Decolonisation Is A Material Struggle

[Pictured: Frantz Fanon is one of the most articulate thinkers on anti-colonial liberation movements, colonial and post-colonial studies.]

By Alieu Bah

Republished from This Is Africa.

Always bear in mind that the people are not fighting for ideas, for the things in anyone’s head. They are fighting to win material benefits, to live better and in peace, to see their lives go forward, to guarantee the future of their children. . .”

—Amilcar Cabral

Decolonisation is not a theoretically eloquent dance to nowhere. It’s the awakening of a sleeping people taking over the means of production. It  is the material struggle of the last becoming the first, qualitatively supplanting the ideologies of the ruling class with the revolutionary ideas and cultures they have developed during the great showdown between the people’s army and the minions of private property. Decolonisation is the fire and fury unleashed unto the world in a historical encounter that is inevitable in this epoch of neocolonialism and capitalism-imperialism – and with this, an inauguration of another way of being.

At this point we must clarify that we do have a philosophical component to this fight. A war of world-views and of the class, race and gender elements whose reactionary hegemonies in the life of the mind must be challenged with progressive ideas and theories to win the material struggle. Our only clamour is that to philosophise  without  changing the materiality of social life will give no credence, no power, no reality to these progressive values and world-views we today are busy talking, writing and theorising about. We must learn the art of merging theory and practice within the organised masses of our people to win the ideological war at hand in this long protracted struggle. That in a nutshell is the thesis of this essay. Let’s move on, then, and hold this conversation.

Land, bread, and water – not a complex intellectual discourse on the ontologies and epistemologies of colonialism and its antithesis – are the deepest interest of the masses. Our people are today clamouring and hungered in the billions by the constant extraction and oppression of corporations, and as such, are caught either in the whirlwind of a vicious cycle of wage slavery or in the labour reserves of big capital. For a mass like that, it would be disingenuous to come with a decolonial program that is not rooted in qualitatively changing the objective material conditions. It would be basically fighting a futile battle against ideas and ideologies that are informed ever deeply by the superstructure that owes its lifeblood to the ever-thriving exploitative economic base that sucks the life, blood, and depths of the third world soils. That’s to say, if the program isn’t materialist and practice-base, it’s more useless than a toothless, clawless, caged lion.

To thin the mist of history a bit, let’s remember that when the righteous masses of the colonised Global South were being rallied in the anti-colonial struggles of yesteryears, the revolutionary leaders didn’t expose them to a program of fighting against mere racist ideas. They didn’t come with a complex decolonial philosophical program and neither did they busy themselves with the frivolous endeavours of competing in speaking and writing a language the masses will never understand nor decipher. They came with a simple program and named the enemy. The program was, let’s win self-determination so we shall no more live under the shadow of another human being as subservient economic and political slaves. That our enemy today is the coloniser and he must be booted out by any means necessary. And our people understood that. They yielded whatever little weapons they had, and as they sharpened their machetes, their determination to become an independent people who would win a glorious fight so their conditions are bettered permanently knew no bounds.

Kwame Nkrumah (pictured on a Soviet postage stamp) was a Ghanaian politician and coined the term “neocolonialism”. Photo credit: by Mariluna. Public Domain. Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository.

The decolonial program then must today be based on where we are today. What contradictions are inherent within our nations and people. It must be class conscious. It must be materialist. It can wear a dashiki and glorify ancient Egypt, but it still must be dialectical. It must invest in winning over the productive forces of our people in an organised fashion to reclaim what rightfully belongs to them and walk the long road to the progress and happiness of all of humankind. It must study yesterday, but not get caught in it. It mustn’t be romantic. It must waste no time in endless masturbatory insults on classic colonialism, but to study objectively the gains made in the liberation struggles, and use those facts in fighting to win against neocolonialism and the comprador class that has risen from amongst us. It must be a mass-based program whose focus is the creation of a people’s popular history that is classless and communist; anything less than this is but a waste of time and an attempt at marching into a dead end. Because great ideas that have no bearing in changing the conditions of the people are just that: great ideas – nothing else.

Decolonisation is about land. Therefore, our nationalism is righteous, whether it be the nationalism of the indigenous of the Americas, the peoples of Africa, or the aborigines of Australia. It’s about winning the land back and building independent societies from the ravages of settlers to the adventures abroad of big money. Today the masses are calling for expropriation of land without compensation as part of an active decolonial program, because without land, everything else fades into thin air whiles the starvation, the sickness, the clamour, and the squalor spiral ever on in the shantytowns, slums and favelas. Decolonisation is winning the land to honour the resolve of our ancestors yesterday and descendants who will survive the beautiful tomorrows yet to come. To this vein we stand today with the fighting people of occupied lands from Azania to Palestine in their righteous struggle for their lands.

Decolonisation isn’t woke, it’s a nightmare.

It’s a messy, habitual, continuous nightmare that plagues both coloniser and colonised in the suburbs and shantytowns. Because the coloniser and colonised are old friends, they have become synced in their anticipations of the dreadful end. An antithesis whose contradiction will only be resolved in the burning-down-to-the-ground of the master’s house. The happiness of the coloniser is the wretched state of the colonised, and vice versa. Theirs is a dialectical relationship that can never be woke, since the day it wakes up it will result in the eternal sleep of the benefactor. So the work today is to awaken the beast within the neocolonial peripheries and remind it of the ending of the friendship. That it won’t be transformed into a complaining Philosophy or a harmless aesthetic, but a program of action whose basis is righteous indignation at the forces of oppression that have stolen the land underneath their feet. For the day the third world wakes up, the first world goes to an eternal sleep filled with the nightmares of the afore time colonised – again, the dialectic, but overturned, this time, to serve the ones that rightfully deserve it.

Decolonisation, then, is to organise for socialist revolution. It’s not academic conferences and coffeehouse bullshit. It is scientific in its analysis and materialist in its theory. It doesn’t beg to be heard in ivory towers, because it’s catching fire in the working class and peasants quarters of the Global South. It is calculated in its advance and its highest development is found in the proletarian and peasant movement that denounces the labor aristocrats of the colonial metropole as it marches forward in seizing production and changing the tide of consumption. Knowing it has nothing to lose but its shackles and in winning worlds it will bring forth the historically-needed economic, social, cultural, political destiny of the world to a radiant beginning(s). It’s the great poetry in motion of a people finally taking ownership of their own dance as they walk into a newness hitherto unseen by the reactionary forces of a decadent world; a reality of their own making, becoming and being in a zeitgeist that’s made through fire, hail, and brimstone.

To conclude, our decolonisation today must sit and converse with the people in a language they understand. It’s a striving at naming and knowing the enemy and the friend of the colonised. It must know that we will never mentally decolonise without winning over the economic base and replacing the ideologies of the bourgeois superstructure with that of the progressive masses. It’s primary insofar as land, bread, and water remain the province of the private. It’s popular, messy, beautiful, poetic, bloody, and in the end, worthy of the final becoming of humankind in its continuous motion and movement to happiness and progress as it enters the vortex of the very eternal.

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Bourgeois Education and the Reproduction of Common Sense

By Christian Noakes

Republished from Peace, Land, and Bread.

Despite right-wing conspiracy theories depicting universities as a communist threat to capitalist society, academia serves as a primary institution in the reproduction of the bourgeois common sense on which capitalism relies. Furthermore, it presents its own version of knowledge as not only self-evident but “progressive,” while denouncing any effective attempt to confront capitalism and imperialism.

With a few flips of intellectual gymnastics, it often asserts that Marxism is the “master’s tools.” As such, it presents Marxism as an oppressive force and bourgeois thought as a force of liberation—albeit one in need of periodic reforms. Fundamental to this inversion is the complete misunderstanding—or at least misrepresentation—of both Marx and the larger historical tradition of Marxism.

Marx is typically treated as a class reductionist who never addressed the interrelated issues of racism, colonialism, and slavery. However, all three of these are given significant attention by Marx and were in fact treated as fundemental to the capitalist processes of accumulation, dispossession, and exploitation. One needn’t delve deep into Marx’s writings to begin to see this. In the first pages of the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels state:

“The discovery of America, the rounding of the cape, opened up fresh ground for the rising bourgeoisie... The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions everywhere.”[1]

Elsewhere they state:

“The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement, and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of negroes, signalized the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief momenta of primitive accumulation.”[2]

Marx and Engels do not equivocate the role of racial oppression and colonialism which are both a means of capitalist expansion and an outgrowth of it. Not only are these pervasive forms of oppression central to the birth of capitalism, but confronting these twin evils of racism and colonialism are essential to combating capitalism today. This is no doubt what Marx means when he noted that, “labor in the white skin cannot emancipate itself where the black skin is branded.”[3] In other words, capitalist exploitation cannot be eradicated so long as racial oppression remains intact.

