South Africas sub-imperial seductionsPatrick Bond2013-05-09, Issue 629<http://www.pambazuka.org/en/issue/629> http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/87288<http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/87288>[image: Bookmark and Share]<http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=250&pub=fahamutech>Printer friendly version <http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/87288/print>
*cc J G* <https://picasaweb.google.com/116344589077076297327>South Africa is this week hosting yet another major conference, the World Economic Forum for Africa, amidst increasing evidence that the nation is fast growing as a sub-imperialist power Thanks are due to the brutally-frank Zambian vice president Guy Scott who last week pronounced, I dislike South Africa for the same reason that Latin Americans dislike the United States, and to our own president Jacob Zuma for forcing a long-overdue debate, just as the World Economic Forum Africa summit opens in Cape Town: is Pretoria a destructive sub-imperialist power? Two positions immediately hardened on Monday at the spiky, must-read ezine Daily Maverick <http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/>, as Zuma<http://www.timeslive.co.za/politics/2013/05/07/zuma-wants-african-stability-force> declared the need for a decisive intervention: an African Standby Force for rapid deployment in crisis areas. One stance that of veteran US State Department official and now DM columnist Brooks Spector<http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2013-05-06-sas-foreign-policies-a-muddle-in-the-middle/> encourages the extension of Pretorias power footprint for the sake of economic self-interest; the other by health and human rights activist Sisonke Msimang<http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2013-05-08-will-the-real-superpower-please-stand-up/#.UYti34IwNDp> favours the revival of a Mandela-era rhetorical passion for continental human rights. First though, some context: · The call for a rush deployment force (Africon-style) comes the week after Ernst & Youngs Africa Attractiveness Survey<http://www.ey.com/ZA/en/Issues/Business-environment/Africa-Attractiveness-Survey> recorded how thanks to predictable mining houses and MTN cellphone service, Standard Bank, Shoprite retail, and Sanlam insurance, SAs foreign direct investment in the rest of Africa had risen 57 percent since 2007; indeed, when one strips out investment from other countries into South Africa itself, [SA] was the single largest investor in FDI projects in the rest of Africa in 2012 and SA finance minister Pravin Gordhans recent budget statement promises to relax cross-border financial regulations and tax requirements on companies, making it easier for banks and other financial institutions to invest and operate up-continent, making the re-scramble for Africa that more frenetic. ·The call comes shortly after 1500 more SA National Defense Force (SANDF) troops were deployed to the resource-rich eastern edge of the Democratic Republic of the Congo where not only is petroleum being prospected by Zumas catastrophe-prone nephew Khulubuse<http://mg.co.za/tag/khulubuse-zuma>, but where coltan for our cellphones is mined, where Africas biggest conglomerate, Johannesburg-based Anglo, was caught working with murderous warlords a few years ago, and where more than five million Congolese have lost their lives over the last fifteen years. ·It comes five and a half weeks after Pretoria declared itself the gateway to Africa for Brazilian, Russian, Indian and Chinese investors at Durbans BRICS summit <http://ccs.ukzn.ac.za/default.asp?6,84>. ·It comes six weeks after 13 SANDF troops returned home in coffins from the Central African Republic capital Bangui in the wake of their mission to protect South African assets which were initially said to be merely SANDFs toys<http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2013-04-05-defence-ministers-theatre-of-car-absurd-we-were-protecting-our-military-equipment/#.UYtjtoIwNDp> yet just as they fell, those soldiers were termed mercenaries by the Seleka rebel group now in control. As a SANDF survivor told Sunday Times reporters Graeme Hoskins and Isaac Mahlangu<http://www.timeslive.co.za/local/2013/03/31/we-were-killing-kids-1>, Our men were deployed to various parts of the city, protecting belongings of South Africans. They were the first to be attacked the guys outside the different buildings the ones which belong to businesses in Joburg. According to the Mail&Guardian<http://mg.co.za/article/2013-03-28-00-central-african-republic-is-this-what-our-soldiers-died-for>, businesses set up in Bangui in recent years include several owned by African National Congress bigwigs. Looking out from this fog of war, Brooks Spector argues that Pretorias foreign policy efforts should also be geared to promoting the countrys economic and commercial prospects. These would include deliberate efforts aimed at opening foreign markets for South African product exports, encouraging foreign investment domestically, and supporting innovation and opportunities for international business ventures. What of higher-order interests? Spector quotes local commentator Xolela Mangcu, writing for the Brookings Institute in Washington: Zumas predecessor Thabo Mbeki also took it upon himself through the foreign affairs department to stand up for the continent both in fighting the superpowers but also in determining the terms of the worlds involvement