Wednesday, July 26, 2017

Congo (Kinshasa): Inga Dam Mirage Recedes, Again

AfricaFocus Bulletin July 17, 2017 (170717) (Reposted from sources cited below)

Editor’s Note

The latest projections for the Inga 3 hydroelectric project on the Congo River to become operational, cited in press reports last week, are 2024 or 2025. But even if the project is financed and constructed, says a new report, the project will likely provide only minimal electric power for the people of Democratic Republic of the Congo and burden the country with more unsustainable debt.

According to the report, “The project will sell most of its electricity to South Africa and to mines in eastern DRC. The report finds that losses along what would be the world’s longest transmission line to South Africa could leave very little power available to the mines, and the Congolese people would receive little benefit in increased electricity. Under the most likely scenario, 88% of the power would be sold to South Africa, leaving just 90 MW for Kinshasa, rather than the 1000 MW claimed. Under the worst-case scenario, no power at all would be available for sale to consumers in Kinshasa.”

This AfricaFocus Bulletin contains a press release and the executive summary of the report from International Rivers, by economist Tim Jones. The full report is available on the International Rivers website, http://www.internationalrivers.org (direct URL: http://tinyurl.com/y8o4olgu)

For a summary background story on criticisms of the project, see Adam Wernick, “Congo pushes for a mega-dam project, with no environmental impact studies,” PRI, July 3, 2017 http://tinyurl.com/y76o55qm

For an update on the latest developments in plans for Inga 3, see Christophe Le Bec, “RDC: pour sauver le barrage hydroélectrique Inga III, l’union fait la force, Jeune Afrique, 12 July 2017 http://tinyurl.com/yc7gmbo3

For an article providing extensive background on the history of plans to dam the Congo River for hydroelectric power, see Charles Kenny and John Norris, “The River that Swallows All Dams,” Foreign Policy, May 8, 2015 http://tinyurl.com/laadz7v

For previous AfricaFocus Bulletins on Congo (Kinshasa), visit http://www.africafocus.org/country/congokin.php

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Inga 3 Dam Risks Plunging DRC Deeper Into Debt

New report finds that DRC likely to suffer financial losses, continuing energy poverty if hydropower project advances

International Rivers, June 27, 2017

http://www.internationalrivers.org – direct URL: http://tinyurl.com/y9g9kssh

Today, International Rivers is releasing the first in-depth economic study of the proposed Inga 3 hydropower project in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Authored by noted British economist Tim Jones, “In Debt and In The Dark” exposes glaring flaws in the assumptions about the dam’s likely performance. The report finds that Inga 3 will likely plunge DRC deeper into debt, exporting needed power and delivering little, if any, to Congolese citizens while allowing international investors to reap the benefits.

The power from Inga 1 dam, which began operations in 1972, is far from sufficient even for the capital Kinshasa. Credit: Alaindg     

“Claims about the benefits of Inga 3 are wildly overstated,” says Jones. “In fact, the dam would be a huge financial burden for the government and the Congolese people and provide little if any electricity.”

From the outset, Inga 3 has been plagued by dangerously optimistic assumptions about the dam’s performance, including power output well above the world’s most efficient plants, zero cost overruns, and unrealistically low transmission losses.

Using empirical evidence from the performance of similar hydropower projects in Africa and globally, Jones tested proponents’ claims regarding Inga 3’s socioeconomic benefits. He then forecasted the dam’s potential performance across a range of scenarios.

His findings highlight the serious financial risks associated with the Inga 3 hydropower project, and should be deeply concerning to the DRC government, potential investors, and the Congolese people.

“The DRC is one of the most resource-rich countries in the world, but suffers from massive energy poverty,” says Freddy Kasongo of Observatoire d’Etudes et d’Appui à la Responsabilité Sociale et Environnementale (OEARSE).

Emmanuel Musuyu of Coalition des Organisations de la Société Civile pour le Suivi des Réformes et de l’Action Publique (CORAP), adds, “Unfortunately, this study shows that the Inga 3 Dam will further impoverish the DRC without delivering the energy that we need.”

The analysis shows that in the most likely scenarios, the DRC government will lose money on Inga 3. Even with fairly conservative estimates of cost overruns and generous assumptions of power generated, electricity prices, and low interest rates, DRC would stand to lose $618 million per year on the project, or nearly $22 billion over the project’s 35-year lifespan.

These financial losses could run as high as $1.5 billion to $2 billion per year under unfavorable conditions – up to $70 billion over the project’s lifespan – ballooning DRC’s debt levels and harming its long-term economic health.

“Not only will Inga 3 bring in no revenue, it will likely increase DRC’s debt burden,” says Rudo Sanyanga, International Rivers’ Africa Program Director. “And it won’t bring much-needed electricity access to the Congolese people. This would be a disastrous investment for the DRC.”

The project will sell most of its electricity to South Africa and to mines in eastern DRC. The report finds that losses along what would be the world’s longest transmission line to South Africa could leave very little power available to the mines, and the Congolese people would receive little benefit in increased electricity. Under the most likely scenario, 88% of the power would be sold to South Africa, leaving just 90 MW for Kinshasa, rather than the 1000 MW claimed. Under the worst-case scenario, no power at all would be available for sale to consumers in Kinshasa.

International Rivers’ study shows that the DRC could achieve greater energy access for its population if it used the funds intended for Inga 3 on micro-hydropower and solar energy. Such investment would support the DRC to generate enough electricity to increase access by an estimated 2.7 million people throughout the country.

Kate Horner, Executive Director of International Rivers, says, “If the DRC wants to become a true economic leader that sets a model for energy access in Africa, it should press the pause button on the Inga 3 Dam and instead explore energy solutions that can make a lasting difference for the Congolese people.”

[International Rivers is a global NGO with offices on four continents. It protects rivers and defends the rights of communities that depend on them.

Media contacts:

Rudo Sanyanga, Africa Program Director, International Rivers | rudo@internationalrivers.org | +27 76 842 3874

Josh Klemm, Policy Director, International Rivers | jklemm@internationalrivers.org | +1 202 492 8904

Emmanuel Musuyu, Technical Secretary, CORAP | emmamus42@gmail.com | +243 81 169 7699]

In Debt and In the Dark: Unpacking the Economics of DRC’s Proposed Inga 3 Dam

by Tim Jones

International Rivers, June 2017

http://www.internationalrivers.org – direct URL: http://tinyurl.com/y8o4olgu

Executive Summary

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) needs reliable energy to power economic development and increase its prestige and standing in Africa. Although it’s one of the most resource-rich countries in the world, the DRC suffers from massive energy poverty. In 2012, only 16% of Congolese had access to electricity, and outside of big cities, this number drops to less than 6% – less than one of every 15 people. This energy deficit stunts economic development, as evidenced by the DRC having the lowest GDP per capita of any country in the world in 2013.

In its bid to address these urgent needs for electricity and economic development, the DRC government has pinned its hopes while other countries and international on the Congo River’s Inga 3 Dam, the first in a planned series of hydropower projects known collectively as Grand Inga.

In its bid to address these urgent needs for electricity and economic development, the DRC government has pinned its hopes on the Congo River’s Inga 3 Dam, the first in a planned series of hydropower projects known collectively as Grand Inga. Proponents of Grand Inga say that the project would harness the mighty Congo River and act as a battery for the continent, exporting power to all corners of the continent and even as far away as Europe.

This report analyzes the Inga 3 project to under-stand whether the dam will accomplish its goals of energy production and economic gain to benefit the DRC. Our analysis finds that Inga 3, in most scenarios, will sink the DRC deeper into debt while other countries (notably South Africa) and international investors reap the benefits.

The DRC should hit the brakes on Inga 3 and repurpose its investment share into alternative ways of powering mines in Katanga and bringing electricity and development to the Congolese people. DRC can power its future – and become a model for energy development on the African continent – by making visionary investments in small hydro, micro-hydro and solar energy.

Inga 3 Background

Inga 3 has a stated capacity of 4,800 MW, and its power is primarily intended for export to South Africa and mining companies in eastern DRC. Any remaining power would be sold to consumers in the capital, Kinshasa. The proposed dam and hydropower project is planned as a public-private partnership involving investment by both the DRC government and a consortium of private international companies.

Proponents of the project argue that Inga 3 will help reduce poverty and boost shared prosperity in the DRC by:

• generating revenues for the DRC government, which could be allocated to poverty reduction pro-grams;
• providing electricity to more people in DRC; and
• creating jobs in a country with a chronically high unemployment rate.

Methodology

To examine these claims, we analyzed the project proponents’ claims based on Inga 3’s likely technical and financial performance. We used empirical evidence from the performance of similar hydropower projects in Africa and globally to test the claims regarding Inga 3’s socio-economic benefits.

Our analysis lays out five possible scenarios for the socioeconomic performance of the Inga 3 project: best, good, median, worse, and worst-case scenarios. The bestcase scenario is based on the highly optimistic and favor-able conditions assumed by the project’s proponents; our analysis discusses the factors that make these assumptions unrealistic. The worst-case scenario, on the other hand, assesses the project under highly unfavorable conditions. While equally unlikely as the best-case scenario, this scenario demonstrates the enormous risks that Inga 3 creates for the DRC government. The median-case scenario presents our assessment of the most likely outcomes, using the most realistic assumptions of project performance.

Revenue Generation

Proponents claim that Inga 3 will lead to a significant increase in revenue for the government, which can then be invested in underfunded sectors such as health and education. We conducted a financial analysis to determine the likely revenue levels for the DRC government, under the five scenarios, based on construction and operating costs, price and amount of power sold, technical losses, and borrowing costs. Our analysis shows that Inga 3 could generate modest revenues under highly favorable conditions in the best and good-case scenarios. However, under the worst, worse, and most realistic median-case scenarios, Inga 3 would not even cover the DRC government’s debt payments for the project, let alone constitute a windfall that could fund development priorities. It would instead become a significant drain on the country’s finances. Figure 1 illustrates the financial benefits and costs associated with each of the five scenarios.

According to this analysis, under the best-case scenario, Inga 3 would generate $749 million per year for the DRC government. This scenario is, however, based on highly unlikely and optimistic assumptions, including zero cost overruns, a capacity factor well above the world’s most efficient hydropower plants, high prices for the electricity generated, very low transmission losses, and low rates of interest on financing that do not in-crease for 35 years. Furthermore, even if these assumptions were met, it is likely that a portion of the $749 million would accrue to the private investors as profit, rather than to the government.

In the good-case scenario, Inga 3 offers a marginal return of just $78 million per year for the DRC government. This scenario is based on slightly less optimistic assumptions compared to the best-case scenario. Thus, even if all assumptions in the good-case scenario are met, the DRC government would still receive only a modest financial return.

In the median, worse and worst-case scenarios, the DRC government will lose money on Inga 3. The median case – with fairly conservative estimates of cost overruns and generous assumptions of electricity tariffs, capacity factor, transmission losses, and interest rates – would result in a loss of $618 million per year. These financial losses could be as high as $1.5 billion per year in the worse scenario and over $2 billion per year in the worst-case scenario, demonstrating the extreme risk that Inga 3 poses to the country’s fragile financial position.

Increase in Access to Electricity

Project proponents claim that Inga 3 will increase access to electricity in the country. Our analysis, however, shows that increased electricity access, if any, would be quite limited. The project will sell most of its electricity to South Africa and to mines in the Katanga region. In the median-case scenario, only 3% of electricity from Inga 3 would be available to non-mining businesses and residents of Kinshasa. In this median scenario, Inga 3 would provide electricity for only 340,000 additional people in Kinshasa, without any impact on electrification rates in other cities and rural areas, where the need is greatest. Under the worst-case scenario, no power at all would be available for sale to consumers in Kinshasa.

