Archive for the ‘Africa’ Category

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Political activists of renown

Published by peter on 2009-12-20 in Africa, Heroes, History and Politics. Closed

Recently, I have listed the teachers and writers who have influenced me, along with the managers whom I admire.  I now list the politicians and political activists whom I admire.  Some of these led conventional political careers, others were community organizers or single-issue advocates, and yet others were spies, or were accused of being such.

Edmund Campion, Robert Persons, Robert Southwell, Thomas Aikenhead, Tom Paine, Abe Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Solomon Plaatje, Franklin Roosevelt, Ted Theodore, John Curtin, Doc Evatt, Richard Sorge, Imre Nagy, Zhou Enlai, Milada Horakova, Bram Fischer, Salvador Allende Gossens, Lyndon Johnson, Donal Lamont, Rudolf Margolius, Gough Whitlam, Helen Suzman, Andrei Sakharov, Alexander Dubcek, Nelson Mandela, Zhao Ziyang, Martin Luther King Jr, Zdenek Mlynar, Mikhail Gorbachev, Vaclav Havel, Michael Schneider, Bella Subbotovskaya, Paul Keating, Vadim Delone, Jes Albert Möller, Barack Obama and Rory Stewart.

Australia (5), Czechoslovakia (5), and South Africa (5) have produced more than their per capita share of political heroes, it would seem, but the distribution no doubt reflects my reading and interests.  Of course, it hardly needs to be said that I do not necessarily agree with any or all the views these people have expressed or hold, nor necessarily support all their actions.

Heroes: the underground railroad in Rhodesia

Published by peter on 2009-12-15 in Africa, Heroes, History and Politics. Closed

Talking about Zimbabwean history reminded me that there are some unsung heroes of Zimbabwe’s struggle for majority rule whom I wish to salute.   These are the people who, rejecting the racist policies of the Rhodesian Front government, organized an illegal underground railroad to secretly transport black and white resisters across the border, mostly to Botswana and Zambia.   The whites transported were usually resisting military conscription to fight in a war they disagreed with, a war in support of a cause they believed immoral.  I knew a couple of these railwaymen:  AP (“Knotty”) Knottenbelt, who had been headmaster of Fletcher High School, a state boarding school for black boys, from where he resigned in 1969 rather than raise a Rhodesian flag; he is said to have tied the flag to the back of his car and driven it through the dust of the schoolyard in front of the assembled students before hoisting it; he later tutored at the University of Zimbabwe, and the Mugabe Government appointed him to the board of the Posts and Telecommunications Corporation after Independence.     Another railwayman was his bridge partner, Nick Holman (1919-2002), father of the (now former) Financial Times Africa Editor, Michael Holman.   These men and their collaborators deserve praise and admiration for their great personal courage in support of a non-racial society.

One of those transported by this railroad was the late Christopher Lewis, son, grandson, and great-grandson of Rhodes Scholars.  His father, Charles Patrick Jameson (“Pat”) Lewis (d. 1975) was a lawyer in partnership with Hardwicke Holderness MP (1915-2007), and Chairman from 1961-1969 of the Constitutional Council established under the 1961 Rhodesian constitution; Christopher Lewis’s paternal great-grandfather Vernon Lewis CMG (d. 1950), was a Rhodes Scholar later appointed in 1950 Chief Justice of Southern Rhodesia (being succeeded on his death the same year by Sir Robert Tredgold);  Vernon Lewis was married to Ethel Amy Jameson, daughter of Leander Starr Jameson (1853-1917), Prime Minister of the Cape Colony between 1904-1908, who had led a failed attack against the Transvaal in 1895-1896 (later called the Jameson Raid).  Another son of Vernon Lewis, John Vernon Radcliffe Lewis (1917-?), was also a Rhodesian and Zimbabwean judge.

Christopher Lewis’s maternal grandfather Leonard Ray Morgan (1894-1967), also a Rhodes Scholar, was a lifelong friend of Robert Graves whom he met at Oxford, and was Permanent Secretary for Education in the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland; and Christopher’s uncle by marriage was the chiShona linguist, George Fortune (1915-2012).  Ian Hancock’s interesting history of liberal white opposition to the racist policies of the Rhodesia Front is dedicated to the memory of Pat Lewis. Christopher’s sister Annette was married to lawyer Anthony Eastwood (1940-2015), whose first wife Ruth Fischer (later Ruth Fischer-Rice) (b. 1939) was the daughter of Bram Fischer (1908-1975), lead defence counsel at the Rivonia Trial of Nelson Mandela and others. Bram Fischer was the son of a Judge-President of the Orange Free State and grandson of the only Prime Minister of the Orange River Colony, Abraham Fischer (Prime Minister 1907-1910); his wife Molly was a niece of Jan Smuts.

