Even if manual workers and slaves were ‘represented’ on the council advising the Crown, then their representatives were not tribunes from the masses, or leaders of men taking to heart the needs of a particular stratum of society or class; they did not bring the people together to hear their grievances before going into session. Rather, they became pseudo princes reigning over entire regions, cut off from their original social background. (Diop 1981, p. 232)
This article will therefore start with a retrospective interpretation of the growth of peasant representation as cotton producers in Mali. There will be a particular emphasis on the strike of 2000, a pivotal period that highlights some of the issues at play. The article will also show the emergence of a number of ‘pseudo princes cut off from their roots’: this phenomenon was assisted by the interventionism of the state cotton company or its funders, and more generally by the way power is exercised in Mali. Potential movements against power can become part of an existing form of power. Anticipating in some measure the conclusions of the research, it can be said that the rise of peasant representation, while leading to the emergence on to the national scene of a rural elite that had largely been marginalised until then, paradoxically did little to serve the interests of the majority of cotton producers. The principal victories in the struggles (in 1975, 1981, 1991 and 2000) were not won by the unions, and questions can be raised about the motivations of the union representatives, caught up in well known corollary effects of power (such as clientelism, corruption, corrupt practices and cooptation).
Cotton growing has held an important place in Mali's recent history, involving hundreds of thousands of peasants, peasant organisations, the Malian state, a Franco-Malian state cotton company and funders. As the saying goes, the devil is in the detail, and the findings set out below, the results of research from 2005 onwards, cannot give a full picture of the complexity of the alliances and opposing factions involved in organisation in the cotton industry; they should however offer some avenues towards a better understanding of this sector and the power issues that are at stake in present-day Mali.
Peasant participation and resistance: long-standing phenomena
The history of African peasant struggles goes back a long way (Isaacman 1990). While it is not possible within the ambit of this article to set out fully a view of the history of the cotton sector and the unions, it should be noted that in the 1950s there were two peasant unions in existence in Mali, one within the Office du Niger, an autonomous public enterprise to build irrigation and attract farming families to the region, and the other around Bamako. Both were dissolved by the Sudanese Union–African Democratic Rally (USRDA) political party that was in power from 1960 to 1968. Mention should also be given to one of the rare popular uprisings in this period, if only to refute interpretations of the peasants as passive: in 1968, in Ouolossébougou, an alliance of peasants and traders clashed with local party officials (Amselle 1978). The protesters were rebelling against the ‘voluntary’ contributions to the collectively farmed fields, with the profits going to the Malian state, and the ban on private trading of groundnuts. The demonstrations were harshly repressed, with many dead and hundreds arrested. The young Malian state, under the guise of national unity, refused to tolerate the existence of differing views not only from an independent union but also from a more spontaneous movement.
Village Associations: a founding stage in the structuring of cotton growing
It was not until the mid 1970s that significant reform, encouraged by peasant protests, brought new life to their struggle. The Malian Company for the Development of Textiles2 (CMDT), created in 1974, then took control of cotton farming in partnership with the French state company that had until then been responsible. The extent of its ever-growing prerogatives, its territorial network and its role as a motor of the rural economy of the south all led to its increasing appearance as a state within a state. It took responsibility for relations between the peasants and the state in the south. The relationship between buyer and grower established between CMDT and the peasants was, in some ways, similar to an employer–employee relationship. The confusion of roles between state, government and CMDT remains striking today, as observed during many of the interviews conducted during the research.
In the developments that led to new unions emerging in the 1990s, CMDT's creation of Village Associations at village level from 1975 onwards is important. This is presented sometimes as a basic reorganisation proposed by Michel Daou, a progressive official in the Fana zone, but was equally a response to the producers’ protests. The creation of the Village Associations was not to a significant degree the result of taking into account the peasants’ organisational capacity – a capacity built out of a growing antipathy towards cotton farming among producers that were fed up with being cheated by company agents at the weighing of the produce (Docking 1999, p. 114). The creation of the Village Associations, although it now looks like social progress, was in CMDT's view a tool that it could use, but one that had no proper legal status. CMDT transferred to the Village Associations the responsibility for assessing their members’ needs according to the size of the land being cultivated by each member, and for carrying out the pre-marketing stages (weighing and storage). There were three constituent functions of the Village Associations: their function in driving forward all agricultural production, including food crops; their function in facilitating access to credit and tools; and their function as the basis for the emergence of a cotton elite.
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Driving forward all agricultural production: Cotton producers brought together in the Village Associations all grew food (maize, millet and sorghum) as well as cotton, and benefited from assistance from CMDT, which provided the necessary agricultural inputs.3 Cotton production was not then in conflict with food production, as it also helped farmers to acquire tools and capital goods, which explained why CMDT often appeared to be a safeguard of food security in the country.