To even talk about class within the hallowed walls of the academy is too often assumed to be a “white issue”—a convenient assumption that obscures the material reality of racial oppression. The explicitly anti-racist, anti-colonial, and anti-slavocratic sentiments in the writings of Marx suggest that many who, in good faith, claim Marxism is implicitly “white”—and therefore conserving racial oppression—are drawing such conclusions without doing the readings. Under the influence of bourgeois thought that pervades capitalist educational institutions, “one knows it is absurd without reading it and one doesn't read it because one knows it is absurd, and therefore one glories in one's ignorance of the position.”[4]

This fundemental misunderstanding—premised on hubristic ignorance—goes far beyond Marx and Engels to encompass all of Marxism. The Guyanese guerrilla intellectual Walter Rodney argued that the perennial debate on the relevance of Marxism across time and place is both an outgrowth of the dominant bourgeois ideology and a fundamental misunderstanding of Marxism.[5] Contrary to an understanding of Marxism as a static manual of revolution, Rodney points out that Marxism is a living thing—a methodology and ideology which concerns itself with material relations in the service of the oppressed and exploited classes.

As a methodology or a scientific lens of analysis, Marxism concerns itself with the material conditions of society, the relations of production which exist—in various forms—across time and place. Marx, and the Marxist tradition which has developed from his contributions to the revolutionary struggle, give considerable attention to the particular relations of production under capitalism—a system into which the Global South has long been forced at gun point. Rejecting Marxism as irrelevant to any context outside of 19th Century Europe follows the same logic as if one were to claim that the theory or relativity—and other developments in physics built on such understandings—only applies to the world Einstein inhabited.[6]

To deny the relevance of Marxist methodology is to inadvertanly suggest that relations of production (especially the predominant capitalist relations) do not exist—a bourgeois position that serves to preserve capitalist exploitation and the racial/colonial relations which underpin it. Despite the often good intentions, such assertions are inevitably in line with bourgeois ideology in that they serve to reproduce the common sense of capitalism which both naturalizes and obscures the social relations of capital. Such academic positions also ignore the historical role of Marxism in national liberation struggles throughout the Global South—an historical fact that makes the question of the relevance of Marxism itself irrelevant.

However, the relationship between Western academia and the Global South is not simply a matter of the erasure of national liberation struggles; it is also openly antagonistic in that the former provides the intellectual justification for imperialism under a facade of progress.

For the sake of brevity, we will limit ourselves to recent events in Bolivia.

On 10 November 2019, the Indigenous President Evo Morales was ousted in an apparent coup. Support for this coup—which would quickly reveal itself as deeply anti-Indigenous and reactionary—included a letter signed by several US academics. Signatories included the anthropologist Devin Beaulieu, a vocal opponent of the Movement for Socialism (MAS) party. Beaulieu—like many other academics—framed their opposition to MAS in pro-Indigenous language. Central to this position has been the reduction of Indigeneity to a monolith in opposition to Morales.[7] This has, in a sense, included the construction of the Indio permitido (the authorized Indian). Under a progressive facade, academics like Beaulieu sit comfortably in the imperial core, deciding for themselves which Indigenous voices are legitimate. Not unlike their colonial predecessors, they rely on a deeply imperialist conception of progress as a modern “white man’s burden.”

Other academics are not so blatantly imperialist. For instance Fabricant and Postero correctly point out how treating Indigenous peoples as a monolith is akin to defining Indio permitido and Indio prohibido (the prohibited Indian).[8] Their acknowledgement of heterogenous Indigeneity is markedly different from the treatment seen in the likes of Beaulieu. However, despite this difference they too fall into the dichotomous thinking which frames MAS as both a capitalist movement for the mestizo and an opposition to Indigenous Bolivians. Despite their apparent attempts to provide balanced analysis, they conflate efforts toward self-determination via the utilization of the country’s natural resources and the fostering non-US trade relations as “capitalist” and “neoliberal,” when in reality not utilizing national resources means a continued subjugation of Bolivia to the imperial core—a position these academics ponder from relative comfort. These (not-so-blatant) imperialist academics also refer to concerns of Indigenous groups over national development as a concern of “further colonisation by Andean coca growers.”[9] Where these coca growers are, in fact, Indigenous, this position only succeeds in weaponizing anti-colonial rhetoric against the colonized.

All of the above is emphasized to say that bourgeois academia’s primary social function is to reproduce capitalist common sense and to reinvent capitalist society with ever-new, illusory facades of progress and liberation. As a central institution of the capitalist superstructure, the university as a whole cannot help but be anything else.

As Jose Carlos Mariategui observed:

“Vain is all mental effort to conceive the apolitical school or the neutral school. The school of bourgeois order will continue to be a bourgeois school. The new school will come with the new order.”[10]

This is not to say that individuals or groups cannot exist in opposition in such institutions or that no revolutionaries should attend university. Institutions of higher learning can and should be treated as sites of struggle from which guerilla intellectuals can, in a sense, redistribute the resources and means of knowledge production otherwise kept from the public.

Following in the footsteps of revolutionaries such as Marx and Rodney, Marxists should utilize capitalist institutions to better understand and combat capitalism. However, the bourgeois academy should never be treated as something that can be adequately reformed under capitalism; or, further, that bourgeois academia is the only source of knowledge production under capitalism. Indeed, a true guerrilla intellectual need not be of the academy at all, and, in fact, cannot be a true guerrilla intellectual if they are confined to the bourgeois institutions which serve only to reproduce capitalist common sense in opposition to the true struggles of liberation.

Endnotes

[1] Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. The Communist Manifesto. In The Marx-Engles Reader (2nd ed.) Robert C. Tucker (ed), 275-276.

[2] Karl Marx. Capital, Vol. 1. (Chicago 1952), P.372.

[3] Karl Marx: On America and the Civil War (New York, 1972) p. 275.

[4] Walter Rodney (1975). “Marxism and African Liberation.” https://www.marxists.org/subject/africa/rodney- walter/works/marxismandafrica.htm.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Jose Carlos Mariategui. “The World Crisis and the Peruvian Proletariat.” in Selected Works of José Carlos Mariátegui.

Frantz Fanon and the Algerian Revolution Today

By Hamza Hamouchene

Republished from Review of African Political Economy.

Sixty years after the death of the revolutionary Frantz Fanon and the publication of his masterpiece, The Wretched of the Earth, Algeria is undergoing another revolution. In the first of a two-part blogpost, Hamza Hamouchene provides a brief historical account of Fanon’s anti-colonial thought, his critique of the postcolonial ruling elites and the new popular movement (Hirak) engulfing Algeria.

This two-part long read is an extract from a chapter in a forthcoming book Fanon Today: The Revolt and Reason of the Wretched of the Earth (edited by Nigel Gibson, Daraja Press 2021).

During the upheavals that the North African and West Asian region witnessed a decade ago–what has been dubbed the ‘Arab Spring’- Fanon’s thought proved to be as relevant as ever. Not only relevant, but insightful in helping to grasp the violence of the world we live in, and the necessity of a sustained rebellion against it.

Fanon’s wrote during in a period of decolonisation in Africa and elsewhere in the Global South. Born in Martinique, a French colony in the Caribbean, though Algerian by choice, he wrote from the vantage point of the Algerian revolution against French colonialism and of his political experiences on the African continent. Today, we might ask: can his analyses transcend the limitations of time? Can we learn from him as a committed intellectual and revolutionary thinker? Or should we just reduce him to another anti-colonial figure, largely irrelevant for our post-colonial times?

For me, as an Algerian activist, Fanon’s dynamic and revolutionary thinking, always about creation, movement and becoming, remains prophetic, vivid and committed to emancipation from all forms of oppression. He strongly and compellingly argued for a path to a future where humanity ‘advances a step further’ and breaks away from the world of colonialism and European universalism. Fanon represented the maturing of anti-colonial consciousness and he was a decolonial thinker par excellence.

Despite his short life (he died at the age of 36 from leukaemia in 1961), Fanon’s thought is rich and his work, in books, papers and speeches, prolific. He wrote his first book Black Skin, White Masks in 1952, two years before Điện Biên Phủ (the defeat of the French in a crucial battle in Vietnam) and his last book, The Wretched of the Earth in 1961. His 1961 classic became a treatise on the anti-colonialist and Third-Worldist struggle, one year before Algerian independence, at a moment when sub-Saharan African countries were gaining their independence–an experience in which Fanon was deeply and practically involved.

In Fanon’s intellectual journey, we can see the interactions between Black America and Africa, between the intellectual and the militant, between theory and practice, idealism and pragmatism, individual analysis and collective action, the psychological life (he trained as a psychiatrist) and physical struggle, nationalism and Pan-Africanism and finally between questions of colonialism and those of neo-colonialism.

Fanon did not live to see his adoptive country become free from French colonial domination, something he believed had become inevitable. Yet his experiences and analysis were the prism through which many revolutionaries abroad understood Algeria and helped to turn the country into the mecca of Third World revolution.

Six decades after the publication of his masterpiece The Wretched, Algeria is witnessing another revolution, this time against the national bourgeoisie that Fanon railed against in his ferocious chapter ‘The Pitfalls of National Consciousness.’

