Social movement struggles in Africa

This special issue of the Review of African Political Economy (ROAPE) arose from a conference held in Paris in January 2010, organised by three of the issue's co-editors: Richard Banégas, Marie-Emmanuelle Pommerolle and Johanna Siméant. The conference on ‘Struggles in Africa’ (Lutter dans les Afriques) examined the nature of popular struggles in Africa's present and recent history, both through individual case studies and more comparative analysis of popular and social movements and their relationship to the wider context of political, economic and social change on the continent. As well as offering new insights into issues which are clearly of concern to the ROAPE readership, much of the research focused on countries, primarily in francophone Africa, that receive limited coverage in the journal. For these reasons, this special issue brings much of this rich body of empirical research and analysis of African struggles and movements to the attention of an English-speaking audience for this first time, demonstrating the diversity and significant impact of such struggles within a continent whose peoples are stereotypically depicted as relatively passive, compliant and even complicit in their own suffering and exploitation. The movements under study have developed original analyses of the changing context in which they operate, utilised new (as well as old) methods of activism and organisation, and articulated original perspectives on the problems faced by them, their constituents, their countries and their continent.

As well as the intrinsic value of these studies, the authors and editors of this special issue also present an original perspective on African political economy, distinct in some respects from ROAPE's established approach. The emphasis is on ‘bottom-up’ analyses, reflecting and representing the voices of Africans engaged in day-to-day struggles that arise from structural manifestations of political and economic inequality and exploitation that are usually analysed in the journal in a larger-scale, theoretical or conceptually oriented way. In doing so, the editors seek to explore instructive encounters and potential disjuncture between the ways in which radical intellectual analysts on the one hand, and social movement activists on the other, understand and seek to address the particular (and evidently problematic) integration of Africa and its peoples into the global political system and its capitalist economy. This introduction, together with the article by Marie-Emmanuelle Pommerolle which immediately follows it, draws out some of these wider themes in ways which, it is hoped, will contextualise the articles that focus more on case studies.

Social movement approaches to African society

The social movements research presented at the Paris conference and within this issue utilises a range of intellectual approaches – political economy, but also Thompsonian ‘history from below’, more voluntarist interpretations of Marxism, subaltern studies, post-colonialism and others – to analyse the role played by popular movements of various kinds in seeking to bring about progressive political and social change. The emphasis is given to African agency in challenging, complex and changing circumstances; underlying structural political and economic forces provide a vital materialist context and restraint to the activities of the movements analysed, but do not provide an easily readable roadmap to the unpredictable trajectories followed by social movements. The overt or official positions and composition of such movements may not be accurate guides to their empirical position in society or their relationship to wider social forces. Social movements are not, it is suggested, best understood as authentic and unproblematic movements of the people, simply counterposed to powerful and exploitative forces in society. They are rather an expression of the contradictions and hierarchies of the society in which they operate, whose debates and conflicts express inequalities of resources, influence and education and differences of class, gender and ethnicity, amongst others. This does not make them ‘inauthentic’ representatives of the poor or exploited; rather, it makes them venues or spaces in which political difference is articulated in societies characterised by inequality, exploitation and social conflict. For these reasons, social movements are best studied (as they are in the articles in this issue) in situ and in depth, utilising the techniques of social anthropology alongside those of political science.

Understanding African political struggles via a social movement analysis inevitably raises a significant number of intellectual and methodological challenges. The strengths of the social movements framework are, it can be argued, precisely what potentially limits its explanatory capacity. First, there is no agreed approach as to what a ‘social movement’ consists of, and none is offered here. Non-governmental organisations (NGOs), civil society organisations, self-defined social movements, strikes and riots, the mob and the crowd – all have elements of social movement praxis and all may be considered, together with their engagement with political parties, international agencies and other societal agents, in critical analyses of the role of popular social forces in African societies. Social movements manifest themselves in overt institutional and organisational forms, for example as civil society organisations, church or other religious groups and trade unions, but can also take more amorphous and temporary forms, for example protest movements which coalesce briefly around a particular issue or initiative before dissolving into wider society – and they may of course involve both such tendencies. Papers presented to the ‘Struggles in Africa’ conference analysed not only more formal organised movements, but also religious movements and even armed movements in countries such as Sierra Leone and Côte d'Ivoire (Boas and Dunn 2010), which utilise and articulate social-movement components.

