Sparkly vampires need not apply

Below is an extract from the Introduction to my magnum opus, In the Shadow of a Hurricane: Global Anarchist Ideological and Organisational Lineages, which weighs in at 515,000 words, and which, after 18 years in research in 14 languages and covering 15 decades since anarchism's emergence in the trade unions of the First International, is the most comprehensive anarchist movement history attempted since Max Nettlau's more than 80 years ago, and which as a result for the first time tells the world-spanning story of what happened to the anarchists after revolutionary Barcelona fell in 1939:

... despite its size, and though I have attempted to be as detailed, where relevant, as possible, this work offers a mere overview of the historical movement. I am told my writing style is dry, lacking in the sort of flair and colour which many anarchists so enjoy; I apologise for that in advance, but my intention is not a social study but rather an ideological, structural and organisational analysis. For a sense of that colour, I would direct the reader to many of the excellent autobiographies and biographies of anarchism’s leading lights. The problem with much of anarchism today is that anarchists themselves prefer their anarchism pale, romantic and doomed… sparkly vampires, really. This book is not for them. It restores to anarchism its true historical weight and contemporary significance for autonomous struggles against dominance, its penetrating global reach, centred on the Latin world and not the North Atlantic, its pro-organisational majority stance, its universal adaptability to local and transnational conditions, and its numerous pragmatic attempts to dismantle vertical power via popular, horizontal counter-power. This work’s ultimate intention is to excite the imagination of activists and scholars to use my illustrations of continuities and challenges as launching-points for further historical, ideological and practical explorations of their own. There is still so much work to be done, for example, on revealing the anarchism and syndicalism of North Africa, Central America and the Caribbean, and South and South-East Asia, let alone on the many borderlands and maritime littorals where anarchism had a transient yet persistent presence – and I hope that is a torch that future generations will take up.

[ENDS]

African Safe Havens Initiatives

Tunisian activist Lina Ben Mhenni, author of the blog A Tunisian Girl, gives the keynote address at Safe Havens 2015, noting youth concerns with the attempted roll-back of the Tunisian Revolution by reactionary forces.

