The transformation of the global system and its implications for Africa

The global capitalist crisis that occurred in 2007-8 has changed the way we shall relate to the future. Mass democratic pressures such as those we are witnessing in the Arab world are already indicative of the way countries will try to cope with problems of equality in economics and freedoms in political life.

The economic meltdown that occurred is deep and it is amazing that when the crisis struck the majority of mainstream economists did not see its magnitude and its long-term implications. Indeed, some economists at first viewed the meltdown as purely an American phenomenon. It was, they argued, a ‘sub-prime mortgage crisis’.

Others, who saw deeper elements in the crisis, called it a ‘credit crunch’, but soon realised that it was not a ‘credit crunch’ related only to the ‘sub-prime’ mortgage crisis, but a ‘financial crisis’ as well.

Even with this broadened understanding, the crisis was still regarded as mainly a US problem and not a global one. The events that have occurred since the beginning of this year in North Africa have demonstrated the widespread effect of the global capitalist crisis.

THE REVOLTS IN THE ARAB WORLD AND NORTH AFRICA

The conditions of desperation that global capitalism has created in the world were behind the uprising in Tunisia. It will be recalled that Mohamed Bouzizi was an unemployed young man who was trying to sell some vegetables on the street to earn a living. Bouzizi was arrested and beaten up by the police for daring to earn a living on the streets and refusing to pay a bribe to be let free. This, in the eyes of the population, symbolised the ‘heartlessness’ of a state that had lost all human contact with its citizens. Instead of empathising with Bouzizi’s plight, Bouzizi was instead harassed on several occasions by agents of the state, assaulted, humiliated and prevented from attempting to engage in some income generating activity on which he and his family could depend. It was out of the desperation of this harassment that Bouzizi, in an act of defiance, set himself on fire and killed himself.

This act of bravery triggered demonstrations on the part of his family in Sidi Bouzid, which were joined by hundreds of supporters in defiance of the ‘heartless’ state, which called on them to disperse. It is this act of defiance on the part of the people and in empathy with Bouzizi’s action that spread like wild fire and finally brought down the 23-year corrupt, authoritarian, pro-Western, and crony capitalist regime of Zine Al-Abadine Ben Ali and his family from power. But before his downfall, Ben Ali and his regime had been lauded and held out to be successful. He was hailed as a wealthy head of a fast-growing economy in Africa, even when the population were suffering under the burden of repression.

But this very ‘competitive’ economy was a monopoly of French interests, for it was also true that France alone accounted for 72.5 per cent of the country’s imports and 75 per cent of its exports to the European Union. This was the kind of ‘success’ that the Western world praised and held out to the people of Tunisia as the basis of their existence. In fact, the economy was dependent on the interests of the European and American monopolies and their local cronies, which required an iron-fisted regime to maintain. It constituted the bedrock of inequality between the very opulent and rich class and the impoverished, poor classes agonising over high levels of the unemployment and political repression. This included many jobless university graduates such as Bouzizi, who were the victims of a lop-sided economy. This was the capitalism that the Tunisian people knew, not the imagined capitalist world of ‘successes’ of a few cronies who ran the Tunisian neo-colonial state. The revolt was an attempt by the people of Tunisia to reconstruct a state that had feelings for its people and not one that was merely instrumental in oppressing them.

The events in Tunisia were quickly followed by those in Egypt, which has been dubbed the ‘Youth Revolution’. They were very much ignited by these developments, which included the use of FaceBook and other social networks as a trigger but not as a cause. These networks are the products of technological changes that have occurred in the capitalist world and which are highly connected with the global economic situation discussed above. This is because of the role the electronic media, especially mobile telephony, FaceBook, Twitter and other social networks have played in these events. These revolts have challenged the rights of dictators who have ruled their countries for decades under ‘emergency’ conditions in order to prevent their citizens enjoying their freedoms, including the right to employment.

THE IMPLICATIONS OF THE REVOLTS

We can now recall the 1964 work of Marshall McLuhan, in which he predicted that the visual and individualistic print culture that characterised the early period of capitalism would be brought to an end by what he called ‘electronic interdependence’ in which the electronic media would replace the visual media with an aural/oral culture.

In this new age, McLuhan predicted, humankind will move from individualism and fragmentation to a collective identity, with a ‘tribal base’. McLuhan called this emerging social organisation the ‘global village’, but this village was to be a product of capitalist ‘economic globalisation’, which McLuhan and the world had as yet not seen in the 1960s. ‘Economic globalisation’, as we now know it, dawned on us in the 1980s.

In order to understand the force behind these revolts, let us again recall the origins of the revolt in Tunisia and the reasons behind them. As we have seen, the revolts arose as an expression of solidarity in empathy with Bouzizi and his family in the way the agents of the state had treated Bouzizi. There are several elements from which we can draw a kind of résumé of his revolt: unemployment, lack of food and other necessities of life, lack of opportunities of advancement, corruption on the part of the state officials, brutality of the police and other security agencies, demand for dignity, demand for equality, demand for citizenship, lack of empathy for the sufferings of the masses of the people by the state, capitalist cronyism, kleptocracy on the part of the ruling family, authoritarianism and dictatorial governance.

If the elements in this résumé are put together, analysed and synthesised, it becomes clear that these concerns and demands of the people are qualitative in nature rather than quantitative. This can be illustrated by an incident which occurred during the Tahrir square demonstrations when the then president Hosni Mubarak tried to calm down the tempers of the demonstrators by increasing the salaries of public workers by 50 per cent. The gesture was rebuffed and laughed at by the crowd, who responded by stating that what they were demonstrating against was his despotic rule and not salaries and that in any case the majority of them were unemployed.