Fanon and colonial Algeria

The Algerian independence struggle against the French was one of the most inspiring anti-imperialist revolutions of the 20th century. It was part of a wave of decolonisation that had started after the Second World War in India, China, Cuba, Vietnam and many countries in Africa. The wave of decolonisation inscribed itself in the spirit of the Bandung Conference and the era of the ‘awakening of the South’, the Third world as  it was then known, which has been subjected to decades of colonial and capitalist domination under several forms, from protectorates to settler colonies.

Frantz Fanon methodically unpicked the mechanisms of violence put in place by colonialism. He wrote: ‘Colonialism is not a thinking machine, nor a body endowed with reasoning faculties. It is violence in its natural state.’ According to him, the colonial world is a Manichean world (to see things as having only two sides), which goes to its logical conclusion and ‘dehumanises the native, or to speak plainly it turns him into an animal.’

What followed the insurrection on November 1, 1954, launched by nationalist forces against the French, was one of the longest and bloodiest wars of decolonisation, which saw the widespread involvement of the rural poor and urban popular classes. Huge numbers of Algerians were killed in the eight-year war against the French that ended in 1962, a war that has become the foundation of modern Algerian politics.

Arriving at Blida psychiatric hospital in 1953 in French controlled Algeria, Fanon realised quickly that colonisation, in its essence, produced madness. For him, colonisation was a systematic negation of the other and a refusal to attribute humanity to them. In contrast to other forms of domination, the violence here was total, diffuse, and permanent.

Treating both French torturers and liberation fighter, Fanon could not escape this total violence. This led him to resign in 1956 and to join the Front de libération nationale (FLN). He wrote: ‘The Arab, alienated permanently in his own country, lives in a state of absolute depersonalisation.’ He added that the Algerian war was ‘a logical consequence of an abortive attempt to decerebralise a people’.

Fanon saw colonial ideology being underpinned by the affirmation of white supremacy and its ‘civilising mission.’ The result was the development in the ‘indigènes évolués’ (literally the more  evolved natives) of a desire to be white, a desire which is nothing more than an existential aberration. However, this desire stumbles upon the unequal character of the colonial system which assigns places according to colour.

Throughout his professional work and militant writings, Fanon challenged the dominant culturalist and racist approaches on the ‘native’: Arabs are lazy, liars, deceivers, thieves, etc. He advanced a materialist explanation, situating symptoms, behaviours, self-hatred and inferiority complexes in a life of oppression and the reality of unequal colonial relations.

Fanon believed in revolutionary Algeria. His illuminating book A Dying Colonialism (published in 1959) or as it is known in French L’An Cinq de la Révolution Algérienne, shows how liberation does not come as a gift. It is seized by the popular classes with their own hands and by seizing it they are themselves transformed. He strongly argued the most elevated form of culture–that is to say, of progress–is to resist colonial domination. For Fanon, revolution was a transformative process that created ‘new souls.’ For this reason, Fanon closes his 1959 book with the words: ‘The revolution …changes man and renews society, has reached an advanced stage. This oxygen which creates and shapes a new humanity–this, too, is the Algerian revolution.’

Bankruptcy of the post-colonial ruling elites

Unfortunately, the Algerian revolution and its attempt to break from the imperialist-capitalist system was defeated, both by counter-revolutionary forces and by its own contradictions. The revolution harboured the seeds of its own failure from the start: it was a top-down, authoritarian, and highly bureaucratic project (albeit with some redistributive aspects that improved people’s lives in the reforms carried out in the first years of independence).

However, the creative experiences of workers’ initiatives and self-management of the 1960s and 1970s were undermined by a paralyzing state bureaucracy that failed to genuinely involve workers in the control of the processes of production. This lack of democracy was connected with the ascendancy of a comprador bourgeoisie that was hostile to socialism, workers control and staunchly opposed to genuine land reform.

By the 1980s, the global neoliberal counter-revolution was the nail in the coffin and ushered in an age of deindustrialization and pro-market policies in Algeria, at the expense of the popular classes. The dignitaries of the new neoliberal orthodoxy declared that everything was for sale and opened the way for mass privatization.

Fanon’s work still bears a prophetic power as an accurate description of what happened in Algeria and elsewhere in the Global South. Fanon foretold the bankruptcy and sterility of national bourgeoisies in Africa and the Middle East today. A ‘profiteering caste’, he wrote, that tended to replace the colonial ruling class with a new class-based system replicating the old structures of exploitation and oppression.

By the 1980s, the Algerian national bourgeoisie had dispensed with popular legitimacy, turned its back on the realities of poverty and underdevelopment. In Fanon’s terms, this parasitic and unproductive bourgeoisie (both civilian and military) was the greatest threat to the sovereignty of the nation. In Algeria, this class was closely connected to the ruling party, the FLN, and renounced the autonomous development initiated in the 1960s and offered one concession after another for privatizations and projects that would undermine the country’s sovereignty and endanger its population and environment–the exploitation of shale gas and offshore resources being just one example.

Today, Algeria–but also Tunisia, Egypt, Nigeria, Senegal, Ghana, Gabon, Angola and South Africa, among others–follows the dictates of the new instruments of imperialism such as the IMF, the World Bank and negotiate entry into the World Trade Organisation. Some African countries continue to use the CFA franc (renamed Eco in December 2019), a currency inherited from colonialism and still under the control of the French Treasury.

Fanon predicted this behaviour of the national bourgeoisie when he noted that its mission has nothing to do with transforming the nation but rather consists of ‘being the transmission line between the nation and capitalism, rampant though camouflaged, which today puts on the masque of neo-colonialism.’ Fanon’s analysis of the class basis of independence speaks to the contemporary postcolonial reality, a reality shaped by a national bourgeoisie ‘unabashedly…anti-national,’ opting he added, for the path of a conventional bourgeoisie, ‘a bourgeoisie which is stupidly, contemptibly and cynically bourgeois.’

Fanon also noted in 1961 the international division of labour, where we Africans ‘still export raw materials and continue being Europe’s small farmers who specialise in unfinished products.’ Algeria remains in a extractivist model of development where profits are accumulated in the hands of a foreign-backed minority at the expense of dispossession of the majority.

The Hirak and the new Algerian revolution

Fanon alerted us sixty years ago that the enrichment of this ‘profiteering caste’ will be accompanied by ‘a decisive awakening on the part of the people and a growing awareness that promised stormy days to come.’ In 2019 Algerians shattered the wall of fear and broke from a process that had infantilised and dazed them for decades. They erupted onto the political scene, discovered their political will and began again to make history.

Since 22 February 2019, millions of people, young and old, men and women from different social classes rose in a momentous rebellion. Historic Friday marches, followed by protests in professional sectors, united people in their rejection of the ruling system and their demands of radical democratic change. ‘They must all go!’ (Yetnahaw ga’), ‘The country is ours and we’ll do what we wish’ (Lablad abladna oundirou rayna), became two emblematic slogans of the uprising, symbolising the radical evolution of a popular movement (Al Hirak Acha’bi). The uprising was triggered by the incumbent president Bouteflika’s announcement that he would run for a fifth term despite suffering from aphasia and being absent from public life.

The movement (Hirak) is unique in its scale, peaceful character, national spread–including the marginalised south, and participation of women and young people, who constitute the majority of Algeria’s population. The extent of popular mobilisation has not been seen since 1962, when Algerians went to the streets to celebrate their hard-won independence from France.

The popular classes have affirmed their role as agents in their own destiny. We can use Fanon’s exact words to describe this phenomenon: ‘The thesis that men change at the same time that they change the world has never been as manifest as it is now in Algeria. This trial of strength not only remodels the consciousness that man has of himself, and of his former dominators or of the world, at last within his reach. The struggle at different levels renews the symbols, the myths, the beliefs, the emotional responsiveness of the people. We witness in Algeria man’s reassertion of his capacity to progress.’

The Hirak succeeded in unravelling the webs of deceit that were deployed by the ruling class and its propaganda machine. Moreover, the evolution of its slogans, chants, and forms of resistance, is demonstrative of processes of politicisation and popular education. The re-appropriation of public spaces created a kind of an agora where people discuss, debate, exchange views, talk strategy and perspectives, criticize each other or simply express themselves in many ways including through art and music. This has opened new horizons for resisting and building together.

Cultural production also took on another meaning because it was associated with liberation and seen as a form of political action and solidarity. Far from the folkloric and sterile productions under the suffocating patronage of authoritarian elites, we have seen instead a culture that speaks to the people and advances their resistance and struggles through poetry, music, theatre, cartoons, and street-art. Again, we see Fanon’s insights in his theorisation of culture as a form of political action: ‘A national culture is not a folklore, nor an abstract populism that believes it can discover the people’s true nature. It is not made up of the inert dregs of gratuitous actions, that is to say actions which are less and less attached to the ever-present reality of the people.’

The struggle of decolonisation continues

Leaving aside largely semantic arguments around whether it is a movement, uprising, revolt or a revolution, one can say for certain that what is taking place in Algeria today is a transformative process, pregnant with emancipatory potential. The evolution of the movement and its demands specifically around ‘independence’, ‘sovereignty’ and ‘an end to the pillage of the country’s resources’ are fertile ground for anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist and even ecological ideas.

