EDITORIAL: Reflecting on resistance and transformation in Africa: a workshop for movements and activist-scholars
Introduction
South Africa was the location for the third of the interconnected workshops held across Africa in 2017–2018 initiated by this journal.1 As with the previous workshops, the preparation and planning was conducted with local partners: the Centre for Social Change at the University of Johannesburg, and the Society, Work and Politics Institute (SWOP) at the University of the Witwatersrand. Both organisations have a history of working with activists and focusing their research on labour and other grassroots organisations and so they attempt to bridge, and certainly straddle, the activist-scholar divide. Both also have a history of working with the Review of African Political Economy (ROAPE) and a number of people on our Editorial Working Group (EWG) and International Advisory Board have working relationships with them.
It was by chance, but not unimportant and unrelated, that this workshop, with its focus on activists and movements, was sandwiched between two important South African anniversaries, the first being the anniversary in September of the 1977 murder of the leading anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko, and the second, a few months after the workshop, the 25th anniversary of the first free elections in South Africa in April 1994. The elections were of world historical importance, when black South Africans, having fought to end apartheid, were entitled to vote for the first time.
South Africa was also home to one of the biggest and greatest mass-based liberation movements of the twentieth century, a movement that gave the world some of the most famous moments and activists in political history: the Sharpeville massacre, the Soweto revolt, brimming with indignant youth and the defiant dignity of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela. Besides, it is easy to forget that in the 1990s the transition to a liberal non-racial democracy was greeted with incredible enthusiasm and fanfare across the world. From US President Bill Clinton and the Financial Times to liberation leaders Julius Nyerere and other globally renowned activists such as Rosa Parks and Angela Davis. Significantly, ‘the new South Africa’ was the last major African country to be formally liberated from colonialism: its peoples and the movements they had created carried the dreams of hundreds of millions of Africans and the hopes of pan-Africanism and socialism, both of which had been the lifeblood of many African liberation movements. As was evident in all the workshops, these are ideas that still inspire African activists and movements today.
Workshop format
In an attempt to build on the lessons and feedback from the Accra and Dar Connections workshops, much thoughtful planning and preparation went into agreeing the structure, content and invited participants and speakers, or ‘sparkers’ of discussion and debate, as we preferred to call them. Our South African partners set up a joint planning committee consisting of activist-scholars, and representatives from some of the organisations from which their invited participants and speakers would come. They took sole responsibility for agreeing who would be invited from South Africa. It was agreed that the ROAPE Connections group from the EWG would invite participants and speakers from elsewhere in Africa and Europe.2 While slightly bigger than the other workshops, and with the inevitable last-minute changes, approximately 85% of participants and speakers were from the African continent and each panel attempted to have a majority of activist speakers.3 The South African planning committee were very aware of the importance of race and gender, and they shared a commitment with ROAPE to use the workshop as a platform for younger activists and activist-scholars. This was most obvious in Panel 3, titled ‘Youth and student mobilisations and intergenerational learning’. The presence and contributions of younger activists from organisations and networks in Burkina Faso and South Africa, together with some of the inspiring new generation of East African activists that we met in Dar, were a constant reminder to the ‘old ones’ not to speak too much or fail to consider issues of importance to younger activists.
The emphasis on activism and movements was vital for the organisers. Nothing happens without people. Specifically, in relation to this and the other workshops, we are talking not just about any people (or organisations for that matter), but about a particular set of people: activists, including many of the scholars who themselves are activists beyond their day job. It is important to recognise their role as the permanent persuaders trying to bring about social and political change. We wanted to centre the workshop around activists’ struggles so we could listen and learn from them. Being activists, we knew they would also expect us, as scholar-activists, to debate with them. Why did we put a lot of emphasis on this? As others have noted in the previous Debate Special Issues on the workshops, the decision to launch the Connections initiative in 2016 was based largely on a strongly held belief by some of the EWG that the journal had in some sense ‘lost its way’. It needed to reconnect with old comrades across the continent and make new connections in order to become more embedded in the ways (new and old) that it once was. We were under no illusions that this would be an easy process, but if the journal were to stay true to a key part of its historic mission, it was essential to re-engage in this way.
