Africa/Global: Charting Where They Hide the Money, 1

AfricaFocus Bulletin March 12, 2018 (180312) (Reposted from sources cited below)

Editor’s Note “Switzerland, the United States and the Cayman Islands are the world’s biggest contributors to financial secrecy, according to the latest edition of the Tax Justice Network’s Financial Secrecy Index (FSI). … Kenya, which this year set up its own tax haven in the form of the Nairobi International Financial Centre, is an example of how interests of western financial service lobbyists have successfully lured governments into a race to the bottom. Kenya, which has been assessed for the first time in the 2018 FSI, has an extremely high secrecy score of 80/100.” – Tax Justice Network The FSI for 2018, released by the Tax Justice Network on January 31, is far more than a simple index. It is an in-depth survey as well as ranking of the countries most deeply involved in concealing wealth through offshore financial services. Based on a quantitative measure of the share of such cross-border financial services based in each country, and an in-depth qualitative evaluation of national laws and regulations affecting transparency and secrecy, the FSI provides the indispensable context for investigative journalism exposes of specific cases and advocacy by civil society groups at both national and international levels. In striking contrast to Transparency International “Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) (https://www.transparency.org/), which rates countries on the basis of observers’ perceptions of the extent of corruption, the FSI focuses on the mechanisms which permit the fruits of corruption and other hidden assets to be concealed. Ironically, Switzerland, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands are ranked as among the least corrupt on the CPI, but they also lead on the FSI as the best places to hide the fruits of corruption, tax evasion, and other crimes. The system that allows this to happen is in fact global, and its distribution by country, by intention, is hard to track. This two-part AfricaFocus contains substantive excerpts from the Financial Secrecy Index reports. This first part (sent out by email and available on-line at http://www.africafocus.org/docs18/fsi1803a.php) excerpts overview analyses from the authors covering the global picture and the African continent. The second part, not sent out by email but available at http://www.africafocus.org/docs18/fsi1803b.php) , provides excerpts from country reports on the United Kingdom, the United States, Kenya, Liberia, South Africa, and Mauritius. Much more extensive data in narrative, database, and graphic formats, is available at http://www.financialsecrecyindex.com For previous AfricaFocus Bulletins on illicit financial flows, tax evasion, and related topics, visit http://www.africafocus.org/intro-iff.php ++++++++++++++++++++++end editor’s note+++++++++++++++++

Financial Secrecy Index 2018

Introduction

https://www.financialsecrecyindex.com/

The Financial Secrecy Index ranks jurisdictions according to their secrecy and the scale of their offshore financial activities. A politically neutral ranking, it is a tool for understanding global financial secrecy, tax havens or secrecy jurisdictions, and illicit financial flows or capital flight.

An estimated $21 to $32 trillion of private financial wealth is located, untaxed or lightly taxed, in secrecy jurisdictions around the world. Secrecy jurisdictions – a term we often use as an alternative to the more widely used term tax havens – use secrecy to attract illicit and illegitimate or abusive financial flows.

Illicit cross-border financial flows have been estimated at $1-1.6 trillion per year: dwarfing the US$135 billion or so in global foreign aid. Since the 1970s African countries alone have lost over $1 trillion in capital flight, while combined external debts are less than $200 billion. So Africa is a major net creditor to the world Рbut its assets are in the hands of a wealthy ̩lite, protected by offshore secrecy; while the debts are shouldered by broad African populations.

Yet all rich countries suffer too. For example, European countries like Greece, Italy and Portugal have been brought to their knees partly by decades of tax evasion and state looting via offshore secrecy.

A global industry has developed involving the world’s biggest banks, law practices, accounting firms and specialist providers who design and market secretive offshore structures for their tax- and law-dodging clients. ‘Competition’ between jurisdictions to provide secrecy facilities has, particularly since the era of financial globalisation really took off in the 1980s, become a central feature of global financial markets.

The problems go far beyond tax. In providing secrecy, the offshore world corrupts and distorts markets and investments, shaping them in ways that have nothing to do with efficiency. The secrecy world creates a criminogenic hothouse for multiple evils including fraud, tax cheating, escape from financial regulations, embezzlement, insider dealing, bribery, money laundering, and plenty more. It provides multiple ways for insiders to extract wealth at the expense of societies, creating political impunity and undermining the healthy ‘no taxation without representation’ bargain that has underpinned the growth of accountable modern nation states. Many poorer countries, deprived of tax and haemorrhaging capital into secrecy jurisdictions, rely on foreign aid handouts.

This hurts citizens of rich and poor countries alike.

Switzerland, USA and Cayman top the 2018 Financial Secrecy Index

by George Turner

Tax Justice Network, January 30, 2018

https://www.taxjustice.net/2018/01/30/2018fsi/

Switzerland, the United States and the Cayman Islands are the world’s biggest contributors to financial secrecy, according to the latest edition of the Tax Justice Network’s Financial Secrecy Index (FSI).

The full financial secrecy index can be found online at http://www.financialsecrecyindex.com. There you can find interactive tables and maps of the FSI, as well as download reports on specific countries. A direct link to the table of rankings by country is at http://tinyurl.com/yblxx27e.

Financial secrecy is a key facilitator of financial crime, and illicit financial flows including money laundering, corruption and tax evasion. Jurisdictions who fail to contain it deny citizens elsewhere their human rights and exacerbate global inequality.

The table below shows the top-ranked 54 countries on the FSI. The full interactive table is available here.

Switzerland, the global capital of bank secrecy, retains the worst ranking, and the US has moved up to second. With Bahrain and Lebanon dropping out of the top ten, Guernsey and a new entry in Taiwan has replaced them.

The US’ rise in the FSI 2018 rankings is part of a worrying trend. This is the second time in succession that the USA has risen up the Financial Secrecy Index. In 2013 the States was in 6th place, and in 2015 it took 3rd. In 2015 the country was one of the few to increase its secrecy score. This time the increase in ranking is driven by a huge rise in their share of the market in offshore financial services that wasn’t neutralised by a significant reduction in their secrecy. In total, the share of global offshore financial services taken by the United States rose by 14% between the 2015 and 2018 index from 19.6% to 22.3%.

The United States remains a secrecy jurisdiction as it refuses to take part in international initiatives to share tax information with other countries, and has failed to end anonymous companies and trusts aggressively marketed by some US states. There is now real concern about the damage this promotion of illicit financial flows is doing to the global economy.

Slow progress in the global fight against financial secrecy

The 2015 Index noted several improvements towards global financial transparency following the 2008 financial crisis and the huge budget deficits that it created, where governments around the world sought to reign in tax abuse by its citizens, and by multinational corporations.

Some of those efforts are now starting to bear fruit. Most importantly, countries have now started to exchange information on bank accounts held by foreign citizens in their jurisdictions on an automatic basis.

But this Financial Secrecy Index demonstrates how ten years on from the financial crisis all countries still have a long road ahead of them to improve their performance on financial secrecy. The most transparent country – Slovenia – has a secrecy score of 41.8, out of a total possible score of 100. A score of 0 would represent ideal, competition and market friendly transparency. In other words, if the Financial Secrecy Index were a school exam, Slovenia (the best student) would have barely passed, with less than 60% of the correct “transparency” answers. The worst countries only got close to 10% of the “transparency” questions right (a secrecy score close to 90). Following this analogy, practically all countries would have to repeat the school year.

The top two countries in this year’s FSI are the two that have been most resistant to the key policy of automatic information exchange between tax authorities. The US refuses to take part altogether. Instead, it has set up its own parallel system (FATCA) which seeks information on US citizens abroad, but provides little, if any, data to foreign countries.

The global capital of banking secrecy, Switzerland has delayed the implementation of automatic information exchange, and in 2017 lawmakers attempted to stop it altogether with countries they deemed ‘corrupt’. As the FSI demonstrates, countries like Switzerland are fundamental to the flow of illicit financial funds, such as the proceeds of corruption. Switzerland’s attempts to stop transparency for funds they receive from countries with perceived high levels of corruption will simply make tackling corruption in those countries harder.

After the financial crash further scandals have led to a greater push for more transparency, such as the demand for public registers of company owners. Yet this progress has been difficult, as powerful vested interests working with friendly governments seek to frustrate change. The UK government for example continues to insist on the right of its satellite tax havens to maintain the secrecy of company ownership, and the German government, with others, have sought to impede attempts to make progress on the beneficial ownership issue within the European Union.

Financial secrecy’s impact on human rights

Six out of the Top 10 FSI 2018 countries are either members of the OECD or their dependencies. Another three are Asian tax havens, demonstrating how major economies are driving the market for financial secrecy.

Secrecy jurisdictions are found all over the world. On this map the top ten are shown in blue. An interactive version of the map is available here.

Kenya, which this year set up its own tax haven in the form of the Nairobi International Financial Centre, is an example of how interests of western financial service lobbyists have successfully lured governments into a race to the bottom. Kenya, which has been assessed for the first time in the 2018 FSI, has an extremely high secrecy score of 80/100.

By harboring the ill-gotten gains of kleptocrats and tax evaders, secrecy jurisdictions deprive governments of the resources needed to provide basic social protection, and encourage the looting of natural resources.

This impact of financial secrecy on the abuse of human rights is increasingly recognised globally. Switzerland has been sharply criticised by the United Nations for the damage that its financial secrecy causes to human rights around the world, while a recent statement by the UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights, highlighted the poverty and inequality suffered by citizens of the United States, in part driven by their government’s desire to become a tax haven. This statement comes at a time when our index shows the country undermining rights elsewhere through its promotion of financial secrecy.

How we created the world’s leading study of financial secrecy

The Financial Secrecy Index is the world’s most comprehensive assessment of the secrecy of financial centres and the impact of that secrecy on global financial flows. The European Commission’s Joint Research Centre provided methodological support for the construction of the index. The study is published every two years and is founded on published, independently verifiable data. In contrast to some so called ‘blacklists’ of tax havens, inclusion in the FSI is not based on political decision making.

Countries are assessed against criteria which include whether companies, trusts and foundations are required to reveal their true owners, whether annual accounts are made available online in open data format, or the extent to which jurisdictions’ rules comply with anti-money laundering standards (FATF’s 40 recommendations).

This year several new indicators have been added to the FSI and existing indicators have been substantially revised to drill deeper into questions around ownership registration and disclosure. A total of 20 Key Financial Secrecy Indicators (KFSI) is used for the measurement of the secrecy score.

In order to create the index, a secrecy score is combined with a figure representing the size of the offshore financial services industry in each country. This is expressed as a percentage of global exports of financial services. The bigger player you are, the more responsibility you have to be transparent.

Beyond of what has been achieved so far by academic or regulatory institutions, the new FSI is the most comprehensive and rigorous assessment of financial secrecy worldwide.

New criteria include checking if a jurisdiction provides for

• A public register of ownership and annual accounts of limited partnerships (KFSI 5);
• A public register of ownership of real estate and a central register of users of freeports for the storage of high value assets (KFSI 4);
• Banking secrecy rules protected by criminal law (risk of prison terms for banking whistleblowers; KFSI 1);
• Public access to tax court verdicts and proceedings, both in criminal and civil tax matters (KFSI 14);
• Mandatory Legal Entity Identifiers for companies created in its territory (KFSI 10);
• Harmful tax residency and citizenship rules (KFSI 12);
• Public access to unilateral tax rulings and robust local filing requirements for Country-By-Country Reports (KFSI 9);
• Unregistered bearer shares for companies & large banknotes (KFSI 15);
• Public statistics on its cross-border financial and economic activities (KFSI 16);
• Mandatory reporting obligations of tax avoidance schemes (KFSI 11).

Africa’s battle against financial secrecy: Financial Secrecy Index

by Rachel Etter-Phoya

Tax Justice Network, February 14, 2018

https://www.taxjustice.net/ – direct URL: http://tinyurl.com/yb7s2txa

How are Switzerland, the United States, and the Caymans working against African efforts to stem the tide of illicit financial flows? They’re among the worst offenders in the Tax Justice Network’s 2018 Financial Secrecy Index.

The index was launched at the end of January 2018 and weights a country’s secrecy score against its global share of financial services. This means that countries that top the rankings have a far higher risk for illicit financial flows running through their systems than countries that may have a higher level of secrecy, but have much smaller-scale financial services. 20 key indicators are used to assess secrecy levels, including banking and tax court secrecy, country-by-country reporting compliance, ownership disclosure rules, and tax administration capacity.

The problem for Africa

Africa remains a net creditor to the world because of illicit financial flows. These flows include money from criminal activity and corruption, tax evasion, avoidance and planning, as well as hidden wealth. So-called foreign aid is dwarfed by the amounts that are leaving the continent. Sub-Saharan African countries lost over USD 1 trillion in capital flight between the 1970s and 2010; external debt was less than one-fifth of this. Financial secrecy is the enabler.

The Paradise Papers was a disturbing reminder of the scale of the problem. 13.4 million documents were leaked from Appleby, a leading British offshore law firm, and Asiaciti, a family-owned trust company, which were investigated by over 90 media partners with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

We learned that Namibians lost potential tax revenues from its fishery resources through a complex corporate arrangement that exploited a double tax treaty signed with Mauritius. Angolans’ sovereign wealth fund was tapped into by a financier who incorporated companies in secrecy jurisdictions for investment projects in which he had a stake. And mining giant Glencore’s nefarious practices in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and in Burkina Faso have also likely reduced the revenue these governments have to spend on vital public services.

