The liberal democratic model imperialist-capitalist countries seek to universalise is 'essentially meant to rationalise, justify and protect and defend private capitalist property' in order to 'reproduce the system of class exploitation,' argues Issa G. Shivji.

In the era of globalisation, post-modernism and culturalism, many a Marxist intellectual of the 1960s and 1970s has metamorphosed, abandoning the class stand of the working people against the voracious capitalist system and imperialism. Not so Samir Amin. He has stood firm against capitalist barbarism. He does not mince his words nor does he capitulate to intellectual fashions. He does not seek accolades from Western scholarship nor does he curry favours to be counted among the 'best' 100 intellectuals. He remains steadfast in the great struggle of national liberation and social emancipation of the working people of the world. He remains anchored in class struggles at 80 as strongly as he was at 30 when he wrote his 'Class Struggle in Africa'.

Africa’s ‘tale of treasures at one end and tragedies at the other cannot be understood’ without ‘locating it in the trajectory of worldwide capitalist accumulation,’ argues Issa Shivji.

Julius Nyerere was among ‘the most articulate, intense and militant’ of the first generation of African nationalists. Issa Shivji traces the development of a Pan-Africanist philosopher-king and his struggle to live a more principled politics.

As the East African Community seeks further integration, Issa G. Shivji explores the historical beginnings and vision behind such regional changes from a pan-Africanist perspective. Rather than debate specific forms of ‘economic integration’ or ‘political association’, Shivji seeks to discuss ‘whether we are asking the right questions’.

Issa G. Shivji writes of Mwalimu Julius Nyerere's conceptions of nationalism in Africa, ideas which encompassed both the political through liberatory principles and the universal through transcending narrow identities. Debates around the economic success of his policies notwithstanding, Nyerere's greatest legacy, Shivji writes, was his sweeping vision of African unity.

Looking to Mwalimu Julius Nyerere's understanding for guidance, Issa G. Shivji stresses the contemporary importance of non-alignment for Tanzania and African countries at large. In the face of a multi-polar world where power is progressively drifting eastwards, Africa must revitalise its erstwhile spirit of national liberation and autonomy, Shivji argues.

Mwalimu Nyerere, writes Issa G. Shivji, “saw Tanzania essentially as a nation of village communities [that] was likely to be so for the foreseeable future.” He thus saw it as site of statist development and bureaucratic social service provision. Although there were “seeds of the conception of the village as a site of governance” in his thought, “there is no evidence that he advocated any consistent, political programme to evolve village governance.” Shivji thus calls on us take Mwalimu’s limited thought on the village one step further by placing the “restructuring of village governance on the centre stage” whereby it should be based on the rule of law and separation of power, not top-down administrative fiat. This will enable people’s development through a process of ‘accumulation from below’ in villages.

‘Can you really re-member Afrika in the images, symbols and languages of the master? Can you really dream the dreams of liberation in the language of the oppressors?’ These are among the questions raised in a new book by Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Re-membering Africa, Issa Shivji writes in Pambazuka News. In a commentary shared at the launch of the book, Shivji says that wa Thiong’o’s latest work ‘captures an important intellectual moment in the long struggle of African people to re-claim and recover our collective memory.’

Professor Issa Shivji pays tribute in verse – in English and in Kiswahili – to the late Haroub Othman, former professor of Development Studies at the University of Dar es Salaam.

My dear friend and comrade, Ho:

I shan’t write a letter,
I can’t.
I shan’t sing a song,
Or recite a poem.
‘Cause I don’t have the talents.
I shall say what I feel,
Deep down in me.

Those were the days,
Of the Vietnam war.
Ho Chinh Minh was your uncle,
My uncle, our uncle.
Demos, sit-ins and boycotts,
Petitions, pictures and panels,
Unclothing war criminals.
People’s courts sentenced, public opinion enforced.

Those were the days,
Of Bertrand Russell and Stokely Carmichael,
Sitting in Stockholm,
Hearing napalmed men, women and children.
The public gallery wept, students shouted,
‘Down with uncle Sam,
Long live Uncle Ho.’

Your kinship was unmistakeable,
Your Cause was clear.
You stood on the side,
Of the oppressed,
humiliated and exploited.
You proudly signed your name,
with a big ‘H’ and a small ‘o’, Ho.

Moderate in language,
Measured in tone.
Civil in demeanour,
Generous in kindness.
Gentle in argument,
Steadfast in disagreement.
That was our Ho.

In Lebanon and Palestine,
In Vietnam and Indonesia.
In Chile and Cuba,
In Iraq and Afghanistan.
In Mozambique, Angola and Guinea Bissau.
Wherever there was oppression and injustice,
Our Ho knew his side.

Imperialism he condemned,
Human rights he upheld.
On union, he stood his ground,
Often stoutly,
Seldom silently.
Unity he applauded,
Secession he feared.

More I say, more I want to say.
But a little more I’ll say.
Jenerali wrote:
‘Poor Saida!
She wanted to retire.
Now she’ll have to unretire,
To lead us from where Haroub left off.’

+

Ndugu yangu, rafiki yangu, kamaradi Harubu:

Sitaomboleza kifo chako;
Sitatowa salamu za rambirambi.
Tumelia ya kutosha,
Tumehuzunika ya kutosha.

Tumesononeka, tumelalamika:
Ewe Muumba,
Kwa nini unatupora watu wetu wema?
Kwa nini?
Eti ulimpenda zaidi ya sisi,
Kwani upendo wetu una kikomo?

Sasa basi:
Mamia tumekutana Nkrumah,
Maelfu wametega masikio,
Moshi, Miatu na Mbezi.
Sio kuomboleza, wala kulia, wala kulalamika.
Bali kusherekea.
Kusherekea maisha yako,
Fikra zako,
Msimamo wako.

Kusherekea maisha yako, Harubu,
Mwana wa Miraji,
Mwana wa Zanzibar na Tanzania,
Mwana wa Afrika.

Tunasherekea fikra zako,
Tunatamani kuchota kutoka busara zako,
Hekima yako,
Mtazamo wako.

Fikra zako za uungwana,
Fikra zako za ukombozi,
Ukombozi wa wanyonge,
Ukombozi wa mwana wa Adamu.

Fikra zako zisizotingisika,
Kupinga dhuluma na ufisadi na ubeberu.
Fikra zako za kutetea,
Haki za wanyonge.

Harubu, umetoweka bila kutuaga.
Hatulalamiki, hatukulaumu.
Kwani, kila pumzi la uhai wako,
Ulikuwa na ujumbe na nasaha.

Enyi makamaradi, wana wa harakati.
Katika medani ya mapambano,
Hakuna kuaga wala kuagana.
Hakuna muda,
Hakuna anasa
Ya porojo za kuaga na kuagana.

