David van Wyk

d.vanwyk58@gmail.com

The Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) is a petite bourgeois nationalist organisation that came to power in Zimbabwe in 1980, after elections following the Lancaster House Agreement that was signed with Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative Party Government in Britain. This agreement was signed at the height of Ronald Reagan’s mission to roll back history.

The petite bourgeois leaders of ZANU mobilised the peasantry in remote rural areas during the second Chimurenga (liberation war). The working class was effectively ignored during the struggle. After 1980, the nationalist petite bourgeoisie easily dismissed the peasantry, and avoided dealing with the land question for the first fifteen years. The petite bourgeoisie was satisfied with replacing the white settlers, stepping into their shoes and continuing to exploit and oppress both the Zimbabwean working class and the peasantry on behalf of international capital. The nationalist petite bourgeoisie, in the prophetic words of Franz Fanon, “discovered its historic mission: that of intermediary” for international capitalism.

Whereas Hitler was the hammer with which international capitalism crushed the working class in Europe, Ronald Reagan was the steamroller that global capitalism employed to destroy working class organisations globally. Robert Mugabe was a key figure in Reagan’s mission in the Southern African context. In the first instance Mugabe ruthlessly destroyed his Soviet Union supported opposition in Joshua Nkomo’s Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU) by unleashing the notorious Fifth Brigade on Matabeleland in 1984 during operation Gukurahundi. Once he destroyed any potential nationalist threat to his dominance he proceeded to destroy the left – including attacking the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU).

At the height of these repressive actions, Mugabe was the darling of the Commonwealth, The United Nations and the World Bank and the IMF. So much so that Mugabe’s Finance Minister Bernard Chidzero chaired the IMF/World Bank Development Committee. Naturally the West and global institutions and organisations kept silent about Mugabe’s brutality then, Interestingly he favoured the Pan Africanist Congress over the African National Congress at the time, because of the latter’s historic ties with ZAPU, after all Chris Hani was involved in the famous Wankie/Whange battle between ZAPUs armed wing ZIPRA and the Rhodesian army in the 1960s.
In the 1980s several MK cadres found themselves at the wrong end of Mugabe’s Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO). Their historical association with Zipra, ZAPU’s liberation army earned them spells in detention and torture particularly in Bulawayo during 1984. Although the ANC had a branch and offices Avondale in Harare, MK had to operate from clandestine safe houses.

Mugabe introduced one of the most stringent economic structural adjustment programmes (ESAP) under direction of the IMF and the World Bank. This Economic Suffering for African People as locals jokingly called ESAP destroyed the Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority (ZESA), most other parastatals and Zimbabwe’s food security. Zimbabwe borrowed massively at the outset, figuring that repayments -- which required 16% of export earnings in 1983 -- would “decline sharply until we estimate it will be about 4% within the next few years”.
The first loan ironically was to completely reconstruct Zimbabwe’s power facility at Whange, the Power I loan was the first Bank energy loan to Zimbabwe after Independence in 1980. The loan was to the Electricity Supply Commission (ESC), which was later incorporated into a national power utility, the Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority (ZESA).

The main lender, the World Bank, concurred: “The debt service ratios should begin to decline after 1984 even with large amounts of additional external borrowing”. This was the economic equivalent of a sucker-punch, for in reality, Zimbabwe's debt servicing spiraled up to an untenable 37% of export earnings by 1987.
Loan conditions quickly emerged. By 1985, the IMF was pressuring Mugabe to cut education spending and, in 1986, food subsidies fell to two-thirds of 1981 levels.

The two global agencies advised Zimbabwe to switch from food crops to cash crops in order to pay off astronomical IMF and World Bank loans. Suddenly Zimbabwe experienced food shortages for the first time, and electricity power cuts became a daily occurrence. This happened soon after the World Bank and IMF became responsible for the micro management of the Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority. One wonders if the ANC leadership in South Africa knew of this historical fiasco north of Limpopo before they entered into the recent loan with the World Bank to construct the Medupe Power Plant in Limpopo. Interestingly, then in Zimbabwe, as now in South Africa, the World Bank advised that “Electricity to ZESAs consumers was “far too cheap.”
The IMF and the World Bank effectively led Zimbabwe into bankruptcy and economic self destruction through the agency of the ZANUPF petite bourgeoisie.