Michael Schmidt, Convenor, Southern African Cities of Refuge Project

With repeated failures by UN peace-keeping missions to protect refugees, Africa has probably done better by its animals than by its people – so I was intrigued when introduced in 2012 to the International Cities of Refuge Network (ICORN), which provides refuge for persecuted writers, artists and activists.  ICORN wanted to expand its network of cities into the developing world. The desire to do so was partly to prevent ICORN becoming another “West saves the Rest” initiative, as well as to reduce the culture shock experienced by displaced people.  For example, when Kenyan poet Philo Ikonya was relocated to Norway by ICORN, her teenage son had to learn Norwegian to complete his schooling; he could have studied in English were they relocated to South Africa.
Back in 2012, ICORN’s sole city outside Western Europe was Mexico City. Since then it has expanded to include – apart from new cities in North America – Oaxaca in Mexico and Belo Horizonte in Brazil, with more being negotiated elsewhere.  In Southern Africa, we are targeting the cities of Windhoek in Namibia, plus Cape Town, Johannesburg and the university town of Stellenbosch in South Africa, to bring them on board as ICORN cities.  The project was founded under the aegis of the Institute for the Advancement of Journalism of which I was then Executive Director.  After moving to freelance work in 2015, I relocated project oversight to the Professional Journalists’ Association, and PEN’s South African chapter has since partnered with us.
Progress has been steady but slow, as working with universities and municipalities can be bureaucratic. However, the project held launches in Johannesburg in May and in Cape Town in July 2014 to introduce academics and city officials to the Cities of Refuge concept; films relevant to the exiled creative experience were screened – Beate Arnestad’s Silenced Voices on Sri Lankan journalists and Marion Stalens’ Silence or Exile on ICORN guest writers. Because most exiled creatives – whether choreographers, film directors, poets, journalists or painters – want to continue doing what got them into trouble in their home countries, the project requires the assistance of third parties to give them that platform. So we have engaged the Universities of Johannesburg, Cape Town, and Stellenbosch to explore possibilities – and have also established relations with the Holocaust and Genocide Centres in Johannesburg and Cape Town because of our mutual interest in interrogating issues of migration and prejudice.
So far, the most progress has been made in Cape Town where, initially, the fact that the city is run by the opposition Democratic Alliance assured that its decisions in this regard would not be aligned to national politics and foreign policy concerns (this is why ICORN works at city and not national level). We conducted an ICORN tour of Cape Town in May 2015, bringing guest writers Parvin Ardalan, an Iranian journalist, and Ramy Essam, an Egyptian musician, to meet officials, academics, and activists, and were tentatively offered a defunct museum in a converted suburban house as a possible ICORN residence. A bilateral agreement signed in 2016 between the mayors of Cape Town and Malmö in Sweden, a City of Refuge, will now be used to drive that project to signature and activation – hopefully in 2018.
Stellenbosch has proven slower. The original mayor who we met with in 2015 has been replaced, but the local university’s journalism department is interested in the project. Johannesburg was revived in 2017 by a range of discussions on possible venues that incorporate theatres, dance studios, computer rooms, exhibition spaces, and residential apartments. There, our project coincides with a similar initiative by the Pan-African Human Rights Defenders’ Network (PAHARDN) which aims at establishing Safe Hubs for persecuted human rights defenders in: Johannesburg, because of its cosmopolitanism; Kampala, Uganda, because of it successfully absorbed Somali and Burundian refugees; Abidjan in Côte d’Ivoire, because of a new law explicitly providing for such safe haven, and; Tunis in Tunisia, because of its new democratic dispensation; the initiative was launched in October 2017 with ICORN participation: here .
In June 2016, we relocated a Zimbabwean human rights defender in exile in South Africa to Windhoek, Namibia, who was seriously at risk of assassination by state agents. Two of his colleagues had already been murdered and one narrowly survived a poisoning. Relocation funds were provided by the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT). It was an operation fraught with danger that almost failed twice and resulted in the defender eventually returning to South Africa. But it taught us valuable lessons about such relocations which we shared at a conference with PAHRDN in August 2016. We have since, in 2017, successfully relocated a persecuted poet and blogger from Lesotho to South Africa, and are involved in monitoring the status of several other at-risk creatives. Our hope is that 2018 will finally see the project mature with Cape Town and perhaps Johannesburg signing on as ICORN cities.

[ENDS]

Hurricane: Updated Contents

My writing of the text of In the Shadow of a Hurricane crossed the half-million-word mark this time last week - meaning that published it will be well over a thousand pages long! But it is almost completed, after 18 years' research in 14 languages. Because of its extreme length, I cut the entire Part 6 which was a series of theoretical-practical explorations of global anarchist praxis today (this will become a separate book or monograph); I also dropped the Thematic Index for the same reason. I have recently translated the only book on the Belorussian anarchist movement and am now rewriting the very final sections, assessing revolutionary Spain. Here is the updated contents table.:

Preface

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Introduction
(The coherence of the broad anarchist tradition; Defining my terms; My “Six Waves” historical periodisation; Explaining the structure of this book; On translations and names)

Part 1: The Latin Heartland and its Peripheries

Chapter 1: Anarchist Mass Organisation 1860s-1930s: Latin Europe, Brazil and the Southern Cone of Latin America
(Pre-Revolutionary Spain and Portugal: the “revolutionary gymnasium” and the fiery roses of the CNT, the FAI and CGT; Italy: Errico Malatesta, Armando Borghi, Women’s Sections, the USI and UAI, the factory occupations and the Fascist menace; Argentina: Pietro Gori, John Creaghe, Juana Rouco Buela, Severino di Giovanni and the southern bastion of the FORA, CORA and FACA; Chile: José Domingo Gomes Rojas, Juan Gandulfo, and the revolts of the FORCh, IWW, CGT and FACh; Uruguay and Paraguay: Virginia Bolten, the FFREU, FORU, FORPa, FAU and the challenge of welfare reforms; Brazil: Neno Vasca, Domingos Passos, Maria Lacerda de Moura and the FORB/COB and FORGS)

