World View: Zambia’s tribalist politics (2002)

From the March 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

The results of the presidential and parliamentary elections that took place in Zambia on 27 December can only be analysed in terms of the prevailing ethnic and tribal prejudices that came to translate themselves in the voting pattern.

The heavily contested elections took place over four days instead of the stipulated one day. This was partly due to the large number of voters who had turned up to vote. The elections took place in the rain season and many roads and bridges were rendered inoperative and thus caused delays in the transportation of ballot boxes and personnel.

This time more than ever before the Zambian electorate was subjected to intense political propaganda coming from no less than twelve political parties, but the elections were held under a mood of cynicism consequent upon the nullification of the constitutional referendum that would have paved the way for a third term for outgoing President Frederick Chiluba.

Voting was heavily determined by ethnic and tribal loyalties rather than the intellectual and political integrity of the presidential aspirants. The strength of political parties has come to depend upon the degree of ethnic and tribal loyalties they can command. Tribalism in Zambia is politically motivated – a political contest among the Tonga, Lozi and Bemba for ethnic domination.

A brief resumé of Zambia’s political history may help to clarify this predominance and the pattern of ethnic and tribal loyalties. The beginning of political agitation that paved the way to the achievement of Zambia’s independence saw the emergence on the political scene of the most assertive tribes. Disenchanted with racial segregation, the nationalist movements manipulated the entrenched ethnic and tribal prejudices to win political loyalty.

Historically the Bemba tribe is regarded as being the most culturally and politically assertive in Zambia. The Bemba originated from the Lunda-Luba multi-ethnic empire that had once flourished in the 7th century in the Congo bassin. Demographically Zambia is heavily populated by the Lunda-Luba tribal offshoots, scattered across Luapula, Northern and Central Provinces. There still exist cultural and linguistic affinities among the diverse tribes found in these regions. In terms of lingua franca the Bemba vernacular has come to supplement English as Zambia’s second language, showing that language itself can be used as a vehicle of tribal domination

The first nationalist party in Zambia (then Northern Rhodesia) was formed by Godwin Mbikusita Lewanika, a Lozi tribesman, in 1948, the Northern Rhodesia African National Congress. Later, in 1951, the party was re-named the African National Congress under the charismatic leadership of Harry Nkumbula, a Tonga by tribe.

Historically the Lozi and Tonga are not related. The Lozi were an offshoot of the Makololo invaders who came from Basutoland (Botswana) and settled in Western Province around 1800. The Tonga have a long ancestral record compared to other Zambian tribes. Traditionally, they are politically non-militant, with political leadership being restricted within clans and village headmen. Tonga and Lozi politicians come into open alliances whenever there is a presidential election.

It can now be vindicated that Kenneth Kaunda’s resignation from the ANC in 1962 was mainly motivated by the entrenched ethnic and tribal loyalties, less so than on the alleged corrupt leadership of Harry Nkumbula. Kaunda himself is not a Zambian. His parents came from Malawi (Nyasaland) with a white missionary society. But it was his early upbringing under a Bemba traditional society that came to play a major role in his political career. The emergence of the UNIP in 1962 under his leadership witnessed the growth of militant political demonstrations in Luapula, Copperbelt and Northern Provinces where the Bemba are concentrated.

In 1963 Nalumino Mundia, a prominent Lozi politician, resigned from ANC and formed his own political party, the United Party. This was essentially Lozi in outlook and derived a mass following in Western Province. The United Party formed a coalition with Nkumbula’s ANC during the 1968 general elections and managed to win 34 percent of the votes.

This voting pattern that emerged from the 1968 general elections emphasised the presence of ethnic and tribal loyalties that have continued to this day.

The inauguration of a one-party (UNIP) state by Kaunda in 1972 was made in order to arrest the trends perceived towards ethnic and provincial parochialism. The UNIP government under Kaunda believed that it had succeeded in containing ethnic and tribal parochialism in Zambia by fabricating the philosophy of Humanism, duly implemented in 1974 as the official political ideology of the party and government. The philosophy of Humanism was spasmodically enunciated by Kaunda in order to enhance the false image of tribal homogeneity under a single party dictatorship.

Throughout his beleaguered political career Kaunda, took account of the prevalence of ethnic and tribal allegiances and allocated political portfolios according to the relative strengths of tribal and ethnic loyalties. The rank of Prime Minister was always reserved to a Lozi tribesman. Thus it can be inferred that the defeat of the UNIP government in 1991 by Chiluba’s MMD was a defeat for the Lozi who had come to comprise the majority in the civil service.

The election victory achieved in December by the ruling MMD presidential aspirant, Levy Mwanawasa, can only be attributed to the large number of votes received from the Bemba-speaking tribes in Copperbelt, Luapula and Northern Provinces. In terms of tribal and ethnic groupings, we can see that the Bemba-speaking areas voted for the ruling MMD whereas the Tonga and Lozi speaking areas voted for the UPND leader, Anderson Mazoka (a Tonga tribesman). Mazoka’s routing in the Copperbelt, Luapala and Northern provinces was compensated by the huge victories scored by the UPND in Lusaka, Southern and Western Provinces. The UPND lost to the ruling MMD by a margin of 30,000 votes but increased its seats in parliament to 44 compared to the MMD’s 68. The UPND’s dissatisfaction with the election results reflects the ingrained ethnic and tribal allegiances that underlies multi-party politics in Zambia.

Our message to the people of Zambia remains the same. The real cause behind unemployment, inflation and poverty is capitalism, the social system based on class domination, competition and selfishness. We repeat: in countries subjected to foreign domination and wage-slavery capitalism feeds and grows by enabling ethnic and tribal prejudices. It encourages voter apathy in societies where political patronage is based on tribal identities. It bedevils political stability through encouraging expediency based upon strengthening tribal domination and ill-feeling.

Socialism can bring to an end all this rot. A classless, moneyless and stateless society will end the ethnic, racial and sectarian antagonisms. The struggle before you remains the same – a class struggle on an international scale.

Kephas Mulenga

The struggle in South Africa (1986)

From the November 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

South Africa is the fourth most populous country in Africa, after Nigeria, Egypt and Ethiopia, but it is by far the richest in terms of wealth produced and capital accumulated. Although representing only four per cent of the land area of the African continent and only seven per cent of its population, it has been estimated that South Africa has 30 per cent of its income, 43 per cent of its mining production, 87 per cent of coal production, 75 per cent of steel production, 57 per cent of electricity production, 56 per cent of rail traffic, and 50 per cent of its motor vehicles and telephones. South Africa, then, is by far the most developed capitalist country in Africa. Its economy is based on the export of minerals (gold, platinum, chromium, diamonds) whose earnings have permitted the development of sizeable manufacturing and service sectors.

The special feature about South Africa is of course what for want of a better term will have to be referred to as the "racial" breakdown of its population. Of its 26 million people, some 18 million (70 per cent) are of African origin, a little under five million (18-19 per cent) of European descent, the remaining three million or so being made up of about three-quarters of a million Indians and of people of mixed European. Asian and African descent.

Everyone in South Africa is by law classified into one of four “groups": European, Bantu, Coloured and Asian. The first group is also officially described as "Whites" and the others (as on park benches) as "Non-Whites". These, it must be emphasised, are the official legal classifications. They are not biologically-defined, but politically-defined groups, even though an individual's biological features and ancestry are used in this political definition. These classifications are absurd even on their own terms. For instance, some "Non-Whites" are whiter than some "Whites", while some "Europeans" are just as much of mixed origin as are those classified as "Coloureds": however their ancestors were able to pass as Whites sufficiently long ago to escape the race classifiers’ investigations. Further, Bantu (like Aryan) is a linguistic not a biological classification and, besides, is completely rejected as contemptuous by those so classified

Needless to say, "Non-White" too is also rejected as being the equivalent of "non-existent". Some political activists and groups in South Africa use the term "Black" as a substitute for — indeed as a reply to — "Non-White", thus including the Africans, the Coloureds and the Indians in a single group facing the Whites. Others, however, use "Black" to mean just the Africans. This can obviously lead to confusion, especially as in British usage the terms "Coloured" and "Black” are synonyms.