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Facilitating access to credit: Farmers took on credit for the whole season's agricultural needs (agricultural inputs, seeds, tools, livestock) via their Village Associations, with guarantees being provided to the bank in the form of a payment at source by CMDT. The system of joint liability meant that the beneficiaries took on the potential debts of farmers in their association that made a loss, which gave rise to numerous tensions, and meant that the greatest liability in view of unknown risks (such as climate or pests) fell heavily on the peasants alone. The functioning of the Village Associations showed the advantage of facilitating access to credit for rural users, but the problem was that they needed to be dependent on cotton to gain that access. The setting up of the local credit unions in the 1990s partly reduced this problem, but anyone wanting access to a sufficient level of credit at the start of the season had to be growing cotton.
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Basis for the emergence of a cotton elite: The need to provide training to Village Association managers led to the setting up of rural literacy programmes for some producers. The training had a further effect: by consolidating a cotton elite that it had helped to create, it not only facilitated the creation of an interest group that would seek to defend the cotton producers, but also reinforced the social differentiation of dominant groups at village level. The growers that received training were largely chosen from rural elites, with the training and their new role only consolidating their status. This effectively maintained the earlier practice of the colonial period of selecting paysans pilotes, not just on the basis of their assumed abilities, but also for their social position within the villages. These colonial-era experimental peasant farmers were appointed to implement innovative growing programmes that it was hoped would demonstrate new ideas and effectively provide training. ‘Far from being just an instrument of autonomy for the peasants, the Village Associations promoted self-exploitation of the villagers, or at least of the poorest ones, to the profit of more affluent peasants and of the development project’ (Amselle and Benhamou 1985, p. 91). One of the issues was the management of the administration contribution provided by CMDT to the Village Associations to cover marketing costs, and calculated according to the quantity of cotton produced by them. These promoted a transfer of the abuses by company officials to the newly trained teams in charge of managing the Village Associations. Marketing costs were still used for the associations’ capital costs (e.g. building storage depots, purchasing weighing scales), but also, in association with CMDT, for village development projects (such as boreholes and schools).
The officials of these teams were little kings. They demanded under-the-counter payments (of money, cereals, animals, etc.), and rigged the scales. In the 1981/82 agricultural season, peasants refused to deliver their cotton to the purchasing teams. After the enquiry, CMDT and the ministry for rural development dealt ruthlessly with the officials responsible. (Mission de restructuration du secteur coton [MRSC] 2001)
The cotton unions under the Third Republic
It was not until the insurrections of March 1991 and the adoption of the new constitution in 1992 that it became easier to set up new agricultural unions.4 As a result, two unions were set up, both on the initiative of the peasants themselves. These were the Syndicat des producteurs de coton et vivriers (SYCOV) (National Union of Cotton and Food Crop Producers), for cotton producers, and which at the outset had a strong peasant membership from the CMDT Koutiala and San region (Docking 1999); and the Syndicat des paysans du cercle de Kita (SPCK) (Union of Cotton Producers of Kita), based in the south-west of the country in a zone that at the time mainly produced groundnuts, before being converted to cotton production. SPCK was supported by the historical organisation of affiliated unions, the Union nationale des travailleurs maliens (UNTM) (National Association of Malian Workers), which helped it to draft its statutes and to which it was affiliated for a while. These factors differentiate it from SYCOV, which asserted its independence when it was set up. Among the leadership of these unions at the time they were set up, there were many former civil servants who had moved into agricultural production, and particularly into peasant representation.
During various interviews on the short history of these unions, it appeared that being educated and knowledgeable about bureaucratic regulations were determining factors in choosing these leaders, as was a command of the French language. Bingen (1996, p. 26) notes that the leader of the Comité de coordination des AV et tons 5 (Committee for the Coordination of Village Associations and Other Organisations) which started the producers’ struggle from 1989 onwards, and which led to the setting up of SYCOV, had been chosen because he was the most educated. However he declined the invitation to become leader of the union, leaving this to Baba Antoine Berthé, in order both to increase the geographical base of the union (as Berthé was from Kadiolo, to the south of Sikasso, rather than Koutiala) and on the grounds of his membership of the government service, Action coopérative (Cooperative Initiatives). Berthé, however, had not taken part in the 1991 movement6 and was new to union mobilisation. There is a certain irony not only in the fact that the leader of the first cotton producers’ union had come from a background as a civil servant in Action coopérative, but also that the formation of the union had been in part a reaction to CMDT's management practices: Action coopérative was CMDT's main rival, and jealous of CMDT's extensive powers, which it considered encroached on its own.