Ever since Mugabe’s unholy alliance with global capital the people of Zimbabwe has had to suffer the impositions of the IMF and the World Bank, including the dismantling of Zimbabwe’s nascent manufacturing sector – the collapse of David Whitehead textiles, the destruction of Supersonic, the end of Bata shoes, reversing gains in local content of Land Rover which had 75% local content in 1980 and the general collapse of the motor vehicle industry, particularly Peugot, Citroen and Ford, with tens of thousands of workers becoming unemployed in working class areas such as Willovale and Chitungwiza. The World Bank and IMF advised that Zimbabwe should concentrate on its competitive advantage – cash crop production.

The peasantry was ‘advised’ to switch from food crop production to cash crop production – droughts in the late 1980s left even the usually resilient Zimbabwean peasantry starving. Land reform in the form of land invasions was but a system of reward for military generals, so as to minimize the risk of military coups, and ZANUPF cronies. Most recently Mugabe punished the working class in Harare for daring to vote against him by launching Operation Murambatsvina, “driving out the trash” by demolishing tens of thousands of houses in Harare’s working class townships.

It is against this background that workers and peasants should read Mugabe’s ‘land reform’ and his calls for economic indigenisation. Fanon noted that the nationalist petite bourgeoisie ‘constantly demands the nationalisation of the economy and of the trading sectors. This is because, from their point of view, nationalisation does not mean placing the whole economy at the service of the nation and deciding to satisfy the needs of the nation. For them nationalisation does not mean governing the state with regard to the new social relations whose growth it has been decided to encourage. To them, nationalisation quite simply means the transfer into native (petite bourgeois) hands those unfair advantages which are the legacy of the colonial period.” In other words the nationalist petite bourgeoisie models themselves on colonial settlers and when in power behaves as colonial settlers would towards the working class and the peasantry.

The nationalist middleclass is too weak to address the questions of the national revolution and fears that the working class will drive the revolution in an uninterrupted way (Lenin) towards a permanent revolution (Trotsky) that will take matters to the logical conclusion of socialism. The national petite bourgeoisie and the weak national bourgeoisie therefore sell their souls to global capitalism, while mouthing the most radical slogans – they don red T-Shirts in township rallies on weekend and three piece suites during office hours, during ‘global conferences and at evening functions reassuring global capital of their loyalty while negotiating a piece of the cake for themselves.

Quoted reference: Fanon, F. 2001. The Wretched of the Earth. London: Penguin.

Capitalism in Africa        

David van Wyk          


What sustains the imperialist wars in Afghanistan and Iraq? What sustains the occupation of Palestine? According to Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics (http://www.cbs.gov.il/hodaot2010n/16_10_232t6.htm) almost 30% of its exports were diamond related (polished diamonds, jewellery, and unpolished diamonds). Since the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003 the prices of copper and uranium have boomed. Copper is the base component of most munitions from bullets to shell casings, not to speak of electronics wiring. Coltan and tantalum are essential components of electronics and communications systems in use by NATO and the US army. 

Uranium prices spiked between March 2006 when George Bush announced his intention of realising a “complete victory” in Iraq and August 2007, when the US conventional military solution in Iraq petered out in the face of concerted guerrilla resistance to the occupation. The invading US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan use plutonium tipped artillery shells and a variety of munitions containing depleted uranium. Depleted uranium munitions were first used by NATO forces in Kosovo, where according to Hari Sharma, “NATO is trying to save Kosovars, but if they leave Kosovo filled with
depleted uranium, it's not a happy situation. They [would be] poisoning them. If you are going to use depleted uranium in warfare, it's better to drop an atom bomb and kill 30,000 people instantaneously rather than killing them over 20 or 30 years.” The same and even more advanced munitions are being deployed in Iraq where Robert Fisk after the first invasion found, “In Iraq in 1997, I discovered monstrous births of deformed babies and old men who, amid the wreckage which the Allies had blasted with our uranium shells, told me of daughters with breast and liver cancer.”