After observing the limited potential energy access benefits of Inga 3, we examined alternative ways to in-crease energy access in the DRC and compared them with Inga 3. DRC could achieve more energy access for its population if it used the funds intended for Inga 3 on other energy sources. The cost of the Inga project is currently estimated at $14 billion, with the DRC government expected to contribute $3 billion obtained via concessional loans. Private partners would provide the balance of $11 billion. Our analysis showed that if the DRC government spent that $3 billion on other sources of energy, including micro-hydropower and solar energy, it could generate enough electricity to increase access by 2.7 million people and to increase average electricity consumption by 48 percent.

Our analysis also shows that consumers would pay much less for electricity from micro-hydro than for electricity from Inga 3. Electricity from micro-hydro would cost between US 1.8 cents and 3.1 cents per kWh, well below the 7–8 cents per kWh projected as the cost of electricity for domestic users in Kinshasa from Inga 3. Furthermore, developers could build micro-hydro at many sites across the country, thereby achieving a far higher geographical distribution of electricity than Inga 3 and reaching more people in rural communities.

Our analysis demonstrates that investing in solar photovoltaic (PV) electricity, while not as attractive as micro-hydro, would still outperform an investment in Inga 3. The DRC would still bear significant financial risk if it used the concessional funds solely for solar PV, though less so than Inga 3. It would also achieve a high geographical distribution of power across the country and provide electricity to more people across more diverse areas. Globally, the rapid scaling up of solar PV technology has seen prices fall rapidly. Consequently, the return on investment in PV power is likely to enjoy progressive increases with time. Our analysis showed that an extra 960 million kWh to 3 billion kWh of PV power would enable between 400,000 and 1.5 million more people to gain access to electricity, and electricity consumption would increase by between 6% and 21% for those with access. Similar to micro-hydro, investing in solar would outperform an investment in Inga 3.

Our report therefore demonstrates that the DRC is more likely to meet its objectives of energy production and economic gain if it redirects funds intended for Inga 3 to micro-hydro and PV power.

Job Creation

Project proponents claim that Inga 3 would create jobs. Our analysis shows that Inga 3 is not likely to create significant numbers of jobs, and would actually destroy more livelihoods than it creates. The national electricity company, Société Nationale d’Electricité (SNEL), estimates that the construction phase would create 3,000 jobs on average, with a peak of 7,000 additional jobs. After construction is finished, the number of direct jobs would likely fall to a few hundred. In economic terms, our analysis shows that it would cost $1 million in concessional loans to create just one temporary job during the construction phase, and $6 million in concessional loans to create one permanent job during dam operation.

In contrast, an estimated over 10,000 people would be displaced and therefore stand to lose their livelihoods from loss of land or fishing resources because of the dam. This figure significantly outweighs the number of people who would gain livelihoods from the few hundred jobs generated.

Impact on DRC’s Debt

Inga 3 will require large external borrowing by the DRC government. The most recent figures from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank say the DRC government’s external debt is $6.5 billion, which is 16% of GDP for 2016. Under the best-case scenario, Inga 3 will lead to $3 billion of new debt for the government, rising to $6 billion in the worst case. The new debt will increase government external debt from $6.5 billion (16% of GDP) to between $9.5 billion and $12.5 billion (24% to 31% of GDP), and could change the IMF and World Bank’s assessment of DRC from being at moderate risk of debt distress to high risk of debt distress. Such an assessment would further reduce the number of lower-interest loans available to DRC from various public bodies, ex-tending the DRC’s cycle of poverty and indebtedness to foreign lenders.

Key Findings

• Construction of Inga 3 is likely to cause a financial loss for the DRC government and become a drain on the country’s limited financial resources, rather than a source of new revenues.
• In the most likely scenarios, Inga 3 would generate little electricity for domestic users in the DRC. In the worst-case scenario, domestic consumers would receive no additional power at all.
• Inga 3 would lead to a large increase in external government debt, risking a downgrade in the risk assessment of DRC’s debt distress and harming DRC’s long-term economic health.
• If DRC invested its limited concessional loans in other energy options, that electricity would reach far more users at lower cost and in more diverse places, and create greater economic gain.
• Inga 3 risks destroying more livelihoods than jobs that it would support.

In conclusion, our analysis shows that if the DRC wants to achieve its stated goals of increased energy access and economic development, and become a true economic leader that sets a model for energy access in Africa, the DRC should press the pause button on the Inga 3 Dam and instead explore micro-hydro and solar power.

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AfricaFocus Bulletin June 19, 2017 (170619) (Reposted from sources cited below)

Editor’s Note

“On July 5, 2016, a 36-year-old Nigerian asylum seeker named Emmanuel Chidi Nnamdi was beaten to death by Amedeo Mancini, a 39-year-old Italian soccer ultra associated with a local chapter of the neo-fascist CasaPound Italy political movement. Emmanuel and his wife Chinyery had fled the violence wreaked by the Boko Haram insurgency in Nigeria after losing their parents and a two-year-old daughter when their village church was set on fire. They undertook the dangerous journey through Libya and across the Mediterranean on a smuggler’s boat, during which Chinyery suffered a miscarriage, finally arriving in Palermo. The harrowing story of Emmanuel and Chinyery is far from an isolated case, however.” – Camilla Hawthorne, “In Search of Black Italia”

Migration, whether of those now legally defined as refugees or other migrants, is a universal phenomenon, throughout history and on all continents. In today’s world, this takes on increasing prominence, both in news coverage and in political debate. Yet news and politics are tilted unequally, toward the sensational and toward those cases that are privileged because of geopolitical or other bias. Yet the lives of refugees and migrants, whether of today or from previous generations, are far more complex than the images most often viewed.

The AfricaFocus Bulletin contains excerpts from two articles that go beyond the surface: (1) Camilla Hawthorne’s article quoted above, on Black Italians of different generations; and (2) a recent first-hand account of the complex situation in Southwest Libya, one of the least visited crossroads of the migration within Africa and through Africa to Europe, by Claudia Gazzini of the International Crisis Group.

Other recent commentaries that go beyond the iconic images of migrants dying in the Mediterranean, to explore the complex human realities and identities in the trajectories of migration across the “African Mediterranean,” include:

• Nunu Kidane, “Stepping back from sensationalist stories on African migration,” OpenDemocracy, May 4, 2017 http://tinyurl.com/y8a432qa
• Laura Delle Femmine, “Room in the middle: the Africans repopulating Spain’s Dying Villages,” The Guardian, June 11, 2017 http://tinyurl.com/y8cu29mc
• Fulvio Vassallo Paleologo, “Elementi per un esposto nei confronti del governo italiano a seguito dell’applicazione del Memorandum d’intesa sottoscritto con il governo di Tripoli il 2 febbraio 2017”, Associazione Diritti e Frontiere (Rights and Borders Association), June 14, 2017 http://tinyurl.com/y8zj24ko – Google translation to English is at http://tinyurl.com/yau3zrdq
• Exile Guayla, Eritrean Music in Switzerland, 8-minute video Afropop, June 16, 2017 http://tinyurl.com/y6vzyoey
• Stuart A. Thompson and Anjali Singhvi, “Efforts to Rescue Migrants Caused Deadly, Unexpected Consequences, “New York Times, June 14, 2017 http://tinyurl.com/ycqhnckh Includes very revealing interactive map of location of rescues at sea, nearer each year to the coast of Libya.
• Brennan Weiss, “Ghana is safe and stable, but its young people are still risking their lives to cross to Europe,” Quartz, June 13, 2017 http://tinyurl.com/yd6spe54

For previous AfricaFocus Bulletins on migration, visit http://www.africafocus.org/migrexp.php

Announcement

AfricaFocus Bulletin will be taking a break from publication for the next two weeks. The Bulletin will resume in early July. The AfricaFocus website and Facebook page will continue to be updated during this break.

To support continuing AfricaFocus publication and education efforts, please consider contributing through one of the following channels:

1. https://cash.me/$africafocus– to pay with debit card from a U.S.- based bank,
2. https://paypal.me/AfricaFocusBulletin – to pay with a PayPal account.
3. http://www.africafocus.org/support.php – to print out a form to send by mail with a check or money order.

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In Search of Black Italia : notes on race, belonging, and activism in the black Mediterranean

Camilla Hawthorne

Transition, 2017

http://tinyurl.com/y7uee78f

On July 5, 2016, a 36-year-old Nigerian asylum seeker named Emmanuel Chidi Nnamdi was beaten to death by Amedeo Mancini, a 39-year-old Italian soccer ultra associated with a local chapter of the neo-fascist CasaPound Italy political movement. Emmanuel and his wife Chinyery had fled the violence wreaked by the Boko Haram insurgency in Nigeria after losing their parents and a two-year-old daughter when their village church was set on fire. They undertook the dangerous journey through Libya and across the Mediterranean on a smuggler’s boat, during which Chinyery suffered a miscarriage, finally arriving in Palermo. The harrowing story of Emmanuel and Chinyery is far from an isolated case, however. UNHCR estimates that in 2016, over 37,000 Nigerians arrived to Italy via the Mediterranean. That year, Nigerians made up approximately 21% of sea arrivals, followed by Eritreans at 11%.

Students from University of Southern Mississippi meet with African migrants at hostel in Ponte Felcino, Perugia, Italy, in study visit led by Bob Press and Joshua Hill. Credit: Barbara Pilati.

Emmanuel and Chinyery had been living at the bishop’s seminary in a small Italian seaside town, Fermo since the previous September, and were married in January. Six months later on the afternoon of July 5, the couple was going for a walk when two men began shouting insults at them. At one point, one of the men grabbed Chinyery and called her “una scimmia africana [an African monkey].” When Emmanuel intervened to defend his wife from this assault, Mancini attacked him with a street sign ripped out of the ground nearby. Emmanuel fell into an irreversible coma from the beating, and died the following day. The murder of Emmanuel Chidi Nnamdi rapidly, albeit fleetingly, brought together two groups in Italy who were normally not in direct dialogue, at least not at the level of formal political activism–that is, newlyarrived migrants and refugees from sub-Saharan Africa on the one hand, and the Italian-born or raised children of African immigrants on the other. This is because the brutal attack made shockingly apparent the precariousness of what Frantz Fanon in Black Skin, White Masks (1952) famously called the “fact of blackness” or “the lived experience of the black man” in Italy which, in many ways, transcends immigration and citizenship status–arguably, the primary ways in which questions of “difference” are framed institutionally in Italy.

And indeed, the outpouring of horror, grief, and anger that was expressed in the wake of Emmanuel Chidi Nnamdi’s murder over private text message exchanges and phone calls, and across public-facing social media postings and calls to action, always condensed to a single, nightmarish point: This could have been any one of us. Merely for committing the violation of being black in public, Nnamdi’s name had been added to the ever-growing roll call of black victims of racist violence in Italy– one that stretches from Jerry Masslo (the South African political asylee murdered near Naples in 1989), to Abdul “Abba” Guibre (the 19-year- old Burkinabe who grew up in Italy and was beaten to death in Milan in 2008), to Samb Modou and Diop Mor (the two Senegalese migrants murdered in Florence in 2011 by another member of the CasaPound). This, in the land of Italiani, brava gente [good Italian people]: the perpetrators of a supposedly more “gentle” and “mild” form of colonialism in Africa, the “underdogs” of Europe who, thanks to their own national experience of large-scale emigration and history of being racialized as “Mediterranean,” had less of an innate capacity for racism. Or so the story goes . . .

