"MANIFESTO PELO DIREITO A VIDA"

I had initially written this as a comment to this post but, on good advice, decided to post it separately.

1. Because it is never enough to stress the importance, relevance and accuracy of messages like Malavoloneke’s here, I must do just that: stress it!

But, let’s not make any mistakes: I am also a good friend of Fernando’s.

With him I shared the anguishes that led many Angolan students in Portugal to bring about a “Manifesto for the Right to Live”, for which we went door to door to collect thousands of signatures from the Angolan community and friends of Angola in Portugal and held a well attended vigil in one of Lisbon’s main squares, which counted with such references of our national culture as Raul Indipwo, his own father, Jorge Macedo, and others, calling for a halt to the hostilities that followed the 1992 elections and for a lasting peace and true democracy in our country.
Supporting him I was, a few months later, in the hunger strike he and other Angolan students held in front of the Angolan Embassy in Lisbon to protest at the victimisation students were being subjected to as a result of the intolerance and political violence that marked those times in our national life. With him I traveled, some time later, to Brussels, to spread our message and express our desire for peace at the headquarters of the European Union. To him I suggested, a few years later in Luanda, when he asked my opinion about it, that it would be better for him to go to pursue his studies and leave the political/civic struggles aside for a while – this particular episode happened when he was working in the same office as Rafael Marques, under the auspices of the Open Society, and it would be particularly interesting to observe the evolution Marques’ relationship with that organisation had in more recent years...

For him I was happy when he let me know some time later that he was in Boston post-graduating in Law. To him go my praises for all the courage and strength he shows in fighting for Justice, Peace and Democracy in our country!

However… however, in this occasion, I subscribe to Malavoloneke’s message to him. And deep down in my heart I believe that Fernando also subscribes to it, at least for this once. For this peace we so longed for. For that right to live that we called for so earthly sixteen years ago! And that message was and is very simple:

GIVE PEACE A CHANCE!

2. While I was living those moments with Fernando, I was also sharing (or had shared) momentous experiences with such ‘Mais Velhos’ from our country’s political history as Mario Pinto de Andrade, Manuel Lima and Daniel Chipenda (it was straight from this late Angolan nationalist's family home that I left, totally exhausted spiritually and psychologically, more than a decade ago, Lisbon to London, where I’ve been based ever since to rebuild, literally piece by piece, my then totally shattered life and from where I’ve been trying to give whatever contribution I can to our country and to our continent, until I can finally return home without fears of seeing my life shattered all over again for whatever reason – it is thus to protect my ‘right to live’ that I am forced, again, to stay abroad for a while longer. You see, unlike others, no matter what passport we may be using, we cannot disguise or conceal our identity: it is imprinted in our skin, our mind, our memory, our soul, our diction, our culture).
With them and others, I learned many of the lessons they had accumulated along about half a century of struggles for liberation, peace and development in Africa. Through them I’ve learned something essential about ourselves: for all the differences in their individual trajectories and standings in the nationalist movement, there was one commonality – our future can only be dictated by our own past, culture and history.

It was from them, among others, and from my own life experiences prior and after meeting them, that I got this sense of just how right Malavoloneke is in saying: “Therefore, I would like you to understand that we all need ways out. Ways out that have also to be ways of hope. Ways of hope that do not need to be necessarily perfect, they just need to be necessarily ours. Created by us with the limitations that we have, created in our own context with our own specificities and created for our land with the adaptations that they might require, but not imposed by a theoretical script from any western country.”

It was what I learned from them (and, to be perfectly accurate, before them, with my father and grandparents) that helped me make sense, particularly looking at my own life, not just of the letters from Unita and Mpla militants that I’ve reproduced here but, above all, of the passages from Douglass North’s Economics Nobel Prize Lecture, which I placed in the comment’s space to this post.

IS THIS FOR GOOD?