Table 1. Known and Suspected Uses of DU Munitions in Warfare

 
Source: Dan Fahey: SCIENCE OR SCIENCE FICTION? Facts, Myths and Propaganda In the Debate Over Depleted Uranium Weapons.

I have just spent three months zipping in and out of the mining provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Zambia and Zimbabwe, where I interviewed mine workers, trade union leaders and peasants.
There is a literal scramble for mining rights by global capitalist companies in these three countries. The most sought after minerals being copper, cobalt, uranium and coltan.

In the north eastern parts of the DRC, Uganda and Rwanda, both under the control of US proxy governments have carved out portions of the DRC using “rebel” armies (bands of armed terrorists) to lay their hands on DRC coltan. In the south eastern Katanga Province multinational corporations are raping the environment and the population in an effort to extract as much copper and uranium as they are able to in as short as possible a time and at as low a cost as they possibly could. Here they are in competition with Chinese companies feeding the booming Chinese economy.

It is interesting to note that the uranium that produced the bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 came from Katanga province in the DRC.

On the Copperbelt in Northern Zambia and Katanga in South Eastern DRC; Marx’s labour theory of value, his theory of exploitation and of primitive accumulation and Trotsky’s theory of combined and uneven development is finding expression daily in the miserable conditions to which the working class and peasantry are being subjected. In this first article I will investigate the application of the labour theory of value and
exploitation in the context of Zambian mine workers.

I was told by a representative of the Zambian Chamber of Mines that the productivity of Zambian mine workers can be measured from the fact that a Zambian mine worker produces 16 tons of copper per worker per month. The most productive mine produces 22 tons per worker per month.

Underground mine workers in Zambia earn around US$357 per month. The current price of copper US$ 7500 per ton. This means that each worker produces US$120 000 per month (calculated at the average of 16 tons per worker per month), or a surplus of US$ 119 643 per month. Mine bosses claim that the costs of producing a ton of copper equals as much as US $ 5000 per ton. They grossly exaggerate the costs of production so as to evade taxes. But even if we accept these costs and note that the costs of production
is invested in labour power and means of production (technology), the ratio of surplus production over necessary labour is still excessive and exploitative if the net income of mining companies are US$2500 per ton after costs while wages are only US$357 per worker per month, because at 22 tons per worker each worker still produces US$40 000 per worker, which represents a surplus of US$39 643 per worker.

In Katanga there are also tens of thousands of artisanal miners, the lumpen proletariat, who unable to secure work in the mines, illegally occupy the concessions of major western mining corporations scratching in toxic mine waste and dumps for copper, uranium or cobalt. Kabwe in Zambia is considered to be the most toxic polluted town on the planet. The artisanal miners are tolerated because the multinational corporations can
exploit them even more than formal mine workers. The corporations deploy armies of negotiators and traders to vacuum up the concentrate from artisanal miners. Artisanal miners exploit family labour, do not require pensions or medical aid. Typically negotiators act like pimps for the artisanal miners, they take 70% of the price per ton, leaving the artisanal miner with a meager 30%. The negotiators then sell forward to traders who are usually the agents of multinational corporations. I was offered copper concentrate (unprocessed ore) at US$800 a ton by a trader. Imagine the pittance receive by the artisanal miner! This impacts particularly badly on women in Katanga and Zambia. I was told by a prostitute in Kolwezi that a woman in Kolwezi has the following choices in life, to break rock, to carry rock like a pack mule, to wash rock or to become a sex worker.
According to her thousands of young women die between the ages of 15 and 17 because of HIV/Aids, condoms are unheard of in Kolwezi.

Much of the copper, uranium, cobalt and coltan is sold forward to the military industrial complex in the West, and the miserable and poor conditions of Zambian and Congolese mine workers and their families translate into the misery of bombed Iraqi and Afghani civilians (collateral damage) and long term prospects of cancer and birth defects for decades to come, while European and US capitalists/shareholders laugh all the way to the
bank.