La kesho, tendeni leo.
La siku, tekelezeni kwa saa.
Mapambano sio lelemama.
Ukombozi sio usanii.

Buriani ndugu yangu,
Rafiki yangu,
Kamaradi Ho.
Kwaheri za kuonana.

Outlining the essential differences between the respective approaches of Julius Nyerere and Kwame Nkrumah, Issa G. Shivji discusses the gradualist and radical positions of two pillars of the Pan-Africanist movement. Underlining the notion of an independent African state as a ‘national liberation movement in power’ as being at the very core of the movement, Shivji stresses that genuine African nationalism can only ever be Pan-Africanism. As both a head of state and leading Pan-Africanist intellectual, Nyerere found himself supporting contradictory ideas around contesting the imposition of colonial borders while emphasising the centrality of states' sovereignty, Shivji notes. While admitting that he is without a complete answer to the question of what intellectuals' role will be in the development of a new Pan-Africanism for today, Shivji stresses that the challenge will be to push forward a 'new nationalist insurrection', one which perhaps ultimately recognises African unity as a dream rather than a vision.

Fahamu Books is pleased to announce that Issa G. Shivji's . In celebration of this collection of Shivji's essays on a wide array of topics – from the Pan-Africanist emancipation project to multiparty politics – this edition of Pambazuka News features a chapter from the book entitled 'Pan-Africanism or imperialism? Unity and struggle towards a new democratic Africa'. A record of the Second Billy Dudley Memorial Lecture delivered at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, on 27 July 2005, the chapter outlines Shivji's reflections on globalisation as imperialism and the inextricable links of African nationalism to the broader Pan-Africanist liberatory movement. Drawing upon Julius Nyerere's poignant reservations around territorial nationalism as 'the equivalent of tribalism within the context of our separate nation states’, Shivji eloquently surveys the evolution of Pan-Africanist thought and sets out its contemporary role in articulating the continent's path towards democracy and liberation in the post-Cold War era.

cc With Dar es Salaam on the verge of hosting the Julius Nyerere Intellectual Festival Week from Monday 13 April, Issa G. Shivji, Mwalimu Nyerere Professor of Pan-African Studies at the city's university, offers his reflections on the pan-African struggle. Though Africa has undoubtedly suffered from the neoliberal onslaught of the past two decades, Pan-Africanism as a progressive ideology is now firmly back on the historical agenda, Shivji states, uniting in the process the continent's dual quest for unity and liberation.

Celebrating Pambazuka’s 400th issue is celebrating pan-Africanism itself. Through its half a million readership and one thousand plus contributors from all over Africa, Pambazuka has truly set ablaze an intellectual pan-African trail; ‘insurrection of ideas precedes insurrection of arms’, some militant is quoted to have said. Pambazuka is certainly not a call to (physical) arms, but one to intellectual and ideological arms. We need it if the pan-African vision – not a dream – is to survive and continue to guide our thoughts and actions as Africans. As Souleymane Bachir Diagne says, we should make pan-Africanism a category of intellectual thought.

I have asserted many times in the pages of Pambazuka and elsewhere that ‘new pan-Africanism’, rooted in social (popular) democracy, is African nationalism of the era of the so-called globalised phase of imperialism. African nationalism was born of pan-Africanism, not the other way round. Its genesis was rooted in democracy – self-determination and anti-imperialism. Self-determination and anti-imperialism are two sides of the same coin, none of which could be successfully achieved on the level of colonially carved territories. The first generation of African nationalists were deeply conscious of the dangers of territorial nationalisms based on geographical spaces designed as countries by colonialists. Nyerere derogatively characterised African countries as vinchi or statelets! African nationalism outside pan-Africanism is tribalism on the international level, he boldly asserted in the early 1960s. Both Nyerere and Nkrumah believed that without a continental unity, individual African countries would become pawns on the imperialist chessboard or degenerate into narrow cultural, racial, or ethnic nationalisms, or both. In this, unfortunately, they were prophetic as half a century of African independence has amply demonstrated.

On the morrow of receiving the insignia of sovereign states, a few of the ‘founding fathers’ genuinely set out to build nations within the colonially defined borders, which all of them, as heads of states, unanimously agreed were sacred, although unviable. Others set to build their power-bases on the colonially invented or re-invented ethnic ‘identities’. Still others did not survive long enough to do either, or something else, because they were overthrown (Nkrumah) or assassinated (Lumumba) by imperialist machinations. Whatever the case, they all failed to build viable, legitimate states and nations.

Kenyatta’s Kenya and Nyerere’s Tanganyika are illustrative examples. Anchored in ethnic power-bases, which also determined resource allocations, the darling of Western imperialism in this part of the world exploded following the 2008 general elections. The so-called government of the so-called ‘national unity’ was cobbled together by American pressure while pretending to be a miracle performed by the chairman of African Union, Jakaya Kikwete, the Tanzanian president. Tanganyika has not so far exploded, thanks to the legacy of Nyerere’s far-sighted policies, preaching and personal integrity helped by relatively undeveloped class divisions. That is proving to be fragile, thanks to extreme social and economic polarisation wrought by Mkapa’s neo-liberal polices, taken over by Kikwete, over the last 15 or so years. The 2000, and even more so the 2005, elections were marked by racial and religious animosity and ethnic based alliances and campaigning. Under the veneer of peace, unity, and stability, Tanzanian political and even intellectual elites are covertly and overtly involved in religious- and ethnic-based politicking. This came out openly in the last session of the parliament where honourable members were unashamedly polarised along religious lines on the issues of the possible membership of OIC (Organisation of Islamic Conference) and the proposal to introduce Kadhi’s courts for the Muslim community.

Even more problematic is the union between Tanganyika and Zanzibar which this year celebrated its 44th anniversary. While the Cold War was the context and pressure from the West to meet what it considered a communist threat undoubtedly played a role, Nyerere’s was driven, at least partly, by his pan-African convictions. He would have preferred Zanzibar to be part of a greater East African federation but his colleagues in Kenya and Uganda were too enamoured with new power and state positions to relinquish it in the interest of a larger association. The failure to form the East African federation bore out Nyerere’s fears. He had argued repeatedly that once African countries went into independence alone, it would be too difficult to dislodge vested interests thus created.

Once you multiply national anthems, national flags and national passports, seats at the United Nations, and individuals entitled to 21 gun salutes, not to speak of a host of ministers, prime ministers, and envoys, you would have a whole army of powerful people with vested interests in keeping Africa balkanised.