[Read story here]

WHAT’S THE WORD ON JOHANNESBURG (AGAIN)?*

Photo: Soweto by Ana Santana

For the last ten days the word has been violence spurred by xenophobia. Nothing can justify the levels it has reached, but it certainly begs explanation, understanding and rational, long-term, solutions. A common definition of ‘xenophobia’ will hold it as “a strong feeling of dislike or fear of people from other countries.” Is this really what explains the appalling scenes from Johannesburg’s shacklands being shown in the media all over the world? I do not believe that South Africans in general fundamentally ‘dislike’ people from other countries, but there is certainly some degree of ‘fear’ behind the shameful attacks against foreigners of the last few days. So, perhaps ‘xenophobia’ only explains part of the issue - more precisely, the part arising from fear. But fear of what exactly?

I think it is safe to posit that it might be fear of being engulfed, overtaken, swamped by massive inflows of economic migrants from all over the continent. Fear of losing out on a totally uncontrolled competition for access to all of their already meagre sources of survival: jobs (or just the increasingly fewer employment opportunities available), housing (or just the decreasing space for their own shacks or more solid and larger houses for their families), marketplace (or just their shrinking share of the local informal markets), food (just bound to become even more expensive and of limited availability as the current food crisis spreads around the globe), health (compounded by the AIDS pandemic in the region) and education (whatever little of it they may access in a financially restricted educational system).

In short, fear of losing out on an open competition for scarce resources and extremely limited opportunities. Hardly anything new elsewhere in the world or in South Africa itself. In effect, Black South Africans have seen the chances of improvement in their living standards undercut by labour competition from the region and the wider continent for more than a century, particularly in the backbone of the country’s economy: the mining industry.

A brief look at the economic history of the Johannesburg region (also known as the ‘Witwatersrand’, or simply the ‘Rand’) tells us that monopsonic control (i.e. control of the labour market by a single employer that sets all rules and wages) of recruiting for the mining industry was vital for the ‘Randlords’. The mining industry was faced with diminishing returns and rising costs of operation, which could not be passed on to the consumer due to the fixed price of gold. Therefore, it vitally depended on the institutionalisation of oscillant migrant labour: only an infinitely elastic supply of labour at rates lower than its marginal product could guarantee profitability.

Monopsonistic organisation of employers, especially in its ability to generate economies of scale by reducing the costs of recruiting, transportation and accommodation of migrants from outside South Africa, prevented competition for labour from pushing wages up. This required an immobilised, disorganised and dependent labour force, the maintenance of which was guaranteed by an array of segregationist policies restricting access of Africans to skilled jobs and their permanent urbanisation, thus hindering their ability to acquire and develop bargaining skills.

In 1893, the South African Chamber of Mines established a ‘Native Labour Department’ with the explicit objective of taking “active steps for the gradual reduction of native wages to a reasonable level.” This was followed, in 1896, by the creation of the ‘Rand Native Labour Association’ which, a year later, claimed to have promoted an increase in employment by over 500% above its level in 1890 “without any appreciable rise in wages.” By the end of the century, the organisation of recruiting had managed to increase the level of African employment by 600% at a wage rate below what it had been at the beginning of the mining industry.[1]

Yet, in spite of that achievement, competition for regional labour still prevailed in the industry and, in 1900, employers created the ‘Witwatersrand Native Labour Association’ (WNLA), which was the only body allowed to recruit in Mozambique, the main source of labour supply. The WNLA was to structurally define the regional labour market, for the rest of the last century to this day, as one of dependency for migrant workers and permanent low wages for Black South Africans – certainly lower than what they could have been if not for the institutionalised influxes of foreign migrant labour.

It is against this historical background that the growing tensions, conflicts and, ultimately, extreme violence of the last few days ought to be analysed. Of course, since the end of Apartheid, a mere 14 years ago, substantial changes have occurred in the nature of institutional relations within South Africa and between the countries in the region and in the structure of the regional labour market, translating into a relatively stronger bargaining power for the South African labour force. Along the last century, there was also a significant diversification of the South African economy away from the mining industry.

