[WSMDiscuss] Africa in movement…, Movements in movement… : Fwd: African protests soaring to new heights this year

[JS CACIM]

Sunday, November 4, 2018

Africa in movement…, Movements in movement…

Neoliberalism, State Repression, and the Rise of Social Protest in Africa 

Patrick Bond

Are protests in Africa politically or economically motivated ? This new book has answers

Kim Yi Dionne <https://www.washingtonpost.com/people/kim-yi-dionne/>
            Thanks again for a great compilation - and essay -, Patrick.

            JS

fwd

> Begin forwarded message:
> 
> From: Patrick Bond <pbond at mail.ngo.za>
> Subject: [Debate-List] (Fwd) African protests soaring to new heights this year
> Date: November 4, 2018 at 4:55:21 AM EST
> To: DEBATE <debate-list at fahamu.org>, "progeconnetwork at googlegroups.com" <progeconnetwork at googlegroups.com>, "pwyp-africa at googlegroups.com" <pwyp-africa at googlegroups.com>, IANRA list <ianra1 at googlegroups.com>, "durbansocialForum at yahoogroups.com" <durbansocialForum at yahoogroups.co>

Many databases <http://openeventdata.org/datasets.html> track dissent in different parts of the world. I prefer a source funded via the U.S. Pentagon's Minerva Project, because Washington spies on African protesters, so as to keep pro-Western dictators in their posts. (Their Mubarak surprise in January-February 2011 shocked them into a new research agenda; so did climate change crises like Darfur.) And hence perhaps the best database <https://www.acleddata.com/dashboard/> to help us understand what Africom understands about African unrest is probably: https://www.acleddata.com/dashboard  <https://www.acleddata.com/dashboard/>
    Since the North African uprising in 2011, social unrest has been soaring across Africa, in spite of rising state repression.


Here are the ACLED records of 2018 protests (as of yesterday), with the # of protests/riots continent-wide peaking at 3500 in September. The map shows significant protests since January 1, bunched in the big cities of SA, Nigeria, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Algeria and Morocco.

 
***

This database allows quite clear country-by-country assessments. For example, in Ghana, we know from press coverage about progressive social unrest in a couple of areas this year: anti-Trumperialism/subimperialism <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsfi8adKNJ4> (from late March but also against the U.S. First Lady's visit last month <https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/10/4/17936752/melania-malawi-trump-comments-shithole-countries>) and student rights <http://www.africanews.com/2018/10/29/ghana-s-protest-hit-varsity-vice-chancellor-asked-to-step-aside/> at Kwame Nkrumah Univ (from last month). Regressive unrest continues, too, against Nigerian small businesspeople <https://punchng.com/fg-summons-ghanaian-envoy-over-closure-of-traders-shops/>. But note the general reason that, according to ACLED, "rioters" have "conflict goals": democracy and economic justice. 


***

Here's a Washington Post review of a new book on the topic: "there are two forces driving them: political grievances among the middle class and material grievances among the poor. Mueller argues that political grievances largely determine when protests will occur, while material grievances largely explain who is likely to participate in the protests. Mueller uses military analogies, likening the middle class to the “generals of the revolution” and the poor as the “foot soldiers of the revolution.”"



Are protests in Africa politically or economically motivated? This new book has answers.

 <>
Protesters surround a bonfire on a street as they demand the release of  Ugandan politician Robert Kyagulanyi. (Stringer/AFP/Getty Images)

 <https://www.washingtonpost.com/people/kim-yi-dionne/>
By Kim Yi Dionne <https://www.washingtonpost.com/people/kim-yi-dionne/>
August 24
In the past two weeks, citizens have taken to the streets to protest the Ugandan government’s detention and arrest of opposition leaders (particularly MP Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu <https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2018/08/24/ugandan-pop-star-ran-office-ended-up-imprisoned-beaten-charged-with-treason/?utm_term=.d1bf55fabcc5>, a.k.a. Bobi Wine), journalists and others. At least one person has died <https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/20/africa/uganda-protest-mp-arrest/index.html> and many more have been injured in the protests. Analysts connect <http://africanarguments.org/2018/08/23/generation-gap-freebobiwine-bobi-wine-uganda-politics/> these recent protests to those in 2011, known as the “Walk to Work <http://africanarguments.org/2015/03/04/africa-uprising-political-walking-in-uganda-an-extract-by-dan-branch-and-zachariah-mampilly/>” protests, which drew large crowds in Uganda’s capital city, Kampala.

[A Ugandan pop star ran for office — and ended up imprisoned, beaten and charged with treason <https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2018/08/24/ugandan-pop-star-ran-office-ended-up-imprisoned-beaten-charged-with-treason/>]

As in Uganda, citizens in Malawi are  taking to the streets to protest their government. Prominent civil society activists are organizing a nationwide demonstration Sept. 7 <https://zodiakmalawi.com/top-stories/pac-backs-demonstrations-csos-issue-final-notice>, saying the government has not answered their demands to deal with corruption and poor governance. Also as in Uganda, protests in Malawi today resonate with those in 2011 that ended in violent repression by the government, with at least 20 Malawians killed <http://www.icla.up.ac.za/images/un/commissionsofinquiries/files/Malawi%202011%20Commission%20Final%20report.pdf> and scores more injured, harassed  and arrested.

Reports of these protests in Uganda and Malawi — both today and in 2011 — focus largely on political motivations  rather than economic motivations. A new book sheds light on how these different motivations drive protests in Africa.

A 2011 protest in Malawi opens the book in this week’s installment of the African Politics Summer Reading Spectacular: “Political Protest in Contemporary Africa <https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1108438253/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=afpota-20&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=1108438253&linkId=5360624573b2ad64339be063897794b4>,” by Lisa Mueller, a political scientist at Macalester College. Mueller was in Malawi in 2011 when students at the University of Malawi were protesting the government of Bingu wa Mutharika, which had harassed Blessings Chinsinga, a professor of political and administrative studies, after he taught about the Arab Spring in one of his courses. Mueller writes about an August 2011 protest that she observed as it unfolded.

 <>
Mueller’s study of protests in Africa shows that there are two forces driving them: political grievances among the middle class and material grievances among the poor. Mueller argues that political grievances largely determine when protests will occur, while material grievances largely explain who is likely to participate in the protests. Mueller uses military analogies, likening the middle class to the “generals of the revolution” and the poor as the “foot soldiers of the revolution.”

To make her case, Mueller draws on Afrobarometer <http://www.afrobarometer.org/> survey data collected in 31 African countries and interviews she conducted with protest leaders in Malawi, Senegal, Burkina Faso  and Niger, as well as citizen surveys she collected in urban Niger. Her analysis also draws on historical documents, secondary interviews  and protest leaders’ public statements from across Africa south of the Sahara.

Her original data best capture the interesting divergence in ideology in protest coalitions. Her chapter examining protests in Niger shows that while protest spokespeople and the international media framed the 2009-2010 uprisings in Niger as a defense of constitutional democracy, Mueller’s survey of urban Nigerians showed that economic grievances (rather than dissatisfaction with the president) had a stronger relationship with Nigerians’ decisions to protest.

The divergent motivations for African protests are also evident in a protest slogan’s evolution in Senegal in 2011. Originally, activists from the M23 movement rallied for people to take to the streets with the slogan, “Don’t touch my constitution.” (Then-president Abdoulaye Wade was seeking changes in Senegal’s Constitution to keep his grip on power; he lost his reelection bid in 2012.) But as M23 sympathizers protested in Dakar by burning flammable objects, they singed wooden stalls of street vendors, aborting M23’s coalition with the poor. Street vendors recast the battle cry to “Don’t touch my table!”

Mueller takes a fresh approach to studying protests. Her primary goal is not to explain variation in protest frequency or protest participation (though her book still teaches us quite a bit on the latter). She aims to interpret what we’re actually witnessing when we see crowds of Africans taking to the streets. Are these democratic revolutions? Electoral protests? Populist movements? Or something else?

Through her careful work, Mueller demonstrates the shortcomings of relying on journalistic reports of protests, especially those that characterize the democratic concerns as the primary issues motivating people to take to the streets. Protest leaders rather than rank-and-file protesters are more likely to act as spokespeople for the movement, increasing the frequency of reports that a protest is about “democratic change,”  overlooking the everyday grievances that motivated rank-and-file protesters to take to the streets.