David van Wyk

Yes indeed it was great being with the crowds, blowing vuvuzelas, waving flags and watching every match on TV, at the stadiums or in bohemian restaurants. I also allowed myself to be swept along the torrent of jubilation and festivities. Yes it was great that South Africa could pull it off without incident. We said so after the Rugby World Cup (1995), after the World Conference on Racism in Durban (2001), after the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Sandton (2002), not to talk of all the global cricket events. There was never any doubt that South Africa could pull this off, and earn browny points from the global neo-liberal ruling class. FIFA is after all a global transnational corporation which has commodified football and sells the privilege of hosting the event to the highest most malleable bidder. 

However, my cynicism remains about the comprador ruling class in South Africa, and about the event itself - we cannot run this country as an events and tourism, carnival destination. While sport and culture is no doubt important key questions that confront our society have to do with poverty, unemployment, housing, health, education, water, electricity, etc. rather than building sport and conference infrastructure.

As an internationalist and a communist I am also critical of nationalism and of nation building. I left this country in 1983 because I could not support the exclusive nationalism propagated by the white population. I am also not comfortable with the current nationalism parading as democracy. I remind myself of the German petite bourgeoisie who with the audacity of Hitler managed to grab power and set about settling historic scores with the working class and its organizations, the German Communist Party, the German Social Democratic Party, the Unions and their newspapers - this settling of scores had the full support of global capital at the time - and Hitler was praised for creating jobs, for restoring German pride, for rebuilding the German nation. His reward was of course the Berlin Olympics of 1936. Hitler rallied the nation with much flag waving, marches and political theatre on a grand scale, but it was all a bankrupt façade. When he ran out of ideas he found a scapegoat for his own shortcomings - the Jewish population of Germany. 

With that awful era in human history in mind, I am not surprised that the poor in South Africa are resorting to xenophobia. They are told that they are part of the "Nation" that they must bury their class awareness, and assume a national consciousness instead, there are no exploiters or exploited now we are all part of the rainbow nation. So if a worker's poverty, miserable living and working conditions are not the result of exploitation, then what is the cause of his or her condition? If the unemployed squatter camp dweller is not the victim of an economic structure that immiserates him and assigns him to the lumpen proletariat, the reserve army of labour, then what is the cause of his or her condition? If it is not the uneven distribution of wealth and resources, if it is not that the priorities of the ruling class is with carnivalesque events rather than the revolutionary transformation of the economic base of the country, then what is the cause? Well the worker, the unemployed and the poor come to a simple conclusion - it is the presence of other workers, poor and unemployed who are not part of the nation - "they, the makwerekwere (foreigners), are stealing our jobs, our housing, our women, our opportunities." The class struggle is neatly averted and the poor are set in violent confrontation with other poor.

This is not really xenophobia in the true sense of the word, it is really a limited form of “Afrophobia”, because those targeted are Africans from other African countries, but not all Africans, only those who are poor, Somalis, Zimbabweans and Mozambicans who share the squatter camps. Then our Minister of Police and our President have the nerve to say that it is the rumours of xenophobia that is causing xenophobia. I have heard that one before - the minister of police in 1976 saying that the kids in Soweto are generally peaceful but they are acting up for the media - so let’s ban the media from Soweto. 

I visited Freedom Park squatter camp in Phokeng, in the shadow of some of the richest platinum mines in the world the day the World Cup started and noticeable was the absence of World Cup accessories such as flags, T-shirts and vuvuzelas. I interviewed members of the community, who do not have access to electricity, water or proper housing about their view of the World Cup. There was no FIFA fan park in Freedom Park. They felt extremely alienated/excluded from the event. I watched the Bafana/France match in a restaurant in Yeoville, a trendy middleclass suburb in the city centre. At half time everyone stormed out of the restaurant to go and blow their vuvuzelas in the Street. It was early evening. The street was packed with revelers of all races and creeds - and through this carnival of energy and colour walked three elderly domestic workers, humbly looking down, not wearing any cup paraphernalia, after a long day in the homes of their middle class madams, on their way to flag a taxi, probably back to Diepsloot or some other urban slum. The contrast stuck in my mind, I wish I had a camera with me.