The diverse nature of social movement organisation and activity may provide a particularly useful basis for exploring the particularities of the relationship between local movements and national politics (without ignoring the vital importance of the international order and Africa's specific and subordinate integration into it). However, this very diversity makes it difficult to generalise in a straightforward manner about the particular role played by social movements in representing their constituencies, effectively articulating discontents and bringing about political change. Thus, the challenge of this approach is twofold: to existing interpretations of political power in Africa, and to our own normative assumptions regarding the likely role of social movements in African history or contemporary society. For an elaboration of these arguments, see Larmer et al. (forthcoming).

It should be clear that any effective analysis of social movement thinking or activity should explore not only a particular movement, but also the wider context in which it operates. Individual movements or organisations influence, and are influenced by, a wider social, political and economic environment, understanding of which is required in order to grasp the context in which that movement operates. An instructive example is that of trade unions; these cannot be understood simply in their institutional form, by analysing their internal structures, elected officials and declared policies. Rather, the actions of their rank-and-file members, their relations with the wider political milieu and their interaction with wider urban (and in Africa, rural) communities of the poor, all shape their activities. This is particularly true in an era of economic liberalisation and declining living standards; as large numbers of formal sector workers are retrenched, the relationship between labour organisations with shrinking memberships and social movements seeking to articulate the concerns of the wider urban poor (including many former union members) becomes an increasingly relevant issue in shaping struggles in urban Africa. In a number of cases, former union activists have taken their organisational skills with them into new campaigns for the rights of retrenched workers, against the environmental impact of industry, or into new political campaigns and parties. Rubbers' study in this issue illustrates the activism of workers retrenched from the mining industry in the Democratic Republic of Congo and how, in the absence of a supportive trade union, they have developed their own movement to represent themselves to their former employees, to the Congolese state and to international organisations they hold responsible for their plight. Lacking access to traditional forms of industrial representation and activism, their Collectif utilises tactics and discourse influenced by both legal and moral economy approaches, in lobbying national and international agencies.

Social movement research must always have regard to tensions and conflicts, not only between particular movements, but also within them, over a period of time. Any study of a particular movement should take into account the relationship between a series of (usually unequal) actors: its leaders and officials; its paid employees (where relevant); those it seeks to directly represent and benefit; and those who are affected, directly or indirectly, by its activities. Unequal power relations – between the more and less educated, women and men, different ethnic groups, and between a dozen other potential divisionsn – commonly shape social movement discourse or activity (see for example Beckmann and Bujra 2009). Roy, for example, identifies how individual leaders of social movements, sometimes selected because of their education and capacity to negotiate with more powerful structures, are propelled by dynamics of socio-economic inequality into elite positions from which they are unable or unwilling to effectively represent those they are assumed to speak for. Such trajectories are of course accentuated by profound inequalities of wealth, education and power within African societies, turning even ostensibly grassroots social movements by a process of commodification into ‘resources in themselves’ – akin to Szeftel's African state as a ‘resource in itself’ (Szeftel 1983).

Studying such movements therefore requires an understanding of social movements as relationships. As E.P. Thompson reminds us in regard to class relationships:

like any other relationship it is a fluency which evades analysis if we attempt to stop it dead at any given moment and anatomise its structure … the relationship must always be embodied in real people and in a real context. (Thompson 1991, p. 8)

