FUTURE OF SOCIALISM IN GHANA

Dr Graham with Barzini Tandoh at a recent workshop on empowering women in the extractive sector

Members and associates of the Socialist Forum of Ghana (SFG) will gather in Accra on workers’ Day, May 1, 2017 to discuss the future of socialism in Ghana.

The event which will be held under the broad theme: “The way forward for Socialism in Ghana and the SFG” will be chaired by Comrade Kyeretwie Opoku, the convener of the (SFG).

The key-Note speaker will be Dr. Yao Graham, Co-ordinator of the Third World Network and Comrade Barzini Tanoh, a member of the International Socialist Organisation has also been invited to speak.

The one-day meeting will take place at the Freedom Centre in Accra and will break into workshops after the plenary session.

Those expected to attend the event will include Professor Akilagpa Sawyerr, Professor Raymond Osei and Professor Ata Britum, some working class activists and individuals from some of registered political parties.

It is expected that at the end of the event a full report will be prepared which will assist the SFG to shape its organisational structure and policy for the future.

The SFG has been in existence for close to 20 years and is currently involved in organising public fora on local and international issues.

It has also published five books and pamphlets on left-wing history and development and has been promoting progressive cultural activities.

The SFG also runs the Freedom Bookshop in Accra to make progressive books and books authored by Nkrumah and about Nkrumah readily available to the general public.

There have been suggestions for the transformation of the forum into a more formidable political force. 

Editorial

IMPORTANT MOVE!

The meeting of members and associates of the Socialist Forum of Ghana (SFG) scheduled for May 1, 2017 at the Freedom Centre in Accra is a very important move.

Since the early 1980s when the Rawlings regime unleased vicious attacks on the left movement in Ghana, no serious efforts has been made to unite the Ghanaian left into a coherent movement against neo-liberalism.

Today, the Ghanaian left is split into many political parties and organisations and has lost considerable influence.

We believe that the time has come for the Ghanaian left to ask important questions about its role in world affairs especially the fight against neo-liberalism in Ghana.

It is to this end that we commend the SFG and its associates for initiating this most important meeting.

We will be following the progress of this effort closely.

Local News:

KNUST builds capacity of artisans in product development

By Stephen Asante 

The Technology Consultancy Centre (TCC) of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, has upped its technical support to artisans and farmers in the area of the development of appropriate agro-based equipment for increased productivity.

Dr. Michael Adjaloo, the Director, said they were being assisted to use local-materials to design simple, inexpensive but efficient agricultural implements to aid production.

These include cassava harvesters and peelers, groundnut planter, maize sheller, cocoa pod breaker and rice thresher.

He said prototypes had been developed by the Intermediary Technology Transfer Unit (ITTU) of the TCC at Suame Magazine and were being perfected by the KNUST College of Engineering (CoE) - to achieve high level of efficiency.

He was speaking at a training workshop held for farmer groups and artisans drawn for the Ashanti and Brong-Ahafo Regions at Fomena in the Adansi North District under the “Creative capacity building for commercialization (CCB4C) project”.

The five-day programme was organized by the TCC with funding from the International Development Innovation Network (IDIN).

“Improving prototypes into products for commercialization”, was the theme chosen for the workshop.

The goal was to expose and comprehensively build the capacity of the participants in product design, development and commercialization.

Dr. Adjaloo said the Centre would continue assist to grow the nation’s agriculture and small scale enterprises through the use of technology.

Professor Osei Boateng, Dean of the Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering, said the CoE would remain responsive to the technological needs of industry.

It remained focused on coming out with appropriate technologies to drive the nation’s economy.

Mr. Opoku Asante, National Coordinator of IDIN, said the CCB4C project was meant to give hands-on training to the people and to encourage innovation.

The nation, he noted, could substantially reduce the high import bill on agro-based equipment, if local artisans were supported to produce these locally.  

Isaac Adongo on how to make ‘One District, One Factory’ successful

Isaac Adongo

By Emmanuel Bruce 

The Member of Parliament (MP) for Bolga Central, Mr Isaac Adongo, says the government has failed to provide a roadmap on how the private sector can help actualise its district industrilisation programme (DIP), the ‘One District, One Factory.’

As an initiative that required private capital to succeed, the MP said the government needed to announce policy incentives that would help entice the private sector to invest in the DIP.

These incentives, he said, could come in the form of tax rebates or high returns for investors willing to move funds into the programme.

“We were hoping to see some incentives in that regard in the 2017 budget but that did not happen. Rather, the government signaled to us in the budget where the investments should be going, which are imports and not ‘one district one factory,” Mr Adongo told the GRAPHIC BUSINESS in the week ending.

“If I am an investor, I will move money where I will make my returns. So, if government has slashed import duties, reduced the consumption tax from 17.5 per cent to a flat rate of three per cent, and I also have a huge market access, why will I carry my money to a remote district when I can make lots of money through the importation of good,” he questioned.

 “As an investor, I will be thinking about how to get reliable source of power in the remote districts, how I can attract the most technically gifted people to work for me, how I can get a reliable all-year round raw materials, how much it will cost me to transport my finished goods from the remotest village to the market centres and also how to get market access for my goods,” he stated.

He said the government should, therefore, come up with measures and policies that would minimise some of these challenges in the districts and give hope to the private sector players, who intend to take advantage of the policy.

“If it’s only about the opportunities, the private sector is already aware of the opportunities in these districts but have not moved there yet because it is not profitable,” he noted.