At first, SYCOV received financial support7 that brought it under the suspicion of CMDT, which concluded rather too soon that the SYCOV committee was being exploited with a view to promoting the privatisation of the company. This is an important point, even if it does not seem to have been well founded. SYCOV was not an advocate of privatising the CMDT, but the union's president had a clear grasp of the issue, given that the state cotton companies in most African countries had already been or were about to be privatised. It was this precise point, in addition to the hostile relations between CMDT and the union, that crystallised CMDT's position, and it was CMDT's response to it – its interference in the choice of the peasant representatives – that was to lead to its downfall.
CMDT chose to rid itself of this thorn in its side when the SYCOV committee was re-elected in 1998. As SYCOV did not have sufficient funds, CMDT funded its congress. The corruption of some producers, or rather the spreading of rumours about the current committee in order to discredit them, proved to be an effective strategy that resulted in the election of a new union committee that was conciliatory towards CMDT's interests. The president chosen by the Company, Yaya Traoré, was known for his opposition to privatisation. CMDT thus appeared to have broken the Union's independence, and certainly considered itself to have succeeded in neutralising the union.
The development of peasant representation: from strikes to privatisation
The causes of the conflict: from prices to representation
In 1998, a social movement in the CMDT Koutiala region, birthplace of SYCOV, took a hard line on the cotton purchase price, which was considered too low. The central contract that had been agreed with CMDT, regulating the price-setting mechanism, had expired. SYCOV Koutiala, the only union committee to be voted back in its entirety at the recent congress, perhaps saw the opportunity to take revenge, and urged the producers not to supply their cotton to CMDT. The protests, banned in the Koutiala zone, were marked by confrontations that led to the death of one of the producers. The action was successful, and the purchase price was raised to 185 CFA francs per kilo. This first action was in a way replayed a year later in the industrial action of 1999/2000, except that SYCOV Koutiala then refused to become involved, as it felt that the other CMDT regions had not shown solidarity the year before.
In 1999, the issue of the purchase price was still unsettled as harvest time approached, and the peasants were sure that they would receive at least the same price as the year before. CMDT, however, faced with a collapse in the world price and, under pressure from the World Bank, proposed 150 CFA francs per kilo to the growers. The compensation fund that had been planned in the event of a fall in the world price had disappeared among CMDT's debts. At this time, the cotton producers were basically represented by SYCOV, joined from this period on by SPCK and the Syndicat des producteurs agricoles du Mali ouest (SYPAMO) (Union of Agricultural Cotton Producers of Western Mali).8 SPCK and SYPAMO however, played a minor role as local unions in the Kita zone. When negotiations on the purchase price took place in 1999, only SYCOV and SYPAMO were invited to take part, as CMDT chose not to recognise the legitimacy of SPCK.
‘The state does not look to tomorrow. It does not look at the long term.’
The SYCOV officials, not long in office, but also the officials from CMDT and the ministry of agriculture all underestimated the level of discontent of the rank and file of the cotton producers at the lowering of the price to 150 CFA francs, a price that a majority (three out of five) of SYCOV's regional branches had accepted during the consultations. The two exceptions were the Bougouni and Sikasso CMDT regions, which therefore were at the forefront of the strike. SYPAMO fought a campaign in its zone to defend the lower price, with one of its leaders saying to discontented producers: ‘You can't eat cotton, and if you don't sell at this price, you're going to have to make it into mattresses and sit on them.’ (Interview, S.M. Keïta, Secretary-General, Union nationale des sociétés coopératives de producteurs de cotton [UN-SCPC] [National Alliance of Cooperative Societies of Cotton Producers], October 2008.) SPCK, at this time marginalised, waited for the marketing period of the 2000/2001 season before reacting by urging the peasants not to deliver their cotton. In Kokofata, the CMDT regional director was briefly taken hostage when he came accompanied by police to collect the cotton.
One of the reasons that the dispute carried over into 2000 was the way that the Village Associations worked, based on the principle of joint liability, as mentioned above. At a price of 150 CFA francs per kilo, most Village Associations found themselves in debt, and the big producers that were supposed to benefit had to absorb the debts of those who had produced less than foreseen. This led to whole villages being in debt. The Village Associations, paid at the earliest between December and June of the following year, were thus each in turn affected by the fall in the purchase price, and their subsequent debts. The discontent had been growing during harvest time at the end of 1999, and at the start of the following season in mid 2000. During this time, the producers in debt had to give up their capital equipment or even their working cattle. A number of factors inflamed the situation, from the shortcomings of the unions to communication about the change in price.
