Popular struggles and the search for alternative democracies

Popular struggles in Africa are once again at centre stage in this issue. ROAPE, as stated in our remit, ‘pays particular attention to the political economy of inequality, exploitation, oppression, and to struggles against them, whether driven by global forces or local ones such as class, race, community and gender’.¹ It is impossible to ignore the number and range of ongoing popular struggles that are taking place all over the continent. Protests are comprehensively researched and documented in South Africa, as Martin Bekker and Mondli Hlatshwayo demonstrate in their contributions to this issue; and Olayinka Ajala provides a case study from Nigeria, another country well known for its multitude of social movements and struggles. However, certain countries – particularly ones formerly colonised by England (and thus ‘anglophone’) – tend to be more visible in so-called international reporting and research, whereas others are widely disregarded.

Struggles against neo-colonial interventions in West Africa

Extensive struggles are also taking place, for example, in West African countries formerly colonised by France. These struggles target the interventions by external governments – namely the French, with their military and corporate actors. More and more people perceive these interventions as characterised by a neo-colonial ‘Françafrique’ attitude that they are no longer willing to accept. This is expressed, for example, in acts of resistance against the CFA franc, the regional currency described recently in ROAPE as ‘one of the most tangible elements of the “colonial pact”’ (Sylla 2020). Created by France in 1945, originally as the franc des colonies françaises d’Afrique, the CFA franc is still the currency of 14 countries (12 formerly colonised by France plus Guinea Bissau and Equatorial Guinea). It is divided into two monetary zones, the Communauté économique des états de l’Afrique Centrale and the Union économique et monétaire ouest-africaine, and is a central pillar of France’s influence in the region symbolically, politically and economically (Taylor 2019; Sylla 2021; see also Gadha et al. 2021). In August 2017, Franco-Beninese activist Kemi Seba was arrested and deported from Senegal for burning a 5000 CFA franc note as part of the anti-CFA protests. Indeed, in Abidjan in December 2020 the presidents of France and Côte d’Ivoire, Emmanuel Macron and Alassane Ouattara, announced the symbolic (they called it ‘historic’) reform and purported end of the CFA franc, which will be renamed the eco (Sylla 2020). Yet there are doubts that this renaming will be anything more than cosmetic.

The last wave of protests against France’s presence in West Africa emerged in late 2021, when people massed together to block the passage of a French military convoy from Côte d’Ivoire through Burkina Faso to Niger (Le Figaro 2021; Le Monde 2021). In Burkina Faso, the French army fired warning shots, and the Burkinabé armed forces used tear gas against the protests. Four protesters were injured (Civicus 2022; Reuters 2021). In Niger, at least two people were killed and 18 injured when trying to block the military convoy (VoA 2021). French military intervention in the region has a long – and colonial – history. Its intervention in Mali started in early 2013, and the latest initiative is Operation Barkhane, created in mid 2014 to include all French troops in the region under a joint command. In 2020, Operation Barkhane comprised 5100 soldiers, half of them in combat units (Moderan and Hoinathy 2021; Tull 2021, 3). As is generally the case for external military interventions, the operation is much more likely to be destabilising rather than giving stability to the region (Idrissa 2019).

Even in France itself, the military interventions in the Sahel have lost support to a considerable degree: in a poll in France in January 2021, 51% of respondents stated that they were ‘not in favour’ of it (Poncet 2021). Tournons La Page (TLP), a broad-based and not necessarily radical civil society network of to 250 groups and organisations in Africa and Europe (TLP 2022) set up in 2014 with the aim of ‘promot[ing] democratic change in Africa’, is calling for the closure of foreign military bases on the continent.² Agence France-Presse quoted Maikoul Zodi of TLP’s Niger branch as follows: ‘France’s colonial past, its meddling in our internal affairs and looting of our resources like uranium are making our youths think … . We don’t have win-win contracts with France’ (AFP 2022). Hence, it hardly came as a surprise when on 17 February 2022 Emmanuel Macron, two months ahead of the French presidential elections (which he won in the second ballot on 24 April), announced the withdrawal of all French and European troops from Mali (France24 2022).