As anti-racism protests erupted in cities across Italy that hot and sticky summer, from Fermo to Milan to Rome, demonstrations under the banner of #BlackLivesMatter were also mushrooming across the United States and in European cities such as London, Paris, and Amsterdam in response to the state-sanctioned murders of black men and women at the hands of police officers. Many young black Italians earnestly followed these global struggles against anti-black violence from the international window afforded to them by Facebook, noting to me the ways in which their struggles against everyday and institutional forms of racism in Italy seemed to be so clearly intertwined with the mobilizations of their sisters and brothers in other countries. The issues that interested activists in Italy may not have precisely mirrored the main violations that were mobilizing protesters in other corners of the black diaspora (instead of–or perhaps in addition to–police brutality, there are restrictive citizenship laws and the deaths of black migrants in the Mediterranean due to the violence of Fortress Europe’s border regimes). Still, my friends and interlocutors in Italy expressed a shared sense of their very blackness being under siege in the context of both micro-level interactions and large-scale bureaucratic encounters. In Milan, an anti-racism and anti-fascism protest was organized less than a week after Nnamdi’s death with the help of the youth organization Il comitato per non dimenticare Abba e per fermare il razzismo [The Committee to Remember Abba and Stop Racism]. This group formed by a multiracial collective of young people in 2008 in response to the racially motivated murder of Abdul Guibre, still organizes language workshops and public events in Milan about the relationship between racism, xenophobia, militarism, border fortification, and capitalism. The Milan-based DJ Marvely Goma Perseverance expressed the continuities (and disjunctures) stretching from Abdul Guibre to Emmanuel Chidi Nnamdi in a wrenching open letter addressed to the deceased Abba, published on July 9 in the Italian web magazine GRIOT:

A lifetime spent with a finger pointed at us, condemned to excel so that we don’t fall into the category of the “usual immigrants” or the “usual blacks,” as if we had chosen to be born “black,” as though we had chosen that label–which, among other things, I never under- stood. . . . Goodbye Abba, I miss you so much and here nothing has changed. The other day they beat and killed Emmanuel. I didn’t know him but unlike you, who was born Italian, he had a different story that was similar to that of our parents, a refugee in search of Christian charity and calm where he could nurture his own hopes.

On the day of the protest organized by the Comitato in Milan, I was walking with my friend Evelyne, who was that day clad in her trademark red dashiki and a fresh twistout, as we headed to make handmade posters near the iconic Piazza Duomo. Evelyne, a plucky 29-year-old Italian-Ghanaian woman who grew up in nearby Brianza, is widely known in Italy as the creator of the first Italian-language Facebook page and blog addressing the care of natural Afro-textured hair, Nappytalia. Evelyne has, in the last two-and-a-half years, rocketed to mini stardom in Italy–she has been invited to give TEDx talks and speak at universities, she has won numerous entrepreneurship awards both nationally and internationally, and she is often recognized on the street as “la ragazza di Nappytalia [the girl from Nappytalia].”

As Evelyne and I commiserated about the social and logistic chal- lenges of organizing political demonstrations in Italy, she proceeded to whip out her smartphone, open up the Facebook application, and proudly swipe through photos of a #BlackLivesMatter march that had taken place not long ago in London. We took refuge from the beating sun in the shade of a portico near an empty café, huddled over her phone near a teetering stack of chairs, while she explained to me that the black-clad activists posing solemnly with raised fists in the photos before us were actually black Italians living, working, and studying in London. Several had met each other for the first time through their involvement in the U.K. demonstration.

Evelyne, like so many other young black Italians born or raised in Italy, had found some inspiration in the model of autonomous black political action represented by #BlackLivesMatter. She saw it as an incitement to build similar types of anti-racist movements in Italy, even if the specific contours of anti-blackness in Italy differed from the primary issues centered by activists in the United States and in the emerging U.K.-based offshoot of the #BlackLivesMatter movement. But for other black Italians, the connection between these struggles was far less self-evident. A prominent Ugandan-Sudanese blogger based in Milan, who over the last year has gained a substantial online following for her smart social commentary, slickly produced anti-racism videos, and curation of beauty tutorials for black women, posted an incitement to Facebook that brought to a head the unspoken tensions within a new generation that has only very recently (and very tentatively) begun to collectively refer to itself as Afro- or black Italian:

Guys, we are not in America and we are not Americans #chill you’re more concerned, shouting, and crying for the injustices suffered by African Americans than for things that are happening in the country where you live, your country of origin, and many other places where injustice and discrimination run rampant . . . #blacklivesmatter here blacklivesmatter there.

A heated debate quickly ensued under the blogger’s aforementioned, indignant message, one I heard directly referenced in passionate conversation over countless aperitifs and coffees in the subsequent weeks. But on that sleepless summer night, I was affixed to my laptop screen as I tried desperately to piece together news reports of racist violence and black resistance from Minnesota, Louisiana, London, Amsterdam, Paris, Rio de Janeiro, and Fermo.

And with each new and increasingly irate addition to the discussion about black Italians and their connection to #BlackLivesMatter, my browser emitted an incongruously cheery two-tone notification alert. BA-BING! “I am half American, so I feel the injustices and hypocrisies of both countries,” replied one woman from Reggio Emilia, the daughter of an African American father and an Italian mother. BA-BING! “Afro-Italians simply need to stop emulating African Americans . . . Afro-Italians can create something better, which hopefully won’t be based on skin color and the stupid ‘one-drop’ rule,” retorted another commenter. BA-BING! “This is why I don’t agree with the use of the term ‘Afro-Italian,'” responded an Italian-Afro-Brazilian student activist from Rome. “It refers to African Americans, but here in Italy and in Europe . . . there is no ‘Afro’ in common,” she continued, arguing that Afrodescendants in Europe tend to identify with their or their parents’ country of origin. A Ghanaian-Italian medical student from Verona with a keen interest in the black diaspora attempted to mediate between the various positions that had been expressed earlier: “It is true, yes, that we and black Americans swim in different waters. Just as it’s true that we are able to take our first steps thanks to them. They are different waters, but at the end of the day we are all drowning in the same sea.”

* * *

This debate about the relationship between black Italians and African Americans, while a small snapshot in time, actually encapsulates several fundamental questions about racial politics and blackness in contemporary Italy.

[Article continues with analyses of identity and a special section of photographs: available at http://tinyurl.com/y7uee78f]

Traversing the Tribal Patchwork of Libya’s South West

Claudia Gazzini

http://www.crisisgroup.org — Direct URL: http://tinyurl.com/yarkbrdj

Our Senior Analyst Claudia Gazzini travels to southern Libya and finds neglect, smugglers, a gold rush, and simmering tensions among a patchwork of ethnic, tribal and militia actors on the edge of the Sahara Desert. She also discovers much longing for a united, well-governed Libya.

Sebha, Libya — To understand the full extent of the impact of the civil war that has fractured the rest of the country into warring fiefdoms, it is critical to visit southern Libya. In April, I had my first chance in two years to get there. There are no commercial flights, no foreign aid missions and traveling 800km by car through a maze of militia-run checkpoints and eager kidnappers is simply not an option.

By a stroke of luck, I am offered a lift by one of the few organisations still operating in south Libya and one of the most important players there: the National Oil Corporation (NOC). Despite recurrent fighting for control of oil fields, export terminals and pipelines, the NOC sustains the north-south flight link to maintain oil fields and keep production flowing.

I check in at a now-bustling former military airfield in Metiga, in Tripoli’s eastern suburbs to join a shift of mostly northern Libyan oil workers on a 100-seat commercial jet. Since fighting in 2014 crippled the capital’s main airport, all domestic and international flights operate from here. My fellow travellers are quiet on what for them is a routine journey.

But south Libya is hardly calm. A plane from the south’s main city, Sebha, was hijacked last year, forcing the closure of that airport. Indeed, the cycles of violence can be bewildering.

Before my trip, the Libyan National Army (LNA), under the command of Gen. Khalifa Haftar, threatened to attack another Sebha airport, the Tamenhint air base, which at the time of my visit to the south was controlled by another faction, the so-called “Third Force”, originally from the northern city of Misrata. Tamenhint was subject to recurrent attacks by a militia backed by the LNA.

Shortly after my trip, the Third Force took apparent revenge by attacking Haftar’s forces in the Brak al-Shati air base, 80km north of Sebha. They killed between 80 and 130 people (numbers are still disputed), mostly LNA soldiers, but also some civilians that were on the base or driving nearby. For the northern belligerents, Sebha and the south are strategic prizes in an ongoing conflict, and neither side will easily give up control.

Luckily the NOC plane is flying me to somewhere else, the Sharara oil field, about 200km west of Sebha. All these places are deep in the Sahara Desert and are seldom visited by outsiders. Analysts like me usually focus on Libya’s long Mediterranean coastline and far more populated cities of Tripoli, Benghazi, Tobruk, Sirte and Misrata, which have been at the political and military core of the conflict.

When Muammar Qadhafi, the self-styled “Brotherly Leader” of Libya, was ousted in 2011, the shattering of his iron grip fractured the country into warring pieces. There are now three rival governments and parliaments, but barely any sense of a state anymore. The key players are a multitude of militias, none of which can control the whole country.

I want to find out to what extent these centrifugal forces have split the tribes and ethnic groups that live in the urban oases and arid sands of the south. And how the local economy has evolved: while the collapse of central authority has turned the region’s desert routes to the Sahel into a crossroads for smugglers, migrants heading to Europe and jihadists, the south is also home to Libya’s great riches. These include not just oil, but also deep aquifers of water and mines for gold as well.

One Desert, Many Factions

The main political-military actors from the north vie for influence in the south, especially control of main roads and key infrastructure. Haftar’s LNA works with the eastern government and parliament, whereas Misrata’s Third Force is nominally loyal to the UN-backed Government of National Accord headed by Prime Minister Faiez alSerraj in Tripoli. Still others are aligned with a rival government in Tripoli headed by Prime Minister Khalifa al-Ghwell. The picture is further complicated by local factions that are loosely aligned with the above-mentioned centres of power. More often than not, these factions are internally split, with some of their members supporting one political-military grouping or another.

Access to this region is so limited that few foreigners, including myself, can know with certainty what is happening on the ground. Libyan media coverage of events in the south tends to be politically charged, and often paints a distorted picture of reality.

After a 90-minute flight, we touch down in Sharara. From the small oval airplane window I can see the shiny complex around the oil field. Even the oil sector workers who travel here rarely make it out of their well-groomed compound. Frustrated local communities often complain that those operating in Libya’s lucrative oil business have no understanding of local dynamics. One consequence is that armed groups or protesters living close to the oil fields or along the pipeline that transports crude oil to the north frequently shut down production as a way to lobby for their demands, adding to strains on the already fragile Libyan economy.

At the airfield, I split off from the oil workers to follow the road less travelled. I’m with Abderrahim, my long-time driver in Tripoli, who accompanies me on my journeys. I speak Arabic and have known Libya for ten years, but his solid presence is an interface and reassurance for everyone I meet — and for me. He has a warm smile, is soft-spoken and somehow manages to get along with all Libyan interlocutors of different religious and political affiliations whom I meet across the country.

It is vital to have local contacts as well, ready to receive me wherever I go in Libya. This is Tuareg country, so I have arranged for a Tuareg acquaintance to meet and look after us on the first leg of my journey. He is a trusted and well-connected civil society activist. We have been introduced by a very respectable Tuareg sheikh I have known for years. Like anywhere else in the country, you need to know who you can trust.