Further, all things in the workshop were related to political economy: the actions of the state, global corporates or large landowners. The ruling class and the actions of the popular classes are affected by and affect the types of people we heard from at this, and the other workshops. That said, it is impossible to evoke or capture in writing the spirit, the animation, the joy and – yes – the sadness and bitter frustrations expressed at the workshops by activists. This is why we put a lot of effort into recording them and conducting short video interviews. Janet Bujra very succinctly captures the essence of the three workshops in her introduction to the brief film about them by Leo Zeilig (Bujra 2019; Roape Online 2019). Consequently, we cannot and we must not forget to remind readers of this journal of the importance of what scholar-activists call ‘agency’: of individual and collective forms of intentional action, of the relationships to each other, to the state, business and other powerful groups. Yes, they are bound in webs of structural social and political relationships, as was emphasised at the first workshop in Accra on structural transformations. Yes, they are also globally subject to imperialism and imperial adventures, as was detailed by activists in Dar es Salaam. But these types of people, with all their frailties, contradictions and humility, matter. This has become lost over time and in the volumes of the journal.
Sparkers, papers and contributions
As with the earlier workshops, we encouraged activists who had been the ‘sparkers’ on the panels to informally write up their notes to be published in this Debate Special Issue. Unsurprisingly the difficulties of getting many of them to do so, despite offers of support, has been a problem that has dogged each workshop. What follows are a number of relatively short versions of some of the sparkers’ inputs.3 After these, we have also included an important piece by Njuki Githethwa that covers the panels and many of the issues that were raised. He gives a very good overview of the content that sparked further discussion from the floor, mixed with his unique insights as an activist from Kenya, now turned activist-scholar and based in South Africa, and as someone who participated in this and the Dar workshop. His contribution is a testament to the calibre of some of the activists we have been fortunate to connect with through this process, and we can see how this has prompted him to begin to engage in some serious personal and critical reflection about his role and that of the activist-scholars he had met before and is continuing to meet.
In her presentation, Fatou Diouf reveals the immense challenges facing trade unionists in an economy racked by structural changes, resulting in unemployment and the growth of precarious work. This makes it very difficult to recruit and retain trade union members at a time when unions are more important than ever in protecting livelihoods as companies use job insecurity to drive down wages and conditions. She talks of how this is not helped by trade union leaders who are part of a bureaucracy that is accused of being out of touch with the lives of the people they claim to represent. Yet all is not lost: despite worsening conditions, resistance still exists, despite trade union leaders’ unwillingness to provide leadership, resist and fight back. Diouf argues that without sustained and unified action, strikes explode but disappear just as fast. However, with empty promises used to call off strikes, this leaves workers’ demands unfulfilled and fuels further strikes.
The more detailed presentation by Grasian Mkodzongi reflects his role as an activist-scholar. In an honest interview published in June 2019, he admits the workshop made him realise he had ‘been stuck in academia’ and that the workshop helped reorient him back towards socialist ideas and the need to keep engaging with activists (Roape.net 2019). In his presentation Mkodzongi argues forcefully that the land question is still central to the lives of millions in southern Africa. Despite the initial optimism in 1994 and after regarding the prospects for land reform in South Africa, he blames the market-based solution adopted by the African National Congress (ANC) government and links it to the self-imposed constraints of the liberal bourgeois constitution it created. Although not uncritical, he defends the changes to the ownership and control of land in Zimbabwe. Drawing on his work and experiences there, for him the solution lies not in looking to the state and government to solve the land question, but with the rural poor, who must take direct action and occupy land.
The Egyptian uprisings from 2011 onwards inspired a continent and beyond, but they were eventually defeated. In her presentation Beesan Kasaab focuses on what she as an activist in that movement thinks are the lessons of the defeat and asks ‘what went wrong?’ In a self-critical discussion, Kasaab highlights the weakness of the left and in particular the radical left and the youth. One area she pinpoints is the failure of radical activists to form independent organisations and political ideas that would have enabled them to see through the limitations of the Muslim Brotherhood and those ‘false friends’ that criticised its conservatism. The tragic result, paid in blood and continuing repression, was that it created an opportunity for a military coup and counter-revolution that ended any hopes of lasting fundamental change.
Didier Kiendrebeogo and Mohamed Traore are activists in a national youth organisation formed in 2000 in Burkina Faso. They provide an example of an organisation that is not a political party, but is proudly political and anti-imperialist. Using the language of revolutionary politics that is committed to struggle, like Kasaab they remind us of the dangers of being an activist, as five of their members died in the popular uprising in October 2014. A national organisation, they also emphasise the importance of campaigning around issues of gender as a way of encouraging girls and women to get involved, underlining that this must be the basis of any successful change. Their emphasis on tight, clearly defined organisation as a key element of their struggles is a good example of some of the ideas raised in the final panel by Dinga Sikwebu and discussed below.