This whole discussion of so-called racial classifications shows that, in the end, no term is completely neutral, all are more or less political as the term used indicates the group or groups of human beings that the user thinks should unite (or be separated). In this game, then, the only terms that are acceptable to socialists are such terms as human race, citizens of the world, world working class and workers of the world.

Your racial classification in South Africa is important as it determines where you can live (and where you can’t) and. until very recently, who you could marry and who you could have sexual relations with (and with whom you couldn't). It also determines whether you are a first, a second or a third class citizen. For in South Africa there are, legally and not just factually, three classes of citizenship.

The first class is composed of those who have full political rights, the same for instance as those nearly everybody has in Britain and in particular the right to elect the members of the national law-making body. Such full political rights are enjoyed only by the Whites — by only one in six — less than 20 per cent — of the population.

The second class, constituted as recently as 1984, is made up of the Coloureds and the Indians who were allowed that year to elect their own members of the national parliament who have a limited (very limited in fact) role in the law-making process. This limited role was recognised by the overwhelming majority of Coloureds and Indians who boycotted the elections — there was a turnout of only about 20 per cent — seeing participation as an acceptance of their second-class status.

The third class is composed of the African majority — representing 70 per cent of the population — who are without any political rights whatsoever at national level. Some do have a vote at local level, while others (some four million) can, on paper, vote for the parliaments of the so-called Bantustans like the Transkei. In fact these latter are not regarded as being South African citizens at all, let alone third-class ones.

Apartheid — which is merely the Africaans for segregation — originally had a much more ambitious project than maintaining White political supremacy by denying the other groups full citizenship rights. As laid down by the National Party which has held power in South Africa without interruption since 1948, it wanted to prevent the Africans from becoming permanently established in the "White" towns and to allow them to be there only temporarily as migrant labourers (and. of course, domestic servants). But what apartheid, as embodied in rigid laws which the National Party government enacted after coming to power in 1948 sought to keep apart, the development of capitalism brought together. Over the years a permanent African urban working class, employed at all levels in manufacturing and service industries and not just in mining, has come into being. In fact since 1975 the majority of urban dwellers have been Africans.

The National Party governments have had to recognise this and to make concession after concession to the economic facts: Africans have been permitted to form trade unions and have taken strike action, the notorious pass laws are soon to be abolished, while other reforms have granted urban Africans property and even municipal voting rights in the towns. Only two of the original pillars of apartheid now remain — the Group Areas Acts laying down residential segregation (and reserving 85 per cent of the land area for the Whites) and the discriminatory political structure — but this latter too is now beginning to totter.

South Africa's present political structure where your say in the political decision-making process depends on your racial classification and which completely excludes 70 per cent of the population is so anachronistic that it is universally — and rightly — condemned, especially since political power is now being brutally used to impose the government’s authority on the unwilling majority. Even the capitalists and Thatcher condemn it. There is no reason to challenge their sincerity here since the South African system is anachronistic even from a capitalist point of view. Historically capitalism has sought to reduce all relations and differences between people to one: economic, to whether you are rich or poor, employer or employee, capitalist or worker. It didn't demolish feudal relations based on birth and legally-defined estates to see such distinctions re-introduced as racially-based citizenship classes.

Basically, capitalism wants a political structure which protects and enforces the property rights of the owning class and which ensures political stability within which the extraction of surplus value from the working class can proceed undisturbed by extraneous. non-economic considerations. Although both theory and practice have shown that political democracy is the ideal capitalist political form, this is not something that the ruling class anywhere has ever spontaneously applied nor, when faced with the choice between political stability and political democracy, will a capitalist class automatically prefer the latter. Historical experience (Nazi Germany. Fascist Italy, Franco Spain. Greece under the Colonels for example) shows that they will sacrifice political democracy and embrace dictatorship, at least for a temporary period, if this is the price of securing a stable political regime.

So political democracy has generally had to be forced on capitalism by popular pressure, in particular from the working class. Workers were right to press for political democracy since this provides the best framework both for the propagation and spread of socialist ideas and for the peaceful establishment of socialism. Since political democracy does not exist in South Africa, workers, besides becoming socialists, need to struggle for its establishment there too.

Over 50 per cent of the population of South Africa now live in the towns and, as indicated, since 1975 over 50 per cent of this urban population — which is overwhelmingly working class — wage and salary earners — has been African, a percentage which is growing all the time. This African and Coloured urban wage and salary working class majority, representing an even greater percentage of factory workers, could bring enormous political pressure to bear on the government to move towards granting them the same political rights now enjoyed exclusively by White workers. In fact the South African capitalist class has already got the message and has also been putting pressure on the Botha government to move in this direction.

Of course it is not going to be easy. People are going to be thrown into jail. People are going to be beaten up. And people are going to be killed by the "security" forces. Indeed, all these things are happening at this very moment. Sooner or later, however, the South African government is going to have to retreat as it did over economic apartheid and to move more and more towards political democracy. But the struggle should not stop there. Political democracy is not an end in itself — it leaves working class exploitation intact and working class problems unresolved — but merely as a means to the end of socialism. This more important struggle will still need to go on.

Adam Buick

Famine in Africa (1984)

From the December 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

Toyin Falola, writing about the impact of colonialism in Africa, has this to say:

The situation then turned from one of mere trading partners to one of unmitigated exploitation. Colonial rule was so successful that although nearly all African countries have now achieved political independence they remain economically dependent on Europe. This unequal partnership is a major obstacle to the socio-economic development of Africa. [1]

The problem with the theory of “neo-colonialism" is that, like all theories developed within the narrow perspective of nationalism, it tends to overlook the boundaries of class. Where it acknowledges the dynamics of class struggle, more often than not it absorbs it into the conflict between countries — between the rich industrialised North and the impoverished providers of raw materials in the South. Thus Susan George:

The present world political and economic order might be compared to that which reigned over social-class relations in individual countries in nineteenth century Europe with the Third World now playing the role of the working class. [2]

To be fair to George, she does draw attention to the existence of “local elites" in the Third World. Yet all too often with those who subscribe to this neo-colonial model of the world, it is not that such an elite exists that matters but that it should so unashamedly ally itself with its erstwhile colonial masters.

Who is this elite in Africa? According to Greg Lanning:

At independence the new rulers in Africa lacked an economic base in society and used the patronage and power of government to consolidate their own position. Partly because of this and partly because of the nature of an underdeveloped economy, “the state plays a major role in economic activity and development". The importance of the state in post-colonial Africa means that those who staff and run the state apparatus form the basis of the emergent ruling class in Africa. [3]

The dominant ideas in society being those that best serve the interests of its ruling class, it is perhaps not surprising that contemporary politics in Africa should be so receptive to Leninist ideology with its statist prescription for the management of an emergent capitalism. On the other hand, as Lanning suggests, in trying to consolidate their economic position Africa's rulers depend heavily on the revenue accruing to their national treasuries from foreign companies operating within their territories. Such a situation demands a degree of pragmatism. For a ruthless pragmatist like President Mobutu of Zaire this has proved most rewarding. With a personal fortune of about £100 million, Mobutu is one of the richest men in the world, while the average wage of a Zairean worker amounts to just over ten dollars a month. Clearly, if Africa’s ruling class chafes against the constraints of “neo-colonialism", it is also very much a beneficiary of it. While it has neither the inclination nor the option to withdraw from the interlocking relationships characteristic of an integrated world economy. Dinham and Hines point out to what extent it has been able to modify these relationships to its own advantage:

Could a politically independent state wrest economic power from the foreign companies which continued to control their export crops? The strategies open to governments were limited and experience soon showed that measures to acquire immediate control by nationalisation led to retaliation from the companies involved. Most countries opted for more modest legal and financial controls. These measures did not drive the companies out — nor were they particularly intended to do so, for the companies were by now crucial to many African economies. [4]

More recently, however, the trend has been for these multinational firms to opt out of plantation agriculture in which many of them have their roots and to move towards an arrangement known as “contract farming”. What this means is that local producers are contracted by a firm to produce a certain output which the firm then purchases at a fixed price. This has the advantage for the firm concerned in that it eliminates the risks attached to growing crops.