Following this, there is no simple way to identify in advance the ‘representativeness’ of any particular social movement, i.e. the legitimacy of its claims to speak on behalf of particular sections of society. Indeed, there is often a disjuncture between the overt or tacit claims made by social movements in this regard and the actual extent of their legitimacy. In practice, social or protest movements exist along a spectrum that reflects their origins, sources of funding, links to particular nation-states, and ideological bases and divergent social forces. It may be suggested that larger non-membership NGOs which are highly dependent on state or commercial funding occupy one end of such a spectrum, whilst more grassroots, local and/or membership-based groups with little or no outside funding exist at the other. In practice, however, placing particular movements on such a spectrum is less than straightforward. Movements dominated by middle-class educated activists may powerfully articulate an apparently radical agenda for change, whilst in practice having no effective links to the poor and dispossessed they claim to represent; in contrast, many more grassroots movements may articulate their aspirations and grievances through less progressive frames of analysis, often drawing on religious or ethnically informed discourses that conventional analysis suggests may militate against the development of an effective emancipatory discourse. Whilst social movements may reflect or articulate in some way the aspirations of some of the poor, their capacity to do this should be assessed through empirical research (as with the articles in this issue) rather than against an externally imposed ideological framework.

In Roy's study for example, struggles over economic issues also become contests over representation, between different organisations' right to speak for Malian peasant cotton producers. The national producers' union, whilst ostensibly the representative body of these farmers, came to act effectively as a ‘middle man’ between the cotton farmers on the one hand and state buyers, international agencies and the state on the other hand. In the late 1990s, having approved a purchase price for cotton unacceptable to many of its members, its authority was challenged by a production boycott led by a temporary ‘crisis committee’, which subsequently became a new and apparently more representative producers' union. In turn, however, this new body, dominated by educated elites and drawn into national politics and international negotiations over privatisation, likewise became distanced from those it supposedly represented.

Periodising social movements in Africa

In order to inform the analysis of social movement activity in recent African history, we can identify (drawing on Hrabanski's analysis of three periods in the history of the Senegalese peasant movement) four major periods that have animated social movements in processes of political (and, to a more limited extent, economic and social) change.

Nationalism and social movements

In the 1950s and 1960s, when Africans were engaged in mass movements to secure self-rule and political independence, it was widely understood that nationalist political movements were not generally coherent and unified forces, whose goal was simply ‘political’ independence. Thomas Hodgkin, in 1956, made the point that the very term ‘African nationalism’

tends to conceal the ‘mixed-up’ character of African political movements … Most of these various types of organisation possessed links, formal or informal, with one another. Many of them were not concerned, overtly or primarily, with achieving national independence or stimulating a sense of … nationhood. (Hodgkin 1956, p. 25)

As Frederick Cooper identified, the anti-colonial struggle was against a form of power which constituted itself in specific economic, social and cultural ways (Cooper 1997). This period was marked by a complex interaction between overtly ‘nationalist’ parties and a diverse set of political or social movements, which generally supported the general project for ‘independence’ but invested it with a range of different meanings and aspirations, social, economic and cultural. From the advent of colonial rule, anti-colonial resistance was often expressed in spiritual form, for example in the 1896/7 uprising against the British South Africa Company in Southern Rhodesia (Ranger 1967), or the Maji-Maji rebellion in Tanganyika (Iliffe 1967). Whilst analysts sympathetic to the nationalist project tended to see the religious aspects of movements such as Mau Mau as forerunners of more ‘modern’ secular nationalist organisations, it is evident that religious idioms have continued to play a central role in the expression of popular aspirations and grievances in post-colonial Africa, for example in the Mungiki sect in Kenya (see also Rubbers in this issue).

Suppression and incorporation: social movements in post-colonial Africa, 1960–75

The initial post-colonial period, from the early 1960s until around the mid to late 1970s, saw the emergence of a post-independence state dominated by a centralised ruling party, which tended to view the autonomous social movements that had played an important role in mobilising anti-colonial discontent as a threat to or distraction from the central project of national-developmentalism dominated by the post-colonial state. In this second phase, social movement articulation of ‘particular’ grievances or aspirations was negatively counterposed by nationalist rulers to the monopoly they claimed over the articulation of ‘national’ interests. Developmental self-initiative by local social movements tended to be stifled by state initiatives for and control over rural initiatives such as cooperatives (as in Hrabanski's illustrative case study). Independent worker and peasant unions were similarly repressed and/or incorporated into party-state structures, severely undermining their capacity for self-representation (Cohen 1981, Crisp 1984). As Roy's study of Mali illustrates, pre-existing peasant unions were dissolved by the party that ruled Mali for the eight years after independence; popular resistance to state controls over agricultural activities were violently repressed. The incorporation of organisations did not, however, equate to the effective incorporation of workers or peasants themselves (Hyden 1980, Isaacman 1993, Bowen 2000).