While the political union of East Africa is still marking time forty years later, even economic integration has been in the doldrums. The East African Community collapsed in the late 1970s and was only revived 10 years ago. Ironically, therefore, the union with Zanzibar, whose future is being seriously threatened, and the fragility of regional economic integration, are proving Nyerere’s position in his debate with Nkrumah questionable. It should be recalled that Nkrumah stood for immediate political union of African states while Nyerere argued in favour of a gradualist approach against Nkrumah’s immediate political unification. Nkrumah dubbed Nyerere’s efforts at EA federation ‘balkanisation on a larger scale’ while ‘regional economic groupings,’ he said, ‘retard rather than promote the unification process.’

While logic was on Nyerere’s side, history has vindicated Nkrumah. All experiments at regional political unions did not survive. Senegambia, formed in 1982, was dissolved on 1989 because the Gambia refused closer union with Senegal. Formed much earlier, the Mali federation collapsed within two years. The only union to survive long was the unity of former British Somaliland and the Italian Somalia, which was formed in 1960 voluntarily by the people of British Somaliland voting in a referendum to join the former Italian Somalia to form the Somali Republic. With the collapse of the Siad Barre regime in 1991 and the whole country breaking up into warlords’ fiefdoms, Somaliland withdrew to form the Republic of Somaliland, which to this date remains unrecognised. Though it remains shaky, this makes the Tanganyika-Zanzibar the longest surviving union between two African countries. The moral is that regional unities, of whatever kind, particularly political, have failed to make it.

Nkrumah’s vision of continental political unity thus remains a beacon of hope. More recently, Muammar Gaddafi has tried to take on Nkrumah’s mantle. But Gaddafi is no Nkrumah. The call for political unification from Gaddafi has found little support. The classical debate between Nyerere and Nkrumah has been resurrected but it is a pale shadow of its former self. There is no Nyerere to argue for gradualism with any legitimacy while Gaddafi is a wrong man to argue a right cause. His maverick tactics and twisting of arms has only resulted in rekindling the Arab-African cultural divide. That brings me to the cultural argument often deployed even by otherwise progressive intellectuals against continental unity.

Pan-Africanism was rooted in anti-imperialist politics. It was a political and not an economic, cultural, or racial project. At a public rally called by PAFMECA (Pan-African Movement of Eastern and Central Africa) in Zanzibar in April 1959, Nyerere said that he did not believe that an African was defined by the colour of his skin. An African, he asserted, is any one who has made Africa his home and is struggling for the rights of his country. This is a political definition of an African, not racial or cultural. Both Frantz Fanon and Amílcar Cabral saw culture as a form and expression of national struggle rather than an ossified custom or tradition. As Archie Mafeje argued, it is one thing to invoke culture – even invent it – as a counterpoint to the assertion and domination by European imperialist culture, it is quite another to make culture a reference point of (political) division.

In conclusion, I return to the point that pan-Africanism was a political project for the first generation of African nationalists and remains so. Africa is at crossroads. We either rise to the progressive, anti-imperialist pan-Africanism as a continental political project of national liberation and social emancipation, or descend into narrow chauvinist nationalisms, be they racial, cultural, or ethnic. I believe we are at the dawn of a new era of pan-Africanism. We have to re-appropriate the pan-Africanist vision, and make it a category of intellectual thought and a guiding post of political struggles.

* Issa G. Shivji is one of Africa’s most radical and original thinkers and has written frequently for Pambazuka News. He is the author of several books, including Silences in NGO Discourse (2007), published in Fahamu Books.

* Please send comments to or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/authors/Issa_Shivji.jpg“Mo Ibrahim’s prize for a retired African president which was awarded to Joachim Chissano of Mozambique was in my view an insult to the African people.” Issa Shivji raises a number of questions around the award such as how and what is “good governance” and why is it only applied to Africa? And most importantly “for which and whose democracy they are getting a prize”.

Punishment is to deter; often to take revenge. Reward is to encourage. Rewards can also be a recognition for outstanding, usually, individual achievements. Which acts are liable to punishment and which are rewarded depends on the dominant values of society. These can differ from society to society and from time to time within same society. Issues of democracy and dictatorship, of war and peace, of governance and state administration, do not fall within the realm of a system of punishment and rewards.

Of course, victorious powers recognise their war heroes and vanquished bury their martyrs with honour. But then heroes of the victor are mercenaries for the vanquished and the martyrs of the vanquished may be terrorists for the victor. In other words, the issues of war and peace are contentious issues and can only be understood in their historical and social context. And so are the issues of democracy and dictatorship. Therefore, it is naïve, if not mischievous, to award a person – moreover with a cash prize – for bringing peace or democracy to his country.

It is even worse to cite “good governance” as an achievement for awarding an individual president of a country. What is “good governance”? Who determines what is good and bad governance? What yardsticks are applied? And why are these yardsticks applied only to Africa? Why doesn’t any one award a Norwegian prime minister for good governance or include “good governance” conditionality to lend Mr. Bush assistance or fund Martin Athissari to advise Bush on good governance? (Remember Martin Athissari, funded by the World Bank, came to Tanzania to advise President Mkapa on good governance.)

The point about these rhetorical questions should be obvious. Mo Ibrahim’s prize for a retired African president which was awarded to Joachim Chissano of Mozambique was in my view an insult to the African people. First, it is belittling African people. Dictators and undemocratic rulers exist all over the world, including the West which has arrogated to itself the right to judge others as “good man” or punish them for being dictators (Saddam Hussein).

Despots and dictators are not a monopoly of Africa. African people, like other people elsewhere, have always struggled against them. If they have attained some success in these struggles, it is their collective achievement. Their success is not due to particular qualities of any single leader. Good leaders are as much a product of our societies as are the bad ones. It is for the people to decide who is a good or a bad leader and how to award a good one and punish a bad one. I certainly cannot imagine Mozambicans (or any African people for that matter) awarding a 5-million dollar prize to Mr. Chissano. First because Chissano’s goodness itself is, I am sure, a contentious issue in Mozambique. Secondly, Mozambican people, if at all, would have awarded their leader by including him in a list of honour or putting his picture on a postal stamp. And if they had 5 million dollars to spare, they would have probably built secondary schools to produce future good leaders rather than give it away to Chissano to “live a better life” and invest in business (which is what Chissano said in a BBC interview he would use the money for.)

The worst disappointment in the prize saga has been its uncritical and unqualified celebration by scribes and even academics and intellectuals. Since this prize to a retired president was for stepping down from power or “good governance’ or bringing democracy and peace to his country, it was expected that analysts would go beyond the superficial and the obvious to a deeper understanding and explanation of issues of war and peace and democracy and dictatorships in Africa. Before we celebrate, we must understand what it is that we are celebrating. Before we applaud this prize to Chissano we must understand the history, politics and forces which underpinned war and peace in Mozambique.