Access to market

Again, he said the government was also creating competition in terms of market access for the existing manufacturing companies and the factories that were yet to be established under the ‘One District, One Factory’ project by opening the country’s doors to imports by eliminating and reducing import duties.

He said this would enable people to bring in cheap imports that would create unhealthy competition for the local manufacturing companies.

Crowding out private sector

Mr Adongo also pointed out that the government’s decision to borrow GH¢17.4 billion from the domestic market in the first quarter would crowd out the private sector.

With the amount being more than half of the entire credit that banks gave out in 2016, which was GH¢36 billion, the Bolga Central MP said, “All the monies available to the banks for credit might be taken by the government.”

“It is very interesting that we are only three months into this new administration and it has already become very clear that borrowing on the domestic market is beginning to escalate,” he mentioned.

Given that the the private sector is the riskiest customer to lend, Mr Adongo said “when government is in the market to borrow, then it makes sense that this is a risk-free borrower compared to the risk-laden private sector.”

“So, when government is in competition with the private sector for funding, it means that the private sector must pay more.

“When government is borrowing, then it means it is indicating to the banking sector where they should put their monies and every bank and every investor will be interested in government bonds,” he stated.

Source: Daily Graphic

Foreign News

BRITAIN:

CORBYN VOWS

Jeremy Corbyn: "I don't play by the establishment rules"

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has vowed to "overturn the rigged system" by putting power and wealth back in the hands of "the people".

In his first major general election speech, he said 8 June's poll was not a "foregone conclusion" and Labour could defy the "Establishment experts".

He also said Labour would not back a second EU referendum.

Theresa May said the election was about ensuring "strong and stable leadership" for the UK.

It was also about strengthening the government's Brexit negotiating hand, she said.

The PM is hoping to convert the Tories' double digit poll lead into a bigger Commons majority.

Her decision to hold a general election - after previously insisting she would wait until 2020 - took her rivals and many in her own party by surprise.

Mr Corbyn could have blocked it in Parliament but instead ordered his MPs to back the snap poll in a Commons vote on Wednesday.

After his speech, the Labour leader was asked to rule out backing a second EU referendum - replying that he respected the result but that the UK had to have continued access to the EU single market and should not "tear up the workers' rights agenda, the environmental protection agenda, or any human rights agenda".

Shadow chancellor John McDonnell also declined to rule one out, telling the BBC the government should "put the deal to Parliament and possibly to the country overall".

But asked later, Mr Corbyn's spokesman said: "A second referendum is not our policy and it won't be in our manifesto."

The Conservatives said it was "yet more evidence" of "Labour chaos".

The Labour leader looks set to run an anti-establishment campaign, presenting himself as a champion of the powerless against political and business elites.

He attacked the "morally bankrupt" Conservatives who he said would not stand up to tax avoiders and other members of a "gilded elite," who were extracting wealth "from the pockets of ordinary working people".

Labour would "end this racket" and "overturn the rigged system," he told an audience of Labour supporters in London.

He also said Labour was the only party that would "focus on the kind of country we want to have after Brexit" - dismissing Mrs May's election campaign as an "ego trip about her own failing leadership".

And he insisted all of Labour's policies, including an increase in corporation tax for big business and more money for carers and a £10 an hour minimum wage, were fully costed.

Addressing Labour's poor opinion poll ratings, he said he was given a 200/1 chance of becoming Labour leader in 2015 and he defied those odds.

Assessing Corbyn's speech: By Iain Watson

Jeremy Corbyn provided two very big clues today to how he will fight the campaign - and for two main reasons.

First, he is opting to have the clearest dividing lines between government and opposition in more than three decades - ever since Labour pledged to scrap nuclear weapons and leave the EU in 1983.

He suggested the Conservatives were "morally bankrupt" and attacked the elites.

But he is also drawing a clear line between his leadership and his party's New Labour past.

He didn't just attack the "fat cats" and the "tax dodgers" - he denounced the "wealth extractors" of big business and the City - and took a pop at the media while he was at it.

What was interesting was that uncensored, unvarnished Corbyn was more passionate and fluent than in many of his much-criticised performances in the Commons.

Mr Corbyn said: "Much of the media and Establishment are saying this election is a foregone conclusion.

"They think there are rules in politics, which if you don't follow by doffing your cap to powerful people, accepting that things can't really change, then you can't win.

"But of course those people don't want us to win. Because when we win, it's the people, not the powerful, who win."

He added: "They say I don't play by the rules - their rules. We can't win, they say, because we don't play their game.

"They're quite right I don't. And a Labour government elected on 8 June won't play by their rules."

He added that those rules "have created a cosy cartel which rigs the system in favour of a few powerful and wealthy individuals and corporations".

Mr Corbyn said: "It's a rigged system set up by the wealth extractors for the wealth extractors."

The Labour leader singled out tycoon Sir Philip Green, who faced heavy criticism over the BHS pensions saga, and Sports Direct boss Mike Ashley in his speech, saying they should be "worried about a Labour government".

North Korea:

Empty Threats: Why Trump's Vow to Strike North Korea Was a Bluff

© REUTERS/ U.S. Navy

North Korea parades nuclear weapons

While the White House threatened Pyongyang with a potential strike in the event of a new nuclear weapons test in North Korea, the US striking group was actually moving away from the Korean Peninsula. "There will be no strike against North Korea," Russian political scientist Alexei Gusev told Radio Sputnik.

It appears that Donald Trump's "armada," led by the USS Carl Vinson, an aircraft carrier, had only been approaching North Korea figuratively.

