Despite early rumours indicating Banda as the favourite candidate Sata’s victory comes as no surprise. The MMD has proven incapable to address the discontent of the urban proletariat and lost thrust after the death of its leader Levy Mwanawasa in 2006. As suggested by a comparison of the two main parties’ manifestos, the PF seems better equipped to tackle Zambia’s economic and social problems. Traditionally campaigning on a strong anti-Chinese (and broadly anti-foreigners) stance, the PF had the merit to reinvigorate an anaemic political debate and to point straight at the major issues of the Zambian economy: an excessive dependency on copper; the government’s inability to extract tax rents from foreign-owned mines; the lack of value-added in the mineral industry.

King Cobra, a Laclauian populist for Larmer and Fraser, was able to convince the electorate that he would defend the interest of “the people” against a corrupt “power” represented by the alliance between the MMD and international corporations. While he (wisely) softened his anti-Chinese rhetoric in the last year, he succeeded in cultivating an image of “man of action” and advocate of the people. His victory is even more momentous considering that it came in spite of the crumbling of his alliance with the third major Zambian party, the liberal UPND.

The populist strategy of the PF does not fully reveal the complexity of the Party’s electoral basis. As Simutanyi explains, remarkable showings in Bemba-speaking regions of Luapula and Northern Province indicate that the PF “may have both ethnic and class bases”. As argued by Cheeseman and Hinfelaar, “the ability of Michael Sata to mobilize a diverse support base – by employing a ‘populist’ message in urban areas at the same time as receiving the support of his ethno-regional community in rural areas – lays bare the complexity of party strategies”. It will be interesting to see how this dual electoral base will reflect on the policies of the new administration.

If anything, Zambian 2011 election was a democratic success. The ECZ delivered results in a reasonably short time (albeit slightly behind schedule) which helped to prevent an explosion of rage by Sata’s supporters. The PF programme includes a reform of the ECZ that would subtract the appointment of its member from the president and confer it to the parliament. If enacted, this would further strengthen the functioning of Zambian democracy.

* * *

Cheeseman, N., Hinfelaar, M., 2009. Parties, Platforms, and Political Mobilization: The Zambian Presidential Election of 2008. African Affairs, 109(434): 51–76.

Laclau, E., 2005. On Populist Reason. London: Verso.

Larmer, M., Fraser, A., 2007. Of Cabbages and King Cobra: Populist Politics and Zambia’s 2006 Elections. African Afairs, 106(425): 611-637.

Simutanyi, N., 2009. MMD’s Narrow Electoral Victory. Zambian Analysis 3(1).

PF Manifesto. MMD Manifesto.

Click here to read my article on Zambian 2011 election for PeaceReporter (in Italian).

Share & Bookmark

Background and main themes

In 1948, a relevant portion of southern Shanxi was controlled by the People’s Liberation Army. The Party used its influence on Border Regions (liberated areas) to start policies of land reform, aimed at fanshen (翻身, turn over) the old system of land ownership and free poor peasants from the oppression of the rural gentry. At a tactical level, land reform policies also had the purpose of sustaining the PLA through widespread support for the Communist Party and for its cause. In the process of land reform, work teams, mainly formed by urban intellectuals, were sent to the countryside to supervise local cadres and help them to solve the social and within-Party contrasts related to land expropriation and redistribution. The author, a prominent American Marxist, was allowed to join one of these work teams and spent six months in the village of Long Bow (Changchuang).

Long Bow was by no means a typical Chinese village: for one thing, it had a seizable Catholic minority and a relatively weak clan structure, since the ancestral roots of many families were based elsewhere. Moreover, in a territory on the edge of Japanese control, Long Bow was one of the few villages that the Japanese occupied. According to the author, this made the path to liberation particularly tortuous and conflict particularly acute. Nevertheless, Long Bow possessed the characteristics of other rural villages in terms of class structure and economic system: indeed, the main difficulties that the land reform process had to go through could all be found in Long Bow.

Two main themes run throughout the book: the weaknesses of the peasants as revolutionary soldiers and the constant dialectic between theory and practice in the Communist ranks. It is useful at this point to recall the classification of peasants’ weaknesses in Mao’s thought: 1) Their purely military viewpoint and the tendency to regard fighting as the only task of the army; 2) “Extreme democracy” and aversion to any form of discipline; 3) “Absolute equalitarianism” – everyone is treated alike regardless of circumstances; 4) “Subjectivism” in voicing critics without realistic examination of facts; 5) Individualism and hedonism; 6) A mentality of “roving insurgents”; 7) “Adventurism” – acting blindly without first assessing one’s own strengths and possibilities. Land reform can then be viewed as an attempt by peasants to overcome their own weaknesses through a self-reform process guided and encouraged by the Party.

In villages like Long Bow, the process entailed a complex relationship between local cadres, members of the work team and the Party. In brief, as local cadres were not necessarily Party members (and vice-versa), the work team, as an equipe of Party experts and educators, acted like a mediator between local cadres and the Party. Central directives were the fruit of debates based on the assessment of local situations, but their correct implementation was in the hands of local peasants-cadres. Hence, the necessity of educating them with the help of work teams. It is worth recalling that the Party itself remained a secret society until April ’48, when membership was made open and peasants could finally give a human, non-divine face to the organization that was leading the revolution.

From commandism to extreme democracy to emancipation: The construction of a social class

In 1946, in Long Bow and all across the County, the “double reduction” policy was substituted by the “land to the tiller policy”. In other words, a significant radicalization of the reform process took place: as the reduction of interest rates and rents had been achieved, the next logical step was land expropriation. At the same time, following the retreat of the Japanese, the focus shifted from the “anti-traitors” to the “settling the accounts” movement. These policies liberated resources and generated an initial production boom: peasants generally had more land to till and no more debts to pay. However, as expropriations went out of control, few private enterprises survived and social strain became too acute. Village cadres reacted to a growing popular reluctance with authoritarian means and “commandism”. For Mao, this proved the weakness of peasants as revolutionary leaders and the necessity to analyse the contradictions of the movement by sending work teams to the countryside. The intention of Mao was to confiscate feudal land and monopoly capital while at the same time protecting commerce and the industrial activities of the national bourgeoisie: he wanted to form a broad coalition against the nationalists, avoiding extremism and encouraging economic development. Long Bow was one of the village that received a work team. Their verdict was tough one: land reform in the village was declared a failure, and a drastic reorganization of the peasants’ movement was deemed necessary.