Mueller’s book is an important contribution to the study of protests in Africa, and builds on another recent book by political scientists Adam Branch and Zachariah Mampilly, “Africa Uprising <https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1780329970/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=afpota-20&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=1780329970&linkId=cbdd629f6bf08896da1af7f16fed7a89>.” Both books give an overview of protests in Africa, with a focus on what they characterize as the “Third Wave <https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2015/06/12/protest-is-always-hopeful-examining-the-third-wave-of-popular-protest-in-africa/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.8247e4760e24>” of African protests. The two books take different (complementary) approaches to studying African protests. The ongoing wave of protests on the continent make these books necessary additions to the libraries of all who want to understand better the issues bringing ordinary citizens to the streets.


***

Here's an essay done mid-year, with some SA case study material:


Neoliberalism, State Repression and 
the Rise of Social Protest in Africa 
in Berch Berberoglu (Ed), Social Movements, Revolution and Social Transformation <https://networks.h-net.org/node/6077/discussions/2904357/new-book-palgrave-handbook-social-movements-revolution-and-social> (London: Palgrave 2018)
 
Abstract
In the best-resourced database of African social unrest (from Sussex University), the continent’s average monthly protest rate rose fifty-fold, from 20 in the years prior to 2010, to 1000 since 2015, starting with the 2011 North African spike. This and other evidence of Africans uprising against adverse socio-economic, political and environmental conditions suggest a new stage of social unrest, albeit one lacking an overarching ideology. There are snippets of progressive social-movement narratives within the NGO networks that seek to connect to the base anger, although this is still the exception, not the rule, given the NGO sector’s overarching liberal politics. Areas of potential linkage from which to generate stronger ideological coherence – such as climate change, economic justice and resource stewardship – remain underdeveloped and ‘single issue’ in nature. Even in the case of South Africa, whose civil society enjoys perhaps the continent’s most generous funding support and professional infrastructure, there is hesitancy to connect the dots between labour, community, women, students and youth, other identity and environmental struggles. The actual construction of movements as well as of liberatory political parties will require more purposive coalition-building, driven by Africa’s now undeniable grassroots and shopfloor militancy.
 
 
Introduction 
 
Frantz Fanon’s critique of African politics deserves continual recalling: “For my part the deeper I enter into the cultures and the political circles, the surer I am that the great danger that threatens Africa is the absence of ideology.”[1] <applewebdata://7C9059D9-3A10-4790-B3EC-19A3772E016F#_ftn1> In the period since the great era of anti-colonialism in which he participated, ideology has regularly appeared, but in incomplete and often truncated form. Two strong ideological currents have variously risen and fallen: liberal, focusing on democratic electoral challenges, using resource revenue transparency as a key lever; and radical, focusing on socio-economic and resource-related or other environmental grievances, with an aim to challenging deeper-rooted power relations. 
 
Occasionally the two are conjoined, and indeed wide-ranging movements of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) spanning the continent began appearing in the 2000s: Jubilee 2000 Africa, the African Social Forum, the Africa Water Network, Publish What You Pay, the Tax Justice Network-Africa (TJN-A) and the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA), for example. A successful continent-wide Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa claims 4000 members. Occasionally the intellectuals and NGOs (or their arguments) are also embedded within grassroots social movements. Indeed by 2017 the notion of “Africans Rising” led to an NGO-driven network launched in Arusha, Tanzania by that name, appealing to a wide variety of members demanding social justice. Its intention is to “amplify broad demands connecting struggles, building solidarity and cooperation within and amongst campaigns for social, economic, environmental and gender justice.”[2] <applewebdata://7C9059D9-3A10-4790-B3EC-19A3772E016F#_ftn2>
 
But the community and shopfloor terrains of struggle often evade academics and NGOs, especially when there are genuine waves of uprisings against various political, economic and ecological injustices. These are occurring in more places and at an ever more rapid pace, as even a glance at one collection of hotspots illustrates (Figure 1). According to one of the five continent-wide on-line databases monitoring political unrest, the U.S. Pentagon-funded Armed Conflict Location and Event Dataset (ACLED), so-called ‘riots and protests’ ratcheted up in number over the past decade, from a monthly average of 20 prior to 2010 to nearly 400 during 2010-12, to 600 from 2012-15, to 1000 from 2015-17. In 2017-18, the number surpassed 1500 in two months. 
 
Figure 1

Source: Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (2018). Conflict Trends. http://www.acleddata.com/ <http://www.acleddata.com/>
 
Although there are debates about the varying quality of different methodologies and sources of protest information, other databases – the Uppsala Conflict Data Program Georeferenced Events Dataset, the Social Conflict in Africa Database, and the Global Database of Events, Language, and Tone – suggest similar trends. Revealingly, the final one of the five – the African Development Bank’s African economic outlook chapter on governance – ceased publication in January 2018. (Afficionados of protest statistics recall the same problem with Chinese statistics: after regular protest and strike counts approaching 200,000 annually, the police simply refused further public access to the data in 2011).[3] <applewebdata://7C9059D9-3A10-4790-B3EC-19A3772E016F#_ftn3>
 
Based on these indications of social unrest, this is a continent that deserves far more attention when it comes to documenting bottom-up resistance to injustices. One reason is that there are so many facets of political-economic-ecological devastation visited upon a billion innocent people, by forces beyond the victims’ control, such as international financial flows and resource extraction, big-power geopolitics and climate change. Not only are there tens of billions of dollars’ worth of “illicit financial flows” that drain financial resources from Africa,[4] <applewebdata://7C9059D9-3A10-4790-B3EC-19A3772E016F#_ftn4> a splurge of new loans in the 2006-14 period (especially from China) caused the return of foreign-debt crises in many African countries, which in turn generates austerity and social resistance. 
 
But the most devastating cause of unrest in coming years will be climate change, a factor recognized by the U.S. military when it funded the Minerva research program at the University of Texas and Sussex University.[5] <applewebdata://7C9059D9-3A10-4790-B3EC-19A3772E016F#_ftn5> In part, the project considers the impact of climate change on malgovernance, protest and social dislocation (e.g. in Sudan’s Darfur region), although there is a danger of simplistic, false correlations.[6] <applewebdata://7C9059D9-3A10-4790-B3EC-19A3772E016F#_ftn6> There is already a hint of how droughts will prove debilitating even in the best of circumstances: Cape Town, the continent’s most glamorous, second-richest (behind Johannesburg) and fourth most unequal city (behind Johannesburg, Lagos and Nairobi, using the Palma Index).[7] <applewebdata://7C9059D9-3A10-4790-B3EC-19A3772E016F#_ftn7> Its three-year drought left all residents fretting about the mid-2018 “Day Zero” when dams were scheduled to empty and new desalination plants reached maximum capacity, leaving residential taps bone dry.[8] <applewebdata://7C9059D9-3A10-4790-B3EC-19A3772E016F#_ftn8> Intense tactics may again characterize protests as water shortages intensify; the throwing of excrement during Cape Town protests – against poor quality sanitation in 2013 and against Cecil Rhodes’ statue at the University of Cape Town in 2015 – proved effective in making demands visible and rapidly forcing authorities to concede. Indeed across South Africa, thousands of “service delivery protests” have been documented, as discussed below. 
 
The yet more dangerous likelihood is that nine out of ten peasants across Africa will not be able to grow food by the end of this century. Hence the ecological conditions of Africa’s underdevelopment require even more debate, and the extent to which socio-political-economic protests are also climate-related should be surfaced. After all, new 2018 data showed even more conclusively the extent to which Africa’s resources – now termed “natural capital” in the most advanced official accounting[9] <applewebdata://7C9059D9-3A10-4790-B3EC-19A3772E016F#_ftn9> – are being drawn from the continent by the extractive industry’s multinational mining and petroleum corporations. They do so without reinvesting, as occurs in contrast in other resource-intensive economies and societies (such as Australia, Canada and Norway). This value transfer is also evident with fossil fuels, thus justifying renewed consideration of ways to compensate Africans whose lands hold coal, petroleum and gas, for leaving them underground. 
 