But while multinational firms invest less in direct landownership than they did in the past, in other respects their dominance has become more entrenched and pervasive. These latter activities include the marketing, processing and transport of agricultural products as well as the provision of agricultural inputs such as fertilisers, machinery and management or technical services. Such "vertical integration" is the hallmark of modern agribusiness corporations. In other words they are able to exercise wide ranging control over the many links that make up the food chain, from the supply of seeds to the packaging of the final product.

For the proponents of economic nationalism, this is a highly regrettable state of affairs. Not only are African countries denied greater "vertical" control over their products but are economically restricted in a “horizontal” sense as well. This is to say their structure of production is relatively undiversified. being closely aligned in most cases to a fairly narrow spectrum of external markets which absorb the bulk of Africa’s trade. According to Dinham and Hines

Twelve countries are dependent on just one main crop for over 70 per cent of their income. and a further eleven countries depend on only two crops for well over half their income. [4]

Such a highly concentrated pattern of production has a number of disadvantages built into it. In the first place, it greatly increases the risk of loss due to environmental factors. It also makes these countries extremely vulnerable to fluctuations in the price of their export crops. Just as a mining community in Britain, for example, could be devastated by the closure of a mine on which it heavily depends, so a drastic fall in the price of a single agricultural product can wreak havoc with whole regions given over to the production of this crop. In Africa’s case, probably the most extreme example of “over-concentration” is that of Gambia, where groundnuts are grown on 73 per cent of the arable land and account for 90 per cent of its export revenue.

The market economy is, of course, an inherently unstable system and within it the price of agricultural products tends to be more volatile than most. It is this very instability which adds yet another dimension to Africa’s plight in that a high proportion of its export crops happen to be slow maturing and so not readily adaptable to the vagaries of the market.

Take, for example, coffee. In at least eight African countries coffee is an important export crop grown largely by smallholders. High current prices will induce farmers to plant or expand their acreage of coffee trees. Once planted they have to wait for roughly five years for the coffee trees to mature but as Moore-Lappe and Collins point out:

By the time your first harvest of such crops is ready you might find the bottom has dropped out of the market. And it probably will have since producers in your country and others will have planted to meet the demand at the same time you did The likely result is overproduction once the new trees begin to bear more than the consumers are willing to buy even with a drop in price. [5]

In the economically advanced areas of world capitalism, governments have usually sought to cushion agriculture from the erratic workings of market forces. But this in turn has created yet another problem: periodic crises of “over-production” and chronic food surpluses. In fact so huge are these surpluses that in America alone it costs £700 million a year just to stockpile them. [6] But such stocks are by no means surplus to human requirements; they are surplus to the capacity of the market system which restricts workers’ consumption to the size of their wallet. Once again, Susan George:

As long as food is regarded as a commodity . . . you will have this scandalous situation of surpluses on the one hand and famine on the other. Because people who can’t pay. who cannot become consumers with a Capital C are not interesting to this world system. [7]

In the Third World, however, there is far less scope for governments to intervene and protect their agricultural sector in the way that the EEC or the American government can. The reason is that the subsidies paid to farmers in the richer countries represent a tax burden on other sectors of industry. But in the developing countries this is hardly a practicable course of action:

Developing countries are so called because their other industries are not developed: generally speaking, agriculture is their one main industry. Agriculture has, in their case, to support the government. Only in developed countries with prosperous industries able to give revenue to the government can the government, in its turn, support agriculture. [8]

In addition to the problems affecting African countries arising from fluctuations in the prices of their agricultural exports, there has been in the post war era a longterm tendency for these prices to drift downwards against those of imported manufactures and oil. For example, "in 1969 a coffee producing country had to sell 66 bags of coffee to buy one 16 tonne truck but by 1979 it had to sell 123 bags of coffee to buy the same truck" [4] Don Casey, in a paper prepared for the UN Development Programme, estimated that the total loss of foreign exchange earnings to Africa due to this relative fall in the price of agricultural exports in the two decades after World War Two, "exceeded all foreign funds invested, loaned or granted during that period". [5]

This "deterioration in the terms of trade" has prompted African and other Third World governments to try to secure commodity agreements through bodies like the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in order to stabilise prices or else to form producer cartels along the lines of OPEC. To date such attempts have been largely unsuccessful. Partly this is because "producer countries" are themselves no more a monolithic bloc than their customers but are deeply divided by competition over markets. When, for example, a conference was held some years ago to try to reach an International Tea Agreement, several African countries objected to the idea of fixing prices or quotas. The reason was that Africa’s share of world output was projected to grow substantially in the near future.

Faced with these increasingly stringent economic pressures, African governments have little choice but to move even further down the road that has led to the predicament in which they find themselves. To boost their revenue they must encourage commercial agriculture. In so doing they have had to turn more and more to multinational agribusiness for the necessary imports and to private banks or aid agencies for loans to finance this expansion. This of course only further reinforces the need to promote commercial agriculture. It is after all mainly from this source (apart from the mining sector in some cases) that governments can hope to raise the necessary amounts of foreign exchange that can go towards repaying the debts incurred.

For peasant farmers throughout Africa such developments translate into a mounting burden of misery. As peasant farmers they are of course mainly “self provisioning" — they produce food primarily for their own consumption — production for the market being a secondary consideration. But today this social arrangement is coming under increasing attack.

After “independence”

Julius Nyerere in his famous 1967 Arusha Declaration, remarked that

The basic difference between Tanzanian rural life now and in the past stems from the widespread introduction of cash crop farming. Over large areas of the country peasants spend at least part of their time — and sometimes the larger part of it — on the cultivation of crops for sale — crops like cotton, coffee, sisal, pyrethum and so on. But in the process the old traditions of living together, working together and sharing the proceeds have often been abandoned.

The Arusha Declaration itself was an attempt to transform peasant agriculture by reducing the influence of market forces. It sought to build a self reliant economy by raising agricultural productivity through the mass mobilisation of peasants within a framework known as the Ujamaa (meaning “familyhood”) programme. Among other things this entailed the enforced resettlement of scattered peasants into some 8000 planned villages, ostensibly to extend essential services to the rural population as a means to greater productivity.

The Ujamaa experiment is interesting because of its ideological commitment to the idea of peasant self-reliance. Its failure to live up to this commitment — for it came increasingly under the control of a burgeoning state bureaucracy — highlights all the more starkly the inherent conflict of interests between African governments generally and the peasant populations in the countries which they govern. The fact of the matter is that these governments need to further extend the influence of market forces, not to reduce it; to transform, as Marx put it. “a society in which one definite mode of production dominates even though not all productive relations have been subordinated to it" into one based more and more on purely capitalistic relations of production. In short, what the Ujamaa programme foundered on was not an ideological betrayal but the economic exigencies of Tanzanian capitalism and its heavy dependence on foreign imports and aid resulting in the need to generate foreign exchange.

