NPP’s VICTORY: Aftershocks of Peaceful Transition

H.E President Nana Akufo Addo

By Cornelius Adedze.

At the January 7 inauguration of Nana Akufo-Addo as the 5th President of Ghana's Fourth Republic there was an important yet unintended illustration of why the fuss about Ghana's peaceful transition. After Akufo-Addo's swearing in and the speeches, various African Presidents and leaders of government delegations present queued to congratulate Ghana's new President and in the process offered a kaleidoscope of the worthy, the dubious, the troubling and the illegitimate foundations of the power of African governments.

The guest of honour Cote d'Ivoire's Alassane Ouattara attended despite a mutiny by soldiers which offered reminders of his route to power and continued uncertainties in his country. There was Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea, in power since he ousted his uncle in 1979 and who runs the country like a family business and tolerates no dissent.

Also in the queue were Ali Bongo of Gabon, Faure Gnassingbe of Togo, disputed successors to their autocratic fathers. At the other end of the spectrum were Senegal's MackySall and Nigeria's Muhammadu Buhari.

On the home front, the euphoria of electoral victory by the opposition New Patriotic Party, NPP, for the second time since Ghana's return to multiparty rule in 1992 seems to have, momentarily, masked the many challenges the country faces. It was a great sigh of relief when the elections not only successfully came off but also ended peacefully despite the numerous challenges and near escalation of violence that characterized the campaign and the sporadic violence recorded in some polling stations during the elections. Even as political observers praised Ghana for peaceful elections and transition to a new government, developments following the elections highlight the many challenges that Ghana shares with other Africa countries which need to be address for the consolidating and deepening of a democratic culture.

In addition to the economic hardships facing many Ghanaians, the NPP's victory was aided by public perceptions of widespread corruption and nepotism, poor management of the economy and the sheer arrogance of the political appointees of the defeated National Democratic Congress (NDC) government. This has generated expectations of better performance from the new government. High among these are jobs and improvements in economic conditions, free secondary school education, reduced taxes, lower electricity tariffs, and a government ready, willing and able to deal ruthlessly with corruption. These are but some of the promises made before the elections by then opposition NPP.

The smooth transition of power has been marred somewhat by suspected grassroots supporters of the party who have been at their rampaging best driving out managers and workers, believed to be sympathizers of the defeated, National Democratic Congress (NDC) party, from toll booths, public toilets and other public offices like National Health Insurance Authority and the Youth Employment Agency. All these took place as the security agencies, the police especially, looked on helpless, even as some of the leaders of these activities, brazenly, carried out the unlawful evictions in broad daylight or justified their actions in the media. Some have attributed the seeming inaction of the security agencies to the fear of commanders who rightly or wrongly believed any attempt to rein in supporters of a victorious political party may lead to punitive actions against them through victimization by political authorities.

The government itself at the higher levels continued with the sacking of heads and other high level staff of public and state institutions, replacing them with party stalwarts or cronies. Among those sacked include head of the National Communications Authority, the Ghana Investment Promotion Authority, COCOBOD (the marketing board of the country's highest export earner, cocoa) and some security heads. This has become a pattern of post- elections political dividends payoff where every electoral cycle change of government goes with replacement of public officials. High unemployment and patronage seem to be providing the triggers of these actions. Others talk of retaliation as presumed supporters of the NPP were at the receiving end after the NDC won the elections in 2008. For some these reprisals represent a throwback to the days of coups d’états, when all hell broke loose and appointments were terminated haphazardly and continuity in public administration was undermined. For others still, these are just ways of paying back some stalwarts and activists of the party for their contribution to the electoral victory.

Table: Approved and Recommended Salary levels for Article 71 Office holders (GHC)

Office holder	*Appr	#Recom.	Appr	Recom	Appr.	Recom	Appr.	Recom	Appr	Recom
	2016	2016	2015	2015	2014	2014	2013	2013	2012	2012
MP	19,430	13,686	17,663	13,364	16,057	13,049	14,598	12,742	14,598	12,742
Speaker	24,287	17,791	22,079	17,372	20,072	16,963	18,247	16,564	18,247	16,564
President	30,359	22,809	27,599	20,865	25,090	19,087	22,809	17,460	22,809	15,972

The continued creation of new ministries and re-designation of others with every change of government reared its head again. Some of these are a repeat of earlier ministries created by the first NPP government (2001-2008) but scrapped by the NDC government (2009-2016). Such ministries as, Ministry for Railways Development, when there is a Ministry of Transport, Ministry of Regional Re-organisation and Mobilisation, the Ministry of Inner City and Zongo Development, when there is a ministry of Local Government and Rural Development, a ministry of Monitoring and Evaluation as well as the post of Senior Minister.

Commenting on the issue, Prof. Ransford Gyapong, of the department of Political Science, University of Ghana, Legon, said, 'By the current arrangement there will be a Chief of staff, an Executive Secretary to the President and a Senior Minister. This is duplication of roles that can create some confusion.' This more likely to feed into the perception that governance in Ghana has become like the creation of 'job for the boys', an attempt to ensure party members get their share of the spoils of political victory. A possible recipe for chaos and invariably a drag on the overburdened coffers of the country as each appointment goes with its financial and logistical arrangements.