Throughout the World Cup electricity supply commission (ESKOM) workers, and civil service workers threatened to strike for better wages. The bourgeois media accused the unions of being unpatriotic, business and political leaders begged the unions to be responsible and not te embarrass the “nation.” 

Two days after the event the poor resumed their struggle. 12 schools in the North West Province closed over delivery protests, poor people taking to the streets of their villages and townships knowing that the only way to get the attention of the government they elected was to become violent. Solly Petwe, Provincial Secretary of the Congress of South African Trade Unions) COSATU publicly announced concerns about World Cup tender irregularities in the North West Province. We still await the outcome of investigations into tender assassinations in Mpumalanga. Delivery protests also resumed in Mpumalanga. Immediately after the event Somalis and Zimbaweans started fleeing poor communities in the Western Cape, and Paul Verryn was threatened in the streets of Johannesburg, and Mozambican mine workers in Rhamaphosa squatter camp were threatened by locals.  

Xenophobia is the product of national consciousness, which in itself is a false consciousness designed to weaken workers and poor communities in their struggle with capital. 

In making these remarks I will be accused of being racist, because the capitalist ruling class has now created some space for a small number of black South Africans to join the ranks of capital. However, the vast majority of black South African class still make out the working class, the poor and down trodden, and the fact that our country has the dubious distinction of having the greatest gap between rich and poor in the world cannot and will not escape them forever. And when the poor rise up, how will our nationalist leaders deal with it? Will they follow the example of the prime nationalist figure in history, Hitler? Will there be a historic crushing of the working class and its organizations and leaders? The recent spat between Vavi, the General Secretary of COSATU and senior leaders of the (African National Congress) ANC, whom he is accusing of corruption, would suggest to me that there are those in the leadership of the ANC who would find such an historic reckoning to their liking.

David van Wyk 

It is important to utilise the tool of historical materialism in the analysis of the position of Africa in the global context. To this end we must understand the role that Africa has played, and continues to play in the global capitalist economy. Where Marx’s analysis differs from that of neo-liberals and Stalinists is in his insistence on perceiving the development of capitalism beyond the limits of the nation state and pre-empting the formation of a global capitalist ruling class – hence his missive that workers know no country, and that workers of the world should unite, that they have nothing to lose but their chains.

The earliest forms of global corporations had their focus as mercantile firms on global expansion. Thus mercantile firms such as the Dutch East India Company, The British East Africa Company, the British South Africa Company, Cadbury etc. realised early on that control of the global sources of raw materials, minerals, spices and agricultural produce was essential to their national status in a period of intense competition in Europe. These sources of raw materials were in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

Where the great mercantile empires of Spain and Portugal lost their advantage in this global competition was the dominance of their parasitic nobility and the catholic church, and the relative weakness of their emergent bourgeoisie. Holland, France and England on the other hand benefited from rapidly emerging and revolutionary middle classes that could move the economic foundations of their countries beyond mercantilism towards capitalist production. Take the manufacturing of cloth for example instead of importing it from Asia, the English manufacturing classes copied the production methods of the cloth industry in India and then revolutionized production in places like Manchester, thus destroying more archaic methods of cloth production in India turning that country into a supplier of raw materials and cotton plantations while creating conditions of mass production in England itself. These processes are described in detail by Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto and in Capital Volume 1.

Similar processes were at play in Africa. Walter Rodney describes how the coastal African populations were turned into commodity traders dealing in exotic goods from the African interior including gold and ivory, but most importantly in the commodity trade of human beings. Tens of millions of the economically most able Africans were traded from both e African West and East Coasts to supply plantation labour in the Caribbean, and in North And South America. A central analytical concept in the Marxist armoury is that of primitive accumulation. In describing how the capitalist class originated Marx coined the concept of primitive accumulation, of which vestiges still remain with us to this day – the drug dealer and the pimp being primary examples. The Kennedy clan in the United States accumulated their initial capital through bootlegging, during the prohibition period – a good example of primitive accumulation. In more developed capitalist countries primitive accumulation is less pronounced occurring on the seedy edges of  the economy. In the African context primitive accumulation played a major part of the accumulation process from the early mercantile period in which the slave trade was the dominant trade, throughout the colonial period when the plunder of Africa’s raw materials and minerals fuelled the industrial revolution in Europe, to the present when embarrassed by accusations of racism and oppression.