Chapter 2: Anarchist Mass Organisation 1860s-1930s: the Andes, Central America, and the Caribbean
(Bolivia and Peru: the FOL, FORPe, Petronila Infantes, Manuel González Prada, Rafael Tupayachi and the indigenous question; Colombia and Ecuador: Juan Francisco Moncaleano, the CON, MTWIU and FTRE and dockside syndicalism; Venezuela, French Guyana and Surinam: the UOV and SAF in the margins of Bolivarismo and colonialism; Mexico: the PLM, COM, Lucha, CGT and FAC, Emiliano Zapata, the Flores Magón brothers, Antonio Gomes y Soto, Juana Belém Gutiérrez de Mendoza and the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1920; Nicaragua and Central America: Augusto Sandino, the CAS, FOH and the “banana republics”; Puerto Rico: the FLT, Louisa Capetilla and the question of who gets to wear the pants; Cuba: Enrique Roig San Martin, the FTC, FGAC, and the CNOC against imperialism, bigotry and the dictatorial elite)

Part 2: The Western Imperial Centre and its Peripheries 

Chapter 3: Anarchist Mass Organisation 1860s-1930s: Western and Northern Europe and North America

(France and Belgium: the CGT, CSB, FCRA/UA, GCL, Jean Grave, Fernand Pelloutier, Ernest Tanrez and the syndicalist laboratory; Germany and Switzerland: the Jura Federation, AKP, AFD, LAB, Gustav Landauer, Fritz Kater, André Boesinger and the anti-militarist, anti-Nazi struggles of the FVdG/FAUD, MTWIU and the AAUE; the Netherlands: the LVC/LFVC, NSV, “Domela” Nieuwenhuis, Christiaan Cornelissen, Harm Kolthek and the forgotten syndicalist template of the NAS; Sweden, Norway and Denmark: the SAC, NSF, FS, Martin Tranmǽl, Christian Christensen and industrial unionism against the seductions of reformism; Britain and Ireland: the IWB, ITGWU, James Connolly, Tom Mann and the refuge of Freedom; the United States and Canada: the IWPA/CLU, IWW, FRAKG, Daniel de Leon, “Big Bill” Haywood, industrial unionism and desegregation)

Chapter 4: Anarchist Mass Organisation 1860s-1930s: Eastern and Central Europe
(Pre-Revolutionary Russia, the Ukraine, Belorussia, and the Georgian Commune of 1905-1907: the NWU, Cherny Peredyel, Afanasy Matiushenko and Varlaam Cherkezeshvili among the narodniks, nationalists and terrorists; Poland, Finland and the Baltics: the ZZZ, FAKGPiL and the shadow of Imperial Russia; Hungary and Austria: the URW, URS, Sandor Czismadia, Ervin Szabó and Leo Rothziegel in the heart of the empire; Czechoslovakia: the FČAK, ZJH-O, Bohuslav Vrbenský and the seductions of national liberation; Yugoslavia and the Balkans: Miloš Krpan, Krsto Cicvarić, Paul Zorkine and the direktaši workers’ faction; Bulgaria, Macedonia and Romania: the LCB, FAKB, BONSF, FAY, Mikhail Guerdzhikov, Gueorgui Cheitanov, Mariola Sirakova, Manol Vassev and platformism armed; Greece: the Democratic Popular League of Patras, “Kostas” Speras, the SEMS and the lessons of direct democracy)

Part 3: The Colonial and Postcolonial World

Chapter 5: Anarchist Mass Organisation 1860s-1930s: South, East and South-East Asia, and Oceania
(Japan and Formosa: Ōsugi Sakae, Itō Noe, Kanno Sugako, Hatta Shūzō, the Zenkoku Jiren, Nihon Jikyo, AKP and the struggle against gender oppression and Japanese imperialism; China: Liu Shifu, the Wuzhengfu Gongchan, HSX and LXL, multinational resistance and the Guangdong-Fukien Revolution of 1921-1925; Korea and Manchuria: Shin Chae-ho, Yu Rim, Lee Jung-Kyu, Lee Eul-Kyu, the HMY, HMGY, HCH and the Manchurian Revolution of 1929-1932; Tonkin, Annam, and Cochinchina: Phan Bội Châu, Nguyễn An Ninh, Trương Thị Sáu, the Phuc Viet and the question of class consciousness; South Asia: Lala Har Dayal, M.P.T. Acharya, the Ghadar Party, Bhagat Singh and insurrectionist anti-imperialism; Malaya and the East Indies: Liu Shixin, Lau Hak Fei, Wong So-ying and the insurrectionists in anti-colonial struggles; the Philippines and Oceania: Isabelo de los Reyes, the UOD and the universal appeal of anarcho-syndicalism)

