Politics and violence
Wednesday, 25 January 2012 00:00
In a December 13, 2006 feature article on Politics and Violence, Elizabeth Frazer of Oxford University and Kimberly Hutchings of the London School of Economics compared and contrasted the political theory and philosophy of political violence as propounded by legendary Frantz Fanon and prolific author and commentator Hannah Arendt.
We have an amazing number of African politicians who subscribe to the doctrine of flagellating political opponents into submission. Campaigns are characterised by sloganeering, song and dance, as well as street and stadium chants that reflect everything on euphoria and hysterics, and absolutely nothing on policy.
Whipping up emotions and conspiring to demonise political opponents has sadly become synonymous with African politicking, and it is this primitive culture that breeds political violence.
Frantz Fanon generally views violence as a means necessary to political action, an organic force or energy that is inevitable among the oppressed. He attacks vehemently the doctrine of realism as expressed by the politics of violent domination, something so natural about imperial expansionism, especially as conceptualised by the West.
Fanon argues for the justification of violent resistance, for liberationist forms of violence. He argues that trying to imitate Western style liberal parliamentary forms of party politics cannot and will not stop political violence on the African continent, not least because it is a meaningless window dressing over an environment of economically unfree and marginalised peoples.
Fanon does not see political violence as a discreet instrument to be used by unscrupulous politicians for individual or collective good. But the question many thinkers keep asking is whether or not violence is a necessary aspect of politics or is in itself destructive to the idea of politics.
Hannah Arendt argues that violence is unpredictable, and as such end-reasoning in favour of violence is anti-political. According to her it is a profound error to naturalise violence or to describe it as an "organic force or energy." What Frantz Fanon argues for is revolutionary violence - the inevitable uprising of oppressed people which comes as people reach a point where they cannot take repression any longer. This is what largely brought down colonial empires across the world, especially in places like Angola, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Namibia and South Africa.
There is what this writer will call repressive violence, or violence targeted at silencing the voice of the majority or the weak, something colonialists tried in vain when they jailed, persecuted and killed freedom fighters across the world. Repressive violence has been used by post-colonial dictatorships like the British-sponsored Idi Amin of Uganda, the US-backed Joseph Mobutu of Congo and many of the ruthless US-backed Latin American dictatorships; like those of leaders like Somoza or Pinochet.
Then there is reactive violence, or retaliatory violence, something Zimbabwean senator Obert Gutu says is the case with political violence attributable to his party, the MDC-T. The revolutionary perspective is based on the political theory and philosophy that says politics and violence are inextricably intertwined. When Abel Muzorewa and his like-minded advocated for a violence-free road to freedom after Ian Smith's 1965 Unilateral Declaration of Independence, the majority of Zimbabweans were of the revolutionary conviction that an independent Zimbabwe was only going to come via the barrel of the gun; and that way it came.
The neo-liberal perspective of democracy is based on the political theory and philosophy that advocates in concept and theory that politics must by definition be antithetical to violence. This is the perspective that made the MDC-T believe that they could march to Zimbabwe's State House to do an unchallenged "final push" on President Mugabe, with all security institutions watching admiringly at these "peaceful protesters," as the Western funders of the MDC-T called them then, just like they said about the armed rebels that rose against Gaddafi in Libya. But violence begets violence.
The idea that politics and violence are intertwined assumes that power is a tool to dominate. Imperialists, tyrants and dictators all work from the premise that power is about domination and control, be that domination territorial or people-targeted.
Elizabeth Frazer and Kimberly Hutchings looked at a few theories on political violence, and we may want to pursue some of these in the context of this piece. There is the Machiavellian argument that says a successful prince must be an admirer of the use of violence, or "willing to use violence judiciously".
So it makes sense for a nuclear-armed US to preach of its intentions to violently stop Iran from pursuing nuclear programs. In support of this theory is Thomas Hobbes who argues that the power of a dominating body only succeeds if it is centred on the sword. Marx Weber concurs when he asserts that political action is the domination of a territory by means of violence. These thinkers lived during the times of the politics of conquest, and not much has changed ever since.