By setting up the ideological challenge in such far-reaching terms, it is possible in the pages below to hone in on national sites of unrest – especially South Africa where social movements of both liberal and radical hues have risen up against their leaders – to identify where opportunities arise for more than the present series of disconnected protests, and potentially for an eco-socialist-feminist approach to Africa’s crises.[10] <applewebdata://7C9059D9-3A10-4790-B3EC-19A3772E016F#_ftn10>
 
Bottom-up resistance rises
 
Generating a broad-brush ideology cognisant of activist campaigning was the subject of the Africa Rising network’s 2016 Kiliminjaro Declaration, in which 272 delegates declared, 
 
Africa is a rich continent. That wealth belongs to all our People, not to a narrow political and economic elite. We need to fight for economic development that is just and embraces social inclusion and environmental care. We have a right to the ‘better life’ our governments have promised.
Africans have a diverse, rich and powerful heritage that is important to heal ourselves and repair the damage done by neoliberalism to our humanity and environment. Being African, embracing the philosophy of Ubuntu should be a source of our pride.
African Youth are a critical foundation of building the success in our continent and must play a central role in building Africans Rising.
Africa’s Diaspora whether displaced through slavery and colonialism or part of modern day migration are part of Africa’s history and future. They are a reservoir of skills, resources and passion that must be harnessed and integrated into our movement.
We are committed to a decentralized, citizen-owned future that will build support and solidarity for local struggles, empower local leadership and immerse our activists in grassroots work of building social movements from below and beyond borders.
We are committed to building a citizens movement that is accountable to the constituencies we represent and enforcing the highest standards of ethical behaviour.[11] <applewebdata://7C9059D9-3A10-4790-B3EC-19A3772E016F#_ftn11>
 
This is one of the most compelling of linkage efforts that followed African Social Forum efforts a decade earlier to link social justice struggles.[12] <applewebdata://7C9059D9-3A10-4790-B3EC-19A3772E016F#_ftn12> It may well suffer the same fate, in which major international NGOs (in ASF’s case Oxfam and Ford Foundation, in Africa Rising’s, ActionAid) find faddish campaigns that require local-level grounding, rather than the other way around. Even where major NGO coalitions are built from grassroots groups – TJN-A and PACJA – the danger persists.
 
One example comes from Tanzanian NGOs, whose foreign donor-driven character has been criticized by Issa Shivji.[13] <applewebdata://7C9059D9-3A10-4790-B3EC-19A3772E016F#_ftn13> In June 2017, Tanzanian President John Magufuli demanded that Canadian mining giant Barrick Gold pay billions of dollars in taxes that had been illegally exported: “We are in an economic war,” he declared. “Billions in revenue have been lost. It’s something that is very painful and shameful for Tanzania.” In response, the NGO network HakiRasilimali – an affiliate of George Soros’ Publish What You Pay (PWYP) – praised Magufuli for standing up, but also warned the government to be mindful of the legal conundrums that could arise from “international legal commitments [under which] the government is bound with guaranteeing companies protection from nationalization and safeguards against retrospective legal applications.” The group further emphasized “the need to continue being an investor friendly country where both the investor and government engage in a win-win situation.”[14] <applewebdata://7C9059D9-3A10-4790-B3EC-19A3772E016F#_ftn14>
 
In contrast, grassroots opposition aimed at blocking mining and petroleum extraction – not reforming extractivism through top-down processes as PWYP attempts – could be far more effective. The Women in Mining network expressed this militancy in relation to one hotly-contested coal mine in South Africa.
 
Climate change impacts are felt most intensively by women because of patriarchal role allocations and unequal control over natural resources in families, communities and economies. Peasant women in Africa will carry the brunt of climate change effects because of their responsibilities for provisioning between 60-80 percent of food consumed by rural households, the collection of safe drinking water, and the care of sick household members.
   “Coal kills. It has destroyed our land, our lives and our community.” These are the words of a woman member of the Somkhele community in KwaZulu-Natal who has endured devastating environmental and social effects of coal mining over the last decade. Just a few miles west, communities in Fuleni are fighting Ibutho Coal, a shadowy firm linked to BHP Billiton and Glencore – the world’s largest mining house and commodity trader – which aims to mine coal on the southern boundary of the iMfolozi Wilderness Area. 
   Thousands of local residents in Fuleni will be relocated (for the second time in a generation) to make way for the mine in an area already suffering more than a year of deep drought. Thanks to increased burning of coal and other fossil fuels, such conditions are now more commonplace, as climate change takes hold across the world. South Africa is both victim and villain, on a grand scale, and this is just one of many sites where the class, race and gender character of the winners and losers are blatantly obvious.[15] <applewebdata://7C9059D9-3A10-4790-B3EC-19A3772E016F#_ftn15>
 
Such anti-extractive militancy is widespread. In 2015, Anglo American CEO Mark Cutifani conceded to Bloomberg news service that due to community protests, “There’s something like $25 billion’ worth of projects tied up or stopped,” a stunning feat given that all new mines across the world were valued that year at $80 billion.[16] <applewebdata://7C9059D9-3A10-4790-B3EC-19A3772E016F#_ftn16> According to a 2018 pamphlet prepared by Johannesburg faith-based mining watchdog Bench Marks Foundation for civil society’s Alternative Mining Indaba, “Intractable conflicts of interest prevail with ongoing interruptions to mining operations. Resistance to mining operations is steadily on the increase along with the associated conflict.”[17] <applewebdata://7C9059D9-3A10-4790-B3EC-19A3772E016F#_ftn17> This is true especially in South Africa but in many other mining sites across Africa.
 
The Alternative Mining Indaba typically faced a difficult choice: either embrace this resistance, or retreat into reformist NGO silos, promoting transparency and the AMV even though these were obviously failing. By choosing the reform option, the Indaba participations generally were compelled to ignore mining’s adverse impact on energy security, climate and resource depletion[18] <applewebdata://7C9059D9-3A10-4790-B3EC-19A3772E016F#_ftn18> Moreover, the vast African protest wave after 2011, including in mining areas, was typically reduced to specific sites of struggle, with few attempts to draw out commonalities, either conceptually or in linking organizations engaged in protest. 
 
But such linkage is rare even in research. As one example, using the ACLED database covering 1997-2010 incidents associated with mining conflict (mostly in Southern Africa), Berman et al identify how “riots and protests” can become more serious “battles” that involve warlords and rebel groups:
 
mining activity does not only increase the scope for localized protests and riots, but it also systematically fuels larger-scale battles… gaining the territorial control of a mining area leads rebel groups to intensify and spread their fighting activity elsewhere in the territory in the successive periods… mines spread conflict across space and time by making rebellions financially feasible. More precisely we first show that spikes in the price of minerals extracted in the ethnic homeland of a rebel group tend to diffuse its fighting operations spatially outside its homeland… the commodities super-cycle (i.e., the steep increase in mineral prices during the 2000s) accounts for 14 percent to 24 percent of the average violence observed in African countries over 1997–2010. [19] <applewebdata://7C9059D9-3A10-4790-B3EC-19A3772E016F#_ftn19>
 
In these instances, the distinction between the rebel warlords’ objectives in taking control of mining – for financial benefit (there are few if any ideological struggles akin to those of the 1990s when right-wing rebels like UNITA took Angolan diamond sites for political purposes) – contrasts sharply with protests and riots which often are aimed at preventing African mining. In yet other cases there are religious-extremist “terrorist” activities financed by resource extraction, not considered in this analysis. Again the difference between a top-down and bottom-up perspective is obvious. As Berman et al conclude,
 
It is likely that mineral extraction relaxes the financing constraints of rebels, because armed groups can sell minerals illicitly on the black market through the benefit of tacit or active support in various areas of society. Our empirical results suggest that one way for domestic governments to dampen rebellion feasibility effects would be to put in place more stringent anti-corruption policies, and to support transparency/traceability initiatives in the mining industry. The multinational foreign firms have too their work to do, as we find that mines operated by companies complying with socially responsible practices are less at risk to fuel violence.[20] <applewebdata://7C9059D9-3A10-4790-B3EC-19A3772E016F#_ftn20>
 
