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Why Black Lives Don’t Matter in Kenya’s Colonial ‘Conservancies’

13 min read.

The colonial powers that reside within the conservation sector often tout “alternative livelihoods” as key to the economic empowerment of pastoralist communities. But this flimsy window dressing barely hides the fraud within. Conservation interests have built a cauldron into which the extremely wealthy are pouring startling amounts of money to subvert systems, grab lands, and plunder resources.

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Why Black Lives Don’t Matter in Kenya’s Colonial ‘Conservancies’
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Mimi nimesema shamba ya Maasai ni ya Maasai.” I am saying that Maasailand is for the Maasai people.

As expected, this statement raised an uproar because of its tone and content. The volume of support for the speaker’s sentiments was only matched by the howls of protests at his perceived “tribalism” or “prejudice” – shop-worn fallbacks for an intellectually floundering society that is terrified of looking at itself in the mirror.

The entire sequence of events leading up to this strident declaration is symptomatic of an escapist society that continuously suffers trauma but remains unwilling to confront the source of the trauma. The reason for this is that Kenya’s formal education structures aren’t equipped (or intended) to have these discourses, so the issues remain unsaid. In this case, the issue is at hand is simply “whiteness”.

Whiteness is a mindset which decrees that land occupied by indigenous people is terra nullius (no one’s land) and is, therefore, available for occupation, acquisition or development. This term came from British settlement in Australia, which for nearly 200 years didn’t acknowledge the rights of the First Nations that preceded them.

There are obvious parallels with the acquisition of Kedong’ ranch for infrastructure development, with no regard to the needs of the many thousands of Maasai people and livestock that use it as a grazing area. This truly frightening challenge of loss of land and access to it is currently faced by the Maasai, pastoralists, and indigenous peoples in other parts of Africa, and has often resulted in violent resource conflict, leading to loss of lives and property, most notably livestock.

In Kenya, the typical responses to such crises is state violence at the flashpoint and vilification of the affected communities as “bandits” or “raiders”, accompanied by legal sanction of their leaders or representatives for their “belligerence” or “ethnic prejudice”. This simplistic approach to the issue speaks loudly of a state where the application of intellectual rigour to natural resource conservation and management is still widely regarded as anathema.

So, what is the true nature of this monster that so consistently defies our (remarkably primitive) attempts to manage its negative impacts? Firstly, the only reason why this challenge seems so intractable is the failure of our society to understand or define it. We are faced squarely with this deep malaise called settler colonialism, and the minutiae that vex us so deeply are merely the symptoms thereof.

Colonialism is a structure, not an event

What is settler colonialism?

In her 2015 paper, “Settler Colonialism”, Tate Lefevre elegantly defines settler colonialism as “a form of colonialism which seeks to replace the original population of the colonised territory with a new society of settlers. As with all forms of colonialism, it is based on exogenous domination, typically organised or supported by an imperial authority”.

The fundamental difference between settler colonialism and standard colonialism is that the latter merely seeks conquest and control, whereas the former seeks to supplant whatever preceded it, notable examples being the United States, Canada and Australia. Settler colonialism is enacted by a variety of means, ranging from violent genocide and disenfranchisement or depopulation of the previous inhabitants, to more subtle legal means, such as cultural assimilation or recognition of indigenous identity within a colonial structure, particularly as concerns land tenure.

In Kenya, the typical responses to such crises is state violence at the flashpoint and vilification of the affected communities as “bandits” or “raiders”, accompanied by legal sanction of their leaders or representatives for their “belligerence” or “ethnic prejudice”. This simplistic approach to the issue speaks loudly of a state where the application of intellectual rigour to natural resource conservation and management is still widely regarded as anathema.

The perceptive reader will notice that the enactment of settler colonialism as described herein bears an uncanny resemblance to the elaborate hoax commonly referred to in Kenya as “community conservancies”. The “recognition of indigenous identity”, for example, accurately describes the celebration of Maasai beadwork, dances and traditional garb within a colonial structure, namely, the “conservancy” within which they are not allowed to practise livestock production, unless under the structures imposed by a conservancy or a conservation NGO – the “colonial powers” in this arrangement.

The colonial powers that reside within the conservation sector often tout “alternative livelihoods”, such as tourism and beadwork, as key to the economic empowerment of pastoralist communities. But this flimsy window dressing barely hides the fraud within. The casual use of the term “alternative livelihoods” is actually a blatant admission of the intention to change what has been developed over many generations.

Livestock production, apart from being a livelihood providing an income far beyond what tourism offers, is an identity. This is what is under assault from settler colonialism – that identity that infuses pastoralists with pride, and makes it impossible to sway them with petty handouts that are de rigueur in the malarkey that styles itself as “community-based conservation”. Modern-day colonialism requires more cunning than violence, and its agents learned from their precursors that livestock is the “glue” that ties pastoralists to their homelands, the source of pride and identity that underpinned their resistance to invaders of all kinds. Maasai man with no livestock has no business in Maasailand and will probably end up working as a watchman in Nairobi, a dancer in Mombasa, or a curio seller on the streets of Cape Town.

These latter-day colonialists are also very well-read in history because they seem to understand how effectively the Native American nations were subdued two centuries ago by European invaders through the systematic elimination of their “livestock” (the bison). Once that task was completed, the impoverished and hungry Native Americans became pliable and were easily moved into small pockets of their former territories. These were called “Indian reservations” and bear an uncanny resemblance to what we in Kenya refer to as “community conservancies”, islands of contrived “self-determination” in the middle of entire landscapes annexed by outsiders.

The basis for negotiating and mitigating the plight of victims of this kind of disenfranchisement lies in understanding arguably the most profound statement on the subject: “Settler colonialism is a structure, not an event.” This hypothesis was proposed by the late Patrick Wolfe, an Australian historian who was an acknowledged authority on the subject.