Naome Chakanya, from the Labour Economic Development Research Institute in Zimbabwe (LEDRIZ), outlines some of the major concerns that shape the labour movement there. The similarities to the points raised by Fatou Diouf are striking. As with Senegal, and many other African countries, structural changes to the economy have resulted in the growth of the informal sector and precarious work, particularly due to structural adjustment in the 1990s. Unlike in Senegal, but like Zambia, this revitalised the labour movement, which went on to form the basis of a new independent political party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). While for some the MDC is politically bankrupt, the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions continues to be at the centre of many struggles.
Emergent themes, issues and debates
A subterranean theme that flowed through this and previous workshops was a sense of urgency to stop the things activists didn't like, to start and take forward the things they wanted to see change, and initiate new ways of doing and seeing. These people want change now, as do the new, young, global organisations and movements such as Extinction Rebellion and the school climate strikes. We learned in the workshops that African and other histories tell us that things don’t always change so quickly. Yet the environmental and social catastrophe that a new generation of young, global activists urge us to prioritise tells us we don’t have much time. In this way, all these activists are part of an ongoing grand historical struggle over control of what they see as their rightful lands, their own individual and collective labour, and all our futures and the very existence of people and planet. But time is no longer on our side. While individuals come and go these activists are a living legacy of struggles and movements that continue to defend gains and press for more. Even if some of the ideas and movements have changed, they re-form and focus on new issues. In this way, although the workshops were in English, everyone shared a vocabulary of struggle that transcended our language differences: ‘comrade’, ‘sisters’ and ‘brothers’, ‘workers’ and ‘our community’, ‘farmers and ‘shack-dwellers’. This is a common language of struggle and activism to which everyone nods respectfully or raises a wary eyebrow as they listen to each other speak. Although this differentiates these activists from some of those with whom they struggle or represent (who some referred to as ‘the masses’), we are also interested in such activists because we can all learn from them, their lives, stories and places.
This suggests that we all know ‘who we are’ and that we can rely on each other through the shared language, commitment and politics of liberation, socialism, pan-Africanism etc. However, the role and reliability of intellectuals and other activist-scholars has been a theme that has emerged at every workshop, most notably in Dar es Salaam and Johannesburg. The reference towards the end of this Debate Special Issue by Njuki Githethwa to activist-scholar Issa Shivji is a good example. Interestingly, in noting the role of ‘organic intellectuals’ (what Shivji seems to mean by activist-scholars), what appears to be missing from the quotation from Shivji is any sense that Antonio Gramsci understood them as coming mainly from the popular organisation of the working class. An interpretation of Gramsci is that, importantly, he saw them as making up the bulk of the activists and being organised in a Marxist revolutionary party. Despite Gramsci’s criticisms of the Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin and the Russian Bolshevik party, the party form was central to forging fundamental change and a break from capitalism. Equally interesting , in the final session, an activist from Kenya urged others not to trust academics because while they may document the lives of activists, the latter and their organisations do not advance their cause as a result.
In a workshop dedicated to resistance, perhaps it was not surprising that the question of organisation became one of the key debates. This debate is not imposed from ‘outside’ the movement by academics or ideologues, but emerges organically as a tactical and strategic question for activists and movements. What organisational form such resistance would and should take was a question that kept surfacing, and it dominated the final day. Dinga Sikwebu centred his input by sparking much debate about organisations and resistance and questioning what he argued was the obsession with what he called ‘party-ism’ in South Africa and, based on his observations at the workshop, other parts of Africa.3 His key question was whether it is still useful to see political parties as a vehicle for genuine emancipation. He reminded us that political parties are a Western concept that emerged at a particular time in Europe, and when thinking about what form is best suited to build and support resistance, African activists should not ignore how these parties evolved and the different forms they have taken and continue to take. On the same panel, Tafadza Choto drew on her experiences in Zimbabwe and southern Africa to argue that it is not the party form as such that is the problem, but the way in which parties are built, often from the top down by a bureaucratic leadership and not controlled from below by ordinary members. What comes with the territory of such parties is a form of bourgeois politics (left and right versions) that ends up, as in Zambia, Zimbabwe and South Africa, in implementing capitalist and neoliberal policies. As such she welcomed the recent setting up of a workers’ party in South Africa.
An important question, perhaps the most important question to ask, is what, if anything, can we learn from this and other workshops, and what can be done with the lessons? At a minimum, one lesson is recording and not forgetting, not just for posterity but socially for all those who believe themselves to be sharing a similar struggle. Listening to people speak – sometimes very movingly – about their lives was to be given privileged access to struggles and moments that are very personal to them. Yet once recognised and recorded, do those involved cease to own them? Do these struggles and moments then, in some way, become a form of collective solidarity, or of ‘bearing witness’? Certainly, this sharing, the public airing of people’s feelings of anger, hurt, desire and hope, was an important part of the workshop and one that should not be underestimated, especially in the rush and pressure for scrupulous academic articles in journals. Is all of this too general and too vague for an academic journal that emphasises practicality and social science? Perhaps it is. However, isn’t this recording of experience, and aren’t these workshops practical examples of what researchers call ‘participant observation’? Is that not enough to understand people’s lives and their struggles? Should or can a journal like this do more?
