No long theoretical preamble here — I’ll try to provide a brief history of colonial Mozambique. I focus mostly on when it gets closer to independence (in 1975), because that’s what we’re gunning for in my paper (and because colonial occupation gets more systematic after the 1880s). I’m also leaving out the pre-colonial history, not because I don’t think it’s important, but because I do think colonialism radically transformed a lot of things, and to whatever extent it preserved, eradicated or transformed pre-colonial relations, that’s what the post-colonial moment had to work with.

Colonialism is brutal, and just about anywhere you go in the world today you can see its after-effects reverberating. There are those who would consider themselves critical and yet try to pass off one kind of colonialism as better than another (because, I don’t know, the French causing a million deaths in Algeria is better than the British causing a few more million in India?), and then there are snots like Sarkozy who imagine that colonialism was the best thing to happen to savage races since Jesus. The truth is that colonialism fucked shit up, everywhere. The violence was tremendous, physically, morally, psychologically, structurally, violence to modes of thought and production of knowledge. Many more forms of violence beside. After significant, bloody and often violent resistance (yeah, even in India, Gandhi notwithstanding) many colonizing powers decided to give up formal political control to the emergent native bourgeoisies of the colonies (something Frantz Fanon referred to as “false decolonization”), maintaining significant political ties and dependent economic relations, i.e., establishing neo-colonialism.

But when it comes to brute force and utter persistence in maintaining formal political control over colonies, Portuguese colonialism wins. (Remember, Rhodesia and South Africa were no longer British colonies, so much as they were ruled by gangs of rich white men, and so that took longer — 1980 and 1994 respectively, and 1990 for Namibia.)

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As I considered my earlier post on the definition of “meaningful development” I realized that a lot of what I said could also be stated in terms of the Marxian theory as I understand it.

My second-last paragraph pointed out that individuals often have an individualized perspective on development (e.g., the necessity for education) even though these perspectives may be widely shared. Here we have an example of the dialectic between immediate needs and objective needs. The immediate need of many in Mozambique is an increase in income by which they can sustain themselves. Many have realized that being educated, or getting their children educated, leads to an increase in income. They thus strive to get at least some of their children (if they survive) educated. We’re still at the level of immediate needs here, the necessity of education is individualized and it becomes dependent upon a transaction. Compare to Adorno (though he isn’t talking about a society like Mozambique’s):

Not only are needs satisfied purely indirectly, by means of exchange-values, but within the relevant economic sectors produced by the profit-motive, and thus at the cost of the objective needs of the consumers, namely those for adequate housing, and completely so in terms of the education and information over the processes which most affect them.

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I have been trying, unsuccessfully, to work on a paper on the politics of Mozambique. The reasons for this are both political and personal, and the ways in which these two intersect. It was due at the end of April, which seemed reasonable at the time, but then a whole series of events followed and life in general took a tanking dive and I’ve been trying to deal with a lot of that. I haven’t been able to work on the paper, and when I try, I fail quite miserably.

But if I can’t bring myself write on Mozambique, perhaps I can write about writing on Mozambique (argh, postmodernism’s revenge!). I’ve done a bit of research — having gone through dozens of journal and news articles and a few books. All of this raises more than a few questions for me, to which I have no satisfactory answer. I hope my musings here will help to, at least, organize the issues for me and give me focus in writing the paper.

I took the class in the first place for a few reasons. I could have taken David McNally’s class on Marx’s Capital — which would have been fantastic, no doubt — but I felt like I needed a grounding in the way capitalism works, internationally, on the ground. I have more than a passing interest in the politics of southern Africa and I wanted, also, to examine how the post-colonial moment has been working out (answer: not well). Also, I heard that this might be one of the last times that John S. Saul would be teaching the class (and, indeed, it was the last class he taught), and that it was worth it to take a class with him. (Saul is a noted scholar-activist, and he was involved in the struggles against colonialism and apartheid, back in the day.) Of course, I also heard and kept hearing other stuff about Saul — vague and non-specific rumours, all of which turned out to be unsubstantiated; and the fact that he seemed to assign his own work a lot was a bit disconcerting, but ultimately, it wasn’t a problem at all.

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In what can only be called a freak burst of actually getting someone to do investigative journalism, The Star has managed to put together a brilliant series of stories on Crime & Punishment. I’ll be trying to parse through it in the coming weeks, but it looks really good. Check it out.

