Re: Africa
Posted: Wed Jan 12, 2022 2:58 pm
South Africa: A Place of Hope in a Time of Spiraling Crisis
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JANUARY 10, 2022
Nigel C Gibson
Illustrator: Anastasya Eliseeva
The eKhenana occupation in Cato Manor, Durban, is a significant site in the struggle for a South Africa that respects the humanity of all.
South Africa has many moments in its long history of struggle that are recognised internationally as turning points. These include the Sharpeville massacre in 1960, the Soweto uprising in 1976 and Nelson Mandela’s release from prison in 1990.
Sharpeville marked the turn to armed struggle and the beginning of a new period of repression with the banning of the PAC and ANC. Soweto opened a new period of struggle as Black consciousness in action that would resonate throughout the country and across townships and schools in boycotts, strikes and daily discussions. Steve Biko recognised it philosophically, arguing at the time that the “boldness, dedication, sense of purpose and the clarity of analysis of the situation … are definitely a result of Black consciousness ideas among the young generation in Soweto and elsewhere”.
Events are not automatically recognised at the time they take place. Today, what we call the “Durban moment” – a term coined by educationalist Tony Morphet in 1990 – describes not only the massive and seemingly spontaneous strikes across Durban in 1973, but also the political-philosophical discussions between and around Biko and Richard Turner, who was active in organising workers and promoting rank-and-file democracy, education and resistance in the nascent union movement.
It was this notion of recognising a “moment” that was reflected in the subtitle to my book Fanonian Practices in South Africa from Steve Biko to Abahlali baseMjondolo. To include Abahlali in a sequence of politics that began with Biko seemed audacious to some in 2011. My point was that the action, thinking and self-organisation of the shack dwellers in the face of brutal ANC hegemony articulated with Frantz Fanon’s critique of former national liberation leaders as a huckstering caste, and the emergence of new forms of struggle, rooted in humanism, from below in The Wretched of the Earth.
Now, over 16 years after its formation, Abahlali, with a paid-up membership of over 100 000 in five provinces and considerable political weight, is not so easily dismissed as it was by an often contemptuous middle-class Left in those early days. And yet the “commune” at eKhenana in Durban, which has received some mainstream media attention, has not gained recognition as a philosophical-political “event”.
Philosophical events
South Africa is in a crisis in which, as Antonio Gramsci puts it, “the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear”. Subjected to the morbid symptoms on a daily basis – the attempted coup of July 2021 is one expression alongside the daily reality of mass unemployment, xenophobia and violence – we have perhaps focused too much on the normalising morbid symptoms and not enough on intimations of the new that are trying to be born. As Karl Marx wrote in his doctoral thesis in 1841, “necessity is an evil, but there is no necessity to live under the control of necessity. Everywhere the paths to freedom are open.”
To speak of the new is also to be wary of proclamation: we should remember that Marx was wary of an uprising in Paris in late 1870 with the enemy at the gate. And yet once that uprising began, he not only supported it but emphasised the creative elements of imagining a new society as “its own working existence”.
He decided to revise Capital, referencing the idea of freely associated labour as the concrete element that could strip away the fetishistic character of commodities. The Paris Commune was of course world historical, the shattering of state power and its replacement by a really democratic state, as Friedrich Engels put it, “the Kingdom of God, on earth … the sphere in which eternal truth and justice is or should be realised”.
eKhenana is Zulu for Canaan, the promised land of milk and honey where God would deliver the Israelites from Egyptian slavery. By invoking the Paris Commune I am not, of course, putting eKhenana on the same level. The point is to view it through a similar lens, through its own working existence, which has emerged out of the basic need for shelter, food and also the need for community, establishing some important practices that address the question of the decommodification of land, communal organisation, production of food, development of a school for political education, cultural projects such as poetry and theatre, and international solidarity.
Survival is based on the necessities such as shelter, warmth, food and security. We need them for life, but they do not exhaust what it means to be alive. Abahlali’s struggle, and its insistence on thinking in the shack settlements, has always emphasised the importance of ideas. The Frantz Fanon School, a place for community discussions and classes in eKhenana, is a concrete expression of continuing “living learning”, as Abahlali has termed it, just as the theatre of the oppressed is an expression of cultural praxis, aware of how the culture and history of resistance and struggle to, in a phrase often used by Abahlali president S’bu Zikode, “humanise the world” is essential to building the movement.
Revolutionary theatre
Solidarity and collectivity have always highlighted the principle of humanising the world. Under continued repression, solidarity across South Africa and also internationally has importantly come to its defence. Seeds to start the programme of urban farming on occupied land in eKhenana were donated by the MST, the landless workers’ movement in Brazil.
The theatre work there, which has included the collective development and performance of a large-cast play on the assassination of Abahlali leader Thuli Ndlovu in her home in KwaNdengezi in 2014, has inspired similar projects in occupations in other parts of the country. A play titled Theatre of the Oppressed was recently performed in Zikode Village, an occupation in Tembisa named after Abahlali’s president. Written by Musa Nonkwelo, an 18-year-old resident of the , it was purposefully titled and included residents as performers in a play about the story of occupying the land.
Theatre of the Oppressed reaches back to the Black consciousness theatre of the 1970s – represented by groups such as Mhiliti, the People’s Experimental Theatre and Theatre Council of Natal – that was influenced by the work of Paulo Freire and later by Augusto Boal and his concept of theatre as praxis, where the audience takes an active role in analysing and changing reality. As Boal puts it, “perhaps the theatre is not revolutionary in itself; but have no doubt, it is a rehearsal of revolution” because the dramatic action “throws light upon real action” encouraging the spectator to think and act for themselves.
