had taken over some farms and would soon take over many more remained with their provider) joined the MDC bandwagon as ZANU-PF's constitutional referendum promised uncompensated land reclamation along with more time for its aging patriarch. When ‘the west’ joined the march to freedom from one-partyism, much as it had in Zambia a decade before, Mugabe could say in 2001 that the MDC should be ‘never be judged’ by the ‘human superfices’ of its black trade union face; by its salaried black suburban junior professionals; never by its rough and violent high-density (this expression of technocratic linguistics is Zimbabwe's euphemism for ‘townships’) lumpen elements … for it is moored in the colonial yesteryear and embraces wittingly or unwittingly the repulsive ideology of return to white settler rule. MDC is as old and as strong as the forces that control it; that converge on it and control it; that drive and direct; indeed that support, sponsor and spot it. It is a counter-revolutionary Trojan horse contrived and nurtured by the very inimical forces that enslaved and oppressed our people yesterday.1
Against such forces, who in ZANU-PF could deny a bit of patriotic head-bashing and careful vote counting? How could the MDC counter such a heady articulation of pan-African anti-imperialism with the pent-up the frustration of stale-mated class struggle?
Tsvangirai did not address these issues; thus the journalists’ doubts were unalloyed. They would be more than willing to agree with their governments’ disenchantment with Zimbabwe's opposition.
Would Stephen Chan's series of interviews with Morgan Tsvangirai have made any difference if they had been available to all these journalists a few weeks earlier? More importantly, would they have altered the collective consciousness of Zimbabweans set to vote? As it happens, the book was not available in time. Initiated in April and completed by the end of August, too many publishers’ reviewers thought the book too obscure, or too Chan-centric, or too complicit with the Westminster approach to democracy. Thus was denied the international solidarity Zimbabwean publishers needed to deflect visits from the presidents’ protectors. In the end someone found funds fallen off the back of a truck to facilitate its ISBN-less ‘Fingerprint’ printing just before the election, but not in time for widespread distribution.
But who could judge the effect in any case? Chan almost forecasts the book's quiet appearance when he writes in the acknowledgements that he demurs at the Saidian presumption that books should ‘speak the truth to power.’ He says he only wants to ‘bear a modest witness and engender a modest debate:’ (p. ix) but in this context even that desire might be too bold. It is clear that given transparent elections, the MDC would win, book on Tsvangirai or not, just as it would have in the parliamentary elections of 2000 and the presidential one in 2002. (Don't bother asking why there are so many elections in Zimbabwe: it's another way of perpetuating power. If the MDC had won the parliamentary elections it would need two-thirds of the seats to alter the constitution so the president – who appoints the cabinet – could be removed before his six-year tenure expires in 2008: imagine the mess.) Where very, very few can afford basic commodities, could a 105 page book – with a flashier cover than this one's basic black – encourage more people to vote, so it would have been harder for ZANU-PF to tinker with the peoples’ will? As it stands, the book did not alter the election. It probably won't make a difference to challenges to Tsvangirai's leadership. It remains – for now – a testament to a man who gained a congress of trade unions as he wrestled it away from the dead hand of ZANU-PF, but who gave it up to lose three national elections as the leader of the MDC. Even if they elections are lost, however, it is clear that Tsvangirai has taken Zimbabwe a long way towards the winning of democracy.
As such, the book intrigues. Sometimes it's hard to see where Tsvangirai might have gone if Chan – Dean of Law and Social Sciences at London's School of Oriental and African Studies; Zimbabwe watcher since his days with the Commonwealth observation team in 1980 and, after that, working for awhile in the offices of guerrilla veteran Joyce Mujuru, then women's affairs minister and now Zimbabwean vice-president; and author of a biography of Mugabe as well as many works in the genres of African studies and international relations – had not been so intent on involving Tsvangirai in his own imaginary spars with Zimbabwe's intellectuals’ efforts to craft an ‘autonomous’ African philosophy along with their goes at historical materialism (on the former component of the task he seems sympathetic, but not hopeful; of the latter, he is scornful of anyone inside or outside of Africa) or making him look respectable to those who like British-style democracy.
