Africa: A Marxian Analysis

 Introduction

1. State and class in pre-colonial West Africa

2. Tribalism, colonialism and capitalism

3. Religion, racism and class

4. Sharia in Nigeria: a class analysis

5. The poverty of education in Ghana

6. South Africa in the twentieth century

Africa: A Marxian Analysis – worldsocialism.org/spgb

African middle class: myth or fact?

The modern definition of middle class says Africa is joining the world’s consumers of dishwashers, refrigerators and automobiles. Its emerging middle class is now the subject of optimistic chatter. Several reports on the middle class in Africa paint a picture of an African golden age full of possibilities for driving growth through middle-class consumption. They have unleashed a glee among corporates who are salivating over the opportunity of selling to more than 300-plus million middle-class Africans they had not noticed before. If 327 million middle-class Africans really existed, investors would consider the continent a potentially lucrative market for making deals in real estate, retail, wholesale and communications.

But are there 300 million middle-class Africans? It all depends on how you define the middle class.

The McKinsey Global Institute, a consulting firm, defines middle-class households as those with incomes of $20,000 (about R230,000) a year or more, and says Africa’s middle class outstrips India’s (as few as 15.7 million households). Standard Bank defines the middle class as households that spend between $8,500 and $42,000 a year,

The African Development Bank definition is broader. It says Africa’s middle class ranges from earning $520 to $5,200 (or $2 to $20 a day.) Unlike McKinsey, it ranks those earning more than $20 000 a year as rich. It claims the size of the African middle class, those earning between $2 to $20 a day, nearly tripled to 313million people in 2010, or 34.3 percent of the continent’s population. The continent according to its statistics has moved from stagnation in individual prosperity before 2000 to impressive gains in the numbers of people with middle-class levels of income. Except that the African Development Bank middle class of these projections is not the same as the anecdotal middle class that purchases dishwashers and weekend holidays. For investment banks, multinational corporations, real estate developers and traders, the middle class is defined by purchasing power and signifies a potentially untapped market. For this reason, a more accurate definition of the middle class requires a higher purchasing-power bracket that shows that households are living beyond subsistence

The bank’s category is an amalgamation of a “floating middle class” whose daily consumption levels range from $2 to $4 a day and a stable middle class whose consumption levels lie between $4 and $20 a day. This is a very broad definition and not a conventional middle class. At a maximum of $4 a day, you are unlikely to participate in higher education, live in the suburbs or fulfil the same political and economic role in the life of a nation that the middle classes of developed countries do. Put simply, members of this floating middle class are different politically and economically from the wealthier class.

What about removing the floating middle class ($2 to $4 a day) from the equation and examining instead the gains made by combining the stable $4 to $20 class? Have they grown? When comparing the proportions of this stable $4 to $20 middle class, not much has changed. Although it nearly doubled from 62million in 1980 to 123million in 2010, its share of the continent’s population has decreased slightly from 14.6 percent in 1980 to 13.4 percent in 2010. In terms of proportions, the stable middle class ($4 to $20) appears to have shrunk a bit, while the proportion of the floating class has increased.

Earning a maximum of $4 a day, this floating middle class has little disposable income to spend and is unlikely to be capable of fulfilling the middle-class promise of economic and political stability and remain vulnerable to external food and fuel price spikes, inflation and the spectre of sliding back to sub-$2 levels of poverty. Their share of the population has increased from 14.7 percent in 2000 to 20.9 percent in 2010, according to the African Development Bank. They account for about 200million of the bank’s misleading middle-class definition. They remain barely above the poverty line and have trouble making the transition into the more stable middle-class category of $4 to $20 a day. Just as the floating class may migrate upwards towards becoming a more traditional middle class, so too may it fall back below the $2 a day line in the face of sudden shocks like rises in food and fuel prices, which this group cannot absorb as easily as the richer classes are able to do. The mass mobilisations in Nigeria in January 2012 that brought Lagos to a standstill over the withdrawal of the fuel subsidy, Uganda’s walk-to-work protests in April 2011 and the rioting in Mozambique in September 2010 over an increase in the price of bread are warnings of how volatile an urban floating middle class can be when such shocks occur. The floating middle class amounts to more than a third of the population in 19 countries (a fifth in 26 countries). In Africa’s three most populous countries, Nigeria, Ethiopia and Egypt, more than half the middle class is in the floating category, living on less than $4 a day.