South Africa has also had its fair share of challenges with secrecy jurisdictions. The notorious Gupta family along with their politically-exposed associates have been able to hide behind opaque companies to gain questionable access to government contracts. For example, the family is reported to have used shell companies in the United Arab Emirates to move ‘the dubious proceeds of state tenders in South Africa to their collection of shell companies in and around Dubai’. The United Arab Emirates is ranked number nine in the Financial Secrecy Index 2018, with an ‘”ask-noquestions, see-no-evil” approach to commercial transactions, financial regulation and crimes’.

African secrecy jurisdictions on the rise

Financial secrecy has also reared its ugly head on the continent itself. Nine African countries are included in this year’s Financial Secrecy Index:

Kenya found itself in the top 30 countries worldwide with a very high secrecy score (80 out of 100). This may not come as a surprise. The country’s Vision 2030 includes the establishment of the Nairobi International Financial Centre as one of its commitments. Legislation entered into force in September last year to encourage foreign direct investment to be channelled through the East African nation to other countries in the region. Kenya has adopted a model similar to the City of London (the UK having experienced the Finance Curse phenomenon as a result) and continues to increase its network of double tax agreements.

Double tax agreements aim to prevent income being taxed twice. Yet a number of associated risks undermine the collection of tax. The treaties restrict the rights of states to tax foreign investors and owned companies and often do not include adequate automatic exchange of information provisions. Multinationals and sometimes domestic companies may set up an entity in an intermediary country, even when they have no substantive economic activities, to exploit tax treaties in place. This ‘treaty shopping’ enables companies and individuals to pay lower taxes in conduit countries and avoid taxes all together in the countries where activities are taking place.

However, with just 15 tax treaties in force, Kenya has some way to go if it is to compete with one of Africa’s oldest secrecy jurisdictions, Mauritius. In a bid to reduce its reliance on sugar back in the 1970s, this island nation started offering preferential tax terms and exemptions to foreign investors, and similar ones exist today. The country has entered double tax agreements with 43 nations, 16 of which are with African states. Zero-percent capital gains tax has lured many companies to set up shop – with no genuine economic activity – on the island, significantly reducing their tax burden at the expense of other countries, often not paying capital gains tax anywhere. South Africa and India have successfully renegotiated their agreements with Mauritius to be able to collect capital gains and withholding tax. Other African nations, including Lesotho and Zambia, are following suit and renegotiating treaties.

Ghana toyed with setting up an International Financial Services Centre (IFSC) and went as far as granting Barclays Bank Ghana Limited an offshore banking licence in the early 2000s although President John Atta Mills revoked the licence in 2011 to avoid OECD blacklisting. Worringly, it appears the country has plans to revive the IFSC.

Much more can be said about secrecy on the continent. We have prepared narrative reports for eight of the nine African countries included in the Index. Take a look here. Our partner Tax Justice Network Africa also has a blog series on financial secrecy. Part 1 is available here.

Global solutions

Some changes have been made to the global infrastructure to tackle secrecy since TJN launched the first Index in 2009. For example, the OECD is mandated by the G20 to roll out the automatic exchange of information on taxation, but coverage is patchy and some countries, particularly African ones, are missing from the arrangement.

Reform is needed now. Besides individual countries addressing laws and regulations to improve transparency, TJN has identified three major policy responses considering the latest Financial Secrecy Index:

1. Take counter-measures against tax haven USA: the USA ranks second in the Index this year because it has not improved transparency while other countries have acted. The global scale of its financial services has also increased. The USA needs to make it illegal to establish anonymous companies within its borders and it must comply with the standard for automatic exchange of tax information. We have a policy proposal for how to incentive the USA, here.
2. Adopt the Tax Justice Network’s ABCs of tax transparency: all countries must be included in the Automatic exchange of information and aggregate statistics published, all entities must disclose their Beneficial owners and data should be online, free and in open data format for companies, trusts and foundations, and all multinational companies must comply with public Country-by-country reporting.
3. Introduce a UN global convention on tax transparency: ambitious standards should be set, with the ABCs of tax transparency at a minimum, through a global, inclusive process that outlines meaningful sanctions for non-cooperation.

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Without the success of the October Revolution of 1917, a century ago this week, there would have been no USSR to provide sanctuary, training, and arms to anticolonial activists, liberation movements and postcolonial African governments. The dismantling of apartheid would have been far costlier and bloodier.
Africa and the world owe an historic debt to the USSR and the emancipatory dream upon which it was founded, the first national government founded on such vision since the Haitian revolution a century earlier.

Africa/Global: Humanitarian Attention Deficits

AfricaFocus Bulletin January 29, 2018 (180129) (Reposted from sources cited below)

Editor’s Note The international system of response to humanitarian crises is flawed. And the often-repeated call to focus on addressing causes of crises and structural flaws in the system, instead of only providing short-term relief, is undeniably justified. But current trends, paralleling austerity programs and cuts in services at domestic levels in the United States and around the world, are not moving in the direction of fundamental reform. Instead, they are further diminishing the already inadequate resources devoted to saving lives. These cutbacks, as is often noted, have disproportionate effects on the most vulnerable regions of the world, notably Africa. This effect is multiplied not only by racial and other stereotypes but by the structural flaw that funding depends not on reliably budgeted funds for timely responses, but on after-the-fact fundraising, itself reliant on media attention, with all its built-in biases and focus on sensational images. Despite this reality, notes one of the foremost investigators of famine, Alex de Waal, the international humanitarian system developed in recent decades has in fact led to hundreds of thousands lives saved, in comparison with the record of the 20th century. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (http://www.unocha.org/) is the lead inter-governmental agency coordinating such efforts. And the news agency IRIN News (https://www.irinnews.org/content/about-us), recently spun off from the United Nations as an independent non-governmental organization, provides regular first-hand coverage and analysis with priorities that prioritize understanding complex realities. This and other sources on-line mean that those who wish to do so do not have to rely only on the most visible “mainstream media” outlets for their news. Despite such advances, the threat from U.S. attacks on multilateral institutions (though not only) leads de Waal to warn that the limited progress is both fragile and reversible. This AfricaFocus contains several different sections related to this overaraching theme: (1) a set of key reliable links for updates on humanitarian crises and international responses, (2) brief excerpts from and links to reflections that go beyond noting the obvious racism in President Trump’s “shithole” remarks, (3) excerpts from an interview with Alex de Waal, author of the new book “Mass Starvation: The History and Future of Famine,” and (4) excerpts from IRIN’s look ahead to 10 humanitarian crises in 2018, including 5 in Africa. For previous AfricaFocus Bulletins on humanitarian assistance and related topics, visit http://www.africafocus.org/intro-peace.php and http://www.africafocus.org/aidexp.php ++++++++++++++++++++++end editor’s note+++++++++++++++++

Key Links

UNOCHA, Global Humanitarian Overview. 2018. http://interactive.unocha.org/publication/globalhumanitarianoverview/

Includes humanitarian response plans for the following 21 countries, of which 13 are in Africa: * Afghanistan, Haiti, Iraq, Myanmar, oPt, Syria, Ukraine, Yemen * Burundi, Cameroon, CAR, Chad, DRC, Ethiopia, Libya, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan

This report also had a revealing chart of the proportion of funding raised for humanitarian appeals in 2017. http://www.africafocus.org/images/funding-2017.pdf At the end of November, only 52% of the $24.0 billion needed for the year 2017 had been committed.

https://www.irinnews.org/africa – IRIN Africa page – formerly UN, now independent non-profit news service. Coverage that goes beyond stereotypes from on-the-spot reporting and careful analysis.

https://reliefweb.int/ – Detailed reports collated by OCHA https://www.unocha.org/ UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Racism Beyond Trump: Not Just Attitudes but Also Structures

The links below include several recent short commentaries in direct response to Trump’s remarks, but also two longer essays written more than a decade ago, one on the legal case for reparations for Africa as well as those of African descent, and the other on the structural persistence of race in the global world order as well as within nations. A common theme is the relevance of historical perspective and deeper analysis as well as acknowledging the racism in Trump’s attitudes and policies.

Paul Tinyambe Zeleza, “On Trump’s ‘Shithole’ Africa – the Homogenization and Dehumanization of a Continent,” Nyasa Times, January 15, 2017 http://allafrica.com/stories/201801150449.html

Trump’s derogatory dismissal of shithole Haiti and Africa reflects enduring tendencies in the American social imaginary about Africa and its Diasporas. This is to suggest, as outraged as we might be about Trump’s provocative and pusillanimous pronouncements, the Trump phenomenon transcends Trump. The specter of racism, whose pernicious and persistent potency Trump has brazenly exposed to the world, has haunted America from its inception with the original sin of slavery, through a century of Jim Crow segregation, and the past half century of post-civil rights redress and backlash.

The disdain expressed for Haiti and Africa in the President’s latest vicious verbal assault is a projection of an angry racist project to rollback the limited gains of the civil rights struggle and settlement of the 1960s that has animated the Republican Party’s Southern Strategy and politics ever since. … The intersection of domestic and foreign affairs tend to reflect, reproduce, and reinforce national and global racial hierarchies.   more

Letter to President Trump from Former U.S. Ambassadors to Africa http://allafrica.com/stories/201801170032.html From 78 ambassadors who served in 48 African countries

As former U.S. Ambassadors to 48 African countries, we write to express our deep concern regarding reports of your recent remarks about African countries and to attest to the importance of our partnerships with most of the fifty-four African nations. Africa is a continent of great human talent and rich diversity, as well as extraordinary beauty and almost unparalleled natural resources. It is also a continent with deep historical ties with the United States.

…

We hope that you will reassess your views on Africa and its citizens, and recognize the important contributions Africans and African Americans have made and continue to make to our country, our history, and the enduring bonds that will always link Africa and the United States.   more

Howard W. French, “Trump’s profane description disregards Africa’s crucial role in making America a world power,” Washington Post, January 14, 2018 http://tinyurl.com/y9pakctu

President Trump’s comments disparaging immigrants from Haiti and the African continent have stunned many in the United States and other parts of the world. I see this as an opportunity to challenge the American public to confront this reality: More than any other factor, it is the wealth derived from Africa, especially the labor of people taken in chains from that continent, that accounts for the rise of the West and its centuries of predominance in world affairs.

The facts of this history hide in plain sight, and yet Americans and others in the West have averted their eyes for 500 years. The West’s ascension over other parts of the world has been attributed, instead, to innate Western qualities, including rationality and a talent for invention and innovation, or Western institutions. It is this distortion of reality — a delusion, really — that fuels attitudes of white superiority, whether subtle and pervasive, or as crude as those exhibited by someone like Trump.   more

M Neelika Jayawardane,” The very American myth of ‘exceptional immigrants,'” Al Jazeera, 20 Jan 2018 http://tinyurl.com/yafxzqke

… Part of why Americans are susceptible to this violent, xenophobic, and nativist rhetoric is not because they are exceptionally thick, but because of how the national mythology of the US – one constructed on Puritan ideals of egalitarianism, “hard work” and perseverance against adversity – is constructed.

Americans are told, since childhood, that hard work and perseverance not only build character, but allow them to overcome obstacles, and achieve their goals and dreams. Because this powerful myth is repetitively drummed into their heads – be it through apocryphal narratives of kids who came from impoverished backgrounds who went on to become multimillion-dollar earning athletes, or women who beat the odds and attained positions of leadership in fields dominated by men – they learn to believe that their country is a meritocracy.

…

It is obvious that (white) Americans need to be disabused of the notion that the US’s white population is special, and deserving, somehow, of privilege; it is time to get over the belief that they only received their privileges from having worked for it.

But just as importantly, those immigrants of more privileged backgrounds – those who are currently touting the percentage of people from their national group who have college and post-graduate degrees, as if waving these statistics and their material possessions are ways of proving that they are not, in fact, deserving of Trump’s racism – also need an antidote for their misplaced smugness.   more

Lord Anthony Gifford, “The Legal Basis of the Case for Reparations: A paper Presented to the First Pan-African Congress on Reparations, Abuja, Federal Republic of Nigeria, April 27-29, 1993” http://www.shaka.mistral.co.uk/legalbasis.htm

Once you accept, as I do, the truth of three propositions a. That the mass kidnap and enslavement of Africans was the most wicked criminal enterprise in recorded human history, b. that no compensation was ever paid by any of the perpetrators to any of the sufferers, and c. that the consequences of the crime continue to be massive, both in terms of the enrichment of the descendants of the perpetrators, and in terms of the impoverishment of Africa and the descendants of Africans, then the justice of the claim for Reparations is proved beyond reasonable doubt.

To those who may say that that is all very true in theory, but that in practice there is no mechanism to enforce the claim, or no willingness of the white world to recognise it, I would answer with a Latin legal maxim: ubi jus, ibi remedium: where there is a right, there must be a remedy.   more

William Minter, “Invisible Hierarchies: Africa, Race, and Continuities in the World Order,” Science & Society, July 2005 http://www.africafocus.org/editor/africa-race-world-2005.pdf

21st Century Color Lines

Eduardo Bonilla-Silva (2003) and other analysts, focusing on the current U. S. racial order, have posited an ideology of “color-blind racism,” which allows for continuation of racial inequality while firmly rejecting overt racial distinctions or discrimination. One of the key components of this ideology is to deny the link between past and present, so that people regardless of their background are seen as starting on a level playing field. This assumption fits well with the companion ideology stressing the virtues of the neutral market, which all are presumed to approach with similar possibilities of success.