Well before the fall of communism, Anthony Eastwood once told me of visiting the USSR as an honoured guest and asking, as a lawyer, if he could meet a fellow lawyer.  The next day he was ushered into a meeting with the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the USSR.

A wonderfully well-written but very sad memoir by Hayden Eastwood, son of Anthony and Annette Eastwood, of his upbringing was published in 2018.

References:

Hayden Eastwood [2018]: Like Sodium in Water: A Memoir of Home and Heartache. Cape Town, RSA: Jonathan Ball.

Ian Hancock [1984]: White Liberals, Moderates and Radicals in Rhodesia 1953-1980. New York, USA: St Martin’s Press.

Lancaster bombing

Published by peter on 2009-12-14 in Africa, History and Politics. Closed

This week marks the 30th anniversary of the signing of the Lancaster House Agreement between the British Government and the major political forces in Zimbabwe, an agreement which led to Zimbabwe momentarily becoming – for the first time in its history – a British colony.  Before 1979, Rhodesia had initially been governed from the first European settlement in 1890 as a concession of the British South African Company* (advised from 1898 to 1923 by a semi-elected council), and then from 1923 as a self-governing British territory with dominion-like status.  From 1898 onwards the franchise, as in other British-controlled territories in Southern Africa starting in 1836, was a conditional one – in order to vote one had to satisfy certain conditions: age, gender, literacy, education, income, and property-ownership.   These conditions were biased against non-whites, but did not exclude them completely, as I explained here.  Because the franchise was not race-based, white Rhodesians like Ian Smith could delude sympathetic foreigners, and themselves, that they were running a democratic and non-racial government.
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Public lectures

Published by peter on 2009-10-08 in Africa, Argumentation, Oratory, Politics and Rhetoric. 0 Comments

I expect that Bertrand Russell is the only person in history to have given public lectures to both TS Eliot (in lectures given at Harvard University) and Mao Tse-Tung (in a lecture series given in China).  With youtube and the web, we are in danger of forgetting how special an occasion a public speech can be.  And so I decided to list the people whose public lectures I have heard.  I’ve not included lecturers and teachers whose courses I attended, the most influential (upon me) I have previously listed here, nor talks given at conferences or in academic seminars.

Kenneth Arrow (2000), Michael Atiyah (2008, 2013), PK van der Byl (1985), James Callaghan (1980), Noam Chomsky (2003), Thomas Clayton (2012), David Coltart (2016), Joan Coxsedge (1979), Don Dunstan (1976), Steve Fuller (2008), Dov Gabbay (2012), Julia Gillard (2016), Joe Gqabi (1981),  Tim Harford (2011), Bob Hawke (1980), Xavier Herbert (1976), Anahid Kassabian (2009), Michael Kearns (2011), David Kilcullen (2013), Hans Kung (c. 1985), Kgosa Linchwe II Kgafela (1983), Bill Mansfield (1976-1980, several times), Robert May (2011, twice), Mobutu Sese Seko (1981, at gunpoint), Moshoeshoe II (1982), Robert Mugabe (1981-7, numerous times), Ralph Nader (c. 1977), Robert Oakeshott (c. 1985), Christos Papadimitriou (2009), Malcolm Rifkind (2016), Joseph Rotblat (2002), Rory Stewart (2009), Oliver Tambo (1987), Edgar Tekere (1981), Rene Thom (1979), John Tukey (c. 1979), Moshe Vardi (2010), Gough Whitlam (1975-8, several times), Gerry Wilkes (1975), Elizabeth II Windsor (1980), Andrew Young (1979) and Mick Young (1979).
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Bonuses yet again

Published by peter on 2009-09-09 in Africa, Corporate culture, Decision theory, Forecasting, Market planning, Planning and Project Management. 0 Comments