What I didn’t expect is for my contact to be accompanied by three cars and several gunmen. It is not uncommon for the Tuareg to carry weapons, and many residents –not necessarily professional soldiers — are armed. The men who escort me are discrete and do not flash their weapons ostentatiously, but I notice that aside from the ubiquitous semi-automatic AK-47 rifles, they also have PK heavy machine guns with belts of bullets. My guide explains it is just a precaution against kidnapping. Two Italian engineers were seized in a nearby town last year and he alleges that a ransom was paid for their release. Many locals, especially impoverished youth, may seek to replicate that to win what locally amounts to a fortune. I’m in his hands.

Given our arsenal, it’s not surprising that these men would not be comfortable going through checkpoints manned by members of other tribes. All of the checkpoints between Sharara and Obari, where we are headed, are under the control of Tuareg in military fatigues who say they take orders from a Qadhafi-era Tuareg commander, Ali Kana. So as long as I stay in this area, I am able to move around easily with my escort.

Disinherited Tuaregs

We reach my first stop, the town of Obari. Under Qadhafi, Obari was a hub for any traveller seeking to experience desert life in the Sahara. I myself had been here back in 2008, part of an archaeological mission from Oxford University researching rock art. Now there are battle-damaged buildings, the hotels are all closed and I am the closest thing to a tourist anybody has seen since a handful of journalists came here in 2016 to report on battles that broke out in the town. After I’m welcomed into a private home, I set out to find the Tuareg guides who took care of me during that two-week long mission in the desert plateau behind Obari. There is so little for anyone to do now, it’s not hard to track them down.

They and others fill me in on the downward spiral of commercial collapse, the gradual shutting down of links with the outside world and two years of war between two groups: the Tebu, a dark-skinned people who live in Sudan, Chad, Niger and Libya; and the Tuareg, a historically nomadic Berber people who straddle the borderlands of the Sahara across Niger, southern Algeria and Mali. In 2014, the Tuareg accused the Tebu of attempting to impose themselves militarily on Obari, which the Tuareg consider historically their territory. For their part, the Tebu claim that they had to attack Obari, where some Tebu also live, because it had become a hotbed for jihadists. The war ended in the summer of 2016 with a ceasefire but without a clear winner.

On the surface at least, life seems normal. But the town is falling through the cracks of post-revolutionary Libya. Municipal services like electricity, water or schools barely function. Under Qadhafi, most Libyan Tuaregs served as a military force, paid for by the central state. But he didn’t give them official citizenship, and after the revolution their salaries were abruptly cut off. Unlike the Tuaregs of popular imagination, in their everyday life the Obari Tuaregs don’t wear mysterious wrappings of indigo-dyed desert robes or habitually ride camels. Some don military uniforms, reflecting the reality that most inhabitants align with one militia or the other simply in order to get paid. My friends wear tight jeans and sandals, and feel abandoned.

The irony, though, is clear. There is great wealth in the southern oil fields, but it is funnelled to the north, helped by those same NOC flights that lift workers far above deprived locals’ heads.

After two days in Obari, my contact passes me over to my next helper. My new guide is from a respected southern Arab tribe and is able to travel between Tuareg-controlled Obari and Sebha, which is mainly controlled by other factions. We set off on what is still a good asphalt road. The occasional checkpoints wave through ordinary cars, but trucks are getting stopped and their drivers have to pay tolls for their loads. This is the illicit economy in action.

The Cracked Jewel of the South

Sebha is not suffering from active conflict during my visit, but it looks battered after experiencing five rounds of local war between Arab tribes like the Qadhadhfa (Qadhafi’s tribe), the Awlad Suleiman and the Tebu. There are burned-out cars on the streets. The former main hotel sits lifeless and derelict. Migrants can be seen passing through, crowded onto the back of pickup trucks. Small wonder, perhaps, that on the road in from Obari I see green flags painted on the gates of some homes, showing occasional nostalgia for the old Qadhafi regime.

There are no central government security forces. Fuel is being sold on the black market on many street corners. The city is carved up into neighbourhoods, with makeshift barriers serving as de facto border demarcations between various militias. No single faction is fully in command. Very few international organisations are now present in Sebha, just one or two offices stripped back to a nominal local presence.

Despite the divisions and uncertainties, there is a kind of normality too. I am able to rent a flat for our stay. In my light veil and long clothes, I move about most parts of the city to meet the various factions and commanders. I don’t meet the people traffickers themselves, but speak to others who know what’s going on. I’m free to ask as many questions as I like about all aspects of the huge rise in the smuggling economy. Sebha’s residents know that in theory smuggling — including of people — is illicit, but most consider it legitimate, normal and profitable. These are just jobs, indeed the only way to make ends meet now that Libya’s economy is in ruins and cash is hard to obtain.

A municipal council operates in an imposing building in downtown Sebha, but tensions among councillors are so high that some prefer to meet me in a more informal setting. Other friends arrange for me to pass into the shanty town dwellings of their poor quarter of Tuyuri, divided into one section where Tebu live and another with Tuareg. Others again are keen to show me Sebha’s old city, now uninhabited but once the heart of this oasis town. They even show me where the Italian school was in the 1930s.

When there is no fighting, like now, schools and the local university are functioning. Electricity comes and goes (at times for more than 12 hours), but while I am there power seems steady. Drinking water still flows to many houses thanks to Qadhafi’s “Great Man-made River”, connected to fossil aquifers deep under the Sahara. Surrounded by desert, I even see some gardens that are lush and blooming.

Some illegal immigrants can be seen in the streets, but they are evidently the lucky few. Many are kept across town in large warehouses, often in atrocious conditions, until they change hands to other smugglers who take them one step further north in a long supply chain that ends in southern Europe. Others, unable to pay for their trip, are forced to stay put to cultivate land, load trucks or undertake other labourintensive work to earn money for their onward journey. Organisations like the International Organization for Migration (IOM) report that in Sebha sub-Saharan migrants are being sold and bought by Libyan traffickers, a trade they denounced as being comparable to “slave markets”. I did not see this and heard many Sehba residents complain that these accusations are exaggerated. But there is no doubt that these migrants I see have already endured a lot, and could suffer even beatings and rape in the next leg of their trip.

Libya’s Wild West

After three nights in Sebha, I’m on the road again, fortunately this time without an armed escort. The next destination is Murzuq, in territory that is dominated by the Tebu and which has not seen any fighting in recent years. A good Tebu friend in Tripoli sends his cousin to take me there.

We pass many trucks filled with goods on their way to Chad and Niger. The Libyan government imports refined fuel and then subsidises it for local use, which makes onward sales to sub-Saharan Africa highly profitable for smugglers. I expect to see many more vehicles with migrants, but I am told that though we are also driving in the direction of the border to Niger, smugglers transporting migrants to Sebha take another route, slightly further east from where we are.

As soon as we enter Murzuq, it’s clear the town is better off than Obari and Sebha. Luxurious houses rise in some streets and the atmosphere is clearly calm. An Ottomanera fortress dominates the town. There are no hotels here, as in Sebha and Obari, so visitors like me have to stay in people’s homes. This works out better for me too, as I learn far more about daily life there than on my own or in hotels.

The city has enjoyed relative stability primarily because there is just one dominant group, and also because the town’s two security chiefs — one loyal to Haftar, the other to Ghwell — have gone on with their respective jobs without picking a fight.

The boom in gold mining in the area bordering Chad and Niger is also boosting the local economy, probably more so than human smuggling. My hosts here say as much as seven kilos of gold (worth nearly $300,000) passes through town daily on the way to outside markets, adding to a sense that this is Libya’s Wild West.

Elusive Jihadists

As I travel through the south, I am constantly aware of reports of Islamic State fighters transiting through the south, fleeing the major setback they were handed by a coalition of Misratan militias that drove them out of Sirte in December 2016 after a six-month battle. I see no sign of jihadists, but so many people tell me about them that it’s clear that some are passing through discreetly and most likely heading to one of the countries to the south, through the Salvador Pass on the Libya-Niger border.

One reason for this could be that few southerners seem interested in ISIS ideology. Some young women I meet in Obari say that some of their relatives are with the Benghazi Revolutionaries’ Shura Council, a group that is fighting alongside the Islamic State against Haftar’s LNA. But they say these men are mainly motivated by anti-Haftar sentiment, and had already joined another anti-Haftar coalition formed in Tripoli in 2014. Few, if any, seem to have joined ISIS themselves, though some admit that, in the immediate aftermath of Qadhafi’s fall, they had joined armed groups that they later discovered were associated with al-Qaeda.

With all the shifting allegiances, people find it difficult to work out who is supposed to be “good” and who is “bad”. They tell me that they want to be with the legitimate factions, but don’t know which those might be. They don’t see the strings being pulled behind the greater daily rush of political chaos. They have people they have to feed, and inadvertently risk aligning with a terrorist group or an illegitimate armed faction, just because that’s all what’s on offer at that time.

A Libyan Enigma

An easy return to Obari, then on to the Sharara oil field airfield, and a quiet flight back to Tripoli affords me time to reflect on what I’ve seen. The ethnic and tribal patchwork I have just criss-crossed seems chaotic, but it is not exponentially different from the rest of Libya. In fact, there is much that is still shared. Even if the economy is all about smuggling to neighbouring countries, it is based on Libyan factors like a policy of subsidising fuel imports that make reselling it so lucrative, a national currency that everyone uses and nationwide lines of supply for most of the goods in the shops.

Many of the local ethnic and tribal groups remain at loggerheads despite ongoing efforts to heal these rifts. Indeed, local leaders tell me that they meet more often at conferences outside the country than at home. But these are still conferences about the south’s place in Libya, and it seems to me that rather than promoting an active separatist dynamic, tribal leaders and local military actors are simply filling a power vacuum. Government officials mostly sit at home, waiting for the political struggles in the big cities on the Mediterranean coast to produce a functioning state again.

The bottom line for southerners is that they have an irresistible financial incentive to continue illicit economic activities, at least compared to the moribund legitimate economy. Profitability trumps legality wherever there are mouths to feed. Unless the legal economy is put back on track, it will be very difficult for interested powers to tackle the smuggling of goods and people. People are in need of salaries, services and security, and they await the moment a central state can once again offer that.

If there is one thing that my trip confirms to me once again, it is a paradox. Despite all the divisions and neglect, Libya is not just a country of two halves, three governments and countless tribes. The Libyans I meet still see themselves as belonging to one country. When the right moment comes, ethnic and tribal divisions can one day be bridged again.

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South Africa: #Guptaleaks – Will Heads Roll?

AfricaFocus Bulletin June 6, 2017 (170606) (Reposted from sources cited below)

Editor’s Note

“The Guptas have until now escaped investigation from the state agencies because they have purchased indemnity. You have to hand it to the Guptas; the way they went about capturing the state is quite impressive. Not only did they buy the president and his son, they targeted key people in government that could act as their minions. When people were resistant to their agenda, they scouted for bootlickers and had them appointed. They paid off people in the security agencies to make sure they would not be bothered with criminal investigations.” – Daily Maverick, June 5, 2017

In the United States and around the world, the news is dominated by the latest twist in President Trump’ express train to disaster, including the escalating revelations of the Trump/Russia investigation. In South Africa, to comparatively little notice around the world, the news is dominated by #Guptaleaks, as confidential emails continue to emerge documenting the spiderweb of corruption linking President Zuma and his team to a family of Indian businessmen who arrived in South Africa in 1993 and quickly built up a business empire and political influence.