However, as the book goes on Tsvangirai takes hold and emerges as a principled, patient, and even powerful politician who can spar on more than equal terms with visiting and local philosophers wanting to advise kings. Chan begins by criticising Tsvangirai's earlier ‘pungent honesty … but also näivety’ about international diplomacy regarding the Commonwealth (the professor has a soft spot for that venerable institution that others might call näive) (pp. 4, 49-50). He cites stories from what he thought was the ‘independent’ Financial Gazette attesting to the MDC's ‘intellectual vs. worker’ split. It is as if he is telling us that he is ‘objective’ about the MDC – but we wonder if he is doing so in order to sing its praises later. We are sidetracked, though, with his own (positive) musings on Ali Mazrui's culturalist platitudes and a nice excursion into the ideas of Achille Mbembe, followed by febrile attacks on leftist African intellectuals such as Issa Shivji and Ibbo Mandaza (the latter, a contradictory supporter of the ruling party with a newspaper and academic think-tank of his own, may deserve it more than the former, but can the guy who coined the phrase ‘the schizophrenic state’ as a descriptor for Zimbabwe be dismissed completely as an ‘apologist?’). Eventually the worker turned opposition leader takes charge. In response to Chan's efforts to situate ZANU-PF's intellectual justifications for its current policies, Tsvangirai says that while a degree of pan-Africanism is necessary for ‘confidence building’ it ‘overshadows the acceptance of one's own faults.’ Africans must get out of the ‘blame-game [and the] denial stage’, if they are to (and he insists they will) find an African solution to the African problem. …We are still grappling with others and trying to blame other people, instead of looking at ourselves and saying ‘what have we done wrong?’ And the ones who have performed the greatest disservice, by not asking that, are the intellectuals … It's time to move on (pp. 38-41).
The MDC's philosophy is based in its urban roots, so it is not surprising when in response to Chan's comment that his vision sounds like he has ignored the rural, Tsvangirai repeated one of his favourite lines:
you cannot create more peasants. There is no society which has developed by creating more peasants than more industrial workers. … It's not that I ignore rural productivity … but that … it is not going to come about unless you create the conditions in the rural areas that will bring about something much more than just a subsistence economy (p. 43).
I think Mugabe's philosophy is more about how to retain power than about any ideological position. Because he has had variant ideological positions. You can look at the Marxist thrust, the socialist thrust, the ESAP [Economic Structural Adjustment Programme – the Zimbabwean version of the neo-liberal policies imposed all over Africa after the Keynesian moment ended after 1980 in most of the continent, but hit Zimbabwe a decade later], the post-ESAP period, and now a period where we are back to agrarian reform. You will find that he is experimenting … with populist positions in order to retain power … the whole thrust has never been about empowering people. It is about empowering himself – a takeover through mass political patronage (p. 45).
Chan and Tsvangirai move through more economics, international politics, the problems of dealing with impatient and violence-prone youth, the HIV-AIDS crisis, the fears and anxieties impelled by close brushes with death at the hands of Mugabe's henchmen and facing a fraudulent treason trial (he was acquitted soon after the interviews), and the fractions within the party emerging heatedly as the fate of the trial loomed and the question of finding a new leader arose. (In the process of discussing the latter, Chan reveals his proximity to London's Foreign Office.)
It is in the discussion about the ostensible moves within the MDC to replace Tsvangirai if he had been found guilty, and dealing with the people who may be after his job, that one is reminded of the press conference journalists’ doubts. They wanted more ‘leadership’ from Tsvangirai. But here, he explains why too much of that quality, at least in the way these impetuous – almost infantile – representatives of the western media seemed to see it, may not be what Zimbabwe needs now. To Chan's question on his ‘misgivings’ about keeping the MDC unified, Tsvangirai answered that he had to ‘discipline certain extreme emotions, frustrations’ and keep the ‘leadership focused on the agenda of the party.’ The MDC grew very quickly, and as such developed ‘unavoidable faultlines … It's natural that they should be there and people should express their frustrations’ (p. 61).
Mugabe is famous for saying – as long ago as 1977, when in the middle of the liberation war he sent some ‘young turks’ to Mozambique's jails when their exuberance for marxist analysis and unity with Zimbabwe's other nationalist party threatened his then tenuous grasp on power – that ‘the axe will fall’ on those within ZANU-PF who do not maintain ‘harmony’. In this context, Tsvangirai's recognition that ‘we are coming from a society which has dictatorial tendencies’ is wise. It is even wiser when one sees the way in which ZANU-PF is now tearing itself apart: expressing frustrations openly may have beneficial long-term effects. Tsvangirai's efforts to ‘confront this dictatorship with a democratic alternative’ and to develop ‘a democratic ethos, a democratic culture’, should be lauded. With this, though, Tsvangirai notes that the difficulties therein should be recognised,
because internal democracy in a young, fragile organisation can also be a source of weakness … being too dictatorial may actually push us back again within the same tendencies we are fighting against (pp. 61-62).