"We are sending an armada. Very powerful. We have submarines, very powerful, far more powerful than the aircraft carrier, that I can tell you," Trump told Fox Business Network, specifying that the deployment was part of the US response to Pyongyang's "provocations."

Earlier, on April 8, US Pacific Command stated that the USS Carl Vinson and an accompanying strike group would head to the Western Pacific in a "show of force" toward North Korea.

Predictably, the gesture prompted a fierce response from Pyongyang, which dubbed the supposed deployment of the strike group in the Sea of Japan as a "reckless act of aggression."

A chain reaction of tough statements led to Pyongyang's threatening the US with a preemptive strike in the event of any US "political, economic or military provocation" and prompted US Vice President Mike Pence to announce that "the era of strategic patience [toward North Korea] is over."

Meanwhile, contrary to all expectations, the much-talked about "armada" was heading toward Australia, far away from the Korean Peninsula.

"It was even farther away over the weekend, moving through the Sunda Strait and then into the Indian Ocean, as North Korea displayed what appeared to be new missiles at a parade and staged a failed missile test," Phil Stewart of Reuters noted Wednesday.

As the US Pacific Command clarified Tuesday, the flotilla needed to complete joint naval drills with Australia. The statement added that now the strike group was "proceeding to the Western Pacific as ordered."

The paradoxical episode has prompted a heated debate in the media, with some observers claiming that Trump's empty threats have dealt a blow to the new administration's credibility and the others blaming the embarrassing situation on a miscommunication between the Pentagon and the White House.

However, at the same time, some experts called attention to the fact that Trump somehow toned down his harsh rhetoric toward Pyongyang during his recent interview with TMJ4-TV in Wisconsin. The US President expressed hope that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un wants to maintain peace on the Korean Peninsula.

"Hopefully, he [Kim Jong Un] wants peace and we want peace. And that's gonna be the end determination. We're gonna have to see what happens," Trump said.

Just a few days ago, however, US media circulated reports that Trump might order a strike against North Korea if Pyongyang decides to carry out a new nuclear weapons test.

Commenting on the matter, Russian political scientist Alexei Gusev told Radio Sputnik that it is highly unlikely that the US will engage North Korea in a direct confrontation.

"There will be no strike against North Korea," Gusev said, "Because the Democratic People's Republic of Korea possesses not only nuclear weapons but also delivery vehicles — missiles with a range of about five thousand kilometers. And that's enough to reach the territory of the United States."

"So, it is most likely that [the US] won't launch a strike against North Korea," the Russian political scientist reiterated, "This adventure would have ended very badly for the US."

Gusev admitted that Pyongyang remains a major "irritating factor" for the Trump administration. He also didn't exclude a new nuclear weapons test on the part of North Korea.

"North Korea has already conducted several nuclear weapons tests. Now, probably, there will be yet another atomic test… It is understandable that Donald Trump should issue a 'serious' response [to it]," the political scientist noted.

Georgiy Toloray, the head of Korean studies at the Institute of Economics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, has a similar stance.

In a Monday interview with Radio Sputnik Toloray suggested that the US threats toward North Korea was mere "bluff."

"Now Donald Trump and his administration say that it is necessary to act decisively and take measures against the DPRK, including military options. However, in my opinion this is still a bluff. And this bluff is aimed primarily at making China act more decisively towards North Korea," Toloray said.

It seems that the Russian experts have nailed it, given the fact that the USS Carl Vinson and his strike group were heading away from the Korean Peninsula while Trump and Pence issued threats to Kim Jong Un.

Why North Korea Needs Nukes – And How To End That

By Moon of Alabama

Media say, the U.S. may or may not kill a number of North Koreans for this or that or no reason but call North Korea ‘the volatile and unpredictable regime’

Now consider what the U.S. media don’t tell you about Korea:

China proposed “double suspension” to defuse the looming crisis on the Korean Peninsula, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Wednesday.

“As a first step, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) may suspend its nuclear and missile activities in exchange for the suspension of large-scale U.S.-Republic of Korea (ROK) military exercises,” Wang told a press conference on the sidelines of the annual session of the National People’s Congress.

Wang said the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula is mainly between the DPRK and the United States, but China, as a next-door neighbor with a lips-and-teeth relationship with the Peninsula, is indispensable to the resolution of the issue.

FM Wang, ‘the lips’, undoubtedly transmitted an authorized message from North Korea:

“The offer is (still) on the table and China supports it.”

North Korea has made the very same offer in January 2015.

The Obama administration rejected it. North Korea repeated the offer in April 2016 and the Obama administration rejected it again. This March the Chinese government conveyed and supported the long-standing North Korean offer. The U.S. government, now under the Trump administration, immediately rejected it again. The offer, made and rejected three years in a row, is sensible. Its rejection only led to a bigger nuclear arsenal and to more missiles with longer reach that will eventually be able to reach the United States.

North Korea is understandably nervous each and every time the U.S. and South Korea launch their very large yearly maneuvers and openly train for invading North Korea and for killing its government and people. The maneuvers have large negative impacts on North Korea’s economy.

North Korea justifies its nuclear program as the economically optimal way to respond to these manoeuvres.

Each time the U.S. and South Korea launch their very large maneuvers, the North Korean conscription army (1.2 million strong) has to go into a high state of defense readiness. Large manoeuvres are a classic starting point for military attacks. The U.S.-South Korean manoeuvres are (intentionally) held during the planting (April/May) or harvesting (August) season for rice when North Korea needs each and every hand in its few arable areas. Only 17% of the northern landmass is usable for agriculture and the climate in not favorable. The cropping season is short. Seeding and harvesting days require peak labor.