The African Development Bank’s misdefined middle class. Reports on the size of Africa’s middle class highlight presumptions and miscalculations. The African Development Bank’s 2011 report conceded that about 60 percent of Africa’s middle class, about 199 million people, were barely out of poverty. Does Africa’s population really have more spending power? Are fewer Africans hungry? The debate on what constitutes "middle class" turns “philosophical” at times. Some definitions include concepts such as professional status, education, and the variety of cultural and consumption habits. The banks seem to think it is all about dubious income levels. Socialists defines class based on who owns or does not own the means of production. All men and women who because of their lack of property are forced to seek work for a wage or a salary are members of the working class. Whether you work in a factory or an office whether you push a barrow or a pen if you have to seek a wage or a salary in order to live you are a member of the working class.

Middle class?

Defining the African “middle class” is a challenge. For the World Bank, it comprises everyone who earns between $2 and $20 per day. It’s a range that is far too broad and while the African Development Bank uses the same income range, it emphasises the need to subdivide the middle class into two. The upper middle class, by this definition, earns between $10 and $20 a day, and a vulnerable lower class is one that earns between $2 and $4 dollars a day. The latter are just marginally above the poverty line of $1.50 a day and can easily slip back into it.

According to the Moscow-based Institute for Emerging Market Studies, the African middle class will rise three times from 32 million in 2009 to 107 million by 2030 — the largest increase in the world.

Professor Marcel Benie Kouadio, economist and dean at the  Cote d’Ivoire’s Abidjan Private University Faculty tells IPS “The middle class has shrunk. Twenty years ago, teachers and doctors were middle class. Now, they can’t afford a new car. The Ivorian middle class lost its purchase power.”

Purchase power is a key word. Accountants differ with economists in their understanding of the middle class; rather than analysing income, they look at disposable revenue. Being middle class is about hitting a “sweet spot”, where people are able to spend money for things other than survival, says a report from accounting firm Ernst & Young.

Class Divide in Death

An accident occurred on Friday, April 5, 2013 at Ugbogui along the Benin -Ore Expressway that involved a haulage truck belonging to Dangote Industries Limited, a petrol tanker and a double-decked  bus.  It  claimed over 100 lives of innocent Nigerians but did not attract any official reaction from the Ogas at the top nor attract any sympathetic response from them to the victims or their relatives. The business mogul, whose truck hit the petrol tanker that ignited the inferno that eventually consumed the victims, never said anything as regards the accident nor the lives of those wasted. No condolence message from the industries’ management. Neither the Presidency nor the National assembly declared any mourning period or observed a moment of silence on the floor to mourn the dead victims.

On June 3,2012 at Iju-Ishaga Lagos-State an air-crash claimed the lives of over 160 occupants of  the aircraft. The government declared 3 days of national mourning, lowered  the nation’s flag to half mast. Many visits were paid to the homes of the bereaved and paid adverts were sponsored by some past heads of state to show their grief. The Senate President, David Mark and Speaker Tambuwal where emotionally affected during the calamitous period. The families of the victims were allowed to claim the bodies of their loved ones, after DNA tests were carried out by the airlines management, to allow the victims to be accorded befitting burials with the compensation and little ameliorative measures given to the victims’ families or relatives, even though the ground victims are yet to be compensated.

In the case of unfortunate victims of Ore-Benin accident was not like that. They were not accorded any befitting burials,  packed  inside a dingy truck that carried them to the mass burial site. It only took a vigorous and sustained demonstrations on the part of the widows of the slain police officers of Atakpo Village, Nasarawa State before the dead bodies of their husbands were not giving mass burial but latter released to their wives and relatives for decent burial.

The embarrassing thing was the action of officials of the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) which denied relatives the release of the corpses, claiming that they were burnt beyond recognition as if those that were burnt at Dana crash were all recognisable, and if so, why carrying out DNA test on them and why not the same treatment given to the victims of the Benin accidents. Are the Dana air mishap victims more Nigerian than the Benin--Ore victims? No, but because the majority of the dead victims in the air disaster were either VIPs or related to any of the ‘Ogas at the top’.