with Africa. Mbekis pet projects, the New Partnership for Africas Development (Nepad), came under criticism in other parts of the continent precisely because of this big brother role. Fighting the superpowers? The bulk of evidence suggests [_id]=266]Mbeki repeatedly bolstered their neoliberal agenda<http://www.ukznpress.co.za/?class=bb_ukzn_books&method=view_books&global[fields> even though he tossed around phrases like global apartheid<http://zedbooks.co.uk/node/11210> to throw observers off the scent. More honestly, Nepad was termed by aBush Administration official<http://www.institutionalinvestor.com/Popups/PrintArticle.aspx?ArticleID=1026932> philosophically spot-on with Bush giving Mbeki point man duty<http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/jul/10/zimbabwe.rorycarroll> on Zimbabwe, for example. In opening African markets for SA, as Spector desires, and in facilitating massive new African infrastructure investments along old colonial lines, even worse US penetration<http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/10/05/which-africans-will-obama-whack-next/> is likely (not just the oft-remarked flood from China). Mbekis pro-West orientation was a central reason why the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa<http://www.codesria.org/spip.php?article352> (the continents leading intellectual body) condemned Nepad, since big brother was actually more of a mini-me looking up to the imperialist powers: Nepad will reinforce the hostile external environment and the internal weaknesses that constitute the major obstacles to Africas development. Indeed, in certain areas like debt, Nepad steps back from international goals that have been won through global mobilisation and struggle. Nepads most fundamental flaws, according to the continents sharpest thinkers, include the neo-liberal economic policy framework at the heart of the plan Its main targets are foreign donors The engagement that Nepad seeks with institutions and processes like the World Bank, the IMF, the WTO, the United States Africa Growth and Opportunity Act, the Cotonou Agreement, will further lock Africas economies disadvantageously into this environment. Instead of encouraging Joburg capitals venal economic greed, Pretoria should indeed intervene, but with a rather different agenda, insists Msimang: Much to the chagrin of those of us who had hoped we would be more muscular in our approach, SA has elected to play a softly-softly role in matters of human rights, good governance and democracy on the continent. (To be sure, the same softly-softly role was also witnessed in Marikana and so many thousands of other South African sites of corruption, neoliberal service non-delivery, malgovernance and police brutality.) What lies behind these grievances? For Spector, it is that Pretorias foreign policy has been bedevilled by what could be termed a slow-growing, ad hoc amateurism; a too-easy reliance on the formalism of international organisations as a substitute for concrete results; and a growing confusion between supporting economic and commercial goals as a whole as opposed to acting for the benefit of individual business profits. The lamentable result? South Africa, today, resembles more and more that pitiful, helpless giant of Richard Nixons late night fears about America caught in the midst of the Vietnam War than it does the view of a colossus that bestrides a continent existing in popular sentiment here. (That sentiment includes Zumas National Development Plan<http://www.info.gov.za/issues/national-development-plan/>, by the way, which concedes the perception of the country as a regional bully because SA policy-makers tend to have a weak grasp of African geopolitics.) To bestride Africa is a regrettably cheeky image, because as you know Brooks Spector, The Rhodes Colossus<http://postcolonialstudies.emory.edu/cecil-rhodes/punch_rhodes_colossus/> was an 1892 cartoon in Punch magazine celebrating the Cape-to-Cairo agenda of Britains sub-imperialist partner. Ten years ago, a similarly misguided speechwriter for Mandela had him utter these words<http://madiba.mg.co.za/article/2003-08-25-mandela-criticises-apartheid-lawsuits> at the ill-advised launch of the Mandela-Rhodes Foundation<http://madiba.mg.co.za/article/2003-08-25-mandela-criticises-apartheid-lawsuits>: I am sure that Cecil John Rhodes would have given his approval to this effort to make the South African economy of the early 21st century appropriate and fit for its time. But today, suffering his perpetual crises, how might a Zuma-Colossus continue bossing disillusioned SANDF soldiers into coffins? (Nixon couldnt do so after around 1973, Spector needs no reminding.) After all, the expectations are high, if we are to judge by a private-sector arbiter of sub-imperial cooperative capacity, the Stratfor<http://search.wikileaks.org/gifiles/?viewemailid=951571> consultancy. Thanks to Anonymous and WikiLeaks, we know that SAs history is driven by the interplay of competition and cohabitation between domestic and foreign interests exploiting the country's mineral resources. Despite being led by a democratically-elected government, the core imperatives of SA remain maintenance of a liberal regime that permits the free flow of labour and capital to and from the southern Africa region, and maintenance of a superior security capability able to project into south-central Africa. That, at least, was conventional imperialist wisdom until the Bangui rebels forced a bloodied SANDF into