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Abstract
In many African states, decolonisation brought neither prosperity nor meaningful independence. The discontent with weak political and economic sovereignty led African revolutionaries to seek support from Asia, a proximity that continues to endure long after 1989. This paper focuses on decades of diverse forms of political interaction – ideational inspiration, policy emulation, party-to-party cooperation – between several Asian states, such as China, Korea and Viet Nam, and African (neo)liberation movements turned governments, from Eritrea and Ethiopia to Mozambique and Tanzania. Socialist imaginaries, institutions and, above all, technologies of rule have been central in these processes and far more prominent – substantively and rhetorically – than any alternative ideology: the development of the vanguard Party, operated through democratic centralism; the popular defence force, an army loyal to the Party; and state capitalism to control the economy’s commanding heights. These enduring ties between African and Asian comrade state-builders, and the quest for heterodox political modernities they represent, have been largely overlooked, especially in the post-Cold War period. They not only shed light on alternative political geographies and transnational histories of Africa and Asia, but also alert us to present-day ideological projects that differ starkly from Western liberal hegemony and its emphasis on Washington Consensus-style economics and representational democracy.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 Cooper, “What Is the Concept of Globalization Good for?”
2 Darwin, After Tamerlane.
3 Metcalf, Imperial Connections; Ho, Graves of Tarim.
4 Emerson, From Empire to Nation.
5 Chatterjee, Nation and Its Fragments; Duara, Decolonization: Perspectives from Now and Then, 1–18; Imlay, “International Socialism and Decolonization during the 1950s.”
6 Acharya, “Studying the Bandung Conference.”
7 Burton, “Sodalities of Bandung,” 351–61.
8 Cooper, “Possibility and Constraint”; Bose, Social Democracy in Practice; Lee, Making a World After Empire.
9 Seng and Acharya, Bandung Revisited; Lewis and Stolte, “Other Bandungs.”
10 Sebestyen, Lenin, the Man, the Dictator, 2.
11 Halper, Beijing Consensus; Fourie, “China’s Example for Meles’ Ethiopia.”
12 Campbell, “Institutional Analysis and the Role of Ideas.”
13 Jones, de Oliveira, Verhoeven, Africa’s Illiberal State-Builders.
14 Young, African Colonial State in Comparative Perspective.
15 Cooper, Africa since 1940.
16 de Oliveira and Verhoeven, “Taming Intervention: Sovereignty.”
17 Sharawy, Political and Social Thought in Africa.
18 Byrne, “Our Own Special Brand of Socialism”; FLN stands for ‘Front de Libération Nationale.’
19 Ndlovu-Gatsheni, “Pan-Africanism and the International System,” 21–9.
20 Mazrui, Africa’s International Relations, 114–29; Scott, Conscripts of Modernity.
21 Westad, Global Cold War, 97.
22 McCann, “Where was the Afro in Afro–Asian Solidarity?”
23 Belgrade Declaration of Non-Aligned Countries, September 5, 1961, http://www.namegypt.org/Relevant%20Documents/01st%20Summit%20of%20the%20Non-Aligned%20Movement%20-%20Final%20Document%20(Belgrade_Declaration).pdf
24 Central Intelligence Agency, “Third Afro–Asian People’s Solidarity Conference.”
25 Westad, Global Cold War, 108.
26 Sharawy, “Presence of African Liberation Movements.”
27 Nkrumah, Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism.
28 Nzongola-Ntalaja, Congo from Leopold to Kabila, 84.
29 Bjerk, Julius Nyerere.
30 For full text, see https://www.marxists.org/subject/africa/nyerere/1967/arusha-declaration.htm, accessed 8 October 2019.
31 Barrington King, DAR to DOS, May 22, 1961, RG59, Box 2027, 778.00/5-61, NARA. See Bjerk, Building a Peaceful Nation, 165, for more context.