This is the scenario that plays itself out in Nigeria on daily basis and it has been affecting the unity, progress and development of the nation’s infrastructure.The situation of the nation’s health sector gives little concerns to the people at the top. A situation where any poor Nigerian who needs medical attention and cannot get it due to poverty or non availability of the medical equipment needed in the treatment of their cases and will be referred to overseas for treatment and no money to undergo such medical tourism will now result to begging on the pages of newspaper for funds, never  pricked the consciences of those ‘Ogas at the top’ is condemnable.

In the justice system is another area where class distinction is very obvious. Kelvin IghaIgbodaho that stole a phone that worth N50,000 was awarded 10 years jail term recently without option of fine.  John YakubuYesufu that confessed to the stealing of N32.9 billion  police pension fund was jailed 2 years OR pay the fine option of N750,000 . In Nigeria, the rich get their bails while the poor get their jails.

Nigeria's champagne class

It is alright for some.

 Nigeria is one of the fastest-growing consumers of champagne. Nigeria spent N9.4billion ($59 million) on consumption of champagne last year.

Prices at clubs can vary widely here, with a standard bottle of Moet & Chandon running around N19,200 ($120), while bottles of Cristal can come in at 144,000 ($900) or more. Store prices tend to be much lower.


World Bank calculations from 2009-2010 showing some 63 per cent of Nigerians live on less than N160 ($1 dollar) per day. 46 percent of the country’s population living in poverty.

Class

The African Development Bank defines the African middle class as people who spend the equivalent of $2-$20 (£1.30-£13) a day. It acknowledged that many living on $2-$4 a day are "floating" and could easily slip back into poverty. Taking these people out of the equation, it put the "stable" middle class at 123 million, 13% of the population.

Yet economic growth does not necessarily mean shared growth: in some cases it means widening inequality, most vividly in South Africa.

There are now more than 100,000 Africans with at least $1m to invest. With an estimated fortune of $10.1bn (£6.5bn), the Nigerian cement tycoon Aliko Dangote is Africa's richest man and one of the continent's 16 billionaires. The South African diamond magnate Nicky Oppenheimer – who also owns the country's largest private game park, the Tswalu Kalahari reserve – comes second, with a $6.5bn fortune. Patrice Motsepe, a 40-year-old mining magnate, is South Africa's first and only black billionaire, with $2.5bn. Together, the combined wealth of Africa's 40 richest is $64.9bn – roughly twice the GDP of Kenya ($32bn) or Ghana ($31bn) in 2010.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/dec/25/africas-middle-class-hope-continent

class in africa

One in three Africans is middle class, a rising group of consumers to rival those of China and India, researchers have found. Mthuli Ncube, the African Development Bank's chief economist said the study used an absolute definition of middle class, meaning people who spend between $2 and $20 a day. Africa's middle class had risen to about 34% (313 million) of the continent's population but of those an estimated 21% earn only enough to spend $2 to $4 a day, about 180 million people vulnerable to economic shocks that could knock them out of the new middle class. 61% of Africa's population living on less than $2 a day.

However, at the top of the pyramid, there exists an elite of about 100,000 Africans who possess a collective net worth of 60% of the continent's gross domestic product in 2008, the report said.

As some economists are prone to do , Ncube uses a consumption pattern to define class, claiming record numbers of people in Africa own houses and cars, use mobile phones and the internet and send their children to private schools and foreign universities. Sales of fridges, TVs and mobile phones have surged in virtually every African country in recent years, the report said. Possession of cars and motorcycles in Ghana, for example, has gone up by 81% in the past five years. The add lifestyle to the definition. The Africa middle classes are more likely to have salaried jobs or own small businesses. They tend not to rely entirely on public health services, seeking more expensive medical care. The middle classes tend to have fewer children and spend more on their nutrition and schooling.

Socialist Banner however uses the Marxian method of defining class and challenges the whole concept of a "middle class". Anyone with no other choice but to sell their physical or mental labour power in order to earn money which provides the means necessary to sustain living is, no matter what the difference in their salary/wages, job description/ responsibility, a member of the working class. Sociological definitions based upon cultural preferences, job types (professional, salaried or blue collar, waged), or number of TVs or cars owned in more likely to reflect a false consciousness of one's actual class position.