Given the scale of discontent among the producers, SYCOV reviewed its stance and for a while held out the threat of a strike in cotton production for the 2000 season, before drawing back and encouraging all the peasants to sow the crop. A group of producers based mainly between the towns of Bougouni and Sikasso saw that the union was not prepared to act, and set itself up as a crisis committee, bringing together mostly Village Association officials, but also a local representative of the Chamber of Agriculture and a SYCOV committee member all to differing extents rebelling against the stance being taken by their organisations. Without any support from the unions, they organised general meetings of the producers between March and May 2000. The Crisis Committee sent representatives to different regions and signed up the most aggrieved Village Associations, and drew up a list of grievances and demands consisting of some 10 points, notably the restoration of the cotton purchase price and the restaging of debt repayments over a longer period. The movement taken up by the Crisis Committee spread, boosted by rural radio stations, and reached virtually nationwide coverage. ‘When our claims reached CMDT and the agriculture minister, SYCOV said that we were troublemakers in league with a madman’, said Crisis Committee member Tahirou Bemba – the madman being himself (Interview, Bamako, October 2008). The CMDT management and the government remained convinced that the producers would end up at least sowing the cotton, and SYCOV talked the industry out of negotiating with the Committee.
The refusal on the part of CMDT and the authorities to negotiate was perceived as highly contemptuous towards the peasants, and contributed to the radicalisation of the producers: ‘The peasants were saying that even under the dictatorship it hadn't been like that’ (Interview, Méné Diallo, member of Crisis Committee, March 2007). President of the Republic Alpha Omar Konaré took the measure of the movement far too late, receiving the Crisis Committee only in June 2000 and acceding to most of their demands. The damage had been done and the strike was by then too advanced, resulting in a poor harvest that season. In addition, 50% of producers abandoned cotton growing that year. National production was halved, leading to considerable financial losses on the part of CMDT, the national economy and not least those who had suffered the most, the peasants themselves. The strike constituted a real slap in the face for CMDT, and the state in general, by the peasants. Moreover, the term used to refer to this widespread social movement was significant, as the peasants called it a ‘strike’ rather than a ‘boycott’ (which might have been the more correct word), showing that they were no longer afraid to confront their ‘boss’, CMDT, and even the state. The movement, up against urban elites wavering between paternalism and contempt for the farmers that they pejoratively referred to as ‘broussards’, or ‘bushmen’, made a deep impression on the people that had taken part and revealed the political strength of the peasants, who made up a large majority of the population. The strikers took great pride in this episode, which showed that their opinion needed to be taken into account, as the producers refused to be variables in the production process that could be adjusted at will.
Rebuilding the union landscape: the founding of SYVAC
The dispute sharply divided producers, both at the local level, where strikers in some villages uprooted cotton plants sown by others or threatened non-native inhabitants to take their lands away from them, and at the national level, where the SYCOV official representation became completely discredited. The tensions over the legitimacy of the different peasant representatives were very acute at that time, and the government set up an arbitration committee, led by a former CMDT managing director and assisted by the Chamber of Agriculture, to organise public meetings in order to draw lessons from the crisis. As Bemba noted, ‘If SYCOV and the Crisis Committee both went to a meeting, they couldn't go in by the same door’ (Interview, T. Bemba, member of Crisis Committee, October 2008). When the arbitration committee decided that a congress should be held to replace the SYCOV committee, the existing committee denied the legality of this decision. The leaders of the Crisis Committee finally set up their own union in 2001, the Syndicat pour la valorisation des cultures cotonnières et vivrières (SYVAC) (Union for the Improvement of the Cultivation of Cotton and Food Crop Culture). The setting up of SYVAC was in part a result of CMDT's strategy that sought to heighten the divisions among the producers in order to exploit the rivalries and weaken peasant representation (Berthomé 2003). CMDT's attempt in 1998 to take control of SYCOV by putting a more conciliatory committee in place had had unexpected repercussions that affected the whole industry, as it was in part the lack of legitimacy of the committee that prevented it from being able to be an effective interlocutor or negotiator when the wave of protest arose from the grassroots. This meant that from the point of the setting up of SYVAC in 2001, the cotton producers were represented by a total of four unions, of which it is difficult to assess the relative strength or influence, with peasants mostly not being formal members of these organisations. SYVAC nevertheless drew its legitimacy for some time from the strike and established itself with meteoric speed. Its strongest presence was in the areas between Bougouni and Sikasso, where the protest had surfaced, but it had no presence in the historical cotton-growing area of Koutiala.