They retorted that what they were demanding was his immediate departure and towards this demand they declared one Friday in February to be his ‘Day of Departure’. They were demanding, they retorted, ‘freedom’, ‘dignity’, and ‘equality’. These were all qualitative demands, which imply a demand for a completely new world free of exploitation and repression.

WHAT KIND OF A NEW WORLD?

In Marshall McLuhan’s analysis, there was a spiritual transformation in the emerging of new ‘holistic individuals’ who together with others are united in empathy and solidarity in these demands. McLuhan argued that the very speed of electronic change, which was occurring during his time, but which had become speedier and speedier with the passage of time, tended to force the individual to forsake processing of reality in an analytic, sequential way. This was essential, he added, in order to take the process ‘mythically’ all at once, using all our senses. In this situation, the state of mind, tended to emphasise ‘field consciousness’, which in turn encouraged identity to be derived from the mind rather than from the contents of the mind. Such a healthy, balanced relationship to the information explosion, which such media brought about, encouraged holistic individuals to go beyond the mere processing of innumerable bits of information towards seeing and feeling. Such a healthy balance of mind and body also tried to identify the patterns of the flow of knowledge and reality in their contexts.

This development implies a human spiritual transformation towards Ubuntu - the African philosophy of recognising others as part of one self. McLuhan’s analysis also provides us with a glimpse of the new kind of society that the holistic individual is seeking.

What then can we say about what the people in Tahrir Square were demanding when they talked of a new democracy that respects their human dignity and equality? Can it not be surmised that what they were really demanding was a state that has feeling and empathy for their needs and concerns? Can we say that perhaps they were demanding a new state that has feelings like a human being, which moreover can demonstrate its feelings for the people rather than through dictates? Can we say that such a state is possible because by its very nature a state monopolises all means of violence, which it has invariably used against its citizens without any feelings for those citizens. In short, a modern state (especially the post-colonial state) brutalises its citizens and at the same time claims to represent them, which is a contradiction in terms.

Perhaps if such a new state that has feelings for its citizens is impossible to imagine, then what the demonstrators were really demanding was that they themselves should constitute a ‘state’ or ‘community’ in which the functions of the state were assumed by the individuals themselves. This happened in the ‘tribal’ societies, but also in the polis in Athens. Is this perhaps what Marx meant when he predicted the ‘withering away of the state?’ But Marx regarded such a situation as leading to ‘communism’ in which there was equality for everyone. Is this perhaps the kind of ‘communal’ society that is imagined by the social networks? If so how can it be actualised beyond the virtual communities that the social networks have created? This is perhaps the task that is implied by the current revolutions.

THE IMPLICATIONS FOR AFRICA

It is clear that despite the fragmentation and marginalisation that modernity has imposed on the people of Africa, elements of Ubuntu still exist in African societies through languages, cultures and knowledge systems. Ubuntu seeks a restoration of balance in relations between individuals inter se and between individuals and nature. In the new situation in which the holistic individuals now find themselves united in solidarity - no longer alienated and isolated - they find Abantu in existence with elements of Ubuntu still with them. The holistic individuals find themselves already embedded in the culture of Ubuntu in a new form, which McLuhan’s analysis seems to suggest. Such a new environment requires that in order to fit in the new combined human environment of interconnectedness and wholeness, such new combined individuals have to make their rules of a restorative society on an on-going basis.

Already academic researchers are beginning to examine this new situation by exploring the parallels between online social networking and the practices of ‘tribal’ societies that McLuhan envisaged. In the collective profile-surfing essential for ‘face-booking’ and ‘my-spacing’ in which they try to engage in ‘friending’, they begin to see the resurgence of ancient patterns of oral communication. Lance Strate, a communications professor at Fordham University and devoted ‘myspacer’ has argued that ‘orality, which is characteristic of African communication, is the basis of all human experience’. He is convinced that the popularity of social networks stems from their appeal to deep-seated, prehistoric patterns of human communication and points out that humans evolved with speech and not with writing. This is in fact what we have called Afrikology. Can this be the basis on which the African heritage can provide humanity new beginnings? As Archbishop Desmond Tutu once declared about the philosophy of Ubuntu, which he called ‘this thing’:

‘Africans have this thing called Ubuntu…the essence of being human. It is part of the gift that Africans will give the world. It embraces hospitality, caring about others, willing to go the extra mile for the sake of others. We believe a person is a person through another person, that my humanity is caught up, bound up and inextricable in yours. When I dehumanise you I inexorably dehumanise myself. The solitary individual is a contradiction in terms and, therefore, you seek to work for the common good because your humanity comes into its own community, in belonging.’

Is this the way the ‘holistic individual’ that McLuhan talked about should go? It is clear that the new society cannot reproduce a society that lived by the principles of Ubuntu for that was a qualitatively different society. But surely there are some lessons that can be learnt from that experience for the new society that those engaged in revolts seem to be demanding.

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* This is the text of a public lecture delivered at the University of South Africa, College of Law, on 10 March 2011.
* Download the PDF of this article (392.5 kb).
* Professor Dani Wadada Nabudere is the executive director of the Marcus Garvey Pan-Afrikan Institute (MPAI). [email][email protected]
* 'The Crash of International Finance-Capital and its Implications for the Third World' by Professor Dani Wadada Nabudere is available from [email protected] or comment online at Pambazuka News.