It is likely that Macron’s decision is a reflection of this falling acceptance, both in France and in West Africa, of the French military presence, linked to the figures of French soldiers killed – as at 23 January 2022, 53 French soldiers had been killed in combat since the first troops were deployed in Mali in 2013. Another relevant factor is the Malian military government’s decision to engage the Russian private military Wagner group. The French-state-owned news network France24 quotes Macron as saying:

This is the hiring by the Malian junta, using financing which they themselves will have to explain to the Malian people, of mercenaries who are essentially there to secure their own business interests and protect the junta itself. (France24 2022)

Ironically, this reflects what a number of people in West Africa now think about the French military presence in the region – that it is securing France’s own business and geopolitical interests. For the vast majority of people in Mali, it is unlikely to make much difference which armed forces are pursuing whose business interests, and whether they are the military troops of a foreign state or those of a private military company. Yet mercenaries from the Wagner group have been accused of serious human rights violations, for example in the Central African Republic (Harding and Burke 2021). Likewise in Mali, Wagner mercenaries have been blamed for a massacre in which between 200 and 400 people were killed in the village of Moura, not far from Djenné in Central Mali, in the last week of March 2022. According to press and NGO reports, Malian soldiers together with Russian mercenaries, in a strike against ‘terrorist armed groups’, separated small groups of people, interrogated some, tortured them, and finally executed them (Roger 2022). As if this were not bad enough, French and Russian actors have been reviving the Cold War, each blaming the other in the press and on social media. The French military released videos and aerial surveillance images ‘appearing to show Russian mercenaries burying [approximately a dozen Malian] bodies’ near a military base in Gossi in northern Mali (Mednik 2022). Conversely, on a pro-Russian Twitter account, similar videos were circulated, accompanied by the message ‘[t]his is what the French left behind when they left the base at Gossi’ (Risemberg 2022). To the news agencies AFP and AP, the French army declared that ‘the mercenaries created the site to circulate images and blame the French army in order to stoke up anti-French sentiment in Mali’ (ibid.). So, rather than seeking clarity over the killings, ensuring the accountability of the perpetrators and commanding officers, and pursuing justice for the victims and assistance to their families and communities, governments and their armies are making use of the incidents to blame their adversaries.

In West Africa, rejection of and resistance towards the French and other external neo-colonial military presence in the region is clearly more pronounced than in Europe. The recent security crises and terrorist threat in the region might be assessed as an opportunity to justify the French military presence in the former colonies, both in the eyes of French society and in the society and politics of the respective African states. However, it does not appear to be succeeding in mitigating internal and external criticism. African activists argue that the acceptance of French military cooperation would amount to a public acceptance of neo-colonial dependency relations. Moreover, the European armaments industry would benefit directly from the crisis, as the European Union provides equipment and training to African militaries and the G5-Sahel joint military force.³ Critical voices from social movements, civil society, NGOs and also state authorities at various levels point to the fact that despite its technological superiority, the French military was either incapable of detecting and fighting the terrorist groups in the Sahel, or did not actually want to do so (Engels 2021; Melly 2021). One resident from a community in the Sahel region told me in December 2020 that they felt ‘sacrificed’, given that French military forces with highly developed drones seemed unable or unwilling to stop terrorists from massacring villagers in the municipality.

After years of a massive military intervention that has failed to meet its declared objectives, people are raising doubts about the motives of the military presence: is it there to secure access to the region’s subsoil resources – gold in Burkina Faso and Mali, uranium in Niger – or simply to demonstrate neo-colonial dominance and to guarantee France’s position in European and in international politics? There is a call for foreign military and security forces to leave altogether and, as current protests have demonstrated, this is increasingly supported by many in the region. This is quite a new development: a long-standing activist in Burkina Faso told me in February 2022 that as recently as a couple of years ago, when some organisations were demanding that the French troops should leave the country, most people would tell them that this was impossible and was a radical left-wing position. Now it seems that this position has acquired majority appeal.

Radical activists consider the security crisis in West Africa to be a consequence of – indeed, a crisis of – capitalism and imperialism. Yet observers who do not refer to, and do not necessarily subscribe to, a general critique of capitalism and imperialism also point to the political economy of the crisis, to the history of European and in particular French geopolitics in Western Africa and the Sahel region, and to contemporary French economic and military interests in the region. ‘It’s not for our beautiful eyes that France is here’, as one activist in Ouagadougou put it in an interview in December 2020: ‘Africa is the richest continent, but with the poorest populations. And somebody has an interest in that', they added. From an anti-imperialist and radical political economy perspective, it is argued that the terrorist threat would suit French economic interests just fine (Engels 2021).

Coups d’état, elections and beyond

Macron’s recent decision to withdraw troops from Mali is also linked to the policy of the military junta that seized power in Mali through a coup d’état on 24 May 2021. This was the second of four recent coups in the region within 18 months. The first occurred also in Mali on 18 August 2020, and these were followed by two more – in Guinea on 5 September 2021 and in Burkina Faso on 24 January 2022. On 9 January 2022, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) announced sanctions against Mali, including trade embargos and closure of the borders, in order to put pressure on the military government not to delay the electoral timetable (initially, the junta had announced preparation for elections in August 2025). France backed the sanctions. By the end of January, the Malian military government expelled the French ambassador and called on people to protest against both the French and ECOWAS measures, thereby reinforcing existing anti-French sentiment in the country. On 4 February 2022, around 3000 people took to the streets in Bamako, according to press reports (Lorgerie 2022).