In his preface to the French edition of Capital, Marx applauded the idea that it would come out in instalments, making it “more accessible to the working class”. Similarly, Fanon had hoped that the English translation of The Wretched of the Earth would find new readers across Anglophone Africa. But what could be a more appropriate place to read Marx and Fanon than a school built and run by organised shack dwellers?
Abahlali has organised and supported land occupations for many years. In 2018, the eKhenana Land Occupation was set up in Cato Manor (Mkhumbane in isiZulu). The residents later joined Abahlali and a branch was established in April 2019. Like other occupations, it has been subject to repeated illegal and violent eviction and destruction by the police and private security companies as well as the repeated arrest and imprisonment of its leaders on trumped-up charges. Both the resistance and repression at Mkhumbane have a long history stretching back over 100 years and continuing into the post-1994 period. This is where the movement suffered its first assassination on 26 June 2013 when Nkuleko Gwala was assassinated at a new occupation named Marikana (after the police massacre of striking miners there in 2012).
The decommodification of land
These occupations from below were taking place as the Jacob Zuma ANC was speaking of expropriating land without compensation and pushing for an amendment. Zuma’s politics focused on large areas of farmland. And while the later hearings in South Africa on the amendment of the Constitution to allow for the expropriation of land without compensation was framed in terms of addressing “historic wrongs of land dispossession, ensure fair access to land and empower the majority of South Africans”, landholding in rural areas remained the issue. The pressing problem of access to land in urban areas to build accommodation was almost completely left out. In the government’s estimation the housing backlog in South Africa, if numbers remained the same, would take 30 years to eradicate. And year by year this estimate grows.
While on the face of it there seemed to be agreement, in reality there were two realities and two visions: the ANC’s idea of land as a commodity, tied to the idea of ownership of property “to resolve historic wrongs”, and Abahlali’s idea of the decommodification of land.
In February 2020, Abahlali organised a march of thousands of people through central Durban in support of what it termed the “total decommodification of land”. In March that year, I had a chance to talk about this with Abahlali in Durban. Mqapheli Bonono, who would go on to spend two weeks in prison for his support for the eKhenana commune, said that “we agree on appropriation of land without compensation, [but] we are not following what the ANC and EFF are saying. They understand this to mean take the land from the whites and give it to the Black elite.” Nhlakaniphi Mdiyastha added: “Land must not be sold, must not be put up for rent … it must be owned … communally.”
If land is a commodity it will end up owned by banks, Bonono added, which is why it needs to be decommodified. The dividing line of decommodification was sharply drawn by Abahlali youth member Lindokule Mnguni, a leading figure in the development of the eKhenana commune, who would go on to spend six months in prison after being arrested on trumped-up charges, asked an important question: “How are we going to engage in society without decommodification? Today we don’t even have jobs.” The majority of the residents in eKhenana are unemployed, reflecting a country in which over half the population is under 29 years old and the youth unemployment rate for the youth is over 77.4%. No nation is viable for long under these conditions.
Zikode often repeats Fanon’s statement that “each generation must discover its mission, fulfil it or betray it”. “In the face of all kinds of threat,” Zikode says, “humanity has to rise. No matter what the consequences are. Abahlali has … risen to live [and] … has discovered its mission. We are in a process to fulfil it or betray it.”
Necessity, as Marx puts the basis for freedom, to think past the constraints of the present and imagine the world anew, the work on the commune is part of that reimagining. And it is the Abahlali youth as revolutionary who are taking up this mission. The theatre of the oppressed and the eKhenana commune are its seeds.
eKhenana’s commune is a working existence toward decommodification, decolonising and solidarity. It should be understood as an event with philosophical consequences in a time of deepening social and political crisis
This article was first published by New Frame.
https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/01/ ... ng-crisis/
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“Conflict between president and PM is a conflict between the Somali people and imperialist forces”
Parliamentary elections in Somalia are set to be concluded by February 25 amid tensions between the president and the prime minister. Mohamed Hassan, historian and former diplomat, explains the political situation, the role of foreign powers, especially the UAE, and the truth behind Shabaab
January 10, 2022 by Pavan Kulkarni
President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, aka Farmaajo (left) and prime minister Mohamed Hussein Roble.
The repeatedly delayed election for Somalia’s lower house of parliament, the House of People, will be concluded by February 25. The agreement on the date was reached on Sunday, January 9, after a week of meetings of the National Consultative Council (NCC), chaired by Prime Minister Mohamed Hussein Roble and attended by the leaders of Somalia’s regional States.
This election will not be held on the basis of one-person-one-vote, for which a landmark law was signed by President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, aka Farmaajo, in February 2020. The prospect of holding an election on the basis of universal suffrage for the first time since 1969 has been derailed. Once again, delegates chosen by clan leaders will vote to elect members to the parliament, who will in turn elect the president.
“It is not really an election. It is a nomination by an aristocratic class. Those with money can buy the vote of the delegates in the name of their clans without even consulting the majority of the clan members. It is the easy way of ruling Somalia and looting its resources,” Mohamed Hassan, historian and former diplomat, told Peoples Dispatch in an interview hours before the election date was agreed upon.
This controversial election will be held amid an escalating conflict between President Farmaajo and PM Roble, which resulted in a tense stand-off in Mogadishu between the soldiers loyal to them.
Radio Dalsan reported that the “NCC also agreed to deploy AMISOM [African Union Mission in Somalia] to the most fortified presidential palace so as to quell tension in the area where rival forces supporting both President Farmaajo and PM Roble continue to occupy rival positions in the rooftops of Villa Somalia.”