At a central level, a Draft Agrarian Law was introduced to correct the initial mistakes of the reform. Class, rather than political affiliation, was to determine the redistribution of land, and no one would be left with insufficient resources to sustain his family. In Long Bow, the enforcement of the Agrarian Law and the reorganization of the peasants’ movement went hand in hand. Correcting the mistakes of the first land redistribution wave required a new class classification, a new Peasants’ League and a deep analysis of cadres’ behaviour. In order to divide villagers into different classes, a “self report – public appraisal” system was used and the emphasis fell on class status rather than on class origin. However, the outcome of the process was not satisfactory: as few landlords and rich peasants were found, there wasn’t much to share. The constitution of a Provisional Poor and Hired Peasants’ League followed, with problems related to different interpretations regarding how an “honest” and “hardworking” peasant should be. The assessment of cadres’ behaviour through mass trials was more successful. The system, called “the Gate”, was an example of supervision by the people, where peasants could give voice to their discontent and cadres had to return misappropriated items. Apart from misappropriations, the main problems that emerged were violence (cadre easily resorted to beating people, cases of rapes were also reported) and immoral behaviours or sexual scandals. What the Gate forgot to stress was the success of the fanshen movement and the fact that most poor peasants doubled their land tenure. Moreover, there was excessive pressure on cadres, an many were forced to confess crimes they didn’t commit.

A County conference in Lucheng, attended by cadres and work teams, addressed the issues of Left extremism among cadres. The “poor-peasant” line was abandoned in favour of a more realistic and moderate policy based on a new assessment of social classes. The conference was a sort of Gate brought at a much wider level: cadres judged one another and improved their self-criticism and ideological preparation. In this sense, the conference was a real Party school and represented the first chance for many rural cadres to share experiences and learn from each another. The key-issue of the conference was how to treat middle-peasants: according to Mao, they were natural allies on the revolution, and a correct assessment of the dividing line between middle and rich peasants was fundamental in designing the opposing factions of the class struggle. Decisions were made to increase the ranks of the middle peasants and to distinguish between feudal income (rents, interest rates) and more acceptable forms of capital, like commercial or productive activities. A consequence of the new line was that middle peasants who were previously classified as rich peasants had to be paid back. This marked a relevant shift from the ultra-leftist “sweep the floor out the door” policies that characterized some earlier phases of the revolution, but while the new measures were accepted, some of the cadres regarded them with little enthusiasm: a great part of their work had been criticized, even if it led to the fanshen of the majority of poor peasants.

A complex mechanism for villagers’ re-classification was put in place, but a general lack of morale, coupled with discontent among poor peasants who were re-classified as “new middle peasants”, encouraged individualistic tendencies and apathy towards village meetings and new procedures. Extreme democracy was dangerously on its way. Good news, however, came from the new Gate that took place inside the Church building. The two bad elements that were discovered (violent cadres with a questionable family life) were sent to a re-education school: the vindictiveness that characterized the first Gate was finally abandoned. The second Gate marked a decisive shift away from violence for the cadres of Long Bow.

When, later in 1948, a second County conference was held in Lucheng, the land reform movement was declared complete and emphasis was put on the restoration of production (“we oppose the feudal system primarily because it hinders production”). Cadres were both relieved and disoriented, some of them perceived the new policy as a symptom of weakness in the Party: local cadres were generally more leftist than Party officials. In Long Bow, after a urban intellectual was sent to revive the morale of the cadres, some mutual aid group was restored and a tax reduction was agreed, after a storm hit the village destroying some of the crops. The main innovation, one that finalized the process of land reform and inspired the enthusiasm of the masses, was the creation of an elective Village People’s Congress in charge for the administration of local affairs, in adherence to what was already decided during the first County conference. The Congress held the final round of class reclassification, followed by the restitution of misappropriated land to middle peasants. At this point, after the completion of the land reform and after local cadres corrected all their past mistakes – but before a final decision was made, at the central level, on whether to follow a capitalist or socialist path to development – the work team left Long Bow.

Conclusion: The peasants and the Party

The land reform was a great mass movement that subverted the status-quo of Chinese socio-economic organization. It was a complex, violent process by which a social class – the peasant – was transformed from a passive social force to the centre of political action. China was not new to peasant’s uprisings and riots, but old peasant’s movements never succeeded to uproot the landlord class. According to Hinton, the reason why the land reform could finally succeed lays in the leadership of the Communist Party, which enabled the peasantry to acquire class consciousness and to adopt a rational rather than emotional approach to voice its grievances.

The dialectic between the Party and the masses rises a question regarding the extent to which the social class of the oppressed was an artificial construct of Marxist ideology or a pre-existent albeit dormant social force. It was probably a mix of both. While a subaltern social class was clearly identifiable at the “core”, its shape became confused at the “edges”. The Party, with its clear-cut borders between poor, middle and rich peasants introduced an element of arbitrary rigidity in the otherwise liquid realm of class definition. The drawing of these borders constituted an answer to the Party’s need of a vast coalition to line up against the Kuomintang. But at the same time, the rigid class definition also prevented the revolutionary movement to become an anarchic struggle of everyone against everyone.

Rather than triggering a confused people’s resentment, the Party channeled and controlled the masses in order to discourage violence and achieve a minimax social outcome that allowed the poor and middle peasants to join in a united front. The regulation of violence (of both cadres and peasants) through self-criticism, re-education and the imposition of Party discipline is indeed one of the recurrent themes of the book. Individual struggles were united in the widest possible collective struggle: conflict was ultimately instrumental to the creation of a new and more acceptable social order. Seen in this perspective, the continuous policy adjustment of the Party and its analyses of the problems and demands of the countryside constituted a dialectic learning process whose main result was to cool down the revolutionary impetus, correct and pay for initial mistakes and broaden the anti-nationalist coalition. Without superimposing a strict categorization of social classes, a constructive dialogue between classes, cadres and the Party would not have started and the “common enemy” would not have been clearly identified.

