Our Friends Are at it Again...

By K. David Mafabi

The United States and the European Union have expressed concern about the freezing of the bank accounts of “several reputable and well-known CSOs (Civil Society Organizations)”. In a statement issued last Saturday, U.S. Ambassador to Uganda Natalie Brown spoke about “disturbing signs that civic space is closing”. Ambassador Brown is troubled “about Uganda’s preparedness for a transparent, inclusive election”.

The EU Ambassador, in another statement (the one I saw is not dated or signed), said, “… the EU and its Member States are very concerned that the bank accounts of several reputable and well-known civil society partners have been frozen on allegations of financing terrorism. … The EU and its Member States call on the competent Ugandan authorities to investigate and review swiftly these allegations and unfreeze the bank accounts of these partners as appropriate”.

Excellences, the investigations you refer to in your statements are already underway … Due processes are being followed, legality scrupulously respected … Civic space is NOT closing. A valid and massive national electoral exercise involving the animated millions of the people of Uganda in their majority IS underway … It shall be SUCCESSFULLY concluded next month, challenges notwithstanding.

Regarding the general historical place and role of CSOs though, you definitely have to unlearn a number of philosophical and practical assumptions. If you do not, you will inevitably misconstrue where the objective interests of the people of Uganda lie - on these and other concerns you may raise from time to time.

What is Civil Society? What are Civil Society Organizations? What is the essence of the organizations that go by that label in Uganda and Africa? What is their objective place and role? The questions must arise - of necessity … If the reverse were true, no statements such as we are dealing with, would have arisen.

For pointers to answers, we must go back in the mists of time to ancient Greece - to Socrates (470 BC - 399 BC), Plato (424 BC - 348 BC), Aristotle (384 BC - 322 BC)) … To Aristotle’s rendition of Civil Society as “Political Community”, in his “Politics” … Encapsulating a shared set of norms and values … held by free citizens on equal footing … This polity, then, was the “political community” or “civil society” - possibly ruled by “philosopher kings”, set aside from the “barbarians” … Never mind that slaves and women were not part of “the people” in the “democratic” assembly of the City-State! These were the origins in antiquity, of the concept of “civil society” - understood as the entire “political community”, as “the people” …

The ancient Romans also picked it up - through writers like Cicero.

The concept of “civil society” re-entered Western political discourse in the late Middle Ages, which lasted from the 5th Century with the fall of the Western Roman Empire to the late 15th Century, merging into the Renaissance. The concept arrived with the translation of Aristotle's “Politics” into Latin by Leonardo Bruni (1370 -1444) who rendered the concept as “Societas Civilis”. The concept remained in essence, what it had been in antiquity.

In our odyssey with “civil society”, we must look at the ramifications of the Thirty Years' War (1618 to 1648) and the Peace of Westphalia (1648) which ushered in the so-called sovereign states system. States were thereafter recognized as territorially-based political units having sovereignty … monarchs formed national armies and deployed professional bureaucracies - maintaining direct control over their subjects and exerting greater control over economies. Feudal absolutism had arrived, dominating Europe until the mid-eighteenth century. These were certainly not very propitious times for the development of our “civil society” - smothered by the alliance between state and church, encapsulated in the doctrine of “divine origin” of kings!

Absolutism, naturally, was resisted in the “Age of Enlightenment” of the 17th and 18th Centuries. The philosophers of the Enlightenment raised major questions: "What legitimacy does heredity confer?", "Why are governments instituted?", "Why do some human beings have more basic rights than others?” .... Thomas Hobbes (1588 - 1679), John Locke (1632 - 1740) and others were at the heart of this philosophical movement. They argued, in summary, that human beings are rational and can shape their destiny. Even Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712 - 1778), a critic of civil society, and Immanuel Kant argued that “people are peace lovers and that wars are the creation of absolute regimes”. Our “civil society” of old, with whatever variations, seemed to be re-emerging center stage!

It was, however, left to the great German philosopher and idealist Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770 - 1831), to completely alter the meaning of “civil society”. Hegel’s work led directly to the modern liberalist understanding of “civil society” - as a form of non-political society, as opposed to institutions of the modern nation-state. Hegel, therefore, differed fundamentally with classical republicanism - where “civil society” was synonymous with “political society”. Hegel separated the “political state” and “civil society”. This schema broadly is what was followed by Alexis de Tocqueville (1805 - 1859) and Karl Marx (1818 - 1883) - in their discussion of “civil society”.