A satirical online publication, Yesiyesi, put the situation thus, “The new government led by Nana AkufoAddo will have a new ministry to oversee the creation of more jobs for friends and other party functionaries. The new Ministry for Strategic Development of Jobs for the Boys has been tasked with the development of new and innovation ways of splitting up existing ministries and creating a multitude of needless bureaucracy. An official statement said the new ministry is in line with the president's promise of insisting on “value for money” by ensuring that all his campaign funders are able to recoup their investments” (yesiyesighana.com, January 31,2017

Management of government information

Conflicting information and public verbal spats between members of the transition teams of the outgoing and incoming governments also raised some hairs. Vice-president, Dr. MahamaduBawumia's stoked the fires further with his announcement that they had just discovered that 7bn could not be accounted for by the NDC government. Spokesperson for the NDC, former deputy Finance minister, Cassiel Ato Forson derided the Vice-President's accusations saying 'the amount in question was the result of a reform on government contracts and expenditures which formed part of the Ghana Integrated Financial Management System (GIFMIS) project' and were reported in the handing over notes of the Transition Team. He further stated that 'the project, which the new government was expected to continue implementing, was covered in the new Public Financial Management Act under the Budget Responsibility provision'.

Meanwhile, as the supposed misunderstanding between outgoing and incoming governments went on, retirement packages for former officials attracted no disputes from any quarter possibly because both parties stand to benefit from them. Not even a whimper was head from either quarter and Members of Parliament would go home with their ex-gratia just like other former government officials. No arguments here. These political office holders are going home with back-dated increases in salaries from 2013 as well as 4 months' salary for each of the 4 years served. What this means is that between 2013 and 2016, the percentage increase in nominal wage for the President is 74 percent, Members of Parliament, 54 percent and the Speaker of Parliament, 56 percent when workers on government payroll got 30 percent over the period. These approved rates fly in the face of the recommended rates by the EduBuandoh Committee that was set up to determine emoluments for Article 71 office holders (political office holders from the President to ministers, parliamentarians and others defined under Article 71 of the Constitution etc). Although the Committee's recommendations were initially accepted by outgoing President Mahama, they were roundly rejected by Parliament which in the end carried the day. Auction of fairly used government cars to politicians at giveaway prices especially when they lose power is another exchange that the two parties are good at without any qualms. Top range cross country vehicles and saloon cars are mostly the target. Public lands have not suffered less as they are 'appropriated' by politicians.

The two major political parties, the NDC and NPP who have so far rotated power between them seem to know how to 'share the spoils' of political power when it comes to taking care of themselves even as the citizenry is told there is not

enough money to go round.

 Bribery in the Legislature

 Long- held public suspicion of bribery in Parliament was given a lease of life when some members of the legislature accused others of attempting to bribe them. A ministerial nominee was alleged to have attempted bribing members of the Appointments Committee of Parliament to ease his approval process. Some members of the minority on the committee raised the issue when they said the supposed bribe was offered them and they rejected it. Once more, the denials and hot exchanges between the NPP and the NDC (and even within the NDC, where the Minority Chief Whip, who supposedly was the conduit of the bribe to the minority committee members initially, denied) have characterized the debate on the matter. The appointment of a 5-member committee by Parliament to look into the issue has however, been rubbished by some groups as an attempt by Parliament to cover up as it cannot be a judge in its own case. Calls have therefore gone for an independent body to conduct investigations into the matter. At the heart of the matter is transparency, fairness and rule of law, the very tenets of democracy that Ghana's legislature seem to be losing sight of in this case. Even as the president in his inaugural address assured that Ghana would under his leadership see a true separation of powers, this seems to have been lost on the legislature.

Predictably the election defeat has triggered soul searching and arguments in the NDC, now the main opposition party. The margin of defeat in both the Presidential and parliamentary elections was unprecedented with the party losing as many as 50 seats in the legislature. The party leadership has set up a committee to investigate why the party lost the elections. This move will buy the different factions time to plan their next moves but a struggle for control of the party ahead of the next elections in four years is inevitable and has already broken out. There are conflicting signals about what ousted president John Mahama will do but the scale of his loss to Akufo-Addo may have fatally undermined the prospects for another run for the top job. Ex-President Jerry John Rawlings, reportedly marginalised by the Mahama bloc has already signaled an intention to return as a key influence on the NDC's future. Speaking on the 35th anniversary of his 1981 coup Rawlings, who sees himself as the embodiment of the party's values, blamed the party's election defeat on the corruption and arrogance of Mahama and his government. The intra NDC power struggle is certain to intensify and other factions will show their hands.

NDC members are currently united in a defensive posture as the NPP government seeks to reinforce the legitimacy conferred by its election victory with disclosures about the failings and misdeeds of the Mahama government. The new government intends to create a new office of Special Prosecutor to deal with corruption, though it is yet not clear how it will fit in with existing offices and institutions with a mandate to tackle corruption. No doubt many misdeeds will come to light. However, now, as in past post-election transitions there is a troubling and difficult challenge of how the new regime deals with the infractions of officials of its predecessor. Should it go for short term political gain of dramatic gestures drawn from the autocratic culture of Ghana's past military regimes, which feed red meat to its support base or take a considered, less populist, approach which reinforces the processes of rule of law and democratic accountability? Wittingly or unwittingly both the NPP and the NDC have shown a preference for the traditions left by the soldiers, thereby ensuring that a gray zone of power play, marked by both legal and dubious use of power by election victors continues to bubble below the peaceful surface that the wider world keeps its narrow gaze on.

Editorial

AFTERSHOCKS

In this edition of The Insight is an analysis published in the African Agenda headed “Aftershocks of Peaceful Transition”.

It deals with the many difficulties which have confronted the Akufo-Addo government since it assumed power in January.

Many of the problems are self-created and can only be solved by President Akufo-Addo and his government.

First, it is important for the Government to make realistic promises which can be kept and supporters of the Government must be made to understand that Ghana belongs to all Ghanaians irrespective of their party affiliations.

The realisation that the majority of Ghanaians are unable to make ends meet and that Government has a responsibility to close the gap between those who have more than they need and those who have nothing.