BEE - Black Elite Enrichment

"Most African politicians play the ethnic card to stay in power. And unfortunately the masses don’t realise that they are being duped – they don’t understand that their interest are different from those of the elite even if they happen to come from the same tribe. Why? The masses have no sense of its own identity and are not politically consciousness of its own interests. It is only when that consciousness develops that this group would be transformed from being a class ‘in itself’ to a class ‘for itself’. Now because of the under-developed nature of our society, sociologically speaking that is, most of our people think that the main problem confronting them are ethnic in nature forgetting the central issue which is the daily struggle for economic survival. So, it’s important that we bring the issue of class and class struggle back in our discussion...
...why after a good 21 years into our independence all we are seeing is the yawning inequality in the Namibian society leading to a sharply divided nation of ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’. This is not what we promised our people. What we promised our people was to imagine a country with no poverty. With no one who sleeps under bridges, no one looking through garbage for food. On the contrary: everyone would have what you or I would call a decent home and a decent standard of living...But when independence came, they made a total u-turn and adopted and accepted the capitalist agenda in toto...
....The masses should now wake up from their deep slumber and wage a new struggle for their own liberation."

Quoted from T Kaure in The Namibian

nigerian shakara

Most of Nigeria's 150 million citizens may live in desperate poverty, but the West African oil giant also has an elite that revels in "shakara" — the flaunting of success.

"Nigerians who have money like to splash it," explains Naomi Okaja, whose company imports goods into Lagos, the commercial capital.
At the Megaplaza mall, a flat-screen TV taller than a man sells for $53,000, a crystal chandelier for $10,000. The wealthy import everything from refined gasoline for their Mercedes-Benzes to their children's favorite foods.
Restaurants post armed guards; the homes of the wealthy have walls with razor-wire, floodlights, cameras and security guards. Newspaper ads for luxury armored Hummers.An island and the connecting peninsula jutting into Lagos Lagoon offer the best real-estate. At night the rich neighborhoods become the ultimate gated communities, reachable only by bridges and checkpoints guarded by police with rifles. There are yacht moorings and helipads for the super-rich.

Meanwhile, four-fifths of Nigerians live on less than $2 a day.

The rich at Megaplaza think, a growing middle class will push for better governance and a better government will provide better services.

For Okuro and other stall holders around him, such visions provoke bitter laughter.

"When will it come? Tell me when," Okuro demands "We are tired of waiting."

Proletarisation of the middle classes

Food costs are soaring across Egypt. The price of chicken has gone up by 40% in three months, and heating, electricity and transportation costs have more than doubled in the last year. It is not just the poor who are suffering. Increasingly, the middle classes are being pulled into poverty. And as protests grow, the rumbles of discontent are starting to worry the government of President Hosni Mubarak.

Dr Mona Mina is the driving force behind an organisation called Doctors Without Rights.
The signs she and her colleagues are carrying say:
"Two-hundred-and-thirty pounds a month is not enough to feed our families."
The average wage of a doctor, 230 Egyptian pounds, works out at less than £25 ($50) a month.

"People think we are beyond money. But how can we live?" said Saad , a surgeon at Nile Hospital . "How can I give the best when I work long hours and earn as much as a nurse or a mill worker? Our salaries need to be commensurate with prosecutors'. They earn 2,000 pounds a month. So, is it more important to put someone in jail or to save someone from dying?"

Civil servants have started to organise. But it is the doctors - middle class, highly respected but poorly paid - who have caught the mood of the country with their audacious but thwarted proposal for a strike.

"We have two classes today in Egypt -- the capitalists and the poor," Farahat , an orthopedic specialist , said. "We have no middle class anymore. Given such conditions, there must be labor strikes."

An extract from Religion Racism and Class :-

The effect on that section of the working class which does not share similar physical characteristics with the owning class is to deny itself as different from the dominant class. It identifies and shares the convictions, doctrines and other attitudes of the dominant class which oppresses it. Guilt and an inferiority complex promoted by the dominant class and imbibed by the oppressed become the result of this process. Consequently the attempt to escape this inferiority by denying and condemning oneself becomes a lifelong struggle.

Let's consider this for one moment. It is important to note that for many Christians, the traditional African religious individuals is superstitious and worships idols and several gods; there is only one God, though he has a son begotten by the Holy Spirit. This god is white, his angels are white; and when the saved finally go to heaven, they will wear white robes of purity. But the devil is black; his angels are black; sin itself is black and when the sinful finally go to hell, they will be burnt to black coal. It is surprising that the African converts sing in pleading terror: "Wash me Redeemer, and I shall be whiter than snow?" And is it any wonder that some Africans buy skin-bleaching creams to lighten their dark skins? Is it also surprising that so-called educated and enlightened women often buy red, blonde or brunette wigs to hide their black hair or spend hours on end in hair saloons trying to make their hair curly and long?