Political actors like NATO, the UN, nation states, or so-called world leaders;all openly share noble goals of justice, prosperity, freedom and peace; values mutually shared with economic and religious actors. The pursuit of these goals becomes so distinct for political actors because they are able to legitimise and monopolise the use of force. The West does it religiously in pursuit of imperialist goals, dictators do it to retain power, and super powers do it to trash on weaker but resourced nations.
When Gaddafi decided to use force against the Western-backed Benghazi rebels, his argument was that Libya had every right to thwart armed rebellion; itself an expression of political violence, and his legitimate expectation was that the UN and other nation states would condemn armed rebellion against his internationally recognised government. It was his intended use of force that was vehemently condemned by Western countries, legitimising their own stronger intention to use more lethal force than Gaddafi could ever be capable of doing.
So in the name of saving armed rebels (or innocent unarmed civilians, as Western media called them); France moved a motion for what it called "a no fly zone" against Libya. Nigeria and South Africa voted for this resolution alongside eight other members of the United Nations Security Council, and that way Resolution 1973 was passed.
So Gaddafi was stopped from cracking down on rebels that were advancing to topple him, and the West joined the rag-tag rebels by providing aerial cover all the way from Benghazi to Sirte, via Tripoli.
Instead of Gaddafi's aeroplanes spraying bombs over Benghazi we saw NATO's high-tech warplanes and US drones devastatingly destroying just about every town and city in Libya, mercilessly killing 50 000 people in the process. Everything bombed was simply labelled a "legitimate target," including babies.
Many human rights activists view political violence from the viewpoint of the political dominator who routinely oppresses weaker peoples. For these and most of the leftists, politics must be viewed from the viewpoint of the oppressed. Of course this viewpoint leads to revolutionary violence - a resolve to resist and defeat oppression.
To keep in line with the revolutionary dimension, the MDC-T has play-acted and exaggerated its position of a victim to alleged Zanu-PF brutality and violence. This position has been well-supported by Western media and it is the same position being touted in the run up to the 2012 election. It is important for the MDC-T to play the victim so that their own violence can be viewed as revolutionary, not the imperialist reactionary project it really is.
Revolutionary violence is what Karl Marx predicted when he said the working class would eventually overthrow the elite capitalist repressive state. There has to be a distinction between violence of reactionaries and that of revolutionaries, just like there is a distinction between violence of the state, of government, of political parties, of trade unions and that of the proletariat.
Fanon dwelt a lot on progressive violence for freedom (revolutionary violence), and he attacked repressive violence for domination, especially by imperialist powers. When you have a conflict between a liberation movement like Zanu-PF and a neo-liberal puppet political party like the MDC-T, the question to ask is whether you are talking about violence for freedom or violence for domination. Is Zanu-PF determined to protect the hard-won freedom of Zimbabweans, or the party is simply trying to dominate over its political opponents?
Is the MDC-T a victim of violence for domination or they are a legitimate target in the fight for total independence and freedom of the country? In its own undisputed acts of political violence, is the MDC-T engaging in violence for freedom, or simply doing the bidding of Western imperial dominators that are after Zimbabwe's natural resources?
Morgan Tsvangirai is viewed from a Weberian viewpoint of a "tragic figure" who is courageous enough to take on the violence of politics, and also courageous enough to face the possible fatal consequences of its effects.
This is the image portrayed in his book "At the Deep End," written on his behalf by his political handlers. The tragedy in Tsvangirai is less in what his political opponents may want to do to him, and more in his willingness to sacrifice the sovereignty of his own country at the altar of the politics of puppetry, the altar of evil lucre of treachery.
Perhaps John Locke was right when he said political power by its very nature is "the power of life and death."