The Akufo-Addo Government can succeed but it has to work hard and accept the concrete reality of our people.

Local News: 

Pass before you enjoy Free SHS – Napo

Matthew Opoku Prempeh

By Kwame Acheampong

Only students who pass their examination will have the opportunity to enjoy the government’s Free SHS policy in September, the Education Minister has revealed.

According to Mathew Opoku Prempeh, students who fail at the basic education level will not benefit from the policy as government readies to roll it out.

The Free SHS policy was a major campaign promise of the Akufo-Addo-led NPP in the 2016 polls. The government had given the indication that every Ghanaian student at the secondary level will benefit from the Policy.

But speaking to Morning Starr host Francis Abban, the Manhyia MP, who failed to mention what will constitute a pass mark for students, noted that the policy will be merit-based and not wholesale for students.

“Since people want to benefit, they will employ their children to study very hard to pass the exams, because there is still a pass there. It is not how the free will be to enjoy, but you have to pass an exam and indeed to study, so let’s get that one done first.

“If you fail an exam how can you benefit from something free; I am surprised. Even now it’s not everyone that gets the chance to go in even with what they pay because if you fail, you fail. How can somebody who has failed progress. Even when COCOBOD is giving scholarships, don’t you have to pass to benefit, for those whose children don’t pass, do they get scholarships?” he said.

Meanwhile, the minister also revealed that the government will explore other creative means to fund the policy since they believe education is key for the development of the country’s human resource.

Source:StarrFMonline.com

Govt’s inconsistency with Free SHS policy worrying

Franklin Cudjoe, of IMANI Ghana

By Mohammed Awal

Policy think tank IMANI Ghana has heavily chastised the Akufo-Addo government for being incoherent in its quest to implement its much-touted free SHS policy.

Barely three months to the implementation of the policy, Education Minister, Mathew Opoku Prempeh, has disclosed in an exclusive interview with Francis Abban, the host of Morning Starr that only students who pass their BECE examination will have the opportunity to enjoy the policy.

He said “Since people want to benefit, they will employ their employ their children to study very hard to pass the exams, because there is still a pass there. It is not how the free will be to enjoy, but you have to pass an exam and indeed to study, so let’s get that one done first.

“If you fail an exam how can you benefit from something free; I am surprised. Even now it’s not everyone that gets the chance to go in even with what they pay because if you fail, you fail. How can somebody who has failed progress. Even when COCOBOD is giving scholarships, don’t you have to pass to benefit, for those whose children don’t pass, do they get scholarships?”

The Minister’s comment is a clear departure from President Akufo-Addo’s unambiguous stance of making sure every Ghanaian of school going age enjoys the policy.

Speaking Saturday February 2, 2017 at the 60th  anniversary celebration of Okuapeman School, the President said “without any equivocation, without any reservation, without any doubt to take Ghana to the stage where public SHS education will be free for every Ghanaian child.”

Commenting on the development Tuesday in an interview with Naa Dedei Tettey on the Starr Midday News, the President of IMANI Ghana, Franklin Cudjoe, said the minister’s comment “is an example of the inconsistencies in policy making, policy planning and implementation. We have been asking for a proper policy guidelines. Some sort of a printed paper on this matter for quite a while now…as I understand, it is still in focus.”

He added “What the minister clearly stated ordinarily, you would say makes sense because in any case…people who are probably needy and brilliant may be supported. But, you see if you capture your comments to the extent that people have to pass first before to enjoy, then presumably the method has changed anyway.”

Source:StarrFMonline

Africa:

America’s Imperial War Drive and the Contemporary African Crisis

By Abayomi Azikiwe

Any reasonable observer of the United States ruling class discourse during April 2017 realizes that the imperialist war drive is still a dominant theme.

Many people were quite skeptical if not disbelieving of the campaign rhetoric of current President Donald J. Trump when he hinted at lessening tensions with the Russian Federation over the wars in Syria and eastern Ukraine. These decisions to embark upon a militarist approach to foreign policy is well entrenched in history.

After all the indigenous Native peoples were driven off their lands and systematic genocide remain the order of the day in light of the situation at Standing Rock as a stark example. Of course African people having been kidnapped into slavery and super-exploited for two-and-a-half centuries through involuntary servitude by the purportedly “enlightened and civilized” British, French, Spanish, Danish and Dutch ruling classes were essential in the transformation of the economic system of the West from feudalism and mercantilism into industrial capitalism and imperialism.

The Atlantic Slave Trade not only created the economic conditions for the rise of mass production utilizing steam technology, large-scale agricultural commodity exports and raw material extraction, it developed more effective means of generating surplus value through the advent of the mining outposts and plants where scientific manufacturing systems such as Taylorism and Fordism took capitalism to unprecedented levels of wealth generation. Although capitalism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries expanded the capacity to generate wealth, it only intensified the contradictions between labor and the owners of production.

It was the global triangular trading system of slave labor, agricultural commodification and export for profit which fueled the economic imperative of colonial imperialism. Slavery was abolished beginning in the early decades of the 19th century only to pave the way for a more effective process of exploitation. Even though workers in the colonies both foreign and domestic were considered emancipated in fact they were enslaved through their dependence on meager wages needed to maintain an existence after the destruction of more traditional forms of farming and small scale commodity production.

The colonial project in the British colonies of the northeast and southeast as mentioned above was based on genocide and enslavement. The contradictions between the ruling classes of Britain and what became known as the U.S. was resolved through the so-called Revolutionary War, which some historian now realize was in actuality a counter-revolution to preserve chattel slavery, and the War of 1812, which solidified the quest for American dominance over areas south of the Canadian border.