The dilemma here is not that resistance to systematic plundering generates resistances that turn to warlordism, although that danger exists in some parts of Africa. It is that the protests are too often focused on the most immediate socio-economic and environmental injustices and cannot address the larger levels of political power in society. One example of how such linkages can be made is through expression opposition to fossil fuels, in ways that are also clearly aimed at slowing climate change. The ‘Blockadia’ mapping within the Environmental Justice Atlas (EJAtlas.org <http://ejatlas.org/>) (Figure 2) is an example of preliminary analysis with that aim, beginning with a Nigerian site of struggle:
 
On every continent there is an increasing frequency and intensity of resistance movements against fossil fuel projects. These interwoven spaces of resistance are Blockadia. Originating from movements such as the Ogoni People against Shell in the Niger Delta since the 1990s and the Yasuni initiative in Ecuador to leave the oil in the soil, local people and activists are demanding we keep fossil fuels in the ground. Today there are diverse and widespread resistances such as the Ende Gelände mass civil disobedience in Germany; the indigenous-led Standing Rock camp against the Dakota Access Pipeline; the movement in Kenya to “deCOALanize”; and, amongst many others, the campaigns #BreakFree and #SaveTheArctic. Naomi Klein popularized the term Blockadia in the book This Changes Everything describing the “roving transnational conflict zone [...] where ‘regular’ people are stepping in where our leaders are failing” along the whole fossil fuel chain, from extraction to transportation to combustion. These struggles are not only against the local impacts of such projects, but also against their impacts on the climate.[21] <applewebdata://7C9059D9-3A10-4790-B3EC-19A3772E016F#_ftn21>
 
Figure 2:

Source: Environmental Justice Atlas: http://ejatlas.org <http://ejatlas.org/>
 
For the EJAtlas mappers, 
 
By bringing together inspiring case studies, the diversity of the movements can be celebrated whilst the connectivity between them can be strengthened and the real ‘glocal’ threats of fossil fuel extractivism can be better understood. The local causes of resistance vary case by case, but many include the violation of human rights, contamination of water, land dispossession, loss of livelihoods, poor working conditions, biodiversity loss, cultural loss, severe health impacts and inadequate compensation. 
       The Blockadia Map serves as a tool for activists to unite their struggles and build a stronger movement against the multitude of injustices presented by fossil fuel projects. When we come together in acts of defiance, our struggles become part of a bigger movement. Just as these resistances are real spaces where people and causes are connected, the Blockadia Map is a space for movement-building and international solidarity. [22] <applewebdata://7C9059D9-3A10-4790-B3EC-19A3772E016F#_ftn22>
 
As observed already, however, even in Africa’s best case of ideologically-infused protest – South Africa – there are profound limits to the way social movement activists have expressed their opposition, and limits to the organizational form their protests will take.
 
South African neoliberalism, protest and repression 
 
Like so many other sites, a central dilemma in South Africa is whether the social movements which helped shake off apartheid in 1994 and then President Jacob Zuma’s rule in 2018 can expand into a struggle for socio-economic-ecological justice at a time the new president, Cyril Ramaphosa, is imposing a creeping-austerity budget, making it more difficult for labor to go on strike, and encouraging a return to extreme extractivism. Ramaphosa was implicated in the 2012 Marikana Massacre, so consideration of overlap between protest and state repression in a context of sustained neoliberalism is especially revealing.[23] <applewebdata://7C9059D9-3A10-4790-B3EC-19A3772E016F#_ftn23>
 
The South African state’s services to crony corporations and its need for a growing security apparatus are evident, although the initial attempts to intimidate activists were unsuccessful. Examples from the early 2000s showed clearly that protests could defeat repression, but subsequent state efforts became more decisive. 
 
·       In 2001 at the UN World Conference Against Racism in Durban, the first inklings of mass protest against President Thabo Mbeki’s 1999-2008 regime emerged. 
·       A year later at the Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development, state paranoia came into full view with repressive policing tactics before and during a protest march of 30 000 from Alexandra to the Sandton Convention Centre. 
·       In late 2003 ANC leaders sided with the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) and instructed Mbeki to retreat from his claims that the US Central Intelligence Agency was working alongside Big Pharma multinational corporations to manipulate TAC against the South African government. The result was a reversal of Mbeki’s AIDS-denialist policies and hence a rise in life expectancy from 52 then to 64 in 2018. 
·       In 2008, four months before his forced departure from the presidency, Mbeki announced that xenophobic attacks that left hundreds of thousands of immigrants displaced were the result of an artificial “Third Force”; Mbeki had openly denied the possibility of xenophobia six months earlier when the African Peer Review Mechanism pointed out the dangers. 
·       In mid-2010 as World Cup soccer matches were played in South Africa, state paranoia about mass unrest was inherited and amplified by Zuma. This led to an initial ban on protest anywhere near the main soccer stadiums, a condition that the World Cup organizers – Fifa – insisted upon. Anti-Fifa protests prior to the World Cup made the government nervous: informal traders facing restrictions, displaced Durban fisherfolk, Cape Town residents of the N2 Gateway project forcibly removed, construction workers, AIDS activists prevented from distributing condoms, environmentalists concerned about World Cup’s offset ‘greenwashing’, Mbombela students who lost access to schools, disability rights advocates, poor towns’ residents demanding provincial rezoning, SA Transport and Allied Workers and Numsa members at Eskom who won major wage struggles just before the Cup began, and on the first days of play, Stallion Security workers protesting against labor broking and opaque payments. 
·       In August 2012, with paranoia by now hard-wired into the securocrat mentality, 34 miners were murdered by police at Lonmin’s Marikana platinum mine while on a wildcat strike. Proof of the connection between capital’s extractive needs and state security came from the now-notorious email from Cyril Ramaphosa describing the strikers as ‘dastardly criminal’ and requesting ‘concomitant action’ from police (in 2017 he apologized for the wording but the stain of complicity remains). In addition, as one police general finally revealed, the main concern was the sudden surge in the popularity of Julius Malema, who had just been expelled as ANC Youth League leader (by a committee Ramaphosa led) and who would soon launch a political party to the ANC’s left, resulting in the 2016 ouster of the ANC from its rule in the Johannesburg and Tshwane municipalities. 
 
The protest-repression cycle was intensifying to the extent that by mid-2013, Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa announced that there were 46 180 ‘protests’ (his word although many such incidents were merely mass gatherings) from 2009-13, and “all were successfully stabilized, with 14 843 arrests effected.” At that point, as Jane Duncan points out, the Public Order Policing division desired “an armoured fleet of 200 Nyalas (the infantry mobility vehicle); pyrotechnic weaponry, including tear gas and stun grenades; more water cannons, equipped with red and blue dye; video cameras for recording protests and other surveillance equipment; and Long-Range Acoustic Devices (LRADs). Commonly known as ‘sound cannons’, LRADs emit sounds that are painful to the human ear and can even cause deafness.” Duncan reminds, “In making their arguments for more resources, the police pointed to the spike in violent service delivery protests in the 2013/14 financial year.”[24] <applewebdata://7C9059D9-3A10-4790-B3EC-19A3772E016F#_ftn24>
 
Some protests were as a result of specific turf battles within the ruling party; some were based upon petty corruption, such as councillors’ ability to profit from housing waiting lists and sales; and others were based on endless micro-grievances.[25] <applewebdata://7C9059D9-3A10-4790-B3EC-19A3772E016F#_ftn25> The general trend in analysis is to characterize the strategies and tactics adopted by protesters based on a typology of “non-violent, disruptive and violent.” The SA Police Service’s Incident Registration Information System database is much clumsier and inconsistent in identifying protests only as ‘peaceful’ or ‘unrest-related.’ Although both municipal and national police have quirky modes of data collection, it is not surprising that the leading causes of protests recorded by police over the period 1997-2013 were wage demands (approximately 17 500 protest incidents), labor disputes (10 000), ‘solidarity’ (7000), ‘forcing of demands’ (6500), and service delivery (4500).[26] <applewebdata://7C9059D9-3A10-4790-B3EC-19A3772E016F#_ftn26>
 