The ignominious brutality of imperialist aggression in the Middle East can only be understood when one imagines the US losing its global political power to smaller countries with globally strategic resources like oil. It may be the same context and view for individual politicians and political parties that treat elections as matters of life and death.
Constitutions are made on the assumption that humans are rational in their pursuit of power, but that is not always the case; otherwise Morgan Tsvangirai could have left the leadership of the MDC in 2009, when his term constitutionally expired, and Lovemore Madhuku would be doing other things right now, instead of overstaying his leadership at the National Constitutional Assembly.
Political violence occurs at many levels. It is difficult to successfully uphold the theory of politics without violence, much as it would desirable. From a rule of law perspective, violence should be held only in reserve for purposes of legitimate punishment and for defence.
But even in this context it is still contentious to distinguish between justifiable and unjustifiable violence, legitimate and illegitimate violence, or good and bad forms and uses of violence or force.
The world advocated for by Hannah Arendt is the world of politics free of violence and this is what all human rights defenders would want to stand for. But the very countries calling themselves "civilised" are the Mafia dons who have killed millions and millions of defenceless civilians in weaker countries like Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Nicaragua, Grenada, Chile, Vietnam, to name just but a few.
It is this writer's wish to remind every reader that violence, whether bad or good, is destructive and tragic. It is in this context that even an evil as bad as Western meddling in the internal affairs of Zimbabwe is not, and cannot be good enough a reason for political actors to engage in acts of violence. The best is to make people aware of the evil before them so they can reject it through the ballot box. When alerted in good faith, people will take note.
Zimbabwe we are one and together we will overcome. It is homeland or death!
l Reason Wafawarova is a political writer based in SYDNEY, Australia.
Labels: FRANTZ FANON, POLITICAL VIOLENCE, REASON WAFAWAROVA
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Lessons from Frantz Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth: 50 years on...
‘History teaches us clearly that the battle against colonialism does not run straight away along the lines of nationalism’ these are the prophetic words which open the famous chapter on ‘Pitfalls of National Consciousness’ in Fanon’s classic book The Wretched of the Earth.
The book became a treatise for revolutionary consciousness and remains one of the most outstanding critiques of both the colonial and neo-colonial edifice that shaped African society since the 20th Century. Fanon analyses the role of class, race, national culture and violence in the struggle for national liberation.
The year 2011 marks the 50th Anniversary of the book’s publication. The history of the ANC is intertwined with both anti-colonial and post-colonial struggles, Fanon touches on matters ranging from the role of the middle classes within developing countries (or the comprador bourgeoisie), the importance of national culture, questions of violence, the role of native intellectuals and more importantly how issues such as Xenophobia manifest themselves throughout the periods of colonization and post-colonization.
Fanon cautions against racial essentialism and bigotry by referring to the wider community of oppressed people and not exclusively to black society, an issue the ANC emphasizes by pursuing the goal of a non-racial society. The post-independence moment in Africa has brought with it numerous contradictions and challenges many of which centre around the structure of economic systems and the challenges of uneven development.
The triumph of the liberation movements of the 1950s and 1960s signified the beginning of a new dawn for Africa. However, the postcolonial states still had to battle the hegemony of the bourgeois of the former colonial countries. The consolidation of the capitalist elite combined with the active participation of the ‘national bourgeois’ perpetuated this historically parasitic relationship.
In a remark that remains strikingly relevant even today Fanon says:
“The young national bourgeoisie is often more suspicious of the regime that it has set up than are the foreign companies. The national bourgeoisie refuse to invest in its own country and behaves towards the state that protects and nurtures it with, it must be remarked, astonishing ingratitude” (Wretched of the Earth; 139).
This should sound very relevant to ANC cadres particularly as both our industrial and macro-economic policies should be geared towards growing our economy in South Africa while also increasing development.