Chapter 6: Anarchist Mass Organisation 1860s-1930s: the Middle East, Africa, and the Antipodes
(Anatolia and the Middle East: Alexandre Atabekian, Daud Muja‘is and radicalism in the declining Ottoman Empire; Palestine and Cyprus: Joseph Trumpeldor, Leah Feldman, and left-Zionism; Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco and Senegal: Mohamed Saïl, Albert Guigi-Theral, Joseph Rosenthal, the INA, CGTU and CGT-SR; Mozambique and Lusophone Africa; Central Africa, South Africa and Southern Africa: Andrew Dunbar, “Bill” Thibedi, Johnny Gomas, Bernard Sigamoney, the Industrial Workers of Africa, and the critique of White Labourism and craft unionism; Australia and New Zealand: Tom Glynn, the Red Feds, Wobblies, Maoris and multiracial labour solidarity) 

Part 4: October 1917 and its Aftermath

Chapter 7: The Global Rupture of 1914-1923, and the Russian and Ukrainian Revolutions
(The Global Rupture: ten years that shook the world; the Russian anarchists of the PAF, PAKF and MFAG and the February Revolution of 1917; The PAKF, Iosif Bleikhman and the July Days; anarchists in the October Revolution of 1917; Anarchists in the Soviets, Factory Committees and the emergent Bolshevik state; The Kronstadt Uprising and a “Third Revolution”; Marusya Nikiforova, Nestor Makhno, the Black Guards and proletarian counter-power in Ukraine; The RPAU, Nabat and KBOP: the Ukrainian Revolution and Bolshevik Counter-revolution; Makhnovist resistance to Bolshevik treachery; Anarchist resistance in Belorussia and the West; Nestor Kalandarishvili, G.F. Rogov, I.P. Novoselov, the AFA and the defence of the Revolution in Siberia, Central Asia and the Far East)

Chapter 8: A Blazing Star at Midnight: Anarchist Resistance to Red and Brown Corporate States
(The anarchist underground in Ukraine, Belorussia, Russia and Siberia: the neo-Makhnovist resistance; Anarchism versus fascism in Spain: power and counter-power contest; The July Revolution against Falangism and militarist-clerical-monarchist reaction: the CNT Defence Committees victorious; The proletariat in arms: the people’s militia and confederal mechanised infantry columns; The heart of the Revolution in agriculture, industry and society: the redoubts of Aragón and Lleida, and the multiple roles of Mujeres Libres; Fascist, bourgeois, communist – and “libertarian” – counter-revolution; The Friends of Durruti-led revolutionary current attempts to rescue the Revolution; Rearguard, collapse and the bitter arguments of the exile MLE; West European partisans against brown fascism; East European partisans against red fascism)

Part 5: Survival and Revival

Chapter 9: The Cold War, Syndicalists, Guerrillas and Anti-Imperialism, 1945-1975
(Syndicalism after the war: the Metropole and New Zealand; Syndicalism after the war: the Latin Heartland; The MLNA, MDC and traces of libertarian socialism in Africa; Ghadarite and anarchist echoes in India and Indonesia; Vietnamese and Algerian anarchists and the dismantling of the French Empire; Revival and reformism in East Asia: the Japanese Anarchist Federation, and the Korean moderate turn; Cracks in the Communist Bloc: the Black Flag Rebellion of 1953 in the Gulag, the Hungarian Revolt of 1956, and Chu Cha Pei’s guerrilla actions; Anarchist resistance in the Heartland: the CNT-Interior and the anti-Francoist guerrillas, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, and Chile; The Cuban Revolution and Counter-Revolution; The “New Left” and counter-culture, Prague Spring and the Global Revolt of 1968-1969; Shengwulian: libertarian socialism re-emerges in China; Yugoslav “syndicalism” and Caribbean “self-management”; Post-war counter-power: the Uruguayan citadel of the FAU and CNT; Anarchist guerrilla forces in the Heartland: OPR-33, ROE, PVP, Resistencia Libertaria, and the MIR versus the Operation Condor death-squads; Anarchist guerrilla forces in the Metropole and Japan: Defensa Interior and the GPM-MIL-GARI Iine, the Angry Brigade and other insurgents)