“The imperialist forces,” who “felt threatened” by the law for one-person-one-vote President Farmaajo signed, see him “as an obstacle because he is a popular leader.. So they are using the prime minister as a Trojan horse against Farmaajo,” said Hassan, who is also an advisor to the president of Ethiopia’s Somali regional State, on the border with Somalia.
Earlier, on January 7, Roble also sought to normalize diplomatic relations with UAE, which was severed by President Farmaajo in 2018 on allegations that it was trying to destabilize Somalia. “That is his purpose – to bring the UAE back into Somalia,” Hassan said, claiming that it is the UAE which has been sponsoring the bombings in Mogadishu and labeling the militant group Al Shabaab as responsible.
The threat of Al Shabaab is often stated in the international media as the reason why Somalia is not ripe for an election on the basis of one-person-one-vote. However, Hassan argues, its mass base, which was formed as a result of Ethiopia’s invasion in 2006 “at the insistence of the US,” has eroded.
Al Shabaab has now “become a ghost invoked by external forces to prevent the Somali people from exercising their democratic rights. All these so-called experts from the International Crisis Group are magnifying Al Shabaab as the greatest threat to the region. But it is not true anymore,” he said.
Read an abridged version of the phone interview below:
Peoples Dispatch: The election in Somalia has been repeatedly delayed. Amid this delay, there is an escalating row between President Farmaajo and Prime Minister Roble. It appears that the US and its allies have taken the PM’s side and are blaming the president for the delay. But it was Farmaajo who had campaigned for one-person-one-vote and signed it into a law in February 2020.
However, the prospect of holding an election on the basis of universal suffrage for the first time since 1969, has been derailed. The election Farmaajo’s opponents and the international community are pressuring him to go along with is once again in accordance with the previous practice where delegates of clans elect the representatives to the lower house, who in turn elect the president. What representative value does such an election hold?
Mohamed Hassan: It is not really an election. It is a nomination by an aristocratic class. Those with money can buy the vote of the delegates in the name of their clans, without even consulting the majority of the clan members. It is the easy way of ruling Somalia and looting its resources. The one-person-one-vote is a landmark law against this.
The warlords who control the clans are losing their hegemony in their own clans because Somali society, particularly over the last 20 years, has changed dramatically. Urbanization has increased the exposure and consciousness of the population. It is very difficult to control them on the basis of this false consciousness of the clan. So the president proposed that the election must be on the basis of one-person-one-vote. The majority of the population supported this proposal.
Elements who in the past have always used the clan as a base to hold power felt threatened. And, of course, the imperialist forces felt threatened. They want to maintain the status quo. They don’t want a popular patriotic sentiment to grow in Somalia. The western countries want to preserve the feudal clan-based system because clans are the only basis on which you can divide the Somali people. You cannot divide them on religion or culture or language, because they are a mono-nation. There is no country in Africa like Somalia where all the population speak the same language from north to south and east to west.
The current conflict between the president and the PM is essentially a conflict between the Somali people and the imperialist forces. The imperialist forces see President Farmaajo as an obstacle because he is a popular leader. You must also note that Farmaajo had signed the tripartite agreement for peace and cooperation with Ethiopia and Eritrea to establish what is called the New Horn of Africa. This was not appreciated by the US and Europe.
So they are using the prime minister as a Trojan horse against Farmaajo. Roble has no vision of nation-building. He is a very corrupt individual. The forces opposed to Farmaajo, including the UAE which the president had chased out of Somalia two-and-a-half years ago, are with him. But they have not been able to stop the emergence of Somali national consciousness.
Gradually, the embryo of a nation-state is taking shape. A national army, which had been absent since the 90s, has been established once again under Farmaajo with support from Turkey. This transcends the clan divisions and lays the pillars for Somali unification. The experiences and exposure of the diaspora are also playing an important role in the cultivation of a national consciousness. There is now a huge gap between the masses, especially the younger generation, and the politicians who want to preserve the status quo. People have refused to live like before, and the ruling class cannot continue to rule like before. I think in the end, the contradicting forces may come to some terms in the middle – that remains to be seen. But the social conditions have changed and they cannot be reversed like before.
PD: One-person-one-vote was a central promise in President Farmaajo’s campaign during the 2017 election. In Feb 2020, he did pass a federal law making way for universal adult suffrage. Can you briefly comment on why it took three years for Farmaajo to pass this law?
MH: Three years was not a very long time given the obstacles President Farmaajo had to surmount to advance democratization – to advance the concept that all citizens have the right to vote and have a say in the future of the country. The UAE and other regional allies of imperialist powers are spending a lot of money to provoke a civil war and create contradictions among the Somali people. They don’t want a new start for Somalia. In fact, they even encourage and subsidize bombings in Mogadishu and blame it on Al Shabaab. Al Shabaab became a tool of the UAE to destabilize the country. Kenya, on the other hand, is supporting warlords in the southern part of the country. But the possibility of triggering a civil war in Somalia is over because the warlords have been decisively defeated a long time ago. The fundamentals for a civil war are not there anymore. The population is much more politicized.
PD: In the international media narrative, Al Shabaab has become synonymous with Somalia. In Feb 2020, when the law for universal adult suffrage was passed, analysts were quoted in international media as saying that amid the war with Al Shabaab, Somalia cannot afford an election on one-person-one-vote basis. Now, the analysts appear to be saying that by not going along with the clan-based election, President Farmaajo is jeopardizing the war against Al Shabaab. How significant a threat is Al Shabaab?