The entire industry had been hugely disrupted by the events of 1998–2000: the strike and the devastating financial effects that followed it opened up the way in 2001 for the World Bank to enforce the privatisation of CMDT that it had been waiting for. The industry was ordered to refocus its activities on cotton and to stop its ancillary activities (such as transport, maintenance of rural roads and drilling boreholes, but also literacy classes for peasants), resulting in 600 redundancies in 2003. CMDT officials, when interviewed, often blamed the privatisation on the producers’ strike, as the damage done to the industry's finances had delivered CMDT into the hands of the World Bank. Looking back, it might rather be considered that it was CMDT's strategy that had backfired on it: by replacing the former SYCOV leadership on the pretext that it supported privatisation, CMDT had put in place a committee that it controlled, but which proved incapable of containing the grassroots, which went ahead with its strike against all opposition. The strike placed CMDT and the Malian state in a financial position that left them powerless to oppose privatisation.
Handing over responsibility or buying social peace?
The World Bank and the ‘Technical and Financial Partners’ demanded that the privatisation of the whole cotton sector10 be carried out as quickly as possible, but the Mission de restructuration du secteur coton (MRSC) (Task Force for the Restructuring of the Cotton Sector) that was in charge of the privatisation process resulted in a series of disappointments. The process, expected by some to be complete in 2005, was still unfinished nine years after its launch, as a consequence of resistance on the part of the Malian state, of CMDT and of the rivalries between the producers’ organisations. President Amadou Toumani Touré, known as ‘ATT’, for example obtained an adjournment of the privatisation before the presidential elections in 2007, probably in order to avoid unpopularity with the electorate, given that cotton provided livelihoods for around three million people. The privatisation process continued sluggishly, and a first attempt to put a geographical cotton region up for sale fell through in 2003. It was not until February 2005 that a new timetable and clear strategy for the privatisation of the industry were put forward (MRSC 2005). One of the essential elements in the preparations was the reorganisation of the producers, in order to strengthen their involvement. The formation of an umbrella organisation, UN-SCPC (National Alliance of Cooperative Societies of Cotton Producers), was asked to represent the producers to private buyers.
The unions learnt in the Etats généraux du secteur coton convention of 2001 that they were to be put in temporary charge of the market management of supplying ‘non strategic’ agricultural inputs to the CMDT Village Associations. This was a strange term to use for inputs used for food crops, which were necessarily very strategic for peasant families, as they concerned the food security not only of the families, but of the whole nation, given that the Malian cotton-producing area is the most productive agricultural region in the country apart from irrigated zones. In order to manage this important market, the four cotton producers’ unions, SYCOV, SYVAC, SPCK and SYPAMO, were brought together under the auspices of the Groupement des syndicats cotonniers et vivriers du Mali 11 (GSCVM) (Association of Cotton and Food Producers’ Unions of Mali), whose head offices were in the Chamber of Agriculture in Bamako, until the umbrella body that would take on this task could be set up. This transfer of competences had all the signs of a poisoned chalice designed to buy the cooperation of the unions. They shared the roles, but also the resources, by diverting the tendering procedures and overcharging the producers they were supposed to be representing for the agricultural inputs supplied. Their disagreements of the past temporarily put aside, the union leaders were now more occupied with sharing this manna among themselves than in fighting privatisation: this was the almost universal view of the producers interviewed during the research.
During the same period, the president, ‘ATT’, an independent without his own political party, was running the country with the support of all the political parties represented in the National Assembly under what he called his ‘policy of consensus’, which can be interpreted as buying social peace after the years of political divisions among the parties. One representative interviewed said that ‘GSCVM is a bit like ATT's consensus’, and another that ‘the peasants have seen that these people [the union leaders] all play the same tune’ (Interview, Sidy Coulibaly, former official of Rural Management Programme, September 2008).
The lack of transparency in the management of the inputs severely penalised the industry as a whole, particularly when CMDT was taken to court by a company supplying inputs, which led to the temporary seizure of Malian cotton that was due to be exported. Various incidents of litigation led to some international banks withdrawing from the banking pool that was financing CMDT, thus putting its financial stability in jeopardy. No one worried about the repercussions of this (see, inter alia, Dicko 2007)12, although all eyes turned to Bakary Togola, who since 2004 had become pervasive in all areas of peasant representation. For this reason, he enjoyed the support of state services, of CMDT and the friendship of the head of state (to whom he also, in peremptory fashion, promised ‘300 votes per village’ in the 2007 presidential campaign). Bakary Togola, of whom peasants from his own district liked to say that ‘A té sé ka togo sébé’(‘he can't write his own name’), was, however, not lacking in skill and persuasiveness, particularly in the financial arena, and became concurrently president of SYCOV and of GSCVM in 2004, president of the Chamber of Agriculture, and finally president of the UN-SCPC, the national umbrella organisation for cotton producers’ unions (see above). For many of the peasants interviewed during this research, including some SYCOV members, the accumulation of all peasant representation in one and the same person was problematic. In his capacity as president of GSCVM the peasants judged him responsible for the disastrous management of the trading of non-strategic inputs. All cotton and food producers in southern Mali, it should be remembered, suffered from the rise in the cost of inputs and the overcharging. Speaking about this in 2005, Mansa Sidibé, president of a cotton cooperative, said that ‘the union officials had dipped their hands in the blood’, as their greed had had serious consequences, affecting the producers’ livelihoods and ability to survive (Interview, January 2005). The union leaders were almost universally criticised by the producers interviewed during the research, particularly on account of their being too often in Bamako, necessarily drawn in by the place symbolising the power that corrupted them: the peasant representative that ‘lingers on’ in Bamako ends up personifying this power and is no longer able to defend the interests of simple village people from the rural areas.