How is the capitalist imperative to extract marketable surpluses from cash crop production transmitted to, and impressed on, the African peasant? In colonial times a favoured method to induce peasants to grow cash crops was by levying taxes. This remained the case after political independence. Indeed, in some cases the burden of taxation has substantially risen:

In Mali in 1929 the French levied a tax that required each adult over fifteen to grow between five and ten kilos of cotton to pay for it. By 1960, the last year of French rule, the tax had risen to the equivalent of forty kilos. By 1970. during the drought, the successor government forced each adult peasant to grow at least forty eight kilos of cotton just to pay for taxes. [5]

Generally speaking, crops that peasants produce for export are purchased by marketing boards — usually government-run and almost all monopolies — and then sold to foreign buyers for processing. The price that peasants are paid is often far less than that charged by the marketing board which in turn reflects the state of the world market. It may be deduced that the lot of the peasant might improve with an improvement in the world market. But this is not necessarily so:

A slight increase in income that peasant farmers in underdeveloped countries might acquire from a rising world price for their commodity has to be weighted against the increased threat of displacement by land-grabbing commercial farmers or corporations that see higher prices as new grounds for profit. [5]

In the post war era most countries in Africa experienced a surge in cash crop production though more recently in the 1970s output has tended to level off (partly due to the world recession). Significantly, this growth was achieved primarily not by raising yields but by expanding the area under cash crop production. Inevitably, this was at the expense of subsistence agriculture which was progressively pushed onto less productive marginal land. Since subsistence agriculture is a major local source of food, this development goes a long way towards explaining the steady fall in per capita food production in Africa over the last twenty years or so.

In the past the availability of relatively abundant land, coupled with communal forms of land tenure, tended to cushion subsistence agriculture and ensure a modicum of food security. Indeed, it was this that mainly inhibited the development of a strong indigenous landowning class. But today this picture is rapidly changing as a recent survey from the Cornell University Centre for International Studies suggests:

The study found a trend across Africa towards increasing privatisation of communal lands, growing concentration of landownership and the fragmentation of holdings, all factors further aggravating rural poverty. In some countries lands traditionally available to all tribal members are being appropriated by government officials or foreign firms, usually with the acquiescence of chiefs.[4]

It has been estimated that three quarters of Africa's population now have access to less than 4 per cent of the land [2] while in many parts of Africa “small farmers do not own enough land to occupy themselves for at least 6 months of the year”. [9] And most importantly, with the question of famine in mind, “8-10 per cent of the rural labour force in Africa is now landless and these numbers and proportions are growing rapidly". [4]

The consequences have been catastrophic for millions of peasants caught between the hammer blows of the market economy and the anvil of diminishing returns from subsistence agriculture. And as rural deprivation worsens, so the tide of migration to the cities has gathered pace. Africa may be the least urbanised continent. with less than a quarter of its people living in cities, but its rate of urbanisation is roughly twice that of its population growth. This means on current trends that the population of African cities can be expected to double every 14 years. But how can this growing population be fed when domestic food production mainly in the form of peasant farming is in the throes of decline?

The answer as far as governments are concerned is to import food, particularly cereals, from abroad. This first began on a significant scale in the 1960s when the price of cereals was low as a result of the accumulation of huge surpluses in North America and Europe. But. as Sir Fred Catherwood explained, this was by no means an unmixed blessing:

These surpluses from Europe and from America depress Third World prices; they put Third World farmers out of business, they drive them off the land and into the shanty towns and they reduce rather than increase production in the Third World. [7]

Without doubt. African governments are fully aware of this, but whether they are in a position to do anything about it is quite another matter. They have to take into account for example the likely response of town dwellers to any increase in the price of basic foodstuffs that might benefit local producers. Furthermore, as new tastes become entrenched in the urban areas it is even more difficult to break away from dependence on a particular cereal (like wheat) which for climatic or other reasons cannot be grown in much of Africa. The population of Africa may be mainly rural but political power is overwhelmingly urban-based, with consequences graphically spelt out by Basil Davidson:

So it was increasingly the towns, after independence, that dictated the priorities of economic policy; and the new demands of the towns, pushing aside the needs of the countryside, increasingly called the tune. More and more exports had to go in paying for the imports demanded by the towns . . . the towns and cities, in short, became the tail that wagged the economic dog. and the rural populations, still in most cases the great majority of all the people, had to suffer for it. [10]

When in fact big increases in food prices have been pushed through against the wishes of the urban population, this has in many countries been the prelude to serious riots and, in some cases, a successful coup d'etat. Little wonder, as Rene Dumont put it. "governments fear urban unrest far more than the dispersed and unorganised peasant farmers”. [11] Prompted by this threat—not to mention the military aspirations of rival African states — they have sought to massively arm themselves with the paraphernalia of repression: “At present governments spend an average of between 4 and 7 per cent of their budgets on agriculture — while spending 20 per cent on defence". [12]

More recently in the 1970s the cost of food imports rose substantially. For African countries this was an ominous development. particularly when seen against the background of a relative fall in the value of agriculture exports. Many governments in response to this crisis have initiated large scale (often state run) agricultural schemes in a bid to boost domestic food production by attracting foreign investment and expertise.

At first sight this might seem an unlikely area for foreign firms to invest in, for the reason so candidly explained by the Chairman of General Foods: "It is virtually impossible for a private business establishment to develop, distribute and sell enough of the kinds of food poor people need and still break even, much less look for any profit". But the role of aid has been a crucial factor in enticing agribusiness. Firms find it sufficiently lucrative to participate in large scale agricultural projects as these "attract funding on concessional terms by aid agencies" and with payments effectively guaranteed by the aid agencies concerned this eliminates financial risks to the firms themselves. In short, with the prospect of large scale schemes coming to dominate domestic food production in the 1980s this will "ensure agribusiness an increased role in Africa’s food production, thus complementing its historic control of Africa's cash crop production". [4]

Should this happen it will further erode subsistence farming, displacing peasants or driving them more and more into the market place of hunger where the economic risks are as great as the physical margins of survival are small. For increasing numbers of them throughout Africa a way of life is dying by degrees; slowly strangled, as though by a python whose length spans the circumference of the globe.

Robin Cox

References

(1) African History and Culture, edited by R Olaniyan, 1982

(2) How the Other Half Dies. S.George, 1979

(3) Africa Undermined. G.Fanning with M. Mueller. 1979

(4) Agribusiness in Africa. B.Dinham & C. Mines. 1983

(5) Food First, F.Moore Lappe & J.Collins. 1982

(6) The Observer, 1 April 1984

(7) Utopia Limited, programme notes, 1984

(8) Agriculture The Triumph and the Shame. R Body. 1982

(9) The growth of Hunger. R.Dumont & N Cohen. 1980

(10)  The Story of Africa, B.Davidson. 1984

(11)  The Guardian. 25 June 1982

(12) Newsweek. 6 August 1984

South African time-bomb (1984)

From the November 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

South Africa has recently experienced the bloodiest conflicts between rioters and police since the 1976 Soweto uprising. Several dozen people were shot dead by police, who used live rounds in addition to rubber bullets and teargas. The conflict was concentrated in the Vaal Triangle, in Sharpeville, in Sebokeng, Boibateng and Evaton. More than a hundred people were seriously injured in the rioting, which coincided with the introduction of a new constitution upholding the apartheid regime.

In 1976, the state response to the Soweto uprising left more than five hundred dead across the country. Clearly, not very much has changed since then. At the time of the more recent riots, those who boycotted the elections to the new system of assemblies were beaten up by van-loads of police and some of the candidates themselves. Some reporters sympathetic to those not voting were also attacked. However, the intense discontent felt by the majority of South Africans relates to far broader issues than the new Constitution.

There have been protests at rent increases, increases in bus fares and over the high level of indirect taxation. As in 1976, it is children who have led the protests, organising widespread school boycotts as a protest against conditions in those prison camps for the young. During last month's elections to the tricameral parliament these boycotts reached a peak, with 500,000 staying away from school.