MH: Al Shabaab has become a ghost invoked by external forces to prevent the Somali people from exercising their democratic rights. All these so-called experts from the International Crisis Group are magnifying Al Shabaab as the greatest threat to the region. It is not true anymore.
Al Shabaab, which translates as ‘The Youth,’ used to be a relatively small organization in alliance with the Islamist Council which in 2006 managed to kick out the warlords and take control over most parts of Somalia. Then, when at the insistence of the US, Ethiopia’s then ruler from the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), Meles Zenawi, invaded Somalia, Al Shabaab splintered from this council. Youth at the time flocked to this group mainly to resist the invasion. It then joined Al-Qaeda and became a threat. However, over time, with the rise of a national civil consciousness across the country, its base has completely eroded. Even if it controls pockets in the country, it can be recaptured by the Somali National Armed Forces anytime it decides to. Al Shabaab’s capabilities have seriously diminished today.
Al Shabaab today is only a pretext to keep Somalia as it is and to prevent the emergence of a democratic state on the basis of one-person-one-vote.
PD: Even after the law for one-person-one-vote was passed in February 2020, opposition to it continued. Eventually, in September 2020 – two months before the end of parliament’s term in November, and five months before the end of president’s term in February 2021 – Farmaajo reached an agreement with the heads of the regional States to abandon election on the basis of universal suffrage and return to clan-based elections. Why did he concede?
MH: This is because the regional State leaders refused to participate in the elections. They were told by their imperialist masters to not let it happen. At the time the one-person-one-vote was signed into law, opponents who had eventually come to agree to it had not understood all its implications. Then, after the law was passed, their imperialist masters said, “No, no, this is dangerous for you and for us. You have to push back to return to the old system.”
It is not even their own decision to refuse cooperation. It is the decision of the external forces. You have to understand that the fight in Somalia is essentially between Farmaajo and the external forces. We have to leave out these others. They are only subsidiaries funded and fed by external forces who have been continuously trying to incite civil war and bring Somalia into warlordism again. But they didn’t succeed. Not because of the president’s strength but because the conscious people rejected this line. I am confident that even though these forces have managed to delay the [realization] of one-person-one-vote, they cannot stop it.
PD: On the same day that this September agreement to delay the vote on universal adult suffrage basis and to have an election on the clan-based system was reached, Farmaajo appointed Roble as the new PM. At the time, what was Roble’s political standing? What, in your opinion, was Farmaajo’s reasoning behind his appointment?
MH: It was probably one of the mistakes Farmaajo made. He thought the man is not politically conscious, but he will be a Prime Minister that can be worked with. But Farmaajo misunderstood. Roble, a small businessman living in Kenya, was interested only in money. The moment he was appointed as the PM, the UAE and Kenya bought him. They put him in their pocket by showing him millions of dollars. The man is not interested in politics, but only in the money involved in it.
As soon as Roble became the PM, he visited the UAE and the imperialist forces became happy that they found the man to weaken Farmaajo. But Farmaajo has been able to hold out because he has the support of the masses.
PD: When Roble was appointed as the PM in September 2020, the main responsibility he was tasked with was to facilitate the elections before the terms expired. But this failed and the term of the parliament as well as the president’s government expired before the election could be held. In April 2021, when the lower house voted to extend the president’s term for up to two years until an election could be held, a huge controversy ensued. Somalia’s regional State heads objected. The US, UK and the EU threatened to cut off aid and even impose sanctions. Tension between the president and the PM has been escalating ever since, and eventually resulted in December in a standoff in Mogadishu between the soldiers loyal to the president and those loyal to the PM. How did things escalate so far?
MH: A lot of money was pumped into the country for this escalation, mainly to derail the prospects of a democratic election. The western powers don’t want the Somali people to exert their independent will because of their experience with Somalia in the past. You should remember that in the 1960s, when Somalia became independent, it was the first African country to recognize the People’s Republic of China. Somali ships and flags were confiscated while supplying weapons from the Soviet Union to Vietnam to resist American invasion. Inside the African continent also, Somalia’s role was very progressive. It had supported all the anti-colonial movements including that of Samora Machel in Mozambique. US imperialism keeps records of this behavior of the Somali state when it was independent. Once Somalia re-establishes its independence, I am sure it will join China’s Belt Road Initiative, like Eritrea and other African countries. The western powers want to thwart this.
Particularly because of its geo-strategic position along the Indian Ocean, they want to control its coastline. So all this pressure the US, UK and EU are exerting on Farmaajo, purportedly to bring about an election, is merely a pretext to intervene in order to exert control over Somalia and prevent the emergence of an independent democratic nation state. Roble is merely a pawn in their hands.
PD: Throughout this week, the Roble has been chairing the National Consultative Council (NCC) meeting with the regional State heads to forge a way forward towards the election. Opposition leaders and even foreign diplomats are also in attendance, but not the president. Why is this so?
MH: There is nothing national about this council. It is in fact a council subsidized by the UAE and the western countries to demobilize the national consciousness of the Somali people. Its purpose is to legitimize Roble, who is merely their stooge with no support from the masses. The president, of course, is not a part of this. He is the enemy they want to overthrow.
PD: Amid these meetings, Roble maneuvered to re-established diplomatic relations with the UAE.
MH: That is his purpose – to bring the UAE back into Somalia. The UAE destroyed Yemen. They supported Islamists and jihadists in Syria and in Libya. It has participated in the destruction of Somalia. Since Farmaajo chased them out of Somalia in 2018, they are angry and they want to come back. Roble’s move is a hijack by the UAE’s agents in Somalia. But they will not succeed. The people of Somalia are hostile to the UAE. This move will only increase the hostility and will of the people to resist external forces.
https://peoplesdispatch.org/2022/01/10/ ... st-forces/
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JANUARY 10, 2022
Nigel C Gibson
Illustrator: Anastasya Eliseeva
The eKhenana occupation in Cato Manor, Durban, is a significant site in the struggle for a South Africa that respects the humanity of all.