Unlike other forms of colonialism, the imperial power in settler colonialism does not always represent the same nationality as the settlers. However, the colonising authority generally views the settlers as racially superior to the previous inhabitants, which may give settlers’ social movements and political demands greater legitimacy than those of colonised peoples in the eyes of the home colonies, whereas natural and human resources are the main motivation behind other forms of colonialism.

Many Kenyans and other people who were once colonised vehemently deny the profound negative impact of colonialism because they are either unwilling to accept or are intellectually incapable of understanding Patrick Wolfe’s basic hypothesis of colonialism as a structure. We can only address the vagaries of colonialism if we accept that it is a structure, rather than an event or an epoch.

The other difficulty facing Kenyans is their view of settlers as “racially superior”. In Africa, the advent of colonialism brought with it a clear colour bar, which in some countrie, actually got formally legislated and led to our initial basic understanding of “whiteness” and “blackness” as centered around our physical characteristics and peculiarities.

“Whiteness” as a policy position

However, it is now high time that natives of the Global South emerged from the Eurocentric silos of our respective reported histories to examine our condition. We urgently need to expand our temporal and geographical horizons in order to understand what ails us. We need to understand that in today’s Global South, “whiteness” is the senseless neoliberalism that only values our lands, our heritage (and even us!) through the prism of how much money a white man will pay to exploit it (or us).

The use of quotes in the word “whiteness” here is the deliberate elevation of whiteness into a policy and cultural position that transcends the race itself. “Whiteness” is not necessarily associated with skin colour, but with a worldview or a mindset. A logical question to ask at this point would therefore be: How does this hypothesis fit into the recent brouhaha pitting the Honourable Senator Ledama Ole Kina against so-called “outsiders” (mostly Kikuyu smallholder farmers) who are supposedly “taking over” Maasailand in Narok?

Put into perspective, Kenya, as a nation, is currently undergoing rapid changes driven by economic growth, misplaced economic pipe dreams, and several other factors. Any casual observer will notice that an inordinate proportion of the planned infrastructure in Kenya is targeted at the rangelands inhabited by Maa-speaking peoples and other pastoralists. The obvious and immediate impact of this is fragmentation and loss of grazing lands and stock routes. Opposition to these developments is always fronted by conservation interests who will speak ad nauseam about the loss of wildlife habitats, but won’t say a word about the negative impact on the livestock production chain or pastoralist livelihoods.

Many Kenyans and other people who were once colonised vehemently deny the profound negative impact of colonialism because they are either unwilling to accept or are intellectually incapable of understanding Patrick Wolfe’s basic hypothesis of colonialism as a structure. We can only address the vagaries of colonialism if we accept that it is a structure, rather than an event or an epoch.

The pastoralists are, therefore, caught between the hammer of infrastructure development and the anvil of avaricious conservation interests who want their land for conservation and tourism purposes. It isn’t difficult to see how this is a socially and economically perilous place to be. Both of these forces are extremely powerful, neoliberal and overwhelmingly white. To anyone who has been subject to this pressure and not yet taken the time to examine the issue critically, the reflex is to hit out at the nearest and smallest target. Sadly, these tend to be smallholder farmers from non-Maa communities who have bought land from willing sellers and are trying to produce crops for themselves and the markets, an overwhelmingly “black” activity.

Ecofascism

There is no doubt that pastoralists communities in Kenya are under relentless pressure from development and conservation interests, both of which are intent on taking control of their lands. However, the problem is a complex one, requiring a far more sophisticated approach than what we have witnessed thus far. More importantly, we need to understand that the vice squeezing indigenous peoples and their livelihoods is a global phenomenon driven by ecofascism, a global school of thought whose intellectual and financial underpinnings are often underestimated, to the detriment of indigenous populations.

The insatiable need that extractive industries have for natural resources isn’t anything new across the world, and communities in many resource-rich parts of the world have fought these industries for decades with varying levels of success. It is instructive to note here that even though these fights are sometimes violent and cost lives, they are honest fights, where the postures and needs of all the protagonists are clearly understood by all.

Apart from these conflicts, the greed of these extractive industries also led to the growth of the global environmental conservation movement and the advent of large conservation NGOs. These organisations have thrived for decades riding on a huge pool of goodwill drawn from the apparent nobility of their romanticised missions and visions. Only in the last decade or so have the white supremacist underpinnings of their images been acknowledged or confronted. For generations, art, fiction, media and even science normalised the absurd notion that wildlife in Africa is under constant peril from black Africans and that the intervention of white people is required in order to “save” this biodiversity.

This paradigm has grown and has now taken a distinct shape that can easily be recognised as ecofascism – defined by Michael Zimmerman (2008) as a theoretical political model in which an authoritarian government would require individuals to sacrifice their own interests for the “organic whole of nature”. Loosely described, this is the notion that any action in violation of human rights can be justified by the demonstration of its benefit to biodiversity or the natural environment in situ.

The pastoralists are, therefore, caught between the hammer of infrastructure development and the anvil of avaricious conservation interests who want their land for conservation and tourism purposes. It isn’t difficult to see how this is a socially and economically perilous place to be.

The majority of our society live on the periphery of these issues and would understandably be sceptical at the thought of such a flawed principle gaining any credibility or traction, but the reality is very different. Several decades of relentless promotion through the media, the arts, academia, and scientific publications has normalised an idea that is an absurdity at best and an injustice at worst.

The vilification of pastoralist communities is still the “default setting” for acquisition of their land from both sides of what is a two-pronged onslaught. “Development” and state and commercial interests maintain that pastoralism is “uncivilised” and that pastoralists’ lands need to be “developed”, while environmental and conservation interests maintain that pastoralists are “overpopulating”, “over-grazing” and “degrading” their land. This creates the absurd logic that conservationists have to somehow “take over” and “manage” these resources on their behalf (read: annex and exploit the said resources). The earlier stated position taken by capital is well known and widely acknowledged, but the position of the “eco-pirates” is often couched in feigned concern for the indigenous population, complete with local foot soldiers for window dressing purposes.