rapid retreat on March 23. Here the danger of Msimangs position becomes apparent: seducing Pretoria to once again talk left so as to invade right. Post-Apartheid SA has elected to do the diplomatic soft-shoe shuffle in matters of human rights, good governance and democracy on the continent. On the continent, the lowest-common-denominator approach to diplomacy and foreign policy is perceived as weak. It is time South Africa spoke softly and carried a big stick, says Msimang. Like Spector recalling Rhodes, the problem with Msimangs latter quote is that the man who first uttered it, at the turn of the last century, was US president Theodore Roosevelt, one of Washingtons most aggressive interventionists. Notches on his belt ranged from consolidating power in neo-colonial Cuba and the Philippines , to rendering the Panama Canal a major staging area for American military forces, making the US the dominant military power in Central America, as one biographer<http://millercenter.org/president/roosevelt/essays/biography/5>remarked. Moreover, Roosevelts corollary to the Monroe Doctrine was that the United States would intervene in any Latin American country that manifested serious economic problems, and serve as the Western Hemispheres main cop. Some say that by now taking a similar gap as chief cop in Southern and Central Africa, SA becomes imperialist<http://zabalaza.net/2013/04/18/south-africas-rulers-have-blood-on-their-hands/>, a case that would be stronger were it not for the vast drain of mining and financial profits into those dozen overseas-listed corporations that were once SAs largest, whose financial headquarters are now mainly in London. The current account deficit from profit and dividend outflows has ratcheted the foreign debt to $135 billion, a potential crisis catalyst in coming months. Such vulnerability to the whim of capital means that while zigzagging across Africa between service to the West and to new BRIC allies (especially China) one day, and to Joburg/family businesses the next, with a military unable to service such a long supply chain, what Spector terms a muddle in the middle is better alliterated as schizophrenic sub-imperialist SA. * Patrick Bond directs the University of KwaZulu-Natal Centre for Civil Society <http://ccs.ukzn.ac.za/>, which co-hosted the brics-from-below counter-summit in March. * BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS --------------------------------------------------------- M&G: 'Shock and awe tactics' used on shack dwellersSubmitted by Abahlali_3 on Fri, 2013-05-10 09:16. anti-land invasion unit<http://abahlali.org/taxonomy/term/1258> | evictions <http://abahlali.org/taxonomy/term/22> | Jared Sacks<http://abahlali.org/taxonomy/term/1193> | Mail and Guardian <http://abahlali.org/taxonomy/term/45> | The Marikana Land Occupation <http://abahlali.org/taxonomy/term/3864> http://mg.co.za/article/2013-05-10-00-shock-and-awe-tactics-used-on-shack-dwellers *'Shock and awe tactics' used on shack dwellers* by Jared Sacks On April 27, while political parties were spending fortunes to celebrate freedom, the shack dwellers' movement Abahlali baseMjondolo commemorated or "mourned" what it called UnFreedom Day in Sweet Home, the shack settlement in Philippi on the Cape Flats. On the same day, a group of shack dwellers from the Philippi East area increased their occupation of a piece of land just off Symphony Way, between Stock and Govan Mbeki roads. But a day later, the City of Cape Town decided to show them exactly how unfree they still are. This settlement, according to community leader Sandile Ngoxolo, was named the "Marikana land occupation" in honour of the workers who died last year in North West province in their struggle for a living wage and because "we too are organising ourselves peacefully and are willing to die for our struggle". Homes were built and occupied, and families worked through the night of Freedom Day to put the finishing touches to them. On Sunday April 28 the Democratic Alliance, which runs Cape Town and which is trying to showcase an anti-apartheid past with the "Know Your DA" campaign, showed that its approach to land issues is not so different from that of the old apartheid National Party. At 1.15pm a large contingent of the city's anti-land invasion unit (ALI) and dozens of day labourers arrived. They were backed up by law enforcement units and police vehicles, including, for extra effect, a Casspir and a Nyala. These forces evicted residents from their homes, often beating them in the process. They pepper-sprayed Abahlali activist Cindy Ketani and then stole her phone, shot another woman twice with rubber bullets and arrested Abahlali baseMjondolo activist Tumi Ramahlele and community member Kemelo Mosaku. Ramahlele claims to have been severely beaten by law enforcement members inside the Casspir after being arrested and is preparing to lay a charge with the Independent Police Investigative Directorate after being examined by a doctor. Counter-spoliation For its part, the ALI then took apart the Marikana homes, often destroying people's property in the process. This was repeated on Tuesday April 30 and once again on Wednesday May 1, only with a much larger police contingent present, which took down yet more homes. Two more residents were arrested. The May Day eviction finished the job begun on Freedom Day, destroying every last home. Moreover, most of the zinc sheets residents had used to build their homes were confiscated by the ALI. On Friday