© 2012 Peter Dwyer and Leo Zeilig
Published in 2012 by Haymarket Books
P.O. Box 180165 Chicago, IL 60618
773-583-7884
www.haymarketbooks.org
ISBN: 978-1-60846-120-2
Cover design by Amy Balkan
Cover photo of a 10,000-strong march for political, economic, and environmental justice outside the 2002 UN World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa. ©Saurabh Das. Associated Press photo.
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Published with the generous support of Lannan Foundation and the Wallace Global Fund.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
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Acknowledgments
“Social movements of the world, let us advance towards a global unity to shatter the capitalist system!”
—Final Declaration of the Social Movements Assembly
World Social Forum, February 10, 2011, Dakar, Senegal
This book is a reflection of our interest in the resistance to oppression and exploitation by the peoples of Africa. We have been writing, working, living, and visiting in parts of Africa for twenty years and we draw many lessons and much inspiration from its extraordinary history of struggle. A fundamental premise of this book is a recognition that social change is about more than just “great leaders”; change is often driven “from below” by those who are excluded from the pages of academic and historical books. This book is a story about the puzzled, disillusioned, well-organized, and angry men and women who continue the struggle to transform their lives and societies for the better.
The roots of this book go back to our attendance at two workshops in Johannesburg. The first was conducted by the Southern Africa Centre for Economic Justice and the other by the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU). It struck us that among a group of progressive academics, researchers, activists, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) from Southern Africa, little was collectively known about the condition and political role of progressive civil society organizations (CSOs) in the region. At the two-day planning workshop on political education, the fifteen or so participants admitted they knew little about the state of civil society in Africa. There was a practical gap in knowledge within Africa and between movements in the global south and north. There was also a tendency to uncritically romanticize nationalist movements, while in the north and at various social forums there was much talk of one united anticapitalist movement. We have sought to integrate an analysis of the complexities of the continent’s recent history with an understanding of really existing movements.
We owe an enduring debt to Miles Larmer for undertaking much of this research with us. The book would never have been completed were it not for his involvement, his research, and the lengthy discussions (and comradely disagreements) we had with him. If he did not agree with the conclusions the book reached, this only serves to illustrate what complex and important work this is.
We must also thank Anthony Arnove and Julie Fain at Haymarket Books, who have encouraged and supported us with the book from the start. David Whitehouse has been central to the painful process of completing the book. He read and edited various drafts very closely and provided invaluable advice and criticism. Sarah Grey deserves thanks as well for her painstaking work on the completed manuscript. Thanks to Emily Albarillo for proofreading.
The book also, in part, reflects an ongoing working relationship with David Seddon, who has so often shared with us his passion and deep understanding of the issues that have long preoccupied us. We have also benefited from the long-standing solidarity and comradeship of Femi Aborisade, Tafadzwa Choto, and Andy Wynne. We have both been inspired and influenced for years by Alex Callinicos and Colin Barker; their influence on us can be found in these pages. Colin’s own research on social movements, which manages to be both highly original and grounded in Marx’s writing and method, has helped shape many ideas in this book.
Peter Dwyer, Oxford
Leo Zeilig, London
April 2012
Chapter 1
Introduction
This book is about the role of social movements in contemporary Africa. Its core argument is that social movements—popular movements of the working class, the poor, and other oppressed and marginalized sections of African society—have played a central role in shaping Africa’s contemporary history.1 In the twentieth century, social movements were central to challenging the material exploitations of Western imperialism and bringing an end to formal European control of the continent. Similarly, they resisted dictatorial and military rule in postcolonial Africa, and in the late 1980s and early 1990s paved the way for the return of democracy to much of the continent. In the last two decades, social movements have critiqued and resisted the imposition of economic liberalization across the continent by the international financial institutions and their allies among African rulers. Despite this extraordinary record, African social movements have not been the subject of systematic analysis. While there has been a considerable proliferation of modern history books on Africa, none focus on popular struggles.2 Although many individual case studies of particular movements have been carried out, the wider impact of those movements has often been neglected, with popular movements consigned to condescending footnotes in broader imposed narratives of the transfer of state power and the triumph of liberal democracy. It is the aim of this study to place social movements at the center of the analysis of postcolonial African political change, capturing both their exciting diversity and their capacity to unite as temporary “coalitions of the discontent” in periods of rapid social change. In such circumstances, they have the potential to play a leading role in progressive political and social change, as they did during the struggle for independence in the 1950s and early 1960s and again in the pro-democracy movements of the early 1990s.
The book is thus designed as a corrective to the tendency to see Africa’s postcolonial half-century as one dominated by political repression, economic decline, and ethnic conflict. Africans have constantly struggled in difficult circumstances to improve their lot, using collective forms of action to challenge unjust and unaccountable systems of political and economic power. This book documents many of those struggles during the post-1945 period in general, and those that