In understanding the complex realities of Africa the concept of primitive accumulation needs to be explained in further detail, and it is important to involve Leon Trotsky’s concept of combined and uneven development in this explanation because it captures the way in which primitive accumulation in Africa happened in ways that are different from the trajectory followed in Europe.

Primitive accumulation, involves the transformation of pre-capitalist (‘communal’ and/or feudal) agrarian relations of production to capitalist ones, and the formation of a capitalist class. As Marx is often quoted, capitalism emerges from its preceding modes of production with ‘blood dripping from every pore.’ None the less capitalism is perceived by Marx as a revolutionary development in these early stages as it sweeps away any fetters that might obstruct the revolutionary development of the forces of production and the creation of conditions suitable for socialist revolution, in this sense it becomes its own grave digger.
Some have referred to this process as an articulation between capitalism and pre-capitalist modes of production. The process of primitive accumulation is by no means ‘natural’ or spontaneous: state force and many other ‘non-market’ modalities are necessary. Once the bourgeoisie gains control of the state and converts it into an instrument for its own class power, it ruthlessly applies the various apparatus of the state towards attaining its class objectives.
At the Berlin Conference of 1884 competition between the national ruling classes of Europe for African resources became so intense that it was realised that the only way to avoid open warfare between European powers over this matter a gentlemanly conference could settle the biggest land grab in human history. Thus the second step in the process of primitive accumulation was initiated, alienating the African population from the primary means of production, the land.
It is important to note that in Europe the process of primitive accumulation was driven by the national bourgeoisie of each country, and it was intended to drive the serfs and peasants off the land, into urban areas and capitalist factories, leaving the land open for the reorganisation of agriculture, and turning the population of Europe in proletarians, people with no means of production other than their ability to work, their labour power which would hence forth be sold on the labour market.
In Africa the process of primitive accumulation was not driven by a local emerging capitalist class, instead it was driven by the capitalist ruling class in the colonial power itself, hence the relevance of Trotsky’s concept of combined and uneven development. Thus the African colonies became locked into the economic structure of the colonial power, with no room for development of an indigenous African capitalist class. In most African countries the indigenous African population was allowed to become clerks and messengers in the colonial administrative structures, those who were effectively proletarianised were driven into mines and plantations producing raw materials and minerals for the European economies of the colonial powers. Countries like Great Britain developed a corps of professional “foreign service” administrators in the form of “native commissioners” and colonial “governors” to administer those countries where conditions were not suitable for large scale European settlement, mainly because of tropical diseases such as malaria. In areas where large scale white settlement could take place such as South Africa, Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) and British East Africa (Kenya) the British government encouraged emigration so as to relieve pressure “at home” caused by the contradictions of Capitalist development such as unemployment, labour militancy etc. In these countries (South Africa, Zimbabwe and Kenya) a small settler capitalist class did begin to emerge much along the lines of Canada, the USA, Australia and New Zealand).
In the rest of Africa capitalist class formation was weak and the emergence of ‘war-torn Africa’ suggests a permanently stalemated process of violence in some regions. At other moments, the process of primitive accumulation speeds up in a very uneven and contradictory way (Trotsky) – also probably with violence. The process is always quite unique in spite of its structural base. Many of its variations can be attributed to the historically specific ways in which a combination of externally ‘imposed’ and internally developing capitalist social formations ‘articulated’ with pre-existing modes of production. One may say that primitive accumulation always has ‘twists in its tail’ and the ideological perspectives accompanying and contesting it will add many twists to its tale.