Algerians are making a direct link between their current struggle and the anti-French colonial resistance in the 1950s, seeing their efforts as the continuation of decolonisation. When chanting ‘Generals to the dustbin and Algeria will be independent’, they are laying bare the vacuous official narrative around the glorious revolution and revealing that it has been shamelessly used to pursue personal enrichment. We see a second Fanonian moment where people expose the neo-colonial situation and emphasise one unique characteristic of their uprising: its rootedness in the anti-colonial struggle against the French.

Slogans and chants have captured this desire and made references to anti-colonial war veterans such as Ali La Pointe, Amirouche, Ben Mhidi and Abane: ‘ Oh Ali [la pointe] your descendants will never stop until they wrench their freedom!’ and ‘We are the descendants of Amirouche and we will never go back!’

The struggle of decolonisation is being given a new lease of life as Algerians lay claim to the popular and economic sovereignty that was denied to them when formal independence was achieved in 1962. In Fanon’s prophetic words: ‘The people who at the beginning of the struggle had adopted the primitive Manichaeism of the settler–Blacks and Whites, Arabs and Christians–realise as they go along that it sometimes happens that you get Blacks who are whiter than the whites and the hope of an independent nation does not always tempt certain strata of the populations to give up their interests or privileges.’

Hamza Hamouchene is an Algerian researcher-activist and commentator, he works as the North Africa Programme Coordinator for the Transnational Institute (TNI).

An Internationalist Critique of the Green New Deal

[SHAWN THEW/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock]

By Tyler Okeke

In 2019, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez unsat the powerful Democratic Congressman Joe Crowley and spurred a wave of progressive congressional campaigns. Soon after being sworn in, Ocasio-Cortez partnered with Senator Ed Markey to introduce House Resolution 109, popularly known as the Green New Deal. The Green New Deal is an ambitious framework for environmental, economic, and racial justice in the United States. It aims for a speedy transition to net zero emissions through the use of renewable energy sources and green technology, a federal jobs guarantee, and a whole host of other social programs like paid medical and family leave, medical care for all, and expanded access to unions. Though not the first of its kind, the political movement on which the policy rides has won the Green New Deal more than a hundred co-sponsors in Congress.

The Green New Deal recognizes the gravity of global climate change and makes an effort to include domestic economic and social welfare reforms in its framework. Despite all this, the Green New Deal is largely deficient and is cause for concern for scholars, policymakers, and activists interested in an internationalist approach to climate change. An internationalist approach not only addresses inequality in the United States but challenges global inequality by reconfiguring the global economy and taking a reparative approach to generations of colonial and neo-colonial exploitation of the Global South. This exploitation has been largely carried out by governments, multinational corporations, and international financial institutions based in the Global North. 

The Green New Deal is also deficient and unimaginative because it forgoes thinking critically about the American people’s unsustainable relationship to energy and production. Instead, the Green New Deal seeks to move from one unsustainable energy source—fossil fuels—to another: cobalt and other minerals necessary for developing climate technology. 

Addressing climate change requires robust engagement not only with domestic contexts, but also with the global contexts that make domestic political and economic life possible.  Especially in a global empire like the United States where US monetary policy and corporate interests define the global economic landscape, policymakers, scholars, and activists have a responsibility to draft solutions where rapid, equitable climate adaptation is possible for all nations. 

The Green New Deal lacks international attention and critical engagement with the nation’s unsustainable relationship with energy and production. To be sure, this deficiency does not detract from the ways in which the Green New Deal is much more ambitious than more moderate approaches to climate change. The Green New Deal asks that the United States reach net-zero emissions in ten years, provide millions of good, high-quality union jobs, invest in green infrastructure and sustainable industry to protect lives and livelihoods, and expand social welfare to ensure a decent quality of life for every American. The Green New Deal not only addresses the domestic economics of climate change but also aims for justice and equity for Americans in its climate solution. 

However, my contention is that these benefits should be available to all people and a concerted effort must be made to ensure that they are tangible for nations in the Global South who will bear the brunt of the effects of climate change despite contributing the least to global emissions. The United States is a global hegemon that actively works against international egalitarianism through the dominance of the US dollar and Washington D.C.’s ability to write the rules of international trade and development. The American government is primarily concerned with securing profit for American and Global North multinational corporations and maintaining the core-periphery relationship between the Global North and the Global South where the economic growth of one is predicated on the underdevelopment of the other. The United States is able to secure privileges for its corporations and its goods through a heavy-handed political and military dominance of global trade and finance. US economic hegemony limits the ability of nations in the Global South to receive a fair return on their exports, make independent economic decisions, and accelerate their development or adaptation. If Americans do not pay particular attention to redistributing global economic power and thinking critically about how to ensure every nation has what they need to respond to the climate crisis, we risk a bleak future defined by social democracy in the Global North and apocalyptic crises everywhere else. 

Solutions like the Green New Deal are consistent with how imperialist nations respond to capitalism’s contradictions, in this case its ecological contradictions. Climate change is the most significant contemporary challenge to modern capitalism, but capitalism has faced significant challenges in the past, and made strategic responses to preserve itself. In the post-World War II moment when capitalism was challenged on both the domestic and international front by fiery worker’s movements in metropolitan cities in the Global North and decolonization movements in the colonies, capitalism made a strategic pivot to assuage its working masses and present the illusion of political independence in its former colonies while maintaining capitalism’s basic infrastructure domestically and globally. 

Nations in the Global North, like the United Kingdom, France, and Germany, granted their workers careful concessions like social security, higher wages, better working conditions, broader access to higher education, and other improvements that were no doubt progressive reforms but maintained the basic structure of capitalism. To fund these reforms and maintain profit for multinational corporations, the colonies got cosmetic political independence but their basic core-periphery relationship to the global economy was maintained by a careful transition from national imperialism to a collective imperialism. The United States played a predominant role and newly independent nations in the Global South were entangled with international financial institutions like the World Bank and World Trade Organization which exercised broad control over their trade and economic policies. The Green New Deal, if it fails to problematize and break this relationship, is a similar reform that ensures social democracy for the core of the empire and sustained exploitation for the dependent nations of the Global South. 

A phrase that haunts the pages of the Green New Deal is “as much as technologically feasible.” This phrase follows virtually every stipulation that mandates pollution removal or greenhouse gas emissions reduction. The Green New Deal is invested in technological stop gaps to systemic problems with American energy use and production of goods. Countries, especially mass emitters like the United States, need to prioritize living within their ecological means and make serious efforts to localize production and consumption. The Green New Deal prioritizes status quo industrial productivity over a radical but necessary reimagining of how energy use and the economy should be organized. Instead of thinking about how to make energy and production relationships sustainable, the Green New Deal simply seeks another power source. 

The “green” technology that the Green New Deal ambiguously refers to references solar panels, waste and energy use tracking systems, fuel cells, and other technological units. It is dishonest to call any of these “green” or climate-friendly, as they rely on cobalt and other green minor metals which are extracted from the ground by multinational corporations and usually in the shadow of gross human rights violations. In the case of the Democratic Republic of Congo, cobalt mining is connected to child labor, rape, war, environmental degradation, starvation wages, and even slavery. An early anthropologist of energy, Leslie White, posits that a society's energy source is the key to understanding and analyzing that society. In fact, the anthropological term energopower refers to the analysis of modern power through the lens of electricity and fuel. This approach is central to understanding the deficiencies of the Green New Deal and its maintenance of an unsustainable status quo.

Perhaps the Green New Deal will usher a new array of power relations under the cobalt-infused green technology energy regime. But given the resolution’s lack of attention to the global economy, it seems safe to assume that a climate future based on green metal extraction across the Global South and perhaps native land in the United States is not one to be hopeful about. It seems safe to assume that oil and natural gas exploitation across indigenous lands in North America, Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa will only be switched out for cobalt and green metal extraction in the same places and the military apparatus that protects U.S. energy security will only turn the muzzle of its gun to new sites of resource extraction and human exploitation. Without serious rethinking, this is the future the Green New Deal promises.

All US climate solutions are incomplete if they do not chart out how a nation with a global effect will relinquish its unsustainable dominance of the global economy and ensure that all nations will have access to the financing and resources they need to adapt to the demands of climate change. This doesn’t only look like reparations in the form of direct cash transfers and debt cancellation but also assurance that nations can trade at equitable prices and chart out their own development trajectory. So long as Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal seeks to tinker around the edges and leave the imperial framework from which the United States benefits untouched, it should be considered an imperial project that is ideologically opposed to the realization of international sovereignty and the right of all people to live dignified, full lives. It is the responsibility of internationalists and people interested in global equity to problematize the Green New Deal’s current framework and advocate for the solutions that this moment requires — a robust redistribution of global wealth and power as soon as possible.

Militant Anti-Imperialism and Liberal Anti-Imperialism: A Demarcation

By Will Griffin

The term “anti-imperialist” gets thrown around so much today that the very definition of it is muddled up. Does opposing the wars abroad make you anti-imperialist? What about the wars here at home? Are there different kinds of anti-imperialists? Can we oppose military/political interventions while supporting economic interventions? How would they be different and how can we draw lines of demarcation between these differences?