And yet, categorical rejection of coups d’état appears to be more common among governments and external observers than it is among the populations of the respective countries, the current cases being Mali and Burkina Faso (see Engels’ briefing on the coup d’état in Burkina Faso in this issue [315]). As Amy Niang writes in a recent blog post on Roape.net:

Not only are the recent coups not contested, but they are also seen as an opening into a new politics of liberation. … 

The much celebrated constitutional order has been discredited in a context where constitutions are routinely violated, regulating mechanisms are often neutralized, and incumbent presidents consistently violate term-limits. … 

Yet the ongoing demand for democracy is internal in kind, it is a popular demand for a different kind of politics and a different kind of democratic participation. (Niang 2022)

For many people, elections turn out to be a way of allocating posts and resources to certain elites rather than a means of providing democracy and participation for the masses; and they are far from bringing about change to address the major issues in people’s lives – access to food, water, health care, education, housing etc. This is not to say that food comes first, and then ethics; but that liberal representative democracy and its institutions so far do not make for radical transformation of political-economic structures. Military coups do neither, and in recent coups references to revolutionary, anti-imperialist, decolonial or Pan-Africanist programmes are, at best, rhetoric. Added to this are, of course, issues of physical violence and democratic legitimation. Yet elections, at least in the way they are currently held all over the world, are probably neither the only nor the best way to achieve inclusive and participatory democracy in a comprehensive manner. The principal question remains: what alternative forms of democratic radical transformation can be imagined beyond elections and military coups? What political-economic order and participatory institutions can be created, and how? How can the various existing institutions of the state be transformed, including – and particularly – the military? What can be learnt from the experiences of previous attempts to achieve political-economic and socio-cultural transformation, such as those of Julius Nyerere and his allies in Tanzania, or during the short era of Thomas Sankara in Burkina Faso? What role does internationalist solidarity play, and how can it be built and sustained? How can we make sure that it will not, unintendedly, reproduce neo-colonial, racist and patriarchal relations?

We have discussed these (and other) questions during three ROAPE Connections workshops held in Accra in November 2017 (Bush et al. 2018), in Dar es Salaam in April 2018 (Bujra et al. 2018) and in Johannesburg in November 2018 (Dwyer et al. 2019). The subsequent Connections workshop was due to take place in Windhoek in April 2020 but was cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Debates have continued in the journal, on ROAPE’s blog pages (Roape.net) and in online events. Important and useful as these formats are, they cannot replace personal meetings: bringing together individuals and organisations, activists and academics, to reflect, discuss, argue, and create visions: this is our joint search for radical and democratic alternatives.

The articles in this issue

All contributions in this issue deal with struggles and theories that strive for radical and democratic change. In the first paper, Mondli Hlatshwayo investigates the case of the Anti-Privatisation Forum (APF), which was significant in post-apartheid South Africa but formally dissolved in 2012. Ten years later, Hlatshwayo interviewed key APF activists to figure out what they did after the dissolution of the movement, and how the experiences they made when campaigning for the forum shaped their subsequent social, political and professional lives. In the interviews, activists outlined the political and analytical knowledge they acquired in the APF, as well as ‘transferable skills’ (209), such as literacy, media skills, organising, and chairing meetings. The activists have used these skills and knowledge in their professional and activist lives until the present, and many of them continue to engage in movements or pursue their engagement in their roles of union professionals, politicians and academics. In this light, popular struggles and social movements continue to have an effect beyond their occurrence and formal existence.

Martin Bekker likewise investigates mobilisations in South Africa. Reliable hypotheses and theorising on movements, mobilisations and struggles require empirical evidence and data, qualitative and quantitative. The latter are mostly based on press reports. Bekker argues that these are likely to be biased, as they focus on what seems newsworthy – ‘“blood-and-flames” reporting’ (230) which ‘might systematically (and vastly) underreport small and rural protests’ (227). The author uses police data, namely the South African Police Service Incident Registration Information System, to examine the number of protest events, numbers of participants per event and their location within the country. More than 89,000 protests were registered by the South African police in the period 1997–2013, with numbers of participants remaining fairly constant (435 per event in 1997 and 453 in 2013). The most significant change Bekker notices is that protests in non-urban locations have increased.