To be sure, attributing altruism to any politician is risky, and such a quality on its own does not lead to good politics. (Jimmy Carter anyone? Michael Dukakis?). Indeed, one could argue that a rational calculus might see that a few hundred deaths in a short-term call to the streets would mean saving millions from suffering and death due to the malnutrition caused by ZANU-PF's policies, and trickles into the torture queue as its slow-burning repression takes its toll. But these are never sure things. The culture of dictatorship would certainly not be diminished by such action. Even the consequences of taking power – peacefully or with a short sharp shock – are not certain: there is a strong possibility that if the MDC won a ‘free and fair’ election, a coup would have resulted. Tsvangirai and his advisors – and in Zimbabwe, as everywhere else, these advisors are likely to include members of the security services, so the decision making process must have a built-in ‘feedback’ loop from the moment a political thought is even uttered – are inevitably considering all of these eventualities. This leads to a process characterised by what the journalists and critics consider paralytic, but the consequences of precipitous action could be worse.
Perhaps the journalists would have refrained from their implicit criticisms if they had read the book: it would have introduced them to the thinking of someone who seems to be a very wise politician, and – even more important – the context that necessitates wisdom's caution. If Tsvangirai sticks it out, the next election might make more exciting reporting. The journalists might go back, not wishing they were somewhere else.
David Moore teaches Economic History and Development Studies at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, South Africa. His most recent published work examines Zimbabwe's ‘two lefts’ in Historical Materialism's special issue on Africa last December. An edited book on the World Bank, and a co-edited one on Zimbabwe, will appear later this year.
Coups from Below: Armed Subalterns and State Power in West Africa
By Jimmy D. Kandeh (2004), New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 225 pages, US$64.95hb. Reviewed by Autumn Scarbrough and E. Ike Udogu.
The story of military coups in postcolonial Africa has been told and retold. The myth that the military is more efficient, able to further political stability, a great unifier and the best organisation to promote the complex process of development in Africa have been stoutly debunked by the reality on the ground. Having failed miserably, some of its leaders have become ‘born again’ democrats by using their amassed wealth to capture the presidencies of their various polities. It is against the background of the foregoing developments in the continent that this excellent book might be visualised.
Coups from Below: Armed Subalterns and State Power in West Africa can be divided into two sections. The first section is made up of three chapters. They address issues that are theoretically and historically significant to understanding military coups in Africa in general and West Africa in particular. The second section deals with case studies on subaltern coups and dictatorships in Ghana, Liberia, Burkina Faso, Sierra Leone and Gambia. The book also includes an introduction, conclusion and a detailed bibliography and index.
In the introduction, Kandeh lays out the framework on which the book rests. The author contends that due to a lack of ‘protective, extractive, allocative, and regulative capacities’ in West African states, subaltern coups became commonplace (p.4). Moreover, subaltern coups are particularly detrimental because they tend to lack any discernable or consistent political agenda. The armed regulars, or subaltern ranked soldiers, in African armies involved in these coups are generally indignant because they have suffered from ‘oppression’ and been marginalised at the hands of the upper class. The author states that ‘subalterns engage in wanton violence not because they have lost their heads or are driven by insatiable criminal appetites but because they are products of political systems that have failed them and the rest of society’ (p.5). Paradoxically, these same armed subalterns in West Africa have often terrorised society and felonise the state than rescue the polity from decomposition after capturing power.
Three factors are historically associated with subaltern coups: the scale to which the use of political power overlaps with wealth accumulation; corresponding class locations, interests and ethnic identity of senior military officers and political incumbents; and severe economic and political crisis (pp. 6-7). Additionally, three basic assumptions undergird the characteristics of a subaltern coup. These are: the planning and execution of the intervention must be conducted by armed regulars; senior military officers must be among the principal targets of the coup and last, the inaugural rhetoric of coup leaders must be populist (pp. 78). The case studies examined in this volume exhibit at least two of the three traits.