Privatisation of the cotton industry and participation: from the unions to their umbrella organisation
One of the most drawn-out stages of the privatisation process was converting the Village Associations into cooperatives, and the series of elections required to set up their national alliance, an umbrella body. This was to be the joint manager of the network, alongside the private companies that would be taking over from CMDT, as the organisation was to be sold in four parts corresponding to the four geographical zones. It was the Inter-profession coton (Cotton Joint-Trade Association), a management board of sorts, that brought together the different actors and shareholders in the network: private companies (with a shareholding of 61%), UN-SCPC (the umbrella body representing the producers, with a shareholding of 20%), the state (17%) and the private company staff members (2%).
This development would at last give the Village Associations a legal identity by converting them into registered cooperatives with documented legal status, and would give them a representative structure, with elections to the different levels (commune, sector, region and national level13) of committee representing them. The setting up of the umbrella body, UN-SCPC, considerably reduced the producers’ representatives’ interest in the unions, which soon became marginalised. As a result, the union officials tended to abandon their organisations to try to get positions in the umbrella organisation, which potentially offered more power, and therefore more possibilities for picking up other sources of income linked to the co-management of the network. However, the function of an umbrella body and that of a union are quite different in theory: the umbrella body was above all envisaged as a socio-professional organisation with economic authority that would be responsible for co-managing the privatised network, whereas the essential role of the unions was to defend the interests of the producers. CMDT, the funders and the peasant elite favoured the economic organisation at the expense of the potentially more political – indeed subversive – organisations, the unions.
The setting up of the umbrella organisation took time and effort. The Programme d'Amélioration des systémes d'exploitation en zone cotonnière (PASE) (Programme for Exploitation Systems in the Cotton Zone) (de Noray et al. 2007), was set up by the Agence française de développement (AFD) (the French Development Agency) and was given the task for the period 2005 to 2007 of piloting the setting up of the cooperatives and the elections that would bring them together into the federated structure, with the Malian Chamber of Agriculture as the contracting authority. During this research, it was noted that many of the producers had difficulties understanding the process. The 30 research consultancies subcontracted under the process, who were responsible for training and information linked to the setting up of the cooperatives, were remunerated according to the number of Sociétés coopératives de producteurs de coton (SCPCs, the cotton-producers’ cooperatives) set up. The consultancies sometimes employed poorly trained personnel with little knowledge of the network and working in great haste. This led to the formation of over 7000 cotton producers’ cooperatives, with many of the members unaware of their purpose. Many producers interviewed were unaware of that the purpose and outcome of the process was the setting up of a national alliance that would represent them after privatisation. Moreover, the competition for jobs in the alliance, with election of representatives at each level, was marked by significant irregularities in the voting. Bakary Togola, by this time well established, had played his game well by becoming the first president of the national alliance of cotton producers’ cooperatives (UN-SCPC). The leaders of SYVAC, realising late in the day what the alliance represented and having failed to join it, tried to bring the cotton-producers’ cooperatives that were unhappy with the results of the ballots together under a second alliance, but although it has a legal persona, it has not to date been recognised as a legitimate representative by CMDT, the government departments involved and the funders.
The affront of the setting up of this second alliance was opposed not by the authorities in charge of the privatisation, but by Bakary Togola himself. It is alleged in the press, and by numerous people interviewed during the research, that Bakary Togola was behind decisions by the judiciary to imprison two SYVAC officials, one for having said in an interview that ‘we need to have done with Bakary Togola’, which was then interpreted by a judge as death threats, and the second for having criticised the judge's decision.14 During each of the research visits, the unions were becoming more and more inactive, scarcely able to organise basic meetings. ‘SYCOV has become an empty sack’, said Adama Sangaré, president of the SYCOV Garalo sector (Interview, March 2007). Trade unionism in the cotton industry, marginalised by the funders, in an unequal contest with UN-SCPC and now unwanted as a partner by CMDT, is going through difficult times that could lead to its disappearance. The network is not safe in the future in the event of an open dispute between the UN-SCPC and the unions, with the producers the judges of the matter, as happened in the dispute between the Crisis Committee and SYCOV during the strike of 2000.