A recent incident in eastern Kenya is a prime example of how this typically plays out. On the 10th of March this year, two four-month old giraffe skeletons were found in Ishaqbin area in Garissa. The conservancy management (under the direction of the Northern Rangelands Trust) immediately issued a press release saying that the giraffes (a leucistic mother and calf) had been “killed by armed poachers” without giving any evidence whatsoever to corroborate this claim. The press release was carefully worded to imply that the two dead giraffes were two out of only three existing animals belonging to an extremely rare species. The key fact that they were simply reticulated giraffes suffering from a genetic disorder was studiously avoided. The BBC immediately started regurgitating the story through their international platforms and made a pointed reference to the fact that the giraffes “lived in an unfenced conservancy”, illustrating clearly that one of their main objectives was to justify the use of fencing here as a conservation tool.

Following the publication of the article, the expected global crescendo of condemnation for the “savage” poachers took hold. In India, for example, the BBC report was covered by the online publication Bhaskar.com and readers’ comments ranged from cursing the “poachers” to demands that they also be killed for their transgressions.

Biased reporting

Extrajudicial killings are a common human rights violation in the Global South, but this extreme reaction clearly indicates the power of biased reporting on African conservation issues. It is important to note that up to this point, the Kenya Wildlife Service has still not referred to this as a poaching incident, and its investigations thus far have not unearthed any evidence of crime. This report on “poaching” is, therefore, a fabrication by conservation practitioners on the ground that is amplified and distributed with the assistance of the BBC.

The power of this romanticised wildlife conservation narrative and its proponents cannot be over-estimated. The BBC is an outlet that is widely respected for its carefully cultivated and demonstrated penchant for objectivity, but this is instantly abandoned whenever it reports on wildlife issues in Africa. Examples of the BBC’s “whitewashing” of African wildlife reports abound, including Dr. Hans Bauer’s “discovery” of a lion population in Ethiopia (2016) and the false report by Dr. Mike Chase of an elephant “massacre” in Botswana (2018). The BBC also participated in the elaborate hoax surrounding the “extinction” of the northern white rhino with the death of “Sudan” (2018).

Interestingly, the same BBC is covering a much-touted project to find some remnant specimens of the species they reported as being extinct with such alacrity two years earlier. This unusual show of institutional weakness is actually just a submission to the needs of global capital. Ordinarily (or in a sensible world), sentiments like ecofascism are relegated to the peripheries of rational thought where other outlandish theories, like the belief in a flat earth, exist.

So, what could have driven the sudden incursion of these ideas into realms of rational thought? Increasing demand for money in the conservation world led to the professionalisation of fundraising and the engagement of marketing professionals in a field where there really isn’t any product to sell. These brilliant professionals came up with a valuable product to tap into the pockets (and guilt) of global capital for funds: a dose of guilt and an offer of self-actualisation (for a considerable financial consideration) as an antidote to the same. Suddenly, any self-respecting billionaire who could have anything had to have an environmental conservation project attached to his name. The only thing missing now was intellectual leadership with enough gravitas to take our minds off the unpleasant whiff of racism that pervaded this movement.

Enter Sir David Attenborough, with his famous breathless voice, brilliant documentaries, and Malthusian views on human population (except white people) and their impact on biodiversity.

The next challenge was capturing academia and those who saw themselves as beyond capture by images. Enter Edward Wilson, the famous Harvard sociobiologist who needed to retain some relevance in the twilight of his career by proposing the “Half Earth Theory” – the ludicrous idea that half the earth should be protected in its primordial state to save biodiversity. It is racism clothed in academic mumbo jumbo because it is obvious to any observer that the target of this “protection” is the tropics, which are home to black and brown people. There won’t be any biodiversity gains by turning London, New York (or Boston) into a protected area.

The vilification of pastoralist communities is still the “default setting” for acquisition of their land from both sides of what is a two-pronged onslaught. “Development” and state and commercial interests maintain that pastoralism is “uncivilised” and that pastoralists’ lands need to be “developed”, while environmental and conservation interests maintain that pastoralists are “overpopulating”, “over-grazing” and “degrading” their land.

With these ingredients, conservation interests built a cauldron into which the extremely wealthy are pouring startling amounts of money to subvert systems, grab lands, and plunder resources in the Global South. This money also captures the media and the arts, who cleanse all the injustices with glowing reports on conservation success or apocalypse, depending on whether white or black people are in charge.

All over Africa, the big international conservation NGOs like the World Wildlife Fund and The Nature Conservancy have captured state conservation organs using financial might conferred upon them by their corporate backers, and Kenya is no exception. Our rangelands, and the people who call them home are caught between the hammer of “white” destruction and the anvil of “white” conservation, neither of which have any time for “black” livelihoods. This can even be observed in the way the state (through Kenya Wildlife Service) is pursuing its conservation mandate. It allows “white” geothermal development and “white” music festivals in Hells Gate National Park, but “black” grazing of Maasai livestock or gathering of firewood in the same place can get one arrested or shot.

In 2017, violent clashes were witnessed when pastoralists from Samburu moved south into Laikipia with their livestock seeking pasture and routes through to grazing lands further south. The media (BBC included) talked at length about the lawlessness and violence, with numerous references to the pastoralists as “raiders” and “bandits”. What they did not mention was the fact that all of the Samburu pastoralists were coming from areas that were “community conservancies” – areas where all their dry season grazing reservoirs had been converted into conservation areas or tourism facilities.

Conservation interests must necessarily be treated with caution because they are the new face of imperialism and disenfranchisement. Awareness of this global challenge is growing through the work of organisations like Survival International. Indeed, international instruments, such as the “New Deal for Nature” merit close examination, as illustrated by Stephen Corry (2020) in the Medium journal.