Qualitative research on the large South African social movements that emerged during the early 2000s includes the well-known edited collection Voices of Protestby Richard Ballard, Adam Habib and Imraan Valodia, in part because many drew directly upon prior (anti-apartheid-era) community or sectoral organizing traditions: TAC (founded in late 1998), Durban’s Concerned Citizens Forum (1999), the Johannesburg Anti-Privatization Forum (2000), and Landless People’s Movement (LPM) (2001).[27] <applewebdata://7C9059D9-3A10-4790-B3EC-19A3772E016F#_ftn27> In two cases – Durban’s activists and the LPM - their brief rise and subsequent decline reflect processes observed elsewhere (e.g. by Manuel Castells, the major scholar of 20th century urban social movements), in which they are either successful and dissolve, or fail, leaving a major void.[28] <applewebdata://7C9059D9-3A10-4790-B3EC-19A3772E016F#_ftn28>Indeed, some of the site-specific analysis relates to Durban.[29] <applewebdata://7C9059D9-3A10-4790-B3EC-19A3772E016F#_ftn29> Other research on South African social protest mixes quantitative and qualitative material, critiques of state-society relations at purely municipal level,[30] <applewebdata://7C9059D9-3A10-4790-B3EC-19A3772E016F#_ftn30> e.g. attitudinal survey research,[31] <applewebdata://7C9059D9-3A10-4790-B3EC-19A3772E016F#_ftn31> social movement views of diverse electoral strategies,[32] <applewebdata://7C9059D9-3A10-4790-B3EC-19A3772E016F#_ftn32> protest tactics,[33] <applewebdata://7C9059D9-3A10-4790-B3EC-19A3772E016F#_ftn33> and the rise of the township and shack community ‘Amakomiti’ (committee_ as a unit of organization.[34] <applewebdata://7C9059D9-3A10-4790-B3EC-19A3772E016F#_ftn34>
 
From the standpoint of relating the high levels of unrest in South Africa to trends across Africa, the major question that arises from the research is whether there are national (as opposed to localistic) political processes that might generate an alternative ideology to the dominant neoliberal nationalism of the ruling African National Congress. Duncan confirms the national-to-local ‘Equitable Share’ grant does not offer sufficient subsidies to permit adequate municipal service delivery.[35] <applewebdata://7C9059D9-3A10-4790-B3EC-19A3772E016F#_ftn35> Likewise, electricity protesters – often connected directly by the national supplier Eskom to the grid (as well as by municipalities) – regularly express grievances over acquiring their first connections to the grid, over the need to prevent disconnections, over their demand for a larger lifeline supply (the norm is a merely tokenistic 50 kWh/household/month), and over prices (from 2008-13, the 350% increase in electricity prices imposed by Eskom on both its direct customers and municipalities amplified the desperation of electricity protesters). The electricity price is just one of several national considerations when theorizing protest in a Polanyian manner, i.e. following Karl Polanyi’s “double movement” in which stresses caused by excessive ‘market’ expansion in turn create resistance.[36] <applewebdata://7C9059D9-3A10-4790-B3EC-19A3772E016F#_ftn36>
 
Duncan notes that Pretoria’s National Intelligence Coordinating Committee has “identified labor issues, political intolerance, service delivery protests and anti-foreigner sentiment” as common causes of unrest. In the same vein, Duncan looks for a universal process:
 
the “micro-mobilizations” that protests represent are not isolated phenomena: they can be related to broader processes of social change. More specifically, in expansionary periods, when political and economic elites can afford democracy, they will tolerate higher levels of dissent, including protests. In such periods, they are likely to promote a negotiated management of protests, where protesting is recognized as a right within clearly circumscribed legal and institutional frameworks…[37] <applewebdata://7C9059D9-3A10-4790-B3EC-19A3772E016F#_ftn37>
 
But since 1994 – especially since 2011 at the peak moment of the commodity super-cycle – the macroeconomic conditions have degenerated:
 
In recessionary periods, when profits decline, these elites are more likely to resort to coercion than negotiation, and to circumscribe the right to protest. At the same time, protests are likely to increase in frequency and intensity, as it is less possible for society to be held in equilibrium through consensus, and as a result social relations become more conflictual. South Africa is in just such a recessionary period.[38] <applewebdata://7C9059D9-3A10-4790-B3EC-19A3772E016F#_ftn38>
 
The Polanyian challenge in South Africa is not just in tracking the myriad of grievances and, where appropriate, correlating these to political-economic processes so as to promote more linkage in analysis. It is to avoid the dangers of localism, when far too many activists and analysts discuss grievances in a way that begins and ends with the municipal councillor, city manager or mayor. This limited perspective on state failure partly reflects how toof many turf-conscious leaders look inward, failing to grasp golden opportunities to link labor, community and environmental grievances and protests, and to think globally while acting locally. They see solutions mainly through ‘quadruple-C’ demands: ending municipal corruption, improving delivery capacity, restoring competence and raising the level of consultation. Ignored in such demands are the over-determining national neoliberal policies (such as outsourcing and cost-recovery) and the inadequate national-to-local financing provisions. 
 
Reflecting the build-up of both such socio-economic and political grievances, in February 2018 Zuma was pushed out of power 15 months early by his deputy, Ramaphosa, as widespread popular delegitimization and the prospect of his ANC ruling party faring poorly in the 2019 election allowed for an intra-elite peaceful shift. The importance in political-economic terms though, was profound: the defeat of the so-called ‘Zupta’ network comprising the president, his family, three Indian immigrant brothers (the Guptas) and a wide group of hangers-on in an extended patrimonial system. During 2017, the “Zuma must go!” demand was made in mass demonstrations, protest marches and legal maneuvers everyone from the Afrikaner white rightwing to big capital to the far left. 
 
In this sense, the ‘social movement’ against Zuma was purely oriented to political personality change, with the bulk of liberal-to-centrist-to-conservative supporters (in groups like the Democratic Alliance opposition and ‘Save SA’ civil society network) rallying in mass mobilizations in February-April 2017. The liberals were celebratory in February 2018, while radicals remained extremely skeptical of the incoming government. The largest trade union, the metalworkers (with 350 000 members) declared the period ahead one of “class war.” Given the austerity budget in February 2018 and return to pro-corporate policies, e.g. the National Development Plan (which Ramaphosa co-authored in 2012), an increase in already-high levels of class conflict can be readily predicted.
 
Continental bottom-up protests in search of an overarching ideology
 
It is here that we can return to the continental-scale of protest analysis to also reflect upon potential patterns. African protests have begun to exhibit patterns so stark they were even recognized in the African Development Bank’s annual African Economic Outlook (AEO) chapter on Governance. The 2017 AEO found that after protests over wages and salaries,
 
Dissatisfaction with political arrangements was among the main drivers of public protests in Africa from 2011 to 2016. The majority of these protests called for more accountability and justice in the public management systems and for fairer elections. This is an indication of demand for higher standards of integrity within public institutions.[39] <applewebdata://7C9059D9-3A10-4790-B3EC-19A3772E016F#_ftn39>
 
Socio-economic grievances drove many specific sites of uprisings. Indeed, the rise of generalized protests since 2011 (Figure 1) is remarkable. There were always major outbursts and in some countries – Zambia (2001), Malawi (2002), Gabon (2003), Nigeria (2006), Cameroon (2008), Niger (2009) – they had a major impact on politics. But notably in 2011, the protest wave did not simply briefly as a result of North African uprising (mislabeled the “Arab Spring”). The Tunisian, Egyptian and Libyan uprisings caught the world’s attention, but only Tunisia’s outcome generated democracy; and even then, the next stage of socio-economic unrest began as neoliberalism failed the country by early 2018. Many protests subsequently led to such strong pressure against national power structures that just as with the once-invincible 2011 Ben Ali, Mubarak and Gaddafi regimes, long-serving leaders were compelled to leave office. 
 
But higher levels of African protests persisted, moving across the continent.[40] <applewebdata://7C9059D9-3A10-4790-B3EC-19A3772E016F#_ftn40> The pressure was maintained in specific sites, including Senegal (2012), Burkina Faso (2014), Burundi. (2015), Rwanda (2015), Congo-Brazzaville (2016), and DR Congo (2016). In 2017-18, leaders backed by similarly-formidable state and political party apparatuses as enjoyed by Zuma (South Africa), Desalegn (Ethiopia) and Mugabe (Zimbabwe) fell surprisingly rapidly, in part due to mass uprisings with tens of thousands protesters massing in national capitals and other major cities.
 
