African
Revolutionary Writers, Part 7c
Mahmood Mamdani
What remains for us in this part is an extract from Mahmood
Mamdani’s “Citizen and Subject” (the downloadable text is linked below).
Like Issa Shivji and Walter Rodney, both of whom we will
come to later, 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.
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 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, 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 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 king – literally.
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 did dominate the country in terms of 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.
Please download and read this text via the
following link:
Further reading:
Cheikh
Anta Diop, Civilisation or Barbarism, 1981 (1785
words)
Aimé Césaire,
Discourse on Colonialism, 1955 (13955 words)
thanks for this; i appreciate your writing & collecting & sharing a lot. keep the energy up, itS much needed. love, kat
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