Senator Ledama Ole Kina stood out back in 2017 because he was the only one who spoke out against this injustice at a time when pastoralism was a reviled and vilified livelihood in Kenya and around the world. This year he has spoken out again, and it is my fervent hope that his voice this time will initiate a conversation, because conversation is a quintessentially “black” method of conflict resolution.

This is my contribution to the much-needed conversation: Senator, we cannot afford to lose pastoralism for the sake of our identity culture or economy, but the two “white” prongs will destroy it if we let them. The capitalist development prong is harmful, but honest. You can negotiate with it because its objectives do not expressly require your subjugation. The conservation prong is lethal, because it comes smiling and it recruits your brothers to help rob you, and it will tell you that your brothers from other ethnic groups are your enemies. It is laughing as you attack smallholder Kikuyu farmers and Luo conservationists while it takes your birthright. To my pastoralist brothers, don’t be silent! Our ancestors will bless you for speaking out, and our children will thank you for it. For now, I only hope that my light has illuminated the face of your real enemy.

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Mordecai Ogada is a carnivore ecologist from Kenya and co-author of The Big Conservation Lie.

Politics

Kenya’s Police Are Violent and Unaccountable – Should They Be Abolished?

After Kenya’s independence in 1963, the police were “Africanised” but retained much of their colonial character. Under Daniel arap Moi’s authoritarian regime (1978-2002), the police continued to play a key role in repressing dissent.

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Kenya’s Police Are Violent and Unaccountable – Should They Be Abolished?
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A world without the police is inconceivable to many people. The police are viewed as part of modern society’s foundation, ensuring democracy and keeping people safe.

In practice, however, police around the world sometimes repress social movements, stifle democracy, and exacerbate social and racial injustice. Across the African continent, they often use force to prop up repressive regimes. And in Kenya in particular, extortion and extrajudicial killings by the police are rampant.

Kenya is unusual for its extensive attempts to reform the police. Reform efforts began in earnest in 2008, when the police were found to be complicit in post-election violence. And yet, after 15 years and billions of shillings spent, the police reform project has largely failed.

The Kenyan police remain repressive, unaccountable and effectively unreformable. Many citizens complain about how the police treat them like ATMs – a source of cash. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the police killed tens of Kenyans while enforcing curfew measures.

We’ve conducted hundreds of interviews, discussion groups and over a decade of ethnographic research into how counter-terrorist policing and securitisation have shaped Nairobi. And in turn, how local residents respond to police violence and build their own practices of care, mutual aid and security.

We have come to the conclusion that the police make most people feel less safe. Many residents told us they don’t depend on the police for their safety: they keep each other safe. Given the impasse of police reform – and citizen responses to this – there is a strong argument to be made for the abolition of the Kenyan police altogether.

Policing at an impasse

Modern police institutions made their first appearances on the African continent as part of colonisation and the expansion of European capitalist interests.

In Kenya, the roots of policing lie in early colonial “conquest”. The Imperial British East African Company developed security forces to protect its expanding economic interests in the 1890s, and the Kenya-Uganda Railroad developed its own police force in 1902.

After Kenya’s independence in 1963, the police were “Africanised” but retained much of their colonial character. Under Daniel arap Moi’s authoritarian regime (1978-2002), the police continued to play a key role in repressing dissent.

There have been calls to reform the Kenyan police for decades. But the 2007-08 post-election violence, in which police were complicit in widespread ethnic violence, accelerated attempts at reform.

Over the past 15 years, police reform has been enshrined in the 2010 constitution and actualised in numerous acts of parliament. It’s been supported internationally with funding and technical expertise from the UN, the US and the EU, among others. It prompted the reorganisation of the police service and the establishment of civil oversight mechanisms.

Yet, despite all of these efforts, the Kenyan police remain corrupt, violent and unaccountable.

Civilian oversight over the police has proved ineffectual. The Independent Policing Oversight Agency has managed to bring only 12 cases of police violence to conviction out of more than 20,000 complaints received between 2012 and 2021. That is only one out of every 1,667 complaints. The under-resourced agency simply can’t grapple with the immense volume of reported police abuses.

The case for abolition

Police reform has failed. Is it time to consider abolition?

Abolition is not about simply tearing things down, but rather asking what should exist in place of outdated and violent systems that no longer serve people. Abolition is a creative and constructive project with deep philosophical roots.

So why abolish the Kenya police?

  1. The police are functionally obsolete for most Kenyans. In many low-income neighbourhoods, our research shows that people avoid calling the police to respond to crises or crimes. For many, experience shows that the police can make matters worse.
  2. The police often exacerbate insecurity, violence and corruption. To provide for their own safety, residents increasingly organise themselves into networks of friends, family and neighbours for basic safety. For instance, women in Mathare, Nairobi, organise their own security practices, which include conflict resolution, de-escalation of violence and support for survivors.
  3. In more affluent neighbourhoods, residents increasingly rely on private companies to provide security in their compounds. Police are seen as one among many security services available for hire. In our research, the few positive experiences with the Kenyan police were reported (predominantly) by such affluent residents.
  4. The remaining function of the police is “enforcing order” and protecting the state against society. Officers uphold and protect a rarefied governing class and political elite against the population.

Police abolition, therefore, would mean dismantling ineffective and repressive institutions and replacing them with systems of actual safety, systems that enable society to thrive.

What should replace the police?

When confronted with the idea of “abolition” for the first time, many people often respond: “but who will keep us safe?”

In Nairobi, the answer is to be found in existing social practices. The problem is that there’s a lack of resources to support alternatives to punitive security. We call for defunding the police and investing these resources in such alternatives.