The people of Africa have been involved in a long struggle against war and for peace and democracy and the struggle continues. In this struggle, they are pitted against not only their own immediate rulers but also against the erstwhile colonial and imperialist powers supporting them. Our dictators were not simply made in Kinshasa (Mobutu) or Central African Republic (Bokassa) or Entebbe (Idi Amin) but also in Washington or Paris or London and Tel Aviv. The vicious war in Mozambique was not simply waged by RENAMO but fully supported and instigated by apartheid South Africa backed by the US and western powers. Apartheid South Africa also claimed the life of the liberation leader Samora Machel and his leading comrades.

Chissano took over from Samora and under the tutelage of Washington steered the neo-liberal course. It is under this new direction that the former freedom fighters like Chissano’s family and Gebuza and others (with some honourable exceptions) began accumulating wealth and became businessmen. Chissano’s son Nyimpine, a businessman, was implicated in the murder of a journalist Carlos Cardoso who was investigating the fraudulent disappearance of 14 million dollars from the Commercial Bank of Mozambique in 1996. The story of wealth accumulation by political leaders in Mozambique is not that different from what we have been witnessing and debating in Tanzania. It is even on a larger scale. In Tanzania Mwalimu’s ghost has had greater restraining power on vultures of wealth than Samora’s in Mozambique.

As with economics, so with politics. The opening up of space after one-party authoritarianism did not just come about on a silver platter. People in Tanzania, Mozambique and the rest of Africa struggled for it. But as usual the rulers and their imperialist backers pre-empted the struggle for real democracy by imposing their own truncated version of neo-liberal democracy

So, when our leaders receive prizes for their democratic achievements we should ask ourselves for which and whose democracy they are getting a prize. Are they getting the prize for a neo-liberal democracy under which the World Bank and “development partners” (read: developed predators!) impose privatization of national assets and resources; under which their diplomats pressurize our ministers and governments to sign utterly one-sided contracts with the likes of golden sharks; under which the parliament is literally ordered to pass laws which have been drafted by their consultants like the Mining Act, under which our political leaders in a free-for-all pandemonium overnight become “wajasiria mali” and bankers and big miners? Is this the democracy for which the peasants, workers, youth, and wamachinga fought? In short, before celebrating let us ask ourselves what are we celebrating and whose music we are dancing to.

Without such critical understanding, I am afraid, we can end up celebrating and legitimizing the shaming and ridiculing of the democratic struggles and achievements of our people.

Mr. Mo Ibrahim: you have made millions of dollars from the sweat and blood of the African people. If you want to return a few million to the people, build schools, dispensaries, and water wells in the south of your own country rather than giving them to Chisasanos of this world. Do not add insult to injury by robbing (poor) Peter to pay (rich) Paul.

© Issa Shivji.

* This article was first published in THE CITIZEN (Tanzania) in Saturday Palaver and is reproduced here with the kind permission of the author.

* Issa Shivji is one of Africa’s most radical and original thinkers and has written frequently for Pambazuka News. He is the author of several books, including the seminal Concept of Human Rights in Africa (1989) and, more recently, Let the People Speak: Tanzania down the road to neoliberalism (2006).

* Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

Issa Shivji continues the debate on the creation of a 'United States of Africa'. Drawing on past experience and present initiatives of regional cooperation in East Africa, he suggests that the economic focus should be at the level of production – capital and labour, rather than on trade. Politically, it should be people-centred rather than state-oriented.

The African Union has set the stage for a critical debate on pan-African unity. This has deep resonance with the nationalist struggles that ushered in Africa’s independence. At that time, the defining theme and rallying cry of the nationalists - from Nkrumah, Nyerere, Banda to Babu - was pan-Africanism. African nationalism by definition, they argued, could not be anything other than pan-Africanism.

The current pan-Africa debate presents an opportune moment for the continent to confront some of the key challenges facing it, among which is imperialism. African nationalism was born in the struggle against imperialism. It could only be sustained as long as it remained anti-imperialist.

Today, few of our countries can claim to be truly independent. We have no power to make the most basic of our own decisions. Our sovereignty is sold to the highest bidder. Our foreign policy is aligned with the super-power. Our laws - ‘made in the IMF’ - are thrust on our parliamentarians. The multinationals wring out of us outrageous concessions in agreements, which are ‘top secret’, even from the elected representatives of the people.

The current quest for pan-African unity must acknowledge the threat, and not shy away from the challenge posed by imperialism. As globalisation, an even more vicious form of imperialism, engulfs us we need to return to the roots of our independence: the great post-war nationalist movement which resulted in the independence of more than 50 African countries.

Today, as we sink deep into the uncharted seas of globalisation, and let the shylocks and sharks of the global market devour our resources and dictate our policies, our societies are being torn asunder along various parochial fault lines of ethnicity, race, region and clan. If ever there were a time to rekindle the dream and vision of pan-Africanism, then that time is now.

Even as Africa trails its focus on pan-African unity, one sees reason for hope and promise in continuing efforts towards regional integration. There are deep historical underpinnings behind the quest towards regional unity. Pan-Africanist visionaries such as Nkrumah and Nyerere foresaw the dangers of becoming independent alone.

Mwalimu was for instance prepared to delay the independence of Tanganyika if the four East African countries (Kenya, Uganda, Tanganyika and Zanzibar) could do it as a federal unit. The ongoing efforts towards regional integration must therefore be weighed in the context of pan-Africanism.

In East Africa, the heads of state have already decided to revive the East African Co-operation and a treaty has already been agreed. Consultations have now been initiated seeking the people's views on the creation of an East African federation.

The East African Community, the predecessor of the East African Co-operation, collapsed in the 1970s under the strain of state differences and bitter rivalry among vested interests.

This time round, one hopes that the lessons have been learnt and that the mistakes of the past will not be repeated. The objective must be to place cooperation on a firmer foundation by adopting better and durable approaches to the issue of unity.

As Africa moves towards consolidating pan-African unity, there are lessons that can be drawn both from past experience and present initiative towards consolidating regional cooperation in East Africa.

The old cooperation was characterised by two major thrusts. On the economic plane, it was trade centred. While on the political plane, it was state driven. Its overall approach was economic rather than political.

A useful lesson to the pan-African vision is that economic unity needs to be based on a complementarity of structures. Countries can only cooperate when the issue of economic unity is approached politically. For instance, a common approach to fixing the prices of agricultural exports or repayment of debts can be a genuine basis for cooperation. This requires political decisions.

In the case of East Africa, the structures of production in the three countries were competitive rather than complimentary. Being export oriented economies, the three entities exported almost similar agricultural crops. They competed in wooing the same investors to invest in import-substitution industrialisation. The three countries were thus rivals in the international market rather than cooperators, which rendered their unity fragile.