Christianity even denies the African the right to their name. A name is a simple symbol of identity. But the African convert would normally be required to discard his African name and give himself such good Christian names as Smith, Verwoerd, Robert, James, Julius, Ironmonger, Winterbotham, Elizabeth, Summer, Winter and sometimes Autumn. This business of getting new names has its roots in slave property relations, where the person of the slave was the property of the owner to be disposed of and used as the master deemed fit. So slaves were branded with the master's name.

The same story is true in art, dance, music, drama etc, but the ultimate objective in class society is one—to control the productive forces and appropriate economic surplus irrespective of the exploiter's race or tribe. Economic control however is much more difficult to attain without political control. Political control is therefore established through proxy governments. Even then the vampire system finds that economic and political control are incomplete without cultural and hence ideological control. So the system employs religion and bogus theories like racism to ensure the mental castration of the worker be he European, Asian or African.

The Class Struggle in Senegal

Police in Senegal's capital, Dakar, have fired teargas at hundreds of protesting street vendors . The clashes came in response to police enforcing a new government policy to remove the vendors. Thousands of people earn a living peddling goods on Dakar's streets. The violence broke out shortly after trades unions held their own demonstration against rising food and fuel prices. Both demonstrations came down to one thing: poverty. The World Bank considers that one in three Senegalese is poor. Unemployment rate estimates are as high as 40 percent, and the vast majority of jobs are in the informal sector.

Police began evicting the thousands of street vendors on Thursday, three days after President Abdoulaye Wade sought an end to informal trading in the city. He said uncontrolled street vending had cost the country some 125m Euros because traffic jams were putting off investors. annd the vendors were protesting a move by President Abdoulaye Wade to force them off Dakar’s busy streets in an effort to improve traffic flow. For months, the government has been giving Dakar a facelift, building new roads and hotels, as it prepares to host an international Islamic conference in March. The authorities in Senegal's capital, Dakar, have now offered concessions to street vendors after violent protests. Several officials moved swiftly to announce measures, including the provision of market areas and reopening some streets for roadside sales .

“Prices of basic commodities have reached incomprehensible levels,” Mademba Sock, coordinator of the United Front of Central Unions representing 14 of Senegal’s unions

Union representatives had been demanding a reduction in food and housing prices, an increase in salaries, and support for struggling businesses. Demonstrators included teachers complaining of empty government promises, public servants let go without pay and average citizens who simply cannot afford to feed their families.

“Senegalese people do not eat three meals a day,” said Fatou Samba, a former teacher. “The president spends millions of dollars here and there while his people are suffering and dying of hunger.”

“In my home, there are eight people,” said teacher Cissé Sow. “I pay the water, electricity, phone, medical care and food. It’s one salary…. And there are 30 or 40 other people who depend on me...Meanwhile, the people in power are all driving fancy American cars

Slavery and wage-slavery

In Mauritania, slavery was banned years ago in 1981 - but it persisted and now there has been passed a new law meaning anyone that keeps slaves can be thrown into jail for up to 10 years.The law foresees fines as well as jail terms for slave masters and reparations for the victims. Mauritania's change in mindset seems to have found its momentum after an army coup in 2005. The military junta leader, Ely Ould Mohamed Vall, declared slavery a problem last year, a marked shift from the denials of the man he ousted.

"It's a historic moment. One of the reasons slavery has flourished is because of impunity, but now it's been criminalised in clear and comprehensive terms," Boubacar Ould Messaoud, the head of SOS Slavery in Mauritania, said

Mauritania's history of slavery goes back more than 800 years when Arab raiders surged across the Sahara to subjugate black Africans. Mauritanian slaves are born into an established slave class, and this binds them to their master's household. They can be given as gifts, and bought or sold. They must marry who their masters say and are usually told they can only go to heaven on their master's word.

As one small boy put it when talking to the campaign group Anti-Slavery International: "I grew up in the master's family, there was one son, we were almost the same age... He went to Koranic school and I was a shepherd, herding animals. I also had to fetch water. I did the work of domestics 24 hours a day. As a slave, we are the first to wake up, we are the last to go to bed."