Click here to see the outcomes of the Land Reform in Long Bow.

Share & Bookmark

The King Cobra, this is how Sata is known in Zambia, ran for the presidency in 2006 and 2008, as leader of the Patriotic Front (PF). He lost in both occasions, but in 2008 he went very close to victory and his popularity is undeniably on the rise: the headlines of the Post, the only independent Zambian newspaper, are all for him, and at least in Lusaka, people believe he is the man of action who could lift the country from the mediocre administration of President Rupiah Banda. “The PF is ready, even if elections were tomorrow” was his last declaration to the press.

The African-humanist independence hero Kenneth Kaunda ruled Zambia from 1964 to 1991 as leader of UNIP, which he made sole legal party in 1972. As public opinion and international pressure forced him to legalize opposition parties, he was defeated by the Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD) of Frederik Chiluba in 1991. Kaunda accepted the verdict without uttering a single word of complaint: an uncommon reaction in this part of the world, which proves the moral stature of the old leader. Since then, the MMD would rule Zambian until now, with Levy Mwanawasa and Rupiah Banda succeeding to Chiluba in the State House.

Under the MMD rule, Michael Sata was made Minister of Health and Governor of Lusaka. However, as he realized that the MMD was betting on other presidential candidates, he founded the Patriotic Front with another long-experienced politician, the white farmer Guy Scott. The PF can claim the merit of animating an otherwise anaemic political debate, but in doing so, it makes large use of populistic slogans that have the sole aim of triggering people’s resentment against the status-quo.

One of Sata’s favourite targets are foreign investors, especially from China. “Chinese investment is not benefitting the people”, he tells me. During the 2006 campaigns, Sata was accused of seeking financial support from Taiwan, which many claim was the main reason for his anti-Chinese stance. Before the elections, he frequently met Taiwanese businesspeople in Malawi, the only country in the region that used to recognize Taiwan as an independent state. His opinion on the matter has not changed: “Taiwanese people are human beings and deserve their own country”, he declares, while in the meantime the government of Malawi changed its foreign policy and closed the Taiwanese Embassy. I want to learn more about this affaire and I ask Sata about the current donors of the Patriotic Front. He nervously replies that this is not my business and knowing who funds his Party would not help my research anyway. “Zambia is not Europe, the identity of donors needs to be protected for their own safety”, he finally adds.

In 2006, the Chinese ambassador Li Baodong intervened in the electoral campaign threatening to freeze Chinese investments had the PF won the elections. The climate is now less tense, and influent members of the Chinese community interpret Sata’s attacks as mere electoral strategies. As the Post journalist Mwala Kalaluka confirms, “this is just campaigning”. However, Sata’s strategy seems to have paid well if one looks at electoral results in the urban area of Lusaka and in the mineral-rich Copperbelt Province, where Chinese investments are concentrated.

It would be interesting to know how the PF is planning to deal with foreign investors. Two alternative solutions could be strengthening the role of Trade Unions or nationalizing foreign companies. Sata’s answer on this point is evasive. He replies that “the role of Unions is irrelevant as long as we have a government that doesn’t respect laws” and that “privatization per-se is not useful”. When it comes to the economy, he seems more cautious than his friend Mugabe. My personal guess is that a PF’s victory in 2011 elections wouldn’t change much in the way Zambia is dealing with foreign investments. As Banda’s government recently authorised the creation of four new Multi-facility Economic Zones, promoted by Western and Asian investors, the path seems laid down for the years to come. As a Chinese businessman puts it, “foreign investments are like water falling down, you can’t reverse its course”.

I conclude my interview with King Cobra with few more questions on Zambian politics. What strikes more me when I read Zambian (and African) newspapers is how politicians constantly and obscurely reinvent their relationship with former leaders. Back in 2006, for instance, Sata and Chiluba where actively supporting each other: Sata claimed that Chiluba should not be prosecuted for corruption and Chiluba granted his endorsement to the Patriotic Front. A rapid look at 2010 newspaper shows that Chiluba is now in the MMD sphere. Similarly, while Sata firmly attacked president Mwanawasa in 2006, he now declares that the former president was a good leader, as opposed to Banda, who was never officially appointed as his successor and is now “selling the country to foreigners without tenders”. Sata doesn’t help in clarifying my doubts: he first argues that Chiluba has never been a factor in recent Zambian politics, and finally says that he does not intend to talk about past leaders (“talking about other people is always dangerous”).

These answers reinforce my suspect that hidden interests and personal relations are what shape the political debate in Zambia. Otherwise, why would Sata attack the corrupted Mwanawasa and defend the equally corrupted Chiluba in 2006, only to invert his preferences four years later? If any form of neo-colonialism exists in Zambia, it is facilitated by a non-transparent ruling class who largely ignores the grievances of one of the most peace-loving people in the continent. This is what could ultimately make Zambia weaker in the eyes of foreign companies and governments, as the superficial (in the PF) and non-existent (in the MMD) debate on foreign investments seems to suggest.

Share & Bookmark

As I left Kashgar behind and entered the steep mountain road I started to feel pleasantly uncertain about my future yet free to move wherever I wanted, something I never experienced when traveling by public transport or hitching. I was riding a bike for the first time in my life and I was on the Karakoram highway. A lucky combination. With the exception of few muddy or flooded sections, the road was in very good conditions and the weather was great. As expected, my little bike began to suffer above 3000 meters, and it took great struggles at low gears to bring it to a decent speed. My next destination, the Pamir Highway, would have mountain passes way above 4000 meters and dirt roads: I was a bit worried that my red Suzuki wouldn’t make it. But in the end I thought it was safe enough if the bike suffered high altitude disease earlier than the driver. Being stranded is better than being ill.

I reached Karakul lake after six hours and found shelter in a yurt by the shore. An old lady with her daughter and one son were my family for that night. My hosts were warm and welcoming, and cooked the best laghman noodles I had eaten in Xinjiang. The area is part of the Kyrgyz autonomous prefecture and is mostly inhabited by semi-nomadic Kyrgyz people. In my yurt, kids could speak some Chinese, but their mom only spoke Kyrgyz, a Turkish language close to Uighur and totally unrelated to Mandarin. Around 20% of the world’s 4.5 million Kyrgyz population live outside their home country and, according to the Chinese 2009 population Census, 145.000 of them live in Xinjiang Province. The Kyrgyz diaspora is probably going to increase as a result of this summer’s clashes in the southern part of the country, with ethnic violence triggering the number of refugees, mostly Uzbek, who are fleeing to neighboring countries.