South Africa has many moments in its long history of struggle that are recognised internationally as turning points. These include the Sharpeville massacre in 1960, the Soweto uprising in 1976 and Nelson Mandela’s release from prison in 1990.
Sharpeville marked the turn to armed struggle and the beginning of a new period of repression with the banning of the PAC and ANC. Soweto opened a new period of struggle as Black consciousness in action that would resonate throughout the country and across townships and schools in boycotts, strikes and daily discussions. Steve Biko recognised it philosophically, arguing at the time that the “boldness, dedication, sense of purpose and the clarity of analysis of the situation … are definitely a result of Black consciousness ideas among the young generation in Soweto and elsewhere”.
Events are not automatically recognised at the time they take place. Today, what we call the “Durban moment” – a term coined by educationalist Tony Morphet in 1990 – describes not only the massive and seemingly spontaneous strikes across Durban in 1973, but also the political-philosophical discussions between and around Biko and Richard Turner, who was active in organising workers and promoting rank-and-file democracy, education and resistance in the nascent union movement.
It was this notion of recognising a “moment” that was reflected in the subtitle to my book Fanonian Practices in South Africa from Steve Biko to Abahlali baseMjondolo. To include Abahlali in a sequence of politics that began with Biko seemed audacious to some in 2011. My point was that the action, thinking and self-organisation of the shack dwellers in the face of brutal ANC hegemony articulated with Frantz Fanon’s critique of former national liberation leaders as a huckstering caste, and the emergence of new forms of struggle, rooted in humanism, from below in The Wretched of the Earth.
Now, over 16 years after its formation, Abahlali, with a paid-up membership of over 100 000 in five provinces and considerable political weight, is not so easily dismissed as it was by an often contemptuous middle-class Left in those early days. And yet the “commune” at eKhenana in Durban, which has received some mainstream media attention, has not gained recognition as a philosophical-political “event”.
Philosophical events
South Africa is in a crisis in which, as Antonio Gramsci puts it, “the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear”. Subjected to the morbid symptoms on a daily basis – the attempted coup of July 2021 is one expression alongside the daily reality of mass unemployment, xenophobia and violence – we have perhaps focused too much on the normalising morbid symptoms and not enough on intimations of the new that are trying to be born. As Karl Marx wrote in his doctoral thesis in 1841, “necessity is an evil, but there is no necessity to live under the control of necessity. Everywhere the paths to freedom are open.”
To speak of the new is also to be wary of proclamation: we should remember that Marx was wary of an uprising in Paris in late 1870 with the enemy at the gate. And yet once that uprising began, he not only supported it but emphasised the creative elements of imagining a new society as “its own working existence”.
He decided to revise Capital, referencing the idea of freely associated labour as the concrete element that could strip away the fetishistic character of commodities. The Paris Commune was of course world historical, the shattering of state power and its replacement by a really democratic state, as Friedrich Engels put it, “the Kingdom of God, on earth … the sphere in which eternal truth and justice is or should be realised”.
eKhenana is Zulu for Canaan, the promised land of milk and honey where God would deliver the Israelites from Egyptian slavery. By invoking the Paris Commune I am not, of course, putting eKhenana on the same level. The point is to view it through a similar lens, through its own working existence, which has emerged out of the basic need for shelter, food and also the need for community, establishing some important practices that address the question of the decommodification of land, communal organisation, production of food, development of a school for political education, cultural projects such as poetry and theatre, and international solidarity.
Survival is based on the necessities such as shelter, warmth, food and security. We need them for life, but they do not exhaust what it means to be alive. Abahlali’s struggle, and its insistence on thinking in the shack settlements, has always emphasised the importance of ideas. The Frantz Fanon School, a place for community discussions and classes in eKhenana, is a concrete expression of continuing “living learning”, as Abahlali has termed it, just as the theatre of the oppressed is an expression of cultural praxis, aware of how the culture and history of resistance and struggle to, in a phrase often used by Abahlali president S’bu Zikode, “humanise the world” is essential to building the movement.
Revolutionary theatre
Solidarity and collectivity have always highlighted the principle of humanising the world. Under continued repression, solidarity across South Africa and also internationally has importantly come to its defence. Seeds to start the programme of urban farming on occupied land in eKhenana were donated by the MST, the landless workers’ movement in Brazil.
The theatre work there, which has included the collective development and performance of a large-cast play on the assassination of Abahlali leader Thuli Ndlovu in her home in KwaNdengezi in 2014, has inspired similar projects in occupations in other parts of the country. A play titled Theatre of the Oppressed was recently performed in Zikode Village, an occupation in Tembisa named after Abahlali’s president. Written by Musa Nonkwelo, an 18-year-old resident of the , it was purposefully titled and included residents as performers in a play about the story of occupying the land.
Theatre of the Oppressed reaches back to the Black consciousness theatre of the 1970s – represented by groups such as Mhiliti, the People’s Experimental Theatre and Theatre Council of Natal – that was influenced by the work of Paulo Freire and later by Augusto Boal and his concept of theatre as praxis, where the audience takes an active role in analysing and changing reality. As Boal puts it, “perhaps the theatre is not revolutionary in itself; but have no doubt, it is a rehearsal of revolution” because the dramatic action “throws light upon real action” encouraging the spectator to think and act for themselves.