The Gupta family mansion in Saxonwold, Johannesburg

They also worked with businesses both in South Africa and around the world to manage “illicit financial flows” of the profits to India, Dubai, and elsewhere. Recent investigations, for example, found a mansion in Dubai purchased for President Zuma, adjacent to a similar mansion for President Mugabe of Zimbabwe. Also of note is that many of the companies involved are concentrated in the energy sector, in coal and nuclear in particular.

It is difficult even for South Africans, or for international financial experts and lawyers, to keep up with the wide cast of characters and intrigue that is being exposed, and definitely impossible for those of us not intimately familiar with the South African political and business scene and how international money laundering works. A succinct summary is therefore impossible.

But the impact, although unpredictable, will be decisive for the future of South Africa. To give a glimpse into the issue, AfricaFocus includes here one of the many recent articles from the Daily Maverick and the AmaBhungane Centre for Investigative Journalism, which have been leading the investigation, and brief excerpts from a comprehensive analysis and report released by the State Capacity Research Project last month.

For updates on #Guptaleaks, even though it has not yet caught the attention of world media, the best strategy for those outside South Africa is a Google news search: as of today, this search gives 90,600 hits, including 50,100 from websites in South Africa.

For previous AfricaFocus Bulletins on South Africa, visit http://www.africafocus.org/country/southafrica.php

For previous AfricaFocus Bulletins on corruption and illicit financial flows, visit http://www.africafocus.org/intro-iff.php

++++++++++++++++++++++end editor’s note+++++++++++++++++

#GuptaLeaks: What does email trove mean for Zuma and South Africa?

Ranjeni Mumusamy

Daily Maverick, June 5, 2017

http://www.dailymaverick.co.za – Direct URL: http://tinyurl.com/ycyhfc5y

Plausible deniability. President Jacob Zuma’s greatest self-defence strategy is the ability to manoeuvre to ensure that nothing can be directly pinned on him. From his corruption case to the Nkandla upgrades to the ANC’s losses at the polls to the activities of the Gupta family, the president’s excuse is either that these things happened without his knowledge or have nothing to do with him. That is the big problem with all the revelations so far from the massive tranche of leaked emails implicating the Gupta family in state capture. Is there a smoking gun that directly connects Zuma to the Guptas’ illicit activities? And what are we supposed to do with all this information?

Ever since the private plane full of wedding guests landed at Waterkloof Air Force Base in April 2013, South Africans have known that the Guptas are a bunch of rotters who have free run of the state. Between then and now, there has been a constant stream of revelations about the extent of the Guptas’ infiltration of the government system, how they have bought political influence and taken over control from the ANC.

Before the leak of the Gupta emails, the evidence in the public domain was already damning and sufficient to pursue prosecutions. Mcebisi Jonas, then a deputy minister in government, confirmed publicly that he had been offered a R600 million incentive to take the job of finance minister. The circumstances around the purchase of the Optimum coal mine had corruption written all over it. The closure of the Guptas’ bank accounts after their transactions had been red flagged by the Financial Intelligence Centre necessitated an investigation into money laundering.

The Guptas have until now escaped investigation from the state agencies because they have purchased indemnity. You have to hand it to the Guptas; the way they went about capturing the state is quite impressive. Not only did they buy the president and his son, they targeted key people in government that could act as their minions. When people were resistant to their agenda, they scouted for bootlickers and had them appointed. They paid off people in the security agencies to make sure they would not be bothered with criminal investigations.

The Guptas also knew how to service and keep their gallery of dancing marionettes happy. Their compound in Saxonwold is like Vegas. Apart from Jonas, former government spokesman Themba Maseko and former ANC MP Vytjie Mentor, whatever happened in Saxonwold stayed in Saxonwold.

The parade of politicians and officials in government and state owned enterprises keep the secrets of whatever is discussed and plotted behind those high walls. In the case of minion without portfolio, Brian Molefe, he would rather conjure up a Saxonwold shebeen than disclose his comings and goings to the Gupta compound.

An essential part of the state capture process was the Guptas’ communications operation. Through The New Age and ANN7, the Guptas ran their own propaganda machinery. Through a partnership with the SABC, they not only set up a scheme to channel large payments from state owned enterprises, they were also able to show off their political connections including the president, Cabinet ministers and provincial premiers. Then through the Bell Pottinger spin operation, they paid a range of useful idiots to direct the national discourse, manipulate social media conversations and attempt to demonise journalists.

The Guptas were thorough and tactical. They invested a lot of money in setting up their patronage network of people who would do exactly what they wanted. For a long time, their investment paid massive dividends.

Ordinary people have an odd fascination with audacious crimes. This is why people are still in awe of the Great Train Robbery in 1963 when £2.6 million was stolen from a Royal Mail train. The remake of the comedy heist film Ocean’s Eleven raked in over $450 million at the box office because the storyline of the most sophisticated, elaborate casino heist in history continues to enthral people. In South Africa the brazen 1996 R31 million SBV robbery was talked about for years afterwards and also became a movie.

The Public Protector’s State of Capture report, the South African Council of Churches Unburdening Panel and the State Capacity Research Project by academics from four universities all show how the Guptas went about gaining access to the state and manipulating people and processes to amass wealth. Through their “silent coup”, they progressively sucked away power and influence from the ANC.

The information released from the email trove so far shows minute details of the Guptas behind-the-scenes operations. From their manipulation of contracts to the movement of money to a glimpse into their opulent lifestyles, the emails crank open their world a little wider so that the rest of the world can gawk.

It is almost like a real life Ocean’s Eleven with South Africa as the casino being robbed – the Gupta brothers are ugly versions of George Clooney, Brad Pitt and Matt Damon.

The emails reflect that central role of the president’s son, Duduzane, in knitting together the patronage network in exchange for the Guptas sponsoring his flamboyant lifestyle. Raunchy attachments to his emails also reveal that he is a philanderer with a taste for the highlife but that simply adds lewd unnecessary details to an already messy story.

What ought to be the focus are the people involved, how the Guptas’ representatives pulled people’s strings and greased their palms, how money was moved, how money was stolen from the state and who aided and abetted them.

Revelations in the emails of how Gupta employees coached and wrote scripts for ANC officials, including the ANC Youth League president shows that the political discourse in the country is fake and driven by an agenda. It is now clear the radical economic transformation narrative was fabricated to distract change the conversation away from the corrupt activities of the patronage network.

But the email leak has yet to produce the smoking gun that links Zuma directly to the Guptas activities. All that has been revealed has so far been circumstantial and there is no firm evidence that Zuma intends relocating to Dubai. While Duduzane’s fingerprints are all over the state capture crime scene, there is nothing to indicate that Zuma was aware or involved in his son’s activities.

In this case, the sins of the son cannot be visited upon the father. But that does not mean there is no case to answer. If Zuma were still accountable to the ANC, he would have had to answer how he came to appoint people in his Cabinet that the Guptas scouted. A proper criminal investigation would ask the same questions of Zuma.

Judge Hilary Squires pointed to a “mutually beneficial symbiosis” between Zuma and his former financial advisor Schabir Shaik who was convicted of corruption. While Zuma might have plausible deniability with regard to the emails, there is enough evidence in the public domain for him to answer some hard questions in a credible corruption investigation.

The avalanche of information released from the email tranche could cause a more severe case of scandal fatigue amongst the South African public. There is too much to process and the information simply confirms the extent to which the Guptas infested the state in order to drain resources through numerous channels.

A judicial commission of inquiry might be the only way to process and test all the information credibly. But because Zuma is charged with appointing it, a conflict of interest is bound to arise both regarding which judge he appoints to head it and the terms of reference. Zuma’s application for a review of the Public Protector’s report that recommended that the Chief Justice name the judge means that the matter will be dragged out for some time before the inquiry can be appointed.

The reliance on the judicial commission of inquiry however lets the police and the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) off the hook in pursuing the matter. The fact that the Hawks and the NPA are not under public pressure to investigate and effect prosecutions means that people accept that these institutions are lost cause and under the thumb of Zuma and the Guptas.

The emails provide prima facie evidence of corruption, fraud, money laundering and racketeering. These cannot be investigated and prosecuted by a judicial commission. The full extent of the Guptas’ activities have yet to be revealed, and possibly might be as reports on the emails reel out. What is needed is an extensive criminal investigation against the Guptas, Duduzane Zuma and others in their network.

Smoking gun or not, whoever is implicated must be investigated. And if there is plausible deniability, let’s hear it. In a court of law.

Betrayal of the Promise: How South Africa is Being Stolen

May 2017

State Capacity Research Project

Convenor: Mark Swilling

http://pari.org.za/ – Direct URL: http://tinyurl.com/yaphsta8

Executive Summary

This report suggests South Africa has experienced a silent coup that has removed the ANC from its place as the primary force for transformation in society. Four public moments define this new era: the Marikana Massacre on 16 August 2012; the landing of the Gupta plane at Waterkloof Air Base in April 2013; the attempted bribing of former Deputy Minister of Finance Mcebisi Jonas to sell the National Treasury to the shadow state in late 2015; and the Cabinet reshuffle in March 2017. Resistance and capture is what South African politics is about today.

Commentators, opposition groups and ordinary South Africans underestimate Jacob Zuma, not simply because he is more brazen, wily and brutal than they expect, but because they reduce him to caricature. They conceive of Zuma and his allies as a criminal network that has captured the state. This approach, which is unfortunately dominant, obscures the existence of a political project at work to repurpose state institutions to suit a constellation of rent-seeking networks that have been constructed and now span the symbiotic relationship between the constitutional and shadow state. This is akin to a silent coup. This report documents how the Zuma-centred power elite has built and consolidated this symbiotic relationship between the constitutional state and the shadow state in order to execute the silent coup.

At the nexus of this symbiosis are a handful of the same individuals and companies connected in one way or another to the Gupta- Zuma family network. The way that this is strategically coordinated constitutes the shadow state. Well-placed individuals located in the most significant centres of state power (in government, SOEs and the bureaucracy) make decisions about what happens within the constitutional state. Those, like Jonas, Vytjie Mentor, Pravin Gordhan and Themba Maseko who resist this agenda in one way or another are systematically removed, redeployed to other lucrative positions to silence them, placed under tremendous pressure, or hounded out by trumped up internal and/or external charges and dubious intelligence reports. This is a world where deniability is valued, culpability is distributed (though indispensability is not taken for granted) and where trust is maintained through mutually binding fear. Unsurprisingly, therefore, the shadow state is not only the space for extra-legal action facilitated by criminal networks, but also where key security and intelligence actions are coordinated.

It has been argued in this report that from about 2012 onwards the Zuma-centred power elite has sought to centralise the control of rents to eliminate lower-order, rentseeking competitors. The ultimate prize was control of the National Treasury to gain control of the Financial Intelligence Centre (which monitors illicit flows of finance), the Chief Procurement Office (which regulates procurement and activates legal action against corrupt practices), the Public Investment Corporation (the second largest shareholder on the Johannesburg Securities Exchange), the boards of key development finance institutions, and the guarantee system (which is not only essential for making the nuclear deal work, but with a guarantee state entities can borrow from private lenders/banks without parliamentary oversight). The cabinet reshuffle in March 2017 has made possible this final control of the National Treasury.