Few days after I came back from Karakul lake, I set off to the Pamir. I reached the Chinese border post after a five hours ride and discussed with custom people for quite a long time. The problem was obviously my motorbike. In the end they agreed to allow me and my bike to cross the border after removing the plate. Kyrgyz guards were milder: they simply stopped for a chat and stamped my passport without complications. I finally entered Kyrgyzstan with an old Japanese bike, bottles of fuel, unofficial-looking papers and no plate at all. Soon after the border, I realized that the hard part was there to come. Irkeshtam, a scary and stony mountain pass, rose abruptly in front of me: this is how the road would look like almost all the way to Sary-Tash, the first Kyrgyz settlement of any size. On top of the mountains there was fog and rain and the engine stopped several times. I had to push the bike and I was worried that road conditions were too bad to make it.

In the middle of that cold, wet fog, a Chinese truck driver jumped off his vehicle and approached me while I was struggling against the stony road: “I used to ride a bike when I had no job, every time I see one my heart starts beating and I remember how free and happy I was. Do you need any help?” Sometimes people save your life without even knowing. We chatted for few minutes, he gave me information on the road to Sary-Tash and assured me that I would be able to reach before dusk. That was exactly what I needed to know. I restarted the engine of the old Suzuki, this time with a little more confidence and hope.

Sary-Tash is a tiny village resting in a green, wide valley surrounded by snowy peaks with awkward Soviet names. I arrived there in the late afternoon and slept at a small guesthouse, where I found two experienced bikers who were riding their BMWs back to Germany: a truly fortunate source of new information and company. On the following morning, after refilling our plastic bottles with petrol, we headed to the Tajik border. The green valley was crossed by yaks and decorated with with white yurts. We stopped as we saw three young kids, not older than twelve, riding horses in the opposite direction. They asked for food, stared at our motorbikes and assured us we were on the right way to Tajikistan. From there onwards we wouldn’t meet anyone on our way.

Twenty Kilometers of a catastrophic mountain road separate the Kyrgyz and Tajik border posts. Soon after we got our exit stamps, we reached a point where the road literally disappeared, destroyed as it was by a fast-flowing river. Crossing was impossible and we agreed to wait until the next morning, hoping that the water level would decrease sensibly. We stayed at the only house we could find in that no-man land, which rapidly became crowded with truck drivers who faced our same problem. The following day, it took us hours to carry our bikes  across the river.

At the Tajik border, our small group of bikers split up: one of my occasional fellows had to head back to our previous night’s hosts as his Tajik visa would start on the following day; the other one was faster than me and tried to reach Murgab in one day. The border post consisted in containers randomly placed on top of a mountain pass, with soldiers in rags weaving Kalashnikovs. One of them, with a red sun-burnt complexion and red vodka-burnt eyes, approached me with a sneer. It was the start of an exhausting negotiation. While the Chinese were concerned with bureaucratic formalities, Tajiks were interested in making some extra money, and the lack of a “pechat” (stamp, the first Russian word I learnt and probably the most useful) on my motorbike papers was a great excuse for them to try to sneak in some extra “fees” or “fines”. The border boss, a man with a Texan hat and no uniform, made things clear: 200 dollars. I did not intend to give him a single cent, and promptly showed him my health insurance card, which was the most official-looking document I had with me. I claimed it was an international bike insurance, and added that a pechat was needless in that case: how could I possibly falsify a plastic card with a barcode? The Texan guy was not much persuaded, so I sat down waiting, trying to ignore the angry soldiers and their machine guns and pretending I had enormous amounts of time to spare (not quite true, since I desperately needed to make it to the next village before dusk). My strategy was simply to irritate them gently, with politeness and patience, trying to become a problem they needed to get rid of (not physically, hopefully)! It finally worked, and after four more hours and few more tense discussions I crossed my second border. I had no bike documents, no plate and was short on petrol bottles. But at least I didn’t pay the 200 dollars.

Afghanistan aside, the Tajik Pamir is the most remote and poor region of central Asia, long forsaken by the central government of the Soviet republic. Shortly after independence, when civil war exploded in Tajikistan, the Pamiris stood against the former Khojand-based Soviet elite who still ruled the country, formed the Islamic Renaissance Party and sought military aid in northern Afghanistan, where most of them live. The new government of Emomali Rahmonov managed to rule the opposition out and, according to Human Rights Watch, promoted an ethnic cleansing campaign in the region. After reorganizing in Afghanistan, opposition forces came back to fight against Tajik and Russian troops, until an armistice was signed in 1997. After more than ten years of peace, Pamiris still rely on foreign humanitarian aid, donations from the Aga Khan foundation (Pamiris are generally Ismailites) and opium trafficking for their survival.

The Tajik road was mostly unpaved but it looked better than its steep and muddy Kyrgyz counterpart. The landscape was empty. No trees, no buildings, no vehicles for more than three hours. Just a dry, windy and dusty high-mountain desert, so different from the green-carpeted valleys of Kyrgyzstan. Unfortunately, the road to Karakul, the next village on the map, was eaten up by a river and I had to stop. This time there was no house or yurt I could have found refuge in, the nearest human trace being the containers at the border post – a place I wasn’t that keen to visit again. As I had no camping gear with me, I sat down waiting and hoped that the trucks I met between the two borders would finally show up. Trying to cross the second river in one day, this time alone, was not an option. To make things worse, I noticed that the brand new shocks I bought in China for peanuts went out of position and there was no way I could put them back as they should be. But I was lucky enough: the two Soviet trucks of the day before finally appeared behind a noisy cloud of dust. I proposed to exchange my Suzuki for a lift to Khorog, and they enthusiastically loaded the bike on top of their truck. It meant yes. We drove west on the desert for one Kilometer until we reached a point where the river was wider, the water shallower and it was possible to cross.