Contemporary Instances of Imperialist Destabilization Efforts in Africa: The Case of Cameroon

For the purpose of this discussion let us first look at the current situation in the West African state of Cameroon. This is a country that garners almost no news reporting in the U.S. due to what is perceived as a lack of strategic interests.

Nonetheless, over the last several months a mounting struggle across the country has paralyzed the ability of the public sector to function in an efficient manner. The Cameroon crisis is almost completely framed by corporate media reports as a conflict between the French and English speaking regions of the nation. Two provinces are dominated by those who speak English while the other eight are largely under the influence of French language and culture.

Teachers and civil servants went out on strike late last year in the English speaking provinces due to policies initiated by the government of President Paul Biya, who has been in office now for 35 years. Lawyers and legal workers objected to the imposition of French speaking judges in their court systems which created an untenable situation.

Later teachers in the English speaking provinces complained of the inadequacy of educational materials mandated by the French-oriented regime. Moreover, teachers were not being paid for their work and these factors precipitated a general strike among both educators and legal workers.

The Biya government responded by imposing draconian measures such as the termination of internet services in an attempt to make it more difficult to organize resistance. Just recently the government announced that it is reinstating connectivity to these provinces in the western region of the country.

This labor unrest eventually spread to the French speaking areas as well. Teachers in the other provinces went out on strike saying that in many cases they have not received a paycheck in as much as five years. Many teachers who graduated college and were hired as educators had not been able to collect one dime for their services.

Despite the efforts of the government and business press to frame the conflict as purely a sectional one, stripping it of its class and anti-imperialist dimensions, this has not been wholly successful. One of the leading football stars of Cameroon, the champions of the Africa Cup, openly expressed solidarity with the people of the English speaking regions of the country.

Nevertheless, how did this situation develop? Africa was subjected to imperialist divisions during the late 19th century.

There is almost no appreciation or acknowledgement of the role of Germany under Otto von Bismarck in the imperialist partitioning of the continent. The fact of the matter is the Berlin Conference was held there due to the important role of Germany in the colonial project.

In a series of three articles published recently by this writer, I have outlined the role of Germany in its genocidal and exploitative role during the late 19th and early 20th centuries in Africa. These articles dealt with the demand by the Herero people of Namibia, formerly known as South West Africa, for the payment of reparations stemming from the genocide against the Namibian people during 1904-1907. Tens of thousands of Africans were slaughtered, forcibly removed from their traditional lands, starved and worked death simply because they revolted against the imposition of German colonialism in the final years of the 1800s and the first decade of the 1900s.

Also the Germans were involved in East Africa through the colonization of the area now known as Tanzania, then Tanganyika, along with Rwanda and Burundi. In Tanzania, the Maji Maji Revolt of 1905-07 against German imperialism prompted another genocidal wave of violence resulting in untold numbers of deaths through brute force, dislocation and systematic starvation. The people of Tanzania are now demanding reparations from the government in Berlin which is seeking to enhance its trade and political relationships with independent African states.

Cameroon was as well a German colony during this same period. Atrocities were committed through forced labor initiatives utilized to build railroads and agricultural commodity production. Those Africans who refused to cooperate were tortured and killed in the thousands.

All of these historical developments occurred decades prior to the holocaust in Germany, Poland and Hungary of the 1930s and 1940s under the Third Reich of Adolph Hitler. Yet the consciousness of people in the West, and even within Africa itself, is almost nil in this regard.

During the course of World War I, Germany lost all of their colonies in Africa. The imposition of the Treaty of Versailles negotiated by President Woodrow Wilson and the victorious European imperialist powers in the aftermath of the First World War did not bring peace to the globe but set the stage for the rise of fascism and the advent of World War II.

However, there has been no recognition of the colonial history of Cameroon in evaluating the contemporary political impasse. It is important to evoke the anti-imperialist and revolutionary national liberation history of Cameroon.

In the aftermath of WWII, there was a wave of anti-imperialist fervorinternationally. Africa did not escape this phenomenon. The Union of the Peoples of Cameroon (UPC) sought immediate national independence during the 1950s. Having met vicious repression on the part of the French colonialists, they embarked upon an armed struggle. Consequently, the UPC was targeted for liquidation by Paris.

Two of the leading figures in the UPC, Ruben Um Nyobe and Felix Roland Moumie were assassinated. Nyobe was killed on the battlefield in 1958. Moumie was later poisoned in Switzerland by the French secret police in 1960. The political forces which became the official government after independence in the early 1960s were willing to compromise with imperialism. Although Cameroon was further divided through the independence process, officially it is not supposed to be a francophone state.

Consequently, it is important to look beyond the headlines in order to understand the post-colonial conflicts in Africa. As historical and dialectical materialists we must uncover the truth through an examination of the social forces motivating existing contradictions both within the society as well as external influences.

Trump Escalates Imperialist War in Somalia 

Late last month, President Trump issued another executive order on Somalia. The essence of the initiative was to purportedly relax restrictions on carrying out aerial strikes against Al-Shabaab fighters who have been in a war with the U.S. and European Union (EU) supported government in Mogadishu.

Washington has a long history of military and intelligence interference in the internal affairs of Somalia. In the last decade, the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has engaged in targeted assassinations, training programs for the reconstructed of the Somalian National Army and the embedding of U.S. personnel within local state structures.

These policy efforts are bolstered by the presence of flotillas of warships off the coast of Somalia in the Gulf of Aden, one of the most lucrative shipping lanes in the world. The situation in Somalia manifested by the naval presence of the Pentagon and the EU in the Gulf of Aden is closely related to the imperialist war in Yemen, Syria and the entire region of West Asia.