Economic crisis and social movements in Africa, 1975–89

With the onset of the debt crisis, the reduction of sovereignty and the initial imposition of structural adjustment policies, state hegemony was severely weakened and/or exposed during a third phase of social movement activism. The imposition by African states of direct attacks on living standards of the urban poor in particular led to the ‘food riots’ of the late 1970s and early 1980s (Zghal 1995). The 1977 revolt in Egypt against the government's decision to raise food and petrol prices under the auspices of the International Monetary Fund was a trigger for the first wave of anti-structural adjustment protests that represented the major popular response to the onset of the continent's profound and enduring economic crisis, and a rejection of attempts by both national governments and the international financial institutions to make the urban poor pay the price of a crisis entirely outside their control.

Simultaneously, however, the partial retreat of the state as a result of the external imposition of early structural adjustment opened up some space for new autonomous forms of organisation, many of which avoided direct political questions and sought instead local solutions to growing economic and social concerns. Although such initiatives were unavoidably political, party-states were often more willing to tolerate limited social movement initiatives which might alleviate problems they were unable to address. In this context, Hrabanski identifies the emergence of new Senegalese peasant associations, making links with international NGOs (which constructed Africa's problems in terms of ‘aid’ rather than ‘solidarity’) and, via these links, accessing funding from international donors for the first time. Although many of these organisations were largely the product of donor funding, others did achieve their own internal dynamic and basis for sustainable existence.

The pro-democracy movements and after, 1990–2010

A fourth phase arrived with the onset of the pro-democracy movements of the early 1990s, in which social movements again played an important role. Diverse and longstanding socio-economic and political grievances combined, in the unforeseen context of the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, in a moment when radical political change suddenly became possible across much of the continent. The transition to multi-party democracy achieved in so many countries was not simply an ‘elite transition’; it involved mass protest movements and the mobilisation of particular organisations, particularly trade unions and church bodies. However, like their anti-colonial predecessors, the unity displayed by pro-democracy movements in ousting dictatorial regimes commonly masked profound divisions regarding the outcomes they wished to see from this process of democratisation (Bratton and van de Walle 1997). Coinciding as it did with the collapse of communism and the emergence of a unipolar, US-dominated world, political liberalisation was coupled with market-based economic liberalisation as the singular solution to the economic problems of the world in general and of Africa in particular.

The role of social movements, both in this transition and in the constrained democracies that resulted, has been evidently ambiguous. The substantial decline in state capacity and the redirection of external funding to NGOs strengthened some existing social movements with credible grassroots linkages, but simultaneously led to a proliferation of new NGOs, many of which owed their initial existence solely to the availability of donor funding and which were thereby accountable externally rather than to those they claimed to speak for or represent (Harbeson et al. 1994). ‘Civil society’ was freed to act by political liberalisation, but simultaneously hampered in so doing by the deleterious effects of economic liberalisation.

Since the early 1990s, Western and African NGOs have played an important part in promoting a liberal ‘participatory’ agenda which has the potential to undermine popular opposition to aspects of economic liberalisation and other policies promoted by the West (Gould 2005). In the 1990s and 2000s, popular struggles that have erupted as a consequence of neoliberal reforms and structural adjustment have often manifested themselves as liberal movements for ‘democracy’ and ‘human rights’ (Englund 2006). In this context, there is a danger that social movements seeking to alleviate the effects of economic liberalisation pursue their grievances via more formal political or constitutional reform, rather than a deepening of democratic culture and practice that enables strengthened popular scrutiny and (ultimately) control of the socio-economic situation.