Such an ideology gains credibility from the visible success of individuals from the subordinate group, which does in the case of race mark a break with earlier ideologies of rigid discrimination. With successful individuals in the foreground, and even celebrated as illustrating diversity, it becomes easier to view continuing structural inequality as relatively unimportant, or even to dismiss it altogether. Persistent poverty or other disadvantages can conveniently be attributed entirely to individual defects, and seen as unrelated to past or present discrimination. The dominant ideology thus diverts attention from the structural bases of persistent and rising inequality.   more

Mass starvation as a political weapon

http://phys.org, January 19, 2018

by Heather Stephenson, Tufts University

http://tinyurl.com/yd38bo84

Mass starvation killed more than three million people in Stalin-era Ukraine in the 1930s and more than 18 million in China during Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Yet by the start of this century, famines like those were all but eliminated, Alex de Waal says in his new book, Mass Starvation: The History and Future of Famine (http://amzn.to/2DuxUW4). The number of people dying in famines around the world has dropped precipitously, particularly over the last thirty to fifty years.

Those gains, though, are fragile, and could be starting to be reversed, says de Waal, who is the executive director of the World Peace Foundation and a research professor at the Fletcher School. For his book, he compiled the best available estimates of global famine deaths from 1870 to 2010, and used that data to analyze trends. Tufts Now sat down with him recently to find out what he learned.

Tufts Now: In the popular imagination, famine is often connected with too many people and too little food–that is, with overpopulation and low agricultural production due to natural disasters such as drought. How does that line up with reality?

Alex de Waal: That is nonsense. Famine is a very specific political product of the way in which societies are run, wars are fought, governments are managed. The single overwhelming element in causation–in three-quarters of the famines and threequarters of the famine deaths–is political agency. Yet we still tend to be gripped by this idea that famine is a natural calamity.

You can actually show that the population theory of famine is wrong. Not just wrong at a global scale–because famine mortality has gone down precipitously while world population has gone up–but also at a country level. In the countries that have historically been very prone to famine, like Ethiopia or India, famine mortality has gone down and continues to do so even while population goes up. This is not to say that there isn’t a problem of resource consumption in the world. It’s just to say famine is not part of that.

Tufts Now: You say that mass starvation was almost eliminated, with famines becoming less frequent and less lethal. How did that happen?

de Waal: There are multiple reasons: the background economics, the improvements in transport systems, information systems, massive improvements in public health. The big historic killers in famines used to be infectious diseases. Those are now much less likely to kill large numbers of people.

One big factor is the international humanitarian industry. The humanitarians are much better at addressing the symptoms than the causes. But nonetheless if you can reduce the lethality of famines to a small fraction of what they used to be twenty, thirty, fifty years ago, even if you’re not addressing the causes, you’re still doing something substantially positive.

The last reason for the decline in famines is undoubtedly the decline in wars, the decline in totalitarian rule, and the spread of democracy and liberal values. There’s something very tangibly precious to be held onto about democracy, liberalism, and humanitarianism. You can demonstrate that this has saved tens of millions of lives. It shouldn’t be treated lightly.

Tufts Now: In addition to sending humanitarian aid, outsiders have sometimes argued for intervening with military force to protect civilians who are suffering during famines in conflict zones. What do you think of that?

de Waal: I think it’s a terribly bad idea–it’s very likely to go wrong. Twenty-five years ago, when President Bush the elder sent his troops to Somalia, I resigned from Human Rights Watch over it. I was asked to support it, and I refused. I still think it’s a bad idea. Almost every instance where you see troops sent in, it has not worked out well. These are not problems that can be solved by the military.

Tufts Now: You say that the success in combating famine is now stalling and that world leaders should help by making the act of starving people a war crime or a crime against humanity. Isn’t it already against international law?

de Waal: Lawyers will argue about this. Some will say there is no law that outlaws faminogenic acts–acts that create famines–and there are so many loopholes in international law that you can fly fighter jets through it, as the Saudis are doing now in Yemen. Others will say the law is there if interpreted correctly.

What can’t be denied is that it’s an issue that we collectively don’t care enough about to make the criminalization work.

Let me give a parallel, which is sexual and gender crimes. Rape has always been unlawful, but it was only relatively recently that the international community– global public opinion–cared enough about criminalizing rape to actually make it into an issue that could be stopped. In the same way, I think we need to care enough about starvation, in places like Yemen, Syria, Nigeria, and South Sudan, to make it an issue that is so toxic that it is stopped.

Tufts Now: You mention Yemen, where an ongoing armed conflict and blockade imposed by a Saudi-led coalition have left millions in need of humanitarian assistance. What should be done about the people starving there?

de Waal: Yemen is the greatest famine atrocity of our lifetimes. The Saudis are deliberately destroying the country’s food-producing infrastructure.

The United States and the European countries, if they cared about it enough, have enough leverage to get the Saudis and the Emeratis to stop bombing agricultural, health, and market infrastructure, open the ports, and have a much less restrictive definition about what food is allowed in. They also need to start a peace process. This is not a war that is going to be won in any meaningful sense. It’s a political, created famine and it will have to be solved by political, created means. One can ameliorate the impact by enabling a humanitarian response, which would save many lives, and allowing the economy to regenerate a bit, but a proper solution has to be a political one.

Tufts Now: How hopeful are you about the possibility of ending famine?

de Waal: At any time up to a couple of years ago, I would have been extremely hopeful. The default mode of the national and global governance systems was in favor of humanitarian systems and against faminogenic actions. That was the way history was going. That was the direction of global politics.

Now I’m much less certain about that, as we are seeing some of this introverted, xenophobic, transactional, zero-sum politics. It’s not just here in the U.S. You also see it in Europe, with Britain as a particularly sad example.

Humanitarianism cannot cope with the political causes of famine. Humanitarians know that. But there’s still an assumption by political leaders, who are somewhat culpable, that if we put the humanitarians on the case, we don’t need to deal with the politics. That is wrong.

Ten humanitarian crises to look out for in 2018

IRIN’s editors sketch out the gloomy-looking horizon for next year

Geneva, 31 December 2017

http://www.irinnews.org – direct URL: http://tinyurl.com/y8vem7ps

From the Rohingya to South Sudan, hurricanes to famine, 2017 was full of disasters and crises. But 2018 is shaping up to be even worse. Here’s why.

The UN has appealed for record levels of funding to help those whose lives have been torn apart, but the gap between the funding needs and the funding available continues to grow.

And what makes the outlook especially bad for 2018 is that the political will needed to resolve conflicts, welcome refugees, and address climate change also appears to be waning. What a difference a year, a new US president, and a German election make.

Here’s our insider take on 10 crises that will shape the humanitarian agenda in 2018 (See 2017’s list here):

Syria’s sieges and displacement

As Syria heads towards seven years of war and Western governments quietly drop their demands for political transition, it has become increasingly clear that President Bashar al-Assad will stay in power, at least in some capacity.

more in original article

Congo unravels

Democratic Republic of Congo. Sylvain Liechti/UN Photo.

You know the situation is bad when people start fleeing their homes, and it doesn’t get much worse than the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Here, violence in its eastern provinces has triggered the world’s worst displacement crisis – for a second year in a row. More than 1.7 million people abandoned their farms and villages this year, on top of 922,000 in 2016. The provinces of North Kivu, South Kivu, Kasai, and Tanganyika are the worst affected and the epicentres of unrest in the country.

New alliances of armed groups have emerged to take on a demoralised government army and challenge President Joseph Kabila in distant Kinshasa. He refused to step down and hold elections in 2016 when his constitutionally mandated two-term limit expired – and the political ambition of some of these groups is to topple him. These rebellions are a new addition to the regular lawlessness of armed groups and conflict entrepreneurs that have stalked the region for years. It is a confusing cast of characters, in which the army also plays a freelance role and, as IRIN reported this month, as an instigator of some of the rights abuses that are forcing civilians to flee.

As we enter 2018, more than 13 million people require humanitarian assistance and protection – that’s close to six million more people than at the start of 2017. Over three million people are severely food insecure in the Kasai region alone, their villages and fields looted. Aid is only slowly trickling in. The $812 million appeal for Congo is less than 50 percent funded. That lack of international commitment represents the single largest impediment to the humanitarian response.

Yemen slips further towards famine

If we repeat the words “world’s worst humanitarian crisis” so often that they starting to lose gravity, here are a few numbers that might help hammer home just how grim life has become after more than two and a half years of war in Yemen, a country of more than 29 million: 8.4 million people are on the verge of starvation; 400,000 children have severe acute malnutrition (that’s as bad as it gets), and more than 5,500 civilians have been killed.

more in original article

South Sudan – it could get even worse

South Sudan. Diana Diaz/UNHCR.

A much-anticipated ceasefire in South Sudan didn’t last long.

It came into effect at midnight on Christmas Eve, and a few hours later government and rebel forces were fighting around the northern town of Koch in Unity State. The violence hasn’t derailed the peace talks underway in Addis Ababa, but it does point to how difficult it will be for the internationally-backed diplomatic process to shape events on the ground.

The ceasefire is between President Salva Kiir and several rebel groups, but confidence is low that negotiations can bring a quick and decisive end to a war entering its fifth year.

South Sudan has fragmented, with a host of ethnic militias emerging with shifting loyalties. The various members of this so- called “gun class” all want a seat at the table, in the belief that any future agreement will be based on a power-sharing deal and a division of the country’s resources along the lines of the last failed settlement.

The international community lacks leverage and neighbouring countries don’t have the unity of purpose necessary to achieve a broad-based and sustainable peace agreement.

What that means is that more refugees – on top of an existing two million – will continue to pour across the country’s borders as the fighting season resumes.

It also means some seven million people inside the country – almost two thirds of the remaining population – will still need humanitarian assistance; hunger will also continue to threaten millions as a result of the war, displacement, and collapse of the rural economy. And yes, there will be the threat of renewed famine.

One final ingredient in the brew of despair is that the humanitarian community’s access to those in need will be constrained by both the prevailing insecurity and the government’s cynical taxation of aid operations.

CAR – where humanitarians fear to tread

Central African Republic. Philip Kleinfeld/IRIN.

There are many reasons why Central African Republic was officially the unhappiest country in the world in 2017.

You can start with the 50 percent increase in the number of displaced, bringing the total to 633,000 people. Then there are the more than two million hungry people, and the half a million who have figured it’s just too hard to stay and have left for neighbouring countries.

It’s not much fun being an aid worker either. In November another humanitarian worker was killed in the north of the country, bringing to 14 the number to have died this year. The level of violence has forced aid agencies to repeatedly suspend operations as their personnel, convoys, and bases are deliberately targeted.

Behind the insecurity is a four-year conflict between competing armed groups that neither a weak government nor an under-staffed UN peacekeeping mission can contain. It pits mainly Muslim ex-Séléka rebels against Christian anti-Balaka, but some of the worst fighting has its roots in the splintering of the Séléka coalition and a feud between former allies.

The violence across the country boils down to the lucrative control of natural resources and the taxes the groups raise from checkpoints. Such is the insecurity that the government’s writ doesn’t even cover all of the capital, Bangui.

Rohingya refugees in limbo; forgotten conflicts simmer elsewhere in Myanmar

more in original article

Afghans return to flaring conflict

more in original article

Venezuelan exodus to strain neighbours

more in original article

Libya: Africa’s giant holding cell

Libya. Alessio Romenzi/UNICEF.

An AU-EU summit at the end of 2017 seemed to offer a glimmer of hope for the 700,000 to one million migrants stuck in the nightmare that is Libya.

It produced a plan to repatriate those who want it, and to move others from squalid detention centres into better conditions.

Some flights home did subsequently take off, and a first group (of 162 refugees and migrants from Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia, and Yemen) was even evacuated by the UN on 22 December from Libya to Italy. But we’ve yet to see how this scheme will play out, and there are some serious obstacles. Many migrants have nowhere safe to return to, and it’s not clear how a UN-backed government that controls little in the way of territory or popular support will manage to move and protect migrants in a country with multiple governments, militias, and tribes.

That the meeting even got press (in large part thanks to a CNN film of what appeared to be a slave auctions) in an oft-ignored country is a sign of how little the world cares about the mostly sub-Saharan African migrants in Libya, for whom kidnapping, extortion, and rape have become the norm.

European policy has largely focused on keeping migrants from boarding boats in the Mediterranean or reaching their shores – creating a situation that is bad enough for Libyans and shockingly worse for Africans. At the summit, French President Emmanuel Macron mooted a military and police initiative inside Libya, plus UN sanctions for people-smugglers. How this could actually work is anyone’s guess, and it seems unlikely to get at the source of many migrants’ woes: the lack of legal avenues to get out of the desperate situations that brought them to Libya’s hell in the first place.

A year of turmoil in Cameroon

It’s taken just over a year for political agitation in Cameroon’s anglophone region to turn into armed opposition against the government of President Paul Biya.

Separatism was only a fringe idea until the government cracked down hard on protesters demanding greater representation for the neglected minority region. Now, government soldiers are being killed, Biya is promising all-out war, and thousands of refugees are fleeing into neighbouring Nigeria.