The pan-Africa enterprise can draw three vital lessons from the East African experience. First, the approach should be explicitly political. Second, on the economic plane, the foundation of unity should be at the level of production – capital and labour; rather than trade. Thirdly, on the political level, it should be people-centred rather than state-oriented.

Another region where forging genuine cooperation can greatly support the pan-Africa vision is in the Great Lakes region. Within a larger political grouping, it is perhaps easier and more feasible to control civil wars which have spilled over into border wars between countries in this region. A project resulting in peace in this region would dramatically boost genuine pan-Africanism and bring the dream of African unity closer.

Pan-Africa unity can provide space for increased interaction especially in areas such as human resource development to benefit countries in need. Countries in re-orientation such as Rwanda for instance could benefit from the talent pool available in other countries in much the same way as happened in the 1960s when Nigeria sent many of its magistrates to support Tanzania’s judiciary.

The same could be applied in higher education. Rwanda is in the process of rebuilding its university. UK universities are fast bidding for donor funds to send their teams of experts, advisors, professors and so on. Such opportunities should be consciously used to create practical ways of cooperation rather than being left to be manipulated by big powers. Such cooperation and assistance among ourselves would be mutually beneficial and in the interest of the ideal of African unity.

Cooperation at every level – regional or continental – must provide an enabling framework for the involvement of civil society and other stakeholders. The rationale is simple. Cooperation at all these levels is too important to be left to heads of state alone. The immediate area heads of state identify for cooperation is defence and security, mostly their own of course.

Left to their devices, states can break unity either owing to pressure from international powers or narrow visions of local vested interests. Africa’s people must therefore not leave the pursuit of pan-African unity to their states and politicians. Only when Africa’s people are united can pan-African unity be sustained. They must widen their horizons to take into account new conditions and possibilities.

While, indeed, we must have sufficient will and sentiment to promote African unity, we must at the same time be prudent to protect and enhance our national interests. However, both these – pan-Africanism and nationalism – should be placed in the larger interests of the majority, and not succumb to narrow factional motives, or the greed of groups and classes. The interest of the large majority – the popular classes – should be the litmus test.

African unity as an expression of pan-Africanism is not only a desirable vision for Africa at this stage of our development, but a necessity. It is a necessity because left on our own, we are likely to become - and are increasingly becoming - pawns on the geopolitical and military chessboard of the imperial powers, under the hegemony of the most militarised and ruthless superpower in the history of mankind.

• Issa G. Shivji was, until his recent retirement, Professor of Law at the University of Dar es Salaam where he has been teaching since 1970. He has authored over a dozen books and numerous articles. His books include Class Struggles in Tanzania (1976), The Concept of Human Rights in Africa (1989) and Not Yet Democracy: Reforming Land Tenure in Tanzania (1998).

• Please send comments to

Following US attacks in Somalia this week, Issa Shivji argues that Africans have constantly warned of the American military design on the Eastern seaboard of Africa.

On 9th January 2007, while we were basking in the limelight of Dr Migiro’s appointment, BBC reported that an American Air-Force AC-130 jet had bombed a site in Somalia near the Kenyan border. The excuse was the usual one – to destroy alleged Al-Qaida agents who, the Americans have constantly propagandized, are part of the Union of Islamic Courts. The planes flew from an American air base in another African country, Djibouti.

This is a very, very ominous turn of events. Africans have constantly warned of the American military design on the Eastern seaboard. Yet, our “leaders” have thoughtlessly been currying favour with this vicious military power. In the horn, the heavily militarized Ethiopia has become their ‘on the scene agent’, doing the dirty work of the American warmonger.

First, the Americans pushed through a Security Council resolution to send an African peace-keeping force to Somalia. This was only a cover; anyone could have seen it. The most important part of that resolution was not so much the peace-keeping force but the lifting of the United Nations (UN) embargo on arms sales to Somalia. The resolution provided some legitimacy – albeit fig-leaf - to the Ethiopian military presence in that war-torn country. Unilaterally, with of course the green light from the US, Ethiopia invaded Somalia ostensibly in support of the so-called Transitional Federal Government (TFG).

The TFG is a cruel joke. It is made up of former warlords who have kept the murderous killings alive in Somalia for the past 15 years. These warlords are supported by the US and the Ethiopians. It has simply no base in Somalia. No government in Somalia with even little roots could have ever allied with Ethiopia, which is essentially an occupying force.

Regrettably, Tanzania co-sponsored the Security Council Resolution. Worse, Tanzania is the only African country which is a member of the American sponsored International Contact Group. The other members are the US, UK, Norway, Sweden, Italy and the EU. The AU, Arab League and Kenya attend as observers. The contact group ploy was clearly meant to by-pass the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD). No wonder Kenya was angered when Tanzania, without proper prior consultations with Kenya, agreed to be part of the Contact Group.

Ethiopia broke ranks with IGAD when it invaded Somalia. The US broke ranks with the Contact Group when it struck Somalia. So much for regional and international collective peace-keeping!

Who authorized the US to strike deep into Africa’s heartland? Let us not be taken in by the so-called Al-Qaida presence. This is not the first time the Americans are telling a blatant lie. They did it in August 1998 when Clinton ordered his cruise missiles to attack the al-Shifa Pharmaceutical plant in Sudan. The Americans said it was producing VX gas. In reality, it was producing medicine. Clinton knew it, but human lives, except American, matter little to US presidents. Again, Bush told a lie that Saddam was hiding weapons of mass destruction. He told another lie that Saddam was connected with terrorists. We have seen the results.

If we keep quiet about American military planes flying over African skies, they will paint our lands red with blood. Within less than a decade, the Americans have razed two countries to the ground, allegedly in search of terrorists. This air-strike is a curtain raiser to expand the Middle East War theatre to Africa. We forget this only at our peril. The US ‘war on terror’ is worse than the proxy-hot wars that the US instigated on the continent during the Cold War era. Now, it is fomenting and instigating civil wars in which Africans will fight Africans, not only across borders but within borders – Muslims against Christians, moderates against extremists, radicals against liberals. It does not matter to them. During the Iran-Iraq war Kissinger quipped: “Let both houses burn”! And when asked about the death of half a million Iraqi children due to sanctions, Madeline Albright shamelessly intoned: “It is worth the price”.

The US has just announced the formation of an African command within its military forces to “train African troops” to hunt down terrorists (meaning our own people). The truth is, and the American spokesmen and women say it openly – that the command has been set up to protect oil resources as 25 per cent of US oil needs come from Africa.

