Course on
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.
- To download any of the CU courses in PDF files please click here.
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