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Issues in the Contemporary Politics of Sub-Saharan Africa: The Dynamics of Struggle and Resistance. Graham
Harrison. New
York:
Palgrave Macmillan. 2002. 208 pp.
In
this book, Harrison grapples with the tendency of analysts to
homogenize African realities, “make grand generalizations about an ‘African
malaise’ or even a dark continent”, and approach Africa as a singular and diseased entity, rather than an amalgam of cultures
and entities with diverse experiences, apparent problems and innate promises
(p. 14). Owing to this practice, Africans have become passive, helpless and
incompetent beings who are subsisting in a violent and poverty-laden milieu,
and essentially are unable to wrest themselves from those presumably
responsible for their dire conditions.
Harrison’s political-economy approach is dynamic
and informed by struggle. He rejects a structural approach, which does not
imbue Africans with agency and which ignores (or dismisses) Africans’ novel
resistance to and transformation of myriad sources of oppression. He
highlights the inauspicious legacies of colonialism, which resulted in
corruption, authoritarianism and extra-economic coercion, and which
engendered “contradictions between accumulation and political power…as
factions fought over patronage, and states extracted such high rent from
their citizenry that peasants, traders and others bypassed the state
altogether” (pp. 9-10). Harrison concretizes the notion of struggle within the
context of the tenuous interplay between ‘peasants’ and the state, and
discards the idea that ‘peasants’ are primitive, “isolated or backward, [and
far removed] from the intrinsic dynamism of modernity” (p. 25).
In the second chapter, Harrison maintains that “the most rewarding pathway in analyzing peasant
politics is to concentrate on the ongoing dynamics of interaction between
peasants and other social groups, and pay attention to the ongoing battles
within peasant society concerning the control of wealth, capital and power”
(p. 40). Nevertheless, we are cautioned not to idealize peasants as ‘virtuous’
individuals engaged in a just war with ‘vicious’ states, as the former
routinely “avoid[ed] and bypass[ed] the state, subvert[ed] the effects and
purpose of state action, captured the state at the local level and
selectively engag[ed] with it where it [wa]s advantageous to do so” (p.48).
Thereafter, Harrison describes how resistance featured in the “politics of debt and social
struggle”, democratization and the formation of new political identities. He
focuses on the contours of the debt crisis vis-à-vis the state and civil
society organizations (CSOs), and analyses the negative effects of the
structural adjustment program (SAP) on wage laborers and the vulnerable, its
divergent impacts on the peasantry and others, and CSOs’ vociferous reactions
to this reality.
For its part, the struggle for democratization
stemmed from the unrelenting demand for economic justice that typified the
SAP debate, which not only radicalized many African CSOs but precipitated
clamors for political liberalization. Furthermore, international financial
institutions (IFIs) and other donors, by tying their aid to improved
governance, created openings in erstwhile-closed regimes. Consequently, the
typical debt-ridden African regime found itself caught between the proverbial
rock and a hard place, and was forced to adopt ‘democratic’ policies that
favored “multipartyism, new constitutions, watchdog agencies [and]
articulation [of] some form of moral repentance for their previously
undemocratic ways” (p. 79). It is the extent and repercussions of this
putative shift in political attitudes that the author takes as his starting
point in this section of the text. Probing the extent to which
democratization [has] “been implemented in [an] undemocratic fashion through
concentrations of power”, Harrison describes if and how the state embarked
upon political liberalization, and the responses of various stakeholders to
this development (p. 78). Overall, Harrison believes
that a holistic discussion of identity, class and struggle demonstrates their
inter-relatedness, reveals how they undergird liberation, and exposes the
fact that Africans possess the innate wherewithal to challenge hostile
structures. The sixth chapter develops these themes in the Mozambican,
Nigerian and Burkinabe contexts.
In describing ‘African struggle’, the author ignores the global
emergence of radical movements and terrorism. Secondly, although Harrison
rightly critiques the problematic manner in which Africa was created and is
treated in contemporary discourses, he partitions Africa into three regions:
North Africa, ‘sub-Saharan’ Africa and South Africa; the latter supposedly is
exceptional, despite the fact that Algeria also connotes deprivation,
liberation, struggle and resistance par excellence. Nonetheless, the
author does not adhere to his artificial division for too long, as he
frequently references examples from North Africa and South Africa to buttress his assertions. This confusion is all
the more peculiar given the author’s insightful comments regarding analysts’
tendency to scrutinize the Continent through parochial lenses and select the
worst scenarios as embodiments of the ‘African’ experience.
Thirdly, the author’s concern with ‘peasants’, their resistance to the
state or withdrawal into symbolic enclaves is neither fully developed nor
original. Although one could take issue with Africa’s ‘peasantization’, which
overlooks its urbanization, and the constant interchange between rural,
peri-urban and urban areas, to ‘freeze’ small-scale farmers in a milieu where
broad generalizations could be made concerning their supposed ignorance of
SAP perhaps is more stifling than the forces that reportedly impede their
advancement.
Even though Harrison presents a fairly informed account of ‘peasant’
life, with all its contradictions, the obsession with the ‘rural’ seems
outdated. His assertion that African Studies should commence with the
peasantry is, at the very least, misguided because of the presence of a large
number of the urban poor and landless, whose conditions vis-à-vis their ‘peasant’
brethren are more precarious. Additionally, urban organizations are more
threatening to governments because they often can undertake violent actions
commensurate with their vitriolic rhetoric. As such, if one were seriously
interested in understanding struggle and resistance, one would not always
begin with the increasingly shrinking number of citizens residing in rural
areas, who arguably are better off than the urban poor. Whilst Harrison suggests that only a few scholars emphasize the centrality of
struggle, it is, has been and always will be at the heart of political,
economic and societal realities in Africa and
elsewhere.
Generally, we are treated to a largely superficial account of the ‘peasant’
experience: We are somewhat enlightened concerning the nuances of the ‘peasantry’
argument but learn very little regarding how they have manifested themselves
within the three countries under review, which are, oddly enough, banished to
the sixth chapter. We also scarcely, if ever, comprehend the far-reaching
manner in which ‘peasants’ reacted to and were affected by seminal economic
and political developments. Conversely, Harrison’s prototypical African state
seems emasculated, devoid of any measurable agency, and unable to circumvent,
ignore or undermine contentious IFI policies. In the final analysis, the text’s
core purpose appears muddled, and the treatment of democratization and other
important variables is impeded by an excessively normative stance.
In closing, the Harrison volume is lucid, compact and should prove useful
to undergraduate students and others with a limited knowledge of African
economic, political and social realities. The ‘further reading’ section at
the end of the first six chapters also is very helpful. Yet, the work would
have been strengthened by field research in rural areas to ascertain what ‘peasants’
know regarding democratization, SAP, struggle and liberation, rather than the
author’s preference to speak on their behalf.
Adedayo Oluwakayode Adekson
University for Peace, San Jose, Costa Rica
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