The capture of the National Treasury, however, followed five other processes that consolidated power and centralised control of rents:

• The ballooning of the public service to create a compliant politically-dependent, bureaucratic class.
• The sacking of the ‘good cops’ from the police and intelligence services and their replacement with loyalists prepared to cover up illegal rent seeking (with some forced reversals, for example, Robert McBride)
• Redirection of the procurement-spend of the SOEs to favour those prepared to deal with the Gupta-Zuma network of brokers (those who are not, do not get contracts, even if they have better BEE credentials and offer lower prices).
• Subversion of Executive Authority that has resulted in the hollowing out of the Cabinet as South Africa’s pre-eminent decision-making body and in its place the establishment of a set of ‘kitchen cabinets’ of informally constituted elites who compete for favour with Zuma in an unstable crisis-prone complex network;
• The consolidation of the Premier League as a network of party bosses, to ensure that the National Executive Committee of the ANC remains loyal.

At the epicentre of the political project mounted by the Zuma-centred power elite is a rhetorical commitment to radical economic transformation. Unsurprisingly, although the ANC’s official policy documents on radical economic transformation encompass a broad range of interventions that take the National Development Plan as a point of departure, the Zuma-centred power elite emphasises the role of the SOEs, particularly their procurement spend. Eskom and Transnet, in turn, are the primary vehicles for managing state capture, large-scale looting of state resources and the consolidation of a transnationally managed financial resource base, which in turn creates a continuous source of self-enrichment and funding for the power elite and their patronage network.

In short, instead of becoming a new economic policy consensus, radical economic transformation has been turned into an ideological football kicked around by factional political players within the ANC and the Alliance in general who use the term to mean very different things.

The alternative is a new economic consensus. Since 1994 there has never been an economic policy framework that has enjoyed the full support of all stakeholders. A new economic consensus would be a detailed programme of radical economic transformation achieved within the constitutional, legislative and governance framework. The focus must be a wide range of employment- and livelihood-creating investments rather than a few ‘big and shiny’ capital-intensive infrastructure projects that reinforce the mineral-energy-complex. For this to happen, an atmosphere of trust conducive for innovation- oriented partnerships between business, government, knowledge institutions and social enterprises is urgently required. None of this is achievable, however, until the shadow state is dismantled and the key perpetrators of state capture brought to justice.

Jacob Zuma comes to power

Jacob Zuma was elected ANC President at the Polokwane conference in December 2007. In July 2008, Duduzile Zuma, his 26-year-old daughter, was asked to join the board of the Gupta technology company Sahara Computers (she resigned in 2010). Duduzane, her twin brother, was also taken under the Gupta’s wing and joined Sahara, though the date is unclear. The twins were two of the five children of Jacob Zuma and Kate Mantsho, who committed suicide in 2000. Zuma is reported as having always felt particularly concerned about their wellbeing.

…

Origins of the nuclear deal

In May 2010, … the media broke a story that Gupta-owned company Oakbay Resources and Energy, together with minority shareholders, including Duduzane Zuma’s BEE vehicle, Mabengela Investments, was the buyer of Toronto-listed Uranium One’s Dominion mine in Klerksdorp. Oakbay paid $37 million (about R280 million). Mabengela Investments is reportedly jointly controlled by Duduzane Zuma and Gupta brother Rajesh (Mabengela is named after a hill overlooking President Jacob Zuma’s Nkandla homestead).

At the time that Oakbay bought Dominion – later named Shiva Uranium – media speculation was rife that President Zuma had intervened a month earlier, in April 2010, to extend the tenure of then Public Investment Corporation head Brian Molefe to facilitate negotiations towards a large investment in the project. The Presidency denied these allegations, saying that the president’s son was, “a businessman in his own right”, and did not need his father’s help.

The interesting thing was that Dominion had been on ‘care and maintenance’ since 2008 with Uranium One chief executive Jean Nortier saying: “We had to close that chapter; we certainly weren’t going to try to bring Dominion back into production — it certainly was going to require too much capital.” Bringing Dominion back to full production was projected to cost far more than the $37 million purchase price, according to media reports. …

… in retrospect, the Zuma power elite had their sights set on a large-scale nuclear programme that would create a new and lucrative market for uranium. Molefe, then CEO of the Public Investment Corporation, seems to enter the story at this point in what may have been his first act to ingratiate himself with the Zuma group after being identified for so long as an ‘Mbeki man’. Although he denied having a hand in the Gupta’s Uranium One deal, there seem to be too many unexplainable coincidences.

The timing is indicative. According to amaBhungane, Molefe’s last day as CEO of the Public Investment Corporation would have been 12 April 2010, two days before the Dominion transaction was closed.

However, his contract was extended for three months, to the reported irritation of senior ANC and alliance officials. At the time, the Sunday Times reported that Jacob Zuma was “understood to have phoned a senior official in the finance ministry to ask that Molefe remain in the job.”

According to amaBhungane, company registration documents show that Atul Gupta and Duduzane Zuma took over as directors of the Dominion holding company on 14 April, the day the sale was finalised. If, as alleged in media reports, Molefe was involved in negotiations to commit Public Investment Corporation funding, his departure at that crucial time might have compromised the negotiations. The investment committee rejected the deal as being too risky, but the Industrial Development Corporation provided the loan.

Guptas go transnational

In December 2014, it emerged that the Guptas allegedly make use of the global financial system in what law enforcement circles refer to as ‘shadow transnationalism’ – an essential element for brokers facilitating large-scale criminality to “navigate resources to international clearing hubs where they enter the legitimate trade and accrue value to the members of the network”. 61 The deal involved the listing of Oakbay and a R100 million Industrial Development Corporation loan, given to the company in 2010 to buy the Shiva Uranium mine.

On 28 November 2014, the Gupta company, Oakbay Resources and Energy, listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. Atul Gupta, his wife Chetali, brother Rajesh and sisterin -law Arti own about 80 percent of the company. Oakbay’s main asset, and the main driver of its value, was its subsidiary Shiva Uranium.

But, according to an amaBhungane investigation and documents observed by this group of researchers, the Guptas appear to have significantly inflated Oakbay’s market value above the inherent value given at the time, with the help of a Gupta associate in Singapore. This allowed them to pay off their Industrial Development Corporation loan, but it also meant that the state- owned entity lost out when the Oakbay share price market corrected. At the time that this story broke, Oakbay’s financials showed that it had not been able to maintain profitability at Shiva. According to the 2010 purchase agreement for the mine, the entire debt should have been repaid by April 2013. But Oakbay’s financials stated that, by the end February 2014, only R20 million had been paid and the debt with interest had grown to R399 million.

In June 2014, after negotiations with the Industrial Development Corporation, they agreed to restructure the debt, including a new repayment schedule that would end in 2018. As part of this agreement, and as Oakbay’s pre-listing statement showed, the Industrial Development Corporation would take a small stake (about 3.6 percent) in Oakbay in lieu of the debt. Oakbay’s interim financials at the end of August 2014 gave the company a net asset value of about R4.6 billion, which translated into an asset value of R5.74 a share, according to amaBhungane. 62 This dropped to R4.84 a share once substituted with the lower value put on them by a valuer appointed as part of the listing requirements.

Despite this, Oakbay listed at R10 a share, which was nearly double the underlying asset value. This was significant, because it was this R10 ‘market’ value, minus a 10 percent discount, at which the Industrial Development Corporation got shares (its 3.6 percent) in lieu of Oakbay’s outstanding debt. When compared with the underlying value of R5.74 provided by Oakbay’s own financials, or to the adjusted R4.84, the Industrial Development Corporation ultimately gave Oakbay a discount of between R93- R119 million (essentially cash in hand to clear their debt – an ultimate loss to South Africa given that these are state resources).

The question was how Oakbay allegedly inflated its market value. The answer, according to an AmaBhungane investigation, lay in Singapore, where a company called Unlimited Electronic & Computers paid R10 a share in a private placement shortly before the listing acquiring 2.3 percent of the company. Unlimited Electronic & Computers, according to amaBhungane, is owned by Kamran ‘Raj’ Radiowala, who has been associated with the Guptas since about 2006. Online company registration data cited by amaBhungane has him being appointed managing director of an Indian electronics distribution company, SES Technologies, in 2007. SES was co-owned by the Guptas’ South African business Sahara Computers, and its board included Ashu Chawla, one of their associates in South Africa. The SES chief operating officer for some time was George van der Merwe, who held the same position at Sahara and who was the former CEO of Oakbay.

… and move their money offshore

In July 2015, the first detailed analysis of how the Guptas move the proceeds of their business activities was presented by amaBhungane. Their operation centres on a Gupta-controlled shell company called Homix. Shell companies, by virtue of the ownership anonymity that they provide, are classic vehicles for money laundering and other illicit financial activity. According to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network:

The term ‘shell company’ generally refers to limited liability companies and other business entities with no significant assets or ongoing business activities. Shell companies – formed for both legitimate and illicit purposes – typically have no physical presence other than a mailing address, employ no one, and produce little to no independent economic value.

Between 2014 and 2015, Homix moved R166 million through its accounts, primarily from five companies. As is characteristic of shell companies, Homix has no discernible office infrastructure or staff commensurate with a company processing such large sums of money, according to amaBhungane, which visited its premises. Bank records obtained by amaBhungane, and other bank records observed by this group of researchers, show that as the money came into the Homix bank account, it immediately went straight out again, to an equally obscure entity called Bapu Trading.

This pattern displays the three classic money laundering characteristics of placement, layering and integration where placement is the movement of cash from its source (the five companies), followed by placing it into circulation (layering) through, among other mechanisms, financial institutions and other businesses (for example Homix), and finally integration, the purpose of which is to make it more difficult to detect and uncover by law enforcement.

…

Enter Mosebenzi Zwane

On 22 September 2015, President Zuma – reportedly to the surprise of even top members of the ANC – announced that he would fill a six-month-old vacancy in his Cabinet with the relatively unknown Mosebenzi Zwane, who he appointed to the critically important mineral resources portfolio. Zwane’s appointment as a minister escalated him from a backbencher member of parliament who previously had been in the Free State provincial government. He had no experience in mining or in a national portfolio position. His origins in the Free State suggest that this was a move orchestrated by Ace Magashule.

In April 2016, seven months after Zwane’s appointment, Gupta-owned Tegeta Exploration & Resources acquired Optimum coal mine from Glencore. Duduzane Zuma owns 12.8 percent of Tegeta. Various members of the Gupta family own 36 percent of the company, Gupta associate Salim Essa owns 21.5 percent and just over 20 percent is owned by two off-shore companies registered in the United Arab Emirates, for which ownership details are unavailable.

The Guptas bought Optimum from Glencore for R2.2 billion. The purchase was, however, riddled with allegations of political interference and bias towards sectional business interests, namely the Guptas. It is now widely accepted that Eskom prejudiced Glencore, by using the full might of the law, to force Optimum into business rescue to enable Tegeta to buy the company on highly favourable terms. Former Public Protector Madonsela’s State of Capture report found that Eskom may have repeatedly broken the law to accommodate Tegeta. …

In December 2015, while Van der Riet and Ramavhona were still on suspension and Tegeta’s purchase of Optimum was being finalised, Tegeta was granted a short-term contract to supply 255 000 tons of coal a month to another power station, Arnot. It subsequently emerged that the award of this contract resulted in Eskom extending Tegeta a R586 million (ex VAT) upfront payment for this coal supply, six hours after the Gupta company’s banks refused them a R600 million loan to close the Optimum Coal deal. The State of Capture report concluded that the payment was likely pushed through to plug a R600 million hole in the R2 billion the Guptas needed to buy Optimum. At a special late-night tender committee meeting on 11 April 2016, Eskom executives, led by Brian Molefe, agreed to transfer R586 million to Tegeta – money that was then used, two days later, to help pay for the purchase of Optimum.