In chapter 1, which is about ‘Class Dimensions of Military Coups’, the author examines the repercussions of class formation in the military and the increased presence of violence within Africa. The author notes that there are relatively few studies that focus on the issue of class relations in the military and the relevance that class relations has on the political actions of the military.1 However, the conflicting role that the state has played (as an apparatus) in forming class distinctions within the military is essential to understanding subaltern coups in Africa. The key concepts related to class issues within the military are domination and predatory accumulation. For instance, Kandeh alludes to how class relations in Africa are formed through relationships of power, i.e. domination, rather than through theproduction of goods (p. 15). A prevailing distinction is found between coups conducted by senior officers and those by subalterns. Coups conducted by senior officers tend to be based on ‘intra-class competition, personal rivalries, greed and ambition’ whereas those conducted by subalterns ‘mirror inter-class antagonisms’ (p.23). Class congruency does not necessarily bring about close relations between those in the military underclass and their civilian counterparts. The actions of subalterns clash and tend to threaten the interest of those in the same class location, i.e. the interests of peasants, workers and lumpens. After analysing the implications of class in military coups, Kandeh does caution his readers that one cannot apply monocausal accounts to the understanding of the complex nature of coups. He infers that ‘class, ethnicity, corporatism, patron-clientalism and personal ambition’ are all important variables that are often entangled in the formation of military coups by subalterns (p. 27).
Chapter 2, which is sub-titled ‘Situating the Militariat’, explores the subaltern location in the politics of the militariat. Kandeh notes that it is important to examine the militariat in ‘social categories [and not as] an abstract construct.’ Determining characteristics of their political actions are their weapons and aggressive behaviour on the population. Indeed, contends Kandeh, ‘it is [with] the gun that [the cabal] defines [its] existence, rights, entitlements and power’ (p. 30). Furthermore, the actions of the militariat have more political impact in a system than any other group due to the availability of coercive resources. Nevertheless, the militariat does have several problems central to its organization such as lack of cohesion, passivity and disunity; and, its dysfunctional attributes range from subversion, mutiny, insubordination, insurgency and counterinsurgency and the most dramatic form of political action, of course, coups (pp. 39-43).
Chapter 3, entitled ‘Historicizing the Militariat’, sheds lights on some of the influences that history has had on recruitment patterns and the propensity to privatise violence. The most important element in this chapter is the colonial construction of African militaries which has impacted the post-colonial states in Africa. Especially prevalent are issues associated with racial and ethnic undertones that still affect the military's character today. Kandeh contends that although the ‘Africanisation’ process implemented by the colonial powers after World War Two helped Africans to move up in rank, it may have created more problems than it solved because of ethnic (and regional) selectivity and impact (p.52). In particular, the colonial powers (France, Britain, and Portugal) used these methods to exploit local rivalries that followed along the lines of the ‘divide and conquer’ policy. He insists that colonial impression on the modern African military should not be take lightly and concludes the chapter by arguing that while the rhetorical populism of subaltern coups may have held out hope for restructuring civil-military relations, the results of these interventions turned out to be unmitigated disasters (p. 63).
In chapter 4, ‘Ghana: Mainstreaming “Junior Jesus”’, Kandeh introduces the five case studies presented in the book. This chapter discusses the pacesetting coup conducted by Flight Lieutenant Jerry Rawlings, in 1979 and his acclaimed ‘resurrection’ in 1981. After briefly discussing the events that led up to the 1979 coup, he examines its implications and the coming to power of the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC). The main agenda of the 1979 coup was retaliatory rather than transformative, and ostensibly focused on ‘eradicating corruption rather than restoring democracy (p. 71).’ Similar to the other case studies, Kandeh devotes a section to analysing the levels of corruption, democracy, human rights abuses and economic performance of subaltern leadership. Further, the decision to replace the Cocoa Marketing Board with the Cocoa Council, along with the revocation of all cocoa buying licences was just one example of the bad economic decision of Rawlings’ administration.
Following the debacle of a democratic experiment, a second coup was carried out by Rawlings and the Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC) was installed. Central to the agenda of the PNDC was to wage another ‘holy war’ on corruption (p. 81). Despite the war on corruption, however, misappropriations of funds could be found at all levels of key public institutions. While the PNDC initially had no intention of holding elections, they were held as a result of internal and external pressures for political liberalisation, and Rawlings was ultimately elected president in 1992. In sum, Kandeh states that the mainstream policies of Rawlings produced not only a macro-economic turnaround, but also ushered in a period in which human rights abuses were curtailed and the promotion of democratic change and consolidation was in vogue (p. 96).