In this context, many African social movements (including some analysed in this issue) are dependent for funding on Western agencies, both governments but also international NGOs, think-tanks and civil society organisations (many of which are themselves funded by Western states). In certain circumstances, Western powers and the international financial institutions (IFIs) regard limited forms of social movement mobilisation or protest as a way to undermine particularly ‘intransigent’ governments that have failed to successfully implement programmes of liberal reform. This should not be reduced to or interpreted as an argument that sees all ‘protest movements’ as manipulated by Western powers, but rather as a call for the critical analysis of the influences upon movements engaged in processes of political change.

Globalisation and extraversion

As has already been indicated, throughout all these periods African social movements, far more than their Western counterparts that serve as the basis for much theoretical and conceptual work on social movements (Tilly 1994, Della Porta and Tarrow 2005), have been influenced by their continent's long history of globalisation, one controlled largely by Western powers, but in which African agency was always influential. During the twentieth century, African political and social movements endlessly debated the problematic relationship between distinctly African political concepts and Western liberal or socialist universalisms. African social movements utilised notions and approaches such as self-government, democracy, collective organisation, direct action, political parties and civil society, all of which were in many respects defined by Western thinkers and activists. Although Africans have appropriated, rethought and reworked such concepts, utilising them in their own interests and in hybrid forms relevant to their specific context, a tension nevertheless often arises between such globalised forms of organisation and resistance and the particular context in which they are conceived of and utilised in Africa. This, coupled with the continent's continued poverty and subordination in the global context, militates against the development of a distinctively ‘African’ form of social movements.

For these reasons and others, social movements actually existing in Africa are unavoidably hybrid in nature, utilising and adapting Western ideas, funding, forms of organisation and methods of activism. Consequently, the enduring influence of universalist models that have their origins in the West, and the profound inequalities and power relations between Western agencies and African social movements, should be part of the analysis of social movements (Pommerolle and Siméant 2008). These issues are further elaborated upon by Pommerolle's article, which examines the role of ‘extraversion’ in the positions adopted by civil society organisations in Africa (Bayart 1993). Pommerolle explores the complexities of the unequal relationships between Kenyan and Cameroonian civil society organisations, their national states, international NGOs and Western governments, and the ways in which these shape the mobilisation and representation of causes, promoting their conceptualisation in liberal discourses, such as that of ‘human rights’ or ‘good governance’. Although civil society organisations retain a considerable degree of autonomy in these unequal relationships, there is nevertheless a powerful tendency towards the depoliticisation of social conflict as a result.

Pommerolle's conclusions are borne out in the other studies presented in this issue, in which social movements commonly orient their activities towards both their nation-states and one or more international forum or agency. Rubbers' Collectif of former mineworkers directs its activities at both national state agencies and international bodies such as the World Bank, in cooperation with Belgian NGOs. In Roy's study of Malian cotton producers, the role of both international donors in general, and the French state's post-colonial relationship with its Malian counterpart in particular, prove to be powerful factors influencing outcomes. Awondo shows how the international authority and funding of Cameroonian homosexual rights organisations depend on their capacity to articulate messages that chime with Western NGO priorities. Hrabanski concludes that Senegal's peasant movement

is not simply the product of its own internal dynamics, but that it has also developed within a multi-level political space wherein it modifies its strategies according to the national and international political environment.

This is not, however, to suggest that African social movements are simply the product of global pressures and circumstances. As Maccatory, Makama Bawa and Poncelet demonstrate in their article, a global phenomenon such as the rise in food prices is experienced very differently in (for example) Niger and Burkina Faso, reflecting distinct local political and economic circumstances and generating varied forms of protests and new social movements as a result. This serves as a useful reminder that, whatever the extent of extraversion or globalisation, social movements continue to operate in particular national environments in which the nation-state continues to be a primary target of activism.