First, let’s make clear what demarcation means. J. Moufawad-Paul describes drawing clear and decisive lines of demarcation as a militant philosophical approach to distinguish between competing interpretations within “the zones of praxis through which it cuts (Demarcation and Demystification, 2019).” In a nutshell, to be as precise as possible in our understanding of our own praxis and theory, it behooves of us to draw clear and distinct lines of differences between particular strategies and interpretations. 

In the book, Philosophy of Antifascism: Punching Nazis and Fighting White Supremacy (2020), Devin Zane Shaw draws a clear line of demarcation of militant antifascism and liberal antifascism. This book provided a clear framework for me to apply the same to the anti-imperialist movement. 

The term “militant” is another word which has been thrown around a lot. Today, it often gets associated with some kind of unnecessary violence, an incorrect usage of the term due to liberal propaganda. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. practiced militant nonviolence. We can confidently say that a militant is someone who is willing to face antagonistic contradictions head on. Whether a militant uses the tactic of nonviolence or armed struggle to face an antagonistic enemy is not the question as both are militant. A labor strike can be militant. A sit-down protest can be militant. Anything can be militant as long as they are willing to face their oppressors. 

In order to understand anti-imperialism more clearly, we must demarcate a split within anti-imperialism itself. The two main trends within any anti-imperialist movement are militant anti-imperialism and liberal anti-imperialism. Both types of anti-imperialisms stand against imperialism, undoubtedly. Yes, I believe liberal anti-imperialists genuinely want to end imperialism; it is just their framework of understanding imperialism is incorrect and therefore their strategy to end imperialism is most certainly wonky. This wonky framework and strategy used by the liberal anti-imperialist could potentially lead down the road of capitulation to the imperialists, which is one reason we need to draw a distinct line of demarcation between liberal and militant anti-imperialism. Wherever liberal anti-imperialists fail, militant anti-imperialists can pick up the ball and continue pushing forward. 

Liberal anti-imperialism tends to funnel resistance back towards the institutions which are practicing imperialism, mainly the capitalist State. Essentially, they believe this State is neutral and can be won over to an anti-imperialist line. For those of us familiar with Marxist history, especially V.I. Lenin’s work in State and Revolution, understand the capitalism-imperialist state can never be won over as it is ultimately tied by a thousand threads to the capitalists and imperialists. So, liberal anti-imperialists are essentially begging a body of parasites to stop being parasitic. This is akin to requesting a human to stop drinking water or for the Earth to stop revolving around the Sun. 

The liberal anti-imperialists tend to denounce nearly all militant forms of resistance to imperialism, such as People's Wars in the Global South, when black and brown people destroy property or march with weapons or anything that they construe as "too far" or "too militant.". In the end, liberal anti-imperialists adhere to a faith in the institutions of government. Much of their faith relies on voting imperialism out of existence. The typical pattern for them is to not only denounce imperialism, but also stigmatize the militant anti-imperialists. How can one say no to the oppressor but also say no to the oppressed? Anyone who opposes liberal ways must be opposed against themselves; this is the liberal mentality.

A fundamental and detrimental mistake made by liberal anti-imperialist is taking the tactic of nonviolence and upholding it as a principle. This is the reason why liberals sit on the sideline as people are murdered in the street and bombed by drones from the sky. Kwame Ture taught us a valuable lesson in a speech where he said, 

“We must not confuse tactics with principles. This is an error that Dr. MLK made, and it also helps to confound the error. Dr. King took nonviolence, which is a tactic, and made it a principle. Being an honest man he came to compound his error because being an honest man he couldn’t compromise this principle, so he was forced to say ‘at all times, under all conditions, we must use nonviolence’. Malcolm X was correct. Malcolm said ‘nonviolence can only be a principle in a nonviolent world’, as MLK’s death came to prove.” (Kwame Ture speech at Florida International University, 1992)

Militant anti-imperialism uses direct action and does not rely on the capitalist State for any kind of policy change. We support movements who practice revolutionary militancy. We understand the necessity of fighting back physically in order to defend oneself from the horrors of imperialism. Militant anti-imperialists tend to realize that imperialism cannot be voted out of existence, it must be stepped on, forced out and overthrown. Militant anti-imperialists place their faith in the people, not the imperialist state; a huge fundamental difference from liberal anti-imperialists. 

The purpose of demarcation here is to force open the terrain of a radical, even revolutionary, militant left that goes beyond a parliamentary struggle. Also in doing so, we can mark the terrain for effective movement building. Despite having some gains in exposing the brutality of imperialism, liberal anti-imperialism will ultimately fail. When it does fail, a militant anti-imperialist movement will offer a new option for people to compete against this failure. 

We should not transform this non-antagonistic relationship between militant anti-imperialist and liberal anti-imperialists into an antagonistic contradiction. Many of the liberal anti-imperialists can, and should, be won over. We must oppose dogmatically applying this demarcation but hold true to it. Liberal anti-imperialists, at least some of them, can be shown the failures of their framework and strategy eventually winning them over to supporting militant anti-imperialist struggles. After all, were any of us born a militant anti-imperialist? No, we had to work our way up to this level of consciousness. 

I want to stress the importance in one of the differences in these trends. Liberal anti-imperialists deny the existence of militant struggles against imperialism, here and abroad. This fundamental outlook leads to the whitewashing of history and current movements around the world. It explains the limitations and failures of the mainstream “anti-imperialist” movement. They disconnect from the militant struggles and, therefore, are demarcating themselves from actual and effective anti-imperialist movements. In my experience, it’s often the pacifists who are the first to censure, and even condemn, movements which choose to pick up the gun, burn a facility down or even dress up in military fatigues. This is intrinsically tied to the idea of holding nonviolence as a principle. 

Is it really anti-imperialist? Anti-imperialism is just as much about opposing the Coca-Cola factory in Iraq as it is in opposing the bombs being dropped. Economic intervention is just as important as a military/political intervention. Imperialism is primarily an economic system, where the more powerful nations exploit, or super-exploit, the less powerful nations. Often, it is about stealing resources but also other reasons like geopolitics. Nonetheless, imperialism maintains an unequal economic, cultural and territorial relationships between nations and capitalist enterprises, often in the form of empire, based on domination and subordination. 

In our universities, the bourgeois academics develop the ideology for the imperialists. One method involves disassociating politics from economics. To understand more precisely and in a more holistic manner of our world, we require the more accurate term, political economy. Politics and economics are intrinsically tied to each other. The military intervention invades in order to protect the economic system of exploitation and super-exploitation. In our era, the Global North exploits the Global South for its resources and to play on the grand chessboard of hegemony. This is only made possible with a powerful capitalist state. 

Liberal anti-imperialists lack a clear idea of imperialism by limiting it to military/political interventions only, leaving out the possibility of economic interventions. When transnational corporations intervene in a poor and oppressed nation in order to plunder its resources, is this not a form of imperialism? The military/political intervention is dependent upon the economic intervention. In fact, the State intervenes in order to protect the economic interests of the ruthless and exploitative corporations. This fractured framework of the liberal anti-imperialists weakened their resolve in opposing imperialism. The clarity around the nature of imperialism can only strengthen the anti-imperialist movement. Drawing this line can help to offer clarity on where each one of us may stand. It helps us to develop a more effective strategy in order to defeat imperialism. Militant anti-imperialists hold true to the power of the people, to combat imperialism in an assertive yet principled manner, and to overcome the weaknesses in our strategies and tactics. 

Will Griffin is a veteran of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars who is now an anti-imperialist and a content creator at The Peace Report, a militant anti-imperialist media collective. 

Zimbabwe's Political, Social, and Economic Prospects: 2019 in Review

By Mafa Kwanisai Mafa

Political landscape

After the 2018 harmonized elections which gave the ZANU PF party the mandate to rule, President Emmerson Mnangagwa appealed to all political party Presidents who contested in the elections to come together in a national dialogue and find a way to stop the toxic political polarization which continues to divide the Zimbabwean nation. Another reason for the national dialogue was to provide a viable platform for contributing towards lasting solutions to the challenges that confront the country. All the 19 political parties accepted the President’s invitation to Political Actors Dialogue (POLAD) and the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) refused on the basis that they don’t recognize the Presidency of Emmerson Mnangagwa.

They claim that Mnangagwa is an outcome of a rigged election despite the fact that they were deemed free and fair by many international observers and also by the Constitutional Court of Zimbabwe. A southern Africa bloc, Southern Africa Development Commission (SADC) is in support of the POLAD platform created by the government of Zimbabwe and support a full inclusive dialogue. Former South African President Thabo Mbeki who brokered the Global Political Agreement (2008) before was in the country towards year end to bring all stakeholders to the table and consult. President Thabo Mbeki is pushing for talks to end economic crisis. Mbeki held marathon meetings with the protagonists in Harare as well as other political, civic society, and church leaders. The opposition MDC says it is committed to “real dialogue” to solve the political and economic morass in the country and will not be part of President’s Mnangagwa’s POLAD platform.