In African settler-colonial societies (South Africa, Zimbabwe and Kenya), primitive accumulation has identifiable and comparable characteristics—race and the agrarian question.   Capitalist agriculture has been dominated by white settlers who carried out their process of primitive accumulation by forcibly taking ‘native’ land and denying African farmers not merely commercial opportunities, but also a chance to become capitalist land owners. Much of the land alienation also has to do with the presence of ‘strategic’ minerals (strategic to global capitalism). Give the current minerals commodities boom with the price of platinum exceeding US$ 2000 an ounce, and gold coming close to US$ 2000 a second wave of primitive accumulation is taking place with global mining corporations such as Barricks, Angloplatinum, BHP Billiton and a host of “new entrants’ from Canada, Australia, Russia and China scramble for mineral rich land and pushing indigenous communities off in often very violent manner, buying off the comprador bourgeoisie with shareholding and board positions to partake in the rape and pillage of their own countries.
The Berlin Conference of 1884 ignored the complex ethnic, cultural, and language realities of Africa and arbitrarily divided the continent between the European powers. This created optimal conditions for capital accumulation as the indigenous populations could be divided and ruled within a geographically defined area, privileging some ethnic or language groups over others, thus obstructing the development of class consciousness amongst workers. This also prevented the emergence of national bourgeoisies who could effectively challenge the capitalist ruling class of the colonial power, and therefore obstructed effective state formation.
In many instances those who were privileged by the colonial power along ethnic or language lines during the colonial period and had better access to educational opportunities and were utilized to administer the colonies emerged as the natural inheritors of the position of managers of the economy and the state rudimentary state apparatus that was left behind at the end of colonialism. The economy was of course locked into the global division of labour constructed during colonialism so much so that people still speak of Francophone Africa, Lusophone and Anglophone Africa referring to those economies and countries that historically fell under the British Empire, the Portuguese empire and the French Empire. The state managers involved are intricately related to and often part of the bourgeoisie emerging in the process of primitive accumulation.  They have complicated alliances with myriad international classes, groups, and agencies. They often condemn their objective allies: hence the many contradictions of ‘anti-imperialist’ rhetoric from those on the periphery of global capitalism who, on close analysis, collude with their ostensible enemies.
The historical development of powerful working classes (such as in South and Southern Africa) often has a strong relationship with indigenous bourgeois democracy, and vice versa. The strongest democratic countries thus also have high levels of social democracy, thus confirming Marx’s insistence on the introduction of universal suffrage (see the Communist Manifesto).
Democratization trajectories often lead to violence as opposition is repressed and fights back. Opposition forces also make counterintuitive class alliances with international forces and ideologies seeking to play of fractions of international capital against each other.  Thus Frederick Chiluba in Zambia was a trade union leader leading a working class based opposition movement against the regime of Kenneth Kaunda, yet Chiluba was quick to adopt stringent structural adjustment and neo-liberal policies for Zambia. In Zimbabwe, Morgan Tsvangirai’s MDC had its roots in the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions, yet the party seems to be espousing a neo-liberal ideology. Such developments indicate the continuing legacy of colonialism, neo-colonialism and imperialism as well as the combined and uneven nature of a capitalist development that was imposed rather than home-grown.
Trotsky developed his theory of permanent revolution, as a response to the Menshevik/ Kautsky stagist theory of revolution which portrayed Marx’s theory of social development as a simplistic and unilinear/evolutionary process from simple to complex. Trotsky shows that through the imposition of colonial rule as a result of imperialism colonised countries experience a complex combination of different stages of historical development. Trotsky’s intervention reinserted the dialectic into the debate on development showing that because of the impact of colonialism through imperialist expansion history develops through sudden leaps and contradictory fusions, thus some societies are able to jump certain stages, or in other instances to be held back due to the fusion of earlier and later developmental stages. Thus the articulation of modern industry with pre-capitalist modes of production creates objective conditions for the proletariat rather than the national bourgeoisie leading both national democratic tasks and the socialist revolution simultaneously. This is particularly true where the national bourgeoisie is weak/ poorly formed, or relatively powerless vis-a-vis global capitalism.
It is against the background of these contradictions and realities that any Marxist revolutionary development must take place in Africa, noting the intricate manner in which the African political and economic realities are interwoven with global capitalism, and noting the need for international working class solidarity South Africa with its well developed and organised working class , combined with its sub-imperial role on the continent represents the bridgehead for socialist revolution in Africa.