Disagreeing with his philosophical predecessors, Hegel looked at “civil society” as a separate realm, a "system of needs" - the space which intervenes between the family and the state." To Hegel, “civil society” was the realm of economic relationships in modern industrial capitalist society. It emerged together with capitalism and served individual rights and private property.

Karl Marx built upon the Hegelian postulation on “civil society”. Marx however argued that the emergence of the modern state created a realm of “civil society” that reduced society to private interests competing against each other. Political society was autonomised into the state, which was in turn ruled by the bourgeoisie.

Antonio Gramsci (1891 - 1937) departed somewhat from Marx on this subject. To Gramsci, “civil society” was not a realm of private and alienated relationships. It was rather, a vehicle for bourgeois dominance. Gramsci summarized the vital role of civil society as the contributor to the cultural and ideological capital required for the survival of the dominance of capitalism.

Gramsci’s work was misunderstood in a number of quarters. The so-called New Left “assigned civil society” a central role in “defending people against the state and the market”.  The neo-liberalists, on the other hand, considered “civil society” as an important space for “struggle against Communist and authoritarian regimes”! In Eastern Europe, Vaclav Havel (1936 - 2011) and others in the 1990s, employed it to denote the sphere of civic associations that felt threatened by the Governments of Communist Eastern Europe.

Postmodern usage of the concept of “civil society” was divided into two: as “political society” and as “the third sector”. The Washington Consensus of the 1990s, which involved conditionalized support from the World Bank and IMF to debt-laden poor states, also created pressures for those states to “shrink”. Great emphasis was placed on "civil society" as the panacea - it was seen as replacing the state's service provision and social care! “Civil Society” had become "the magic bullet!"

We have tried to compress a very long and complex story into 1,300 words!

We have delivered to the reader, “civil society” as it has developed, evolved and emerged - in advanced capitalist and industrial societies. We have demonstrated the socio-economic interests which that particular “civil society” represents. We have also demonstrated that the mutants of that “civil society”, are myriad.

Now, let us come home to the “civil society” of the largely pre-capitalist, pre-industrial, and peasant dominated states of the emergent world … Whose interests does this “civil society” represent and serve? This “civil society” which operates in countries where the contemporary National Question is largely unresolved … where there is incomplete or stunted national and statal formation … where no national ethos or psyche has been consolidated - who does this “civil society” serve? Does this “civil society” impede or promote the resolution of the fundamental historical challenges of the day? Does this “civil society” comprehend our fundamental structural and other challenges, or does it operate from and is stuck - at a most superficial understanding of our complex reality? That is, at the level of social psychology?

What kind of “civil society” is this that cannot function for a single day without financial support from Europe and America? That kind of support is certainly overall not healthy for our states … As our leader President Yoweri Museveni has repeatedly emphasized, what Africa needs from the outside world is not AID, but TRADE … That is why the African people must, and shall, continue to struggle for greater independence from conditioned AID from our friends outside Africa …

I salute the many steadfast compatriots that work in “our civil society” … Very many mean very well … I salute the friends of Africa outside Africa who mean well for us … But, you will not be very useful to our people over the medium to long term, if you seek to mechanically recreate Mother Africa in the image of the advanced capitalist and industrial countries … The discussion on whether this is even desirable aside, the impossible cannot be done! We cannot forcibly graft liberalist advanced capitalist reality onto pseudo-liberalist, peasant enclave economy!

As we have stated here before, we shall continue working to consolidate democratic governance in the homeland - because we believe in democratic government, and because it is the right thing to do. We do not do it because someone tells us to do it. We shall continue working to advance our all-around fundamental human and peoples’ rights - because it is our historical mission to do so, and because it is the right thing to do so. We do not do it because someone tells us to do so.

The long, circuitous and tortuous struggle for fundamental national transformation and a secure Mother Africa fully of the Digital, Nuclear and Space Age - shall continue until final victory!

K. David Mafabi

Senior Presidential Advisor/Special Duties

State House