Chapter 5, ‘Liberia: No Doe, No Liberia’, brought to light the epitome of gross atrocities that can be associated with subaltern coups. It also brought to the fore the complex politics between the socalled Americo-Liberians and the ‘natives’. Following the long presidencies of William Tubman and William Tolbert, a violent coup broke out in 1980 that was instigated by Master Sergeant Samuel Doe and sixteen of his followers. Shortly after the coup, Doe installed the Provisional Ruling Council (PRC) that subsequently began to ‘milk the Cold War for everything that it was worth by posing as an anticommunist zealot’ (p. 103). Moreover, comparable to the case of Ghana, the rhetoric of the regime was to rid the country of corruption and to liquidate those who were allegedly against the state (p.105). Among all the case studies in the book, the human rights abuses under the leadership of Doe were the most appalling – a practice that continued after his demise (p. 109). In addition, no attempts at democracy were made during Doe's rule and Liberia was thus farther away from democracy than ever before. The United States role in providing aid to Doe was the only reason why the regime was able to stay in power for as long as he did. With the end of the Cold War, however, the United States withdrew support for the Doe administration and Liberian economy collapsed as did Doe himself, metaphorically (p. 118).
Chapter 6, ‘Burkina Faso: Robin Hood of the Sahel’, examines Thomas Sankara's leadership of the Conseil National de la Revolution (CNR). Kandeh affirms that this regime was highly ideologically provoked. Burkina Faso had experienced numerous coup attempts in 1966, 1980 and 1982; however, Sankara's coup in 1983 was the most radical transformative project attempted by a military regime in the sub-region, contends Kandeh (p. 119). The government of the CNR became a complex admixture of nationalism, Marxism-Leninism, Pan-Africanism and anti-imperialism (p. 125). Among the many policies formulated by the CNR, personal sacrifice was among its top priorities, especially for civil servants and urban workers. For example, many were told that it was their patriotic duty to provide a day's work or make voluntary financial contributions to the state. Moreover, the model of social justice followed by the exuberant ‘coupist’, Sankara, was meant to help those that were most marginalised in society such as women and peasants. While the main purpose of the regime was to democratise politics in the polity, his performance failed to come close to the good intentions and lofty expectations (p. 134); it is one thing to profess an ideology and quite another to implement its tenets. While the GNP and average life expectancy of Burkina Faso was the lowest in the world before Sankara came to power, Sankara changed very little during his leadership.2
The government preached self-reliance, but remained heavily reliant on external development assistance. In sum, Kandeh found that the regime became the victim of schisms and factionalism, with the assassination of Sankara in 1987 marking the end of the regime's professed commitment to improve the lives of the marginalised in society.
In chapter 7, ‘Sierra Leone: ‘Sobels’ and ‘Foot of State’, the author explores the National Provision Ruling Council (NPRC) chaired by Captain Valentine Strasser and the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) led by ‘semiilliterate army corporal’ Paul Koroma. Sierra Leone has experienced more subaltern coups than any other state in sub-Saharan Africa. Like Ghana and Liberia, the coup was instigated by increasing amounts of civil unrest and weakening socio-economic conditions. One of the many policies of the NPRC was to seize power in order to end the rebel war taking place in the country. However, the armed insurgency called the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) became stronger adversaries during the reign of the NPRC and the state became less secure. In fact, Kandeh notes that ‘reminiscent of Doe's PRC … the NPRC leaders rejected calls to declare their assets but wasted no time confiscating the possessions of some of the predecessors’ (p.153). Pressured by external actors, the NPRC conducted democratic elections in which Ahmad Tejan Kabba won the seat of the presidency.
Unlike the NPRC that seized power from a one-party dictatorship, the unpopular AFRC coup overthrew a democratically elected government. Rejected by the international community, the AFRC began to pillage the state under the slogan ‘if you don't want us, you'll die’ (p. 167). While the NPRC managed to improve the economic conditions from the previous regimes, the AFRC reversed any advances made by the NPRC and the people of Sierra Leone became the victims of horrific internal aggression.
Chapter 8, ‘The Gambia: Despot from Kannillai’, discusses the bloodless coup of 1994 carried out by the Armed Forces People's Revolutionary Council (AFPRC). A vital factor that distinguished this coup from the failed coup attempts that Gambia had experienced in the past, was the ‘resentment felt by junior Gambian officers towards their Nigerian commanding officers’ (p. 182). Led by Lt. Yayah Jammeh, the AFPRC established that their mission was to rid the country of those that had plundered its resources. The reasons given for the coup were corruption and nepotism of the Jawara government, discontent over low salaries and deplorable living conditions, and so on (p. 183). The poor performance of this regime turned out to be similar to that of the other cases discussed in the book. While human rights abuses pale in comparison to Liberia, for instance, many citizens, especially ex-ministers and army personnel were the victims of harassment and even executions. The regime's atrocities aside, the AFPRC managed to sustain the country's economy. Also, Gambia held democratic elections in 1996, in which, like Rawlings in Ghana, Jammeh was elected president. In general, Kandeh finds that Jammeh could be ‘slotted somewhere in the middle’ of subaltern leaders; however, the performance of the AFRPC regime worsened the longer Jammeh stayed in power (p. 198).