Other protests with strong prospects of maintaining pressure on their governments at the time of writing include Togo (against the dictator Faure Gnassingbé), the Democratic Republic of the Congo (against Laurent Kabila), Cameroon (mainly against Paul Biya, some of which demanded Anglophone-Cameroonian independence), Somalia (against Islamic extremism), Morocco (against corruption and unemployment), Libya (against slave markets), Uganda (against Yoseri Museveni’s overturning of term limits) and Kenya (against Uhuru Kenyatta’s dubious election). In The Gambia, protests against Yahya Jammeh succeeded in ensuring the integrity of a December 2016 election, which the long-serving dictator lost.
 
In November 2017, Zimbabwe’s 93-year old Robert Mugabe – who had served for 37 years – was replaced in a popularly-supported soft coup by his former chief henchman Emmerson Mnangagwa (whom he’d attempted to fire a week before in favor of his wife Grace taking power after he died). Again, the surface appearance was that of an intra-elite transition in which the armed forces rose up, sending 17 tanks to key locations in the capital city after Mugabe over-reached and lost control of his party and especially the military’s Joint Operations Command. However, it took the November 18 mobilization of tens of thousands anti-Mugabe protesters in the streets – from all political ideologies and class positions – to both give the coup legitimacy and send the strong signal to Mugabe that sustained protests would continue. It was ultimately the beginning of an impeachment in parliament – anticipated to have unanimous support – three days later that forced his resignation. 
 
In Ethiopia, February 2018 also witnessed a dramatic presidential resignation, as Hailemariam Desalegn quit once the Oromo ethnic group (the country’s largest) maintained consistent protests. Notwithstanding a geographically-specific character, they were sufficiently widespread as to force change, including ethnic balancing in a future regime which at the time of writing still remained unclear. This is notable in part because socio-economic stresses were continuing in a country with extremely rapid growth and a reputation as the next world sweatshop site, as Chinese mega-project development (e.g. urban infrastructure, hydropower and a railroad connecting Addis Ababa to Djibouti) provided a highly visible veneer of ‘development.’
 
In 2011, one of the central forces in the North African protests had been the Tunisian and Egyptian independent trade unions. Since official unions are often coopted, it is to a measure of worker anger that we turn in conclusion. The World Economic Forum’s annual Global Competitiveness Reports poll corporate managers to rate ‘Cooperation in labor-employer relations’ in each country on a scale from ‘generally confrontational’ (1) to ‘generally cooperative’ (7).[41] <applewebdata://7C9059D9-3A10-4790-B3EC-19A3772E016F#_ftn41> The 32 African countries included in the survey are by far the most militant of the 138 sites surveyed annually, for of these, 28 African proletariats score above the world median of militancy, and just four below. Of the top 30 countries in terms of labor militancy in 2017, a dozen were African: South Africa (scoring 2.5 in 2017, ranking its workers the world’s most un-cooperative, as has been the case every year since 2012) followed by Chad (3.5), Tunisia (3.6), Liberia (3.7), Mozambique (3.7), Morocco (3.7), Lesotho (3.7), Ethiopia (3.8), Tanzania (3.8), Algeria (3.8), Burundi (3.8), and Zimbabwe (4.0). 
 
If we take these signs of dissent seriously, it is not only the removal of corrupt, unpatriotic regimes that is needed, though that is a pre-condition. What is now urgent to discuss in many settings growing ripe for revolution, is the replacement of neo-colonial African compradors with a political party and programme of popular empowerment. Otherwise, without structural change based on ideological clarity, the same conditions will generate the same corrupt African elites. The forces of resistance may be rising fast – labor, community, environmental, women’s, youth, students and other groups angry about the real meaning of “Africa Rising” – but they need ideological and organizational coherence to begin discussing programmes and policies that diverge from the Washington Consensus, in advance of democratization. That State Department and Bretton Woods Institution narrative – so successful in narrowing African political discourses since the first democratization wave of the early 1990s – is simple: achieving a free society means imposing ‘free-market’ (pro-corporate) economics. 
 
In opposition, an egalitarian economic argument will be increasingly easier to make now that world capitalism and the dynamics of deglobalization are forcing Africa towards rebalancing. This will ultimately compel discussion of much more courageous economic policies, potentially including:
 
• in the short term, as currency and debt repayment crises hit, reimposing exchange controls will ensure control of financial flows, quickly followed by lowered interest rates to boost growth, with an audit of ‘Odious Debt’ before any further repayment of scarce hard currency, along with much better management of imports – to serve national interests, not the interests of elite consumers;
• as soon as possible, the adoption of an ecologically sensitive industrial policy aimed at import substitution (making things locally), sectoral re-balancing, meeting social needs and true sustainability;
• once finances are secure, it will be possible to dramatically increase state social spending, paid for by higher corporate taxes, cross-subsidization and more domestic borrowing (and loose-money ‘Quantitative Easing,’ too, if necessary, so long as it does not become hyper-inflationary);
• the medium- and longer-term economic development strategies will reorient infrastructure to meet unmet basic needs, and the expand, maintain and improve the energy grid, plus water and sanitation, public transport, clinics, schools, recreational facilities and universal access to the internet; and
• in places like South Africa and Nigeria that have an excess reliance on extraction and burning of fossil fuels, it will be vital to adopt what have been termed ‘Million Climate Jobs’ strategies to generate employment for a genuinely green ‘Just Transition’.
 
These are the kinds of approaches requiring what the continent’s greatest political economist, Samir Amin, long ago termed ‘delinking’ from global capitalism’s most destructive circuits. [42] <applewebdata://7C9059D9-3A10-4790-B3EC-19A3772E016F#_ftn42> He stressed that this is not a formula for autarchy, and certainly would gain nothing from North Korean-type isolation. But it would entail a sensible approach to keeping G20 states and corporations at bay as much as possible, while tapping into even more potentials for transformation thanks to the bottom-up Africans Uprising against the failed, top-down strategy of ‘Africa Rising.’ 