Somalia today has all the ingredients of becoming the next Afghanistan or Iraq. God forbid! The people of Africa must rise up to condemn the American strike without reservations. The youth of Africa must understand that the MacDonaldisation of the world is accompanied by MacDonnelisation [MacDonnel Douglas is an American firm supplying defense needs.]. Don’t be mesmerized by globalization.

Globalization is the most militarized phase of imperialism, just as it is the beastly face of capitalism.

• Issa Shivji is a retired law professor.

• Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

President Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete came to power on a populist vote. Wamachinga, the semi-employed and unemployed youth of Dar es Salaam symbolized his populist support. He promised them one million jobs.

Kikwete’s first task was to convert his populist support into a popular support. Populism is fragile; it is ambivalent and can go in either direction, progressive or reactionary. In a country like Tanzania with over 12,000 villages, in which live some 80 per cent of the population, mostly smallholder peasants, converting populism to popularity means establishing a close rapport with village communities.

Mwalimu Julius Kambarage Nyerere did have such rapport but it was top-down, paternalistic. Mwalimu did not see peasants as an agency for change; peasants could not bring about change, rather he saw change being brought to them. Edward Moringe Sokoine had a developmental conception of the village. Sokoine saw the village as a harbinger of self-reliant, national development and the peasant (a rich peasant?) as an agency of change. Whatever the differences, there was one fundamental thing common to them. Both men were persons of unimpeachable personal integrity, which endeared them to the masses and strengthened them against pressures from local reactionary and foreign imperialist forces.

A fourth phase president who would make a difference would have had to combine the popular rapport of a Kambarage with the sober developmental vision of a Moringe. We therefore needed a JMK. In his first year, I envisioned President Kikwete in khaki perched on a landrover conversing with villagers, visiting even those villages where they still think Nyerere is the president. It was not to be. Instead, we found the President jet-trotting to foreign lands, including the most hated bullies of this world, chasing ‘development’. If investors needed to be charmed, that could well have been done by his charming Prime Minister. But JK needed to be in the country to transform himself into a JMK.

While the populist support was not converted into a popular support, worse, within one year the President lost even his populist support, thanks to his short-sighted lieutenants who mercilessly chased away Wamachinga thus piling up the numbers of unemployed. Now the President will have to create not one million, but perhaps 1.4 million jobs to accommodate the former Wamachingas!

The Cabinet

The ‘who’s who’ in the cabinet would give a signal of the President’s direction. In the people’s perception, the previous vigogo had indulged in an orgy of self-enrichment, ujasiriamali. They could not name names in public for fear of being persecuted by the State but in their palavers - majiweni and mabarazani - they could tell you who owned what and how he/she got it. The tip of the iceberg was an utterly inexplicable sale of government houses.

True, Mwalimu’s leadership code was killed and buried in Zanzibar by Mzee Ruksa. What we did not know then was that it was a signal to forsake even elementary political ethics. In the second half of the third phase government the neo-wabenzi, against whom the leadership code was promulgated in the first place, went berserk, holding directorships in companies, sometimes in the very sector under your ministry; awarding tenders to sons, and cousins and girlfriends; accumulating real estate; having a finger in every business pie, fair or foul, and much more. People were not only disappointed with this type of ujasiriamali, they were simply disgusted - and despaired.

People expected a messiah in JK who would deliver them from the orgy of self-enrichment. They expected him to signal a different direction by, at least, choosing into his cabinet people of unquestionable personal integrity. As a symbolic gesture he would have perhaps declared that those who took government houses had disqualified themselves from the potential pool of ministers. That alone would have sent a signal that he meant business, that he was truly a man of the people. And Kikwete could have done it; he was riding on a wave of 80 per cent vote. For reasons best known to him and his advisers, the president rubbed salt into the wound by announcing that he too had “bought” a government house!

CCM appointments

The 2005 nomination process of the presidential candidate within the CCM was one of the worst in the party’s history. Politics of ethnicity and race were freely deployed; the amount of money used could have only come from slush funds provided by tycoons; factional fights and intrigues abounded. Many felt in their bones that the party could crack. That did not happen. But the party came out of elections more fractionalized than it had entered it. Any farsighted leader of a political party in that situation had two major tasks.

First, to cement the party with a vision and a programme transcending factions and primordial prejudices. Second, to re-establish the integrity of the party and its leadership. Two party posts would be germane to this double-task, the post of the secretary general and that of the treasurer.

The party cried out for a sober organizer as the secretary general, not a cheer-leader used to haranguing people as if they were some empty tins fit only for making noises. It called for a treasurer who would be absolutely above board and known for his/her personal integrity, who would not compromise in matters of money. Again, the chairman did not measure up to the expectations in his party appointments.

Social and economic development

One year is not long enough to assess the developmental performance of a regime. But it is long enough to gauge its developmental direction. In this case, the fourth phase government seems to have decided, either consciously or by default, to stay the course. The course was set by the Mkapa regime: mindless privatisation and marketisation of the economy, including privatisation of strategic sectors, for example, finance and insurance; commodification of public goods and services, for example, land, water, energy, health and education and ruthless and unregulated exploitation of resources by multinationals – minerals, timber and forests and other bio-resources.

The experience of mining companies and the fiasco of privatized management in the water and electricity should have made the fourth phase government to revisit the course rather than stay it. The current power crisis, whose origins could be traced to the scandalous IPTL deal and equally scandalous imposition of Net Group management by force (remember that FFU accompanied the South African management when taking over TANESCO offices against resisting workers!), has been made worse by the outrageously scandalous Richmond saga. The credibility of the regime has hit rock-bottom, and the president’s studious silence only helps to feed the rumour mills of Dar es Salaam.

After some twenty years of the neo-liberal direction of the economy, one would have thought that the new government would have made a sober assessment in the light of its own experience and the experience of other countries, particularly Latin America where neo-liberalism has been discredited to the boot. Instead, we have accepted to be part of the perverted logic of IFIs (International Finance Institutions) which attributes lack of success to insufficient reforms – so reform is the only industry that shows exponential growth rates! When shall we be done with reforms?

Space does not allow going into details. But the least that is expected is that we seriously revisit our development paradigm. Are Mkukuta and Mkurabita serious developmental programmes? Which country has reduced poverty by cash transfers without developing the economy? And where is an example of success of De Soto’s Mkurabita?

Foreign policy

If there is one area where both the third and fourth phase governments have shown utter lack of appreciation of the world situation, it is in the country’s foreign alignments. True, there is only one superpower but that does not mean one has to go into its armpit. This superpower is a vicious military power with a clear military design on Africa. It is therefore very difficult to understand Tanzania accepting to send a brigade to Lebanon and co-sponsoring the US-authored UN resolution for intervention in Somalia. The design of the US on the Eastern seaboard is clear – to string it with military bases from Djibouti through Somalia and Dar es Salaam to Durban. Tanzania is one country which has a relatively stable polity and the lingering Nyerereist legitimacy in Africa. Its landmass connects the Indian Ocean to the heart of rich Africa, the Democratic Republic of Congo. For these and many other reasons, US eyes Tanzania. It is surprising therefore that instead of keeping safe distance, our leadership goes out of its way to court this dangerous military octopus.