Lessons
Of course, in many ways there are too many lessons to mention, too difficult to capture because some have no place or seem out of place in an academic journal. Some are simply too short-lived, and social science and rigorous research often like to work on facts and data, precise terminology and polite language. In bringing together different social groups there were political and social clashes and differing forms of behaviour. But we should have expected that. If you bring airport workers and academics together to talk politics we should not be surprised if some do not like or understand the way the others argue or speak. But this is not beyond a solution, and there was no mocking or dismissal of each other in this workshop.
After all, many of the activists and the communities and workplaces in which they live and work personally carry the battle scars of rapid social and economic change, foisted upon them from above by, for example, a foreign mining corporation sometimes working with local politicians, or community leaders and governments. But their stories also reveal ongoing personal and collective change: be that the notable increase in confidence since the 2011 uprisings of many women in Egypt, who now publicly scorn or scoff at the unwarranted attention; or the lessons from starting a new union in Senegal or South Africa. Of course, some learning is very painful, and physically and psychologically damaging, as was made very clear by activists talking about the real consequences of defeat in Egypt or Burkina Faso, and Zimbabwe, or in South Africa, at Marikana.
Yet what many of the participants, and the radical currents from which they came, expressed, is hope which can be a powerful lesson and spur to action, or indeed a way to retreat to catch a breath. For there is no shame in admitting defeat or pausing and reflecting. Nobody can ignore the too many defeats that our side has suffered. Yet – no matter how fragmented, uneven, messy, isolated, or forlorn some of them may be – these activists and their groups, associations, trade unions and movements, still survive in different shapes, forms, sizes and strengths, across the continent. That these potential and actual radical currents still exist should give us optimism. That they have not been historically and ultimately defeated, despite the economic, social and physical violence unleashed upon them, is a testament to their resilience and doggedness, characteristics much undervalued and downplayed by the activists and those they come up against.
What also came out clearly from all of the panels and contributions, and in the interviews with activists, is the importance of grounding ideas and debates in local struggles. But also, that activists must always be open to listening and engaging, even if disagreeing with others from across the continent and beyond. That is, we should always seek, even if it is not possible at times, to go beyond the smallness of our own struggles, be it a rural land occupation or a protest against nationwide cuts in fuel or food subsidies. This is also important because, as we have noted elsewhere in previous issues, this journal has never uncritically bought into the hype and bluster of ‘Africa rising’. African countries have been a huge experimental playground for structural rupture for decades. We, and the participants, see no reason to believe that those who attempt to manage and promote capitalism, in whatever form, have cured the recurring historical challenges of booms and slumps or crises of overproduction and profitability. Africa, with its growing and youthful population, its abundant natural resources and ‘market potentials’, will always be susceptible, if unevenly, to further plunder, land grabs, extractivism and exploitation of lands and peoples.
In one negative sense, this may well turn out to be ‘Africa’s century’, as some of its recent leaders had hoped – but as a time of resistance. If it is, then the people we have met and listened to in this and other workshops and people like them, and people we don't yet know exist, will still be doing what they do. A novel idea that the organisers shared was to ask those presenting to see themselves as ‘sparkers’ of discussion. The notion of sparks has a long tradition on parts of the left and is linked to the belief that (social and political) sparks fly all the time (a family evicted from a smallholding, a hawker beaten by the police) and can, potentially, ignite other protests and actions that can get ‘out of control’. This was reflected in the continuous comments from activists that ‘the people’, ‘our people’, are facing so many difficult issues every day, from women having to ‘piss in the bush’ to children going to school hungry.
Consequently, when the disrupters from Washington, central government or the mining corporations come their way, as they have and they will, it is clear and reassuring to know that ‘the people’ will ‘know someone who knows someone’ who can help – someone who will encourage them to ‘give it a go’, call that meeting or just say no! An older revolutionary perhaps, a redundant trade unionist, or the mother of a student? That person will probably be someone linked to communities, like Napoleon in Marikana, networks of women like Fatou and Koradji in Senegal and Chad, the friends of youth in Burkina Faso, or the sisters of a fish-seller in Morocco. Nobody knows, and they won’t know until after that step has been taken, after that stand has been made – and that’s when we in academia might find out what is going on.
What’s next?