The development of the industry over recent years shows that, following record production of over 600,000 tonnes of cotton in 2004, there has been a growing disinclination on the part of producers to grow cotton. This is explained by a series of factors, including the vagaries of the climate that have resulted in poor harvests, and the sometimes low purchase price for cotton, and indeed the increase in the cost of agricultural inputs. This placed the cooperatives deeply in debt, and some of them now function with a very limited number of members. In addition, CMDT was not able to pay the producers in time during the 2007/08 season, and still owed them more than 2 billion CFA francs at the start of the following season. With the industry due to be privatised, in principle at the end of 2010, it is likely that the peasants are waiting to see how things will be in practice, given that their connection with cotton farming, embodied by the relationship with CMDT, was already highly damaged. This can be seen from the large numbers of producers who refused to grow cotton during the 2008/09 season, despite rising cotton prices. Production has therefore plummeted, falling to 190,000 tonnes only four years after the record harvest that shot the country into the lead of sub-Saharan Africa cotton producers. The imminent privatisation of the industry will open a new and unknown chapter, but will be setting out from a very fragile starting point. The cotton sector in most African countries has been weakened for a number of years, on account of both the weakness of the markets, accentuated by the US policy of subsidising its own cotton sector, and of privatisations that have had mitigated results (for a comparative assessment of privatisations in the cotton industry in Africa, see Gorieux 2003). The decline in cotton production in Mali could also have knock-on effects on the country's food production and food security. The cotton producers’ cooperatives set up during the privatisation process are first and foremost cotton cooperatives. Growers who give up cotton production therefore find that they are excluded from the food production support system set up by CMDT, and are liable to have problems accessing credit but also agricultural inputs, in the absence of a viable alternative structure (to the cotton cooperatives) in cotton-producing areas.
When the representatives join those in power
This article has focused mainly on how peasant representation evolved, on its internal tensions and on its relations with its partner organisations. Any emphasis on these tensions within peasant representation should not overshadow the conflict present throughout the whole industry and its partners. Indeed CMDT experienced many latent conflicts among its agronomists, its trainers and its industrialists (known as ‘the Russkoffs’, given that many had been trained in Russia). The agronomists criticised the trainers for working to put them out of a job by promoting the autonomy of the peasants, and the industrialists accused the agronomists of monopolising the power in the company. The CMDT also had conflictual relationships with various of the state services, with the ministry of agriculture and ministry for social development at the top of this list. These departments envied CMDT's greater powers over social development in the cotton-producing zone, as its prerogatives encroached substantially on their own competencies. For example, the ministry of social development responsible for managing cooperatives contributed significantly to the deterioration in relations during the months of negotiations over the number of representative levels that there would be in the umbrella body; this attitude was due to the French Development Agency (AFD) having chosen the Malian Chamber of Agriculture and private consultancy firms rather than the competent ministry services to manage the establishment of the cotton producers’ cooperatives. The funders, apparently united within the ‘Technical and Financial Partners’ grouping, also experienced conflict. AFD tried to defend first CFDT's interests in the 1990s, and then, once privatisation was under way, the option of an integrated industry that was often at odds with the more liberalised approach favoured by the World Bank.
Finally, over and above these considerations, there were political stakes regarding relations between France and Mali, Mali and the funders, but also within the Malian political class itself regarding what has been called the politicisation of CMDT. As a potential source of funding and on account of its considerable logistical capacity, CMDT had been envied on all sides. The Alliance pour la démocratie au Mali (ADEMA), the dominant political party in the 1990s, had greatly benefited from this: many of its important members had come from the CMDT fold, to the point where people talked about a CMDT clan within the party, one example of these being Soumaïla Cissé, losing candidate in the 2002 presidential elections. Another example of political interference was when Drissa Keïta, former managing director of CMDT, was made the main victim of a damning audit of the industry by Ernst & Young. Other people had seen the opportunity to get rid of Keïta, who was rumoured to be a potential candidate in the presidential elections. Clearly in the cotton industry there was a lot at stake and correspondingly high tensions, which affected the majority of the partners.
The emergence of peasant trade unionism in Mali could be interpreted as the awakening of class consciousness in a social group defined by its activity, which would eventually defend the peasants in a system that at least during the colonial period had seen the state and traders fighting over the surplus production of the peasants, who were losing out (Jacquemot 1981). However the opposing power relationships in the organisation of cotton growers helped lead to their exploitation, to the detriment of defending the producers’ interests. The history of the agricultural unions shows an enduring mistrust on the part of the political powers and CMDT toward them, and is illustrated by their ambivalent positions, from their efforts at cooptation to their efforts to destroy the unions.