In his conclusion, the author presents, among other factors, the common characteristics of subaltern coups in West Africa. First, is the relative youth and lumpen social background of many of its leaders. Second, the regimes that the subalterns toppled were relatively the same, i.e. elitist and exclusionary, with the main targets of the subalterns being the privileged class. Third, populist rhetoric was a main tool utilised by the military regimes, all of which are for the most part deceptive (pp. 201-202).
In sum, Kandeh provides three broad conclusions in this study. First, subaltern coups are by their very nature more violent and destabilising than coups led by senior army officers. Second, subaltern coups give way to more intense combinations of violence and accumulation. Third, the reason for the seizure of power by the militariat has been the failure of the non-hegemonic political elites (and state) to legitimise political power, curb corruption and promote socio-economic development (pp. 207-208). He, then, contends that in order to deter coups, of any sort in West Africa, civilian governments must work to establish institutions that will be so efficacious as to make military intervention passé.
This book, splendidly, paints a vivid picture behind some of the most shocking subaltern coups conducted in West Africa. One wonders, though, why the author ‘cautiously’ left out the coupprone Nigeria in this book. In spite of this omission, however, the author has written an enjoyable and informative book that adds to the literature on military coups in Africa and elsewhere. This volume is very useful to students of military politics and highly recommended for libraries and courses in African political development.
African films Human rights watch international film festival, 16 ‐ 25 March, Covent Garden, London
Sometimes in April
Raoul Peck: France/Rwanda/US; 2005, 140 m ‐ drama
Shot on location in Rwanda, Sometimes in April is a compelling retelling of the tragedy of the some 100 days of the 1994 Rwandan genocide by acclaimed director Raoul Peck. In April 1994, Hutu army officer Augustin defies the Hutu army leadership's plans to perpetrate genocide against the Tutsi and opposition Hutus. He tries to get his wife (who is Tutsi) and family to safety. When he is separated from them, Augustin is caught in a desperate struggle to survive and is haunted by questions about what happened to his loved ones. Filmmaker present.
Baadassss!
Mario Van Peebles; US; 2003; 108 m drama
One of the most entertaining movies about the making of a movie, Mario Van Peebles's Baadassss! is a brilliant retelling of the making of his father Melvin's Sweet Sweetback's Baadassss Song, the legendary 1971 hit which sparked the birth of independent black cinema. Set against the backdrop of the Vietnam War, Woodstock, hipsters, hucksters, free love, afros and funk music, Baadassss! is a hilarious yet considered portrayal of a seismic period in history following the assassinations of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King. Filmmaker present; Associated Ritzy Café Event, Friday 18 March, 8 -11pm, Baadassss!
Funk reception, free
Liberia: An Uncivil War
James Brabazon and Jonathan Stack; US, 2004 ‐ 102 m ‐ doc
In Liberia, the summer of 2003 was pure insanity: two armies are in the final battle of a decade-long civil war, holding the capital under siege while thousands die from mortar shells launched from afar. As the soldiers, mostly teenagers, fight a bloody urban battle, the nation prays that American forces show up to put an end to the violence. The film journeys to the heart of the conflict by covering both sides ‐ Jonathan Stack covers the defence of the capital from the inside, his partner James Brabazon travels with the LURD rebels as they fight their way to the capital. Filmmaker present.
Living Rights: Yoshi, Toti and Lena
Duco Tellegen; Japan/Kenya/Belarus; 2004 ‐ 83 m ‐ doc
A powerful, striking film exploring dilemmas facing three young people on three different continents, including TOTI, a Masai girl of fourteen. When she was 11, she was going to be married off in return for cattle that the family needed to survive. Instead, she ran away and her twin sister was married in her place. Three years later, Toti tries to reconnect with her family. Filmmakers present.
The Refugee All Stars
Zach Niles and Banker White; Guinea/Sierra Leone/US ‐ 2004 ‐ 86 m ‐ doc.
The Refugee All Stars tells the remarkable and ultimately life-affirming story of a group of six Sierra Leonean musicians who come together to form a band while living as refugees in the Republic of Guinea. Following the group over three years, we begin to understand the brutal realities of civil war and are witness to the ability of individuals to sustain hope in a landscape dominated by rage and loss. Filmmaker present.