…

The draft findings of a year-long National Treasury investigation concluded in April 2017 that the prepayment should be treated as a loan. According to the investigation: “The advance payment of R659 558 079 should be regarded as a loan because there is no evidence that Optimum Coal Mine or Tegeta Exploration and Resources used the funds to procure any equipment for increasing the volume of the coal or further processing the coal,” adding that the interest should be recovered from Tegeta or the Eskom officials involved. The draft report also recommended that a forensic audit firm be appointed to “investigate why Eskom gave and continues to give preferential treatment to Tegeta … by not enforcing key conditions of the Coal Supply Agreement”.

In August 2016, Eskom acting CEO Matshela Koko, gave Tegeta a R7 billion coal contract without a tender, ignoring warnings from the National Treasury that such a contract could be irregular. Under the contract, Tegeta’s Koornfontein Mines would deliver 2.4 million tons of coal a year at R414 a ton to Komati power station, 40 kilometres south of Middelburg. The contract was due to run until August 2023. However, two months after the seven-year contract was signed, Eskom’s board decided to mothball the power station. This means that Eskom will either need to buy Tegeta out of the contract or assume the cost of transporting the coal to another power station, at least 50 kilometres away.

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http://www.mltranslations.org/Britain/Marxclass.htmMARXISM AND CLASS: SOME DEFINITIONSA paper from the COMMUNIST LEAGUE (Britain)The Concept of Social ClassThe concept of social class as “a division or order of society according to status (‘The Oxford English Dictionary’, Volume 3; Oxford; 1989; p. 279) is a very ancient one, the English word ‘class’ being derived from the Latin ‘classis’, meaning each of the “… ancient divisions of the Roman people” (Charles T. Onions (Ed.): ‘The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology’; Oxford; 1985; p. 180). Servius Tullius, king of Rome in the 6th century BC, organised a classification system which divided citizens into five classes according to wealth”. (‘New Encyclopaedia Britannica’, Volume 10; Chicago; 1994; p. 455).

The Marxist Definition of ClassMarxist-Leninists accept the concept of social class put forward above, but hold that a person’s social class is determined not by the amount of his wealth, but by the source of his income as determined by his relation to labour and to the means of production.

“Classes are large groups of people differing from each other by the place they occupy in a historically determined system of social production, by their relation (in most cases fixed and formulated by law) to the means of production, by their role in the social organisation of labour, and, consequently, by the dimensions of the share of social wealth of which they dispose and their mode of acquiring it”. (Vladimir I. Lenin: ‘A Great Beginning: Heroism of the Workers in the Rear: ‘Communist Subbotniks’ in: ‘Collected Works’, Volume 29; Moscow; 1965; p. 421).

To Marxist-Leninists, therefore, the class to which a person belongs is determined by objective reality, not by someone’s opinion.

On the basis of the above definition, Marxist-Leninists distinguish three basic classes in 19th century Britain:

“There are three great social groups, whose members… live on wages, profit and ground rent respectively”. (Karl Marx: ‘Capital: A Critique of Political Economy’, Volume 3; Moscow; 1971; p. 886).

These three basis classes are 1) the proletariat or working class, 2) the bourgeoisie or capitalist class and 3) the landlord class, respectively.

The Landlord ClassMarxist-Leninists define the landlord class as that class which owns land and derives its income from ground rent on that land:

“Land becomes… personified and… gets on its hind legs to demand… its share of the product created with its help…: rent (Karl Marx: ‘Capital: A Critique of Political Economy’, Volume 3; Moscow; 1971; p. 824-25).

With the development of capitalist society, however, the landlord class progressively loses its importance and a new class emerges — the petty bourgeoisie. Thus, in a developed capitalist society, there are still three basic classes, but these are now: 1) the capitalist class or bourgeoisie; 2) the petty bourgeoisie; and 3) the working class or proletariat:

“Every capitalist country… is basically divided into three main forces: the bourgeoisie, the petty bourgeoisie and the proletariat”. (Vladimir I. Lenin: ‘Constitutional Illusions’, in: ‘Collected Works’, Volume 6; Moscow; 1964; p. 202).

The BourgeoisieThe English word ‘bourgeoisie‘ is derived from the French word ‘bourgeoisie’ meaning “… the trading middle class” (Charles T. Onions (Ed.): op. cit.; p. 110) as distinct from the landlord class.

Marxist-Leninists define the bourgeoisie or capitalist class as

“…the class of modern capitalists, owners of the means of social production and employers of wage labour”. (Friedrich Engels: Note to: Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels: ‘Manifesto of the Communist Party’ in: Karl Marx: ‘Selected Works’, Volume 1; London; 1943; p. 204).

The capitalist class includes persons whose remuneration may come nominally in the form of a salary, but which is in fact due to their position in the capitalist class (e.g., the directors of large companies). It also includes persons who are not employers, but who serve the capitalist class in high administrative positions:

“The latter group contains sections of the population who belong to the big bourgeoisie: all the rentiers (living on the income from capital and real estate…), then part of the intelligentsia, the high military and civil officials, etc. (Vladimir I. Lenin: ‘The Development of Capitalism in Russia’, in: ‘Collected Works’, Volume 3; Moscow; 1960; p. 504).

It also includes the dependents of these persons.

The ProletariatThe English word ‘proletariat‘ is derived from the Latin ‘proles’, meaning ‘offspring’, since according to Roman law a proletarian served the state “… not with his property, but only with his offspring (Charles T. Onions (Ed.): ibid.; p. 714).

Marxist-Leninists define the proletariat or working class as

“…that class of modern wage labourers who, having no means of production of their own, are reduced to selling their labour power in order to live (Friedrich Engels: Note to the 1888 English Edition of: Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels: ‘Manifesto of the Communist Party’, in: ‘Selected Works’, Volume 1; London; 1943; p. 204).

In modern society, “… the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class”. (Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels: ‘Manifesto of the Communist Party’ in:

Karl Marx: ‘Selected Works’, Volume 1; London; 1943; p. 216) so that, in producing the proletariat, the bourgeoisie produces “… its own gravediggers”. (Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels: ‘Manifesto of the Communist Party’ in: Karl Marx: ‘Selected Works’, Volume 1; London; 1943; p. 218).

The ‘Middle Class’The term ‘middle class’ is used by Marxists — including Marx and Engels themselves — in two different ways:

Firstly, in the historical sense,

“… in the sense of… the French word ‘bourgeoisie that possessing class which is differentiated from the so-called aristocracy (Friedrich Engels: Preface to ‘The Condition of the Working Class in England: From Personal Observation and Authentic Sources’, in: Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels: ‘Collected Works’, Volume 4; Moscow; 1975; p. 304).

secondly, when speaking of modern capitalist society, with the meaning of petty bourgeoisie’, discussed in the next section.

The Petty BourgeoisieBetween the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, stands the petty bourgeoisie:

“In countries where modern civilisation has become fully developed, a new class of petty bourgeois has been formed” (Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels: ‘Manifesto of the Communist Party’ in: Karl Marx: ‘Selected Works’, Volume 1; London,’ 1943; p. 231).

The English term ‘petty bourgeoisie’ is an anglicisation of the French term ‘petite bourgeoisie’, meaning ‘little bourgeoisie’. Marxist-Leninists define the petty bourgeoisie as a class which owns or rents small means of production which it operates largely without employing wage labour, but often with the assistance of members of their families: “A petty bourgeois is the owner of small property”, (Vladimir I. Lenin: Note to: ‘To the Rural Poor’, in: ‘Selected Works’, Volume 2; London; 1944; p. 254).

As a worker, the petty bourgeois has interests in common with the proletariat; as owner of means of production, however, he has interests in common with the bourgeoisie. In other words, the petty bourgeoisie has a divided allegiance towards the two decisive classes in capitalist society.

Thus, the ‘independent’ petty bourgeois producer

“… is cut up into two persons. As owner of the means of production he is a capitalist; as a labourer he is his own wage- labourer”. (Karl Marx: ‘Theories of Surplus Value’, Part 1; Moscow; undated; p. 395).

and consequently petty bourgeois “…are for ever vacillating between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie”. (Joseph V. Stalin: ‘The Logic of Facts’, in: ‘Works’, Volume 4; Moscow; 1953; p. 143).

This divided allegiance between the two decisive classes in modern capitalist society applies also to a section of employed persons — those who are involved in superintendence and the lower levels of management — e.g., foremen, charge-hands, departmental managers, etc. These employees have a supervisory function, a function is to ensure that the workers produce a maximum of surplus value for the employer. On the one hand, such persons are exploited workers, with interests in common with the proletariat (from which they largely spring); on the other hand, their position as agents of the management in supervising the efficient exploitation of their fellow employees gives them interests in common with the bourgeoisie:

“An industrial army of workmen, under the command of a capitalist, requires, like a real army, officers (managers) and sergeants (foremen, overlookers) who, while the work is being done, command in the name of the capitalist”, (Karl Marx: ‘Capital: An Analysis of Capitalist Production’, Volume 1; Moscow; 1959; p. 332).

“The labour of supervision and management… has a double nature. On the one hand, all labour in which many individuals cooperate necessarily requires a commanding will to coordinate and unify the process…. This is a productive job…. On the other hand, this supervision work necessarily arises in all modes of production based on the antithesis between the labourer, as the direct producer, and the owner of the means of production. The greater this antagonism, the greater the role played by supervision”. (Karl Marx: ‘Capital: A Critique of Political Economy’, Volume 3; Moscow; 1971; p. 383-84).

Because of this divided allegiance, which corresponds to that of the petty bourgeoisie proper, Marxist-Leninists place such employees (and their dependents) in the petty bourgeoisie. For the same reason, Marxist-Leninists also place persons in the middle and lower ranks of the coercive forces of the capitalist state — the army and police — (and their dependents) in the petty bourgeoisie.

The Polarisation of Capitalist SocietyBecause of the small size of their means of production, petty-bourgeois are in constant danger of sinking into the proletariat:

“The lower strata of the middle class… sink gradually into the proletariat, partly because their diminutive capital… is swamped in the competition with the large capitalists, partly their specialised skill is rendered worthless by new methods of production”. (Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels: ‘Manifesto of the Communist Party’ in: Karl Marx: ‘Selected Works’, Volume 1; London; 1943; p. 213).

“The working class gains recruits from the higher strata of society… A mass of petty industrialists and small rentiers are hurled down into its ranks”. (Karl Marx: ‘Wage-Labour and Capital’, in: ‘Selected Works’, Volume 1; London; 1943′ p. 280).

and even the old, once highly respected petty bourgeois professions become proletarianised:

“The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage-labourers”. (Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels: ‘Manifesto of the Communist Party’, in: Karl Marx: ‘Selected Works’, Volume 1; London; 1943; p. 208).

Thus, as capitalist society develops, it becomes increasingly polarised into two basic classes — wealthy bourgeois and poor proletarians:

“Society as a whole is more and more splitting up… into two great classes facing each other — bourgeoisie and proletariat”. (Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels: ‘Manifesto of the Communist Party’, in: Karl Marx: ‘Selected Works’, Volume 1; London; 1943; p. 205-06).

“Accumulation of wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil, slavery, ignorance, brutality, moral degradation, at the opposite pole”. (Karl Marx: ‘Capital: A Critique of Political Economy’. Volume 1; Moscow; 1959; p. 645).