The southern maneuvers directly threaten the nutritional self-sufficiency of North Korea. In the later 1990s they were one of the reasons behind a  severe famine. (Lack of hydrocarbons and fertilizer due to sanctions as well as a too rigid economic system were other main reasons.)

Its nuclear deterrent allows North Korea to reduce its conventional military readiness especially during the all-important agricultural seasons. Labor withheld from the fields and elsewhere out of military necessity can go back to work. This is now the official North Korean policy known as ‘byungjin‘. (Byungjin started informally in the mid 2000nds after U.S. President Bush tuned up his hostile policy towards North Korea – Chronology of U.S.-North Korean Nuclear and Missile Diplomacy)

A guaranteed end of the yearly U.S. maneuvers would allow North Korea to lower its conventional defenses without relying on nukes. The link between the U.S. manoeuvres and the nuclear deterrent North Korea is making in its repeated offer is a direct and logical connection.

The North Korean head of state Kim Jong-un has officially announced a no-first-use policy for its nuclear capabilities:

“As a responsible nuclear weapons state, our republic will not use a nuclear weapon unless its sovereignty is encroached upon by any aggressive hostile forces with nukes,” Kim told the Workers’ Party of Korea congress in Pyongyang. Kim added that the North “will faithfully fulfill its obligation for non-proliferation and strive for the global denuclearization.”

During the congress, as elsewhere, Kim Jong Un also emphasized (transcript, pdf, v. slow) the above described connection between nuclear armament and economic development. Summarized:

After decades of emphasizing military strength under his father, Korea is moving toward Kim’s “byongjin” — a two-pronged approach aimed at enhancing nuclear might while improving living conditions.

The byongjin strategy, despised by the Obama administration, has been successful:

What are the sources of [North Korea’s economic] growth? One explanation might be that less is now spent on the conventional military sector, while nuclear development at this stage is cheaper—it may only cost 2 to 3 percent of GNP, according to some estimates. Theoretically, byungjin is more “economy friendly” than the previous “songun” or military-first policy which supposedly concentrated resources on the military.

To understand why North Korea fears U.S. aggressiveness consider the utter devastation caused mostly by the U.S. during the Korea War:

Imperial Japan occupied Korea from 1905 to 1945 and tried to assimilate it. A nominal communist resistance under Kim Il-sung and others fought against the Japanese occupation. After the Japanese WWII surrender in 1945 the U.S. controlled and occupied the mostly agricultural parts of Korea below the arbitrarily chosen 38th parallel line. The allied Soviet Union controlled the industrialized part above the line. They had agreed on a short trusteeship of a united and independent country. In the upcoming cold war the U.S. retracted on the agreement and in 1948 installed a South Korean proxy dictatorship under Syngman Rhee. This manifested an artificial border the Koreans had not asked for and did not want. The communists still commanded a strong and seasoned resistance movement in the south and hoped to reunite the country. The Korea War ensued. It utterly destroyed the country. All of Korea was severely effected but especially the industrialized north which lost about a third of its population and all of its reasonably well developed infrastructure – roads, factories and nearly all of its cities.

Every Korean family was effected. Ancestor worship is deeply embedded in the Korean psyche and its collectivist culture. No one has forgotten the near genocide and no one in Korea, north or south, wants to repeat the experience.

The country would reunite if China and the U.S. (and Russia) could agree upon its neutrality. That will not happen anytime soon. But the continued danger of an “accidental” war in Korea would be much diminished if the U.S. would accept the North Korean offer – an end to aggressive behavior like threatening maneuvers against the north, in exchange for a verified stop of the northern nuclear and missile programs. North Korea has to insist on this condition out of sheer economic necessity.

The U.S. government and the “western” media hide the rationality of the northern offer behind the propaganda phantasm of “the volatile and unpredictable regime”.

But it is not Korea, neither north nor south, that is the “volatile and unpredictable” entity here.

Yesterday’s Day of the Sun / Juche 105 (the 105th birth anniversary of Kim Il-sung) parade in Pyongyang went along without a hitch and without interference from the U.S. side.

Several new types of missile carrying Transporter-Erector-Launcher vehicles (TELs) were shown. The three hour TV transmission is available here. The military equipment display starts around 2h14m; the nuclear capable carriers are seen from 2h20m onward.

An early-impression remark from The Diplomat: North Korea’s 2017 Military Parade Was a Big Deal. Here Are the Major Takeaways

Even though Pyongyang withheld from testing this weekend amid rumors of possible retaliation by the United States, North Korea is still looking to improve its missile know-how. Moreover, the long-dreaded ICBM flight test also might not be too far off now. Given the ever-growing number of TELs — both wheeled and tracked — North Korea may soon field nuclear forces amply large that a conventional U.S.-South Korea first strike may find it impossible to fully disarm Pyongyang of a nuclear retaliatory capability. That would give the North Korean regime what it’s always sought with its nuclear and ballistic missile program: an absolute guarantee against coercive removal.

The “absolute guarantee against coercive removal” would, in consequence, allow for much smaller conventional forces and less resources spend on the military. This again will enable faster economic development for the people in North Korea. The byongjin strategy will have reached its aim.

The original source of this article is Moon of Alabama

Africa:

Zimbabwe at 37: We are 'masters of our own destiny' – Mugabe

President Robert Mugabe

Zimbabwean President, Robert Mugabe, has said citizens are now masters of their own destiny thirty-seven years after attaining independence from the British.