Little will change though for that boy . From chattel slavery to wage-slavery is not really such a big change, though . He will labour in the interests of others and toil for the benefit of the master class .

"Slaves are often thought of as people in chains. But here they are born into submission. They are chained in their heads..." Messaoud of SOS Slavery went on to say .
Indeed , that is a condition that many live under - perhaps not literally actual slaves but still , nevertheless , in bondage to the yoke of capitalism and the necessity of working for a wage or a salary for mere simple survival and yet not realising their enslaved position in class divided capitalist society.
.

Nigerian Status and Class

The BBC reports on the class divisions and stratifications in Nigeria . To be addressed as a Mr, Mrs or Ms in Nigerian social circles means you are a nobody. To be a mover or shaker you need to be a chief . To be a traditional chief is like being a small god - it is seen as the peak of one's achievement in life. A chief should be someone who is well-to-do financially and intellectually and has contributed substantially to the development of the community.

But no longer.

Honorary titles can often be bought by giving a donation of about $10,000 to one's home area.
The moment somebody is financially buoyant the next thing is to be chief because he has more money.
Many people use their titles for political gain. In Nigerian politicians don't sell party programmes, they sell people . It is the face , not the case .

"Chieftaincy titles have practically been bastardised these days," said Financial manager Reginald Ibe, a chief of the Igbo people in the south-east "Now you even have armed robbers, corrupt politicians and all sorts of people being chiefs,"

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo was made chief shortly after he first stepped down from power when he was the military head of state in 1979. President Umaru Yar'Adua holds the title Matawalin Katsina - "custodian of wealth of Katsina" - given to him by the Emir of Katsina when he was governor.

"Most of the people who seem to be crazy about titles are making up for some deficiencies or some inadequacies," claims Alhaji Abbu Mohammed from northern Borno State, the Yerima Kida of Biu Emirate, which literally means he is prince of the Kida area.

Religion , Race and Class

The absurd claim of racism is that people’s behavioural, physical and cultural traits conform to a certain fixed and immutable pattern; and this determines the superiority or otherwise of a group in relation to others. This is an outlook that has been used to justify some of the most unspeakable and horrendous crimes against humanity, sometimes leading to killings of genocidal proportions.

In Eduardo Galegno’s Open Vein of Latin America, he recounts that before foreign conquerors set foot on the soil of the land, the Indians totalled no less than 70 million. But a century-and-a-half later, they had been reduced to 3.5 million; and in 1685 only 4,000 Indian families remained of the more than two million that had once lived between Lima and Paita. Yet Archbishop Linan by Cisneros exposed how some of the church elders had perfected lies into a fine art. He said: "The truth is that they are hiding out, to avoid paying tribute, abusing the liberty which they enjoy and which they never had under the Incas."

Racism, however, is flawed on a number of counts, not just for its barbarism and irrationality. Its fundamental arguments are basically weak. Where are those people who conform to racial purity, let’s say in terms of colour? You will meet a lot of dark-skinned people in Africa, but you will no doubt also come across light-skinned types in southern Africa and eastern Nigeria. How can one also argue that the Yanamani Indians or the Bushmen of the Kalahari desert are less intelligent than people in Norway or Japan. The two groups live in different material conditions, and these varied environments impose on them tasks and solutions that respond to their peculiar circumstances. In spite of the gaping loopholes in racists’ theories, racism has been used together with religion to justify the enslavement of other people.

Islam, Christianity and Hinduism

The Arabs and their Muslim counterparts, according to Dais Brion, were the first people to develop a specialised long-distance slave trade from sub-Saharan Africa. They were also the first people to view blacks as suited by nature for the lowest and the most degrading form of bondage. Rotter’s pioneering work and the research of Benard Lewis reveals that for medieval Arabs the blackness of Africans suggested sin, damnation and the devil. Arab scholars, most of the time, also invoked the biblical curse of Canaan to explain why the sons of Ham had been blackened and degraded to the status of natural slaves as punishment for the sins of their ancestors.

By the 10th century, some Muslim writers asserted that Ham begot all blacks and people with crinkly hair and that "Noah put a curse on Ham according to which the hair of his descendants would not extend over their ears, and they would be enslaved wherever they were encountered". Lewis also quotes a 13th century Islamic historian from Iran who concluded that the Zanj (blacks) differed from animals only because their two hands are lifted above the ground and that many have observed that the ape is more teachable and more intelligent than the Zanj.