Those Kyrgyz truck drivers were my companions for two days and two nights. With them I slept at their Kyrgyz-friends’ places, ate naan and yogurt, changed tires several times and got cooked by the sun as they desperately tried to repair the engines in the middle of Alichur plains. Our final journey  from Murgab to Khorog was meant to last eight hours but it finally lasted twenty. Mechanical problems, bad road conditions and corruption-prone policemen made things substantially slower.

7 August, 3:00 in the night: Khorog, at last. As trucks were being unloaded, I found a place to sleep and the driver had a short nap in the cabin. The next day, he would try to sell the motorbike and drive all the way back to Osh. In all truth, the drive from Murgab to Khorog was a nightmare, I wondered how my Virgil could leave for another strenuous six-days Pamir journey without taking any proper rest. He became my hero, a working-class hero at that.

The following day I went to the Afghan bazaar on the border and sold my bike-gear leftovers: a rough pair of Chinese jeans and a small rucksack. From then onwards, I would travel without a motorcycle under my bum or over my head, so I suppose these diaries should end here, after one thousand Kilometers, two border crossings and a handful of precious memories to keep.

Share & Bookmark

My name is Jacques Bwira, I was born thirty-seven years ago in Kitchanga, Nord-Kivu Province of former Zaïre, now the Democratic Republic of Congo. Son of Nsii Theresa and Kyamwami Eduard, I am member of the Bahunde-Banyanga tribe, who occupies the Territoire de Walikale. I am a Christian Jehovah’s Witness by religion. I am married to Sarah Lubuto Bwira, eight years younger than me. We have two children, a boy and a girl, both attending primary school.

In 1992, ethnic tensions bursted in Walikale, my home territory, forcing my family to seek refuge in neighboring areas. I had to abandon school for six years and finally managed to complete secondary education in 1998, qualifying as a teacher. Since I strongly wanted to pursue higher education, I sought and obtained admission with a local university but failed to meet the financial requirements, as our family lost all investments during the war.

Soon after completing my secondary education, I became an activist of Action pour la Defense des Droits de l’Homme au Congo (ADDHOC), a local human rights NGO then based in Goma town. My work consisted in denouncing to the International Red Cross and to neutral local media any human rights violation committed by all sides involved in the conflict, guiding victims on how and where they could find psychological and legal help to recover from post war trauma. Unfortunately, due to economic pressure some of my former colleagues decided to use fire-arms to earn money: they deserted ADDHOC and enrolled as soldiers in the Rally for Congolese Democracy (RCD), a Rwanda-assisted rebel movement. As a consequence, they started to view me as an obstacle to their activities.

In the same period, three sons of my paternal uncle stubbornly grabbed my father’s land. As members of the RCD rebel military force, they became powerful and influential. My father obtained a favorable judgment over the matter at the provincial court in Goma, but they refused to concede to the court pronouncement and started to abuse their position in the rebel army threatening to kill me and my relatives.

They hired Interahamwe fighters to exploit our land, with dramatic consequences for my family. My father and mother went displaced and could never resettle; my young twelve years old brother Bikumba Evariste was kidnapped to slave for the army and my other brother Guillaumes was forced to escape, leaving our parents even more vulnerable.

The situation became so tense that I ended up in hideouts and lastly in a prison cell in Katindo. The local International Red Cross finally negotiated my release and helped me with money to run to Kampala (Uganda) for my safety.

Life in Uganda

In 2000, I was granted the refugee status in Uganda, where I started a school for refugee children named Kampala Urban Refugee Children’s Education Centre (KURCEC), which later became HoPE Primary School. The school started with the eleven families living with me in a flat I rented from a Catholic priest in Kampala. We started with no books and used French as the main teaching language, since the majority of the children were Francophone from Congo, Rwanda, or Burundi. Our school now only has English-speaking teachers and follows the Ugandan national Curriculum.

I later worked with my fellow refugees in the creation of a community based organization called Helping People of Ethnicities, HoPE. The mission of HoPE is to integrate and reconcile the refugee and national communities in Uganda through formal education, skills training, income generating initiatives and recreational opportunities that foster peace and development. I noticed that by working and studying together in a united community and by engaging in positive recreational activities such as sports and arts, people develop appreciation for one another, despite cultural barriers. With legal assistance from the Refugee Law Project and the UNHCR, the centre is now an established primary school.

Young refugee, HoPE primary school

This has been my main occupation in the last eight years in Uganda. Unfortunately though, life here wasn’t always easy.

A difficult environment

In 2002, I was falsely accused by Mr. Mavambu Charles that I was involved in the death of his wife. He vowed to avenge his wife against me and he even reported me for murder at the UNHCR, but he failed to support his claims. When I in turn appealed to the UNHCR for protection against Mavambu, I received a negative response in a letter dated 11 December 2002. Mavambu is associated with a religion that teaches that a person’s death is always caused by his neighbors. Also, he is in the group of my fellow Congolese who hate me for my refusal to share with them the funds of KURCEC.

* * *

KURCEC qualified to receive support from the Social Development Fund of the French Embassy in Kampala, which allowed us to legally purchase land for the classroom construction in the Kampala suburb of Ndejje. This caused jealousy among some of my fellow Congolese that wanted me to share the project’s resources. They went to Ndejje and tried to turn the local people against me, claiming that I received huge amounts of money from Museveni’s government and donor agencies to buy land and that my main purpose is to eventually occupy the area and send away the residents.

* * *

Problems also emerged during the school construction. The French Embassy wanted to connect me with a local company called Rukararwe, but Abel, the company engineer that was to supervise the construction, betrayed me with Mr. Tusiime and Muhofa, respectively headmaster and land-owner of a school that KURCEC was about to take over. He exaggerated the grant amount we had received and alleged that refugees are not supposed to run institutions like schools in Uganda, so they should make sure the school is built in their names. These men gave me hard time! They reached an extent of using an army officer to threaten to repatriate me forcefully in case I built the school elsewhere. They secretly visited our new site and kept on sending me oral threats.