  1. Invest in communities.When we ask about local security problems, residents often answer that the lack of schools, food, land, quality housing, water, electricity, toilets, healthcare and safe places for kids to play are what cause “insecurity”. Reinvestment in community means funding such social infrastructure to allow people to thrive. This reduces crime and violence.
  2. Invest in alternative safety mechanisms.This means strengthening dispute-resolution mechanisms that help resolve conflicts without violence. The government needs to support existing social justice centresnetworks and movements fighting for change.

When these forms of social reinvestment are pursued, the need for the police is greatly diminished.

The Conversation

Wangui Kimari, Anthropologist, University of Cape Town and Zoltán Glück, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, American University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Politics

Nigeria: A Messiah Will Not Fix Country’s Problems

In Nigeria’s recent election cycle, many citizens looked to Peter Obi for change. But the country needs people-led social transformation, not saviors.

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On February 25, Nigerians once again took to the polls with a determination that their votes could change the fate of a country in deep despair. For the seventh time since a civilian dispensation began in 1999, Nigerians hoped that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) would conduct a free, fair, and credible election. This hope was reinvigorated by the emergence of technology that would ensure, purportedly, a transparent process. Yet, once again, voters had their dreams crushed with an election marred by violence, ballot box snatching, forged results and, of course, voter intimidation and buying. In the days that followed, despite mounting evidence of irregularities and international outcry, INEC declared Bola Ahmed Tinubu, of the All Progressives Congress (APC), the winner of the presidential poll. The continuation of a gerontocratic oligarchy was solidified.

Although media attention focused on a young class of voters and the uniqueness of this historical moment, a deeper analysis is necessary. If nothing else, this election provided an opportunity to examine the shifting landscape of Nigeria’s elite electoral politics, and the increasingly complex voting patterns of citizens, while understanding these voters are increasingly a minority—less than 30 percent of the registered voters (about one-tenth of the population) cast their vote.

The dizzying rise of Peter Obi as a “third force” candidate over the last nine months was largely due to a movement of emergent and middle-class youth, the so-called “Obidients,” who used technology to galvanize a youthful base to push forward their candidate. That the Obidient movement was formed, ironically, off the back of the EndSARS movement, is in many ways a direct contradiction. The generation that was “leaderless” now suddenly had a leader. The rate at which young people chose this candidate still gives me whiplash. But there was no shaking their convictions. Obi was their candidate, and no one could shake their belief that a new Nigeria would be formed under his presidency, despite the evidence that he was directly endorsed by the same ruling class that has led to the country’s demise.

Obi is not a revolutionary, a social welfarist, nor even pro labor, but he became the savior many youth were looking for to “rescue” Nigeria. Ironically, the millions of youth that fought the EndSARS battle, and named themselves the leaderless soro soke (“speak up” in Yoruba) generation, did not seek elective office themselves. Rather, many put their eggs in Obi’s basket in supporting an older, veteran politician whose clean cut and soft demeanor led to his near deification. Other EndSARS activists, including Omoyele Sowore, were mocked for running in the election and were seen as not experienced enough for the job. In the end Sowore  performed abysmally at the polls, despite his demonstrated commitment to Nigerian youth and human rights record and involvement in the EndSARS protests (Sowore’s African Action Congress polled only 14,608 votes, faring worse than in the 2019 election).

This absolute faith in Obi was demonstrated when his followers patiently waited for five days after the election to hear from him. Instead of sending them into the streets, he advised them to wait for him to challenge the electoral irregularities in the courts. Why did a leaderless generation need a hero?

The contradictions in the EndSARS ideology and the Obidient campaign will be tested in the years ahead. After the Lekki massacre on October 20, 2020 brought the massive street protests of the EndSARS movement to an abrupt halt, many of the sites of protests shut down completely and groups that were loosely organized dismantled into relative silence for almost two years. In fact, there was little indication that EndSARS would evolve into a mass political movement until Peter Obi emerged on the scene in May 2022. The first- and second anniversaries of the Lekki massacre were marked by smaller protests in Lagos and a few other cities, which paled in comparison to the numbers at the 2020  protests. Still, efforts to free many of the prisoners arrested during EndSARS are proving difficult, with some protesters and victims still in jail today. There was no direction, no cohesiveness, and no willingness to move forward at that point. But in May 2022, seemingly out of nowhere, things began to shift. A candidate emerged that many EndSARS protesters seemed to think would be the savior.

Understanding the youth divide

While often lumped into a sum, the category of “youth” is not a single class of people. When Obi was said to carry the youth vote he actually only carried the vote of a particular category of young people, an emergent middle and professional class, who were also some of the most vocal in the EndSARS movement. However, if we are to use the discredited election geography as a proxy for representation, it is clear that this demographic is both well defined and narrow. Major urban areas like Lagos and Abuja pulled towards Obi, as did a few Eastern states. The North Central states including Plateau and Benue asserted their own identity by aligning with Obi, perhaps in a rejection of the Northern Muslim tickets of the Peoples Democratic Party (with whom Atiku Abubaker ran) and the APC.

The 2023 election also forces us to re-examine the dynamics of class, ethnic and religious divides and the deepening malaise of the poor and their disengagement with politics. What is clear from this election, like many before, is that Nigeria has yet to come of age as a democracy; indeed, the conditions for democracy simply do not exist. It is also quite evident that the Nigerian elite are adept at changing the political game to suit the mood of the Nigerian people. Electoral malpractices have shifted over time in response to the increasing pressure of civil society for accountable elections. Strong civil society advocacy from organizations focused on accountability and transparency in government have pushed against electoral practices. While these practices continue, there are significant shifts from previous elections where vote buying was brazen. However, it begs the historical questions: has Nigeria ever had a truly free and fair election, and is the process with which democracy is regenerated through the ballot the path for emancipatory politics? These questions become more relevant as the numbers of voters continue to dwindle, with the 2023 election having the lowest turnout in Nigeria’s electoral history, despite the social media propaganda around the youth vote and the turning tide of discontent that was predicted to shape the election.

