The Long Revolution of the Global South. Samir Amin
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the Committees for Defense of the Revolution and others, established and led by cadres, many of whom came out of local Maoist circles, were certainly not without roots or some resonance in the working classes. But they did not always have a coherent strategic vision, and the demands put forward here and there as priorities were sometimes conflicting, or “leftist.” There is no reason to be afraid of this. It is difficult to see how a genuine people’s movement would otherwise begin. Nevertheless, I am one of those who continue to believe that coordination and organization are essential if one wants to prevent a movement from stagnating, thereby preparing the conditions for a reactionary counteroffensive. Yet any such organization should promote democracy and actually practice it in its own affairs. This is never easy. It is even less so when it is necessary to work with a wing of the movement that holds critical positions in the government—here meaning Rawlings, his group (in particular, P.V. Obeng, head of the civil administration, Kojo Tsikata, a remarkable soldier, head of the secret services who also maintained political control over the army, and Emmanuel Hansen, the group’s ideologue), and his army. Rawlings, Obeng, Hansen, Tsikata, Amoa, and I held long discussions that convinced me that the Rawlings group belonged to a new generation that was much more aware than the earlier national liberation leaders of the minimal requirements of democracy, and more in touch with the expressed demands of the working classes. But they were also, as is often the case in English-speaking lands, limited by pragmatism. The central question dealt with which strategy to adopt, in relation to the Ghanaian bourgeoisie, both its corrupt comprador-bureaucratic wing (an enemy) and its active economic wing (the affluent planters, the merchants). Neutralize them? Integrate them into the system? What democratic forms should be constructed—multiple parties, grassroots movements, election procedures, organization of powers—to move forward and strengthen the real weight of the people while avoiding economic chaos?
Ghana does not lack leaders. At the University of Legon, the group that has since led debates at the Forum asked me to lecture and participate in debates, which I never refuse, and also carried out active functions in the movement’s internal discussions. There was a diversity of opinion that could have gradually evolved over time as the regime became stabilized around the center right in a difficult world and regional conjuncture, which should encourage some prudence in passing judgment. None of this precludes either a more consistent move to the left in the future or a return to compradorization in the service of dominant capitalism.
Congo-Brazzaville
Following the fall of the clown Fulbert Yulu in Brazzaville in 1963, comrades (as they called themselves) from the popular movements that lie behind the change invited me in 1968–69 to discuss their economic strategies. I then got to know this group of young radicals: the brothers Antoine and Joseph Van den Reysen (we have since developed a strong personal friendship), Ambroise Noumazalaye, Pascal Lissouba, Da Costa, Pierre Nzé, Aba Ganzion, Henri Lopez (who subsequently became assistant director general of UNESCO), Charles Ganao (a diplomat of the first order and defender of the collective interests of Africa in many international forums), and Ange Diaware (head of the youth militias, organizer of a resistance movement), who was subsequently murdered in atrocious circumstances. The analyses of Pierre Philippe Rey, at that time assigned by the ORSTOM, now the IRD, to Brazzaville, were also very useful to me.
My first stay allowed me to get right to the heart of this country’s complicated political life, impossible to reduce either to the cliché of “tribalism,” so dear to many anthropologists and political scientists, or to the “class analyses” put forward by the various conflicting tendencies within the movement: trade unionists, activists from the revolutionary youth, intellectual leaders, and bureaucrats. I followed for numerous years the chaotic evolution of the Congolese movement and the country’s economy.20
The IDEP then organized a good seminar in Brazzaville in 1974 at an important moment, characterized by the intensification of debates. What exactly should be done in the economic area? The temptation was strong to give way to the easy possibilities offered by income from the exploitation of oil resources to finance the growth of public administration, but also the development of education (in a country already well educated in 1960) and the improvement of social services. But the question then was how to complement this approach with a serious plan to increase agricultural production and a specific kind of industrialization, one that takes into account the extremely limited economic space of this demographically small, but geographically large country? The collective audience that the president granted to us revealed nothing except for the unfortunate impression of an appetite for unlimited power.
I subsequently visited this friendly country from time to time, despite its tragic political evolution. Pascal Lissouba, then prime minister, hoped that I could give him some proposals to, at the very least, make some minimal improvements in the management of the public sector. This was a pertinent question. I then had to make on-site visits to a group of ailing companies, from Fort Rousset and Makoua in the north, to Niari and Pointe Noire. I was given an all-terrain vehicle, a driver, and a guide. I was able to see the large equatorial primary forest, its gigantic trees and impenetrable undergrowth. It was beautiful, very beautiful, but terrifying. Along the road, when we stopped to eat, the Pygmies, who seemed to come from nowhere, immediately appeared and offered us the only product they had: monkeys. The guide, a good and jovial cook, grilled and sautéed them in a frying pan, then flambéed them—in the Parisian style, he said—with whisky. I also saw an incredible scene of Pygmies exploited by the Bantu planters. The Pygmies came to work—hard—for several days to harvest coffee and were paid in low-quality red wine, drunk in unlimited quantities from a cistern with a rubber hose. The Pygmies drank for one or two hours, after which, dead drunk, they slept on the ground, disappearing the next day into their great forest until the next harvest, a year later.
I realized after visiting the country how difficult it was to start any sort of agriculture in this underpopulated country. Farmers isolated in pockets of the forest could, at best, deliver to market only a few sacks of produce that they had to transport over hundreds of kilometers on terrible roads. Should the farmers be brought together? But they did not want to hear that. I also realized that the “industries” could hardly be designed and managed without taking into account all types of conditions specific to the country.
I was in Brazzaville, en route to Luanda, two days after the presidential election in which Lissouba was victorious. Lissouba, who met with me, had made a good impression. He spoke about democratization, surpassing ethnic divisions, and reconciliation with the militants of the PCT, who had just lost power. I had not been surprised by this defeat. Gradually, sustained by oil revenues, the state bureaucracy—in which the majority of intellectuals was integrated—had absorbed the so-called Marxist-Leninist party, suppressed the autonomy of working-class organizations, and massacred young rebels. The army had become an essential component of this rather ordinary form of authoritarian statism. All efforts to develop agricultural and industrial production were abandoned and replaced by simple social redistribution of oil revenues sufficient to ease popular discontent. The movement for democratization, which began in 1990 with all sorts of ambitions, waved the multiparty flag to begin the attack on the decrepit machinery of state power. But this was a farcical democratization that worked for dominant transnational capitalism through globalized neoliberalism. It would effectively put an end to the chance—as small as it was—for a renewal of the left and would liquidate the vestiges of statism and its vague desires for independence without threatening the interests of the multinational corporations. Such a democracy would combine perfectly with the compradorization of the local system. In these conditions, Lissouba’s election only emphasized the uncertainty of the future. Had he been elected to set up this farcical comprador democracy? Or had he been elected against this farce, whose real candidates—the horrible Paul Kaya, former lackey of Fulbert Yulu, and the disturbing Thystère Tchicaya, former member of the PCT, a convert to liberalism who proposed particularly violent repressive measures to settle all problems—had been soundly beaten when voters ultimately split their votes between Lissouba and the PCT? I personally hoped that the second hypothesis offered the correct explanation. I discussed all this with several former leaders of the PCT and received varying opinions. Subsequent history showed that Lissouba really intended nothing other than to assert his personal power and, for that purpose, to select the worst means: ethnic chauvinism, thereby preparing the most favorable conditions