This in part has already been answered by some of the participants from previous workshops who have since organised several other ones. The first, ‘Connecting social movements: a dialogue for activists and researchers in East and Southern Africa’, held in April 2019 at the University of Nairobi, brought together a mixture of activists and activist-scholars and was convened by the Centre for Social Change, the Institute for Development Studies at the University of Nairobi, and the African Leadership Centre based in Nairobi. One of the key organisers was Njuki Githethwa. In late October 2019, another attempt at creating a non-academic workshop space for dialogue and debate was held at the Université Cheikh Anta Diop in Dakar, Senegal. Partly sparked by ROAPE’s Connections initiative, the theme ‘Revolutionary lefts in sub-Saharan Africa (1960s–1970s): a political and social history to be written’ brought together existing activists and activist-scholars and key people from an earlier generation of activism in order to evaluate critically the lessons of success and failure of previous movements, largely in West Africa. ROAPE co-sponsored the event and several participants from the three ROAPE workshops also made presentations and attended what sounded like a unique event that generated robust debates that were not based on simple nostalgia (Mayer 2019).
There was a lot critical self-reflection and, just as activists and movements reflect on decisions and actions taken, so must we. This and all the other workshops were very bold, risky initiatives rarely associated with academic journals and editorial boards. In the spirit of openness and learning and in drawing on the feedback we have received, a number of key points stand out. As some activists made very clear across all the workshops, what an academic journal based in the UK can do very practically ‘on the ground’ for these activists and movements is severely limited. Although we are aware of that, we did not make that clear enough or soon enough to some participants, especially those who had never heard of ROAPE. Managing expectations is important.
Secondly, how we hope to use these workshops and newly created relationships and acceptance into networks is by trying to still play a small role in facilitating new networks and reconnecting people. For now, we still think it is very important to provide spaces like Roape.net for activists to write their stories, and, if needed, to help them write their stories, letting them know they are not alone. A common point in all workshops was the value of an activist’s contribution and of hearing more from other activists who are like them. They want people like them to be given more time to speak and less given to scholar-activists, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and others. Is this something than can be facilitated at any future workshops? Or should we be more modest, and provide space for activists in the form of short articles, blogs and vlogs at Roape.net? Yet challenges remain. We were sternly reminded that if we ask someone to write a blog, will we pay their bus fare to the nearest library? As an academic journal we generally think it is best to work through partner organisations who have various organic relationships with social movements. But they are not movements themselves. So should we, can we, work with other forms of organisations and activists to help plan and drive the agenda of any future workshops? Is this a better way to get their practical experiences and the issues embedded in any discussions? All this is food for thought.
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In an interview at the Dar es Salaam workshop Issa Shivji stated that ‘this conversation must continue, on a sustainable constant basis’ (Roape Online 2019). But how? While this was the third of three workshops, it would be short-sighted to see it as the last one or the end. Certainly for ROAPE, and going by much of the feedback we have received from participants, it points to the potential of a new avenue. A return to the source of one of ROAPE’s key historical objectives? Previous colleagues have been aware of limitations and set boundaries. As the first editorial of ROAPE noted:
[O]ne point of departure of this Review is that it does not presume to offer a ‘line’. … Ultimately the specific answers will emerge from the actual struggles of the African people, on the continent and throughout the world. (ROAPE 1974, 2)
No matter what concepts, words or slogans we and others use when writing and analysing what seem like endless and momentous challenges that face the popular classes across the continent, someone somewhere has to do something about them. That people continue to do so can be seen in the magnificent revolts that are sweeping the world as we write, and Leo Zeilig does a service for us all in providing an overview of these inspiring protests and movements. There is hope (Zeilig 2019). It is very likely that it is people like the ones we met in this and the other workshops who are the making of the current revolts. It is they who constantly stand out from the crowd. It is they who call that meeting, send that text, and write that pamphlet. It is they who try to motivate others to attend, to gather and to strike. It is they who do the endless, thankless, and sometimes very dangerous work of bringing others together. The humdrum, bread-and-butter work of activism is not often exciting or glorious, but without it we are all, literally, finished. Nothing else matters. The urgency of the global climate crisis that is upon us testifies to this. The urgency of the need to act now was captured at this workshop by Tina Mafanga, a young activist from Tanzania:
This is our time to be fully committed within the struggle, so I would just like to tell them, especially the young comrades, that we are not the future, we are the current, it’s now that we have to really, really engage with the struggle, it’s now that we need to really work towards the change that we want to see within our societies. We need to drive this revolutionary agenda and walk the talk of the revolution by really practising it within the ground. We do not need to wait for the future for us to start engaging because we are the current. (Interview, Roape.net 2019)