May 3 I got a phone call from a newly homeless resident, Zanele: "Law enforcement is back again. They are not only taking our zinc sheets, but now they are even taking our sails [plastic tarpaulins]. We do not know what to do. It's raining and we have nowhere else to go." I later found out that not only was removing people's belongings illegal (especially if the city doesn't allow residents to claim it back) but also it is against the ALI's official guidelines. I also found out that not only were these evictions illegal but also that the city was citing a nonexistent Act to justify them. City of Cape Town media manager Kylie Hatton claimed in a statement that the evictions were done in accordance with the "Protection of the Possession of Property Act" as an act of "counter-spoliation". But Sheldon Magardie, director of the Cape Town office of the Legal Resources Centre, said there is no such law. Advocate Stuart Wilson, director of the Socio-Economic Rights Institute of South Africa, and constitutional law professor Pierre de Vos concurred. The overarching law that regulates evictions is section 26(3) of the Constitution, which states: "No one may be evicted from their home, or have their home demolished, without an order of court made after considering all the relevant circumstances. No legislation may permit arbitrary evictions." Unfinished and unoccupied The Prevention of Illegal Eviction From and Unlawful Occupation of Land Act of 1998 (the PIE Act) expands on that, as well as on "spoliation", and details the procedures a municipality must follow in order to conduct a legal eviction. According to Wilson, in common law "counter-spoliation permits a person who is in the process of having property taken from them to immediately take that property back without a court order". But, as Wilson, Magardie and others explain, counter-spoliation does not apply to the eviction of people from their homes. Once they are deemed squatters, or even illegal land grabbers, as per the 2004 case of Rudolf vs City of Cape Town, the PIE Act must apply. To justify the eviction in terms of counter-spoliation, the city claims the structures were not homes but were unfinished and unoccupied. This is a blatant lie. I saw the homes, and there are photographs and videos showing clearly that the homes were fully occupied and were being lived and slept in from as early as April 25. On Friday May 3, for the fifth time that week, I set off for the "Marikana" occupation. When I arrived people were cold, wet, tired and depressed. "How could they take the only things we have that would keep us dry?" they wondered. What could be the city's justification for confiscating the tarpaulins? Did they want people to get wet and sick? Is it punishment for daring to build shacks in the first place? I can understand the city's perverted rationale for illegally evicting poor people from empty land. I can understand the economic logic behind the city leaving such land vacant until its value increases, and I can understand the city's perversion of the PIE Act to place the interests of the rich and well connected over the welfare of the poor. But, visiting Sweet Home on that cold day, I could not understand the reason why the ALI would be so malicious as to steal an item vital to the struggle to keep dry on such a miserable, rainy day. Well-thought-out strategy Then I remembered Naomi Klein's discussion of the role of torture in her book, The Shock Doctrine. Torture is a notoriously unreliable way to extract information but, as Klein points out, that is not its primary motive. Rather, it is to put the victims in a position of such disarray that they could not resist power. In the case of these occupiers, shocking them with aggressive displays of power, removing their belongings and making them as uncomfortable as possible in the rain was equivalent to the "shock and awe" tactics of the American invasion of Iraq. As Harlan K Ullman and James P Wade define it in their history of the war, Shock and Awe: Achieving Rapid Dominance, the aim was "to seize control of the environment and paralyse or so overload an adversary's perceptions and understanding of events that the enemy would be incapable of resistance at the tactical and strategic levels". Is this why the ALI flouted its own guidelines? Was it mere meanness, or a well-thought-out strategy aimed at breaking the will of the community? Whatever the case, these actions show that the DA's liberal ideal of small, "efficient" government is a farce, because it requires an extensive, violent, often illicit system of authority to contain the basic demands of the poor as well as their larger, emancipatory aspirations. The ANC, too, in a city such as Durban, talks about the "rule of law" while responding to the organised poor with astonishing violence. This violence is physical, social and spatial. Geographer David McDonald writes in World City Syndrome: Neoliberalism and Inequality in Cape Town (2008) that it is now "arguably the most uneven and spatially segregated city in the country". Abahlali baseMjondolo mourns on UnFreedom Day because, for the poor, the only thing liberalism has given them the right to vote for their oppressors. If we are to have any chance of resolving the escalating crisis in our society, we are going to have to think beyond liberalism. To start, we need to talk about redistribution and put the social value of urban land above its commercial value. 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