In his preface to the French edition of Capital, Marx applauded the idea that it would come out in instalments, making it “more accessible to the working class”. Similarly, Fanon had hoped that the English translation of The Wretched of the Earth would find new readers across Anglophone Africa. But what could be a more appropriate place to read Marx and Fanon than a school built and run by organised shack dwellers?
Abahlali has organised and supported land occupations for many years. In 2018, the eKhenana Land Occupation was set up in Cato Manor (Mkhumbane in isiZulu). The residents later joined Abahlali and a branch was established in April 2019. Like other occupations, it has been subject to repeated illegal and violent eviction and destruction by the police and private security companies as well as the repeated arrest and imprisonment of its leaders on trumped-up charges. Both the resistance and repression at Mkhumbane have a long history stretching back over 100 years and continuing into the post-1994 period. This is where the movement suffered its first assassination on 26 June 2013 when Nkuleko Gwala was assassinated at a new occupation named Marikana (after the police massacre of striking miners there in 2012).
The decommodification of land
These occupations from below were taking place as the Jacob Zuma ANC was speaking of expropriating land without compensation and pushing for an amendment. Zuma’s politics focused on large areas of farmland. And while the later hearings in South Africa on the amendment of the Constitution to allow for the expropriation of land without compensation was framed in terms of addressing “historic wrongs of land dispossession, ensure fair access to land and empower the majority of South Africans”, landholding in rural areas remained the issue. The pressing problem of access to land in urban areas to build accommodation was almost completely left out. In the government’s estimation the housing backlog in South Africa, if numbers remained the same, would take 30 years to eradicate. And year by year this estimate grows.
While on the face of it there seemed to be agreement, in reality there were two realities and two visions: the ANC’s idea of land as a commodity, tied to the idea of ownership of property “to resolve historic wrongs”, and Abahlali’s idea of the decommodification of land.
In February 2020, Abahlali organised a march of thousands of people through central Durban in support of what it termed the “total decommodification of land”. In March that year, I had a chance to talk about this with Abahlali in Durban. Mqapheli Bonono, who would go on to spend two weeks in prison for his support for the eKhenana commune, said that “we agree on appropriation of land without compensation, [but] we are not following what the ANC and EFF are saying. They understand this to mean take the land from the whites and give it to the Black elite.” Nhlakaniphi Mdiyastha added: “Land must not be sold, must not be put up for rent … it must be owned … communally.”
If land is a commodity it will end up owned by banks, Bonono added, which is why it needs to be decommodified. The dividing line of decommodification was sharply drawn by Abahlali youth member Lindokule Mnguni, a leading figure in the development of the eKhenana commune, who would go on to spend six months in prison after being arrested on trumped-up charges, asked an important question: “How are we going to engage in society without decommodification? Today we don’t even have jobs.” The majority of the residents in eKhenana are unemployed, reflecting a country in which over half the population is under 29 years old and the youth unemployment rate for the youth is over 77.4%. No nation is viable for long under these conditions.
Zikode often repeats Fanon’s statement that “each generation must discover its mission, fulfil it or betray it”. “In the face of all kinds of threat,” Zikode says, “humanity has to rise. No matter what the consequences are. Abahlali has … risen to live [and] … has discovered its mission. We are in a process to fulfil it or betray it.”
Necessity, as Marx puts the basis for freedom, to think past the constraints of the present and imagine the world anew, the work on the commune is part of that reimagining. And it is the Abahlali youth as revolutionary who are taking up this mission. The theatre of the oppressed and the eKhenana commune are its seeds.
eKhenana’s commune is a working existence toward decommodification, decolonising and solidarity. It should be understood as an event with philosophical consequences in a time of deepening social and political crisis
This article was first published by New Frame.
https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/01/ ... ng-crisis/
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“Conflict between president and PM is a conflict between the Somali people and imperialist forces”
Parliamentary elections in Somalia are set to be concluded by February 25 amid tensions between the president and the prime minister. Mohamed Hassan, historian and former diplomat, explains the political situation, the role of foreign powers, especially the UAE, and the truth behind Shabaab
January 10, 2022 by Pavan Kulkarni
President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, aka Farmaajo (left) and prime minister Mohamed Hussein Roble.
The repeatedly delayed election for Somalia’s lower house of parliament, the House of People, will be concluded by February 25. The agreement on the date was reached on Sunday, January 9, after a week of meetings of the National Consultative Council (NCC), chaired by Prime Minister Mohamed Hussein Roble and attended by the leaders of Somalia’s regional States.
This election will not be held on the basis of one-person-one-vote, for which a landmark law was signed by President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, aka Farmaajo, in February 2020. The prospect of holding an election on the basis of universal suffrage for the first time since 1969 has been derailed. Once again, delegates chosen by clan leaders will vote to elect members to the parliament, who will in turn elect the president.
“It is not really an election. It is a nomination by an aristocratic class. Those with money can buy the vote of the delegates in the name of their clans without even consulting the majority of the clan members. It is the easy way of ruling Somalia and looting its resources,” Mohamed Hassan, historian and former diplomat, told Peoples Dispatch in an interview hours before the election date was agreed upon.
This controversial election will be held amid an escalating conflict between President Farmaajo and PM Roble, which resulted in a tense stand-off in Mogadishu between the soldiers loyal to them.
Radio Dalsan reported that the “NCC also agreed to deploy AMISOM [African Union Mission in Somalia] to the most fortified presidential palace so as to quell tension in the area where rival forces supporting both President Farmaajo and PM Roble continue to occupy rival positions in the rooftops of Villa Somalia.”