The opposition, in cahoots with their international allies through foreign embassies and civil society groups, are escalating their efforts to topple the government of Emmerson Mnangagwa. These organizations are fighting in the opposition corner by supporting and funding the MDC destabilization agenda. The same organizations have been urging USA and EU to maintain the illegal economic sanctions on Zimbabwe, citing alleged human rights violations by the government and security services. The MDC opposition leadership has been on the whirlwind tour in western capitals asking for more sanctions to put pressure on the Zimbabwean government.

Economic Situation

Zimbabwe is in the throes of its economic decay in a decade characterized by acute shortages of cash, medicine, fuel and rolling power cuts of up to 20 hours a day. Inflation skyrocketed to 481.5% in November 2019, in the process eroding salaries and decimating pensions. Zimbabwe is also grappling with price increases which are changing every day. In the interim, salaries have remained depressed, with consumer spending severely curtailed. Zimbabwe economic morass constitutes one of the biggest threats to ZANU PF's continued hold on power. United Nations expert Hilal Elver, the UN special rapporteur on the right to food, noted that Zimbabwe is on the brink of starvation, a crisis that has been compounded by hyperinflation, poverty, natural disasters and economic sanctions. The ZANU PF Central Committee report of 2019 noted that the most latent security threat that has great consequences is the unstable economy, which is largely propelled by the parallel market (black market). Formal trading prices are determined by the parallel market exchange rate, which has been sharply rising on a daily basis. Prices of all commodities and services have followed suit to unsustainable levels.

The report admitted that most people are failing to make ends meet, so poverty levels are rising very much throughout the year. As a result anger is brewing among the citizens while there is loss of confidence on the direction the economy is taking. In January a steep hike in fuel prices led to violent demonstrations across the country which the army and police ruthlessly put down. The human rights groups estimated that about 17 people were shot down with live ammunition by the security forces during the three days protests.

Zimbabwe is suffering from massive power cuts which has brought a number of businesses to a standstill. The power utility in 2019 went on to increase tariffs by 320%. The increase in tariffs was meant to solve the power crisis in the country but failed dismally with some businesses bearing the brunt as they lost productive hours.

Economic Sanctions and the Regime change agenda

This is a sad chapter in Zimbabwe's recent history which marked the beginning of a well-organized, meticulously coordinated and generously funded campaign of economic sabotage and misinformation designed to mislead both the Zimbabwean population as well as the international community with the ultimate aim of overthrowing the elected government. Activists are being trained in foreign lands by intelligence forces on how to organize and apply strategies to undermine the government and its economic policies. This is meant to render the country ungovernable and incite the population to revolt and overthrow a legitimate government.

October 25, 2019 was declared a national holiday in Zimbabwe for people to march against western sanctions. Sanctions are causing more harm as they have affected people, companies, and schools. Zimbabwe has for the past two decades failed to access lines of credit from IMF and the World Bank. Some banks in the country are restricted from trading with international financial institutions. Under the USA Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act, American companies are not allowed to deal with Zimbabwe entities on the sanctions list. Some companies associated with the state have had their money intercepted and blocked when they attempt to do business with international institutions. Companies are finding it difficult to move money into the country because banks can be fined for dealing with sanctioned countries.

In April 2019, the USA fined the Standard Chartered Bank US$18 million for dealing with a sanctioned country. Many companies have been forced to close shop or to scale down their operations. This has led to a loss of jobs. Many international investors are shying away from investing in the country.

In the past two decades, various opposition leaders from the MDC party have been consistently calling for and instating on the maintenance of the illegal economic sanctions with the aim of regime change. SADC set October 25, 2019, as the SADC day against Zimbabwe sanctions which marks the start of a sustained call for the unconditional lifting of sanctions against Zimbabwe through various activities.

There is an organization based in Belgrade called Centre for Applied Non Violent Action and Strategies (CANVAS) which is clandestinely training antigovernment activists with strong umbilical links to the Zimbabwean main opposition MDC. Its mission is to layout the groundwork for civil unrest. Srdja Popovic is the founder and executive director of this organization. He is based in Belgrade, Serbia and his job is to foment revolutions in countries such as Sudan, Swaziland (Eswathini), Venezuela, Libya, Egypt, Tunisia, Burma, Vietnam, Belarus, Syria, Somalia, and Zimbabwe. Most of the activists which were arrested in Zimbabwe in the aftermath of the January 14 and 16, 2019 violent protests and charged with treason and subversion received their training in Czech Republic and the Maldives. Their training involves organizing mass protests, the use of small arms, and counter intelligence. Most of the organizations which are engaged in these nefarious and subversive activities to topple the government of Zimbabwe are also funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), an American private and nonprofit organization which focuses on “strengthening democratic institutions.”

CANVAS was founded in 2003 by Srdja Popovic and Ivan Marovic and ever since it has been training antigovernment activists in Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Iran, Lebanon, Tibet, Ukraine, and Venezuela. Srdja Popovic was one of the key founders and organisers of the Serbian nonviolence revolution group called Otpor! Otpor! Campaign which toppled the Serbian President Slobodan Milosovic in October 2000. CANVAS has been successful in most countries mentioned in fomenting uprisings save for Swaziland, Belarus, and Zimbabwe, which are still enjoying some peace. Foreign organizations are coordinating workshops and trainings in the country, the region, and overseas to topple the Zimbabwe government.

Austerity and the International Monetary Fund

Zimbabwe launched its austerity measures under the Transitional Stabilization Programme (TSP) in October 2018 when it was presenting the 2019 national budget. The time frame of the programme is scheduled to run from October 2018 to December 2020. The purpose of the austerity measures are meant to implement cost cutting measures, and to reduce the public sector wage bill. In addition to that, austerity reforms are aimed at increasing tax revenues by introducing the unpopular 2 % Intermediated Monetary Transfer (IMT) tax, restructuring the civil service and the privatization of ailing state enterprises and parastatals. These reforms are meant to bring about fiscal balances in the public sector. These reforms are meant to reduce government spending, increase tax revenues or to achieve both. The International Monetary Fund is keeping an eye on these reforms through a Staff Monitored Programme which covers a period from May 2019 to March 2020. These measures are very unpopular with the masses as they have proved to be anti-developmental, self-defeating, and have an adverse effects on the toiling working class.

The civil service has been affected by the austerity measures in terms of salaries which are now pegged at less than US$30 a month. Persistent threats of strikes and demonstrations have crippled important sectors such as health, education and even provision of documents such as passports. These austerity reforms shrink economic growth and cripple public service delivery. From past experiences IMF is unlikely to offer any bailout to the Zimbabwe economy, which means the country will have to lift itself out of any economic slowdown caused by the austerity measures. Critics of austerity measures fear that the reforms are acting as a double edged knife that leads to economic recession, job cuts, and company closures whilst failing to tackle runaway government expenditure. Its most likely that history is going to repeat itself, cognizant of the 1990 Economic Structural Adjustment Programme (ESAP) which left the economy worse off, further marginalizing the poor and vulnerable groups.

The impact of austerity measures are likely to widen the already high income inequality gap in Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe is worsening social suffering as the government cuts social spending by 62%. Low income households are the most affected through expenditure cuts on social protection programmes which are mend for the children, elderly and the disabled and beneficiaries of Basic Education Assistance Programme (BEAM) and health facilities. In the current budget the government prioritized Defense and Home Affairs. The impact of taxation policy on distribution and equality is so glaring. Big companies are being offered several investment incentives under the 2019 national budget, the citizens under distress of the additional 7c and 6.5c per litre of diesel, petrol and paraffin. Implications of the 2c on Intermediated Money Transfer above Zimbabwe $10 are similar. This shows the repressiveness of the Zimbabwe tax system, where the poor contribute more than the rich.

By experimenting with TPS the government is repeating the mistakes of 1990 under ESAP and it’s expecting different outcomes. The commercialization and privatization policy is being smuggled into the fiscal policy under the government mantra of “Zimbabwe is open for business.” The Transitional Stabilization Programme, just like the previous Economic Structural Adjustment Programme, is affecting the economic opportunities for the urban middle income and the working class while marginalizing the poor further, especially women and children. The combination of privatization with the proposed labour market reforms under the Special Economic Zones, further exposes labour to exploitation. The Public Private Partnerships model in public hospitals has led to segregation and deepening inequality between the haves and have nots.

The austerity measures have failed to stabilize the economic situation as the cost of living has increased to extreme levels. The ever increasing prices of basic commodities has become a breeding ground for more poverty and vulnerability amongst the masses. The persistent hard economic situation is reversing and derailing some of the progressive plans the government has put in place to attain the UN sustainable development goals. The Zimbabwean government is a signatory to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and the 2020 Agenda and it is committed to ensure that no poverty or hunger exists by 2030. It looks like there is no reprieve for the masses as fuel prices are continuing to rise due to the weakness of the Zimbabwean dollar against the US dollar and other foreign currencies.