Chapter 10: Neo-liberalism, Fascist / Soviet Collapse and Anarchist Reconstruction, 1976-2016
(The collapse of Iberian fascism and the resurgence of anarchism; Anarchist alternatives to authoritarian autonomism in the Metropole; Turkey, the Middle East, Shagila, the CHK and the Iranian Revolution of 1978-1979; Japan, South Korea, India and resistance in the Far East: the Gwangju Free Commune of 1980; Zapatismo, Magónismo, the FAT, FAM, EZLN, CIPO-RFM, and resistance in the Andes; Self-management and factory occupations in the Southern Cone; African anarchism versus capitalist “liberation movements”: the PALIR, Awareness League, IWW, and ZACF choose libertarian federalism over tribal centralism; Seeds beneath the snow: the end of the Soviet Empire and the re-emergence of anarchist mass organisations; Twilight of the IWA, and the rise of the CGT and the independent revolutionary and grassroots syndicalist unions; Social insertion in the new millennium: the anarchist movement flowers again; The RKAS-NM and its neo-Makhnovist revolutionary project in Ukraine; The Arab Spring and the Rojava Revolution of 2012-today: autonomous directly-democratic confederalism, anarchist guerrillas, and women’s liberation; Instead of a conclusion: surfing the Seventh Wave)

Part 6: Appendices

Appendix A: Maps & Tables
(First Wave: Emergence 1868-1894; Second Wave: Consolidation 1895-1921; Third Wave: Realignment 1922-1949; Fourth Wave: Insurgency 1950-1975; Fifth Wave: Rearguard 1976-1991; Sixth Wave: Reconstruction 1992-2016; Anarchist Bids at Counter-power: Mexico, Ukraine, Manchuria, Spain; Anarchist Movement Periodic Table)

Appendix B: Organisational Index

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Makhnovist Influence on the Dnieper Military Flotilla

Armoured Boat No.2, 1st Squadron, Dnieper Military Flotilla, during the Russian Civil War. It had a crew of seven, which, from the design I take to be a captain-pilot, fore Maxim-turret gunner, aft (anti-aircraft?) gunner, and four naval infantrymen/women who, during combat would fire through armoured ports in the vessel's flanks, or who would be deployed ashore in support of ground forces. Not sure what flag is being flown, but it sure isn't the Bolshevik Navy's saltire cross!

I have previously written about the Makhnovist "Navy", a small force consisting it seems mostly of riverine and coastal tugboats fitted with rudimentary armament under the command of Seymon Karetnik, but flagshipped by a converted, armoured and armed civilian steamer which plied the Sea of Azov between the Makhnovist-occupied ports of Berdyansk and Mariupol in 1919. This fascinating tale is told in a great Russian-language book, Vladimir M. Chop and Igor I. Liman, Free Berdyansk: The Life of a City Under an Anarchist Social Experiment (1918–1921), AA “Tandem-U”, Zaporyzhia, Ukraine, 2007. 

Now, it seems that there was another Makhnovist-linked naval force, the Dnieper Military Flotilla, ordered to be formed on 12 March 1919 by the anarchist-friendly Bolshevik commander Vladimir Antonov-Ovseyenko who was close to anarchist commander Maroussia Nikovorova whose armoured train, the Free Combat Druzhina, had liberated four Ukrainian cities from the Whites in 1918, laying the groundwork for the rise of the later Makhnovist Insurgent Army of the Ukraine (RPAU) in 1919. The Flotilla initially consisted of the following vessels:

1st Squadron – the Charlotte, and Armored Boat Numbers 1, 2 (pictured above), 3, 4, and 5;
2nd Squadron – the Courier, the Apollo, and the Samuel; and
3rd Squadron – the Arnold, the Faithful, and the flotilla flagship, the Admiral;
plus seven support vessels which would have included ammunition and fuel bunkers, and at least one tugboat.