Anglophone Cameroon is becoming radicalised. Refugees recounting experiences of killings by the security forces talk of revenge, and commentators worry that the opportunity for negotiations with more moderate anglophone leaders – those pursuing a policy of civil disobedience and diplomatic pressure on Yaoundé – may be rapidly shrinking.

If the government believes there is a military solution to the activists’ demands for an independent “Ambazonia”, made up of the two anglophone regions of western Cameroon, they may well be mistaken. Where the separatists’ training camps are being established, next to the Nigerian border, is a remote and heavily forested zone – ideal for guerrilla warfare.

Biya, 85 in February and in power for the past 35 years, is standing in elections once again in 2018. The “anglophone crisis” and the potential of an even larger refugee exodus will not only leave him politically damaged but could be regionally destabalising, especially as Nigeria faces its own separatist challenge.

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South Africa/USA: Inequality is Extreme and Still Rising

AfricaFocus Bulletin January 15, 2018 (180115) (Reposted from sources cited below)

Editor’s Note “I came here because of my deep interest and affection for a land settled by the Dutch in the mid-seventeenth century, then taken over by the British, and at last independent; a land in which the native inhabitants were at first subdued, but relations with whom remain a problem to this day; a land which defined itself on a hostile frontier; a land which has tamed rich natural resources through the energetic application of modern technology; a land which once imported slaves, and now must struggle to wipe out the last traces of that former bondage. I refer, of course, to the United States of America.” – Robert F. Kennedy, University of Cape Town, June 6, 1966 More than 50 years after Robert Kennedy’s speech in Cape Town, there have been many victories in the fight for political rights and against racial discrimination in both South Africa and the United States. The sacrifices and victories of those decades should not be discounted. Nevertheless, despite tha advance of many African Americans and Black South Africans into positions of power and wealth, the inequality inherited from that history remains deeply imprinted in the society and the economy. Its effects are felt not only in the explicit racial inequalities that still exist, but also in the ideologies rationalizing inequality more generally and legitimizing structural inequalities as the allegedly deserved outcome of individual achievement. The World Inequality Report, just released, documents with the best data available on the trends of inequality at global and national levels, a necessary but of course insufficient step in finding remedies to reverse the trend of increasing inequality and to repair the damages still felt from historical inequities. This AfricaFocus Bulletin contains excerpts from the chapters on South Africa and the United States from the new World Inquality Report. Excerpts from the executive summary of the report appear in another AfricaFocus Bulletin sent out today and available at http://www.africafocus.org/docs18/ineq1801.php. For previous AfricaFocus Bulletins on South Africa, visit http://www.africafocus.org/country/southafrica.php ++++++++++++++++++++++end editor’s note+++++++++++++++++

World Inequality Report 2018

Trends in global income inequality

For the full report, database, and extensive additional background information, visit http://wir2018.wid.world/

Robert F. Kennedy in Soweto, June 8, 1966. Credit: Photo taken by Alf Kumalo

2.12: Income inequality in South Africa

• South Africa stands out as one of the most unequal countries in the world. In 2014, the top 10% received 2/3 of national income, while the top 1% received 20% of national income.
• During the twentieth century, the top 1% income share was halved between 1914 and 1993, falling from 20% to 10%. Even if these numbers must be qualified, as they are surrounded by a number of uncertainties, the trajectory is similar to that of other former dominions of the British Empire, and is partly explained by the country’s economic and political instability during the 1970s and 1980s.
• During the early 1970s the previously constant racial shares of income started to change in favor of the blacks, at the expense of the whites, in a context of declining per capita incomes. But while interracial inequality fell throughout the eighties and nineties, inequality within race groups increased.
• Rising black per capita incomes over the past three decades have narrowed the interracial income gap, although increasing inequality within the black and Asian/Indian population seems to have prevented any decline in total inequality.
• Since the end of Apartheid in 1994, top-income shares have increased considerably. In spite of several reforms targeting the poorest and fighting the segregationist heritage, race is still a key determinant of differences in income levels, educational attainment, job opportunities and wealth.

South Africa’s dual economy is among the most unequal in the world

South Africa is one of the most unequal countries in the world. In 2014, the top 10% of earners captured two thirds of total income. This contrasts with other high-income inequality countries such as Brazil, the United States and India where the top 10% is closer to 50–55% of national income. However, unlike other highly unequal countries, the divide between the top 1% and the following 9% in South Africa is much less pronounced than the gap between the top 10% and the bottom 90%. Otherwise said, in terms of top income shares, South Africa ranks with the most unequal Anglo-Saxon countries, but, at the same time, there is less concentration within the upper income groups, mostly composed by the white population. The average income among the top 1% was about four times greater than that of the following 9% in 2014 (for comparative purposes, the top 1% in the United States earn seven times more than the following 9%), while average income among the top 10% was more than seventeen times greater than the average income of the bottom 90% (it is eight times more in the United States). It is then only logical that the income share of the top 1% is high, capturing 20% of national income, though this is not the largest share in the world.

The South African “dual economy” can be further illustrated by comparing South African income levels to that of European countries. In 2014, the average national income per adult among the richest 10% was €94 600, at purchasing power parity, that is, comparable to the average for the same group in France, Spain or Italy. But average national income of the bottom 90% in South Africa is close to the average national income of the bottom 16% in France. In light of these statistics, the recently debated emergence of a so-called middle class is still very elusive. Rather, two societies seem to coexist in South Africa, one enjoying living standards close to the rich or upper middle class in advanced economies, the other left behind.

Inequality has decreased from the unification of South Africa to the end of apartheid

South Africa is an exception in terms of data availability in comparison with other African countries. The period for which fiscal data are available starts in 1903 for the Cape Colony, seven years before the Union of South Africa was established as a dominion of the British Empire, and ends in 2014, with some years sporadically missing, and noticeably an eight- year interruption following the end of apartheid in 1994. As is often the case with historical tax data series, only a very small share of the total adult population was eligible to pay tax in the first half of the twentieth century. Therefore, the fiscal data from which we can estimate top-income shares allows us to track the top 1% income share since 1913, but only cover the top 10% of the population from 1963 (with a long interruption between 1971 and 2008).

With important short run variations, the evolution of income concentration over the 1913–1993 period seems to follow a very clear long-term trend. The income share of the richest 1% was more than halved between 1913 and 1993, falling from 22% to approximately 10%. Not only did the income share attributable to the top 1% decrease, but inequality within this upper group was also reduced. Indeed, the share of the top 0.5% fell more quickly than the share of the next 0.5% (from percentile 99 to percentile 99.5). Consequently, while the top 0.5% represented about 75% of the top 1% in 1914, by the end of the 1980s, their representative proportion fell to 60%.

Despite the extreme social implications of the first segregationist measures that were implemented in the early 1910s, these policies did not lead to large increases in income concentration among the top 1%. This was also a time in which South Africa progressively developed its industrial and manufacturing sector, enjoying notable accelerations in the 1930s that were to the benefit of the large majority of the population. Aside from a brief fall during the Great Depression, average real income per adult then increased steadily. Following a trend similar to other former Dominions of the British Empire (Australia, Canada and New Zealand) inequality decreased significantly in South Africa from 1914 to the beginning of the the Second World War, despite some short-run variations in the late 1910s: the income share of the top 1% fell from 22% to 16%.

During the Second World War, national average continued to follow its previous trend, but the average real income of the richest 1% took off. As a consequence of the demand shock during the war, the agricultural export prices boomed, the manufacturing sector more than doubled its output between 1939 and 1945, and profits for the foundry and engineering industries increased by more than 400%. However, the wage differential between skilled/white and unskilled/black workers remained extremely large. As C.H. Feinstein described, “black workers [were] denied any share of the growing income in the new economy they were creating.” The fact that the peak in the income share of the top 1%–as high as 23% in 1946–was concomitant with the war effort thus seems essentially due to a brief enrichment of the upper class.

In contrast, income growth in the 1950s was more inclusive, as average real income per adult increased by 29% between 1949 and 1961, while the average real income of the top 1% slightly decreased. By 1961 the income share of the top 1% had fallen to around 14%. In the 1960s, both averages grew approximately at the same rate such that inequality remained relatively constant. Following 60 years of successive increases, national average income was almost four times greater by the early 1970s than in 1913. Inequality resumed its downward sloping trend from 1973, but this also marked a period of overall income growth stagnation in South Africa until 1990 that culminated in a three-year recession.

For the first time in the previous 90 years, gold output started falling. Richer seams were exhausted and extraction costs increased rapidly. The industry that was once the engine of the economy started to weaken. Increases in oil prices and other commodities accelerated inflation dramatically, averaging about 14% per year between 1975 and 1992. In the 1980s, international sanctions and boycotts were placed on South African trade as a response to the apartheid regime, adding further pressure to that created by domestic protests and revolts, and contributed to the destabilization of the regime in place. White dominance was challenged on both economic and political grounds, to which the ruling government progressively made concessions, recognizing trade unions and the right to bargain for wages and conditions; this could partly explain why the average real income per adult of the top 1% decreased faster than the national average.

The progressive policies implemented after apartheid were not sufficient to counter a profoundly unequal socio-economic structure

There are no fiscal data to estimate top-income shares for the eight years that followed 1993. However, joining up the data points to the next available figure in 2002 suggests that income inequality has increased sharply between the end of apartheid and the present, even if the magnitude of the increase must be taken with caution, as the estimates in these two periods may not be totally comparable. The income share of the top 1% increased by 11 percentage points from 1993 to 2014. Part of the increase from 1993 to 2002 should come from changes in the tax code. In particular, before 2002, capital gains were totally excluded, which is very likely to downward bias the share of top-income groups. Also, the tax collection capabilities seem to have increased substantially in the last years. That being said, household survey data for the years 1993, 2000 and 2008 research has demonstrated that inequality increased significantly during the period for which we have no fiscal data.

At first, it might seem puzzling that the abolishment of a segregationist regime was followed by an aggravation of economic inequality. The establishment of a multiracial democracy, with a new constitution and a president of the same ethnic origin as the majority of the population, did not automatically transform the inherited socio-economic structure of a profoundly unequal country. Interracial inequality did fall throughout the eighties and nineties, but inequality within race groups increased: rising black per capita incomes over the past three decades have narrowed the black-white income gap, although increasing inequality within the black and Asian/Indian population seems to have prevented any decline in aggregate inequality. In explaining these changes scholars agree in that the labor market played a dominant role, where a rise in the number of blacks employed in skilled jobs (including civil service and other high-paying government positions) coupled with increasing mean wages for this group of workers.

Since 1994, several redistributive social policies have been implemented and/or extended, among which important unconditional cash transfers targeting the most exposed groups (children, disabled and the elderly). At the same time, top marginal tax rates on personal income were kept relatively high and recently increased to 45%. However, in spite of these redistributive policy efforts, surveys consistently show that top-income groups are still overwhelmingly white. Other studies further demonstrate that such dualism is itself salient along other key dimensions such as unemployment and education. Furthermore wealth, and in particular land, is still very unequally distributed. In 1913, the South African parliament passed the Natives Land Act which restricted land ownership for Africans to specified area, amounting to only 8% of the country’s total land area, and by the early 1990s, less than 70 000 white farmers owned about 85% of agriculture land. Some land reforms have been implemented, but with seemingly poor results, and it is likely that the situation has not improved much since, although precise data about the recent distribution of land still needs to be collected.

Given this socio-economic structure, the interruption of the international boycotts in 1993 might have more directly favored a minority of high skilled and/or richer individuals who were able to benefit from the international markets, which therefore contributed to increase inequality. This hypothesis would also explain the fact that income inequality in South Africa did not increase in the 1980s, while boycotts were put in place, contrary to other former Dominions (New Zealand, Canada and Australia) despite the country having so far followed a similar trend. Furthermore, the implementation of the Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) program in 1996, which consisted of removing trade barriers, liberalizing capital flows and reducing fiscal deficit might also have contributed, at least in the short run, to enrich the most well off while exposing the most vulnerable, in part by increasing returns to capital over labor and to skilled workers over unskilled workers.

The rapid growth experienced from the early 2000s until the mid-2010s was essentially driven by the rise in commodity prices and was not accompanied with significant job creation as the government hoped it would. The income share of the top 1% grew from just less than 18% in 2002 to over 21% in 2007, then decreased by about 1.5 percentage points and increased again in 2012–2013 as prices reached a second peak. The fact that these variations closely mirror the fluctuation in commodity prices suggest that a minority benefiting from resource rents could have granted themselves a more than proportional share of growth.

Lastly, it should be stressed that the top 1% only represents a small part of the broader top 10% elite which is mostly white. While the share of income held by the top 1% is relatively low as compared to other high inequality regions such as Brazil or the Middle East, the income share of the top 10% group is extreme in South Africa. The historical trajectory of the top 10% group may be different to that of the top 1%–potentially with less ups and downs throughout the 20th century. Unfortunately at this stage, historical data on the top 10% group does not go as far back in time as for the top 1% group.”