“The imperialist forces,” who “felt threatened” by the law for one-person-one-vote President Farmaajo signed, see him “as an obstacle because he is a popular leader.. So they are using the prime minister as a Trojan horse against Farmaajo,” said Hassan, who is also an advisor to the president of Ethiopia’s Somali regional State, on the border with Somalia.
Earlier, on January 7, Roble also sought to normalize diplomatic relations with UAE, which was severed by President Farmaajo in 2018 on allegations that it was trying to destabilize Somalia. “That is his purpose – to bring the UAE back into Somalia,” Hassan said, claiming that it is the UAE which has been sponsoring the bombings in Mogadishu and labeling the militant group Al Shabaab as responsible.
The threat of Al Shabaab is often stated in the international media as the reason why Somalia is not ripe for an election on the basis of one-person-one-vote. However, Hassan argues, its mass base, which was formed as a result of Ethiopia’s invasion in 2006 “at the insistence of the US,” has eroded.
Al Shabaab has now “become a ghost invoked by external forces to prevent the Somali people from exercising their democratic rights. All these so-called experts from the International Crisis Group are magnifying Al Shabaab as the greatest threat to the region. But it is not true anymore,” he said.
Read an abridged version of the phone interview below:
Peoples Dispatch: The election in Somalia has been repeatedly delayed. Amid this delay, there is an escalating row between President Farmaajo and Prime Minister Roble. It appears that the US and its allies have taken the PM’s side and are blaming the president for the delay. But it was Farmaajo who had campaigned for one-person-one-vote and signed it into a law in February 2020.
However, the prospect of holding an election on the basis of universal suffrage for the first time since 1969, has been derailed. The election Farmaajo’s opponents and the international community are pressuring him to go along with is once again in accordance with the previous practice where delegates of clans elect the representatives to the lower house, who in turn elect the president. What representative value does such an election hold?
Mohamed Hassan: It is not really an election. It is a nomination by an aristocratic class. Those with money can buy the vote of the delegates in the name of their clans, without even consulting the majority of the clan members. It is the easy way of ruling Somalia and looting its resources. The one-person-one-vote is a landmark law against this.
The warlords who control the clans are losing their hegemony in their own clans because Somali society, particularly over the last 20 years, has changed dramatically. Urbanization has increased the exposure and consciousness of the population. It is very difficult to control them on the basis of this false consciousness of the clan. So the president proposed that the election must be on the basis of one-person-one-vote. The majority of the population supported this proposal.
Elements who in the past have always used the clan as a base to hold power felt threatened. And, of course, the imperialist forces felt threatened. They want to maintain the status quo. They don’t want a popular patriotic sentiment to grow in Somalia. The western countries want to preserve the feudal clan-based system because clans are the only basis on which you can divide the Somali people. You cannot divide them on religion or culture or language, because they are a mono-nation. There is no country in Africa like Somalia where all the population speak the same language from north to south and east to west.
The current conflict between the president and the PM is essentially a conflict between the Somali people and the imperialist forces. The imperialist forces see President Farmaajo as an obstacle because he is a popular leader. You must also note that Farmaajo had signed the tripartite agreement for peace and cooperation with Ethiopia and Eritrea to establish what is called the New Horn of Africa. This was not appreciated by the US and Europe.
So they are using the prime minister as a Trojan horse against Farmaajo. Roble has no vision of nation-building. He is a very corrupt individual. The forces opposed to Farmaajo, including the UAE which the president had chased out of Somalia two-and-a-half years ago, are with him. But they have not been able to stop the emergence of Somali national consciousness.
Gradually, the embryo of a nation-state is taking shape. A national army, which had been absent since the 90s, has been established once again under Farmaajo with support from Turkey. This transcends the clan divisions and lays the pillars for Somali unification. The experiences and exposure of the diaspora are also playing an important role in the cultivation of a national consciousness. There is now a huge gap between the masses, especially the younger generation, and the politicians who want to preserve the status quo. People have refused to live like before, and the ruling class cannot continue to rule like before. I think in the end, the contradicting forces may come to some terms in the middle – that remains to be seen. But the social conditions have changed and they cannot be reversed like before.
PD: One-person-one-vote was a central promise in President Farmaajo’s campaign during the 2017 election. In Feb 2020, he did pass a federal law making way for universal adult suffrage. Can you briefly comment on why it took three years for Farmaajo to pass this law?
MH: Three years was not a very long time given the obstacles President Farmaajo had to surmount to advance democratization – to advance the concept that all citizens have the right to vote and have a say in the future of the country. The UAE and other regional allies of imperialist powers are spending a lot of money to provoke a civil war and create contradictions among the Somali people. They don’t want a new start for Somalia. In fact, they even encourage and subsidize bombings in Mogadishu and blame it on Al Shabaab. Al Shabaab became a tool of the UAE to destabilize the country. Kenya, on the other hand, is supporting warlords in the southern part of the country. But the possibility of triggering a civil war in Somalia is over because the warlords have been decisively defeated a long time ago. The fundamentals for a civil war are not there anymore. The population is much more politicized.
PD: In the international media narrative, Al Shabaab has become synonymous with Somalia. In Feb 2020, when the law for universal adult suffrage was passed, analysts were quoted in international media as saying that amid the war with Al Shabaab, Somalia cannot afford an election on one-person-one-vote basis. Now, the analysts appear to be saying that by not going along with the clan-based election, President Farmaajo is jeopardizing the war against Al Shabaab. How significant a threat is Al Shabaab?
MH: Al Shabaab has become a ghost invoked by external forces to prevent the Somali people from exercising their democratic rights. All these so-called experts from the International Crisis Group are magnifying Al Shabaab as the greatest threat to the region. It is not true anymore.