The 93-year-old was speaking at the Harare National Stadium where the country was celebrating its 37th independence anniversary.

“Fellow Zimbabweans, now we enjoy the fruits of our independence and we can now call ourselves the masters of our own destiny,” he however cautioned, ‘‘We, however, need to be mindful that our assignment is not yet over.’‘

Despite the economic turmoil, political instability, and massive protests against the Mugabe regime, many Zimbabweans are celebrating the independence they gained on 18 April 1980.

He lighted the Independence flame before inspecting a guard of honour mounted by the security forces. The President addressed a wide range of issues during his speech, he touched on measures the government over the last three decades was undertaking to ease the plight of nationals.

He mourned recent natural disasters that led to the loss of life and property, promising that the state will undertake efforts to improve social amenities by constructing educational and health facilities across the country.

He lauded gains made in the energy sector and assured small-scale businesses of increased government support. The anticipated growth of the tourism sector was another area he highlighted.

‘‘We need to continue as true patriots and citizens to create a conducive environment for all regardless of political affiliation,’‘ he is quoted to have said.

The event was well attended by security chiefs, by school children and a large cross-section of citizens.

Opposition leaders and supporters have expressed disdain towards the celebration, calling for a commemoration rather than a celebration given the ‘hard times’ that Zimbabweans are living through.

“We commemorate and not celebrate because the stinking poverty around us and the extreme suffering of the people is not worth celebrating. Our current sad national predicament is not commensurate with the sacrifice we made as a nation in the brutal struggle for our independence,” leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC-T) party, Morgan Tsvangirai said in a statement.

Spokesperson for the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Jacob Mafume, also told local portal News Day that Zimbabweans have nothing to show for the independence being celebrated.

“We have so many years of so-called independence, yet Zimbabwe families are desperate and have nothing to show for all the years. The political independence is all but lost, as a number of laws make sure you can be taken to court for your beliefs and opinions, the irony being that those taken to court are the lucky ones, as the others are simply beaten or have food denied them,” he said.

Zimbabwe is due to hold its next presidential and parliamentary election in July 2018.

Source: Africanews

Land Equals Freedom

By Onyekachi Wambu

Africans have an obsession with land. And rightly so. At the heart of the liberation struggle was the issue of land and Africans understand its importance in the spiritual, political and economic sense. 

A discussion with an English colleague a few years ago was quite revealing. He felt that Africans over-obsessed about the land issue. He argued that in modern economic times, ideas, technology, capital and legal frameworks were far more important. But what about the link between collateral and capital? I inquired. For instance, if you followed the Sunday Times Rich List which has been depicting the 1,000 richest people in the UK since the 1970s, you would be able to appreciate the enduring importance of land ownership, even in so-called modern economies. 

Over the years, as my colleague rightly observed, different industries and their leading figures have made an appearance on the list. There was a time when, with a lot of innovation in music and modern retail, the owners of these companies made the top ten, then innovations in banking, finance, tech and mobile companies began to be seen, with their owners replacing the old innovators in the top ten.

Of interest, however, is that the one category of people who have never been out of the top ten despite the changes in industry, technology, fashion, etc are the huge British landowners like the Duke of Westminster and the Queen. The importance of land has remained constant during this period whilst other industries have come and gone. 

Africans understand this importance [of land] in the spiritual, political and economic sense. It is interesting for example, that the proper name for the Mau Mau is actually the Kenya Land and Freedom Army and in Zimbabwe the key issue for the liberation struggle was the issue of land. As Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe once noted about the country’s freedom struggle: “It was always about the land. It is today about the land, and it will always be about the land.”

So why the African obsession with land?

Mau Mau Gang

The Mau Mau were deliberately named the Land and Freedom Army, because African notions of freedom are inextricably linked to the land. There is a much-quoted saying: “People cannot eat freedom”. 

In my own Igbo community in Eastern Nigeria, the land or Ala was traditionally at the heart of the political economy of the people. A farming-based society structured itself and guaranteed that all blood-linked members of the community had access to a portion of communal land to work while alive. They did not own this land, which passed on death to their male descendants, or into communal ownership.

The elders who managed the allocation of the land were the political and judicial leaders of the community. In fact, the concept of a free person in Igbo culture, “an Amadi”, is a peer with land. In other words, as the Africans say, freedom is not an abstract concept. It cannot be separated from the capacity to make a livelihood. You need to be able to literally eat freedom. 

The social system that the Igbo created meant that within the beloved blood-linked community, there were no poor people, or beggars. Each blood-linked member had the potential to make a living.

The system did of course have its problems – what happens if you are not part of this community and don’t have access to land? What happens when members even of the blood-linked community suffer crop failures and are not able to reproduce their own livelihoods, or if they are lazy and do not want to work the land? If the definition of a free man is a person with land, then everybody else who is land-less is potentially a person of lower status and at the lowest end of this spectrum – a slave. 

Igbo land was at the heart of the Transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans. As African Remembrance Day was commemorated on 1 August, to remember the victims of that vile trade in humans, it was time for us to really ponder how we conceptualize the issues of freedom and human rights.

Source: New African||

CARIBBEAN REPARATIONS MOVEMENT MUST PUT CAPITALISM ON TRIAL

By Ajamu Nangwaya

From chattel slavery to the current period of neocolonial flag independence, the Caribbean labouring classes have yet to exercise substantive power over the political institutions that govern their lives. A system of popular assemblies with the capacity to challenge the authoritarian liberal capitalist democracies for power would be one of the best expressions of reparatory justice in the Caribbean.