[1] <applewebdata://7C9059D9-3A10-4790-B3EC-19A3772E016F#_ftnref1> Fanon, F. (1967). Toward the African revolution. New York: Monthly Review Press.
[2] <applewebdata://7C9059D9-3A10-4790-B3EC-19A3772E016F#_ftnref2> Africans Rising (2017). Homepage. Arusha. https://www.africans-rising.org/www/ <https://www.africans-rising.org/www/>
[3] <applewebdata://7C9059D9-3A10-4790-B3EC-19A3772E016F#_ftnref3> Global Security (2018). Ministry of Public Security. https://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/world/china/mps.htm <https://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/world/china/mps.htm>
[4] <applewebdata://7C9059D9-3A10-4790-B3EC-19A3772E016F#_ftnref4> Mbeki, T. (2015). Track it! Stop it! Get it! Illicit Financial Flow, Report of the High Level Panel on Illicit Financial Flows from Africa, United Nations Economic Commission on Africa, Addis Ababa, http://www.uneca.org/iff <http://www.uneca.org/iff>.
[5] <applewebdata://7C9059D9-3A10-4790-B3EC-19A3772E016F#_ftnref5> Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law (2016). Final Program Report on Climate Change and African Political Stability. Austin: University of Texas; and Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (2018). Conflict Trends. http://www.acleddata.com/ <http://www.acleddata.com/>
[6] <applewebdata://7C9059D9-3A10-4790-B3EC-19A3772E016F#_ftnref6> Raleigh, C. (2017). Climate violence? Lecture to the Oxford Martin School, Oxford, 11 May. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y90WzN5wGq8 <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y90WzN5wGq8>
[7] <applewebdata://7C9059D9-3A10-4790-B3EC-19A3772E016F#_ftnref7> Euromonitor (2017). Income inequality ranking of the world’s major cities. London, 31 October, https://blog.euromonitor.com/2017/10/income-inequality-ranking-worlds-major-cities.html <https://blog.euromonitor.com/2017/10/income-inequality-ranking-worlds-major-cities.html>
[8] <applewebdata://7C9059D9-3A10-4790-B3EC-19A3772E016F#_ftnref8> Environmental Monitoring Group (2018). EMG's guide to the Cape Town drought. Cape Town, January. http://www.emg.org.za/programmes/water-and-climate-change/215-emg-s-guide-to-the-cape-town-drought-december-2017 <http://www.emg.org.za/programmes/water-and-climate-change/215-emg-s-guide-to-the-cape-town-drought-december-2017>
[9] <applewebdata://7C9059D9-3A10-4790-B3EC-19A3772E016F#_ftnref9> Lange, G., Wodon, Q. and Carey, K. (Eds.) (2018). The changing wealth of nations 2018. Washington, DC: World Bank, doi:10.1596/978-1-4648-1046-6; and Gaborone Declaration (2012). Gaborone Declaration for Sustainability in Africa. Gaborone, 12 May. http://www.gaboronedeclaration.com/ <http://www.gaboronedeclaration.com/>
[10] <applewebdata://7C9059D9-3A10-4790-B3EC-19A3772E016F#_ftnref10> Wengraf, L. (2018). Extracting profit. Chicago: Haymarket Press.
[11] <applewebdata://7C9059D9-3A10-4790-B3EC-19A3772E016F#_ftnref11> Africans Rising (2016). The Kiliminjaro declaration. Arusha, 24 August. https://www.africans-rising.org/www/the-kilimanjaro-declaration/ <https://www.africans-rising.org/www/the-kilimanjaro-declaration/>
[12] <applewebdata://7C9059D9-3A10-4790-B3EC-19A3772E016F#_ftnref12> Bond, P. (2005). Gramsci, Polanyi and impressions from Africa on the social forum phenomenon. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 29, 2, pp.433-440. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-2427.2005.00596.x/full <http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-2427.2005.00596.x/full>
[13] <applewebdata://7C9059D9-3A10-4790-B3EC-19A3772E016F#_ftnref13> Shivji, I. (2006). The silences in the NGO discourse, Africa Development, 31, 4, http://www.codesria.org/IMG/pdf/2-_Shivji.pdf <http://www.codesria.org/IMG/pdf/2-_Shivji.pdf>
[14] <applewebdata://7C9059D9-3A10-4790-B3EC-19A3772E016F#_ftnref14> HakiRasilimali (2017). Position on Presidential Committees' Reports on Mineral Exports”, Dar es Salaam, 16 June. http://www.policyforum-tz.org/hakirasilimali-position-presidential-committees-reports-mineral-exports <http://www.policyforum-tz.org/hakirasilimali-position-presidential-committees-reports-mineral-exports>
[15] <applewebdata://7C9059D9-3A10-4790-B3EC-19A3772E016F#_ftnref15> Women in Mining (2015). Women stand their ground against Big Coal, Women in Mining declaration, Johannesburg, 22 January, http://www.ngopulse.org/press-release/women-stand-their-ground-against-big-coal-southern-african-exchange <http://www.ngopulse.org/press-release/women-stand-their-ground-against-big-coal-southern-african-exchange>
[16] <applewebdata://7C9059D9-3A10-4790-B3EC-19A3772E016F#_ftnref16> Kayakiran, F. and Van Vuuren, A.J. (2015). Community acceptance is the mother lode of mining, Business Day, 30 March. 
[17] <applewebdata://7C9059D9-3A10-4790-B3EC-19A3772E016F#_ftnref17> Bench Marks Foundation (2018) Empowering communities, turning the tide. Booklet. Johannesburg, 9 February.
[18] <applewebdata://7C9059D9-3A10-4790-B3EC-19A3772E016F#_ftnref18> Bond, P. (2015). Disconnecting the minerals-energy-climate dots. Counterpunch, 13 March. https://www.counterpunch.org/2015/03/13/disconnecting-the-minerals-energy-climate-dots/ <https://www.counterpunch.org/2015/03/13/disconnecting-the-minerals-energy-climate-dots/> and Maguwu, F. and Terreblanche, C. (2015). We need a real ‘Alternatives to Mining’ indaba. Pambazuka, 12 February. https://www.pambazuka.org/global-south/we-need-real-%E2%80%9Calternatives-mining%E2%80%9D-indaba <https://www.pambazuka.org/global-south/we-need-real-%E2%80%9Calternatives-mining%E2%80%9D-indaba>
[19] <applewebdata://7C9059D9-3A10-4790-B3EC-19A3772E016F#_ftnref19> Berman, N., Couttenier, M., Rohner, D. and Thoenig, M. (2017). This mine Is mine!, American Economic Review, 107, 6, pp. 1564-1610.
[20] <applewebdata://7C9059D9-3A10-4790-B3EC-19A3772E016F#_ftnref20> Berman, Couttenier, Rohner and Thoenig, This mine Is mine! 
[21] <applewebdata://7C9059D9-3A10-4790-B3EC-19A3772E016F#_ftnref21> EJAtlas (2018). Environmental justice atlas ‘Blockadia’. https://ejatlas.org/featured/blockadia <https://ejatlas.org/featured/blockadia>
[22] <applewebdata://7C9059D9-3A10-4790-B3EC-19A3772E016F#_ftnref22> EJAtlas, Environmental justice atlas. African cases with detailed maps include Cape Boujdour (Offshore Block) oil and gas exploration, Western Sahara; a Coal Power Plant in Lamu, Kenya; the Fuleni blockade and leave the coal in the hole campaign, South Africa; and Hydraulic fracking in the Karoo, South Africa.
[23] <applewebdata://7C9059D9-3A10-4790-B3EC-19A3772E016F#_ftnref23> Bond, P. (2014). Elite transition. London: Pluto Press. The leading expert on the topic is Jane Duncan, author of Protest Nation (2016) which surveyw social conflict and state repression. Duncan’s colleagues Peter Alexander, Carin Runciman, Luke Sinwell, Trevor Ngwane, Mahlatse Rampedi, Boikanyo Moloto, Boitumelo Maruping, Eunice Khumalo, Sehlaphi Sibanda, Mary Galvin and others based at the University of Johannesburg’s Centre for Social Change are doing updates based upon tens of thousands of even more detailed protest cases, and their regular reports in South African Crime Quarterly continue to update scholars and activists about the scope and scale of dissent.
[24] <applewebdata://7C9059D9-3A10-4790-B3EC-19A3772E016F#_ftnref24> Duncan, J. (2016). Protest nation, Pietermaritzburg: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press.
[25] <applewebdata://7C9059D9-3A10-4790-B3EC-19A3772E016F#_ftnref25> Duncan’s (2016) Protest Nation considers protests in a dozen sites representative of national trends: the Eastern Cape’s Nelson Mandela Bay (Port Elizabeth), Lukhanji, Makana and Blue Crane Route municipalities, the Western Cape Winelands (in part because of impressive farmworker protests in early 2013), Mpumalanga’s capital of Mbombela (Nelspruit), KwaZulu-Natal’s eThekwini (Durban) metro, and Johannesburg. 
[26] <applewebdata://7C9059D9-3A10-4790-B3EC-19A3772E016F#_ftnref26> Alexander, P., Runciman, C. and Maruping, B. (2016). The use and abuse of police data in protest analysis. SA Crime Quarterly, 58, pp.9-21. http://www.scielo.org.za/pdf/sacq/n58/02.pdf <http://www.scielo.org.za/pdf/sacq/n58/02.pdf>; and Runciman, C., Alexander, P., Rampedi, M., Moloto, B., Maruping, B., Khumalo E. and Sibanda, S. (2016). Counting police-recorded protests. University of Johannesburg Research Chair in Social Change Report #2, Johannesburg. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Peter_Alexander9/publication/304076282_Counting_Police-Recorded_Protests_Based_on_South_African_Police_Service_Data/links/5765768708aedbc345f380d5/Counting-Police-Recorded-Protests-Based-on-South-African-Police-Service-Data.pdf <https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Peter_Alexander9/publication/304076282_Counting_Police-Recorded_Protests_Based_on_South_African_Police_Service_Data/links/5765768708aedbc345f380d5/Counting-Police-Recorded-Protests-Based-on-South-African-Police-Service-Data.pdf>
[27] <applewebdata://7C9059D9-3A10-4790-B3EC-19A3772E016F#_ftnref27> Ballard, R., Habib, A. and Valodia, I. (2006). Voices of protest, Pietermaritzburg: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press.
[28] <applewebdata://7C9059D9-3A10-4790-B3EC-19A3772E016F#_ftnref28> Castells, M. (1983). The city and the grassroots. Berkeley: University of California Press.
[29] <applewebdata://7C9059D9-3A10-4790-B3EC-19A3772E016F#_ftnref29> Mottiar, S. and Bond, P. (2012). The politics of discontent and social protest in Durban. Politikon, 39, 3, pp. 309-330. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02589346.2012.746183 <https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02589346.2012.746183>; Lodge, T. and Mottiar, S. (2017). South Africa’s ‘unrest’ or ‘rebellion’, in M.Paret, C.Runciman and L.Sinwell (Eds) Southern resistance in critical perspective. London Routledge; Bond, P. and Mottiar, S. (2018). Terrains of civil and uncivil Society in post-apartheid Durban. Urban Forum, forthcoming.
[30] <applewebdata://7C9059D9-3A10-4790-B3EC-19A3772E016F#_ftnref30> Matebesi, S. (2016). Civil strife against local governance, Leverkusen: Barbara Budrich Publishers. http:// <http://weiterlesen.de/Leseprobe/Civil-strife-against-local-governance/9783847411345/pdf>weiterlesen.de/Leseprobe/Civil-strife-against-local-governance/9783847411345/pdf <http://weiterlesen.de/Leseprobe/Civil-strife-against-local-governance/9783847411345/pdf>
[31] <applewebdata://7C9059D9-3A10-4790-B3EC-19A3772E016F#_ftnref31> Bohler-Muller, N., Roberts, B., Struwig, J., Gordon, S., Radebe, T. and Alexander, P. (2017). Minding the protest, SA Crime Quarterly 62, pp.81-92.
[32] <applewebdata://7C9059D9-3A10-4790-B3EC-19A3772E016F#_ftnref32> Runciman, C. (2016), ‘The ballot and the brick’. Journal of Contemporary African Studies, 34, 4, pp.419-436. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02589001.2017.1287347?scroll=top&needAccess=true&journalCode=cjca20 <https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02589001.2017.1287347?scroll=top&needAccess=true&journalCode=cjca20>
[33] <applewebdata://7C9059D9-3A10-4790-B3EC-19A3772E016F#_ftnref33> Paret, M. (2015). Violence and democracy in South Africa’s community protests, Review of Political Economy 42, 143, pp.107-123.
[34] <applewebdata://7C9059D9-3A10-4790-B3EC-19A3772E016F#_ftnref34> Ngwane, T. (2017). ‘Amakomiti’ as ‘democracy on the margins’. PhD thesis, University of Johannesburg Department of Sociology, Johannesburg. https://ujcontent.uj.ac.za/vital/access/manager/Repository/uj:22963 <https://ujcontent.uj.ac.za/vital/access/manager/Repository/uj:22963>
[35] <applewebdata://7C9059D9-3A10-4790-B3EC-19A3772E016F#_ftnref35> Duncan, Protest nation.
[36] <applewebdata://7C9059D9-3A10-4790-B3EC-19A3772E016F#_ftnref36> Polanyi, K. (1957). The great transformation. Boston: Beacon Press.
[37] <applewebdata://7C9059D9-3A10-4790-B3EC-19A3772E016F#_ftnref37> Duncan, Protest nation.
[38] <applewebdata://7C9059D9-3A10-4790-B3EC-19A3772E016F#_ftnref38> Duncan, Protest nation.
[39] <applewebdata://7C9059D9-3A10-4790-B3EC-19A3772E016F#_ftnref39> African Development Bank (2018). African economic outlook 2018, Abidjan, 18 January. https://www.afdb.org/en/knowledge/publications/african-economic-outlook/ <https://www.afdb.org/en/knowledge/publications/african-economic-outlook/>
[40] <applewebdata://7C9059D9-3A10-4790-B3EC-19A3772E016F#_ftnref40> Brandes, N. and Engels, B. (2011). Social ovements in Africa. Stichproben. Wiener Zeitschrift für kritische Afrikastudien, 11, pp. 1–15; Ekine S. (2011). Defiant in the face of brutality. Pambazuka News, 532, 2 June. http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/73738 <http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/73738>; Manji, F. and Ekine, S. (2012). African awakening. Oxford: Fahamu Books; Dwyer, P. and Zeilig, L. (2012). African struggles today. Chicago: Haymarket Press; Mampilly, R. (2013). Urban protests and rural violence in Africa: A Call for an Integrated Approach. African Futures Forum, Social Science Research Council, New York. http://forums.ssrc.org/african-futures/2013/02/04/urban-protests-and-rural-violence-in-africa-a-call-for-an-integrated-approach/#sthash.4KB0d0vO.dpuf <http://forums.ssrc.org/african-futures/2013/02/04/urban-protests-and-rural-violence-in-africa-a-call-for-an-integrated-approach/#sthash.4KB0d0vO.dpuf>; Branch, A. and Mampilly, Z. (2015). Africa uprising. London: Zed Books; Wengraf, Extracting profit.
[41] <applewebdata://7C9059D9-3A10-4790-B3EC-19A3772E016F#_ftnref41> World Economic Forum (2017). Global competitiveness report 2017-18. Davos. https://www.weforum.org/reports/the-global-competitiveness-report-2017-2018 <https://www.weforum.org/reports/the-global-competitiveness-report-2017-2018>
[42] <applewebdata://7C9059D9-3A10-4790-B3EC-19A3772E016F#_ftnref42> Amin, S. (1990), Delinking. London: Zed Books.