The rise of the anti-globalisation movement from 1999 onwards arguably provided a way of overcoming African social movements' marginalisation and dependency on Western funding (Sen et al. 2004). This movement of movements suggested that, in an era of globalised neoliberal capitalism and technological connectivity, a global counter-hegemonic movement of movements could develop in which existing inequalities and hierarchies between Western and non-Western movements might be overcome (Fisher and Ponniah 2003, Negri and Hardt 2005).

Aspects of the anti-globalisation agenda have found particular expression in South Africa as an influence on both social movements protesting against the policies of the ANC government and their intellectual proponents at the Centre for Civil Society (CCS) at the University of KwaZulu Natal. Champions of autonomous social movements have counterposed them to older forms of representation such as the country's trade union movement which, it is suggested, has fatally undermined its capacity to represent the country's workers through its alliance with the African National Congress government (Desai 2002, Pithouse 2008). A great strength of the CCS ‘school’ is the detailed empirical basis of its research, which has not been replicated elsewhere on the continent. It is questionable, however, how much the particular experience of South Africa can be generalised to the wider continent. Research on African social movement participation in the anti-globalisation movement suggests that, whilst it is in many respects a progressive initiative, its particular modus operandi of decentralised and apparently egalitarian decision making unwittingly reflects and reproduces some aspects of the inequalities and injustices of the globalised neoliberal capitalism against which it positions itself (Larmer et al. 2009). Despite the best efforts of the organisers of Social Forums (the organisational manifestation of the anti-globalisation movement) to integrate different social groupings, the unintended reproduction of social hierarchies via inequalities of material and intellectual resources leads to the domination of the Forums, which are certainly attended by a wide range of social movements, by both large international NGOs and by those from South Africa, which are advantaged by their particular historical trajectory, ideological development and organisational know-how (Pommerolle and Siméant 2008). Social forums held on the continent have tended to be dominated by a small number of technocratic elite figures, whose attendance is often enabled by Western NGOs and whose accountability to African movements they purport to represent is in practice often undermined by lack of popular comprehension of the globalised policy environment in which they operate (Pommerolle and Siméant 2008).

The changing terrain of struggle

The subject of social movement campaigns and the actors involved have evolved substantially with the increasing heterogeneity of African society in recent decades. Changing class dynamics in African society, arising in part from the devastating impact, both material and ideological, of neoliberalism on organised labour movements across much of the continent – movements which have played such an important role in political and economic struggles since the 1940s (Cooper 1996) – have altered the nature of social movements and their campaigns. Traditional venues of struggle – the workplace, the land, and others – have been supplemented by new spaces in which power is contested and in which new strategies and modes of struggle manifest themselves. It has long been recognised that peasant resistance may be ‘hidden’ or indirect, based on escape or non-compliance rather than more overt forms of struggle (Scott 1986, Isaacman 1993, Harrison 2002). It might be suggested that the same may apply to struggles by other elements of African society. Standardised models of industrial action, for example, have often been undermined in Africa by the illegality of strike action and the suppression of public assembly. As economic liberalisation has undermined formal sector employment, many retrenched or casualised workers, often abandoned by their former trade unions, have adopted original methods of representation that raise questions regarding the nature of ‘struggle’ – see Rubbers' article in this issue. As so often, the material grievances of Rubbers' respondents are framed not by any overtly ideological analysis, but rather ideas of injustice best understood in the context of ‘moral economy’ (Berman and Lonsdale 1992, p. 9, Siméant 2010).

Debates about morality within African society have become an important focus for struggles in recent decades. The proliferation of civil society and the relative space afforded by democracy, coupled with the increased potential for globalised interactions among national civil societies that this affords, has generated new campaign movements that challenge established social values in African society. Just as African women's movements challenged manifestations of gender inequalities from the 1970s onwards (a process that is far from complete), contestations over sexual freedom have become an important and violently contested new terrain of struggle across Africa, as a new cultural politics pervades the supposedly private space of sexuality. Awondo's study of homosexual rights movements in Cameroon illustrates how the public space opened up by HIV and AIDS for the open discussion of private sexual practices led in turn to campaigns that rejected a public health basis for the legitimate discussion of same-sex sexuality and developed instead a discourse based on gay rights and the legitimacy of a homosexual lifestyle. Such campaigns however, in Cameroon as in much of the continent, have led to a backlash by state and religious authorities, with even relatively liberal figures such as Zimbabwe's Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai rejecting the legalisation of male homosexual relationships. The capacity for the mobilisation of counter-movements against liberal universalist social agendas by involving the utilisation of Africanist or religious rhetoric should not be underestimated.