In the 17th century, Father Gregorio Garcia detected "Semitic blood" in the Indians, because like the Jews, "they are lazy, they do not believe in the miracles of Jesus Christ, and they are ungrateful to the Spaniards for all the good they have done to them". When Bartolome de Las Casas upset the Spanish court with his fiery denunciations of the conquistadors’ cruelty in 1557, a member of the Royal Council had replied that Indians were too low in the human scale to be capable of receiving the faith. Another justification for holding other people as slaves was found in Leviticus 25:44 which said, "Both thy bonds-men, and thy bonds-maid, which thou shalt have, shall be the heathen that are round you; of them shall ye buy bonds-men and bonds-maids." But the most popular text on the matter is found in Genesis 9:25 which says, "Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be to his brethren." Some slave-owners went beyond the bible arguing that it might be wrong to enslave Christians, but that the Negro was not a human being and therefore could not become a Christian. One pious lady said, when asked if her Negro maid was to be baptised, "you might as well baptise my black bitch." While Bishop Berkeley put the same idea into philosophical language when he said, "Negroes were creatures of another species who had no right to be included or admitted to other sacraments."

Similarly, racist sentiments are expressed in the Rig Veda, the Hindu scriptures of ancient India. Indra, the God of the Aryans, is described as "blowing away with supernatural might from earth and from the heavens the blackskins, which Indra hates". The account further reports how Indra "slew the flat-nosed barbarians, the dark people called Anasahs. Finally, after Indra conquers the land of the Anasahs for his worshippers, he commands that the Anasahs are to be flayed of [their] black skin."

The first distinctive feature to be noted in religion and racism is their appeal to a two-category system which presupposes a basic division of mankind into an "in" group and an "out" group. In addition, this fundamental division is supported, initiated and sanctioned by God himself. God has a special concern for the "in" group, and it receives his sustaining aid and grace. By contrast he is indifferent or hostile to the "out" group. In the final analysis God does not value all men equally, consequently he treats them differently. And this difference is not accidental but central to his will and purpose. The two-category system is correlated with an imbalance of suffering in which the "out" group suffers more than the rest of the people. In the account of the Rig Veda, for example, we know that God has less affection for the Anasahs because they suffer more than the Aryans. It is also evident from holy books like the bible and the Rig Veda that God’s favour or disfavour is correlated with the racial or ethnic identity of the group in question. God’s wrath and hostility are sometimes even directed at the physical features of a particular ethnic or racial community.

In the bible, Yahweh often sides with the Israelites in the murderous campaigns to grab land from the Jebusites, Canaanites, Philistines and Amalekites in the same way that he was used to justify colonialism. Similarly, in African traditional religion, the God of a particular ethnic group assists it to overcome its enemies and brings prosperity to the "in" group. It stands to reason that whilst there is no rock-solid evidence to support the claim that God created man, there is enough justification in the materialist assertion that God is an invention of man. This is grimly illustrated by the fact that while Saddam Hussein was calling on God to help the Iraqis in the Gulf War, George Bush was doing the same thing. No God caused the death of the young men who were slaughtered; but the misguided beliefs and the greed of the ruling class.

Production and production relations

Consequently, the "out" and "in" scheme of analysis has nothing to do with God. It is a manifestation of the concrete and material world of humans reflected in their consciousness in the process of the production and distribution of wealth. Ultimately, production and production relations determine the ideas individuals have about themselves as a group, and about society at large in matters of morality, religion, metaphysics, etc. And it is only when we have identified and understood the material assets and constraints of a society, how it produces goods to meet its material needs, how the goods are distributed, and what type of social organisation sprouts from the organisation of production that we would have come a long way to understanding the culture and religious views of that society.

If the production relations are such that makes it possible for a minority to appropriate the end-product of the labour of the majority the views of the minority become the dominant ones in society, whilst the opinion of the majority are suppressed.

The ownership of the means of production is thus important in understanding people’s perception of social phenomena – religion, philosophy, art etc. Bearing this in mind, we shall find that religious perceptions in any class-divided society are not neutral, but a tool in the hands of the dominant class in its struggle to maintain its control over economic surplus. Religious and all manner of spurious ideological theories are contrived by the ruling class or its representatives in the intellectual community and church organisations to keep the downtrodden perpetually entrapped in the vicious circle of exploitation.