Alex Goodall, over at A Swift Blow to the Head, has written another angry post about the bonuses paid to financial sector staff. I’ve been in several minds about responding, since my views seem to be decidedly minority ones in our present environment, and because there seems to be so much anger abroad on this topic.  But so much that is written and said, including by intelligent, reasonable people such as Alex, mis-understands the topic, that I feel a response is again needed.  It behooves none of us to make policy on the basis of anger and ignorance.
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A good woman in Africa

Published by peter on 2009-08-11 in Advertising, Africa, Anthropology, Culture and Politics. Closed

Marbury reports on the reaction of US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton to a question asked by a university student in Kinshasa about her husband’s opinion on some issue.  She appears to have taken umbrage at being asked for Bill’s opinion, as if she would have  no opinions of her own.

If the questioner were an Australian journalist (Norman Gunston, say*), then she would have been correct to take offence. But the questioner was Congolese, and the question could have been asked sincerely.  Perhaps no aspect of African culture is more distinct from contemporary, post-Protestant, western culture than the relationship between individuals and families.  In traditional African society, individuals would not normally have their own opinions; rather, they would defer to the group opinion of the extended family to which they belong.  These family opinions are reached in different ways, in some cases by discussion among the adults until a consensus emerges, in other cases by diktak by the most powerful family member (who may not necessarily be the eldest male).   The means of reaching shared opinions differ from one society to another, from one family to another, and even, within a single family, from one occasion to another.  In short, the locus of decision-making is not an individual but a group. 

Traditional Catholic culture has more in common with this idea than our post-Protestant western culture because in Catholic belief, it is the Church, as a whole, that mediates communications between Man and God, and which is the recipient of Christian grace.  Protestants allowed each person to speak to God him or herself directly, thus promoting (or perhaps examplifying or accompanying) the trend to individualism that has been a feature of western life these last two centuries or so.

This fact of African life has implications for anyone doing market research or opinion polling in Africa, since the standard method used for random variation of respondents within households in sample surveys (the so-called Kish Grid) does not work.  People speaking to sample surveyers, if they are willing to speak, want to give their family’s opinion not their own (if indeed, the concept of “their own opinion” makes any sense to them), and usually they want the designated household spokesperson to do the speaking. Depending on the specific culture, this designated person might be the eldest male, or it might be the youngest child, or the person with the most formal education.   I know this from my own experience doing market research surveys in Southern Africa, and I wrote about this experience for an anthropology journal.   Similarly, there are important implications for anyone designing and executing marketing campaigns or public health information campaigns in Africa, and perhaps elsewhere in the world (eg, Latin America).

On balance, I think Mrs Clinton should probably not have taken personal offence at the question.  But the fact that she did take umbrage points to the very profound cultural difference at play here.

Footnote:

* At a US press conference given to announce a movie about Watergate, Norman Gunston asked if the film would have any 18.5 minute gaps in it, as Nixon’s secret Oval Office tapes did, and whether former President Nixon would receive complimentary tickets to the film.

Reference:
P. J. McBurney [1988]: On transferring statistical techniques across cultures: the Kish Grid. Current Anthropology, 29 (2): 323-5.

Tony Benn in Rhodesia

Published by peter on 2009-07-05 in Africa, History and Politics. 0 Comments
Normblog today quotes an interview with former British Cabinet Minister and MP Tony Benn, talking about visiting Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) during WW II:
When I was there, there was no democracy at all: all the good land had been stolen and given to white farmers, no African had votes, it was a criminal offence for an African to have a skilled job; and now we lecture Zimbabwe on democracy – total hypocrisy.”
First, as so often with Benn, rhetorical effect takes priority over truth.   The franchise in Southern Rhodesia was not based on race, but on age, property ownership, income, and a test of English literacy.  Despite the inherent bias of these conditions (made worse by the use of a definition of “property” which excluded cattle, the main traditional form of black wealth), some black Rhodesians qualified to vote from the granting of self-government in 1923.  Of course, the number of black voters enrolled was tiny (in 1948, 248 non-whites to 48,000 whites enrolled), but even 248 is not zero.    Such a system allowed many white Rhodesians to convince themselves their electoral system was not racist.    The electoral situation in Rhodesia was undemocratic enough without Benn having to exaggerate it.
Second, the fact that any non-whites had the vote at all was due to British government insistence against the wishes of most of the Rhodesian white population, from 1898 onwards (see West 2002).  Benn’s statement jumps from a description of Southern Rhodesia in WW II straight to Zimbabwe in 2009, ignoring the campaigns for majority rule in the 1950s and 1960s, the international struggle and sanctions against the illegal UDI regime of Ian Smith, the British-sponsored negotiations leading to British-led peace-keeping forces, majority rule, and independence in Zimbabwe in 1980, and the political, technical, moral and financial support given by Britain for the newly-elected democratic Government of Robert Mugabe.   It is Mugabe and his ZANU-PF henchmen, not Britain, who have failed to honour the standards of democracy.   Like Norman Lamont in his deplorable support for the Chilean murderer Augusto Pinochet, Tony Benn seems to apply one standard to elections in Britain and another standard elsewhere.    As with Lamont, let me ask Benn:  Would it have been OK for John Major to have terrorized and murdered his opponents and refused to leave office when he lost the British election of 1997?  If not, then why is it OK for Robert Mugabe to do so?  Such a double standard strikes me as treating black people differently to white people.
 