Why is the reparations movement in the Anglophone Caribbean not putting capitalism on trial in its campaign to force British imperialism to provide financial compensation for its industrial and agricultural capitalists’ enslavement of Africans? To what extent is capitalism such a sacred spirit or god whose name should not be publicly called in order to avoid attracting its vindictive and punishing rebuke? Are the advocates of reparations truly convinced that British imperialism’s payment of financial compensation for the enslavement of Africans would end the economic marginalization of the labouring classes who are toiling under capitalist regimes throughout the region? Why are we willing to place racism or white supremacy in the dock but not its creator – capitalism?

On 17 December 2007, the United Nations’ General Assembly passed a resolution that made March 25 the annual commemorative International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade. This day should be used as a rallying point by people of good conscience to press the former major slaving states such as Britain, Denmark, France, Germany, Holland, Portugal, Russia, Spain and Sweden to pay reparations for their participation in the economic exploitation and racist dehumanization of enslaved Africans. The General Assembly’s initiative is an acknowledgement of the over fifteen million Africans who landed in the Americas and the over thirty million captives who died during the process of catching and delivering them into the Holocaust of Enslavement.

Capitalism and slavery in the Caribbean

A key goal of all yearly progressive remembrance activities in the Caribbean and elsewhere should be to educate or remind people of the fact that capitalism was the primary force behind the extraction of the labour power of enslaved Africans. Of equal importance is the need to etch into the consciousness of the public that white supremacy or racism was simply an ideological tool used by the capitalist enslavers and various European states to morally justify the enslavement of Africans. Racism was deployed by these early capitalists and their respective national states to mask the purely economic motivation behind the development of an enslaved labour force.

In the seminal and classic book Capitalism and Slavery that was written by the late historian and statesman Dr. Eric Williams, he states that the brutal, exploitative and exacting labour condition of white indentured workers served as the template for the institution of African enslavement or slavery:

“Here then is the origin of [African] slavery. The reason was economic, not racial; it had not to do with the color of the laborer but the cheapness of the laborer…. The features of the man, his hair, color and dentifrice, his “subhuman” characteristics so widely pleaded, were only later rationalizations to justify a simple economic fact: that the colonies needed and resorted to [African] labour because it was the cheapest and the best. This was not a theory, it was a practical conclusion deduced from the personal experience of the planter.”[1]

Williams asserts that slavery, as “basically an economic institution,” gave birth to racism. He further states that “Unfree labor in the New World was brown, white, black and yellow; Catholic, Protestant and pagan.” Racism or white supremacy is now an autonomous system of oppression that intersects with patriarchy and capitalism to create differing degrees of labour exploitation within the ranks of the working-class.

The point that should be centred in the minds of revolutionaries and radicals in the Caribbean is that capitalism, the architect of racism, is still negatively impacting the lives of the working-class descendants of enslaved Africans as well as the societies that were built by their exploited labour. The late revolutionary, organic intellectual and historian Dr. Walter Rodney convincingly argues and documents in his ground-breaking text How Europe Underdeveloped Africa that capitalism was the main contributor to the stagnation of Africa’s economic development (see Chapter 4 – “Europe and the Roots of Africa’s Underdevelopment – To 1885).

Rodney’s indictment of capitalism and its retardation of the potentiality of the greater portion of humanity (the labouring classes) should be duly noted by the reparations activists or advocates who are playing footsie with capitalism:

“… the peasants and workers of Europe (and eventually the inhabitants of the whole world) paid a huge price so that the capitalists could make their profits from the human labour that always lies behind the machine. That contradicts other facets of development, especially viewed from the standpoint of those who suffered and still suffer to make capitalist achievements possible. This latter group are the majority of [humanity]. To advance, they must overthrow capitalism; and that is why at the moment capitalism stands in the path of further human development. To put it another way, the social (class) relations of capitalism are now outmoded, just as slave and feudal relations became outmoded in their time.”[2]

Dr. Hilary Beckles, Vice-Chancellor of the University of the West Indies, has written an excellent and easily comprehended book, Britain’s Black Debt: Reparations for Caribbean Slavery and Native Genocide. It is a must read for people who would like to understand the basis of the claim for reparations from Britain for its role in the enslavement of Africans and genocide against Indigenous peoples in the Caribbean.

Unfortunately, Britain’s Black Debt has placed the misbegotten child of capitalism – racism- on trial, but not the inherently exploitative and soul destroying parent – capitalism. If we are going to throw the book at capitalism for chattel slavery, we are morally and politically obligated to do the same for the wage slavery of capitalism under which the Caribbean working-class is currently being exploited.

Caribbean states and reparations

Today, we are witnessing the unconscionable, but politically understandable behaviour of the neocolonial states in the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) in divorcing their call for reparations from measures aimed at throwing capitalism into the cesspool of history. These member states of CARICOM are all committed to the implementation of social, economic and political policies that have enshrined capitalism in the region.

They are interested in reparations as a way to deal with their balance of payment, budgetary and development challenges as seen in the call for debt cancellation, technology transfer and a formal apology and not statements of regrets in this regional body’s Ten Point Action Plan for Reparatory Justice.