* * *

On the evening of 7 June 2007, while heading home from our church, I was attacked by unidentified men who spontaneously started beating me up alleging that I was trying to steal a motorcycle in the darkness. They beat me heavily and were about to pour petrol on me to burn me up, when two brave ladies appeared shouting for help and people came around and stopped my assailants. They checked my bag to see if it contained a weapon the aggressors claimed I used to intimidate them – only to find a bible and other religious texts. I was abandoned there bleeding from my nose, swollen all over the body with heavy backache, until someone arranged for me to be taken to the nearby Lufuka clinic. I took the matter to the area local authorities, but the residents who helped me did not show enough cooperation to denounce the attackers, fearing repression from the gang. The fact is still under investigation at Katwe police station, but with no results.

The good of others

Fortunately, these problems didn’t compromise the success of HoPE. We now have more national children than refugees: locals don’t just see HoPE as a refugee school; they see it as a school in the community – and refugee children know that they are pupils like any others at any school. When the Ugandan government wanted to collect taxes from us, it was the community that said, “No, this is a school which is not charging as much money as other schools, so we think that they are not supposed to pay taxes.” That showed me that we have gotten so much support from the community.

This work has impacted my life. When I came to Uganda, I was seeking resettlement to a different country. A number of my fellow refugees were resettled to the United States, Canada, and other Western countries. I realized that if I sought my own interests and the interests of my family, I could leave this project. But all the children who have benefited from this work would not have access to education. So I had to change my goals. This work has taught me how to sacrifice for the good of others.

Our students are doing very well, better than most students at other schools. When refugee children meet people who love them, it starts to level their past memories of the machetes, guns, and terror that they have seen in their home countries.

Author: Jacques Bwira

An interview with Jacques Bwira can be found in Harvard Educational Review Vol. 79 No. 1 Spring 2009.

Share & Bookmark

Chinese mine workers - photo by Song Chao

While the world-acclaimed economic miracle is turning China into one of the leading global polluters and greenhouse-gas emitters, an environmental public sphere is now emerging within the country itself.

Different types of social organizations are currently operating in China, occupying different positions in the continuum between state domination and societal autonomy. There are registered Government-NGOs (GONGOs) and grassroots organizations, non-profit organizations that work under a business license and unregistered groups.

Lu Ying is a committed Party member who works for CEPF (Chinese Environmental Protection Fund), a government-sponsored organization founded in 1992 by Prof. Qu Geping, the first administrator of China National Environmental Protection Agency. Lu has a pragmatic opinion on  the relationship between CEPF and the government: “Registration is like a fee to pay for our privileges,” she says – in other words, the price of government support. “At CEPF, we educate people and school children on environmental protection and energy-saving practices”, she adds, concluding that “educating the people about their future is a way to achieve the Communist ideal state”.

Matthew comes from the world of Chinese registered grassroots organizations and recently moved to a British NGO after receiving training in Malaysia, Italy and the UK. As such, he keeps himself distant from the government and does not praise communism. However, Matthew would not call himself an activist: he works in cooperation with government officials (“even though some of them are corrupted, many of them are good”) and tries to avoid political conflicts.

Tom is an activist from Greenpeace, whose Beijing office operates as a branch of the Hong Kong headquarters, thereby circumventing bureaucratic problems but giving up any fundraising activity as they lack formal registration. “People in China are starting to mobilize themselves”, he says, adding that the role of Greenpeace is to assist them by providing a rational rather than emotional approach to their problems. While talking about the strategies of Greenpeace, Tom shows me pictures of Shanxi, his home province: sheep with coal-dark wool grazing on coal-dark grass in front of a coal processing factory. “Growing up in such a context is what triggered mine and other people’s environmental consciousness”, he explains to me.

A variety of competing actors is simultaneously working on China’s environmental cause. The country’s success in tackling these problems depends on the strength of all of them: from government environmentalists to common people; from registered organizations to activists and the local media.

An extended version of this article will appear in the first Issue of the Oxonian Globalist.

Share & Bookmark

Q: Why should we bother about Italian politics at all?

A: Italy is an example of how the delicate equilibrium between media and power, business and politics, may explode and deprive of meaning the normal functioning of democratic institutions. As such, it is a living warning to other western countries, where similar strains exist on a smaller scale. All the more relevant if we consider that the Italian Constitution is the “best and more clearly republican among all European Constitutions” (Jacqueline Risset on Le Monde).

Q: Your answer indirectly points to Mr. Berlusconi. How could people still vote for him?

A: This is where the media come in. In Italy, a large portion of the population – the elderly, the lower class, the poorly educated – relies on television as their only source of information. Italian television, arguably the worst in Europe, consists into two major groups: Berlusconi’s Mediaset and the public-controlled RAI, with a roughly identical market share. Berlusconi normally controls half of the television market, and the whole of it when his coalition is in power. As a result, the imaginary world of his populist rhetoric becomes real through television discourse.

Q: Can you give examples?

A: On 26 February, the most popular Italian newscast reported that the British lawyer David Mills was acquitted from the accuses against him, while the court only declared the offence to be prescribed by law. One step back: Mills was sentenced to four years and six months of jail for accepting a bribe from Silvio Berlusconi to give false evidence on his behalf in corruption trials in 1997 and 1998. On 25 February 2010, the Italian Supreme Court of Cassation ruled a sentence of prescription, meaning that Mills “had committed the crime but was no longer punishable for it” (Wikipedia). However, the average Italian public was told the Mills was acquitted, and that Berlusconi was innocent: a plain lie. But that’s not the whole story: Mills could not be sentenced to jail because a 2005 law approved by Berlusconi’s government significantly shortened prescriptive periods for corruption cases.

Q: Do you mean that Berlusconi uses the Parliament to pass bills that prevent him to be put on trial?

A: Indeed. According to La Repubblica (23 November 2009), the Italian Parliament passed eighteen bills that directly or indirectly favour Berlusconi. Three of them were ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.

Q: What is the role of Centre-Left Parties in this quasi-fascist scenario?

A: Italian Centre-Left is a nebula of parties, stretching from communists to moderate catholics. They are unable to stick to a common political program and lack strong leadership. The central role should be played by the Democratic Party, a fusion of post-1989 reincarnations of the Italian Communist Party and a moderate centre, which is still in search for a precise identity. Because of a relevant catholic presence, the Democratic Party did not join the European Socialist group, as would appear natural by looking at political affiliations in most European countries, where some sort of Socialist Party runs against some sort of People’s Party.