Lessons from history

The fact that young people were surprised by the events on February 25 may be indicative of youthful exuberance or a startling lack of knowledge of history. The idea that a ruling class, who had brought the EndSARS struggle to a bloody end, would somehow deliver a free and fair election, needs more critical scrutiny. For those that remember the history of the June 12, 1993 elections—annulled after the popular rise of MKO Abiola—the election is no surprise. But for young people deprived of history education, which has been removed from Nigeria’s curriculum for the past 30 years, the knowledge may be limited. When a young person says they have never seen an election like this, they also cannot be faulted, as many young voters were voting for the first time. Given that many youth seem to underestimate the long history of elections and electoral fraud, the question of intergenerational knowledge and of a public history that seems to be absent from electoral discourse cannot be ignored. It is also hard to fault young voters, in a  land where there is no hope, and whatever hope is sought after can be found in the marketplace.

Many of the young organizers were adept at reading their constituencies and mobilizing their bases, but some of the elephants in the room were ignored. One of these elephants, of course, was the deep geographic and ethno-religious and class divisions between the North and the South. This is evident in the voting patterns in the North West and North East where Obi’s campaign did not make a dent. Though Obi ran with a vice president from the North, the majority of votes in Northern zones were divided between PDP, APC and New Nigeria People’s Party while two of the North Central states, Plateau and Nasarawa, went to Obi’s Labor party. Kano, the largest voting population in the country went to Rabiu Kwankwaso’s NNPP, an outlier who was ignored to the peril of opposition parties (Kwankwaso was the former governor of Kano).

Obi’s campaign also focused on the emergent middle class youth, as well as appealing to religious sentiments through churches on a Christian ticket and ethnic sentiments appealing to his Ibo base in the South East, where he swept states with more than 90 percent of the vote. The North is largely made up of the rural poor with poverty rates as high as 87 percent and literacy rates among young women in Zamfara state as low as 16 percent. Tracking Obi’s victories, most of the states where he won had lower poverty rates and higher literacy rates; states like Delta and Lagos have the lowest poverty counts in the country. While Obi used poverty statistics to bolster his campaign, his proposed austerity measures and cuts in government spending do not align with the massive government investments that would be needed to lift Nigerians out of poverty. While the jury is still out on the reasons for low voter turnout, deepening poverty and the limited access to cash invariably impacted poor voters.

Historically, Nigeria’s presidency has swung between the North and the South, between Muslims and Christians, and this delicate balance was disrupted on all sides. In 2013, an alliance between the Southern Action Congress (AC), the Northern All Nigeria’s People’s Party (ANPP), and Congressive People’s Alliance (CPC) to produce the Action People’s Congress (APC) was able to remove the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) who had dominated the political scene. Another important historical note is that of the legacy of Biafra that lives on, as an Igbo man has never taken the helm of the Presidency since the Civil War. While Obi ran on the promise of a united youth vote, the lingering ethnic and religious sentiments demonstrate the need for his campaign to have created a stronger alliance with the North and the rural and urban poor.

The failure of the youth vote is also a failure of the left

The other factor that we must examine is the failure of the left to articulate and bring into public critique the neoliberal model that all the candidates fully endorsed. Many young Nigerians believe if Nigeria works, it will work for everyone, and that “good governance” is the answer to the myriad problems the country faces. The politics of disorder and the intentionality of chaos are often overlooked in favor of the “corrupt leader” indictment. The left was divided between the Labor Party, whose presidential flag bearer ran on a neoliberal rather than pro worker or socialist platform, and the African Action Congress, who ran on a socialist manifesto, but failed to capture the imaginations of young people or win them over to socialist politics and ideology. In seeking to disrupt the two party power block, young Nigerians took less notice of the lack of difference between the three front running parties, and chose to select the lesser of three evils, based on credentials and the idea that Obi was “the best man for the job.” In fact, the Nigerian youth on the campaign trail emphasized experience in government as a criteria for a good candidate, over and above fresh ideas.

The left also failed to garner the EndSARS movement and channel it into a political force. The emergent youth middle class, not the workers and the working poor, continued to carry the message of liberal rather than revolutionary politics. Unfortunately, just as the gunning down of Nigerian protesters caught young people off guard in October 2020, so too the massive rigging of this election. However, there is no cohesive movement to fight the fraud of this election. The partisan protests and separate court cases by the Labor Party and PDP, demonstrate that the disgruntled candidates are fighting for themselves, rather than as a single voice to call out electoral fraud and the rerun of the election. The fact that there is acceptance of the National Assembly election outcomes and not the presidential election, points to the seeking of selective justice, which may eventually result in the complete disenfranchisement of the Nigerian people.

At this time we must seek answers to our current dilemma within history, the history that we so often want to jettison for the euphoria or overwhelming devastation of the moment. The question for the youth will now be, which way forward? Will we continue to rely on the old guard, the gerontocratic oligarchy that has terrorized Nigerians under the guise of different political parties for the past 24 years? Or will we drop all expectations and pursue the revolution that is sorely needed? Will young people once again rise to be a revolutionary vanguard that works with millions of working poor to form a truly pro-people, pro-poor party that has ordinary Nigerians as actual participants in a virbrant democracy from the local to the federal levels, not just during election time but every day?  Will the middle class Nigerian youth be willing to commit class suicide to fight alongside the poor to smash the existing oligarchy and gerontocracy and snatch our collective destiny back?

It is a time for truth telling, for examining our own shortcomings. As young people, as the left, and as civil society, we have relied too long on the oppressors for our own liberation.

This post is from a partnership between Africa Is a Country and The Elephant. We will be publishing a series of posts from their site once a week.

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Africa in the New World Disorder

The war in Ukraine indicates a new world disorder, where great powers fight for primacy and Africa continues to be exploited.