______________________________

Jai Sen

jai.sen at cacim.net <mailto:jai.sen at cacim.net>
www.cacim.net <http://www.cacim.net/> / http://www.openword.net.in

Now based in New Delhi, India (+91-98189 11325) and in Ottawa, Canada, on unceded Anishinaabe territory (+1-613-282 2900) 

CURRENT / NEW publications :

Jai Sen, ed, 2018a – The Movements of Movements, Part 2 : Rethinking Our Dance. New Delhi : OpenWord and Oakland, CA : PM Press.  Ebook and hard copy available at PM Press <http://www.pmpress.org/> and in Canada at www.leftwingbooks <http://www.leftwingbooks/>
Jai Sen, ed, 2018b – The Movements of Movements, Part 1 : What Makes Us Move ?, Indian edition.  New Delhi : Authors Upfront, in collaboration with OpenWord and PM Press.  Hard copy available at MOM1AmazonIN <https://www.amazon.in/dp/9387280101/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1522884070&sr=8-2&keywords=movements+of+movements+jai+sen>, MOM1Flipkart <https://www.flipkart.com/the-movements-of-movements/p/itmf3zg7h79ecpgj?pid=9789387280106&lid=LSTBOK9789387280106NBA1CH&marketplace=FLIPKART&srno=s_1_1&otracker=search&fm=SEARCH&iid=ff35b702-e6a8-4423-b014-16c84f6f0092.9789387280106.SEARCH&ppt=Search%20Page>, and MOM1AUpFront <http://www.authorsupfront.com/movements.htm>
Jai Sen, ed, 2017 – The Movements of Movements, Part 1 : What Makes Us Move ?.  New Delhi : OpenWord and Oakland, CA : PM Press.  Ebook and hard copy available at PM Press <http://www.pmpress.org/> and in Canada at www.leftwingbooks <http://www.leftwingbooks/>
Recent publications :

Jai Sen, ed, 2016a  – The Movements of Movements, Part 1 : What Makes Us Move ?  and Jai Sen, ed, 2016b – The Movements of Movements, Part 2 : Rethinking Our Dance (both forthcoming in 2017 from New Delhi : OpenWord and Oakland, CA : PM Press), ADVANCE PREFINAL ONLINE MOVEMENT EDITIONS of all the material @ www.cacim.net <http://www.cacim.net/>
CHECK OUT CACIM @ www.cacim.net <http://www.cacim.net/>, OpenWord @ http://www.openword.net.in <http://www.openword.net.in/>, and OpenSpaceForum @ www.openspaceforum.net <http://www.openspaceforum.net/>
AND SUBSCRIBE TO World Social Movement Discuss, an open, unmoderated, and self-organising forum for the exchange of information and views on the experience, practice, and theory of social and political movement at any level (local, national, regional, and global), including the World Social Forum.  To subscribe, simply send an empty email to wsm-discuss-subscribe at lists.openspaceforum.net <mailto:wsm-discuss-subscribe at lists.openspaceforum.net>
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