The previous administrations of Presidents George W. Bush, Jr. and Barack Hussein Obama engaged in aggressive military and covert operations in Somalia. Since 2007, U.S. and British warplanes have staged bombing operations in various regions of the Horn of Africa state.

Therefore, the proclamation by Trump is merely a disingenuous approach to continuing the already existing war policy in the Horn of Africa. Additional Pentagon troops are being deployed to Somalia in a supposed bolstering of training operations in support of the recently-elected administration in Mogadishu.

In fact the role of the U.S. in Somalia over the last twenty five years has done more ensure that no real political settlement is achieved in the country. When any semblance of national unity and social stability is achieved it is immediately attacked by Washington. This holds true for successive Republican and Democratic administrations.

Somalia is an oil-rich nation where leading multi-national petroleum firms are engaging in drilling. Its natural resource wealth combined with the strategic waterways off the coast makes the nation an important focal point of imperialist intrigue on the African continent extending through the so-called Middle East.

Nevertheless, despite all of the natural wealth and imperialist funding of military operations, including the stationing of 22,000 African Union Mission to Somalia (AMISOM) troops which are funded and trained by the imperialist states, the humanitarian situation in the country is worsening on a daily basis. Somalia has for nearly four decades suffered from periodic drought and famine. These problems have forced millions of its residents into neighboring states throughout Africa, the Middle East and even into Western Europe and North America.

The advent of colonialism scattered the Somalian people across five different geographic nation-states: British Somaliland, Italian Somaliland, French Somaliland, Kenya and imperial Ethiopia under the monarchy. The maintenance of the status-quo under neo-colonialism is the driving forces by the U.S. support of military intervention by neighboring states such as Ethiopia, Kenya and Djibouti.

Formerly French Somaliland, Djibouti, is now the largest base of the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) on the continent. This geographically and populated small Horn of Africa state houses thousands of American and French troops at Camp Lemonier serving as an imperialist base for Pentagon and CIA operations across the region including Yemen.

With all of these resources flowing in from the West and its allies, why are the people in Somalia still under extreme duress? It is largely due to the real objectives of the imperialist states which are to ensure geo-strategic dominance and the exploitation of resources and labor.

In a report issued by the Inter-regional Information Network (IRIN) of the United Nations on March 28, it says:

“Six years after a famine killed a quarter of a million people in Somalia, the country is threatened with another. Famines only occur if political decision-makers allow them to; it is imperative that the right decisions are made now. But have we learnt enough from the mistakes of 2011? The context has changed since 2011. Somalia now has a functioning – if limited and fragile – state apparatus. Some of the areas worst affected by the last crisis have since received considerable resilience investment (although how far such programming has helped people prepare for or cope with the current crisis is not yet known).”

IRIN continues in this same article emphasizing:

“Food security, nutrition and health are rapidly deteriorating in affected areas of the Sool Plateau in the north of Somalia and in the ‘sorghum belt’ in the south. In late 2016, the deyr rains failed in the south and the earlier gu rains were well below average, bringing national grain yields to their lowest in a decade. Predictions for the coming gu season in the affected areas are not optimistic. Food prices are rising. The purchasing power of typical households has declined by 20 percent in some areas of the north and by as much as 60 percent in the hardest-hit areas in the south – repeating the dangerous pattern seen in early 2011. Large-scale livestock deaths are already occurring. The Shabelle River, which provides irrigation water and a livestock refuge in the south, ran dry at some locations in January and remains dangerously low.”

Such as profound contradiction of increasing U.S. military involvement and deteriorating social conditions are by no means an anomaly. This is the actual history of imperialism in Africa over the last six centuries.

Prior to the rise of the Atlantic Slave Trade and colonialism, the area now known as Somalia was very much a part of the world system extending from the Far East in Asia to the Indian Ocean basin. This trading network existed for at least a thousand years and was not disrupted until the rise of Portugal and Spain as the initiators of the triangular construct leading to involuntary servitude as an economic system.

In understanding this history it is quite conceivable that the system of imperialism can be overthrown and transcended. This basis for the establishment of an alternative economic method of organizing society, the relationships between states, and the priorities of production, has been set forth through socialist ideology.

This is the reason why imperialism declared war on socialism in its infancy following the Russian Revolution (1917) and the subsequent founding of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (1922) in 1922. Both the bourgeois liberal imperialists and their fascist counterparts longed for the destruction of the Soviet Union and the national liberation movements through the rise of the Third Reich, Mussolini’s Italy, Franco’s Spain and Japanese expansionism in Asia. The breaking of the might of the Nazi military apparatus at Stalingrad and other key battles in 1942-43 has never been fully recognized by the educational modules that have achieved dominance in the U.S.

Then of course the efforts by both Italy and Germany to reclaim their imperialist ambitions during World War II led to some of the fiercest battles of the period being waged in the North Africa regions of Egypt and Libya in 1942-43. Ethiopia’s invasion by Italian imperialist fascism in 1935, are far as Africa is concerned, represented the beginning of the Second World War.

Even with the defeat of Italy and Germany in 1944-45 solidifying the resultant dominance of England, France and the U.S. did not lead to the abolition of colonialism. A Cold War beginning in 1947 was not merely designed to reverse the advances of socialism and national liberation in Vietnam, Korea and China. The Cold War represented the imperatives of the West to maintain its colonial hegemony among the immense majority of humanity in the oppressed nations of Africa, the Middle East, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean.

In addition, the contradictions within the imperialist states themselves had reached unprecedented proportions prior to World War II. The Great Depression of the 1930s brought the capitalist system to the brink of collapse. Both the ruling classes of the U.S. and Britainwere forced through their desire for mere survival to adopt the Welfare State, incorporating elements of socialist “safeguards” toprotect the interests of the private ownership of capital and to ameliorate the antagonism of the nationally oppressed and the proletariat as a whole.