The fact that hand in hand with the racist oppression of apartheid goes an underlying class division has not escaped the notice of the rioters. The black majority are turning against black councillors because of their association with unpopular measures such as rent increases, and the government's attempt to distance itself from the discontent by giving some power to black councils in the townships is certain to backfire in the end.

In South Africa today there is an explosive undercurrent of resentment and discontent among the black majority, who are treated like beasts of burden by the ruling class. But the actions of this reactionary white elite are part of a wider conflict which directly involves us all every day: the power struggle between a propertied and privileged minority, and the majority on whose backs they prosper. Of one thing there can be no doubt: the majority in South Africa will defeat those who today sit smugly entrenched in Johannesburg. Victory will set the end of a class division between a powerful minority and the dispossessed majority and the ownership of the means of life by the world’s inhabitants without distinction of race or sex.

New pamphlet on Racism (1966)

Party News from the October 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

A new Socialist Party pamphlet, entitled The Problem of Racism, is available. The previous pamphlet on this subject The Racial Problem, published in 1947 has been out of print for some time. The Problem of Racism is not just a revision it is a completely new pamphlet. In 1947 it was the Jewish Question that was prominent. Today it is the Colour Question. This change is taken into account in the new pamphlet which examines the colour question in Britain, America, South Africa and Rhodesia. There are chapters too on the scientific theory of race, the historical origins of racist theories and on African nationalism.

There is an unfortunate error. The reference on page 41 to Guyana should, of course, be to Guinea.

Pamphlet obtainable from Socialist Party (Dept SR), 52 Clapham High St., London, SW4. Price 1/6.

Blogger's Note:

Unfortunately, the text of The Problem of Racism pamphlet is not currently on the SPGB website. Hopefully that can be rectified in the future.

Letter: Nothing has changed (2005)

Letter to the Editors from the August 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

Nothing has changed

Dears Editors

Twenty years ago, there was a high profile pop concert organised by the Live Aid group, to help the famine in Ethiopia. Now two decades later nothing has changed.

The Live 8 concerts addressed the effects of poverty not it causes. Unless the present social system has changed, for many more decades down the line there will be more Live Aids, more GB summits on this poor continent, and more Bonos and Bob Geldofs, yet all their cries for billions to be spent on aid are still unlikely to make more than the smallest dent in the deprivation.

Although there is criminal incompetence of Africa’s post-colonial black elites (the people who call themselves presidents, prime ministers, and in some instances kings and princes of the continent have waged war on their own people and plundered the continent’s wealth to ever bulging Bank account in Switzerland), the main problem of the continent is capitalism.

It is common knowledge that up to two-thirds of the world’s population are hungry, while millions actually die from starvation each year. Why in a world of potential plenty is so elementary a human need as food neglected for some many people?

Some would deny that we live in a world of plenty and claim that the cause of world hunger is natural scarcity. That in other words, some people starve simply because not enough food can be produced.

In the present state scientific knowledge and productive techniques, enough food could be produced adequately to feed the population of the world.

World malnutrition then is not a natural but a social problem. Its cause must be sought not in any lack of natural resources but in the way society is organised. World society everywhere rests on the basis of the resources of the world, natural and manufactured, by very rich minorities.

Rock stars or any other celebrities will not persuade the rich class to make world poverty history. It’s in fact the world market system that ruled the world. Acting like a natural force beyond human control, it has much power than any national government.

The market creates an artificial scarcity and organised waste that is responsible for poverty and hunger in the world today. The law that governs everywhere is “no profit, no production”.

Michael Ghebre, 

London NW1

Material World: King Capital’s plunder of the Congo (2025)

The Material World column from the April 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

King Capital’s plunder of the Congo

The brutal conflict in the ‘Democratic Republic’ of Congo is not an ethnic struggle, a failure of governance, or an unfortunate accident. It is the direct consequence of capitalism’s relentless pursuit for profit. The plunder of the Congo’s vast mineral wealth is not a by-product of war, but the reason for it.

Despite being endowed with vast natural resources, the Congo remains one of the most impoverished and most exploited countries in the world. The cause of this paradox lies in the legacy of colonialism combined with modern rulers of capital and the ongoing plunder facilitated by the master class.

‘The colonised can see right away that the coloniser is a thief, a liar, a fraud, a murderer, a torturer, and a hypocrite…’ (Frantz Fanon, the well-known psychiatrist and revolutionary, on the Congo).

Towards the end of the 19th century, King Leopold II of Belgium transformed the Congo into his personal property. He subjected millions of Congolese to forced labour in the extraction of rubber and other resources. Under Leopold’s rule, appalling atrocities were committed with millions dying from violence, starvation, and disease. After international condemnation, Belgium formally took control of the Congo in 1908, continuing the exploitation of its resources while not investing in the country’s infrastructure or development.

Eventually Congo gained independence in 1960, under a rigged system that ensured foreign control over its wealth. Patrice Lumumba, the first democratically elected Prime Minister, sought to assert national sovereignty. For this affront to King Capital, Lumumba was overthrown and assassinated by Belgian and US interests. The installation of the dictator Mobutu ensured that the Congo’s resources would continue to be funnelled to corporations while the population withered.

Today, Congo remains trapped in a cycle of exploitation. Minerals like coltan, cobalt, and copper, essential to Tesla, iPhones and solar panels continue to benefit capital rather than the Congolese. Neighbouring Rwanda has become a key exploiter.

The European Union’s special representative for Africa’s Great Lakes region, Johan Borgstram, accused Rwanda of violating Congolese territory. Borgstram urged a political solution to the conflict in eastern Congo, noting that Rwanda’s support for the M23 (March 23) rebel group and the presence of its military on Congolese territory constituted a violation of Congolese sovereignty. The M23 movement, which has seized key territories in eastern Congo, claims to be defending the interests of Congolese Tutsis. It has committed horrendous acts including mass killings, sexual violence, and the displacement of civilians, particularly in eastern Congo.

Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame has cited security concerns, pointing to the Congolese government’s alleged lack of political will. M23’s territorial control has caused nearly 80,000 people to flee, many seeking refuge in neighbouring countries like Burundi.

This ongoing cycle of extraction and conflict is not an accident; it is the result of the global capitalist system that continues to exploit Congo’s resources for the benefit of foreign elites, whether they are in the West or in Rwanda. The wealth generated from Congo’s vast resources is largely funnelled to multinational corporations, with little benefit to the local population.

Don’t imagine this is some accidental lapse on capitalism’s part. It is exactly how capitalism functions. The Socialist Party has always argued that capitalism cannot be reformed to serve the majority. It is a system built on exploitation, where wealth is continually extracted, and power remains concentrated in the hands of few. The wars in Congo, like the wars before them, are not by accident or the result of mismanagement; they are the natural outcome of the economic system that demands the subjugation of entire nations for the benefit of King Capital.

Digital book burnings in Trump’s America

When viewing history through the lens of analysis socialists understand that attacks on marginalised groups are likely an early indication of rising authoritarianism. A century ago, the Nazi party of Germany targeted transgender people and the scientists who were pioneers of sexual research, raiding Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, one of the world’s first centres dedicated to the study and care of queer and trans people. The Nazi Party raided the clinic, terrorised the workers, and burned thousands of books, papers and research materials in a public spectacle of hate that foreshadowed the grim horrors to come. Now, today, a modern version of this erasure is also underway. This time, the flames are in the form of a trash folder, as it is a digital erasure, and this horror is unfolding in the United States under the directorship of Donald Trump.

Since his return to political power, the Marmalade Mussolini and his collaborators have systematically erased the existence of trans people from official records. Under his administration, the term ‘transgender’ is being removed from government websites, crucial health data scrubbed, and even references to historical trans activists such as Marsha P Johnson at the Stonewall National Monument eradicated.