“Working within the system” to produce change that is substantial and transformative is kind of like trying to insert a third team into a standard foozball table without any tools or supplies while obnoxious, rich fat white male brats play the game.

I just finished writing an article about police repression of dissent a couple of days ago, which may get published somewhere, and which I will post here when it does. It’s basically about how police get funding as social services get cut, and how they use arrests as a method of intimidation and marginalization — against activists but also against the poor and racialized groups.

As I finished writing it on Saturday and Sunday, OCAP activists staged a demonstration at Allen Gardens which the police repeatedly interfered with. The next day, Monday, they arrested an OCAP activist. The next day, Tuesday, they announced an infusion of $5 million from the province to fund more cops. And the next day, Wednesday, police chief Bill Blair announced that there would, in fact, be armed and uniformed police officers strolling the halls of our city’s schools. And a “linchpin witness” in the “homegrown terrorist” Toronto 18 trial testified in court that the police and crown’s case was weak.

And this from a New York blog, AngryBrownButch, posted two days ago:

It’s not about arresting people who are actually doing anything wrong – after all, observing the police is not officially a crime, though I’m sure they wish it were. No, they do it to scare us, make us too scared of arrest or other retaliation to hold them accountable.

And you know what? Sometimes their fear tactics work. Getting arrested is fucking scary, and even just getting messed with or threatened by the cops is daunting. Especially when I’m alone, I get nervous to stop and watch the cops. Not even question them, not even take pictures, and certainly not even anything close to intervening – I get scared of standing nearby and looking at them. And that fear pisses me off. When I’m with someone else, it’s easier; with a group, even easier. The fear makes sense – cops and the power they wield are scary – but we can’t let it stop us from practicing our civil rights and our civic duties in holding them accountable.

Perhaps one of the easiest things to take for granted in this society is that the police are here to “serve and protect” us. Sure. But that depends entirely on how you define “us.”

A high school teacher in Los Angeles got fired for encouraging her students to be, well, socially engaged. Karen Salazar was accused of teaching a curriculum that was too “Afro-centric”. You see, teaching texts like the Autobiography of Malcolm X is dangerous. Students organizing and mobilizing on the high school campus was apparently too much for stuffed up administrators (and most definitely, their higher ups) to see and deal with, so they do what they usually do in such circumstances: Scapegoat a teacher, because, of course, students themselves are too stupid to do anything on their own, and press down on her. In this case, they’ve decided to fire Ms. Salazar.

No, wait, it wasn’t that the curriculum was too “Afro-centric” after all — the materials, apparently, were appropriate. It’s just that her teaching style crossed the line into advocacy. You see, when someone encourages you to change the conditions in society that produce inequality and injustice, that’s inappropriate. Ms. Salazar quotes Paulo Freire, she says one should practice “education as the practice of freedom.” In a democratic country, where education is supposed to be a pillar of freedom, that would be all right. But in countries which pass themselves as democracies but practice so many dispersed forms of tyranny, education needs to be the brainwashing of students to toe the line.

And by firing Karen Salazar, that’s precisely what these administrators are trying to enforce. It’s not that she teaches Malcolm X and Tupac, or that she quotes Freire. It’s that students are organizing and mobilizing, learning to work together in cooperative and collective frameworks to challenge authority and change things for the better. And that’s too much.

Learn more about the struggle of the students to have Ms. Salazar reinstated — including videos of their mass actions — here: http://savesalazar.pbwiki.com/

Note: This article was supposed to be published in the next Basics Community Newsletter, but unfortunately because of some misunderstandings was unable to make it. So I’ve published it here in full.

On Thursday March 20, over forty students and allies staged a sit-in at the University of Toronto administration’s offices to protest against increases in student fees. The peaceful protest was met with physical aggression by campus police on the orders of senior university administrators. Undeterred, students and allies formed the Committee for Just Education and organized an emergency rally on March 25 to continue protesting fees. On April 7, they held an open forum on fees and staged another rally on April 10 to protest fees.

Charging fees for university and college is one way to keep the working-class and the poor in check. Although the government discusses grants and loans, these are either hard to come by or add up to huge debt-loads after graduation. Students then become “indentured servants” — working to pay off loans while also trying to maintain a life. But free education is a possibility. Cuba, Ireland, Sweden, Finland and many other countries around the world offer free education at all stages. Others, like Venezuela, are moving toward free higher education.