The PeasantryThe English word ‘peasant is derived from the Latin ‘pagus’, meaning a “… country district”. (Charles T. Onions (Ed.): op. cit.; p. 660) and is defined as “… one who lives in the country and works on the land”. (The Oxford English Dictionary’, Volume 11; Oxford; 1989; p.402).

The above definition excludes the landlord class from the peasantry since, even if a landlord ‘lives in the country’ he does not work on the land’, but derives his income from ground rent.

The peasantry do not form a class of society, but consist of a number of different classes which live in the country and work on the land:

“It is best to distinguish the rich, the middle and the poor peasants” (Vladimir I. Lenin: ‘To the Rural Poor: An Explanation for the Peasants of what the Social-Democrats want’ (hereafter listed as ‘Vladimir I. Lenin (1903’), in ‘Selected Works’, Volume 2; London; 1944; p. 261).

The peasantry is composed of:

Firstly, rich peasants, or rural capitalists, who employ labour, that is, who exploit poorer peasants:

“One of the main features of the rich peasants is that they hire farmhands and day labourers. Like the landlords, the rich peasants also live by the labour of others…. They try to squeeze as much work as they can out of their farmhands, and pay them as little as possible”. (Vladimir I. Lenin (1903: ibid.; p. 265).

Sometimes rich peasants are called ‘kulaks’, a word derived from the Russian ‘kulak’, originally meaning a “… tight-fisted person”. (‘The Oxford English Dictionary’, Volume 8; Oxford; 1989; p. 543).

Secondly, the middle peasants or the rural petty bourgeoisie, who own or rent land but who do not employ labour. Speaking of the middle peasantry, Lenin says:

“Only in good years and under particularly favourable conditions is the independent husbandry of this type of peasant sufficient to maintain him and for that reason his position is a very unstable one. In the majority of cases the middle peasant cannot make ends meet without resorting to loans to be repaid by labour, etc., without seeking subsidiary’ earnings on the side”. (Vladimir I. Lenin: ‘The Development of Capitalism in Russia’, in: ‘Collected Works’, Volume 1; p. 235).

Thirdly, the poor peasants or rural proletariat. The poor peasant lives

“… not by the land, not by his farm, but by working for wages…. He… has ceased to be an independent farmer and has become a hireling, a proletarian”. (Vladimir I. Lenin (1900): op. cit.; p. 265-67).

Sometimes Marxist-Leninists describe poor peasants as “… semi-proletarians“, (Vladimir I. Lenin (1900): ibid.; p. 267) to distinguish them from urban proletarians, regarded as ‘full’ proletarians.

‘Neo-Marxism‘‘Revisionism’ is “… a trend hostile to Marxism. within Marxism itself”. (Vladimir I. Lenin: ‘Marxism and Revisionism’, in: ‘Collected Works’, Volume 15; Moscow; 1963; p. 32). In other words, a revisionist poses as a Marxist but in fact puts forward a programme which objectively serves the interests of a bourgeoisie:

“The revisionists spearheaded their struggle mainly against Marxism-Leninism… and replaced this theory with an opportunist, counterrevolutionary theory in the service of the bourgeoisie and imperialism (Enver Hoxha: Report to the 5th Congress of the Party of Labour of Albania, in: ‘Selected Works’, Volume 4; Tirana; 1982; p. 190).

Despite all the torrents of propaganda levelled against it, Marxism- Leninism still retains enormous prestige among working people all over the world. It is for this reason that many modern revisionists call themselves ‘Neo-Marxists’ or ‘Western Marxists’ — claiming that they are not revising Marxism, but merely bringing it up to date, bringing into the age of the electronic computer which Marx and Engels never knew.

In general, ‘neo-Marxists’ pay their loudest tributes to Marx ‘s early writings, before he became a Marxist. ‘Neo-Marxism’ is essentially a product not merely of universities, but of the worst kind of university lecturer who equates obscurantism with intellectualism. One sees admiring students staggering from his lectures muttering ‘What a brilliant man! I couldn’t understand a word!’.

Even sociologists sympathetic to ‘neo-Marxism’ speak of “… the extreme difficulty of language characteristic of much of Western Marxism in the twentieth century”. (Perry Anderson: ‘Considerations of Western Marxism’; London; 1970; p. 54).

But, of course, this obscure language has a great advantage for those who use it, making it easy to claim, when challenged, that the challenger has misunderstood what one was saying.

Much ‘Neo-Marxism’ is an eclectic hotchpotch of Marxism with idealist philosophy — giving it, it is claimed, a ‘spiritual aspect’ lacking in the original. A typical example is the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre who writes: “I believe in the general schema provided by Marx”, (Jean-Paul Sartre: ‘Between Existentialism and Marxism’; London; 1974;

p. 53), but — and it is a big ‘but’ — it must be a ‘Marxism’ liberated from “… the old guard of mummified Stalinists”. (Jean-Paul Sartre: ibid.; p. 53). And how, according to Sartre, is this ‘liberation’ to be effected? By merging it with the existentialism of the Danish idealist philosopher Soren Kierkegaard! “Kierkegaard and Marx… institute themselves… as our future”. (Jean-Paul Sartre: ibid.; p. 169).

However, this paper is concerned only with revisionist theories which are based on distortions of the Marxist-Leninist definition of class.

In particular, it will be concerned with ‘neo-Marxist’ definitions of the proletariat which narrow and restrict it as a class. While to these ‘neo-Marxists’ the proletariat may still be, in words, ‘the gravedigger of capitalism’, they portray it as a gravedigger equipped with a teaspoon instead of a spade.

The UnemployedSome ‘neo-Marxists’ exclude the unemployed from the proletariat on the grounds that someone who is not working cannot be regarded as a member of the working class!

But Marx explicitly characterises the unemployed, the “… industrial reserve army”, (Karl Marx: ‘Capital: A Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production Volume 1; Moscow; 1959; p. 628) as part of the working class, as “… a relative surplus population among the working class”, (Karl Marx: ‘Capital: A Critique of Political Economy’, Volume 2; Moscow; 1974; p. 518) and speaks of “… the working class (now actively reinforced by its entire reserve army)”. (Karl Marx: ‘Capital: A Critique of Political Economy’, Volume 2; Moscow; 1974; p. 414).

Clearly, therefore, the founders of Marxism did not exclude the unemployed from the working class.

Non-Productive LabourOther ‘neo-Marxists’ exclude all workers engaged in non-productive labour from the working class.

Certainly, for the purpose of analysing the complexities of capitalist society, Marx differentiated labour into productive and unproductive labour. According to Marx, “… only that labour is productive which creates a surplus value“. (Karl Marx: ‘Theories of Surplus Value’, Part 1; Moscow; n.d.; p 45).

It is on this basis that the Greek revisionist Nicos Poulantzas excludes non-productive workers from the working class:

“I have a rather limited and restricted definition of the working class. The criterion of productive and unproductive labour is sufficient to exclude unproductive workers from the working class”. (Nicos Poulantzas: ‘Classes in Contemporary Capitalism’; London; 1975; p 119, 121).

Poulantzas therefore assigns non-productive workers to the “… new petty bourgeoisie” (Nicos Poulantzas: ibid.; p. 117) asserting that “… the new petty bourgeoisie constitutes a separate class” (Nicos Poulantzas: ibid.; p. 115).

But

“… the distinction between productive and unproductive labour has nothing to do… with the particular speciality of the labour (Karl Marx: ‘Theories of Surplus Value’, Part 1; Moscow; n.d.; p 186).

The same kind of labour may be productive or unproductive:

“The same labour can be productive when I buy it as a capitalist, and unproductive when I buy it as a consumer”. (Karl Marx: ‘Theories of Surplus Value’, Part 1; Moscow; n.d.; p. 186).

For example, a teacher in a private school is engaged in productive labour (in the Marxist sense of the term), because his labour produces surplus value for the proprietors of the school. But a teacher in a state school, working under identical conditions, is engaged in unproductive labour, because his labour does not create surplus value.

Furthermore, many kinds of unproductive labour, such as the labour of clerical workers in a capitalist production firm,

“… while it does not create surplus value, enables him (the employer — Ed.) to appropriate surplus value which, in effect, amounts to the same thing with respect to his capital. It is, therefore, a source of profit for him”. (Karl Marx: ‘Capital: A Critique of Political Economy’, Volume 3; Moscow; 1971; p. 294).

Thus the question of whether an employee is engaged in productive or unproductive labour has no relevance to the question of whether he belongs to the proletariat.

The ‘Labour Aristocracy’In developed capitalist states,

“… the bourgeoisie, by plundering the colonial and weak nations, has been able to bribe the upper stratum of the proletariat with crumbs from the superprofits”. (Vladimir I. Lenin: Draft Programme of the RCP (B), in: ‘Collected Works’, Volume 29; Moscow; 1965; p. 104).

Superprofits are profits

“… obtained over and above the profits which capitalists squeeze out of the workers of their ‘own’ country”. (Vladimir I. Lenin: Preface to the French and German Editions of ‘Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism’, in: ‘Collected Works’, Volume 22; Moscow; 1964; p. 193).

Marxist-Leninists call employees in receipt of a share in such super profits “… the labour aristocracy”. (Vladimir I. Lenin: ibid.; p. 194).

Some ‘neo-Marxists’ exclude employees who share in superprofits from the proletariat. Thus, according to the London-based ‘Finsbury Communist Association’, in Britain “… the proletariat consists of the workers on subsistence wages or below” (Finsbury Communist Association: ‘Class and Party in Britain’; London; 1966; p. 4).

However, Lenin defines the labour aristocracy as a part of the proletariat, as a “… privileged upper stratum of the proletariat”, (Vladimir I. Lenin: ‘Imperialism and the Split in Socialism’, in: ‘Collected Works’, Volume 23; Moscow; 1965; p. 110) as “… the upper stratum of the proletariat”, (Vladimir I. Lenin: Draft Programme of the RCP (B), in: ‘Collected Works’, Volume 29; Moscow; 1965; p. 104) as “… the top strata of the working class”. (Vladimir I. Lenin: ‘How the Bourgeoisie utilises Renegades”, in: ‘Collected Works’, Volume 30; Moscow; 1965; p. 34).

Furthermore, while Lenin characterises the ‘labour aristocracy’ as “… an insignificant minority of the working class”, (Vladimir I. Lenin: ‘Under a False Flag’, in: ‘Collected Works’, Volume 21; Moscow; 1964; p. 152) the ‘Finsbury Communist Association’ presents it as “… the overwhelming majority of Britain’s workers” (Finsbury Communist Association: ‘Class and Party in Britain’; London; 1966; p. 5).

Thus, according to the ‘Finsbury Communist Association’, the British imperialists pay the overwhelming majority of Britain’s workers’ above the value of their labour power. Since there is not even a Marxist-Leninist party, much less a revolutionary situation, in Britain at present, this can only be out of the sheer goodness of their hearts!

Clearly the ‘neo-Marxist’ picture of imperialism bears no relation to reality. It merely lends spurious support to the false thesis that, since the workers in developed capitalist countries are ‘exploiters’, the future for socialism lies only in the less developed countries in the East!

ConclusionThe most urgent task facing Marxist-Leninists today is to rebuild unified Marxist-Leninist parties in each country, united in a Marxist-Leninist International.

But such parties, and such an international, can be built only on the basis of agreement on Marxist-Leninist principles.

Perhaps agreement to accept a few simple definitions put forward long ago by the founders of Marxism-Leninism, and to reject their revisionist distortions, might constitute a small step in that direction.

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