Olayinka Ajala, in his article, draws on debates and concepts from social movement studies, demonstrating that although these have been predominantly developed in view of empirical analyses from North America and Europe, they can be applied to study movements and struggles on the African continent too. At the same time, overarching debates and theories are enriched by taking into consideration a wide range of empirical cases from various contexts. Nonetheless, the author argues that there are ‘unique characteristics of African politics, steeped in historical issues such as colonialism and the Cold War, while political patronage remains a prevailing issue’ (247). According to him, it is more challenging for social movements in ‘emerging democracies’ to adapt to new situations and to transform when they have achieved their aims or failed to do so. These challenges are revealed in a case study on the Oodua Peoples Congress, one of Nigeria’s largest ethnic social movements.

Two further contributions to this issue deal with the potential of radical theory to understand struggles in various contexts, and to develop visions for alternatives and pathways to radical political-economic transformations. Shahenda Suliman continues her ‘earlier attempts to “translate” or critially “travel” with Gramsci in the global South’ (265). Her article draws on Gramsci’s concept of (minimal) hegemony to explain the rise and fall of the National Islamic Front (NIF) in Sudan from the 1960s until the overthrow of Omar al-Bashir in 2019. Analysing the class dimension of the NIF’s rule, Suliman argues that neoliberal restructuring in Sudan, closely entangled with shifts in international politics, gave rise to a powerful ruling bloc and marginalised other social groups. This resulted in social struggles, protest and uprising, and in the end – once more – in a military coup that removed al-Bashir from office in April 2019. A Gramscian perspective proves to be particularly useful for a class analysis that interlinks the material and cultural dimensions of class relations.

Gramsci’s concept of hegemony refers substantially to Lenin’s writing. It is thus fitting that Joe Pateman, in his contribution to this issue, discusses the importance of Africa in Lenin’s work, and at the same time the relevance of Lenin’s thoughts to African intellectual and political debates and struggles. Pateman argues, vigorously and convincingly, that Lenin has been a central reference for African thinkers and activists such as Kwame Nkrumah and Julius Nyerere, and that ‘several of them understood Marxism primarily through Lenin’s work’ (288). Vice versa, Africa was important to Lenin, as Pateman outlines in his thorough analysis of Lenin’s writings such Imperialism: the highest stage of capitalism and his Notebooks on imperialism. Indeed, racist notions that dominated European thinking and debates at the era (and that of course continue to exist) are reflected in Lenin’s work too. But they are relatively rare, as Pateman argues, ‘and they did not characterise his theoretical thinking. [Rather] Lenin was a militant critic of colonialism in Africa and a consistent defender of African liberation’ (290).

The first two Briefings in this issue raise concerns regarding political interventions and constitutional and economic transformation – or at least the promise of both. Christian John Makgala and Ikanyeng Stonto Malila interrogate and problematise the popular view of Botswana's economic boom. They argue that it was accompanied by a disproportionately powerful presidency, poverty and economic inequality. Elite corruption and unemployment were not addressed, despite rhetoric to the contrary by President Masisi and pressure for constitutional reform.

Bettina Engels explores the dynamics behind the January 2022 coup d'état in Burkina Faso. She investigates the justifications for the coup given by the putschists and provides invaluable context to question the ‘transition phase’ announced by them. Will it, for instance, meet the needs of workers and mass organisations that are so central to politics in Burkina Faso?

Osaze Omoragbon and Nafisatu Irene Okhade highlight the consequences of the Boko Haram insurgency in north-east Nigeria. They discuss the hitherto under-researched implications for how the conflict shapes the character of electoral politics, constituency consultations and political representation.

Like the latter Briefing on north-east Nigeria, the Debate in this issue focuses on the ways in which elections are conducted and how their outcomes need scrutiny. Terrence Lyons and Aly Verjee explore what they call ‘asymmetric electoral authoritarianism’. The Ethiopian election in 2021, following closely after the November 2020 war in Tigray, reveals why it is important not to draw conclusions from limited national assessments before looking at local political dynamics. The ruling party may have won 97% of the seats where voting took place, but the results reveal dynamics about institutions and competition for power. There may have been heavy-handed political dominance in some areas, and there were also circumstances where there was political space and opposition that mobilised and won votes.

Notes

1 See https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?show=aimsScope&journalCode=crea20. Accessed May 1, 2022.

2 For more information on the Tournons La Page movement, see https://tournonslapage.org/fr/le-mouvement. Accessed May 2, 2022.

3 Since 2014, Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Chad and Mauritania have built the alliance ‘G5 du Sahel’, or G5-Sahel. In February 2017, the G5-Sahel states decided to set up a joint military force of 5000 military and police forces to fight terrorism and organised crime. The Security Councils of the African Union and of the United Nations both approved the plan, both in 2015. The European Union provides financial support for infrastructure, equipment and training. Both G5-Sahel and international military cooperation have been sharply criticised: G5 soldiers and gendarmes were repeatedly accused of human rights violations and even of committing massacres of civilians.