While these governments are acting like capitalism was not the real culprit behind the economic exploitation of enslaved Africans, progressive civil society groups and individuals who are advocating for reparations should not be silent or conveniently forgetful of this historical fact. We should expect the liberal petite bourgeois or middle-class reparations advocates to not indict capitalism. Their class interests and aspirations are totally immersed and dependent on the continued existence of capitalism. The petite bourgeois elements, unlike the labouring classes, display high levels of class consciousness and the former group tends to allow its class interests to guide its thoughts and actions.

However, radical and revolutionary reparations activists and supporters have no business not putting capitalism on the stand in their activism and general public education initiatives. As political activists who are committed to ending inequity and exploitation that are rooted in the social, economic, political and cultural structures of society’s principal institutions, they should know that capitalist economic relations and practices are a major source of oppression.

As such, they ought to educate the public on the reality that the capitalism that exploited the labour of enslaved Africans is the same capitalism that exploited them as wage slaves after the end of slavery. Capitalism is still exploiting Caribbean workers and taking the lion’s share of the profit that comes from the labour power of the working-class.

CARICOM’s ten-point reparations proposal is implicitly using the societies in the global North as the model of social and economic development. The mature capitalist societies in North America and Europe are characterized by widespread income inequality and concentration of wealth as well as the political marginalization of the working-class. How can such societies in good conscience serve as the standard of social, political and economic development for the Caribbean?

Reparatory justice for social transformation and dual power

In the Caribbean, the revolutionaries and radicals must advance a reparations agenda that demands Britain/Europe’s financial compensation for the economic exploitation and racist dehumanization of enslaved Africans. It has been estimated that Britain’s reparations payment to Africans in the Caribbean would be in the region of £7.5 trillion.[3] The £20 million paid to the enslavers of Africans after the 1838 abolition of slavery in the British Empire would be worth about £200 billion in today’s currency.[4]

The proposals below ought to be a part of the Caribbean reparations movement’s programme and be seen as a part of the general class struggle. The neocolonial Caribbean states do not need the immediate payment of reparations to undertake some of these demands. The social movements in the region must organize around these demands as a part of a dual power strategy or infrastructure of dissent or anarchist transfer cultures[5]:

Promote labour self-management and economic democracy: The governments in the Caribbean must capitalize national and regional worker self-management and entrepreneurship Funds from allotments out of the respective annual national budgets. These funds would be controlled by progressive civil society forces. These financial resources would be used to finance and support worker cooperatives and other labour self-managed companies as well as the work of the support organizations and structures that are necessary to ensure the viability of the workers’ ownership, control and management of their workplace.

It would be the duty of the revolutionary and radical organizers to ensure that a critical mass of the worker-cooperators embrace labour self-management as a part of the class struggle and the fight for socialism. The worker’s democratic control of the workplace combined with popular assemblies would be the laboratory or training ground for the self-management of the future stateless, classless and self-organized (communist) society.

Include labour self-management in school curriculum: The governments in the Caribbean should restructure the curriculum and place at its centre knowledge of the oppressive nature of chattel slavery and wage slavery as systems of labour extraction and exploitation. Of equal importance is the strategic need to adequately educate the students in primary, secondary and tertiary educational institutions about workers’ control, ownership and management of the workplace.

Further, the students would be equipped with the knowledge, skills and attitudes to collectively self-manage worker cooperatives and other worker self-managed companies. We must challenge the public education curriculum that prepares learners, at public expense, to work in capitalist enterprises. The worker self-management ideas and practices should be integrated throughout the curriculum.

Develop comprehensive land reform programme: According to  Tony Weis in the paper “Restructuring and Redundancy: The Impacts and Illogic of Neoliberal Agricultural Reforms in Jamaica”, “Jamaica’s landscape still bears the scars of the most ferocious form of agricultural production ever devised, as plantations kept their vice-like grip on the best land after Emancipation in 1838, with all subsequent distribution programmes only ever acting on the margins of these inhumanly constructed yet sacrosanct institutions.”[6] The preceding state of affairs is essentially the situation in the rest of the Anglophone Caribbean.

The governments in the Caribbean must undertake a comprehensive land reform programme that puts flat, arable land in the hands of the labouring classes. Enslaved Africans and indentured South Asians and the Indigenous peoples worked the land and their descendants must now exercise stewardship and control over it.

In order for them to take land out of the capitalist speculative market and to end the idea of the ownership of land by individuals, these governments must create the legislative framework for the establishment of community land trust (CLT). CLTs are structures that are used to protect land from the rise or fall in the value of land based on speculation or the whims and fancies of capitalist demand and supply of land and housing. The access to land should be based on the right of collective use or usufructuary rights and not the right of private ownership. Each generation should be the steward of land and not its owners as under capitalism.

Create a cooperative housing programme: The condition of a large proportion of the housing stock in the Caribbean is an assault on human decency, especially for those who live in urban squatter settlements or overcrowded, ill-repaired housing in urban and rural communities. The state must create national funding programmes to support the development and maintenance of cooperative housing by the people through their organizations.

Cooperative housing is a way to engender popular, democratic and collective control and management over the housing by the people who live in these units and to undermine the idea of housing as a tradeable commodity. The members of cooperative housing would have security of tenure but would not be able to pass on the property to their heirs.

Establish working-class friendly labour laws: The system of chattel slavery in the Caribbean and the rest of the Americas was a very vile form of labour exploitation. The slave masters did not simply exercise power over the labour power and the fruit of the labour (profit) of the enslaved African workforce. These capitalists also owned the enslaved Africans.