I am still researching this but the named ships in the flotilla were likely to be armoured steamers of the "river monitor class" which were "purpose-built, armored, low-board, shallow-draft vessels designed to attack enemy fortifications, forces, or water craft in coast or river defense... There were several types, but typical was a vessel with a displacement of 130–150 metric tons, 140–200 horsepower engine, capable of 14 knots per hour (26 kilometers), armed with two 122 mm howitzers, two 40mm cannon and three machine guns or three 76 mm cannon and four machine guns." The description is from Lester W. Grau, River Flotillas in Support of Defensive Ground Operations: The Soviet Experience, The Journal of Slavic Military Studies, 2016, but his study is of Civil War-era flotillas such as the Dnieper which were reactivated in the 1930s and fought in WWII, so the armaments he cites are most likely later, updated armaments, but it gives you some idea of the sort of vessels likely to have been in the Civil War-era flotilla. Many vessels were, in fact, converted civilian paddle-wheelers, barges, coast guard vessels, or small steamers such as Karetnik's flagship.

The Wikipedia entry (sigh: I know!) on the Flotilla states that its "combat vessels were of two kinds: gunboats and armored boats. The gunboats were usually conversions of boats confiscated from Kiev shipowners, on which were installed one or two guns of 37–152 millimetres (1.5–6.0 in) calibre (fore and aft, if two guns) and up to six machine guns – Hotchkiss, Maxim, or whatever was available – with some iron or steel sheet bolted on for protection if any was available. The armored boats were purpose-built patrol craft inherited from the Imperial Navy; their armament consisted of one Maxim machine gun in a rotating turret, with a crew of 7." The Flotilla carried Special Companies of marine infantry who would be deployed ashore in battle.

According to Yuri Glushakov, The Revolution Is Dead! Long Live the Revolution! Anarchism in Belarus 1902-1927, SzSS, St Petersburg, Russia, 2015, the Dnieper Military Flotilla's first commander the revolutionary sailor A. V. Polupanov, a Donbas miner, and "a person colorful and rebellious" who had in 1918 been commander of the armoured train "Freedom or Death", which had served on the front alongside Nikiforova's armoured train and the Makhnovists. The Flotilla's crews were selected in Kiev from Black Sea and Baltic revolutionary sailors. Glushakov notes that the crews remained staunchly partisan with only 63 Bolsheviks and 40 sympathisers among its 2,300 personnel in 1919: "The Flotilla lived Makhnovist ideals, and there were many such who, having visited Makhno and having got into the Flotilla, were not averse to joining him again." An early disaster in battling against the Green warlord and pogromist Daniil Illich Turpilo 400 rebels of whose self-proclaimed "Army of the Independent Soviet Ukraine" on 11 April 1919 assaulted the Flotilla at dock in Kiev from the  steamer Baron Ginzburg, later capturing the Flotilla vessels Dnieper, Salubrious, Gogol, Charlotte, and Zeus. After six campaigns against Turpilo by the FLotilla in support of some 21,000 Red Army troops, he was defeated in July and killed in November 1919.

Such was the Flotilla's aversion to regimentation that Trotsky replaced Polupanov on 13 September 1919 with a Bolshevik named Smirnov who was disliked because of his love of the officer caste; nevertheless, though Smirnov purged the Flotilla of 65% of its sailors, several hardcore anarchist ideologues remained. Glushakov cites the case of M.V, Sednev, a sailor from the cruiser Askold, who had served jail time for mutiny in Vladivostok in 1907 during the 1905-1907 Revolt. After fighting with some distinction against White Polish forces over the spring and summer of 1920 - especially its marine infantry - the Flotilla's three squadrons were dispatched to two separate locations: the Berezhinsky and Sozh Squadrons to Gomel in Belorrussia, and the Southern Squadron to Yekaterinoslav in Ukraine in the Makhnovist theatre of operations - which suggests further opportunities for fraternisation between the revolutionary sailors and the anarchists. The Flotilla was disbanded in December 1920, though several of its vessels were rehabilitated and put back into service in the 1930s.

Danube Military Flotilla Gunboat, built in 1916; here the side gun-ports through which the naval infantry could fire their rifles can be clearly seen. 