The Zimbabwe government must come up with socialist policies that ensure that all citizens afford to live a dignified lifestyle. The economic hardship are causing moral decadence and erosion of social norms and values. The urban areas are becoming dangerous as incidents of robberies and prostitution are on the increase as well as reports of drug abuse amongst the youths. By intruding the TPS government is trying to please the IMF because since 2016 the government has been implementing the IMF staff monitored programmes.

Social services

Upon attainment of independence in 1980, Zimbabwe experimented with Socialism as it pursued a free primary school education and primary health care policies. This contributed to the high literacy levels which the country boasts as the highest in Africa, but the withdrawal of government support as recommended by ESAP climaxed in the introduction of school fees and user fess even in government hospitals. This had serious repercussions on women and children, as this contributed to gender inequality as parents were forced to prioritize educating the boy child at the expense of a girl child. Child mortality heightened as expecting mothers could not afford the hospital fees. These reforms mainly target social services, and even now in Zimbabwe it is the social services that are bearing the brunt of the austerity measures. Under the TPS, the government has removed fuel and electricity subsidies and this has caused the skyrocketing of prices of basic commodities and services.

The removal of subsidies are greatly affecting the companies on production as many companies are closing shop because it’s now difficult to sustain operations using diesel and petrol power generation. Inflation is rising at an alarming speed and the living standards, life expectancy, and economic production are plummeting. These hardships are causing increase in inequality, disaffection and exclusion. Opposition to the ruling class is deepening each day. The government economic crisis is becoming more pronounced, with a mounting foreign debt, declining experts and urban strife due to increased food prices, unemployment, the rising cost of living and brain drain. Many educated Zimbabweans are leaving the country for the foreign countries where they are being subjected to xenophobic attacks and precarious labour and exploitation.

The government under the direction of TPS intends to privatize some parastatals. With the high levels of corruption in Zimbabwe it is likely that these companies will be sold to acolytes, fronts and elites. This could be reminiscent of what happened in Russia in the 1990s, a period that gave rise to the oligarchs who stripped Russia of its gas and oil resources leading to the emergency of overnight billionaires. The Russian ultra-rich, such as Chelsea Soccer Club owner Roman Abramovich, amassed wealth during the economic and social turmoil that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union and the introduction of the free market economy. Oligarchs are monopolistic by nature. These are the pitfalls of privatization.

Greece is a good example of a country which experimented with austerity measures. In 2010, Athens imploded after its Parliament voted and approved the draconic austerity measures which they thought would unlock 120 billon Euros of emergency loans for the debt stricken country to avoid insolvency. Up to this day Greece is feeling the negative effects of austerity measures nine years later. The Greece story is a good example of how negative and cruel the austerity measures could be. The experimenting with TSP will leave most of the Zimbabwean population in dire straits. The public expenditure cuts, linked with this year’s drought and the effects of Cyclone Idai, will leave many people destitute. Pro-poor and socialist policies are the only way that is going to redeem the toiling masses and bring social development. The government vision of an upper middle class by 2030 under its slogan Vision 2020 remains a pie in the sky, influenced by western imperialist privatization efforts. The reality for most Zimbabweans is an economy that is regressing at an unprecedented rate.

Drought and Climate Change

Zimbabwe is grappling with a nationwide drought that h” The government vision of an upper middle class by 2030 under its slogan Vision 2020 remains a pie in the sky as the economy is regressing at a faster, unprecedented rate.

Drought and Climate Change

Zimbabwe is grappling with a nationwide drought that has depleted dams, cutting output by hydro power generation at Kariba dam. The has caused harvests to fail as most crops are wilting and this has prompted the government to appeal for US$464 million in aid to stave off famine. These prolonged droughts, dry spells, and heat waves are a result of climate change. Most major cities in Zimbabwe are rationing water in an effort to stretch the water supplies. The world over more than 2 billion people live in countries experiencing high water stress and the UN has warned that the problem is set to worsen with demand expected to grow as much as 30% by 2050. A combination of drought and economic meltdown are pushing Zimbabwe to the brink of humanitarian catastrophe. In the rural areas, 5.5 million farmers are struggling to find food. In urban areas, the inflation rate of 480% is forcing the poor families to survive on just one meal a day. The crisis is being made worse by a formal unemployment rate of 90% and also by an indebted government that is struggling to provide basic services, perennial shortages of fuel and foreign currency, and regular 20-hours daily power cuts.

Zimbabwe is marching towards unprecedented food insecurity levels in its history, the 2018/19 was the driest season in 40 years and these are the signs of climate change. Approximately 8 million Zimbabweans are now dependent on food from the World Food Programme and other donor agencies from western countries. Water and electricity are in short supply and basic health services close to collapse. The rising inflation has made the imported food in the shops unaffordable to many.

Zimbabwe was also ravaged by Cyclone Idai which devastated the eastern parts of the country leaving 259 people dead and thousands displaced. The storm caused destructive winds and heavy precipitation causing riverine and flash floods, deaths, and destruction of property and infrastructure. According to official figures, 250,000 people were affected by the cyclone. The forecast was done two months before the cyclone struck but authorities were “caught off guard.”

Trade Unionism, Picketing and Demonstrations

As the nation is falling in a deeper economic abyss, trade unions have come under spotlight and clashes with the government and business over the working conditions are increasing. The Zimbabwean working class is dwindling with 10% employment rate. The working class in Zimbabwe is starving, failing to pay rent, and has no access to health care. The purpose of trade unions among other things are to negotiate for living wages and better working conditions, regulating relations between workers and the employer, taking collective action to enforce the terms of collective bargain, raising new demands on behalf of its members, and helping to settle grievances.

Trade unionism in Zimbabwe has been hijacked by politicians and no longer serves the interests of the working class. The Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) came into existence on 28 February 1981, after joining of six unions, namely African Trade Union Congress (ACTU), the National African Trade Union Congress (NACTU), Trade Union Congress of Zimbabwe (TUCZ), United Trade Unions of Zimbabwe (UTUZ), Zimbabwe Federation of Labour (ZFL) and the Zimbabwe Trade Union Congress (ZTUC). These unions came together to form the now Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions. The ZCTU is now being used by the western governments as a tool for the regime change agenda which saw it becoming a bedrock of the opposition party, the Movement of Democratic Change (MDC) which was formed and launched in September 1999.

The birth of the Movement of Democratic Change (MDC) on September 12, 1999 was the genesis of the ZCTU participation in politics. This unwarranted meddling in politics has left the working class poorer. Trade unionism in Zimbabwe has become a stepping stone for individuals to gain political power at the expense of the poor working class whom they claim to represent. The unions are failing to address the working class needs yet they must be the voice of the working class. Majority of the working class in Zimbabwe are being subjected to exploitation, unions must negotiate for higher living salaries, and jobs must be dignified and productive with adequate social protection. The unions have been captured by western government forces seeking to topple the government so that they can exploit the natural resources freely. Currently, Zimbabwe is reeling from the economic sanctions wrought by illegal economic sanctions imposed by USA and EU. The ZCTU must join calls and demand the lifting of the sanctions that are severely affecting its membership. The current crisis in Zimbabwe is exacerbated by the disputed 30 July 2018 elections, economic collapse, high prices and cash shortages, high unemployment, and public health crisis. The local authorities in major cities are failing to provide adequate clean water to residents and even basics such as regular garbage collections have been delayed.

Company closure and the slowing down of production in most sectors of the economy has led to a decline of trade union membership, and those that are still working are earning very low wages. Most workers are now in the informal sectors such as vending. Factory shells in the light and heavy industrial sites in major cities are deserted. Manufacturing and industrialization has stagnated and been replaced by importation of finished goods from neighboring countries.

Zimbabwe currency collapsed in 2009 which led to the adoption of the US dollar as legal tender but the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe lacked the foreign currency reserves to meet this obligation. Prices of basic commodities have risen dramatically and the purchasing power has been eroded. In January 2019, the country’s 305,000 civil servants gave notice to strike after they were paid in the local currency which is called the bond note instead of the US dollars. During that same period the government raised fuel prices by over 200%, which made Zimbabwe fuel to be the most expensive in the world. The following day, the ZCTU called a three-day general strike, which was supported by many civil society organizations. Many people joined this nationwide strike because of widespread anger over economic decay but there was massive looting and property destruction. This provoked a brutal crackdown by the security forces, and the government shut down the internet to prevent social media coordination of the demonstrators.

Between the period of 1996 and 1999, George Linke of the Danish Trade Union Council came to Zimbabwe with an agenda to transform the ZCTU into a political party. Part of his mission was to identify other groups in the country which were to join the proposed new political formation. This party was to spearhead the regime-change agenda. The transformation of the ZCTU as a political formation brought together employers, workers, students, and former white farmers. This new party was also formed as a response to a government resolution to designated 1,500 white-owned farms for expropriation and the increased emphasis on black empowerment and the draft constitution which would enable the government to acquire white-owned farms compulsorily without compensation. The ZCTU allowed itself to be transformed into a political party so that it can serve the interests of the former white farmers and western capital. Labour unions are being funded by the arms of the US government through conduits such as the National Endowment for Democracy, International Republican Institute, and National Democratic Institute, which have nothing to do with strengthening workers’ rights and everything to do with toppling governments.