POSTSCRIPT (2009-07-07):
The advisory Legislative Council established by the ruling British South Africa Company in Southern Rhodesia in 1898 had 6 appointed and 5 elected members, who were, from its creation, chosen under a non-racial franchise (see Walker 1953, p. 104).   This franchise was that in force in the Cape Colony, which itself dated from a Municipal Ordinance of 1836, which created a conditional, but colour-blind, franchise for some local governments based solely on ownership or rental of fixed residential property above stated monetary values.   Other tests, such as literacy in English, were added later to the conditions.  Indeed, the history of white rule in southern Africa in the 19th century can be seen as a fight between liberal, often colour-blind policies imposed from the Colonial Office in London but opposed by far-less-often liberal settlers, particularly those of Afrikaaner origin, who repeatedly left the area under British colonial jurisdiction to establish their own settlements further inland.
 
Reference:
Michael O. West [2002]:  The Rise of an African Middle Class:  Colonial Zimbabwe 1898 – 1965. Indiana University Press.
Eric A. Walker [1953]: The franchise in Southern Africa. Cambridge Historical Journal, 11 (1): 93-113.

Minority politics

Published by peter on 2009-03-31 in Africa, Culture, History and Politics. 0 Comments

The death this weekend of Janet Jagan (1920-2009), former President of Guyana (1997-1999), is a reminder that the election of President Barack Obama in the USA last November was not the first time that a democracy has elected a national leader who was a member of an ethnic minority.  Born Janet Rosenberg, Janet Jagan was a ruthless Chicago pol, although far to the left of Young Bazza.  Indeed, since no ethnic group in Guyana has a majority, one could argue that every leader which that country has elected democratically (which, sadly, is not all of Guyana’s leaders) has been an example of a majority electing a leader from a minority.  Elsewhere in South America, Alberto Fujimori, a Peruvian of Japanese descent, was three times elected President of Peru from 1990-2000.

And there are other examples, if one widens the definition of ethnicity:  Britain currently has a Scottish-born Prime Minister, its second Scottish-educated PM in succession, and disproportionately many Scots Cabinet Ministers.   Both Britain and Australia have in the past elected as leaders people whose first language was not English, and both did so around the same time:  Lloyd George in Britain (PM 1916-1922), and Billy Hughes in Australia (PM 1915-1923), were second-language speakers of English, both having Welsh as their mother-tongue.  Australia’s current Deputy Prime Minister (and this week again Acting PM), Julia Gillard, is also Welsh-born.   One of Australia’s most influential politicians in its first two decades, and founder of Canberra as the national capitol, was King O’Malley (1858-1953), who was almost certainly born in the USA.  Both Australia and New Zealand had several Cabinet Ministers in their first decades born in the other country.  And the Australian state of New South Wales has had a Premier born in Hungary (Nick Greiner, Premier 1988-1992), one born in the USA (Kristina Keneally, Premier 2009-2011), and one whose first language was Armenian (Gladys Berejiklian, Premier 2017- ).  Sydney has had a Lord Mayor born in Poland (Leo Port, 1975-1978).  Australia currently has a Federal Minister for Finance born in Belgium (Mathias Cormann).