32 Mazrui, Political Values and the Educated Class in Africa, 170–83.
33 Bienen, Tanzania: Party Transformation and Economic Development, 374–80.
34 Lupogo, “Tanzania.”
35 Bailey, “Tanzania and China.”
36 Johnson, Peasant Nationalism and Communist Power.
37 Pachter, “Contra-Coup.”
38 Zedong, “Problems of War and Strategy,” 224.
39 McGregor, The Party: The Secret World.
40 Bjerk, Building a Peaceful Nation.
41 Brennan, “Short History of Political Opposition.”
42 Yu, China and Tanzania.
43 Cabral, “On the African Revolution,” 116.
44 Byrne, Mecca of Revolution, 66.
45 Taylor, China and Africa.
46 Mwakikagile, Nyerere and Africa, 494.
47 Roessler and Verhoeven, Why Comrades Go to War.
48 Ibid.
49 Fisher, East Africa after Liberation.
50 Davies, “Missing Revolutionary War”; Zhang, Mao's Military Romanticism.
51 Wade, Governing the Market.
52 Woo-Cumings, “Introduction: Chalmers Johnson and the Politics”; Chua, “State-Owned Enterprises, State Capitalism.”
53 Amsden, Rise of the Rest.
54 Akamatsu, “Historical Pattern of Economic Growth.”
55 Kojima, “‘Flying Geese’ Model of Asian Economic Development”; Lin, “From Flying Geese to Leading Dragons.”
56 Krugman, “Myth of Asia’s Miracle.”
57 Mkandawire and Soludo, African Voices on Structural Adjustment; IMF stands for ‘International Monetary Fund.’
58 Clapham, “Ethiopian Developmental State”; Hagmann and Reyntjens, Aid and Authoritarianism in Africa.
59 De Oliveira, “Illiberal Peacebuilding in Angola.”
60 Zenawi, “African Development,” 12.
61 Gray, “Industrial Policy and the Political Settlement in Tanzania”; Behuria, “Centralising Rents and Dispersing Power.”
62 De Waal, “Theory and Practice of Meles Zenawi.”
63 Cheru, “Emerging Southern Powers and New Forms.”
64 Interview in Addis Ababa, September 2015.
65 Interviews with the Korean Ambassador to Ethiopia, Kim Moon-Hwan, March 2016, and with numerous senior Ethiopian officials, 2014–2017.
66 Chua, Liberalism Disavowed.
67 Welde Giorgis, Eritrea at a Crossroads, 191–2.
68 Ottaway, Africa’s New Leaders, 57.
69 “Rwanda – Paul Kagamé : ‘Nul ne peut nous dicter notre conduite,’” Jeune Afrique, April 7, 2015, http://www.jeuneafrique.com/228824/politique/rwanda-paul-kagam-nul-ne-peut-nous-dicter-notre-conduite/
70 Goodfellow, “Rwanda's Political Settlement and the Urban Transition.”
71 Goodfellow, “Taxing Property in a Neo-Developmental State.”
72 Sun, “Political Party Training.”
73 Interview in Oxford with Ambassador Shu Zhan (former chief of mission in Eritrea and Rwanda), March 2014.
74 Hodges, Angola; Demissie, “Situated Neoliberalism and Urban Crisis”; Wiegratz, “Fake Capitalism?”
75 Freeden, Ideologies and Political Theory.
76 Pow, “License to Travel.”
77 Studwell, How Asia Works.
78 Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies, 336.
79 Taylor, “Governance in Africa and Sino–African Relations.”
80 Fourie, “Intersection of East Asian and African Modernities.”
81 Fourie, “Model Students.”
82 Zenawi, “African Development,” 9.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Harry Verhoeven
Harry Verhoeven is the Convenor of the Oxford University China–Africa Network. He is the author of Water, Civilisation and Power in Sudan: The Political Economy of Military Islamist State Building (Cambridge University Press) and Why Comrades Go To War: Liberation Politics and the Outbreak of Africa’s Deadliest Conflict (with Prof. Philip Roessler, Hurst/Oxford University Press). He is also the editor of Environmental Politics in the Middle East: Local Struggles, Global Connections (Hurst/Oxford University Press).