Charities and institutions that receive federal funding are being overtly pressured to follow suit, ensuring that the trans community is transported out of public life. The speed and efficiency of this erasure would have made the Nazis envious.

These moves are not happening in isolation. They come after a build up over years of false moral panic stoked by the capitalist press, where trans people are being unjustly smeared as a threat to children, just as Hirschfeld was accused of ‘grooming’ youth in the pages of the Nazi propaganda organ Der Stürmer. The narrative is chillingly familiar: demonisation, exclusion, and then elimination.

The implications however extend beyond just trans rights. Fascist parties who seized the reins of democracy under the gaze of capital would test the boundaries by attacking the most vulnerable, seeing how much liberals of all shades would tolerate. As they succeed today in digitally erasing trans people, they will move on to the next targets. Already, Trump and his axis of tech billionaires have floated the idea of defying court rulings, openly challenging judicial authority in their efforts to strip rights from minorities. The broader working class must recognise that an attack on one group’s liberties is an attack on all.

Just as socialists oppose divisions and discriminations over race and colour, so we commit to solidarity with those workers under the LGBTQIA banner being victimised by this explicitly nasty face of capital.

Socialists are keenly aware that oppression is the tool of the master class, used to divide and distract workers while capitalists consolidate capital. The erasure of transgender people is not only a symptom of this alt-right culture war but is a warning sign of the increasingly authoritarian aspect of the capitalist political order. Socialists that seek to build a truly free, wholly democratic and equal society will not accept these digital book burnings and Trump’s wider assault on humanity. Marx teaches us to look on history scientifically to understand the present condition and in doing so what we are witnessing unfolding under raw capitalism in the US must concern us all.

A.T.

Other “Huns” and Other Louvains. (1914)

From the December 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

I.—The Belgians on the Congo.

The two faces of the capitalist have been exposed in these pages times out of number, and in various forms. Once again this dual personage has become clearly visible to the merest observer under another set of circumstances.

We have of late heard the squalling of the Belgian capitalists and the officials of the Belgian State. So shocked and horrified were these tender people at the way in which the “brutal Germans” trod upon their sacred soil and destroyed some of their towns, that a deputation was sent to proclaim this sacrilege to the world, with a view to persuading the neutral powers to come to their assistance.

But the Socialist remembers that these capitalists wailing over their wrecked property and pretending to be so concerned about the poor Belgian workers who are being driven from their homes, are the same capitalists who, through their agents, ransacked scores of villages and towns, shot and killed thousands of men, women, and children who had never raised even a finger against them.

Before describing these barbarities it would perhaps be as well to briefly sketch the events that led up to them. If the reader wishes them elaborated he should read “Red Rubber,” by E. D. Morel, to which book, together with White Paper, Africa, No. 1, 1904 (Cd 1933, 8½d.), the writer is indebted for the following information.

In the sixties and seventies of last century the great commercial countries saw enormous possibilities in the creation of new markets, arising out of notable discoveries by explorers in Central Africa, and each wished to acquire as large an outlet as possible for their own manufactures. The scramble commenced.

The discovery of the Congo Basin by Stanley was the most significant of all, and in this direction the late King Leopold II turned his attention. Having previously juggled successfully with Suez Canal and other shares, he had amassed a considerable fortune. He sent several investigating expeditions, consisting mostly of Englishmen and Germans (how strange !) assuring the world that his intentions were purely scientific and severely disinterested. To carry on this work Leopold formed a company styled “The International African Association.”

This bloody and astute king capitalist played his cards like an expert. He became a member of the Aborigines Protection Society, and promised to support lavishly the missionary societies of England and America. He captured the British Chambers of Commerce by declaring that if the commercial communities supported his proposals the Congo trade would be open to them and would be exempt from all fiscal restrictions.

After a time the various powers became uneasy and jealous as to who should control this vast and rich land. Certain suggestions were considered with a view to placing it under international control. Then on the suggestion of the Portuguese it was decided to recognise the sovereignty of Portugal on both banks of the river up to a certain limit inland, to declare the river open to the world, and to place it under an Anglo Portuguese Navigation Commission to which the accession of the other Great Powers would be welcome. After introducing clauses protecting traders against exaggerated tariffs, and for the protection of the natives (!), etc., the treaty was signed.

But Leopold had not been playing to the gallery for nothing, and immediately the treaty was denounced by the British Chambers of Commerce and the philanthropic societies. The British Government was accused of betraying national interests, and the Portuguese Government was accused by its bosses of a similar crime. France, encouraged by the clamour, became resolutely hostile, and Bismarck, on behalf of Germany, kicked. Belgium was now in an unique position, and received the reluctant support of the British Government, with a proviso to secure freedom of trade, etc. Bismarck’s proposal of an International Conference was assented to, and was opened “in the name of God,” on Nov. 25, 1884.

Fourteen powers were represented, and their first consideration was for the welfare of the natives ! Such was the slimy cant and hypocrisy that we are told “the delegates, figuratively speaking, fell upon each other’s necks and wept with emotion.” They placed the Congo Basin in the hands of Leopold’s company. Articles were signed to ensure the utmost freedom to all capitalists, and for the preservation of the natives, the suppression of slavery and the slave trade, and “the protection of all . . . institutions which aim at instructing the natives and bringing home to them the blessings of civilisation.” We shall see, presently, what these “blessings of civilisation” were.

On August 1st, 1885, Leopold notified the signatory Powers that the International African Association would henceforth be known as the Congo Free State, with himself as sovereign of that “State.” Almost immediately followed a decree claiming all vacant lands as the property of the State. Another decree limited the rights of the native to the area upon which his hut was built, whilst another prohibited the hunting of the elephant “throughout the whole of the State’s territory” (three-fourths of which had never been trodden by a white man). Then they commenced recruiting an army of the most savage tribes. These natives could either volunteer or were taken in raids. For every recruit of the latter order the State officer obtained a bonus according to the physical fitness of his captive. Male children were also taken and drafted to military instruction camps to be made soldiers in due course. Having secured and trained sufficient recruits they set out with a mandate from Christendom to exterminate the Arabs, who had up to then been trading with the natives. Their object was to obtain the vast stores of ivory and rubber in the Arabs’ possession and to capture their markets. This accomplished, everything was clear for Leopold and his thieves’ gang to commence business.

On Sept. 21st 1891 a secret decree was issued to the State officials in Africa, stating that it was the paramount duty of the Congo Free State to raise revenue, and “to take urgent and necessary measures to secure for the State the dominal fruits, notably ivory and rubber.” Other regulations followed, which forbade the natives selling rubber or ivory to European merchants, and threatened the latter with prosecution if they bought these articles from the natives.

The merchants protested, and Leopold defined the position. Everything, he told them, belonged to the State—the land and the produce thereof. The natives were tenants upon State property. If they interfered with that property they were poachers ; and whoever abetted them were poachers, receivers of stolen goods, and violators of the law. How simple and concise !

Other secret documents were dispatched to the Governor-General baiting him to do his utmost to obtain the produce from the natives, “sparing no means.” A sliding scale was fixed by which officials were paid. The less it cost to obtain the goods the greater the bonus ; the more it cost to get the goods the less for the official. In other words, the less the native got for his ivory and rubber the larger the official’s commission and the more for the thieves on top !

One can pretty well guess the nature of the orders of tha Governor to his subordinates, and of the subordinates to their subordinates. Here is a typical one from Commandant Verstracten to the officials in charge of stations in the Rubi Welle district :

“I have the honour to inform you that from Jan. 1st 1899, you must succeed in furnishing 4,000 Kilos of rubber every month. To this effect I give you carte blanche. You have, therefore, two months in which to work your people. Employ gentleness at first, and if they persist in not accepting the imposition of the State, employ force of arms.”

