African Revolutionary Writers, Part 7c
Mahmood Mamdani
What remains for us in this
part is an extract from Mahmood Mamdani’s “Citizen and Subject” (attached, and also downloadable below).
Like Issa Shivji and Walter
Rodney, both of whom we will come to later in our course, Professor Mamdani is
a product of the famous Dar-es-Salaam campus. He is now head of the Makerere Institute of
Social Research (MISR) in his native Uganda.
Note that Mamdani's sense of
the word “subject” in this work is different and opposite from the one usually
found in communist literature. Here it means a subordinate person, as opposed
to a free person.
It is typical of the English
language that, just when you need certainty, it gives you ambiguity. Mamdani is
referring to the “subjects” of a king or of a feudal lord or "traditional
leader".
Neo-colonial class
alliance
In the book, Mamdani’s
principal insight is to recognise the class alliance typically sought by the
Imperialists in neo-colonial Africa countries. In other words, whereas the
partisans of the working class and other anti-Imperialists will form a National
Democratic Revolutionary Alliance of certain classes and fractions of classes,
the Imperialists will seek a countervailing alliance of their own, and it is
the nature of this pro-Imperialist, neo-colonial alliance that Mamdani probes.
According to Mamdani, the
Imperialists prefer to ally with the most backward rural feudal elements,
commonly 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 common presumptions about the
existence of a sellout or “comprador” bourgeoisie allied to the Imperialists in
Africa.
This other theory says that
the Imperialist monopoly-capitalists tend to work through the “compradors”, who
are local aspirant bourgeoisie, or bourgeoisie-for-rent, and who do the
Imperialists’ work for them.
Such compradors do exist, and
clearly they are seen to exist in South Africa. Yet Mamdani’s scheme reflects
the facts and the history of Imperialism 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, and the recolonisation of Libya, 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
Imperialist-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,
i.e. partly rich, but mostly dirt poor.
In Mamdani’s view, backed
with data, it is the feudals who have betrayed Africa and not the African
bourgeoisie, whether called “comprador” or anything else. In Swaziland today,
we can see a perfect example of this. In Swaziland, the “comprador” is,
literally, the king .
In South Africa the Imperialists
relied heavily on Bantustan leaders, and especially 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 liberation class alliance that could, and
did, dominate the country in terms of its mass support.
The (national) Bourgeois and
Proletarians are the modernisers and the democrats, who are compelled by
necessity to combine together to fight against the feudals for the democracy
that forms the nation.
·
The above is to
introduce the original reading-texts: Mahmood Mamdani,
Linking the Urban and the Rural, 1996.