It is school-boyish to think that non-alignment does not make sense in the unipolar world. It makes more sense today than ever before. Remember Bush has drawn the line – you are either with us or with the “terrorists”, which means anyone who is against US foreign policy. Under these circumstances, non-alignment means ‘we are neither with you nor with the terrorists!’

By the same token, it is again surprising that Tanzania is increasingly courting and embracing another vicious military power totally aligned with the US – Israel. Hopefully, our leadership will realise its folly before it is too late.

The union question

This has been the continuing subject of discussions and frustrations in the media. The tail continues to wag the dog. The mpasuko in the union cannot be resolved without resolving the mpasuko in Zanzibar. And for resolving the mapasuko, the CCM has to rise above political opportunism. The problem is that the CCM leadership fails to discipline the Zanzibar CCM because mainland CCM factions opportunistically seek out the most reactionary elements in Zanzibar, lest the ‘opposition’ get into power. This is a groundless fear. There is no force in Zanzibar which would want to break the union but if the situation continues as it is, where Zanzibar fails to build a national consensus, then indeed the union could breakup. The JK government has failed to move on this score. One needs to be firm; flabbiness of position wouldn’t do. Sharing of power in Zanzibar is not going to rock the Tanzanian boat at all, nor, in fact CCM’s hegemony. Those who are opposed to national unity on the Islands are purely doing so out of personal interest and personal interests cannot be allowed to wreck a country.

Summing up

In sum, then, the immediate task facing the fourth phase government is to take a serious stock, not only of its one year in power, but also the direction in which the country has been moving for the last twenty years. For any government to lose its massive support within a year is very serious indeed and it requires serious attention, not escapism and scapegoating.

• This article first appeared in The Citizen, a Tanzanian daily, on 21st December, 2006. Issa Shivji is a retired law professor.

• Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

Issa Shivji, on the occasion of his retirement as Professor of Law from the University of Dar Es Salaam, tackles the role of lawyers in propping up the neo-liberal system. This is an extract from the full version of his paper presented on the subject, which can be read by clicking on the link provided at the end of the article.

Neoliberalism generates a transnational legal intelligentsia to serve and oil it. Globalization globalizes corporate capital. The neoliberal elite globalizes the so-called ‘rule of law’. This is not the ‘rule of law’ embedded in liberal political values of the Enlightenment period. This is the ‘rule of law’, firmly rooted in the exigencies of the ‘rule of capital’ in the service of a corporatocracy. As Cutler says the ‘law that is being globalized is essentially American or Anglo-American in origin, promoting the values of neoliberal regulatory orders.’ Central to these values is the expansion and protection of property relations and private appropriation of surplus value.[1]

Thus the legal elite is involved as consultants to draft legislation on privatization; setting up enabling institutional frameworks in which corporate capital can function without let or hindrance. It is involved in drafting contracts to enable corporate capital to exploit underground minerals and overground bio-resources. It is involved in facilitating commodification of education and health; water and energy; customary land and traditional medicinal plants. It is involved in drafting intellectual property laws to protect modified seed plasma and herbal medicines, the knowledge of which is looted from peasants and pastoralists of the Fourth World.

Laptop consultants fly from capital city to capital city; conduct a week or two of ‘rapid rural appraisals’, churn out policy papers, make power-point presentations to stakeholder workshops, where state policies are made and endorsed.

The transnational legal intelligentsia is also divided between the First and the Fourth Worlds. The legal elite is based in the First World; the legal ‘masses’ or ‘messengers’ are based in the Fourth World. The international consultant is paid five times more than a local consultant and 10 times more than a local civil servant. Research and local analysis is done by the ‘legal messenger’; the international consultant does the power-point presentation and expounds on the norms of ‘international best practice’. A local lawyer tells me that if he wants to get a tender he has to associate with a Northern law firm. A number of local law firms are thus associated.

Consultancy gobbles up billions of dollars annually. Action Aid says almost one-fifth of total aid goes to pay consultants and so-called technical experts. Donors employ 100,000 technical experts in Africa. Tanzania pays US$500 million annually to foreign consultants more than three times what it received annually in direct foreign investment between 1994 and 1999. [2]

Consultancy is touted as one of the main functions of our University in the new Draft Charter. In the 1970s, the mission of the Faculty of Law was to produce society-conscious lawyers using the historical and socio-economic method. We did Legal Aid to assist workers, peasants, women and children. Now we are chasing the phantom of producing corporate lawyers. In terms of the Draft Charter, the University shall advance its objects ‘in close association with industry and commerce.’

Corporatisation of the university is part of the neoliberal ideological attack on critical thinking, on intellectuals who would ‘Speak Truth to Power’, to use the words of Edward Said. [3] It undermines the university as a critical site of knowledge, as a mirror of society. No doubt, temptations are great and none of us is immune.

As I approach the end of my oration, allow me to be a little nostalgic, to do a little soul-searching. At 60, I guess, you will also permit me to be a little immodest. In 1968, we in USARF, launched a cyclostyled journal called Cheche, named after Nkrumah’s The Spark and Lenin’s Iskra. Its first editors were three fine young persons, Zakia Meghji, Henry Mapolu and Karim Hirji.

The first issue carried my The Educated Barbarians. Reading it today, one feels a little embarrassed. In twelve pages it has some 20 footnotes, carrying half a page text in them with numerous quotes from Baran, Nkrumah, Fanon, De Castro and so on. No “respectable” publisher would accept it but then, at that time, we did not care. We did not write for publishing. We wrote as a part of ideological struggles. Clumsy and crude in style and somewhat mechanistic in thinking, it surely is. But The Educated Barbarians unmistakably exuberates anger, passion and commitment. We were in the period of radical nationalism called ‘socialism.’ Young people were angry at the world as it was, and intellectually committed to understand it better, and passionate to change it for the better. We discussed Fanon while we worked in cashew nut farms around the University, taught literacy classes in Mlalakuwa based on Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, built our own shelters, called houses, through self-help. Comrade Joe’s (Professor Kanywanyi) stands testimony to it.