Q: What differences exist between the Centre-Left and and Berlusconi’s Party in terms of political ethic?

A: The Left is in theory committed to the respect of laws and constitutional values, which should stand above the government and limit its action. On the other hand, Berlusconi’s idea of power is based on the superiority of electoral legitimization over non-elective bodies. In other words, Berlusconi thinks that the one who wins the popular consensus has the right to stand above law and its non-elected representatives, notably judges. This rather bizarre claim relies on a persecution rhetoric, by which a bunch of subversive judges led by a communist conspiracy is trying to overturn a legally elected government. Television control allows Berlusconi to instill these ideas into people’s mind. The recent incident of “electoral lists” is the last case: Berlusconi’s Party risked to be excluded from elections in two important regions because of procedural errors; rather than bearing his responsibility, Berlusconi preferred to delegitimize those procedures and judges who check over their compliance.

Q: What strategies does the Centre-Left use to cope with Berlusconi’s control over the media?

A: The Centre-Left coalition is seriously guilty of not having addressed Berlusconi’s conflict of interests when it was in power, and is now struggling to communicate its shaky and woolly ideas to the general public. In two weeks, Italians will vote for many of their regional governments. Surveys on electoral intentions are incredibly informative on Centre-Left communications problems: while the vast majority of citizens in Centre-Left-ruled regions have a good opinion of their local government, electoral polls report a much narrower margin between the two coalitions.

Q: We mainly talked about political parties and the media. What does Italians think about Italian politics?

A: Many of them don’t think about it at all. This is indeed the greatest victory of Berlusconi’s televisions. Some others became deeply disillusioned, which increased abstention figures. While leaders of the Democratic Party are mostly concerned with winning the votes of the “moderates”, they do not seem to recognize the importance of regaining the votes of the disillusioned. The greatest of all problems is that Italians are too tired even to express public indignation. Yet, some encouraging sign of civil awakening is emerging: a grass-roots movement named “Il Popolo Viola” (The Purple People) set up a milestone demonstration called “NoB.Day” last December 5, asking Berlusconi to resign. The Purple People does not limit themselves to protest: they wish to “build a renovation project for Italy, supported by all members through their proposals and ideas”. Following the success of that initiative, a new public demonstration is taking place today in Rome and 18 other Italian cities, with Centre-Left leaders and supporters defending the Constitution against the attacks of the Prime Minister.

Q: Can we say that Italians deserve the ruling class they have, or that Berlusconi is popular because he represents the stereotypical Italian citizen?

A: This an easy albeit wrong conclusion. In the 1996 and 2006 elections, the Centre-Left won over the Centre-Right. In both cases, the winning coalition was led by Romano Prodi, whose personality is poles apart to the one of  Berlusconi. The stereotypical Italian does not exist, or it would be impossible that a country led by Prodi could later be led by Berlusconi. The overall quality of the ruling class is a different issue. I would say that the political consciousness of post-1989 Italians is too shy: voters tend to forgive and forget too much. Southern Italy – with the exception of the well-governed Puglia – deserves a chapter on its own. Take Sicily, for instance: votes there are totally unrelated to political performances or achievements. The Centre-Right wins easily despite mafia-stinking corruption scandals and a per capita GDP that is half the one of Northern regions. The main reason is nepotism: the Sicilian public administration has 21,000 employees, more than Northern regions altogether.

Q: Do you have any thought on 28 March regional elections?

A: I think people should go to vote. Like Eugenio Scalfari, founder of La Repubblica said, abstaining from vote on grounds of an ill-defined moral superiority is equal to desertion. To straighten Italy’s troubles, we should first get rid of its emergency, which has a name and surname: Silvio Berlusconi. A defeat of his coalition in the next elections would reinforce the credibility of an alternative to his rule and would urge Centre-Right politicians to stand aloof from their maraja.

19/11/2010, Post Scriptum. After a group of former allies issued a motion of no confidence, people started wondering whether Berlusconi’s era has come to an end.  The London Review of Book published an excellent article by the Italian writers’ collective Wu Ming, titled “Berlusconism without Berlusconi“.  They conclude by warning that Berlusconi’s “narrative is no longer working and must be replaced by something else. Many of Berlusconi’s former allies have realised this and are leaving the sinking ship one after another. The trouble is, they’re taking refuge on a boat that’s heading on exactly the same course.”

Share & Bookmark

The epidemiologist Wolfgang Wodarg, who chairs the European Council’s Health Committee, took a strong stance against the handling of swine flu by the WHO: “In my view, the WHO undertook an incomprehensible action which cannot be justified by scientific evidence. The Council of Europe should investigate this to see how the WHO can undertake this kind of dangerous nonsense” (speech at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, 29 January 2010). Dr Keiji Fukuda, the top flu expert at WHO, replies that “the world is going through a real pandemic. The description of it as a fake is wrong and irresponsible.” In the meantime, BBC News (Feb 10, 2010) reports that “the Department of Health in Northern Ireland still has half a million swine flu vaccines which remain unused.”

How do people react to such contradictory information, and how do they perceive the emergency, if there is any emergency at all? This short documentary I shot in Oxford is an attempt to answer these questions.

Share & Bookmark

Dr Zhang came to Zambia for two years as a volunteer, and fifteen years later he is still here, far from his motherland and from his friends. “I put all my money in this activity, I can’t come back now”. The activity he talks about consists in a clean small clinic in a dusty and busy street in central Lusaka. He works here all days with his Chinese wife and no local employees. They have a son at one of the city’s Secondary Schools.

Dr Zhang cannot speak Nianja, the most common language in this part of Zambia. His poor English is of little use; I wonder how he manages to talk to his patients. Indeed, his relationship with patients does not seem smooth: he keeps complaining that many of them often fail to pay.

The world of Dr Zhang is all here: a wife, a child, his clinic and his poor patients. He doesn’t hang around with other Chinese and he doesn’t mix with locals. He doesn’t belong in Zambia but he probably won’t ever live in China again. Yet, he still feels Chinese in the deep of his heart: as I mention Zambian relationships with Taiwan, he immediately overheats and starts an exited and ill-formed monologue on the territorial rights of the People’s Republic over her small Republican sister, while his worried wife clumsily tries to stop him.