Free education is something that working-classes and their allies have fought for over the past centuries in various countries. These were not gracious policies of the ruling classes, but like health care, the eight-hour working day, and the weekend, are the products of struggle. The students and organizers at UofT are attempting to continue in this tradition of struggle.

But UofT’s administration responded in the most authoritarian way. First, the administration is investigating students under the Code of Student Conduct, which could lead to sanctions including suspension and expulsion. Then, for the first time in over 35 years, they selected 14 students and organizers and got Toronto Police to press criminal charges against them for alleged involvement in the sit-in on March 20. The “Fight Fees 14” were arrested over one month after the events and were released on restrictive bail conditions that prevent their associating with one another, and ban them from UofT property except for classes. One student organizer was in custody overnight, and others were held for unusually long periods of time.

This repression of dissent comes at a time when universities are moving toward increasing privatization and commercialization to intensify serving the needs of corporations and industries, instead of serving the public good. Increasing student fees contributes to the university itself operating like a private corporation instead of a public institution. When students and others protest against this agenda of corporatization, they are met with tremendous repression. At the University of British Columbia, 19 students were arrested on April 4 for opposing the commercialization of campus space, and other universities are introducing or revising Student Codes of Conduct.

We must act now to make the university accountable and accessible to our communities. Please visit www.fightfees.ca and e-mail fightfees@gmail.com to learn more about joining the struggle against student fees and helping the Fight Fees 14.

About $126,000.

According to CTV News:

[the demonstrators] even mixed up their facts, Steiner added, noting the fee hike is actually 10 per cent.

Ah. Well, according to the University of Toronto’s own documents accessible here (p. 16):

The ancillary will increase the fall/winter residence rates by 20% in 2008-09.

So, if Robert Steiner is capable of getting an incontrovertible fact wrong — either because he was misinformed or willfully misleading everyone — then what else other facts did he get “mixed up”?

He said, “Demonstrators seemed to be protesting everything from the war in Afghanistan to the coffee at Second Cup […]”

Well, actually, no. The demonstrators were protesting the NC residence fees, and student fees in general. The only time Second Cup was brought up was when one of them asked me why I was drinking Tim Hortons coffee — and that I threw away the cup without rolling up the rim.

(Yes, one of them commemorated the 5th anniversary of the war in Iraq — March 20 — but, last time I checked, being against wars that kill millions of people is a good thing.)

Also:

If there was any “brutality,” Steiner suggested it was on the part of demonstrators who tried to trip staff as they left the building, shouted at security and in one case even bit an officer.

Well, it is evident that protesters were pushed to the floor and held by police officers as members of the administration were escorted out. According to the protesters, the administration members literally walked on top of them. According to Robert Steiner, they were trying to trip staff.

Seeing as Robert Steiner is so full of lies and misinformation, I’m not planning on taking his word for anything. After all, if you get $126,000 a year for “Strategic Communication” you probably know exactly how to spin the truth into lies — even if that contradicts your own documentation.

March 20, 2008 thirty-five University of Toronto students occupied Simcoe Hall, the home of the President’s Office, to protest a 20% fee increase. The nonviolent sit-in was accompanied with a peaceful rally outside the building—until the police began brutalizing those inside. This was captured by multiple video cameras.

The students had three simple demands.
1) To be granted a meeting with President David Naylor;
2) To have the proposed fee increase removed from the University Affairs Board meeting, scheduled to take place on March 25; and
3) To be given 15 minutes at the University Affairs Board meeting for a presentation and discussion on broader issues of access to education and the impacts of high tuition upon students, families and communities.

Students attempted to deliver their letter to the University of Toronto President, David Naylor, and to speak to other members of the administration in Simcoe Hall about the rising costs of education in Ontario. The administration refused to meet with the students. The response of the University of Toronto was to violently remove students from their peaceful sit-in. Police aggressively grabbed students and dragged them away from the entrance of the office. The students feared for their safety and after four hours in the building, the police violence forced the students to leave.

Video of these events has been posted on YouTube and it can be viewed here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ketNtnZQIwQ

Images can be viewed here:
http://www.edwardfwong.com/uoftact/9.jpg
http://www.edwardfwong.com/uoftact/10.jpg

Students are continuing to demand a meeting with President Naylor, and the right to accessible and affordable education.