Today, perhaps, my writings may be more scholarly, more intellectually refined. I can’t say. I am not supposed to say. Only my peers are allowed to evaluate. You need to be an Ali Mazrui to self-evaluate! But whatever be the intellectual verdict on them, I can say one thing about them, and no one can prevent me from saying it, these writings are not passionate like the ‘educated barbarians’. Maybe I am more educated now, but less moved by injustice, and therefore, perhaps, more barbaric! Once, reading a draft of my article recently, my daughter quipped, ‘papa, you are not angry enough’. And it is not a matter of age; one doesn’t grow out of commitment, passion and devotion because of age! We have to look for explanation, not justification; and explanation lies elsewhere.

Neo-liberalism has taken its toll and the language of consultancy has displaced and replaced the language of conscience and commitment. As individuals, we can only agonize and gradually forget even to diagnose the ills of our society. ‘Organise, don’t agonise’, my friend Chachage says, and goes back to his desk to write Makuadi wa Soko Huria. That, too, we need to do. It is better than flying off to Johannesburg to attend another conference on how to implement the imperialist-driven NEPAD.

I don’t know if our world is better than it was thirty years ago. But I do know that neither our country nor our continent is. Structural Adjustment Programmes of the 1980s destroyed the little achievements in education, health, life-expectancy, and literacy that we had made during the nationalist period. Neo-liberal policies of the last ten years have destroyed the small industrial sector - textiles, oil, leather, steel, farm implements, cashew nut factories – which had been built during the period of import-substitution. Most important of all, we have lost the respect, dignity and humanity and the right to think for ourselves that independence represented. The large majority of our people, workers and peasants, as the Arusha Declaration dignified them, have been transformed into ‘the nameless poor.’

Workers and peasants who were supposed to be the makers of history and motors of development have become the subject-matter of PRSPs – poverty reduction strategy papers. Private sector is the engine of growth, we are chastised day in day out, and history has ended, we are lectured. ‘Carbon’ copies of PRSPs are produced in country after country by laptop consultants. The poverty reduction strategies are a condition precedent for getting debt reduction. Meanwhile, debt rises; it used to be around US$8 billion, now it is over US$9 billion. Paying debts is like chasing a mirage! The goal-post keeps shifting.

Meanwhile, funded by millions of dollars of further aid, we hire a De Soto to tell us that we are too stupid to recognise ‘the mystery of capital’ and understand ‘why capitalism triumphs in the West and fails everywhere else’. We are sitting on trillions of dollars of ‘dead capital’. We have to breath legal life into these ‘dead’ assets and lo! behold, we’ll all be as capitalist as the West. The question is who would have the trillions of dollars at the end of the process, and who would be dead. History teaches us that the trillions accumulate in capitalist Centre leaving behind the dead, the mutilated, the malnourished, the divided and the conflict ridden, in the Periphery.

In the 1980s, financed by Mahatir Mohammed of Malaysia, Mwalimu Nyerere chaired the South Commission to look into how the capitalist West rides roughshod over the Rest, (my words, their message). Among other things, it found that the world was skewed and lop-sided and divided and suffered from unequal power relations. And it found that this was the result both of the history of colonialism and the contemporary unequal world order.

In its restrained language it said: ‘The widening disparities between South and North are attributable not merely to differences in economic progress, but also to an enlargement of the North’s power vis-à-vis the rest of the world.’ [4] The South Commission found that there was a reverse process of flow of resources from the poor South to the rich North. ‘… [I]n recent years’, it said, ‘developing countries have had to make net debt-related transfers of nearly $40 billion per year to developed countries, and there is little prospect of a reversal of this perverse flow of capital from poor to rich.’ [5]

In the year 2000s, President Mkapa was appointed a member of Tony Blair’s Africa Commission on poverty. In two sentences the Commission dismissed Africa’s 50-year history thus:

Africa’s history over the last fifty years has been blighted by two areas of weakness. These have been capacity – the ability to design and deliver policies; and accountability – how well a state answers to its people. (p. 14 ) [6]

So, Africans don’t have the capacity to think and African states don’t have the capacity to design policies. They are ‘blighted’ by lack of accountability which is a code word for legendry ‘corruption’ and the so-called “bad governance”.

In the 1960s, the West Germans were asked to pack and go and take with them all their aid baggage because they were using aid to pressurize Tanzania not to accord any diplomatic status to the East Germans. Today “good governance” demands that we pass anti-terrorism laws, even at the risk of dividing our people, because that is the foreign policy of some bushy bully of the world.

Yes, indeed, the world has changed. Yes, indeed, times have changed. Yes, indeed, we have a new form of imperialism called globalisation. Yes, indeed we must change. The question is change in what direction, for whose benefit and in whose interest. Edward Said says the basic question for the intellectual is: ‘how does one speak the truth? What truth? For whom and where?’ [7] The basic question today is whether this neoliberal, Thatcherite counter-revolution is for the benefit of the masses or the narrow neo-liberal elites? No social, economic and political change can be described, let alone analysed and understood, except from the standpoint of a particular class, a particular people, a particular nation and, universally, from the standpoint of humanity. And, certainly, the present cannot be understood and changed for the better without understanding better the past. No intellectual worth her name can condone bestiality, which is what imperialism is.

For us the lawyers, the least we can do is to ask, in the paraphrased words of Edward Said: How do we lawyers address authority/power: as professional supplicants, or as its unrewarded, amateurish conscience?

* This is an extract from a paper entitled ‘Lawyers in Neoliberalism’, presented by Issa G. Shivji, Professor of Law, University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania on the occasion of his formal retirement. For the full paper, please click on the link below.

* Please send comments to

Notes:

[1] A. Claire Cutler, 'Historical Materialism, globalization, and law: competiting conceptions of property', in Mark Rupert and Hazel Smith eds. (2002) Historical Materialism and Globalization, London: Routledge.
[2] Action Aid International (2005), Real Aid: An Agenda for Making Aid Work, p. 22.
[3] Dr. Ali Mohamed Shein, Vice President, The Guardian, 10/06/2006.
[4] Tanzania Investment Centre, Tanzania Investor,

Ndugu yangu
Rafiki yangu
Kamaradi Chachage:

Nani kasema umetuacha?
Eti umefariki!

Kwani mwili ndiyo maisha?

Maisha ni fikra.
Maisha ni vitendo.
Maisha ni ubinadamu.

Fikra zako,
Vitendo vyako,
Ubinadamu wako,
Utadumu.
Leo, kesho, keshokutwa na milele.

Vitendo vyako tutavienzi,
Ubinadamu wako tutauiga,
Fikra zako tutazieneza.

Msomi wa afrika,
Mtetezi wa wanyonge,
Mshabiki wa fikra za kitabaka,
Tabaka la wavujajasho.

Nimetumwa.

Nimetumwa na wasomi wenzako wa afrika kupitia codesria nikuletee salaamu zao.

Wameniambia, nikuage.
Nimekataa.
Sikuagi.

Nitakusindikiza tu.
(Follow link to view the complete poem)