And Britain, as perhaps befits a former colonial power, has had a succession of Cabinet ministers from abroad (although not all of these have been elected).  Lloyd George offered a position in his cabinet during WW I to American businessman, Herbert Hoover (who declined the post).  In both world wars, the British PM established an Imperial War Cabinet, in which the dominions were invited to be represented, although not all took up the invitation.  In recent years, Britons have seen Ministers who were born or raised in Australia (Patricia Hewitt), Dominica (Baroness Patricia Scotland), Ghana (Paul Boateng), Guyana (Baroness Valerie Amos), Iraq (Ara Darzi, although of Armenian descent), Kenya & South Africa (Peter Hain), and Yemen (Keith Vaz).   Malcolm Rifkind, Defence Minister and Foreign Minister under John Major (1992-1997), spent part of his early adult life in Africa (in Zimbabwe, then Rhodesia), as Major himself did also (in Nigeria).

“Only in America!”, as Yogi Berra might say.

POSTSCRIPT:  Writing this, I forgot Bill Skate, Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea from 1997-1999; Julius Chan, Prime Minister 1980-1982 and 1994-1997; and Peter O’Neill, Primer Minister since 2011.  All three men are of mixed race ancestry.   And there was also Paul Berenger, Prime Minister of Mauritius from 2003-2005, a Christian leader in a majority Hindu nation, and Guy Scott, briefly President of Zambia (2014-2015).  These have been the only Caucasian leaders of African nations post Independence or majority rule.

POSTSCRIPT 2 [2012-03-14]:  And one could also mention the leaders of various places who were members of religious minorities, and whose elections sometimes excited controversy:  JFK in the USA is the most famous.  Before him, we had various Jewish premiers in predominantly Christian or gentile dominions:  Julius Vogel (PM of New Zealand, 1873-1875), Vaiben Solomon (Premier, South Australia, 1899), Francis Bell (PM, New Zealand, 1925), David Marshall (Initial Chief Minister, Singapore, 1954-1956), Roy Welensky (PM, Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland,  1956-1963), and John Key (PM, New Zealand, 2008-2016).

POSTSCRIPT 3 [2024-07-31]: Perhaps this is the place to mention Mr Stuart Comberbach, a white Zimbabwean diplomat, who has been a senior diplomat with the governments of successively Rhodesia, Zimbabwe-Rhodesia, and Zimbabwe since 1974. He has previously been the Zimbabwean ambassador to Italy and to Japan, and is currently the country’s ambassador to various UN agencies in Geneva. His first overseas posting, under the rebel Rhodesian Government of Ian Smith, was as leader of a representative trade office in Gabon from 1974 to 1979. Who knew Rhodesia had enough trade with Gabon to justify a permanent trade mission there?

And here is a list of people who served in more than one Parliament or Assembly.

Adults at the helm, again

Published by peter on 2008-11-24 in Africa, Economics, Politics and Post-Industrial Nomads. 0 Comments

Africans will note that President-elect Barack Obama has selected his homeboy, the admirable Timothy Geithner,  as his nominee for Treasury Secretary.  Geithner spent part of his childhood in East Africa.  I’m sure it was professional competence and not fluency in Dholuo which got him the job.
And here’s The Economist:

“Assuming he is nominated Mr Geithner brings two crucial qualities. First, he represents continuity. From the first days of the crisis last year, he has worked hand in glove with Ben Bernanke, the Fed chairman, and Mr Paulson. He can continue to do so while awaiting confirmation. If Citigroup, for example, needs federal help, Mr Geithner will be involved. An unknown when he joined the New York Fed in 2003, he is now a familiar face to the most senior executives on Wall Street and to central bankers and finance ministers overseas.
Second, he represents competence. He has spent more time on financial crises, from Mexico and Thailand to Brazil and Argentina, than probably any other policymaker in office today. Mr Geithner understands better than almost anyone that in crises you throw out the forecast and focus on avoiding low probability events with catastrophic consequences. Such judgments are excruciating: do too little, and you undermine confidence and generate a bigger crisis that needs even bigger policy action. Do too much, and you look panicked and invite blowback from Wall Street, Congress and the press. At times during the crisis Mr Geithner would counsel Mr Bernanke on the importance of the right “ratio of drama to effectiveness”.
Ah, glorious, glorious competence. How we’ve missed you.”