Another lesson that can be drawn from the rise to power of the rural organisations (the Village Associations in the 1970s and 1980s, the unions in the 1990s and UN-SCPC in the 2000s) is that the movement seemed to be operated mainly for the benefit of dominant groups in the rural world, to the detriment of small producers.15 The affirmation of a peasant movement showed a (re-)negotiation of how the receipts from cotton were shared out, illustrated by the competition from that point onwards between two groups that fluctuated between cooperation and antagonism – the peasant ‘elite’ and CMDT. This happened when the responsibilities were transferred from the CMDT grassroots training staff to the offices that managed the Village Associations. At the same time, many abusive practices that had previously been denounced by the producers were transferred. ‘Everything that we'd criticised the CMDT training personnel for in terms of abuses was also done by the peasants who had received training, and was done at all levels, from the Village Associations right up to Bakary Togola. The difference was that in the villages they no longer criticised the practices, and just let them get on with it,’ said Mamadou Y. Cissé, a retired CMDT employee (Interview, Bamako, October 2008). From the start of the 1980s, there were a number of management problems in Village Associations. The key figures that became their leaders gradually established themselves as intermediate groups between CMDT and the producers that tried to take advantage of this position, helped by their status as educated individuals with a knowledge of the finer points of management and accountancy.16 Next, the union leaders, who had come from some of these Village Association committees, continued to maintain this situation and to reproduce the corrupt practices extant in the business. Indeed this accelerated when they were given responsibility for managing the ‘non-strategic’ agricultural inputs from the early 2000s.
How could structures that were created to address particular practices so easily themselves assume these same practices? A study of the career path of several of the leaders of the Village Association, unions and umbrella organisation shows that most of them belonged to groups that were already dominant within the rural context – former civil servants, people elected to local councils, traders, customary authorities, NGO staff, with many of them falling into several of these categories. Furthermore, a number of them were not cotton producers, and sometimes paid for a labourer to cultivate a small area to give them legitimacy. The majority of these rural elites reinforced or reproduced, rather than transformed, the logic of power. The peasants in south Mali, far from being a homogeneous category, had contradictory interests that were highlighted by the liberalisation accompanying the privatisation process in the cotton industry, a liberalisation as much political as economic, in that it allowed a representative leadership to emerge. It might be considered that these liberalisations primarily favoured a transfer of practices: according to analysis of the neopatrimonial and clientelist state (Bayart 1989, Médard 1991), Mali appears to be evolving into a patrimonial and clientelist state, or even into ‘uncivil society’. Whereas a dominant position was dependent on the state or on trading, and often on the combination of the two, a third option – that of participation, given the label of ‘civil society’ – is now open to actors. The dominant class would seem to be made up of three pillars (with some confusion and overlap among them): the bureaucracy pillar, the trader pillar and the civil society pillar. The elites, both old and new, move according to circumstance and strategy between these different pillars. This, like the marked presence of elites within civil society, is unlikely to be the case in Mali alone. More generally, the issue of leadership and the place of elites in social movements and civil society organisations would appear to be highly significant in analysing their strategies and limitations (Morris and Staggenborg 2004).
New tensions appeared in the rural context when it was faced with a liberalising approach brought in by the democratic constitution of 1992 and international partners. The way it was interpreted by the rural inhabitants was not without its contradictions (Le Roy 1992, Fay 1995), and a number of ambiguities remain. Clientelism and corruption, which more often than not characterise the exercise of power in Africa, are modes of political regulation that transcend the categories and lead to the conclusion that whoever is holding the reins of power – the state via its officials, peasants via their representatives, or even traders and the market – uses pretty much the same mechanisms. ‘Civil society’, far from being the revenge of African societies (Bayart 1983) or of its new elites, above all reorganised the dominant group, by the partial redistribution of the roles, especially given that those who had established the domain of civil society had more often than not come from that group. The diversification of vectors of access to the dominant pillars, which was no longer made up only of state and traders, far from ensuring better distribution of wealth, can be seen rather to demonstrate flexibility and adaptability of the power relations in Mali, which to a great extent ‘digest’ or absorb the processes initiated exogenously (such as privatisation, decentralisation, and civil society). Looking at the powers in Mali, the representation of peasant cotton growers would thus appear to be a new actor exploiting the fashion for participation in order to more successfully compete against the dominant powers.
Note on contributor
Alexis Roy is a doctoral candidate in Anthropology at the Centre d’Études Africaines of the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris, and has been researching issues on and in Mali since 2003. His first study was on decentralisation in a rural commune, after which his research became more oriented towards the history of cotton-producers’ unions and their industry, and now includes more general agricultural issues.