Here is an extract from another :

“Decidedly these people of Inoryo are a bad lot. They have just cut some rubber vines at Huli. We must fight them until their absolute submission is obtained, or their complete extermination.”

Under this system £13,715,664 worth of raw produce was forced out of the Congo natives during the seven years preceding 1906 by the hirelings of this royal member of the Aborigines Protection Society and his confederates.

Let us now see how the rubber was acquired under the stimulus of bonuses and force. The information is furnished by Belgian and French, traders (who, no doubt, felt sore at being outdone by the State monopoly), and travellers and missionaries. The most brutal act of the “German Huns” sinks into insignificance compared with some of them.

The procedure was by levying a tax on the villages and towns payable in kind, and State soldiers would be sent to demand payment—so much ivory or rubber as well as food stuffs—every week or month as the case might be. But let the eye witness describe. The following is au extract from a letter written as early as 1892 by a resident of Likini.

“The frequent wars upon the natives undertaken without any cause by the State soldiers sent, out to get rubber and ivory, are depopulating the country. The soldiers find that the quickest and cheapest method is to raid villages, seize prisoners, and have them redeemed against ivory, etc. . . . Each agent of the State receives 1,000 fr. commission per] ton of ivory, and 175 fr. per ton of rubber.”

This, the reader will notice, was about a year after the decree urging the officials to secure the “dominal fruits.” The bloody events that followed have never been surpassed. The following is from the diary of E. J. Glave, an “independent English traveller” who crossed the Congo in 1894-5. It appeared in the “Century Magazine” in 1896.

“Up the Ikelemba away to Lake Mantumba the State is perpetrating its fiendish policy in order to obtain profit. War has been waged all through the district of the Equator, and thousands of people have been killed. Many women and children were taken, and twenty-one heads were brought to Stanley Falls, and have been used by Captain Rom as a decoration round a flower bed in front of his house.”

The following piece of information was given to the British Consul, Roger Casement, and is quoted in his report (p. 43.)

“Each time the corporal goes out to get rubber, cartridges are given to him. He must bring back all not used ; and for every one used he must bring back a right hand. . . . Sometimes they shot a cartridge at an animal in hunting ; they then cut off a hand from a living man. … In six months, on the Momboyo River they had used 6,000 cartridges, which means that 6,000 people are killed or mutilated. It means more than 6,000, for the soldiers kill children with the butt of their guns.”

If a soldier returned to his station without a sufficient number of hands to make up for the rubber he had not brought, he was shot by his superiors. A native corporal described how in one day he had brought 160 hands home to his officer and they were thrown into the river. Another individual testifies to a village (Katoro) being attacked. Many were killed, including women and children. The heads were cut off and taken to the officer in charge, who sent men back for the hands also, and these were pierced and strung and dried over the camp fire. On another occasion a large town was attacked ; hands and heads cut off and taken to the officer. The witness said : “I shall never forget the sickening sight of deep baskets of human heads.”

According to Roger Casement many had their ears cut off ; also the native soldier, after being told “You kill only women ; you cannot kill men,” would mutilate the bodies and carry the sexual organs to the officer. In fact, in the Mongalla massacre of 1899 the agents confessed to ordering sexual mutilation. Consul Casement says that “this was not a native practice, but the deliberate act of soldiers of an European administration . . . and that in committing these acts they were but obeying the positive orders of their superiors.”

In some cases when protests were made to the Congo Courts a mock trial ensued. Lacroix, one of the agents in the Mongalla region was thus held up, and he confessed to having been instructed by his superiors to attack a certain village for shortage of rubber, and to having killed in his raid many women and children. He said:

“I am going to appear before the judge for having killed 160 men, cut off 60 hands ; for having crucified women and children, for having mutilated many men and hung their sexual remains on the village fence.”

Terms of imprisonment were inflicted, but were never served. Why ? Because “they had acted on instruction.”

The Congo Free State is split up into several “Companies” or “Trusts,” each occupying a specific area. One named “The King” was worked in the interest of Leopold’s private purse. Other portions were handed over for stewardship to financiers, “personal friends and officials of his European Court,” etc. In the “Companies” the King or the State usually held half the shares. One is named the Anglo-Belgian India Rubber Company. In six years this company, with the aid of the State soldiers, made a nett profit of £720,000 out of the rubber slave trade on a paid-up capital of £9,280 ! Thus each share of a paid up value of £4 6s. 6d. has received £335 in the same time. King Leopold held 1,000 of these shares.

However, it seems quite clear that, although the Belgian capitalists, backed by the arms of the State, had a big hand in this dirty business, there was along with them the international gang of plunderers. If this were not so, why was it that, although the evidence of these devilish horrors was before the Governments of America, Italy, France, Portugal, Germany, and the rest of them for years, they did not move to stop them ? Why was it that for six years the British Government was continually having reports of atrocious maladministration on the Congo and yet refused to move ? Why, indeed, did it absolutely suppress these reports—which it has never yet made public? Sir Henry Johnston, who has travelled a good deal in that direction, is evidently in the know. He says : “If there have been bad Belgians on the Congo, there have been bad Englishmen, ruthless Frenchmen, pitiless Swedes, cruel Danes, unscrupulous Italians.” (See preface to Morel’s “Red Rubber,”)

At any rate, how do these brutalities practised by Belgian bullies upon a defenceless people whose country they had invaded compare with the German atrocities of to-day ?

I am not attempting to defend German autocrats, but merely to make it plain that it is nothing but sheer hypocrisy for the Allies to point an accusing finger at Germany, for there is not one of them but has been guilty of deeds of brutality every whit as appalling as has been charged, not to say proved, against the German butchers. With the Belgian workers the sympathy of all Socialists must lie, but suffering is no new thing to them, any more than it is to the workers of other countries. And if their pains and travail contribute to their political enlightenment, then they will not have suffered in vain.

J. W. Pyle

Pirates (2024)

Book Review from the August 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Pirate Enlightenment, Or The Real Libertalia. By David Graeber, Penguin, 2024

The Age of Enlightenment is usually said to be the intellectual movement that occurred mainly in Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, based on knowledge learned by reason and evidence. Graeber argues that the Enlightenment did not begin in Europe and that its true origins are to be found on the island of Madagascar, in the late seventeenth century, when it was home to several thousand pirates. This was in the Golden Age of Piracy which lasted no more than fifty years, but it was also an experiment in radical democracy as the pirate settlers attempted to apply the egalitarian principles of their ships to a new society on land. Those also involved were Malagasy women, merchants, traders and escaped slaves. They were exploring ideas that were ultimately to be put into practice in Europe a century later.

This short book was first written to be a chapter of a book on ‘divine kingship’ Graeber co-authored with fellow anthropologist Marshall Sahlins. Graeber obtained a doctorate under Sahlins doing ethnographic research in Madagascar. Graeber died in 2020. This book answers the question: since they were wanted men who couldn’t go home, what happened to the pirates who wanted to escape or retire? The answer seems to be: they often settled in north-east Madagascar, a large island (one thousand miles long) to the east of Africa. Libertalia is the name given to the utopian pirate experiment, even if there was never any actual settlement that bore that name. Piracy is still practised in that part of the world.

Graeber’s treatment of piracy and Madagascar is convincing. He argues that what unifies the pirate Enlightenment of Libertalia and the later Age of Enlightenment was an intellectual movement which was conversational. In Libertalia there was an expectation of rational conversation, on an egalitarian basis, of such subjects as liberty, authority, sovereignty and much more. There is however no persuasive evidence of the pirate Enlightenment feeding into the later Enlightenment, as Graeber claims. He admits that he is being ‘intentionally provocative’ as if he knows the evidence he presents is flimsy and speculative. In this respect he is following in the buccaneering tradition of not letting the facts get in the way of a good story.

