Anti-Imperialism, War and Peace, Part 9a
Citizen and Subject
Mahmood Mamdani’s “Citizen and Subject” (downloadable extract linked
below) maps the relations of four class-based powers in the anti-Imperial
struggles in Africa: Bourgeois, Proletarians, Imperialists and “Traditional
Leaders”. The (national) Bourgeois and the Proletarians are the modernisers and
the democrats, who are compelled by necessity to combine together to fight for
the democracy that forms the nation.
Capitalism has failed, and
Imperialism has failed. In South Africa, capitalist Imperialism arrived more
than 100 years ago, and it never delivered to the people or even employed more
than a fraction of them at any time. It started bad and it got no better.
Recently it has gone from a boom from which the masses somehow failed to
benefit, to a recession that will last for years. What’s new? The same excuses
have been there all along. Maybe it is truer to say that Imperialism didn’t
fail: it only lied. It was never going to deliver, and it never will.
Like Issa Shivji and Walter
Rodney (author of “How
Europe Underdeveloped Africa”, also downloadable in [1069 KB] PDF
format by clicking here),
Professor Mamdani is a cadre of the famous Dar-es-Salaam campus. Mamdani is now
Director of the Makerere Institute of
Social Research (MISR) in his native Uganda, and has previously served
in many capacities including at Columbia University, New York, USA, and the
University of Cape Town, South Africa.
Note that Mamdani's sense of
the word “subject” in this work is different and opposite from the usual
communist, or philosophical one. Here it means a subordinate person, like for
example the subject of a king, and not a free person.
In the book, Mamdani’s
principal insight is to recognise the class alliance typically sought by the
Imperialists in neo-colonial Africa countries. According to Mamdani, the
Imperialists prefer to ally with the most backward rural feudal elements (often
called “traditional leaders” or “chiefs” in Africa) in opposition to the
modernising bourgeoisie and proletariat of the cities and towns.
Mamdani regards South Africa
as the classic case in this regard, although he quotes many other examples.
Mamdani’s analysis stands in contrast with a common presumption, namely that
the Imperialist monopoly-capitalists tend to work through “compradors”, who are
local aspirant bourgeoisie, or bourgeoisie-for-rent, who do the Imperialists
work for them.
Such compradors do exist, and
clearly they exist in South Africa. Yet Mamdani’s scheme reflects the facts and
history of Imperialism in Africa better, at least up to now. Imperialism is in
general hostile to the national bourgeoisie. The typical neo-colonial war of
recent decades, including the Iraq war, the long war against Afghanistan, the
war against Libya, and the war against Syria, is a war of Imperialism against a
national bourgeoisie that wants national sovereignty and control over its
country’s national resources.
In the light of this analysis
it becomes easier to see why it is that the South African proletariat has long
been, via the ANC, in alliance with parts of its national bourgeoisie, for
national liberation, against the monopoly-capitalist oppressors with their
Imperial-globalist links.
The Imperialists make a
marriage of convenience with the most retrogressive social power that they can
find – tribalism – in a pact to hold Africa where it was under colonialism:
partly rich, but mostly dirt poor. In South Africa the Imperialists relied
heavily on Bantustan leaders and on the Inkatha Freedom Party, but the ANC was
able to form better links with the rural as well as with the urban masses, thus
achieving a class alliance that could, and in fact did, dominate the country in
terms of mass support.
·
The above is to
introduce the original reading-text: Citizen and Subject,
Chapter 8, 1996, Mamdani.