These dynamics on the part of imperialism are manifested in Africa through the crises in Somalia and throughout the continent in the present era. Drought and famine are spreading across the region at a rapid pace.

IRIN in this same above-mentioned report stressed:

“On the other hand, the current drought is more widespread than that of 2011. Global competition for humanitarian resources is fiercer. Parts of South Sudan have already been declared to be experiencing famine, and the situation there is likely to worsen substantially over the next four to five months, while Nigeria and Yemen also face the imminent threat of famine. Across the world, a record 70 million people are estimated to need emergency food aid in 2017. Yet there are fears some donors, notably the U.S., will significantly cut their aid budget this year, including for humanitarian assistance.”

The U.S.-based corporate and government-sponsored media never asks the simple question:

How is the renewed military build-up by the Pentagon in Somalia going to address the humanitarian crisis? Or what is the correlation between imperialist militarism and underdevelopment as represented by increasing poverty, dislocation, food deficits and political instability? Also what real impact does aid from the West actually have on the imperatives of self-reliance, self-determination, genuine independence and sovereignty and sustainable development?

We can only conclude based upon the actual history of Africa that what is described as “aid” is part and parcel of a reinforcement of the cycle of dependency stemming from centuries of slavery, colonialism, neo-colonialism and imperialism. The only real solutions must derive from the struggle of the masses against Western domination which can only be effectively realized through Pan-Africanism and Socialism in practice.

The Destabilization of South Africa, Zimbabwe and the SADC Region

Finally we must look at recent events in the sub-continent to get an even clearer insight into the African situation. The Republic of South Africa is the most industrialized state on the continent due in large part to the international division of economic power and labor.

During the 19th century, the struggle for the imperialist control of South Africa and the Southern Africa region intensified through the quest for control of its treasure trove of natural resources and arable land. The mining of gold and diamonds in South Africa and Zimbabwe thrusts these countries into the forefront of imperialist exploitation worldwide.

The complete rationalization of capitalist exploitation through the apartheid system after 1948 was by no means an aberration. This social pattern had been based on developments in the U.S. where the indigenous people were forced off of the most arable and mineral rich lands to make way for the settler-colonialists. Super-exploitation of the labor of Africans generated profits so enormous that the return on investments was unprecedented in comparison to any other period in world economic history.

A protracted struggle for national independence accelerated in the aftermath of World War II with the Rand Miners’ Strike, the development of the African National Congress Youth League Program of Action, the Defiance Campaign Against Unjust Laws, the creation of a Federation of South African Women, the advent of the South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU), the Congress of Democrats, etc.

By the period between 1976 and 1994, less than two decades, the African masses and their allies were able to force the racist apartheid National Party from power. The African National Congress, which had been labelled as communist and terrorist were able to construct a government that remains in power after 23 years.

In response to the national liberation movement in South Africa, occurring in conjunction with the overall African revolutionary struggle across the continent and the broader international community, the owners of capital sought to undermine the capacity of the ANC to effectively govern the post-apartheid state. Large scale disinvestment after the advent of the national democratic government was far more significant in real terms than the divestment movement which sprung up from the 1960s through the early 1990s, targeting the settler-colonial system itself and its enablers in the imperialist countries, mainly the transnational corporations and financial institutions based in the West.

Even today a major controversy has developed over the economic trajectory of ANC government policy. Since the world recession of 2008 and beyond, the South African people have loss millions of jobs inside the country. This is due to the shrinking of manufacturing and monetary markets increasing the cost of conducting commerce and prompting the closure of plants, mines and its concomitant impact.

These developments were compounded with the reaction of capital to the demands of the working class for a greater share of the profits accrued from the exploitation of strategic minerals, commodities and manufacturing production. The legacy of radical trade unionism is South Africa has roots which extend back for the greater portion of the 20th century to the present. Without the essential role of the South African working class, the overthrow of the apartheid system could have never been achieved within the existing historical framework.

The formation of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) in 1985 placed tremendous pressure on the already beleaguered settler-colonial state and internal capitalist system which was dependent upon the investments from Wall Street, Washington and London. An organized working class union with a strong alliance with the national liberation movement and the South African Communist Party (SACP) signaled the potential for a genuine socialist construction after the demise of white minority-rule.

Since 1994, the Tripartite Alliance has been flexible and even conciliatory in its approach to the immediate need of preserving foreign capital inside South Africa. Yet this approach has not been met with reciprocity by the ruling class. Not only have the mine owners and other capitalists retrenched production facilities and markets as well as laying off many workers over the last several years, they have systematically resisted any mentioned within the public discourse of the necessity of wealth redistribution as a prerequisite for the realization of a people’s democracy.

The opposition parties which have sprung up to challenge the ANC on an electoral level are largely bankrolled by the capitalist class. The Democratic Alliance (DA) advocates policies of greater neo-liberalism which have not worked effectively anywhere in Africa or throughout the world. Another party, the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) is led by Julius Malema who was expelled from the ANC several years ago. Although the EFF takes an ultra-left position in its rhetoric, objectively it has blocked with the DA which is in actuality a party of the white settler-class despite the Black figureheads who are ostensibly in charge of the organization.

A recent illustration of the role of international finance capital and its efforts to strangle the South African National Democratic Revolution was the revelations regarding the currency fixing carried out by some of the leading banks inside the country. This scandal is strikingly similar to the London Interbank Offering Rate (LIBOR) matter which gained considerable media coverage in years past. LIBOR was utilized to exploit working people utilizing insider information and informal negotiations to maximize the profits of these firms at the expense of the most vulnerable within capitalist society.