Al Shabaab, which translates as ‘The Youth,’ used to be a relatively small organization in alliance with the Islamist Council which in 2006 managed to kick out the warlords and take control over most parts of Somalia. Then, when at the insistence of the US, Ethiopia’s then ruler from the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), Meles Zenawi, invaded Somalia, Al Shabaab splintered from this council. Youth at the time flocked to this group mainly to resist the invasion. It then joined Al-Qaeda and became a threat. However, over time, with the rise of a national civil consciousness across the country, its base has completely eroded. Even if it controls pockets in the country, it can be recaptured by the Somali National Armed Forces anytime it decides to. Al Shabaab’s capabilities have seriously diminished today.
Al Shabaab today is only a pretext to keep Somalia as it is and to prevent the emergence of a democratic state on the basis of one-person-one-vote.
PD: Even after the law for one-person-one-vote was passed in February 2020, opposition to it continued. Eventually, in September 2020 – two months before the end of parliament’s term in November, and five months before the end of president’s term in February 2021 – Farmaajo reached an agreement with the heads of the regional States to abandon election on the basis of universal suffrage and return to clan-based elections. Why did he concede?
MH: This is because the regional State leaders refused to participate in the elections. They were told by their imperialist masters to not let it happen. At the time the one-person-one-vote was signed into law, opponents who had eventually come to agree to it had not understood all its implications. Then, after the law was passed, their imperialist masters said, “No, no, this is dangerous for you and for us. You have to push back to return to the old system.”
It is not even their own decision to refuse cooperation. It is the decision of the external forces. You have to understand that the fight in Somalia is essentially between Farmaajo and the external forces. We have to leave out these others. They are only subsidiaries funded and fed by external forces who have been continuously trying to incite civil war and bring Somalia into warlordism again. But they didn’t succeed. Not because of the president’s strength but because the conscious people rejected this line. I am confident that even though these forces have managed to delay the [realization] of one-person-one-vote, they cannot stop it.
PD: On the same day that this September agreement to delay the vote on universal adult suffrage basis and to have an election on the clan-based system was reached, Farmaajo appointed Roble as the new PM. At the time, what was Roble’s political standing? What, in your opinion, was Farmaajo’s reasoning behind his appointment?
MH: It was probably one of the mistakes Farmaajo made. He thought the man is not politically conscious, but he will be a Prime Minister that can be worked with. But Farmaajo misunderstood. Roble, a small businessman living in Kenya, was interested only in money. The moment he was appointed as the PM, the UAE and Kenya bought him. They put him in their pocket by showing him millions of dollars. The man is not interested in politics, but only in the money involved in it.
As soon as Roble became the PM, he visited the UAE and the imperialist forces became happy that they found the man to weaken Farmaajo. But Farmaajo has been able to hold out because he has the support of the masses.
PD: When Roble was appointed as the PM in September 2020, the main responsibility he was tasked with was to facilitate the elections before the terms expired. But this failed and the term of the parliament as well as the president’s government expired before the election could be held. In April 2021, when the lower house voted to extend the president’s term for up to two years until an election could be held, a huge controversy ensued. Somalia’s regional State heads objected. The US, UK and the EU threatened to cut off aid and even impose sanctions. Tension between the president and the PM has been escalating ever since, and eventually resulted in December in a standoff in Mogadishu between the soldiers loyal to the president and those loyal to the PM. How did things escalate so far?
MH: A lot of money was pumped into the country for this escalation, mainly to derail the prospects of a democratic election. The western powers don’t want the Somali people to exert their independent will because of their experience with Somalia in the past. You should remember that in the 1960s, when Somalia became independent, it was the first African country to recognize the People’s Republic of China. Somali ships and flags were confiscated while supplying weapons from the Soviet Union to Vietnam to resist American invasion. Inside the African continent also, Somalia’s role was very progressive. It had supported all the anti-colonial movements including that of Samora Machel in Mozambique. US imperialism keeps records of this behavior of the Somali state when it was independent. Once Somalia re-establishes its independence, I am sure it will join China’s Belt Road Initiative, like Eritrea and other African countries. The western powers want to thwart this.
Particularly because of its geo-strategic position along the Indian Ocean, they want to control its coastline. So all this pressure the US, UK and EU are exerting on Farmaajo, purportedly to bring about an election, is merely a pretext to intervene in order to exert control over Somalia and prevent the emergence of an independent democratic nation state. Roble is merely a pawn in their hands.
PD: Throughout this week, the Roble has been chairing the National Consultative Council (NCC) meeting with the regional State heads to forge a way forward towards the election. Opposition leaders and even foreign diplomats are also in attendance, but not the president. Why is this so?
MH: There is nothing national about this council. It is in fact a council subsidized by the UAE and the western countries to demobilize the national consciousness of the Somali people. Its purpose is to legitimize Roble, who is merely their stooge with no support from the masses. The president, of course, is not a part of this. He is the enemy they want to overthrow.
PD: Amid these meetings, Roble maneuvered to re-established diplomatic relations with the UAE.
MH: That is his purpose – to bring the UAE back into Somalia. The UAE destroyed Yemen. They supported Islamists and jihadists in Syria and in Libya. It has participated in the destruction of Somalia. Since Farmaajo chased them out of Somalia in 2018, they are angry and they want to come back. Roble’s move is a hijack by the UAE’s agents in Somalia. But they will not succeed. The people of Somalia are hostile to the UAE. This move will only increase the hostility and will of the people to resist external forces.
https://peoplesdispatch.org/2022/01/10/ ... st-forces/