Paul is 32, he also comes from Henan and he works at his uncle’s Chinese restaurant in Lusaka. He came here after having spent six years in Beijing trying to enter University, changing dozen of jobs and finally settling to be a tourist guide. He hopes to start his own business in Zambia as well, but would never take a local wife, his parents would not accept it. Zambian people, he tells me, may not be hard workers but they are honest and friendly. Problems may only come from the Police, which seem particularly skillful in finding reasons for charging small fines to the restaurant.

Paul is young and has been in Lusaka for one year only, but he is wise. “This is not China,” he tells me, “we must adapt to local conditions and to the local way of working and doing business”. He is sharp and speaks good English, his relationship with the African waiters of the restaurant doesn’t seem hampered by language and cultural barriers. This is pretty rare: it often happens here to see African workers making fun of the dodgy shyness of their Chinese employers and striving to use an overly simplified English to talk to them, especially when they are old.

Paul is the only Chinese I interviewed who accepts to talk about Michael Sata, a Zambian political leader who ran for the Presidency in 2006 on a violent anti-Chinese campaign, losing the elections for a handful of votes. In his opinion, Sata’s campaign was financed by Taiwan, which explains the aggressiveness of his xenophobic stance. Paul argues that Zambian should better complain about the “Whites”, who imposed their own culture and religion, while the Chinese only came for working. When he mentions the western cultural domination over Zambia, he proudly adds that “no one could ever do something similar to China.”

As Dr Zhang, he also perceives his Chinese identity as based on an imaginary and legendary notion of Chinese superiority. Tiziano Terzani noted a similar type of identity perception among the Chinese expatriates in South-East Asia: “they feel proud – he wrote – to be part of the great Chinese civilization [...] but whether that China actually exists, is unclear”. In Lusaka, this shared sense of belonging to China seems confined to a private and psychological domain. Paul admits that the expatriates community is quite loose here: chances for meeting with other Chinese are few, as everyone is focused on his job and comes from different Provinces.

Michael, from Guangdong, represents an entirely different face of Chinese presence in Zambia. He works for a large Chinese company, his offices are in a tall glass building in the centre of Lusaka. He has already worked in India and Egypt for the same employer. “Zambians”, he declares, “are the best people”. Michael came here one month ago and will stay for three months only. His main concern is safety: “here you don’t feel as safe as in China, it is dangerous to go out when it’s dark”, he complains.

Michael lives in a compound with his Chinese colleagues, they have a Chinese chef and evening “amusements” organized by the company. His only ties with Zambia are a passport visa and the mosquito repellent: he couldn’t ever settle here, but it’s a good place to be for a short period, he tells me. As I say goodbye and leave his office, two local attendants enter with a box of Chinese packet-lunch, duly prepared by the Chinese chef for all the workers.

Zhang, Paul and Michael: three different types of China, three different relationships with Zambia. Lot is being written on Sino-African relationships, and African politicians often debate on Chinese interests in their respective countries. Yet the variety and complexity of these interests and presences is rarely recognized. Who was Michael Sata trying to kick off the country: was it Zhang, Paul or Michael? And why?

All names are pseudonyms.
For a good source on the Sino-African debate, I recommend the blog of Aleksandra Gadzala.

Share & Bookmark

Cituku became a witchdoctor after the death of his father, a witchdoctor himself, who appeared to him in a dream commending to carry on the family business and stick to chastity. The first order was clearly obeyed, Cituku promises me he complied with the second one as well. “Who is going to take up your job if you have no heirs?”, I ask him. “No one will come after me”, his answer. In that very moment a mobile ringtone invades our silent space, Cituku picks up the phone and starts a brief conversation. He seems a quiet man and he possesses the typical peacefulness of overweight persons.

He claims he cures little illnesses of body and mind, but when he comes across to some serious case, he immediately addresses it to the hospital: his relationship with science seems more collaborative than hostile. His therapies are based on the use of local herbs. He shows me some leafs that are going to be chopped and merged with a white powder inside a plastic bowl. He uses herbs for curing colds and making adulterous husbands return to their wives, he dresses wounds and helps pregnant women to give birth to boys, he treats stomachaches and prescribes potions to unemployed persons who wish to find a job.

Cituku is catholic. Every Sunday, in Ugandan churches, priests and pastors snipe at people like him and at their pagan cults. “How could you reconcile being a witchdoctor with being a catholic?”, I ask him. His brief answer is enlightening for understanding African religiousness: “It’s true, priests fiercely attack witchdoctors during masses, it’s their job. But the next day, they secretly come here”, he says proudly. An extreme form of syncretism, or a careful role division.

The carpet in front of Cituku is scattered with pebbles and broken shells: he uses them to read the future. I give him a new 5,000 note and listen carefully. Cituku can only foresee generic events, particularly likely to happen to a European who bothers to reach his hidden place. For instance: I like traveling, I am curious, I better beware of thieves. At this point, Merab’s face is seized by a pious terror: someone has recently stolen some money from me, Cituku’s warn against thieves would prove his extraordinary power. It doesn’t take much effort to understand that being cheated is normal in a situation like mine, but I can’t persuade Merab of this obviousness: power of suggestion.

It is getting dark, Cituku only works during daylight. He gives me a green powder for relieving my headache and we say goodbye. I walk out with Merab and pass through a grey waiting room, while the sun is setting behind mango and acacia trees.

Post scriptum: in these days, Ugandan newspapers are filled with repulsive pictures of a decapitated boy. Cutting children’s head is supposed to ensure huge riches to the executioner. This practice is common enough for many young children to wear earrings: head-cutters only want virgin victims, with no scars or wounds. Head-cutters are mainly witchdoctors and when they are discovered they are readily brought to justice. Cituku firmly condemns this perversion: “Those are degenerated witchdoctors”, he says, “and it’s usually clients who order these crimes.” As a matter of fact, in the case newspapers are now pointing out, it was a rich and powerful client who performed the bloody ritual before the eyes of the witchdoctor, a terrified twenty years old boy.

Share & Bookmark