In that process, do we still need to look at the question of the growth of a local bourgeoisie that is not inherently parasitic in its relations with the state? Does our current policies promote the growth of such a localized bourgeoisie? In interfacing with international Capital, is there an explicit goal of ‘localizing’ capital in order to ensure future sustainability and relative sovereignty of our society?
If we are considering all these issues the next (and logical) question is how do such discussions inform the broader discussion of building a National Democratic society in South Africa?
Political parties in Africa have long been criticized for losing ‘touch’ with the masses or developing a ‘distance’ from the masses. Commentators often overlook it that Fanon explicitly views the orientation of political parties as essentially Western, resulting in the contemptuous attitude towards the masses.
In his own words he says; “In order to arrive at this conception of the party, we must above all rid ourselves of the very Western, very bourgeois, and therefore very contemptuous attitude that the masses are incapable of governing themselves. In fact, experience proves that the masses understand perfectly the most complicated problems”.
ANC branches are a clear expression of this direct contact with the masses not just for procedural reasons but also as an important part of participatory democracy. This is why the ANC teaching that branches are ‘the basic unit of the organization’ is so important.
The African Renaissance would never be a possibility if the masses are not conscious architects of their own destiny through their own purposeful and conscious actions. There have been protracted discussions amongst scholars about the ‘consciousness’ of the masses and the need for revolutionary parties to insert political ideology to their actions.
This discourse can be traced as far back as the writings of Vladimir Lenin in 1922 on the ‘Role of Trade Unions: Under the New Economic Policy in Russia’ and Rosa Luxembourg’s 1906 piece on ‘Mass Strike, a Historical and not an artificial product’ in which she seeks to clarify the importance of the diversity of the working class.
Interestingly Fanon departs from the traditional Marxist focus on the industrial proletariat as the class that is sufficiently conscientised to lead the revolution. Instead Fanon maintains that it is the working class outside of industrial production and outside of the cities that has sufficient independence to successfully lead the revolution!!
Recent developments in North Africa are a stark reminder that popular resistance and mass mobilization still remain relevant tools of confronting pervasive undemocratic and authoritarian regimes many of whom have been buttressed by the active support of Western powers. What is largely unsaid but can and should be read between the lines is that the popular uprisings in North Africa cannot be narrowly defined along the dictum of ‘left’ and ‘right’ wing politics.
A wider confluence of social and class forces has emerged to oppose the basic character of undemocratic regimes in that region. However, it is the outcomes of such popular struggles that requires more attention because even such revolutions can reproduce reactionary social phenomenon if not guided by a progressive political ethos embedded within values of social solidarity and African unity. This is what brings me to another important aspect of Fanon’s writing, the issue of ‘National Culture’.
Fanon also concerned himself with the central role of national culture and how it contributes to the struggle for freedom. Fanon refers to three phases in the development of a national culture. He says in the first phase: the native intellectual gives proof that he has assimilated the culture of the occupying power.
This phase Fanon refers to as ‘unqualified assimilation’; in the second phase the native is disturbed and decides to remember what he is. Past happenings of the bygone days of his childhood will be brought up out of the depths of his memory; and in the third phase that Fanon calls ‘the fighting phase’ the native turns himself into the awakener of his people (pg: 178-179). It is within this discussion of ‘National Culture’ that Fanon reminds us that the role of the intellectual is to use the past in order to open the future as a basis of hope.
A consistent thread in The Wretched of the Earth is a critical debate about neo-colonialism a process which Colin Leys defines as ‘essentially a system of domination of the mass of the population of a country by foreign capital, by means other than direct colonial rule. By its nature such dominance requires the development of domestic class interests which are allied to those of foreign capital, and which uphold their joint interests in economic policy and enforce their dominance politically’.
Within the neo-colonialism process the middle classes of the homeland become the intermediaries between the national bourgeois and the bourgeois of the ‘mother’ country. Students of dependency theory would realize that Fanon’s analysis is seminal in the understanding of post colonialism and the notion of dependency between the ‘core’ and the ‘peripheral’ countries.