The brutal legacy of exploitation of African workers continued after Emancipation in 1838. In the Anglophone Caribbean of today, progressive organizations ought to develop broad national and regional campaigns to force these neocolonial governments to create worker-friendly labour laws that make it easier for workers to join or form trade unions. Severe or prohibitive fines must be levied against employers who violate the rights of workers to form or join trade unions. It is hypocritical of governments to demand reparations from British imperialism for slavery, while facilitating the exploitation of workers through laws that titled against the power of workers in the workforce.

The rate of unionization is very low in the Caribbean and it must become a priority of progressive social movement organizations, socialist organizations, the revolutionary petite bourgeoisie and trade unions to push for legislation that will give workers a greater level of bargaining power in the workplace-based class struggle.

Establish popular, democratic and horizontal assemblies of the oppressed: The revolutionary and radical forces in the Caribbean’s reparations movement must work with other progressive forces throughout society to establish a federated system of popular, democratic and horizontal assemblies of the oppressed. These assemblies would function as the direct democratic structures of political self-management that seek to approximate the communist self-organizing concept of “the administration of things and not the governance of people.”

The assemblies would be the local, regional and national organs through which the labouring classes discuss, plan and determine their economic and social priorities. The masses would implement their main concerns through their alternative and oppositional institution as well as organize and impose them on existing and domination economic, social, cultural and political institution. In this contestation for power, the people’s organizations would use all available and ethical means to advance their liberation.

Perry Mars documents in his book Ideology and Change: The Transformation of the Caribbean Left that a section of the The Left in the Caribbean has a tradition of using or advocating the deployment of assemblies to connect with the people: “What these parties have in common is their strong advocacy of what are called variously ‘people’s parliament’ or ‘people’s assembly’ representing mass democratic participation in grass roots self organizations.”[7]

Further, The Left sees assemblies as political instruments that compensate for the fact that the liberal capitalist democracies in the region are not responsive or represent the needs of the people. Assemblies should not be used as consultative or information-sharing bodies by nationalist and socialist revolutionaries or radicals.

These political assemblies are supposed to be proactive and positive structures that familiarise the people with the idea and practice of shaping all decisions that impact their lives. Mars notes that in the Caribbean “The problem with the ‘people’s assembly’ is that the implementation does not necessarily eliminate the tendencies towards political centralization and elitism as far as leadership of the movement is concerned.”[8]

From the period of chattel slavery to the current period of neocolonial flag independence, the Caribbean labouring classes have yet to exercise substantive power over the political institutions that govern their lives. A system of popular assemblies with the capacity to challenge the authoritarian liberal capitalist democracies for power would be the one of the best expressions of reparatory justice in the Caribbean.

Conclusion

The struggle for reparations in the Caribbean should become a site of the class struggle and organizing the people for socialism or communism. Capitalism must be put on trial for aiding and abetting the enslavement of Africans and genocide against the Indigenous peoples.

The proposals that are outlined above for adoption by the Caribbean reparations will not become a reality in the absence of national campaigns that organize the people into their self-organized class-based and other popular organizations. We are seeking to build a counterhegemonic force or alternative power bloc to contest the existing forces of domination and to advance the long-term struggle of putting them out of business.

The neocolonial governments have jumped in front of the reparations bandwagon and are trying to set the agenda. It is incumbent on the popular forces to organize the people in order to wrest the agenda setting initiative from the state and impose their programme of action on the state through the organizing of the labouring classes and other oppressed groups within its ranks.

It is critically necessary for the organizers who are organizing the people from below to do everything possible to utilize all available opportunity to build the capacity of the oppressed to challenge and undermine the existing white supremacist, patriarchal and capitalist political order. It is for this reason that a dual power strategy must build the embryonic economic, social and political structures of the future socialist society, while engaging and contesting the existing institutions of power.

It is in this light that the development of worker self-management over their workplaces and the establishment of a system of popular assemblies as the seat of working-class political power become necessary. The reparations movement can play an important catalytic role in helping to ideologically prepare the people for the completion of the Second Emancipation in the Caribbean and the rest of the Americas.

* Ajamu Nangwaya, Ph.D., is a writer, organizer and educator. Ajamu is a lecturer in the Institute of Caribbean Studies at the University of the West Indies.

Source Pambazuka

[1] Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery, (London: Andre Deutsch, 1964), 18-19. Available online at: https://urbanartiphax.com/ebooks/files/Eric-Williams-Capitalism-Slavery.pdf

[2] Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, (Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press, 1974), 10. Available online at: abahlali.org/files/3295358-walter-rodney.pdf

[3] Hilary Beckles, Britain’s Black Debt: Reparations for Caribbean Slavery and Native Genocide, (Kingston: University of the West Indies Press, 2013), 175

[4] Ibid., 144.

[5] Jeff Shantz, Re-thinking Revolution: A Social Anarchist Perspective, Philosophers for Change, Accessed on April 6, 2017, https://philosophersforchange.org/2012/03/07/re-thinking-revolution-a-so.... Shantz is opposed to using the concept “dual power” but his preference for “infrastructure of dissent” or “anarchist transfer cultures” is not a variance with a dual power strategy that focuses on self-organization of the working-class and oppressed identity groups within that class.

[6] Tony Weis in the paper “Restructuring and Redundancy: The Impacts and Illogic of Neoliberal Agricultural Reforms in Jamaica”, Journal of Agrarian Change, 4, no. 4, (October 2004): 463.

[7] Perry Mars, Ideology and Change: The Transformation of the Caribbean Left, (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1998), 113.

[8] Ibid., 113.