Nevertheless, struggles over material circumstances remain central to the creation and recreation of social movements on the continent, which nevertheless articulate their discontent in moral terms. Of most recent significance, the recent wave of protests against the sudden rise in food prices examined by Maccatory, Makama Bawa and Poncelet in this issue demonstrated once again the creative capacity of local activists to generate new and effective urban movements, always building on their historical antecedents and operating in very particular local circumstances.

Social movements and wider political change in Africa

This brings us to the central question of the nature and degree of political change to which social movements may contribute. Progressive Western analysts of African political history have tended over the last 50 years to seek to identify particular social forces or movements that can form the basis of overarching, self-conscious projects of radical political transformation, usually of the kind that they themselves have already preconceived. Social democrats and liberals saw African nationalism as the answer to the continent's problems, believing that self-rule in the hands of wise indigenous leaders (whose ideas, developed in Western universities and missions, closely resembled their own) would enable steady and controlled change of the sort appropriate to the continent's level of (as they saw it) education and civilisation. Development advisors, seeking to implement their blueprints for economic ‘take-off’ and ‘catch-up’, sought to identify indigenous agents of such changes and were constantly disappointed by their inability or unwillingness to play the role prescribed to them. More radical analysts fiercely debated whether the urban working class (Arrighi and Saul 1973, Sandbrook and Cohen 1976), the rural peasantry (Leys 1975), or the Westernised intelligentsia (Cabral 1969), would be in the vanguard of socialist or communist revolution on the continent; and were often dismayed by the dismal results of such vanguardist approaches to radical change. Anti-globalisation activists, in theory more open to diverse forms of political expression and organisation, have more recently been similarly disappointed with the failure of African social movements to sound, look and act like their counterparts in the West or in Latin America. Western observers of many political hues (and their allies amongst Africa's elites) have been periodically seized with enthusiasm about Africa's decade, century, moment or renaissance, and have been rapidly disillusioned with the continent's enduring failure to meet their expectations in a timely manner.

Meanwhile, Africans, individually but also collectively, have gone about the difficult and often dangerous business of organising actions and organisations to improve the particular circumstances of sections of their society and to achieve what Hrabanski terms ‘an autonomous self-emancipation dynamic’. These movements at times coalesced into broader movements for social change that carried within them the potential for a radical transformation of society. Whether this potential was achieved or not, it has normally been the case that Western observers have been unable to see past their own expectations and norms, to understand the real extent of these social movements' achievements. This edition of Review of African Political Economy invites radical analysts and observers of Africa's contemporary problems and challenges, seeking a singular counter-hegemonic force to provide the answer to the continent's exploitation, marginalisation and suffering, to focus instead on the myriad day-to-day struggles for change that are Africa's true story of struggle.1 It is perhaps out of these complex and ambiguous movements that the political alternatives to global capitalism's uneven and brutal hegemony will emerge. Messy, ideologically confused, inherently contradictory, such struggles and movements may nevertheless contain within them genuinely organic seeds of indigenous change that may take root and blossom on the continent's rich soil.

Acknowledgements

The editors of this issue would like to express their thanks to the translators of the six articles, Clare Smedley and Maggie Sumner. The ROAPE Editorial Working Group would also like to thank the journal's publishers, Taylor & Francis, for their generous contribution to the translation costs of this issue.

Notes

This counterposing of ‘resistance’ to ‘counter-hegemonic struggle’ was recently articulated by John Saul, in his address to the plenary session on ‘African Studies in Canada’, at the Annual Conference of the Canadian Association of African Studies, Ottawa, 5–7 May 2010.