A report published by this writer in March says:

“In South Africa, it was revealed by an anti-trust agency that during the period where residents were negatively impacted by the uncertainty in the economy fueled in part by the fluctuating value of the rand, banks were profiting from these problems. These multi-national firms represent some of the largest of such entities in South Africa and the world. The South African Competition Commission cited the following companies in relationship to the currency fixing matter: Citigroup, Nomura, Standard Bank, Investec, JP Morgan, BNP Paribas, Credit Suisse Group, Commerzbank AG, Standard New York Securities Inc., Macquarie Bank, Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BAML), ANZ Banking Group Ltd, Standard Chartered Plc and Barclays Africa (Absa), part of the Barclays Plc. Investec and Barclays agreed to participate in the probe. Nonetheless, Standard Bank, BAML, Nomura, Credit Suisse, ANZ and Standard Chartered have not gone on record as to whether they will cooperate in the inquiry.” (Global Research, March 16)

This same report goes on to stress that:

“These developments in South Africa and internationally illustrates that the economic system of capitalism is controlled by an ever shrinking group of financial interests who operate as a matter of policy in contravention to the majority of people not only within the western industrialized states notwithstanding throughout the world. As the African Union member-states face escalating economic difficulties a re-emergent debt crisis in looming. This burgeoning phenomenon of declining currency values and lack of credit availability portends much for the ability to strengthen both state and non-state structures in Africa. Escalating rates of poverty and lack of national and regional economic capacity will inevitably foster even greater dependency on the West and its transnational institutions.”

This is why the lessons of Zimbabwe and its land reclamation process are important. After two decades of independence from settler-colonialism, in 2000, the Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) government initiated a constitutionally engineered policy of seizing and redistributing millions of acres of land which rightfully belonged to the African people. The land was illegally confiscated by Cecil Rhodes and his class of settler-colonialists. In order to carry out this process it was necessary to politically enslave the masses through a colonial system of military and economic domination.  Sanctions were enacted against Zimbabwe not only by the former colonial power of Britain but also their erstwhile imperialist allies in Washington and Brussels. Zimbabwe is yet to recover from this economic war against social transformation yet the farmers are able to exercise a greater degree of self-determination and economic independence through land ownership. Studies conducted by the Institute for Development Studies in Britain confirm the positive impact of land reform which is sorely needed in South Africa and Namibia as well.

A recent summit of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) endorsed a regional industrialization program aimed at fostering such self-reliance and internal-centered development policy. Nonetheless, it will be a challenge in pushing forward with this process because it goes right up against the desire on the part of the former colonial and current neo-colonial powers which actively work against genuine independence and sovereignty.

Conclusion: The Need for an Anti-Imperialist Viewpoint

These examples of events on the continent bring attention to the cause of anti-imperialism in the U.S. We must be in complete solidarity with all anti-capitalist, socially progressive and socialist-oriented policy initiatives taking place in Africa.

The African states have an inherent right to shape their own governmental and societal structures free of imperialist influence. It is quite obvious that six centuries of slavery, colonialism, neo-colonialism and imperialism has failed to bring real development to the people. Therefore, the importance of social transformation should be a priority of all modern-day anti-imperialist and solidarity forces in North America.

Note: This address was delivered at the Detroit branch of Workers World Party public forum held on Sat. April 22, 2017. The event examined various anti-imperialist struggles taking placed around the world from the Middle East and Africa to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) and Venezuela. Other speakers included the event chairperson Kayla Pauli of Workers World Party, Randi Nord of Workers World Party, Joe Mchahwar of WWP youth section, Tom Michalak of WWP read a paper prepared by Jim Carey of Geo-politics Alert and WWP, Yvonne Jones of the Detroit Active and Retired Employees Association (DAREA), and Martha Grevatt of the UAW Local 869, who is also a contributing editor for Workers World newspaper.

The original source of this article is Global Research

What is meant by cultural warfare?

By Elier Ramírez Cañedo 

The United States has vast experience in the practice of cultural warfare against any alternative project to its hegemony on the international stage. The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters, by Frances Stonor Saunders, is an indispensable book in this regard, offering the most thorough research on the subject, allowing for an understanding of this reality. This book demonstrates how, during the Cold War years, the CIA’s program of psychological and cultural warfare against the socialist camp was its most prized possession.

“A central feature of the Agency’s efforts to mobilize culture as a Cold War weapon was the systematic organization of a network of ‘private’ groups or ‘friends’ into an unofficial consortium. This was an entrepreneurial coalition of philanthropic foundations, business corporations and other institutions and individuals, who worked hand in hand with the CIA to provide the cover and the funding pipeline for its secret programmes in western Europe,” Stonor notes.

Cultural warfare is that which is promoted by cultural imperialism – especially the United States as the leading power of the capitalist system – in both the affective and cognitive fields of the human domain, with the intention of imposing values on certain groups and nations. It is a concept that, understood as a system, incorporates or relates to elements of other terms that have been more widely used such as political warfare, psychological warfare, fourth-generation warfare, smart power, the soft coup, unconventional warfare and political-ideological subversion.

Art and literature are not the main target of imperialism’s cultural warfare strategy against any particular country – although art and literature are used as instruments or as targets of cultural warfare. The terrain in which this cultural war is waged is mainly linked to lifestyles, behaviors, perceptions of reality, dreams, expectations, tastes, ways of understanding happiness, customs and everything that has an expression in peoples’ daily lives.

Achieving a U.S.-style homogenization in this field has always been part of the highest aspirations of the United States’ ruling class, especially since its elite understood the difference between domination and hegemony; and that the latter could not be guaranteed only through coercive means, but that it was essential to manufacture consensus.