2.4 Income inequality in the United States

• Income inequality in the United States is among the highest of all rich countries. The share of national income earned by the top 1% of adults in 2014 (20.2%) is much larger than the share earned by the bottom 50% of the adult population (12.5%).
• Average pre-tax real national income per adult has increased 60% since 1980, but it has stagnated for the bottom 50% at around $16 500. While post-tax cash incomes of the bottom 50% have also stagnated, a large part of the modest post-tax income growth of this group has been eaten up by increased health spending.
• Income has boomed at the top. While the upsurge of top incomes was first a laborincome phenomenon in 1980s and 1990s, it has mostly been a capital- income phenomenon since 2000.
• The combination of an increasingly less progressive tax regime and a transfer system that favors the middle class implies that, even after taxes and all transfers, bottom 50% income growth has lagged behind average income growth since 1980.
• Increased female participation in the labor market has been a counterforce to rising inequality, but the glass ceiling remains firmly in place. Men make up 85% of the top 1% of the labor income distribution.

Income inequality in the United States is among the highest of rich countries

In 2014, the distribution of US national income exhibited extremely high inequalities. The average income of an adult in the United States before accounting for taxes and transfers was $66 100, but this figure masks huge differences in the distribution of incomes. The approximately 117 million adults that make up the bottom 50% in the United States earned $16 600 on average per year, representing just onefourth of the average US income. As illustrated by table 2.4.1, their collective incomes amounted to a 13% share of pre-tax national income. The average pre-tax income of the middle 40%–the group of adults with incomes above the median and below the richest 10%, which can be loosely described as the “middle class”–was roughly similar to the national average, at $66 900, so that their income share (41%) broadly reflected their relative size in the population. The remaining income share for the top 10% was therefore 47%, with average pre-tax earnings of $311 000. This average annual income of the top 10% is almost five times the national average, and nineteen times larger than the average for the bottom 50%. …

Income is very concentrated, even among the top 10%. For example, the share of national income going to the top 1%, a group of approximately 2.3 million adults who earn $1.3 million on average per annum, is over 20%–that is, 1.6 times larger than the share of the entire bottom 50%, a group fifty times more populous. The incomes of those in the top 0.1%, top 0.01%, and top 0.001% average $6 million, $29 million, and $125 million per year, respectively, before personal taxes and transfers.

As shown by Table 2.4.1 , the distribution of national income in the United States in 2014 was generally made slightly more equitable by the country’s taxes and transfer system. Taxes and transfers reduce the share of national income for the top 10% from 47% to 39%, which is split between a one percentage point rise in the post-tax income share of the middle 40% (from 40.5% to 41.6%) and a seven percentage point increase in the post-tax income share of the bottom 50% (from 12.5% to 19.4%). …

National income grew by 61% from 1980 to 2014 but the bottom 50% was shut off from it

Income inequality in the United States in 2014 was vastly different from the levels seen at the end of the Second World War. Indeed, changes in inequality since the end of that war can be split into two phases, as illustrated by Table 2.4.2 . From 1946 to 1980, real national income growth per adult was strong–with average income per adult almost doubling– and moreover, was more than equally distributed as the incomes of the bottom 90% grew faster (102%) than those of the top 10% (79%). However, in the following thirty-four-year period, from 1980 to 2014, total growth slowed from 95% to 61% and became much more skewed.

The pre-tax incomes of the bottom 50% stagnated, increasing by only $200 from $16 400 in 1980 to $16 600 in 2014, a minuscule growth of just 1% over a thirty-four-year period. The total growth of post-tax income for the bottom 50% was substantially larger, at 21% over the full period 1980–2014 (averaging 0.6% a year), but this was still only one-third of the national average. Growth for the middle 40% was weak, with a pre-tax increase in income of 42% since 1980 and a post-tax rise of 49% (an average of 1.4% a year). By contrast, the average income of the top 10% doubled over this period, and for the top 1% it tripled, even on a post-tax basis. The rates of growth further increase as one moves up the income ladder, culminating in an increase of 636% for the top 0.001% between 1980 and 2014, ten times the national income growth rate for the full population.

The rise of the top 1% mirrors the fall of the bottom 50%

This stagnation of incomes of the bottom 50%, relative to the upsurge in incomes experienced by the top 1% has been perhaps the most striking development in the United States economy over the last four decades. As shown by Figure 2.4.1a , the groups have seen their shares of total US income reverse between 1980 and 2014. The incomes of the top 1% collectively made up 11% of national income in 1980, but now constitute above 20% of national income, while the 20% of US national income that was attributable to the bottom 50% in 1980 has fallen to just 12% today. Effectively, eight points of national income have been transferred from the bottom 50% to the top 1%. … This has increased the average earnings differential between the top 1% and the bottom 50% from twenty-seven times in 1980 to eighty-one times today.

Excluding health transfers, average post-tax income of the bottom 50% stagnated at $20,500

The stagnation of incomes among the bottom 50% was not the case throughout the postwar period, however. The pre-tax share of income owned by this chapter of the population increased in the 1960s as the wage distribution became more equal, in part as a consequence of the significant rise in the real federal minimum wage in the 1960s, and reached its historical peak in 1969. These improvements were supported by President Johnson’s “war on poverty,” whose social policy provided the Food Stamp Act of 1964 and the creation of the Medicaid healthcare program in 1965.

However, the share of both pre-tax and post-tax US income accruing to the bottom 50% began to fall notably from the beginning of the 1980s, and the gap between pre-tax and post-tax incomes also diverged significantly from this point onwards. Indeed, the data indicate that virtually all of the meager growth in the real post-tax income of the bottom 50% since the 1970s has come from Medicare and Medicaid. Excluding these two health care transfers, the average post-tax income of the bottom 50% would have stagnated since the late 1970s at just below $20 500. The bottom half of the US adult population has therefore been effectively shut off from pre-tax economic growth for over forty years, and the increase in their post-tax income of approximately $5,000 has been almost entirely absorbed by greater health-care spending, in part as a result of increases in the cost of healthcare provision.

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Taxes have become less progressive over the last decades

The progressivity of the US tax system has declined significantly over the last few decades, as illustrated in Figure 2.4.6 . The country’s macroeconomic tax rate (that is, the share of total taxes in national income including federal, state, and local taxes) increased from 8% in 1913 to 30% in the late 1960s, and has remained at the latter level since. Effective tax rates have become more compressed, however, across the income distribution. In the 1950s, the top 1% of income earners paid 40%–45% of their pre-tax income in taxes, while the bottom 50% earners paid 15–20%. The gap in 2014 was much smaller. In 2014, top earners paid approximately 30%–35% of their income in taxes, while the bottom 50% of earners paid around 25%.

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In contrast to the overall fall in tax rates for top earners since the 1940s, taxes on the bottom 50% have risen from 15% to 25% between 1940 and 2014. This has been largely due to the rise of payroll taxes paid by the bottom 50%, which have risen from below 5% in the 1960s to more than 10% in 2014.

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Transfers essentially target the middle class, leaving the bottom 50% with little support in managing the collapse in their pre-tax incomes

While taxes have steadily become less progressive since the 1960s, one major evolution in the US economy over the last fifty years has been the rise of individualized transfers, both monetary and in-kind. Public-goods spending has remained constant, at around 18% of national income, but transfers–other than Social Security, disability, and unemployment insurance, which are already included in calculations of pre-tax income–increased from around 2% of national income in 1960 to 11% in 2014. The two largest transfers were Medicaid and Medicare, representing 4% and 3%, respectively, of national income in 2014. Other important transfers include refundable tax credits (0.8% of national income), veterans’ benefits (0.6%), and food stamps (0.5%).

Perhaps surprisingly, individualized transfers tend to target the middle class. Despite Medicaid and other means-tested programs which go entirely to the bottom 50%, the middle 40% received larger transfers in 2014 (totaling 16% of per-adult national income) than the bottom 50% of Americans (10% of per-adult national income). … These transfers have been key to enabling middle-class incomes to grow, as without them, average income for the middle 40% would not have grown at all between 1999 in 2014. By contrast, transfers have not been sufficient to enable the incomes of the bottom 50% to grow significantly and counterbalance the collapse in their pre-tax income.

The reduction in the gender wage gap has been an important counterforce to rising US inequality

The reduction in the gender gap has been an important force in mitigating the rise in inequality that has largely taken place after 1980. …The overall gender gap has been almost halved over the last half-century, but it has far from disappeared. …

Still, considerable gender inequalities persist, particularly at the top of the labor income distribution, as illustrated by Figure 2.4.9 . In 2014, women accounted for close to 27% of the individuals in the top 10% of the income distribution, up 22 percentage points from 1960. Their representation, however, grows smaller at each higher step along the distribution of income. Women make up only 16% of the top 1% of labor income earners (a 13 percentage point rise from the 1960s), and only 11% of the top 0.1% (an increase of 9 percentage points). There has been only a modest increase in the share of women in top labor income groups since 1999. The glass ceiling is still far from being shattered.

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Africa/Global: World Trends in Inequality

AfricaFocus Bulletin January 15, 2018 (180115) (Reposted from sources cited below)

Editor’s Note “The divergence in inequality levels has been particularly extreme between Western Europe and the United States, which had similar levels of inequality in 1980 but today are in radically different situations. While the top 1% income share was close to 10% in both regions in 1980, it rose only slightly to 12% in 2016 in Western Europe while it shot up to 20% in the United States. Meanwhile, in the United States, the bottom 50% income share decreased from more than 20% in 1980 to 13% in 2016.” – World Inequality Report, 2018 The first World Inequality Report, just released, represents sustained work by over 100 researchers to collect the best data available from multiple sources on income and wealth inequality both within and between countries. The project is ongoing, and the availability of data for different countries is very uneven. But for the first time there is a common basis for comparison, and both data and analysis are available to the public. Notably, the project is also stressing the implications of the research for policy, and exploring ways of presenting the data in user-friendly graphic formats. The measures most often used are the percentage of national income (or wealth) held by different percentile groups of the population. A striking regional comparison (see graph below) highlights the percentage of national income received by the top 10% in 2016, from 37% in Europe to 61% in the Middle East. The percentage held by the top 10% is 47% in North America, and around 55% in Brazil, India, and sub-Saharan Africa. Not shown in this graph, but noted in a separate chapter and available in the on-line database (http://wid.world/country/south-africa/), the top 10% in South Africa received 65% of national income in 2012. The report stresses that the levels of inequality are highly dependent on the progressivity of tax policy, with the obvious implication that the Trump/Republican tax bill will undoubtedly make inequality in the United States even more extreme. The full database is available to access on-line or to download at http://wid.world/data. This AfricaFocus Bulletin contains excerpts from the executive summary of the report. Another AfricaFocus Bulletin sent out today, and available at http://www.africafocus.org/docs18/sa-us1801.php) contains excerpts from the chapters on South Africa and the United States. For previous AfricaFocus Bulletins on inequality, tax evasion, and related issues, visit http://www.africafocus.org/intro-iff.php Recent articles on closely related topics include: Amanda Erickson, “The world’s 500 wealthiest people got $1 trillion richer in 2017,” Washington Post, December 27, 2017 http://tinyurl.com/y7splebt, and Gabriel Zucman, “Nearly 10% of the world’s wealth is held offshore by a few individuals. The rest of us pay the price for this theft.” Guardian, 8 Nov. 2017 http://tinyurl.com/y8apyp3v++++++++++++++++++++++end editor’s note+++++++++++++++++

World Inequality Report

Executive Summary

Full report and abundant additional information available at http://wir2018.wid.world/

II. #What are our new findings on global income inequality?

We show that income inequality has increased in nearly all world regions in recent decades, but at different speeds. The fact that inequality levels are so different among countries, even when countries share similar levels of development, highlights the important roles that national policies and institutions play in shaping inequality.

Income inequality varies greatly across world regions. It is lowest in Europe and highest in the Middle East.

Inequality within world regions varies greatly. In 2016, the share of total national income accounted for by just that nation’s top 10% earners (top 10% income share) was 37% in Europe, 41% in China, 46% in Russia, 47% in US-Canada, and around 55% in sub-Saharan Africa, Brazil, and India. In the Middle East, the world’s most unequal region according to our estimates, the top 10% capture 61% of national income (Figure E1).

In recent decades, income inequality has increased in nearly all countries, but at different speeds, suggesting that institutions and policies matter in shaping inequality.

Since 1980, income inequality has increased rapidly in North America, China, India, and Russia. Inequality has grown moderately in Europe (Figure E2a). From a broad historical perspective, this increase in inequality marks the end of a postwar egalitarian regime which took different forms in these regions.

• There are exceptions to the general pattern. In the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa, and Brazil, income inequality has remained relatively stable, at extremely high levels (Figure E2b). Having never gone through the postwar egalitarian regime, these regions set the world “inequality frontier.”
• The diversity of trends observed across countries since 1980 shows that income inequality dynamics are shaped by a variety of national, institutional and political contexts.
• This is illustrated by the different trajectories followed by the former communist or highly regulated countries, China, India, and Russia. The rise in inequality was particularly abrupt in Russia, moderate in China, and relatively gradual in India, reflecting different types of deregulation and opening-up policies pursued over the past decades in these countries.
• The divergence in inequality levels has been particularly extreme between Western Europe and the United States, which had similar levels of inequality in 1980 but today are in radically different situations. While the top 1% income share was close to 10% in both regions in 1980, it rose only slightly to 12% in 2016 in Western Europe while it shot up to 20% in the United States. Meanwhile, in the United States, the bottom 50% income share decreased from more than 20% in 1980 to 13% in 2016 (Figure E3).
• The income-inequality trajectory observed in the United States is largely due to massive educational inequalities, combined with a tax system that grew less progressive despite a surge in top labor compensation since the 1980s, and in top capital incomes in the 2000s. Continental Europe meanwhile saw a lesser decline in its tax progressivity, while wage inequality was also moderated by educational and wage-setting policies that were relatively more favorable to low- and middle-income groups. In both regions, income inequality between men and women has declined but remains particularly strong at the top of the distribution.