However, and in spite of the prevailing status of South Africa as the regional powerhouse, poverty and social exclusion levels in the country have not decreased sufficiently as to offset the potentially distortionary effects on the local economy of a permanent influx of economic migrants from all over the continent, as far afield as Nigeria and, for the best part of the last decade, particularly from Zimbabwe. Although official figures show only around 120,000 people applying for asylum in South Africa in the last decade, at least another million Africans - and some estimates say two million - have moved there (figures from 2005). And this time without any regulator, such as the WNLA, to somehow control it. To quote Mamphela Ramphele, Co- Chair of the Global Commission on International Migration, “South Africa is finding it difficult to absorb the flows of immigrants, which have increased faster than the South African economy. We are like a little Europe, without her resources.”

This is a reality that the South African government, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the African Union (AU) have to tackle with unwavering determination. In particular, SADC and the AU have, more than ever before, the duty, under their existing general legal and institutional frameworks and specific sectoral protocols, to regulate economic migration fluxes within the continent in such a way as to guarantee that both migrants and host country residents have their economic, social and human rights protected.

Moreover, all countries in the continent (and here I am particularly thinking about my own country of origin, Angola, which has also been attracting significant levels of migrants from all over the continent and the rest of the world since the end of the war) must understand the current events as a desperate cry from the poor and socially excluded for their governments to put their houses in order, i.e. to improve their economic and governance performances, and in particular their income redistribution policies and social support systems, in order to, if not totally stem, at least make the current levels and specific directions of intra-continental migration controllable overall. Only such an integrated approach to the problem can turn migration into a productive, culturally and humanly enriching experience to the benefit of the entire continent.

Finally, to all brothers and sisters, victims and perpetrators of the unspeakable acts of violence of the last few days in Johannesburg, I would like to dedicate this song, Chileshe, about which Bra Masekela said: "We first recorded this song in 1968 on the 'Promise of A Future' album. People from Jo’burg always thought of themselves as being much more advanced, civilised and hipper than anybody that did not grow up there, especially people from the outlying provinces like Northern Transvaal, Kwa-Zulu Natal, Mozambique, Zambia, Namibia, Lesotho, Botswana, Malawi, Swaziland. I was also thinking about how the whites used to ill-treat us and call us 'Kaffirs' and all kinds of dirty names. The song is a call to those who are denigrated and vilified by these attitudes to stand up proudly and not allow themselves to be called derogatory names like 'Mighirighamba', 'Makirimane', 'Makwankwies', 'Makhafula', etc. With the influx today of peoples from all over the African diaspora into South Africa, the level of xenophobia has risen to disgusting heights. Most paradoxically, the song is even more popular amongst black South Africans today and is deeply loved by the new immigrants which helped the 'Black To The Future' album to platinum heights."

*****

*The title refers to this poem by Gil Scott-Heron
[1] Figures from Wilson F., Labour in the South African Gold Mines 1911-1969, (Cambridge UP, 1972)
Other references: Katzenellenbogen S., South Africa and Southern Mozambique: Labour, Railways and Trade in the Making of a Relationship, (Manchester, Manchester UP, 1982); Milazi D., The Politics and Economics of Lbour Migration in Southern Africa (1984); Crush J., Jeeves A. & Yudelman D., South Africa’s Labor Empire – A History of Black Migrancy to the Gold Mines, (Oxford, Westview Press, 1991)

*****

Article also published at Africanpath

ECOS DA IMPRENSA ANGOLANA (5)

“Pergunto ao vento que passa
notícias do meu país
e o vento cala a desgraça
o vento nada me diz.

Mas há sempre uma candeia
dentro da própria desgraça
há sempre alguém que semeia
canções no vento que passa.”
Manuel Alegre

Numa longa entrevista ao jornal A Capital, o director do Semanario Angolense (SA), Graca Campos, disserta sobre a actual panaramica da imprensa privada em Angola:

[Aqui]

No Jornal Angolense, Wilson Dada (Reginaldo Silva), conduz-nos pelos intersticios da pre-campanha eleitoral ja' iniciada:

“Depois do que aconteceu com as passeatas e meetings (comícios/ bebidos/maratonas) organizados pelo MPLA no último fim-desemana um pouco por todo o país, generosamente amplificados e ampliados pela sempre fiel comunicação social estatal, pode-se dizer que oficialmente teve inicio a pré-campanha eleitoral, embora a lei eleitoral não preveja nenhum período com esta designação.”