In September 2019 the Zimbabwe health care system became shambolic, characterized by an acute shortage of drugs and an indefinite industrial action by doctors over salaries. The country’s public hospitals, already beset by a myriad of challenges, degenerated into death traps after doctors embarked on a strike that is still ongoing. In response, the government dismissed 448 doctors while it pursued disciplinary action against 1,000 others.

Also in August, Zimbabwe was hit by another wave of protests, which saw the security forces brutally squashing the demonstrations. The ZANU PF ruling party and the main opposition party MDC both feel the way forward and out of this economic crisis is to impose neoliberal austerity measures against the working class and the poor. The right-wing organizations that are currently pushing for social dialogue are fronts of the imperialist countries and are funded by them.

Demands

The Zimbabwe working class are demanding a living wage and pensions.

Workers are demanding that never again should they allow the workers’ struggle and trade unions to be hijacked by politicians.

Workers demand the immediate stoppage of harassment of street vendors who are trying to make a living to support their families.

Workers stand against the government mantra of “Zimbabwe Is Open for Business” as this is tantamount to selling the country to imperialist investors.

No to privatization of government companies, as this will benefit the elite connected to the government who will buy the company for a song.

The rich, which include huge mining companies, multinational corporations and foreign investors, must be taxed more to finance developmental interests of the poor

The only way forward is to smash the system of capitalism which breeds wars, poverty, and misery and replace it with Socialism. This can only be achieved by building an International Workers Socialist Revolutionary Party. This is the time as capitalism is in deep crisis globally.

Aluta Continua!

The author may be contacted at cdemafa@gmail.com

Disaster in Zimbabwe: Cyclone Idai, Climate Change, and Capitalism's Assault on the Global South

By Mafa Kwanisai Mafa

About a month ago Zimbabwe, Malawi and Mozambique were devastated by a tropical cyclone which has been described as one of the worst disasters ever to strike the southern hemisphere. Approximately 2.6 million people were affected in the three countries. Cyclone Idai hit the Mozambican port city of Beira with winds up to 170km/ph., it then proceeded into inland Zimbabwe and Malawi, flattening buildings and took more than 1000 people and others unaccounted for across the countries. Torrential rainfall washed away road networks in Zimbabwe. The United Nations called it possibly the worst ever weather-related disaster to hit the southern hemisphere.

Western capitalists are largely at blame for climatic changes that cause natural and environmental disasters. Poverty, which is a result of the diabolic and pernicious economic sanctions, as well as a natural byproduct of global capitalism, has resulted in poor and weak structures which do not withstand the heavy winds and storms.

The economic prescriptions of the IMF and World Bank has forced countries like Zimbabwe to reduce their budgets on social services as governments are forced to impress and attract investors in line with the neoliberal path. Things like sanitation, emergency services, and disease-outbreak prevention are poorly resourced and often times lead to unnecessary loss of life. From the statistics of past natural disasters in poor counties like Haiti, and impoverished cities like New Orleans, these factors lead to high death tolls compared to well-resourced sectors in the western world. The Civil Protection Unit of Zimbabwe had developed the National Flood Plan Management framework; however, because of depleted resources caused by IMF and World-Bank intervention, was not fully implemented. Very little of the nation's budget is allocated for disaster management, as determined by the needs of capitalism's pursuit of profit.

The Donald Trump Administration and EU have extended their sanctions on Zimbabwe despite its reforms and capitulation to neoliberal dictates in the form of austerity measures. This means that Zimbabwe must brace for further economic turmoil because of the renewal of sanctions. To further exacerbate the situation, Zimbabwe is facing drought and trying to recover from the gory effects of tropical cyclone Idai, which has killed many and displaced thousands. The entire infrastructure of Zimbabwe is now in ruin. If Zimbabwe was not under sanctions, its response to Cyclone Idai could have been much better. Destruction could have been avoided; lives could have been saved. Like every nation under US sanctions, Zimbabwe is experiencing failing healthcare, dwindling government coffers, failed service delivery, and food and basics shortages. In a similar situation, Iran took the US to the International Court of Justice in October 2018 and the ICJ ruled that the US must stop restricting medical and basic supplies to Iran. What is the impact of the ICJ ruling on Zimbabwe's medical system?

Tropical cyclone Idai brings vital lessons: it's a stark reminder of the deadly effects of greenhouse effect. A hotter world means more damaging cyclones because they draw their energy from the oceans. The hotter the ocean, the more powerful and devastating the cyclones have become. Hotter oceans and melting ice caps also mean a rise in ocean levels, which means cyclones spin faster, do more damage, and have more energy to get into the interior. The governments that have the power and resources to effect change, like the US, are failing to take climate change seriously. Governments who would like to effect change remain impotent due to global capitalism's demands. It is a threat to humanity and its environment.

The Global Connection

The inequalities within the poor global south are caused by the capitalist economic systems of the rich North. The legacy of colonialism and apartheid still manifest in most of the African and third world countries, and this has adversely hampered human and economic development. The poor and the working class in these countries are suffering the most from climate change and must push for climate justice. The global North are the biggest culprits in environmental degradation and carbon emissions; thus, are responsible for creating an environment ripe for natural disasters.

The rich countries have technology of early warning systems and disaster management and preparedness. It is only the poor countries like Zimbabwe, Malawi, and Mozambique who bear the brunt of the effects of natural disasters, with the biggest number of casualties. Western capitalism must give poor nations debt relief and allow them to chart their economic path using their own natural resources, which in many cases exist in abundance. Zimbabwe at independence adopted the Rhodesian debt whose money was used kill the black people in their quest for freedom and self-determination. South Africa also adopted the Apartheid debt which it is still paying up to this day - a debt whose money was used to oppress butcher them with impunity.

With so many resources at their disposal, countries throughout the global south would be able to redistribute their wealth equally for putting up flood defenses, social services, and investing in appropriate technology. Humanitarian assistance has been a curse to African development - a trojan horse used to push through capitalist austerity. African countries have the capacity to stand on their own if they are allowed to chart their independent path. The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), which is assessing the damage on food crops, estimates that about 200,000 Zimbabweans will need urgent food aid for the next three months. Most of the food aid which is provided on humanitarian grounds is genetically modified and poses a serious health risk to the local people.

The US military is contemplating sending rescue teams to Mozambique; however, this is not trusted since they are butchering people all over the world in unprovoked wars. Most countries are suffering and millions dying through the US's direct or proxy wars and economic sanctions. Mozambique is wary and considering denying them entry into their country, despite desperate times.

Because of the rapacious nature of the capitalist economic system, which has no regard for nature or human life, we are now confronted with an environmental crisis that threatens to undermine the basis of civilization and survival of human species. There is now a global consensus that the emission of greenhouse gases is caused by use of fossil fuels which global capitalism has relied upon as the main source of energy supply. Global temperatures are precariously rising.

China is now the biggest player in the global capitalist economy and it has overtaken the US as the biggest carbon emission emitter. China and US combined account for 40% of the global emissions of carbon dioxide worldwide. If the levels of emission do not subside, the world will experience more extreme floods, droughts and storms, disappearance of the Arctic ice cap, dramatic cuts in food yields, and the drying out of the Amazon rainforest. Notwithstanding all the looming catastrophe world gas and coal production is surging.

Capitalism is the Cause

The root cause of the climate change is capitalism, an economic system that thrives on exploitation of human beings and the natural environment. The world, if it is to survive, needs an alternative system that values social equity, justice, and environmental sustainability. Humanity and the natural environment are under threat because of the capitalist system, which is based on private ownership of the means of production. Overproduction and waste are endemic. The crisis of humankind requires putting an end to capitalism. Capitalism is only concerned about profit.

The great danger today, with the way in which these environmentalist topics are being addressed, is that they are being used with a short-term political objectives in mind. Many researchers and scientists are reaching a conclusion that there is a tendency towards climate warming. More organisations and political parties are being formed on the pretext of fighting against global warming without any practical result. There is a deliberate diversion away from the real polluters by asking citizens to be responsible and make them understand that they must take care by throwing plastic materials into different waste bins and that they should stop buying cotton buds from supermarkets because they are terrible source of pollution. A systemic issue is being individualized, in true capitalist fashion. And it is a smokescreen.

Capitalists pollute billions of tonnes of oil into the China Sea, while a citizen throws three cotton buds into the wrong bin. Are we really going to save this planet through these everyday actions? It is a claptrap. While many politicians, world leaders, and big corporations speak about the future effects of climate change, poor and impoverished nations are already struggling to battle the consequences of rising global temperatures. They speak as if it's a future problem, but its already here and happening throughout the global south. It's only a matter of time before it hits the north.

The world's poor are not causing the problem, but they bear the brunt of climate change. They are suffering from drought and suffer in worsening storms because they cannot afford to build houses that can withstand storms or escape to higher ground. Governments encourage citizens to do "one green action a day" but ordinary citizens are not the root cause of climate change. Extreme weather disasters are becoming more prevalent around the world, be it Zimbabwe or elsewhere. Capitalism is the culprit. Let's save our environment and nature from global capitalism.