The revolutionary consciousness encouraged by Fanon in Wretched of the Earth should be a reminder to activists across the political spectrum that the goal of national liberation was to strive for true freedom of the masses of our people and their emancipation from social bondage. The period of the publication of the Wretched of the Earth was followed by publications of other books that built on Fanon’s arguments throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s such as ‘How Europe Underdeveloped Africa’ by Walter Rodney and ‘The West and the Rest of Us: white predators, Black slavers, and the African elite’ by Chinweizu.
The real question that should be posed by ANC cadres after reading such literatures is: how do we characterize anti-imperialist struggles in the present conjuncture of globalisation and integration of economic systems? And what meaning do we attach to the notion of economic freedom in its wider sense?
By answering such questions we may be able to go beyond Fanon, Rodney, Chinweizu and others and posit new questions for anti-imperialist struggles in the 21st century. It is my hope that in the year of the 50th Anniversary of this important work we may look to Wretched of the Earth to heed the warnings made by Fanon and confront all forms of oppression wherever they manifest themselves.
>>Siphelo Ngcwangu is the interim convenor of the ANC Ward Task Team in Ward 70 Centurion
Labels: FRANTZ FANON, LIBERATION, POVERTY
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Unravelling Thabo Mbeki
Fit to Govern: The Native Intelligence of Thabo Mbeki; by Ronald Suresh Roberts, STE Publishers, Johannesburg, 2007, 296 pages.
ISBN: 978-1-919855-89-9 (hardback)
FOR some, former South African president Thabo Mbeki was a blundering man who loved his whisky and would not mind spending close to a week holed up in the 17th floor of a five-star Harare hotel where negotiations that gave life to Zimbabwe’s current inclusive Government were held.
For some in the know, the former top South African head of state had a very tight schedule and had millions of expectant Zimbabweans clawing for him to breathe life into the seemingly endless dialogue.
However, for Ronald Suresh Roberts, with his vast knowledge of history, politics, literature and debates, these may not have been true depictions of the perspective of the former African National Congress supremo on a plethora of issues ranging from apartheid, neo-colonialism, HIV/ and Aids and Zimbabwe.
Roberts, in Fit to Govern: The Native Intelligence of Thabo Mbeki, uses his access to the former president to come up with an accurate sketch of the man who many thought was only there in the South African government as payment for his father’s contribution towards the final repulsion of apartheid as a political system in that country.
Fit To Govern: The Native Intelligence of Thabo Mbeki comprises 11 aptly titled chapters and three annexures. It is dedicated to Eric Eustace Williams, the first prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago and a historian of note, especially on the subject of the slave trade.
While Williams was leading his people in their fight against British domination, one Millins, who visited Trinidad and Tobago in 1946, had this to say about apartheid in South Africa:
"I have pain over the pro-Nazism of our present government, but I will not be dominated by a continent of cruel, diseased savages." (p292) Apartheid and slavery remain some of the worst violations of human rights that man has inflicted on fellow humanity.
The book has been described as an illuminating examination of South Africa’s second democratic leader Mbeki and provides unprecedented access to the man and his ideas. The Financial Mail finds it " an intriguing read".
However, the author’s own version is that: "Instead of soul-searching, enigma-breaking or ‘biography’, call this book a displacement of certain fictions --- an engagement with many of the myths and insidious discourses that have piled themselves high around Mbeki."
The book, therefore, seeks parade to Mbeki’s ideas.
In the same way that Williams questions British historians who suggest that the abolition of the slave trade was a result of British moral philanthropism by citing falling profits as an important factor, Roberts also sees the fall of apartheid not as a result of white liberalism.
Many observers have condemned Mbeki for his perceived attitude towards HIV and Aids. After reading through Roberts’ book one emerges with a better understanding of Mbeki’s stance on the pandemic. The thrust of his widely criticised address in the South African parliament gets apparently corrected when one realises that Mbeki was basically saying Western mitigation efforts against HIV and Aids must not be forced onto Africa.