O kulunista partilha tambem algumas recebidas 'licoes de jornalismo' com os seus leitores:

“O reino da objectividade é a informação, a notícia, a cobertura, a reportagem, a análise, assim como o reino da tomada de posição era a opinião, o comentário, o artigo, o editorial. E fundamental separar e distinguir informação de opinião, indicar as diferenças de conteúdo e forma dos géneros jornalísticos, e apresentar toda a produção jornalística ao leitor/telespectador de forma a que ele perceba imediatamente o que é a exposição da realidade e o que é o juízo de valor". [Aqui]

No SA, o linguista e tradutor Adérito Miranda introduz-nos o “Segmento Mba como música”, na sua serie sobre “Linguística Bantu a partir do Kimbundu”:

"Conhecemos o segmento Mba com dois significados, sendo um no reino animal (pessoas, animais, população), que já foi aqui tratado abundantemente, e outro na música, como se pode ver nos vocábulos acima referenciados. Na música, o Mba representa ou reproduz fonologicamente uma batida no tambor ou em qualquer outro instrumento de percussão. Façamos então uma breve análise sobre aqueles casos." [Aqui]

Ainda no SA, Luis Kandjimbo apresenta uma recensao critica da obra de Arnaldo Santos, detendo-se particularmente no seu romance “A Casa Velha das Margens”:

“O autor do romance em apreço é natural de Luanda, onde nasceu em 1935. Fez os estudos primários e secundários em Luanda. Na década de 50, integrou o chamado «grupo da Cultura». Colaborou em várias publicações periódicas luandenses, entre as quais a revista Cultura, o Jornal de Angola (da década de 60), Abc e Mensagem da Casa dos Estudantes do Império. É membro fundador da União dos Escritores Angolanos (Uea). Passou a infância e a adolescência no bairro do Kinaxixi, topónimo que ocupa um lugar privilegiado na sua produção narrativa. Aos vinte anos de idade, publicou a sua primeira colectânea de contos, intitulada Quinaxixi. Com o livro de crónicas Tempo do Munhungo, arrebatou em 1968 o Prémio Mota Veiga, um dos poucos existentes em Luanda, nas décadas de 60 e 70.

Preciosista na depuração do texto narrativo curto e avaro da economia dos seus elementos, Arnaldo Santos submete a língua portuguesa a um singular tratamento articulando formas de expressão resultantes de modelos de comunicação angolanos a correspondentes formas de conteúdo. No dizer de Jorge Macedo, ele usa «lexias-kimbundo no interior de um português de luzidia correcção». Devido a esse labor oficinal, a sua obra narrativa não conheceu variações até à década de 90, gravitando em torno da forma breve do texto narrativo, entre o conto (Kinaxixi) e a crónica (Tempo do Munhungo). O seu romance que anuncia um outro fôlego, A Boneca de Quilengues, é publicado em 1991. No panorama da ficção narrativa angolana, é uma referência incontornável.” [Aqui]

OBAMA VS. CLINTON: THE MOTHER OF ALL BATTLES! (11)

'THE ELITIST'!