How has inequality evolved in recent decades among global citizens? We provide the first estimates of how the growth in global income since 1980 has been distributed across the totality of the world population. The global top 1% earners has captured twice as much of that growth as the 50% poorest individuals. The bottom 50% has nevertheless enjoyed important growth rates. The global middle class (which contains all of the poorest 90% income groups in the EU and the United States) has been squeezed.

At the global level, inequality has risen sharply since 1980, despite strong growth in China.

• The poorest half of the global population has seen its income grow significantly thanks to high growth in Asia (particularly in China and India). However, because of high and rising inequality within countries, the top 1% richest individuals in the world captured twice as much growth as the bottom 50% individuals since 1980 (Figure E4). Income growth has been sluggish or even zero for individuals with incomes between the global bottom 50% and top 1% groups. This includes all North American and European lower- and middle-income groups.
• The rise of global inequality has not been steady. While the global top 1% income share increased from 16% in 1980 to 22% in 2000, it declined slightly thereafter to 20%. The income share of the global bottom 50% has oscillated around 9% since 1980 (Figure E5). The trend break after 2000 is due to a reduction in between-country average income inequality, as within-country inequality has continued to increase.

III. Why does the evolution of private and public capital ownership matter for inequality?

Economic inequality is largely driven by the unequal ownership of capital, which can be either privately or public owned. We show that since 1980, very large transfers of public to private wealth occurred in nearly all countries, whether rich or emerging. While national wealth has substantially increased, public wealth is now negative or close to zero in rich countries. Arguably this limits the ability of governments to tackle inequality; certainly, it has important implications for wealth inequality among individuals.

Over the past decades, countries have become richer but governments have become poor.

• The ratio of net private wealth to net national income gives insight into the total value of wealth commanded by individuals in a country, as compared to the public wealth held by governments. The sum of private and public wealth is equal to national wealth. The balance between private and public wealth is a crucial determinant of the level of inequality.
• There has been a general rise in net private wealth in recent decades, from 200–350% of national income in most rich countries in 1970 to 400–700% today. This was largely unaffected by the 2008 financial crisis, or by the asset price bubbles seen in some countries such as Japan and Spain. In China and Russia there have been unusually large increases in private wealth; following their transitions from communist- to capitalist-oriented economies, they saw it quadruple and triple, respectively. Private wealth–income ratios in these countries are approaching levels observed in France, the UK, and the United States.
• Conversely, net public wealth (that is, public assets minus public debts) has declined in nearly all countries since the 1980s. In China and Russia, public wealth declined from 60–70% of national wealth to 20–30%. Net public wealth has even become negative in recent years in the United States and the UK, and is only slightly positive in Japan, Germany, and France. This arguably limits government ability to regulate the economy, redistribute income, and mitigate rising inequality. The only exceptions to the general decline in public property are oil-rich countries with large sovereign wealth funds, such as Norway.

V. What is the future of global inequality and how should it be tackled?

We project income and wealth inequality up to 2050 under different scenarios. In a future in which “business as usual” continues, global inequality will further increase.

Alternatively, if in the coming decades all countries follow the moderate inequality trajectory of Europe over the past decades, global income inequality can be reduced– in which case there can also be substantial progress in eradicating global poverty.

The global wealth middle class will be squeezed under “business as usual.”

• Rising wealth inequality within countries has helped to spur increases in global wealth inequality. If we assume the world trend to be captured by the combined experience of China, Europe and the United States, the wealth share of the world’s top 1% wealthiest people increased from 28% to 33%, while the share commanded by the bottom 75% oscillated around 10% between 1980 and 2016.
• The continuation of past wealth-inequality trends will see the wealth share of the top 0.1% global wealth owners (in a world represented by China, the EU, and the United States) catch up with the share of the global wealth middle class by 2050.

Tax progressivity is a proven tool to combat rising income and wealth inequality at the top.

Research has demonstrated that tax progressivity is an effective tool to combat inequality. Progressive tax rates do not only reduce post-tax inequality, they also diminish pre-tax inequality by giving top earners less incentive to capture higher shares of growth via aggressive bargaining for pay rises and wealth accumulation. Tax progressivity was sharply reduced in rich and some emerging countries from the 1970s to the mid-2000s. Since the global financial crisis of 2008, the downward trend has leveled off and even reversed in certain countries, but future evolutions remain uncertain and will depend on democratic deliberations. It is also worth noting that inheritance taxes are nonexistent or near zero in high-inequality emerging countries, leaving space for important tax reforms in these countries.

A global financial register recording the ownership of financial assets would deal severe blows to tax evasion, money laundering, and rising inequality.

Although the tax system is a crucial tool for tackling inequality, it also faces potential obstacles. Tax evasion ranks high among these, as recently illustrated by the Paradise Papers revelations. The wealth held in tax havens has increased considerably since the 1970s and currently represents more than 10% of global GDP. The rise of tax havens makes it difficult to properly measure and tax wealth and capital income in a globalized world. While land and real-estate registries have existed for centuries, they miss a large fraction of the wealth held by households today, as wealth increasingly takes the form of financial securities. Several technical options exist for creating a global financial register, which could be used by national tax authorities to effectively combat fraud.

More equal access to education and well-paying jobs is key to addressing the stagnating or sluggish income growth rates of the poorest half of the population.

• Recent research shows that there can be an enormous gap between the public discourse about equal opportunity and the reality of unequal access to education. In the United States, for instance, out of a hundred children whose parents are among the bottom 10% of income earners, only twenty to thirty go to college. However, that figure reaches ninety when parents are within the top 10% earners. On the positive side, research shows that elite colleges who improve openness to students from poor backgrounds need not compromise their outcomes to do so. In both rich and emerging countries, it might be necessary to set trans- parent and verifiable objectives– while also changing financing and admission systems– to enable equal access to education.
• Democratic access to education can achieve much, but without mechanisms to ensure that people at the bottom of the distribution have access to well-paying jobs, education will not prove sufficient to tackle inequality. Better representation of workers in corporate governance bodies, and healthy minimum-wage rates, are important tools to achieve this.

Governments need to invest in the future to address current income and wealth inequality levels, and to prevent further increases in them.

Public investments are needed in education, health, and environmental protection both to tackle existing inequality and to prevent further increases. This is particularly difficult, however, given that governments in rich countries have become poor and largely indebted. Reducing public debt is by no means an easy task, but several options to accomplish it exist–including wealth taxation, debt relief, and inflation–and have been used throughout history when governments were highly indebted, to empower younger generations.

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AfricaFocus Bulletin is an independent electronic publication providing reposted commentary and analysis on African issues, with a particular focus on U.S. and international policies. AfricaFocus Bulletin is edited by William Minter.

AfricaFocus Bulletin can be reached at africafocus@igc.org. Please write to this address to suggest material for inclusion. For more information about reposted material, please contact directly the original source mentioned. For a full archive and other resources, see http://www.africafocus.org

Zimbabwe: After Mugabe, Looking Back

AfricaFocus Bulletin November 27, 2017 (171127) (Reposted from sources cited below)

Editor’s Note In Zimbabwe, celebration at the departure of Robert Mugabe from office after 37 years in power has been fervent and heartfelt. But almost all of those celebrating also acknowledge the difficulties of the months and years to come. Hope is tempered by recognition that the structures of kleptocratic and military rule remain in place. The trend lines for searches for Zimbabwe and for Mugabe both rose dramatically in the last two weeks (see http://tinyurl.com/ycnmc33s for a Google search graph). Predictably, global attention has begun to decline. But the juxtaposition of hope and pessimism has been a recurrent theme, with varying degrees of nuance and depth. The two AfricaFocus Bulletins released today contain a selection of links and excerpts from commentators who provide insights going beyond most news coverage,  both looking back and looking forward. This first Bulletin, looking back, highlights a Reuters special report on the events leading to Mugabe’s downfall, an article by Sarah Ládípọ̀ Manyika on the best (fiction) books of the Mugabe years, a short personal essay by Petina Gappah, one of the authors cited by Manyika, followed by excerpts from an extensive historical review by Paul Tiyambe Zeleza and from a passionate personal reflection by Leon Jamie Mighti. The second Bulletin, looking forward, includes a summary report from Harare from IRIN News, additional links particularly on the economic challenges ahead, and excerpts from an essay written after the inauguration of the new President Emmerson Mnangagwa by commentator Alex T. Magaisa. http://www.africafocus.org/docs17/zim1711b.php. For a full archive of previous AfricaFocus Bulletins on Zimbabwe, visit http://www.africafocus.org/country/zimbabwe.php ++++++++++++++++++++++end editor’s note+++++++++++++++++

Additional articles worth noting

MacDonald Dzirutwe, Joe Brock, Ed Cropley, “Special Report: ‘Treacherous shenanigans’ – The inside story of Mugabe’s downfall,” Reuters, Nov. 26, 2017 http://tinyurl.com/y6wwd2hy Reuters has pieced together the events leading up to Mugabe’s removal, showing that the army’s action was the culmination of months of planning that stretched from Harare to Johannesburg to Beijing.

Sarah Ládípọ̀ Manyika, “From Zimbabwe: The Best Books of the Mugabe Years,” Nov. 21, 2017 http://www.ozy.com – Direct URL: http://tinyurl.com/yaeuvdmf

Truth is said to be stranger than fiction, but Zimbabwe’s novelists have always shone a light on the truths — both complex and contradictory — of this nation. Mugabe himself embodies complexities and contradictions: He was a liberation hero and the first president of Zimbabwe who presided over a country that initially thrived, but at the same time there was a dark underbelly to his rule in the ’80s and ’90s. Then came the period of the 2000s when he led a country that was clearly in decline. These 10 books trace this arc of the Mugabe era.

Petina Gappah, “Mugabe and me: A personal history of growing up in Zimbabwe,” BBC, Nov. 25, 2017 http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-42109616

By the end of the academic year, I had studied constitutional law, and learned, through case law on illegal detentions, that all the time I had been gulping down books as a child in the library, a state of emergency had been in place in Matabeleland, and that region had been the theatre of mass killings by the army’s Fifth Brigade.

By the time I came face to face with Mugabe at my own graduation four years later, I was no longer a believer. Gone was the hero worship, but still left was deep and conflicted respect. As the Dean read out my achievements and I knelt before him to be capped, I looked into the face of my president. In that voice, the voice I had first heard in our township house when Zimbabwe was just a dream, Mugabe said to me, “Congratulations, well done.”

The last 17 years saw me count myself among his opponents as he waged another war, this time against the country he had promised.

We could not count all the bodies after that terrible war of liberation, but those that we could, we gave funeral rites and buried in places of honour. But how do you count the bodies of those who died in the war Mugabe waged against his own people?

Zimbabwe’s Political Watershed: A Tale of Failed Transitions

Paul Tiyambe Zeleza

Linked-In Pulse, Nov. 18, 2017 http://tinyurl.com/y9482jja

President Robert Mugabe, once the celebrated hero of Zimbabwe’s protracted liberation struggle who descended into an irascible octogenarian dictator, seems to have finally met his rendezvous with history. On Wednesday, November 15, 2017 the army overthrew him. He was placed under house arrest together with his much-reviled wife, notoriously known as ‘Gucci Grace’ or ‘DisGrace’. It has been an unusually slow motion and sanitized coup, homage to the unpopularity of coups in an increasingly democratic Africa. But it also underscores the fact that President Mugabe’s ouster arose out of an internecine struggle for power among the ruling elite. This suggests the limits of fundamental change in the immediate post-Mugabe era for the longsuffering masses of Zimbabwe.

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Zimbabwe protesters on November 18, the Saturday before Robert Mugabe resigned. Credit: http://www.groundup.org.za

The Mugabe era began with so much promise in 1980 after a bloody liberation struggle that lasted almost two decades. It ended 37 years later in almost unimaginable ignominy, leaving behind a trail of economic mismanagement, widespread impoverishment, and millions of emigrants, not to mention the intangible but no less palpable wounds of national trauma, humiliation, and disillusionment. Much of the commentary in the African and international media has largely focused on the epic failures of the president and the outrageous foibles of his avaricious and ambitious wife. Specifically, they concentrate on the spectacular mistake President Mugabe made in firing his once close and loyal confidant Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa, in an apparent bid to prepare his wife as his successor.

There can be little doubt the president and his wife finally overreached and sealed their fate by unleashing forces that they could no longer control. But the dramatic moment we are witnessing in Zimbabwe is rooted in a longer and far more complex history that transcends the fatal flaws of the president, his wife, and the country’s other leaders, however critical their respective roles maybe. It can be argued the current conjuncture in Zimbabwe represents the confluence of three failed transitions. The first was the problematic transition from the liberation struggle to a developmental post-colonial state arising out of the country’s decolonization in the era of neo-liberalism. The second was the challenge of shifting from an authoritarian to a pluralistic order when the winds of democratization, for the ‘second independence’, began blowing across the continent. The third concerns the management of inter-generational contestations for power in anticipation of the postMugabe era.