A 1916 Russian steamer converted into a gunboat. Perhaps the Makhnovist "Navy" flagship under Seymon Karetnik was similar? It seems to be about 17m in length.

A small armed tugboat of the sort believed to be operated by the Makhnovists. I have suggested a similar scale to that of the gunboat above, but it's pure guesswork based on the vertical height of the pilot's houses.

The Dnieper Military Flotilla - probably in its 1930s reincarnation - showing the small Gunboats and, in the background, larger craft including what looks like a River Monitor.

A River Monitor, illustrated in Grau (2016)

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l’Eredità di Mandela

Estratto da un'intervista di Carlo Annese, GQ Italia, Johannesburg, Ilugo 2012

«Oggi esiste una divisione in classi che replica la divisione razziale d’un tempo», dice Michael Schmidt, direttore dell’Istituto per lo sviluppo del giornalismo, nell’uffi cio da cui domina Johannesburg. «Si sta verifi cando un’apartheid economica, per cui i poveri sono sempre più poveri, le township che dovevano scomparire sono ancora lì, gli operai non guadagnano abbastanza per comprare ciò che producono, e all’élite bianca del regime di vent’anni fa si è aggiunta una classe media nera agiata di non più di 300 mila persone. Tutto ciò non è solo l’effetto del governo degli ultimi anni: anche Mandela ha delle responsabilità, ma pochi vogliono vederle. La sua fi gura è stata quasi beatificata, come un nuovo Gandhi, per cui tutto ciò che ha fatto è sacrosanto, mentre anche la critica aiuterebbe a restituirgli una dimensione umana, al di là del mito: Madiba è stato un uomo di partito che ha ceduto al compromesso per riconciliare il Paese, respingendo le richieste dell’ala estremista dell’ANC di nazionalizzare le miniere e consentendo ai bianchi di rimediare ai danni imposti all’economia da anni di boicottaggio internazionale e isolamento commerciale». 

[FINE]

Mozambique: Change is in the Air

Mozambique's liquid natural gas fields. The map was produced in 2016 by Africa Confidential.

When Renamo leader Alfonso Dhlakama died unexpectedly on 3 May 2018, there were fears that it would upset the Mozambican peace process between Renamo and Frelimo. It was also unfortunate as I had been waiting for some months to interview the reclusive former rebel leader whose movement had once been a proxy of Rhodesian then apartheid South African intelligence, making him something like a Mozambican version of Angolan rebel leader Jonas Savimbi (whose killing I reported on in 2002); I had been assured by his aide-de-camp that the Dhlakama interview was imminent, so was disappointed at the news of his death. Here's a piece I wrote in March last year on the peace process - and Mozambique's emergent liquid natural gas industry.