I started mentally writing this post as I watched Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama expound on their views about faith and religion on CNN’s “Compassion Forum” last night. Apart from the points relating to inter-faith dialogue in the global arena brought in by Obama, it was mainly a domestic affair and, to be honest, faith and religion discussions, particularly in the American context, is not something I’d normally engage in. However, there was an angle to it that surely caught everybody’s interest, including mine, namely the new line of fire launched by Hillary (and McCain, but he was not present at yesterday’s forum) on Obama for saying, a few days ago, that “decades of lost jobs and unfulfilled promises from Washington have left some Pennsylvanians ‘bitter’ and clinging to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

For these, by his own admission, ‘clumsy’ words, Obama is now being painted by his opponents as “out of touch with ordinary, particularly blue collar, Americans”, “patronising”, “contemptuous”, “condescending”, in short, an “elitist”! He did his best to dismiss the deliberate misconstruction of what he really meant but, of course, because it is all politically motivated, it will be milked till the last drop. Well, let me say this: though it is bound to cost him some votes in the upcoming election in Pennsylvania, I don’t think that this will cost him the possible nomination by the Democratic Party and will eventually fade away much easier than the Reverend Wright debacle (hopefully helped by the upcoming Pope’s visit to the US).

However, there is a dimension to this issue that touches me on a personal level. I explain: in my life experience, particularly in most recent years, I’ve been observing this interesting, but disturbing, phenomenon, whereby – be it in contests for power at any level, or simply in the trivial course of people trying to assert themselves in any sort of social relationships – some will make a point of going out of their way to invert the terms of a particular equation, e.g. the true elitist will do all s/he can to accuse the other of elitism, the true racist will try anything to portray the other as racist, the gender-insensitive will willy-nilly paint the other as a misogynist, the unsure about their African roots and/or identity, or totally lacking any, will relentlessly play the “more African than thou” game against the true African (yes, there is such a thing!)... The examples could go on and on.

So, here we have a Barack Obama, who was the son of an absent father, raised, at times on food stamps, by a single mother and not exactly rich grandparents, who financed his studies with student loans, whose professional career was mostly developed within working class communities, who is a practicing religious man and, not totally irrelevant to this entire discussion, who is an African-American with all the adversities the ‘condition’ entails in the US and virtually anywhere in the world, being pitched to the public exclusively as a ‘Harvard graduate’, therefore an ‘elitist’, by those who were born in privilege and raised by the rules of the true American elite for generations… And, not only that, have been widely known for notorious elitist statements and behaviour.

I mean, how much must someone lack in elitism (… racism? I wouldn’t even go there…) to despise the American Civil Rights Movement to the point of opposing the institution of a holiday in memory of Martin Luther King Jr., as McCain did? Of course, he expressly went to Memphis to apologise for it on the recently marked 40th anniversary of Dr. King’s assassination, but… Or, how closely ‘in touch’ with the feelings of ordinary people can someone be to say on TV that “I’m not seating here like some little woman 'stand by your man' like Tammy Wynette” – when that’s effectively what she was doing – as Hillary did to save her husband from impeachment over a certain sexual scandal in the White House?

Played, as it is in this case, at the highest level of the political arena, this game can be either inconsequential, or utterly destructive, depending on the correlation of forces at presence in one particular moment. And as these stand right now, it will most probably be of relatively minor consequence for Obama’s chances in the current American primaries. He can regret the effect of his words, as he did, but eventually laugh it all off with just something like “shame on you Hillary, you should know better!”, as he also did.

However, when the same game is played, as it often is in my experience, against more vulnerable people, who – exclusively by virtue of their strenuous effort at making the most of the opportunities they fought for and their determination to succeed against all odds, when they could have chosen much easier paths in life – come to be perceived as part of an elite born with a silver spoon in their mouth and, as a result of that, ostracised and antagonised by all sorts of opportunist, jealous, envious, manipulative and populist ‘warriors’ and 'young turks' so prevalent in certain ‘influential’ African or African-minded quarters, in the blogosphere and elsewhere, it can only be destructive. And sad, very sad indeed. And, as always, it’s good old Mamma Africa that ends up paying the price of all such utter nonsense…

LOCAL VOICES OFFLINE (11)

Things someone, somewhere in the world, was talking about but you probably weren’t listening…

Chopper for the Vice President


[Obs: President Mogae is expected to officially step down tomorrow in favour of Vice-President Ian Khama. Read more HERE]

FIELD DAY