Lew Higgins

Letter: The Root of Roots (1977)

Letter to the Editors from the July 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Root of Roots

Your article under the above title, written by Harmo, caught my attention as I feel it misses the particular significance of the “roots phenomenon” in race relations in Britain today. The quotation your correspondent gave from Kautsky that “the study of the past, far from being mere dilettante antiquarianism, will become a powerful weapon in the struggles of the present . . ." is indeed apt, but he did not, it seems to me, draw an important conclusion from it. I don’t believe that most black people are unduly concerned to prove “racial purity” as is implied by your writer who correctly points to the miscegenation which has existed from time immemorial. The point is that the slave background, common to so many in the USA and the Caribbean, has left black people with a feeling of disorientation, not of belonging—in short, of “rootlessness”.

Historically therefore the story of slavery is important in leading present day peoples to struggle for real equality, but psychologically the study of one man’s own history may be equally important in helping oppressed groups not only to a better awareness of the injustices of the past and the need for social change, but also to a confident awareness of their own great cultural tradition which is only slowly but surely becoming evident particularly in studies in the African continent. Thus the study of history may not only be informative but also may have a profound psychological part to play in the struggle for equality.

D. C. Mayer

Romford

Reply:

Our article did not imply that most black people are unduly concerned to prove “racial purity”—the reference was made to Haley (the author of Roots) and militant “Afro-Americans” who do pursue this line, and who invariably do so for commercial or political reasons. You say black people have a “feeling of disorientation” and "rootlessness” and if we are, for the sake of brevity, to assume some positive meaning from such phrases, is not this “feeling” common to the Irish, Polish, Italian and other elements —including the native Indian—which go to make up the American population?

The mistake is made by some in assuming that "a feeling of disorientation” reflects a form of almost instinctive desire to get back to “roots”. As our article pointed out, this is likely to prove a most difficult exercise in itself. It also fails to take into account the effects of capitalist society which, with its lack of social plan, its requirement for the free movement of labour coupled with reversals in this policy, so-called national rivalries and shifting alliances, in itself creates insecurity among members of society as a whole.

We have always stressed the need for men and women to both study, and learn from, history. Any real study will reveal that the vast majority have a common solution to problems, including racial problems, which in capitalism are falsely made to appear as group problems to be dealt with in isolation. If you feel that there is a psychological barrier to be overcome before members of the working class can understand and work for the establishment of a society based on common ownership, it is not one erected by Socialists.

Editors.

The South African snake pit (1963)

From the June 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

Repression and bloodshed are no strangers to Africa.. Even so, what is happening now in South Africa will make a black page in the history of that unhappy continent.

South Africa lives now under a cloud of fear, in resigned acceptance of the fact that widespread violence is inevitable in the near future. Both the Government and the Africans are ready. Both have done their share of violence. The record of the government is well enough known; now an African terrorist movement has emerged, and has already carried out its first “execution.”

Behind the political dispute there is the mass of everyday crime, the gang warfare, the murders (2,610 of them in 1961—twenty times many as in Britain, which has a population three times that of South Africa) and the intimidation. This is South Africa. It is a scene savage enough to belong to a distant, primitive society.

Yet in many ways the Republic is a modern country, with strongly developing industries and considerable natural wealth. It has mines which have turned out over £16 million worth of gold in one month. It has uranium—a by-product of the gold mines. It has silver, manganese, asbestos and diamonds.

Over the ten years 1952 to 1962, South Africa more than doubled the value of her exports, from £376.2 million to £778 million—in impressive increase, even after we have allowed for currency inflation. Vital production, such as steel, has bounded upwards.

With her economic power, and with a ruling class which is possibly the most sophisticated in Africa, South Africa could become the workshop of its continent. But the policy of its government is firmly denying the Republic its chance of becoming an advanced, developed capitalist nation.

This policy is apartheid—euphemistically translated as “separate development’’—which the South African government has followed single-mindedly since the Nationalists came to power in 1948. Because apartheid is essentially a repressive policy, it needs widespread coercive laws to enforce it.

The Pass Laws, for example, forbid an African to stay outside his allotted area for more than a certain time. The Laws are designed to keep the Africans out of the towns, and confine them to the rural areas. There are frequent round ups of Africans in the towns, to ensure that the Pass Laws are not flouted. One thousand Africans a day are being arrested in this way.

South Africa has established Bantustans, or areas reserved exclusively for coloured people. Nobody goes voluntarily to a Bantustan—100,000 native families have already been forcibly moved into them and the government plan to move a total of five million families in the same way. This has meant that one-third of the Africans now have no legal right to live anywhere.

It means that eventually South Africa will be split into two nations, with the white one having 87 per cent. of the land.

The Pass Laws are not the only repressive legislation at work in South Africa. The Africans—the vast majority of the population—have no legal right to strike, nor even to negotiate through trade unions. And in case opposition to the government threatens to become too vocal, there are Acts like the recently passed Security Bill, which allows the indefinite detention of an opponent of the government and which can, of course, be used against a European as easily as against an African.

As the screw has been tightened upon the African, his desire to hit back has been intensified. The Luthuli tactic of passive resistance seems likely to be forgotten, as the violence from one side inevitably provokes further violence from the other. The immediate outlook for South Africa is not happy. 

Why does the South African government stand out against what seems the inevitable progress of its country into the ranks of the world’s capitalist powers? In South Africa there are eleven million Africans as against three million Europeans. If the country’s industry is to develop it needs a stable, contented working class to draw upon for its labour requirements. The bulk of this working class must come from the Africans.

But a stable working class is one which has the sort of political and legal rights which workers in this and other capitalist countries have. If the Africans had these rights, there would almost certainly be no compromise with the Europeans. The country would become, like Ghana, Nigeria, and so on, politically African.

To the industrialists of South Africa, this is not so fearsome a prospect. They are confident that they could do a deal with an African government and in any case they know that their future expansion depends upon the freeing of the native labour force.

It is a different matter for the landowners. Their future hangs upon them preventing the Africans asserting their numerical superiority. So they have done their best to prevent the Africans developing into a perceptible working class. They have tried to keep them out of the towns. And now, as they split the country in two, they are in fact trying to stop South Africa entering the twentieth century.

South Africa's industrialists—her capitalists—aspire to become the continent’s dominant economic power. The policy of apartheid stands in their way, while the smaller, newer states do their best to catch up and take the lead. Unless the industrialists can match their economic power with political power, their ambitions will become an empty dream.

They have a hard struggle ahead. At the moment, as the country slips ever deeper into the pit of violence, of crime and xenophobia, it seems that the landowners may win.

And there is a massive irony in this situation, which should be remembered by everyone who, for one reason or another, takes up the stand against apartheid. The very people who are administering the policy—the dour, ruthless men who are obstinately turning South Africa into a mad dictatorship—are the heirs of the men who were once the darlings of the “progressives.”

When, at the turn of the century, British capitalism was reaching out for the new-found mineral wealth of South Africa, the Boer farmers were the world’s favourite underdogs. Many people thought that they were gallant defenders of liberty against a powerful bully. What was called the “morality” of what was called “ England's last imperialist war ” was a hot political issue.

Well, the Boers made their point. Out of the early struggle of their nationalism has grown the dictatorship which oppresses South Africa today. There is nothing surprising in this. Most struggling nationalist movements pose as the champions of freedom; when they come to power, freedom is often one of the first things to be thrown out of the window.

True as this is of the Boers, it is equally so of the Africans who are now suffering under apartheid. There is no reason to assume that if they ever get power in South Africa they will be any better than some of the other African governments, who have allowed only as much political freedom as their particular brand of capitalism needs. There is no reason to assume, in fact, that the African nationalists would be any better than Verwoerd himself.

This is the irony and the bitterness of nationalism and indeed of property society. South Africa is but one corner of a world which, by its very fundamentals, can only live by denying human priorities.

Ivan.