". . . a simple superimposition of Western experience on African reality would be absurd and illogical".
Fit to Govern: The Native Intelligence of Thabo Mbeki seeks to right the misconceptions held on Mbeki and the South African’s perspective towards the Aids pandemic.
Just as Mbeki writes to world leaders on April 3, 2000, "I am convinced that our urgent task is to respond to the specific threat that faces us as Africans. We will not eschew this obligation in favour of the comfort of the recitation of a catechism that may very well be a correct response to the specific manifestation of Aids in the West."
In the same letter, Mbeki stresses that the South African leadership would not "condemn its own people to death by giving up the search for specific and targeted responses to the specifically African incidence of HIV and Aids".
Therefore, the Mbeki portrayed in Roberts’ book is one who has been able to see the distinction between the incidence and impact of HIV and Aids on Western communities, on the one hand, and African societies, on the other.
Mbeki’s logic is also highlighted in the way he deals with the general problem of neo-colonialism in Africa. Roberts’ standpoint seems to have been informed by a number of other scholars before him and this makes the book even richer in its probing of the former leader of Africa’s largest economy.
The writer quotes George Orwell in challenging liberal ideology, which at some point views the "liberation movement sweeping through Africa as the ominous development of pan-African imperialism. Faced with the real threat to white domination and vested interests, the ‘true liberal turns out to be a supporter of perhaps the most illiberal regime in the world". (p103)
True, white liberals in South Africa, viewed against the background of apartheid, could not sanitise themselves unless they defined their role as "organic representatives of British colonialism".
Premised on Frantz Fanon’s reference to "the violence with which the supremacy of white values is affirmed and the aggressiveness which has permeated the victory of these values over the ways of life and of thought of the native" (p107), Roberts’ understanding of Mbeki cannot be questioned.
The former ANC leader is an individual who has personally wrestled European imperial tactics which institutionalised racial discrimination and, thus, gave apartheid its lifeblood.
The 1994 ascendancy of Nelson Mandela to the helm of South Africa’s political set-up signalled the end of apartheid as a system and, therefore, the accompanying policy of reconciliation was supposed to propel the country forward as a multi-racial nation.
It is this quandary that political leaders like Mbeki seek to challenge as representatives of the majority of the people and are, therefore, presumably democratic. The concept of a nation, particularly one that can still see racial discrimination in its midst, is also probed in Roberts’ account. Hermann Giliomee, an Afrikaner separatist historian’s definition of nation as quoted by the author is "a group that is believed to be a community of people sharing the same descent or blood".
South Africa, on the ground, is not like that and hence the heterogeneous nature of the population should be understood by all those with a keen interest in the politics of the southern African state.
Obviously, such notions are diametrically opposed to the thrust towards unity that the political leaders of the "Rainbow Nation" seek to foster. Inherent in Giliomee’s definition is the fact that South Africans are not one people. Giliomee is an example of those who thought South Africa would slide into racial and ethnic disarray at the end of apartheid.
Roberts quotes Mbeki’s reference to the perceived "black mayhem" that was on the minds of reactionary forces. Transforming South African society was one of Mbeki’s thrusts.
Last but not least, Mbeki, the champion of quiet diplomacy on Zimbabwe, is portrayed as a master craftsperson whose role in creating the inclusive Government in Zimbabwe is the envy of many.
Somehow, by reading through Roberts’ book, one would be re-experiencing the protracted and arduous journey through the inter-party dialogue that led to the signing of the inter-party accord called the Global Political Agreement in Zimbabwe.
Fit to Govern: The Native Intelligence of Thabo Mbeki thus remains a must-have for any respectable bookshelf.
l Feedback: edmore.zvinonzwa **** zimpapers.co.zw
Labels: BOOKS, FRANTZ FANON, HIV/AIDS, NEOCOLONIALISM, THABO MBEKI
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