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Africa in the New World Disorder
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There are some of us in Africa who believe that we should not invest any serious thinking in the war in Ukraine as it is one of the “European tribal wars.” The logic of that belief is that in Africa we have too many of our own problems to invest energy and effort in European problems. The trouble of being African in the present world order, however, is that all problems and wars end up African in effect if not in form. In the sense in which one who knows it feels it, every war in the world is an African war because Africans have, for the longest time, felt and known wars that are not of their creation. The African condition itself can be understood as a daily experience of war.

Over centuries Africa has been structured and positioned to be on the receiving end of all world problems. As such, Africa is not only the storied cradle of mankind, but also the cemetery of the human condition where every human and world problem comes to kill and to die as well. The worst of the human condition and human experiences tend to find final expression in Africa. It is for that reason that Julius Nyerere once opined that the Devil’s Headquarters must be in Africa because everything that might go wrong actually goes wrong in the continent.As the world tiptoes precariously from the COVID-19 pandemic, at the same time it seems to be tottering irreversibly towards a nuclear World War III. The countries of the world that have the power and the privilege to stop the war pretend to be unable to do so. Even some powerful and privileged Western thinkers are beating the drums of war. For instance, Slavoj Zizek, considered “the most dangerous philosopher in the West,” wrote for The Guardian in June 2022 to say: “pacifism is the wrong response to the war in Ukraine,” and “the least we owe Ukraine is full support, and to do that we need a stronger NATO.” Western philosophers, not just soldiers and their generals, are demanding stronger armies and bigger weapons to wage bigger wars. In Ukraine, the conflict is proving too important to be left to the soldiers, the generals and the politicians. In that assertion Zizek speaks from the Euro-American political and military ego, whose fantasy is a humiliating total defeat of Russia in Ukraine. Zizek, the “dangerous philosopher” takes his place as a spokesperson for war and large-scale violence, agitating from a comfortable university office far away from the horrors of Bakhmut.

United States President, Joe Biden, spoke from the same egopolitics of war before the Business Roundtable CEO Quarterly Meeting on March 21 last year: “And now is a time when things are shifting… there’s going to be a new world order out there, and we’ve got to lead it.  And we’ve got to unite the rest of the free world in doing it.” Clearly, an “end of history” fantasy of another unipolar world led by the US and its NATO allies has possessed Western powers that are prepared to pump money, weapons and de-uniformed soldiers into Ukraine to support the besieged country to the “last Ukrainian.” During a surprise visit to Kyiv on the eve of the anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Biden hawkishly said the US will support Ukraine in fighting “as long as it takes,” dismissing diplomatic alternatives. Suggestions for a negotiated settlement in Ukraine that have come from influential figures, such as Henry Kissinger on the right and Noam Chomsky on the left, have been dismissed with the sleight of the left hand, and this is as Ukraine is literally being bombed to dustAfrican countries that have for years been theaters of colonial invasions, proxy wars, sponsored military coups, and regime changes can only see themselves in Ukraine. What Ukraine is going through is a typical African experience taking place in Europe and the first victims are Europeans this time.

Being Africans in Africa, at the least, should equip us with the eyes to see the war in Ukraine for what it is, a war driven by a Euro-American will to power, a spirited desire for world dominion against the Russian fear of NATO encirclement and containment, and nostalgia about a great Soviet empireIt is a war of desires and fears from which the belligerents will not back off. The envisaged “new world order” can only be another “world disorder” for an Africa that has for so long been in the periphery of economic, political, and military world affairs.

Destined for war: The Thucydides trap

Well before the war, the Singaporean diplomat and scholar Kishore Mahbubani described how the “world has turned a corner” and why “the West has lost it” in trying to maintain its economic and political dominion by any means necessary and some means unnecessary. Power is shifting under the feet of a young and fragile Euro-American empire that will not lose power peacefully, hence the spirited desire to force another unipolar world without China and Russia as powersTaiwan and Ukraine are the chosen sites where the Euro-American establishment is prepared to militarily confront its threatening rivals. That “from AD 1 to 1820, the two largest economies were always those of China and India” and that “only in that period did Europe take off followed by America” is little understood. That the Euro-American empire has not been the first and it will not be the last empire is little understood by the champions of the “new world order” that Francis Fukuyama, in 1989, mistakenly declared as “the end of history and the last man;” a world ruled by the West, led by the US  and its European allies had arrived and was here to stay in Fukuyama’s enchanting prophecy. Ensuing history, 9/11 amongst other catastrophic events, and the present war in Ukraine, were to prove Fukuyama’s dream a horrific nightmare. Mahbubani predicts that the short-lived rise and power of the Euro-American Empire has “come to a natural end, and that is happening now.” It seems to be happening expensively if the costs in human life, to the climate and in big dollars are to be counted.

In the struggle of major world powers for dominion of the globe Ukraine is reduced to a burnt offering. While, on the one hand, we have a terrified Euro-American empire fearing a humiliating return to oblivion and powerlessness, on the other hand we have the reality of an angry China and Russia, carrying the burden of many decades of geopolitical humiliation. Such corners of the world as Africa become the proverbial grass that suffers when elephants fight. The scramble to reduce Africa to a sphere of influence for this and that power is a spectacle to behold and the very definition of the new world disorder; a damaged and asymmetrical shape of the world where the weaker other is dispensable and disposable.

In its form and content, this new world disorder is ghastly to ponder, not only for Africa, but also for the rest of the world. Graham Allison pondered it in 2015 and came up with the alarming observation that “war between the US and China is more likely than recognised at the moment” because the two powerful countries have fallen into the Thucydides Trap. The ancient Greek historian, Thucydides, described the trap when he narrated how avoiding war becomes next to impossible when a ruling power is confronted by a rival rising power that threatens its dominion. Thucydides witnessed how the growing power and prosperity of Athens threatened Sparta in ancient Greece,  driving the two powers to warThe political and historical climate between China and the US captures the charged political temperatures that punctuated the relations between an entitled and proud Sparta confronted with the growth and anger of a frightening Athens. The proverbial chips were down.