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But unlike many countries that got their independence in the 1950s and 1960s, Zimbabwe attained its independence during a period characterised by global economic crisis and the ascendancy of neo-liberalism. The first severely limited primary commodity and export driven economic growth enjoyed by many of the newly independent countries in the 1960s, while the second entailed the ‘rolling back’ of the state that severely curtailed the developmentalist ambitions of the new government. To be sure, in the early post-independence years Zimbabwe’s record of achievement in the provision of social services especially education and health care was very impressive. But it was unsustainable following the imposition of structural adjustment programs, which, as in much of Africa, took a heavy toll on the economy particularly social services and formal and public sector employment. In fact, the austerities of structural adjustment programs (SAPs) galvanized the increasingly pauperised urban middle classes and the rural masses still awaiting their fruits of Uhuru into the wave of protests and agitation that crystallized into struggles for democratization, for the ‘second independence.’

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By the late 1990s the comrades in power could no longer fool their beloved masses in the rural areas, the restive armies of unemployed educated youths in the cities, and the workers flexing their industrial muscles and discovering a new political voice through mushrooming civil society organizations and the MDC.

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By the end of the 1990s both rural and urban discontent were growing. Indeed, the rural areas bore the brunt of economic decline engendered by the draconian regime of structural adjusment imposed with missionary zeal by the gendarmes of global capitalism—the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. This was compounded by political terror as the increasingly besieged regime sought to shore up its dwindling legitimacy and tattered revolutionary credentials by tightening its grip on the peasantry, its symbolic and substantive basis of power. The costs of the economic crisis, as manifested in food shortages and the politicization of food relief efforts, finally broke the proverbial patient backs of the peasantry.

Connecting the two, the peasantry and the working classes, the rural and the urban areas, and the country’s other spatial and social divides, including the ethnicized divisions between the old political geographies of Mashonaland and Matabeleland, which the Mugabe regime had manipulated to weaken the opposition and maintain its iron grip on power, was the draconian ‘Operation Murambatsvina,’ officially translated as ‘Operation Clean Up,’ but literally translated as ‘getting rid of the filth,’ through which the government sought to drain the cities including Harare, the capital, of political opposition. The operation was launched in 2005 and affected more than two million people. The bulk of the MDC’s parliamentary seats from previous elections were located in the cities.

This criminal evacuation program, which was widely condemned within Zimbabwe and internationally including by the United Nations, led to the destruction of the informal sector in the cities and the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people many of whom flocked to the increasingly destitute rural areas. This not only exacerbated rural poverty, but also helped dissolve some of the social and political boundaries, both real and imagined, between the rural and urban areas and dwellers, which raised national consciousness and reinforced opposition to the former liberation heroes turned into predators in power.

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The violence and polarisation became even more evident in the election of March 2008. Preliminary indications were that the MDC was poised for victory both in the parliamentary and presidential elections. The government unleashed massive intimidation against the opposition and their supporters and perpetrated voter fraud, which provoked widespread condemnation at home and abroad. Both SADC and the United Nations tried to intervene. It took more than a month before the final results were declared after being doctored to prevent a run-off—the winner needed more than 50% for outright victory. Finally, on May 2 the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission announced that the MDC leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, had received 47.9% of the vote, trailed by President Mugabe who received 43.2%, and the rest went to minor candidates. For the Parliamentary elections the MDC secured 100 seats and the breakaway MDC-Mutambara 10 seats, while the ruling ZANU-PF garnered 99 seats. In the Senate ZANU-PF claimed 57 seats, MDC 24, and MDC-Mutambara 12.

Despite international condemnation and interventions, violence and intimidation against the opposition continued, which saw dozens of people killed. The MDC decided to withdraw from the second round of presidential elections scheduled for June 27, 2008. President Mugabe won 85.51% of the vote in a much-reduced turnout placed at 42.37%. He was sworn in immediately after the results were announced. The regional bloc and the African Union called for Government of National Unity (GNU) between ZANU-PF and the MDC, which was eventually formed in early 2009 under which Morgan Tsvangirai became Prime Minister. It was a bloated government with two deputy vicepresidents, two deputy prime ministers, 31 ministers, 8 ministers of state, 20 deputy ministers, and 9 provincial governors.

The oversize government was not matched by its efficacy, let alone were the political divisions overcome. Indeed, as with most marriages of convenience, it was a fragile, acrimonious, and temporary union that crumbled several years later. To be sure, under the GNU, the economy recovered from the economic crisis of the 2000s that was characterized by endemic shortages of goods, hyperinflation measured in the trillions, the collapse of educational institutions and health facilities, massive unemployment, and migrations of an estimated 3-5 million to South Africa and other neighbouring countries as well as Europe and North America.

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The political respite that came with the containment of the MDC proved short-lived. Assured of its political dominance, ZANU-PF turned inward, and intra-party contestations over the post-Mugabe era heated up. As in many other dictatorships in post-colonial Africa, openly discussing the president’s fraility and demise were taboo. But everyone knew the old man was on his last legs as evidence mounted of his growing physical and mental infirmity. Predictably, the struggle centered on the position of the Vice-Presidency in which intra-Shona ethnic, generational, and gender cleavages reared their ugly heads. Ideology had long ceased to be a factor notwhitstanding invocations of tired socialist rhetoric and empty obeisance to protecting and promoting the ‘revolution.’

In recent years the intra-ZANU conflict has centered on the war veterans’ and postlibration generations coalesced around two key protagonists. On the one hand is the 75-year old Vice President, Mr. Mnangwaga, the cunning and ruthless ‘Crocodile’ infamous for orchestrating the Matabeleland massacres of 1983. On the other is the Generation 40 faction of post-liberation apparatchiks and looters beholden to the President’s wife, the combative 52 year old Ms. Grace Mugabe, who had since acquired an insatiable hunger for power beyond her earlier shopping addiction. Both sought the ouster of Ms. Joice Mujuru, a renowned war veteran in her own right, as Vice President, which happened in December 2014. Soon after Ms. Mujuru was expelled from ZANU-PF. Mr. Mnangwagwa and Ms. Mugabe fell into openly bitter jostling for power within ZANU-PF and for the president’s ear. The latter enjoyed the upper hand of marital intimacy and the support of the G40, while the former had the support of the war veterans and most crucially the military.

The reckoning came following the ouster of Mr. Mnangwagwa as Vice President on November 8, 2017. For the military and political elite that had accumulated vast wealth in an increasingly impoverished country and enjoyed political power for decades the prospects of Ms. Mugabe and the G40 supplanting them was anathema. They struck back on November 15. The hapless President quickly discovered that the weary population was not on his side as it marched in the streets of Harare with ecstacy not seen since independence. Even his party seemed more interested in protecting its hold on power and economic interests than in protecting him. Party branches passed no confidence votes in him and an emergency meeting was called to formally remove him as party leader. As with many dictators power oozed out of the once beloved and longdreaded President’s hands like air out of a deflated balloon.

…

The immediate trigger of President Mugabe’s fall came from the regime’s failure to manage the transition from the nation’s octogenarian founder to a successor and new political dispensation. The fratricidal conflict in ZANU-PF between the two generations means that the struggle for Zimbabwe’s future, the country of my birth whose struggles for liberation I cherish and whose bright future I yearn for, means the post-Mugabe era will be a troubled one. The vicious struggle between the two factions is less about charting a more productive future for the country, and more about safeguarding their ill-gotten wealth built on the carcasses of deepening poverty for millions of workers and peasants, not to mention the immiseration of significant sections of the middle classes. In short, both factions have profiteered from President Mugabe’s political repression and economic plunder.

Read full article at http://tinyurl.com/y9482jja

Op-Ed: Beware ‘Crocodile’ Mnangagwa – Zanu-PF is not renewing, it is a snake shedding its old skin

Leon Mighti

Daily Maverick, 21 Nov 2017

https://www.dailymaverick.co.za – Direct URL: http://tinyurl.com/y9h6k982

Those who believe Robert Mugabe should be punished for crimes against humanity and stand trial, I agree with you. If you believe that then you must believe the same for the number one henchman, Emmerson Mnangagwa. We cannot have a fresh start without a full account from Mugabe and Mnangagwa about what they did, who they did it with, and why they did it.

Let me share my Zim story with you.

When my mother fell pregnant at the age of 19, the first thing she did was buy life assurance. She didn’t want her only son to suffer in case something happened to her. So, she went to Old Mutual and got the best life assurance package they had. I sometimes see those adverts in the morning and think of it. Pay such and such at 20 and get R3-million if something happens.

My mother never thought that she would only live to be 29. She passed away so suddenly. There was a big fight for custody and perhaps even because of that life assurance policy. When it was all over we were well into the post-2000 Zimbabwe. That funeral policy ended up being worth less than the amount of taxi fare it cost to travel to the bank.

My mother worked all those years for nothing. Think about that for a second if you are a person who pays life assurance today. Politics can mess up your bank balance and wipe away a lifetime of sweat and tears. That’s how I was personally affected by the Mugabe era.

When I, like millions of others, ran away to try to pursue my dreams elsewhere. I had nothing. I struggled to pay for my fees at Wits. I was homeless for years and watched my peers graduate and buy cars while I stood selling earphones on the university library steps.

I left Zim back then because I had nothing, I wanted to be somebody and have something like the boys in my classes at CBC. I left Zim coz of the poverty I was tired of breathing every day. I left Zim because I wanted to be a doctor so badly but I didn’t have a chance in Zim (my marks were good but not good enough) at the one medical school that was present at the time. Only 200 could make it in and there was no graduate entry programme.

When my father died he was a plumber for the national railway services, the NRZ. He was a foreman and was damned good at what he did. One of my uncles (his cousin) loved to mock him for being a handyman but he loved that job and the dignity it offered him to provide for his family.

When he passed away he died a pauper. He was making less than R500 a month – when the government chose to pay. …

My father did his best to give me the best education; he gave me an education he could never afford. I went to Marist Brothers in Dete, and I was always one of the people who had to explain my fees situation. My trunk was never full, and Kudzai Mucheriwa is my witness. But my Dad did the best he could. I even went to CBC in Bulawayo and my stepmother hated it, she complained daily. I will never forget what my father said to her, “If we have to eat amacimbi (mopane worms) daily till he finishes school, we will eat amacimbi daily.”

He would do piece jobs for pennies in the many months that government did not pay. My father died still walking to work coz he could not afford to catch a taxi. From Northend to the NRZ close to the factories, in Bulawayo. If you know that area, imagine a qualified technical graduate, top of his class, a man who once managed city of Bulawayo water systems, a foreman for years. Walking to work.

Under Mugabe my father watched his dreams and efforts to create something of value for his family melt away. He tried to get into another country like so many others did to escape that suffocating poverty but it caught up with him…

I tell you those true personal stories to preface this next sentence.

I hate Robert Mugabe.

I haven’t shared how one of my grandmothers told me horror stories about some of what happened to her friends and family during Gugurahundi (the notorious massacres). She used to cringe when she saw that mass murderer on TV speaking as if he was God’s gift to Africa and Zimbabwe.

I hate Robert Mugabe.

I hate him so much I have obsessed over him, studying him, studying his rise to power and how he was able to destroy so many lives. How could one man do this. It was at that point that I realised he was NEVER ACTING ALONE.

I know that he did not do what he did alone. He had some people co-starring with him in this movie of Evil that we have all been watching since 1979. Joshua Nkomo warned people back then not to vote for an Idi Amin. He meant Mugabe, he had seen enough to make the conclusion; they say character is prologue.

So today I want to caution against dancing in the streets for the next Idi Amin whose governmental and leadership CV is as horrific as that of Mugabe, the number one disciple of Mugabe for 41 years. The co-star of the Robert Mugabe show.

Mr Emmerson (Crocodile by reputation) Mnangagwa.

If I hate Mugabe, I must also hate this man; there is no Mugabe without Mnangagwa. Two sides of the proverbial coin.

…

So having said all of this we have to truly consider if this is a #Freshstart for Zimbabwe?

Those who believe Mugabe should be punished for crimes against humanity and stand trial, I agree with you. If you believe that then you must believe the same for the number one henchman Mnangagwa. We cannot have a fresh start without a full account from Mugabe and Mnangagwa about what they did, who they did it with, why they did it. Until those people in those “affected” areas are made whole. Until they receive justice and closure. It was not a moment of madness as Mugabe and Mnangagwa have said on record, it was an intentional, calculated mass execution on ethnic grounds of innocent civilians. To put it in perspective, 30,000 lives were lost in the fight for independence, and just three years after getting it more than 20,000 people never lived to see it because Mugabe and Mnangagwa had to settle a tribal score with Mzilikazi and Lobengula.

For those who believe that Mugabe must account for all the farms that ended up belonging to his wife and not the people, Mnangagwa must account for the same corruption, he owns many farms too, and so do many military generals. The economic and social crimes that they see all of a sudden, both the Lacoste faction and the G40 faction committed those crimes against the dowry of Chimurenga that is not theirs to self-appropriate. Mnangagwa must explain what happened to the 15-billion. Is this what he used to pay the army for its loyalty? Those are blood diamonds, for sure.

For those who say Mugabe has been rigging elections, has been suppressing rights of the people to movement, to free speech, to fair trial. To all those people I say you are absolutely right. Mugabe did all those things, and he did them with Mnangagwa. Who helped Mugabe arrest journalists and activists, where is Dzamara? Mnangagwa must tell us where they buried him.