The cultural war waged throughout history by Washington is not a hollow fantasy, but is based on concrete and proven facts, open and covert operations of U.S. government agencies, statements by the leaders of that nation and documents governing its foreign policy, both in the diplomatic and military spheres.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, one of the leading imperialist ideologues, who served as National Security Advisor to former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, in his work The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives, expressed:

“Cultural domination has been an underappreciated facet of American global power. Whatever one may think of its aesthetic values, America’s mass culture exercises a magnetic appeal, especially on the world’s youth. Its attraction may be derived from the hedonistic quality of the lifestyle it projects, but its global appeal is undeniable. American television programs and films account for about three-fourths of the global market. American popular music is equally dominant, while American fads, eating habits, and even clothing are increasingly imitated worldwide. The language of the Internet is English, and an overwhelming proportion of the global computer chatter also originates from America, influencing the content of global conversation.”

This is the same Brzezinski who in 1979, in a memorandum sent to Carter, recommended the following course of policy toward Cuba: “The Director of the International Communication Agency, in coordination with the Department of State and the National Security Council, should increase the influence of American culture on the Cuban people through the promotion of cultural trips and allowing the coordination of the distribution of American films on the island.”

Not long ago a document of extraordinary importance to understanding the current strategies of U.S. imperialism in the field of cultural warfare was presented: The United States Army Special Operations Command’s “SOF Support to Political Warfare White Paper,” dated March 10, 2015.

What this White Paper essentially sets out is that the United States should again take up the idea of George F. Kennan – a former U.S. expert on the Soviet issue and architect at the State Department of the policy of “containment” to prevent the spread of communism – regarding “the premise that rather than a binary opposition between ‘war’ and ‘peace,’ the conduct of international relations is characterized by continuously evolving combinations of collaboration, conciliation, confrontation, and conflict.” That is, that war is permanent, although it adopts multiple facets and can not be limited to the use of military resources. In fact, the document states that war can be waged without having been declared, and can even be waged while declaring peace.

“Political Warfare is a strategy suited to achieve U.S. national objectives through reduced visibility in the international geo-political environment, without committing large military forces,” the document emphasizes from the beginning. The text continues: “Political Warfare’s ultimate aim is to win the ‘War of Ideas,’ which is not conterminous with hostilities. Political Warfare requires ‘co-operation of the [armed] services, aggressive diplomacy, economic warfare and the subversive field-agencies, in the promotion of such policies, measures or actions needed to break or build morale.’”

This White Paper is only one among many studies and recommendations of doctrines and military strategies developed in Washington, which assign an increasing lead role to the cultural and ideological components of its hegemonic strategies.

THE CULTURAL WAR AGAINST CUBA

The cultural war against Cuba did not begin on December 17, 2014. Since Cuba’s revolutionary triumph, the island has faced both the impacts of the colonizing wave of global hegemonic industry and specific cultural warfare projects designed, financed and implemented by U.S. imperialism, its agencies and international allies, with the aim of subverting Cuban socialism.

In this regard Ricardo Alarcón, former Cuban Minister of Foreign Affairs and President of the National Assembly of Peoples’ Power, pointed out: “Cultural aggression against Cuba (...) Does not only still exist but continues to grow. It maintains a covert, clandestine dimension, led by the CIA, but in addition, since the beginning of the last decade of the 20th century, it has another public, brazenly open dimension. The Cuban case is, for these reasons, absolutely unique, exceptional.

“It is also unique because what is done to us in the cultural field has always been an integral part of a broader aggressive scheme, which has included a cruel and permanent economic war, and military aggression, terrorism and other criminal acts, whose purpose, (...) detailed in an infamous Yankee law, is to put an end to our independence.”

A fundamental component of the cultural war waged by different United States governments against the Cuban Revolution has been the psychological and media war.

Jon Eliston’s book Psywar on Cuba: The Declassified History of U.S. Anti-Castro Propaganda, published in 1999, reveals how Washington practiced psychological and propaganda aggression against Cuba for decades, and that this included books, newspapers, comic strips, movies, pamphlets, and radio and television programs.

Another of the favorite fields of cultural warfare has been that of history. It manipulates and distorts our past, attacking its most sensitive and symbolic bases, precisely because it seeks to do away with the example of the Cuban Revolution from its very roots.

What are Radio and TV Martí, if not structures created for cultural warfare in the broadest sense against the Cuban revolutionary project?

There is a great difference between the public diplomacy that many countries espouse in the international arena, and the actions that different U.S. administrations have historically undertaken. Behind this “inoffensive” discourse, lies the hidden apparatus for the dissemination of U.S. political and cultural values, which ignore respect for the sovereignty of nations and the cultural diversity of peoples. This is not just about influence, but about covert and open interference in the internal affairs of other states.

When evaluating the challenges we face, we sometimes adopt triumphalist positions, based on a reductionist view of culture, understood strictly as art and literature. Of course, cultural influences and confluences have existed for more than two centuries between Cuba and the United States, thanks to which both peoples have been spiritually enriched, but the fundamental challenges lie in the field of lifestyles, political culture and social habits.

Faced with this reality, there is no better antidote than patriotism, a comprehensive Cuban identity – not limited Cuban attributes – anti-imperialism, anti-colonialism and, together with the promotion of solid cultural referents, the development of a critical individual with a profound humanist education, capable of discerning what is really valuable for him or herself among the avalanche of cultural products with which he/she interacts.

This critical individual can only be forged from the earliest ages through training in the debate and challenging of ideas, with the active participation of the family, community, school, media and political and mass organizations. Of course, all the actions we carry out in the cultural field must be accompanied by specific events and achievements, for things to be done well in all spheres, and for the results of this work to be manifest in the daily lives of our people.