For the US and China to escape the Thucydides Trap that is luring both superpowers to war, “tremendous effort” is required of both parties and their allies. The effort is mainly in mustering the emotional stamina to see and to know that the world is going to be a shared place where there must never be one center of power; that political, economic and military diversity is natural, and the world must be a decolonial pentecostal place where those of different identities, and competing interests can share power and space, is the beginning of the political wisdom that can guarantee peace. President Xi Jinping of China seems to have read Allison’s warning about the Thucydides Trap that envelops China and the US because on a visit to Seattle he was recorded saying: “There is no such thing as the so-called Thucydides Trap in the world. But should major countries time and again make the mistakes of strategic miscalculation, they might make such traps for themselves.” The world is sinking deeper into new disorder and violence because rival powers cannot resist the Thucydides Trap and keep repeating “strategic miscalculations” based on their will to power and desire for global dominion.

The problem with China (the Athens of our present case) that troubles the US as the Sparta of the moment is that, as Allison observes, “China wants to be China and accepted as such—not as an honorary member of the West.” The problem with world powers, past and present, seems to be that they cannot live with difference. In fact, political, economic and cultural differences are quickly turned from competition to conflict, from opposition to total enmity. How to translate antagonism to agonism, and to move from being enemies to being respectful adversaries that can exist among each other in a conflictual but shared world is a small lesson that seems to elude big powers, whose egopolitics drives their geopolitics into a kind of militarized lunacy. One would be forgiven, for instance, to think that playground toys are being spoken of when presidents of powerful countries talk about monstrous weapons to be deployed in Ukraine. Observing from Africa one can hazard the view that big powers might be small and slow learners, after all. The death-drive of the superpowers is perpetuated by the desire to force other countries, including other powers, to be “more like us” when they are formidably determined to be themselves. To break out of the Thucydides Trap and avoid war, for instance, the US has to generate and sustain enough emotional stamina to live with the strong truth that China is a 5,000-year-old civilization with close to 1.5 billion people and in its recent rise is only returning to glory and not coming from the blue sky. And that the world has to be shared with China and other powers, and countries. China, and allies, would also not have learnt well from  many years of decline if they dreamt and worked for a world under their sole dominion.

Any fantasy of one world ruled from one mighty center of power is exactly that, a fantasy that might be pursued at the dear cost of a World War. Away from that fantasy, the future world will be politically pentecostal, not a paradise but a perpetually in the making and incomplete world where human, national, cultural, political and religious differences will be normal. From Africa that future world is thinkable and world powers should be investing thought and action in that and not in new monstrous weapons and military might.

Africa in the new world disorder

The symptoms are spectacular and everywhere to be seen. It can be the Namibian President, Hage Geingob, on live television having to shout at a German politician, Norbet Lammert, for complaining about the growing Chinese population in Namibia. Geingob asks why Germans land in Namibia on a “red carpet” and do “what they want” but it becomes a huge  problem for the West when the Chinese are seen in Namibia. That Namibia should not be reduced into a theater of contestation between the West and China because it is a sovereign country was Geingob’s plea to the German politician. It can be President Emmanuel Macron of France, in May 2021, asking President Paul Kagame of Rwanda for forgiveness for France’s role in the genocide of 1994—the bottom line being that African conflicts and genocides bear European footprints and fingerprints. Africa is reduced to the West’s crime scene, from slavery to colonialism and from colonialism to present coloniality. 

Coloniality is brought to life with, for instance, the US Republican lawmakers launching a bill “opposing the Republic of South Africa’s hosting of military exercises with the People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation and calling on the Biden administration to conduct a thorough review of the US-South Africa relationship.” Africa as an object that does not have the agency to act for itself but is acted upon in the new world disorder, is real. It is Africa as a child in the world system that must be protected from other relationships and that must be told who to relate with and who not to relate with. It is also Africa as an owned thing that must be protected from rival owners. Behind the myth of African independence and liberation is the reality of Africa as a “sphere of influence,” about which world powers are still scrambling for control and ownership, including Russia and China. When in January 2018, Donald Trump referred to African countries as “all these shithole countries,” he meant that Africa still metaphorized the toilet of the world order, where disposable waste and dispensable people were to be found. Looking at the world disorder from Africa is a troubling view from the toilet of world affairs.

Looking at the world disorder from Africa with African eyes and sensibility makes it obvious that it is Africa that should be against war and for a decolonial, multipolar world order where differences are legitimated, not criminalized; where economic competition, political opposition, and rivalry are democratized from antagonism to agonism; and where political opponents are adversaries that are not necessarily blood enemies that must work on eliminating each other to the “last man.” Such a world order may be liberating in that both fears and desires of nations may play out in a political climate where might is not necessarily right. From long experiences of being the dominated and exploited other of the world, Africa should expectedly be the first to demand such a world. 

World powers need to be persuaded or to pressure themselves to understand what Mahbubani prescribes as a future world order that is against war, and liberating in that it is minimalist, multilateral, and Machiavellian. Minimalist, in that major countries should minimize thinking and act like other countries are minors that should be changed into their own image. Multilateral in the sense that world institutions, such as the United Nations, must be pentecostal sites where differences, fears and desires of all countries are moderated and democratized. Machiavellian in that world powers, no matter how mighty they believe they are, must adapt to the change to the order of things and live with the truth that they will not enjoy world dominion alone, in perpetuity. The world must be a shared place that naturalizes and normalizes political, economic, cultural, and human diversity.

This post is from a partnership between Africa Is a Country and The Elephant. We will be publishing a series of posts from their site once a week.

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