Michael Schmidt

The extension of the ceasefire announced on January 3 between the Mozambican armed forces and opposition guerrillas is holding – and a peace process now appears imminent, as gloom over the country’s debt crisis is somewhat dispelled by progress on exploiting its gas reserves.
Despite ranking 180 out of 188 on the UN’s Human Development Index, liberalisation saw the economy grow at a blistering 7-8% of GDP by the mid-2010s, and in September 2015, Mozambique was declared landmine-free. Meanwhile, the discovery in 2010 of offshore gas reserves – at 2.8 to 5 trillion m³, the biggest find in the world in a decade – promised the country an influx of US$100bn in investment, which would make the country the world’s third-largest liquid natural gas (LNG) exporter within a decade, the IMF estimated. 
But then it all exploded in Mozambicans’ faces: a disputed election result in 2014 saw Renamo take up arms in the hinterland again, despite occupying almost two thirds of the seats in the Assembly of the Republic; while three security-related companies, Ematum, Proindicus and MAM, defaulted on loans illicitly guaranteed by the Armando Guebuza government over 2013-2014, adding 20% to the country’s foreign debt, and resulting in the suspension of financial aid from the IMF, World Bank and all Western donors and funding agencies. MAM’s US$535m loan was to build shipyards to service the offshore gas rigs.
So even though the Renamo-Frelimo conflict is not fuelled by gasfields bidding or the debt escalation, sighs of relief greeted the extension of the ceasefire, negotiated in two phonecalls between President Filipe Nyusi and Renamo leader Afonso Dhlakama, bypassing an international team of mediators led by EU representative Mario Raffaelli. Raffaelli said the team would only return once invited by a joint commission set up by Frelimo and Renamo to iron out a peace deal. But though that commission stopped work in December, on 3 February, a working group was appointed to resolve the military impasse – and another to draft constitutional amendments and legislation on the decentralisation of power.
Veteran Maputo journalist Paul Fauvet told me that “Everyone, Frelimo, Renamo and the second opposition party, the MDM, agrees that the constitution should be amended. But neither Frelimo nor the MDM will accept Dhlakama simply appointing provincial governors in the provinces he claims that Renamo won in the 2014 general elections. A constitutional amendment requires a two thirds majority in parliament, and Frelimo plus the MDM don't have two thirds. If Renamo is not on board, there can be no constitutional amendment.
“The simplest solution would be for the elected provincial assemblies to appoint the provincial governors. Given the current make-up of the assemblies, that would result in Renamo governors in Sofala, Zambezia and Tete, and possibly in Nampula (depending on how the sole MDM assembly member casts his vote). Frelimo would have the governors in the other six provinces.”
Mozambique is scheduled to hold municipal elections next year and general elections in 2019, so there is pressure to amend the constitution before then. Last year, leading Frelimo intellectual and former security minister Sergio Vieira warned that the ruling party was in danger of losing the coming polls as it was “degenerating” while “a crowd of new crooks” looted the state.
The silver lining is that the gasfields investment is steaming ahead, with an US$8,5bn refinery announced in December, and production of about 3,4m tons/year over 25 years expected to start flowing from the Area 4 gasfield in 2022. According to Natural Gas World, last month South Korea’s KOGAS green-lighted investment of US$513m in a floating LNG rig over 2017-2022 and a guarantee of up to US$640m of the facility’s debt. 
Area 4 rights are divided at 10% each between KOGAS, Portugal’s GALP, and Mozambique’s ENH, with 70% held by ENI East Africa, consisting of Italian operator ENI and China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC). All boards have approved their investments with CNPC’s the last decision awaited before construction begins.
Meanwhile, a second consortium led by US-based Anadarko is expected to announce its investment in Area 1 shortly, and the latest gasfields tender awards, to Royal Dutch Shell, Norway’s Yara International and London-registered GL Africa Energy, have been hailed for boldly excluding Frelimo old guard bidders close to President Nyusi.
Fauvet said he did not expect gas to distort the Mozambican economy as oil had in Angola: “Nyusi is well aware of the dangers of excessive reliance on hydrocarbons, and repeatedly stresses the need for further investment in areas such as agriculture and tourism. So I remain optimistic.”

[ENDS]

Market Leaders

Not sure if this is a poem or a song or just a rant, but I was tired of sitting in Doha international airport drowning in the useless products of late capitalism:

***

I am so not interested in your New York Times bestseller list
with its endless screeds on how to be a feng-shui asshole in business;
I am so not interested in your favourite new-fangled gadget 
– I don’t care what it does while you ignore those around you;
I am so not interested in your overweeningly hip craft beer 
with its coyly underbrewed, oversweet stench;
I am so not interested in your Dalai Lama lecturing me on joy
when he uses his title though Desmond Tutu uses his name
I am so not interested in your Hugo Boss perfume
– that queer old Sturm Abteilung scent of fruit salad; 
I am so not interested in your slickly-branded clothing range
– it’s poorly stitched, doesn’t hang well, and won’t last the season;
I am so not interested in your vacuous attempts at artworks
that say zero about the dangerous philosophies of death and fucking;
I am so not interested in your po-faced robotic news-channels
that feed us tidbits of tragedy like the macaws we are;
I am so not interested in the faux contestations of sports matches
– run by mobsters and profiteers and mistaken for fun;
I am so not interested in your latest social media monster
because yonks ago some dinosaurs even had two brains;
I’m so not interested in the vacuum of your trans-Atlantic flight
- it’s just another kind of bus, but you’re still the same kind of kine;
I am so not interested in your anodyne mimicry of politics
– nice folks are jailed and gunned down each day for less;
I am so not interested in your shallow ruminations about the soul
– because, “brother,” I’ve never seen you really get down.

[ENDS]