As children in a predominantly Catholic community, we used to be told that God was surrounded by a host of angels with archangels. God was the boss and each angel and archangel had a specific assignment to perform in heaven. This was a world-view that sought to give blessing to the master-servant relationship that existed in the feudal era and class society in general.

Some quotations in the bible are also anti-worker if applied in today’s circumstances. Take for instance the saying, "But I say unto you, that ye resist no evil; but whosoever shall smite thee on thy cheek, turn to him the other also." I suppose that when the Accountant General’s Office slashed as much as a 100,000 cedis from my salary in March, I should have responded: "Please my Lordship why are you so generous with me? Take 100,000 cedis more." This would have been submissiveness stretched to its idiotic limits, and an invitation to exploitation and despotism. It could mean an acceptance of wage slavery, a system that is inimical to working people’s interests.

The New Testament also advises us to despise and deprecate worldly things in lieu of heavenly rewards. What would this mean for those who have already made material gains here on Earth? If people like Bill Gates are also God-fearing they would have a double reward; one on Earth and the other in heaven, whilst the God-fearing poor will have only one. As for the poor who are not God-fearing, the extent of their loss and damnation is inestimable. The end result of these teachings, if employed in a class society, makes the working people docile and facilitates their exploitation by the owning class.

Convenient smokescreen

But this is not all. It also calls forth the other forms of alienation which are not strictly economic, but are organically linked to it. It is important to note that racism and religion tend to elevate the culture and other virtues of the dominant class; and denigrate that of the oppressed. But the class character of this domination especially becomes difficult to unmask if the oppressor class has a different racial background from the oppressed, as was the case during the heady days of apartheid and colonialism. Skin pigmentation and other physical characteristics subsume the class dimension of the problem, and exploitation is seen through the binoculars of race. One therefore develops a superiority or inferiority complex, depending on one’s physical traits; and the fundamental issue, which is class exploitation, is lost. Given these circumstances racism becomes a convenient smokescreen with which the ruling class masks its exploitation of labour. Eventually the attention of the working class is diverted from the real causes of its predicament; and a section of it becomes a pliant tool of the ruling class in its attempt to entrench the capitalist system.

The effect on that section of the working class which does not share similar physical characteristics with the owning class is to deny itself as different from the dominant class. It identifies and shares the convictions, doctrines and other attitudes of the dominant class which oppresses it. Guilt and an inferiority complex promoted by the dominant class and imbibed by the oppressed become the result of this process. Consequently the attempt to escape this inferiority by denying and condemning oneself becomes a lifelong struggle.

Let’s consider this for one moment. It is important to note that for many Christians, the traditional African religious individual is superstitious and worships idols and several gods; there is only one God, though he has a son begotten by the Holy Spirit. This god is white, his angels are white; and when the saved finally go to heaven, they will wear white robes of purity. But the devil is black; his angels are black; sin itself is black and when the sinful finally go to hell, they will be burnt to black coal. It is surprising that the African converts sing in pleading terror: "Wash me Redeemer, and I shall be whiter than snow?" And is it any wonder that some Africans buy skin-bleaching creams to lighten their dark skins? Is it also surprising that so-called educated and enlightened women often buy red, blonde or brunette wigs to hide their black hair or spend hours on end in hair saloons trying to make their hair curly and long?

Christianity even denies the African the right to their name. A name is a simple symbol of identity. But the African convert would normally be required to discard his African name and give himself such good Christian names as Smith, Verwoerd, Robert, James, Julius, Ironmonger, Winterbotham, Elizabeth, Summer, Winter and sometimes Autumn. This business of getting new names has its roots in slave property relations, where the person of the slave was the property of the owner to be disposed of and used as the master deemed fit. So slaves were branded with the master’s name.

The same story is true in art, dance, music, drama etc, but the ultimate objective in class society is one—to control the productive forces and appropriate economic surplus irrespective of the exploiter’s race or tribe. Economic control however is much more difficult to attain without political control. Political control is therefore established through proxy governments. Even then the vampire system finds that economic and political control are incomplete without cultural and hence ideological control. So the system employs religion and bogus theories like racism to ensure the mental castration of the worker, be he European, Asian or African.

ADONGO AIDAN AVUGMA
From Africa: A Marxist Analysis