…

Read full article at http://tinyurl.com/y9h6k982

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Africa/Global: Counterproductive Counterterrorism

AfricaFocus Bulletin November 13, 2017 (171113) (Reposted from sources cited below)

Editor’s Note What strategies work to counter terrorism effectively, whether in Africa or anywhere else in the world? Few would claim to have a convincing answer to that question. However, there is some real evidence of what strategies do not work and are even counterproductive. For example, a new UNDP study studying recruitment to violent extremism, based on interviews with former extremists in Nigeria, Kenya, and Somalia, found a number of factors underlying the growth of violent extremism. Particularly striking was the finding that 71 percent of recruits interviewed said that it was some form of government action that was the ‘tipping point’ that triggered their final decision to join an extremist group. Those interviewed cited incidents such as ‘killing of a family member or friend’ or ‘arrest of a family member or friend’, as the incident that prompted them to join. These findings throw into stark relief the question of how counterterrorism and wider security functions of governments in at-risk environments conduct themselves with regard to human rights and due process. State security-actor conduct is revealed as a prominent accelerator of recruitment, rather than the reverse. This AfricaFocus contains excerpts from the 128-page UNDP report “Journey to Extremism in Africa,” as well as links to a press release and the full report. It also contains a survey article by Obi Anyadike, Africa Editor of IRIN, on how police conduct (which should be the first line of defense against extremism) instead fosters recruitment through abuses against civilians. IRIN, founded by the United Nations, is now an independent non-profit news service featuring first-hand reporting on humanitarian crises. Another AfricaFocus Bulletin, also released today, and available at http://www.africafocus.org/docs17/sah1711.php, focuses specifically on the questions raised for the recent deaths of four U.S. Soldiers in Niger. It features links and brief excerpts from articles selected to highlight questions asked, unasked, and half-answered. For previous AfricaFocus Bulletins on peace and security issues, visit http://www.africafocus.org/intro-peace.php ++++++++++++++++++++++end editor’s note+++++++++++++++++

Unfair cop – why African police forces make violent extremism worse

Obi Anyadike, Editor-at-Large and Africa Editor

IRIN. 28 Septermber 2017

http://www.irinnews.org – direct URL: http://tinyurl.com/yab9couf

Part of a special project exploring violent extremism in Nigeria and the Sahel (https://www.irinnews.org/in-depth/countering-militancy-sahel)

Undermanned, underfunded, underwhelming: African police forces struggle to contain regular crime, and they are even further out of their depth when it comes to tackling violent extremism.

The best way to identify threats to public safety is a policing model that promotes trust and collaboration with the community, say the policy manuals on preventing violent extremism, better known as PVE. A positive relationship is believed to help build resilience to radicalisation.

But the reality in much of the world is that the police are viewed as corrupt, violent, and people best avoided.

“In African culture the police are there to intimidate, to coerce,” acknowledged Kenyan senior sergeant Francis Mwangi.

He is trying his best to change that perception. Sharp and articulate, Mwangi is the face of a new policing initiative in the Nairobi slum of Kamakunji, which aims to build a partnership with the community to help blunt radicalisation of the youth.

Traditional policing – far too often based on brutality and arbitrary arrest rather than proper detective work – can create more fear of the security services than the insurgents and is clearly counter-productive.

The effectiveness of police forces, whether national or international, such as this UN peacekeeping patrol in Mali in 2014, depend on good relations with local communities. But the growth of violent extremism in many countries is a signal that this counsel is often not followed in practice. UN Photo/Marco Dormino.

A new UNDP study based on interviews with more than 500 jihadists – drawn mainly from Kenya, Nigeria, and Somalia­ – found that in over 70 percent of cases “government action”, including the killing or arrest of a family member or friend, was the tipping point that prompted them to join.

Why is the culture of human rights abuse and resistance to reform so deeply ingrained?

Citizen or subject

Part of the problem is history. African police forces were set up by the colonial powers to maintain control over the local population. Independence didn’t really change that function. Their role largely remains regime protection and representation rather than serving the public.

As a result, most police forces are seriously undermanned. The UN recommends a ratio of 300 officers per 100,000 citizens. It’s a rough guide – force levels are influenced by a range of factors. But Kenya manages a ratio of only 203, Nigeria 187, and Mali – another country facing an Islamist insurgency – just 38.

Police forces are also underequipped. From vehicles and the fuel to run them, to paper, pens, and printing ink. The barest of necessities are in short supply, before you get to functioning forensic labs and national fingerprint databases.

Unsurprisingly, conviction rates are low. In South Africa, one of the more advanced police forces on the continent, only an estimated 10 percent of murder cases end in conviction. In crimes of sexual violence, it falls to between four and eight percent.

The temptation, then, is to turn to forced confessions. In Nigeria, torture has become such an integral part of policing that many stations have an informal torture officer, according to a 2014 Amnesty International report.

The prevalence of shoot-to-kill policies are also a reflection of the failure of the criminal justice system, with sections of the community seeing themselves as targets of persecution.

Police hit squads take that logic one step further. In the Kenyan port city of Mombasa, they are known to operate against so-called radical elements, whose deaths only serve to stoke the anger of Muslim youth, who view themselves as already marginalised.

Nigeria provides a stark example of the impact of the failure of due process. In 2009 the police killed Boko Haram founder Mohamed Yusuf while he was in custody. It did not stop his movement, and his successor, Abubakar Shakau, has proved a far more brutal and implacable enemy.

The impunity of the police commanders involved in the murder undermines the moral authority of the Nigerian state.

Governance failure is key in the tolerance of abuse. A corrupt political system breeds corrupt cops. If states are unwilling to provide opportunities, services, and rights to entire sections of its citizens, “there is then little reason to expect national police actors to do so”, argues a report by the Global Centre on Cooperative Security.

Sympathy for the police

The subservience of the police to the ruling elite doesn’t win them any political favours. Conditions of service are generally appalling and pay poor. Families of officers killed in action can struggle to receive their benefits – with kickbacks expected.

A former Nigerian Inspector General of Police acknowledged that some barracks were “to say the least, nauseating”. In the absence of accommodation, one Nigerian officer told IRIN how he spent the first few months of his posting to the northeastern city of Maiduguri sleeping on two plastic hard-backed chairs.

The police top-brass regularly make whistle-stop visits to the city as part of political entourages, but hardly ever drop in on the officers who are on the frontline of the insurgency, and very much targets for Boko Haram.

Predatory police take out their frustrations on the public – typically the most vulnerable and powerless members of society. According to an Afrobarometer survey across 34 countries, the police are universally regarded as the most corrupt of institutions – well ahead of even government officials.

“In most cases the police in Africa are demoralised because the remuneration they are getting is just peanuts,” said sergeant Mwangi in half-hearted mitigation. “They have a family to feed so can be prone to being compromised.”

In the Afrobarometer survey, more than half of respondents who had been victims of a crime did not report it to the police. Regionally, levels of distrust were highest in East Africa – just 43 percent said they would seek the assistance of police first if they became victims.

That’s because the police don’t have a monopoly on criminal justice. People often have multiple choices, with varying degrees of legitimacy and links to the state – from family and friends out to exact revenge, to local militia, customary courts, and formal commercial security guards.

Western models of PVE stress community policing – the ideal of the “bobby on the beat”. But in an African context, community policing means something quite different.

These informal security systems – some of which are just plain vigilantes – have less to do with notions of state legitimacy, “and more to do with what’s available, trusted, and affordable,” the Global Centre on Cooperative Security report points out.

Resistant to reform

Security sector reform is a growth industry in aid world, despite little concrete evidence of success. The reports compiled by external police experts, paid for with donor money, gather dust on the shelves of police commands, the officer in Maiduguri told IRIN.

According to researcher Alice Hills, police reform cannot be divorced from “fundamental socio-political change”. Without buy-in from the powers that be, the effects are only transitory.

The lessons being learnt by sergeant Mwangi in Kamakunji, for instance, are yet to feature in the curriculum of the Kenyan police college.

Reform is admittedly difficult to tackle in the middle of an insurgency. The priority of governments and their international partners is for harder-hitting security services, not the soft power of PVE.

What that can mean in practice is squads of men who are simply more proficient at harming their fellow citizens and extracting rents.

What is needed are “programmes that recognise that the core problems of governance lies in incentives and desire, not capacity,” write researchers Rachel Kleinfeld and Harry Bader.

oa/ag

UNDP, Journey to Extremism in Africa: Drivers, Incentives and the Tipping Point for Recruitment. 2017.

http://journey-to-extremism.undp.org/en/reports – Direct URL for full report: http://tinyurl.com/y9g6n6qp – Sept. 7, 2017 press release: http://tinyurl.com/yamo4ucy

Journey to Extremism in Africa: Key findings

Starting with the ‘accident of geography’ that is place of childhood, experiences related to living in highly peripheral regions of Africa – often borderlands and traditionally marginalized regions – begin to shape individuals’ worldview and vulnerability. Long-standing realities of ‘centre/periphery’ divides have, if anything, been exacerbated by the recent economic growth enjoyed overall in Africa. The vulnerabilities of communities living in such areas (macro- and meso-level factors) were, in the journeys to extremism of the individuals interviewed, refracted through micro-level experiences of early childhood. These included a relative lack of exposure to people of other religions and ethnicities. Perception of childhood happiness was lower among those who went on to join violent extremist groups within the sample. The critical factor in explaining childhood unhappiness that correlates with future extremism is perceived lack of parental involvement in the child’s life. Further, in environments where overall levels of literacy and education are low, individuals who later join violent extremist groups are found in this research to be particularly deprived in educational terms. Their experience of civic engagement in childhood was also low.

The findings also clearly differentiate between perceptions about religion and its significance as a reason for joining violent extremist groups, and actual religious literacy. Fifty-one percent of respondents selected religion as a reason for joining. However, as many as 57 percent of the respondents also admitted to limited or no understanding of religious texts. Indeed, higher than average years of religious schooling appears to have been a source of resilience. These findings challenge rising Islamophobic rhetoric that has intensified in response to violent extremism globally, and demonstrate that fostering greater understanding of religion, through methods that enable students to question and engage critically with teachings, is a key resource for PVE. Further, feeling that ‘religion is under threat’ was found to be a common perspective among many respondents. This sounds a warning that recruitment by violent extremist groups in Africa, using religion as a touchstone for other context- based grievances, can readily expand.

The Journey to Extremism research unequivocally underscores the relevance of economic factors as drivers of recruitment. The grievances associated with growing up in contexts where multidimensional poverty is high and far deeper than national averages, with the lived reality of unemployment and underemployment, render ‘economic factors’ a major source of frustration identified by those who joined violent extremist groups. This is a key dimension of individuals’ vulnerability to narratives that invite them to channel such grievances and associated desperation into the cause of extremism. If an individual was studying or working, it emerged that that he or she would be less likely to become a member of an extremist organization. Employment is the single most frequently cited ‘immediate need’ faced at the time of joining. Individuals who joined but were studying or employed (not in vulnerable employment) at the time of joining the organization took longer to take the decision to join than did counterparts either in vulnerable employment or unemployed. Respondents report uneven experiences in receiving salaries for being active members of violent extremist groups: some were paid above the local average, whereas at least 35 percent were not paid at all during their period of recruitment.

The research makes clear that a sense of grievance towards, and limited confidence in, government is widespread in the regions of Africa associated with the highest incidence of violent extremism. This may be an inevitable corollary of the life experience of growing up in the context of acute and relative multidimensional poverty, neglect and political marginalization affecting these areas. However, disaffection with government is highest by significant margins among the Journey to Extremism respondents who were recruited by violent extremist groups across several key indicators. These include: belief that government only looks after the interests of a few; low level of trust in government authorities; and experience, or willingness to report experience, of bribe-paying. Grievances against security actors, as well as politicians, are particularly marked, with an average of 78 percent rating low levels of trust in the police, politicians and military. Those most susceptible to recruitment express a significantly lower degree of confidence in the potential for democratic institutions to deliver progress or meaningful change. Meanwhile, positive experience of effective service provision is confirmed as a source of resilience: respondents who believed that governments’ provision of education was either ‘excellent’ or ‘improving’ were less likely to be a member of a violent extremist group, within the sample.

The research specifically set out to discover what pushed a handful of individuals to join violent extremist groups, when many others facing similar sets of circumstances did not. This specific moment or factor is referred to as the ‘tipping point’. The idea of a transformative trigger that pushes individuals decisively from the ‘atrisk’ category to actually taking the step of joining is substantiated by the Journey to Extremism data. A striking 71 percent pointed to ‘government action’, including ‘killing of a family member or friend’ or ‘arrest of a family member or friend’, as the incident that prompted them to join. These findings throw into stark relief the question of how counter-terrorism and wider security functions of governments in atrisk environments conduct themselves with regard to human rights and due process. State security-actor conduct is revealed as a prominent accelerator of recruitment, rather than the reverse.

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AfricaFocus Bulletin is an independent electronic publication providing reposted commentary and analysis on African issues, with a particular focus on U.S. and international policies. AfricaFocus Bulletin is edited by William Minter.

AfricaFocus Bulletin can be reached at africafocus@igc.org. Please write to this address to suggest material for inclusion. For more information about reposted material, please contact directly the original source mentioned. For a full archive and other resources, see http://www.africafocus.org