Les damnés de la terre

Durante el último parcial, nos topamos con un trabajo de Frantz Fanon llamado Los condenados de la Tierra, Les damnés de la terre en su título original (1961).

En primer lugar, el libro cuenta con prefacio de Jean-Paul Sartre que nos da una perspectiva diferente ya que plantea el momento, en que escribe, como el fin de la dialéctica por lo que podemos señalarlo como un punto en donde una nueva historia puede empezar a escribirse. Ésta nueva historia, por supuesto, partiría de África. El prefacio de Sartre nos hace referencia a la medidad en que el continente ha sufrido de la descolonización y como a partir de ella, ha mezclado sus tradiciones tribales con las adquiridas durante la colonia para dar como resultado la democracia bajo la que los países africanos se rigen en la actualidad.
Podemos resaltar la posición de la élites como un grupo que por influencia modifica las condiciones del escenario y las regiones es decir, un grupo que modifica las tradicones originales de la región.


I. La Violencia
Desde las primeras líneas de éste capítulo logre entender que éste sería un libro adelantado a su época y que podemos utilizar para hacer una comparación con los acontecimientos que actualmente están sucediendo en África. Como lo sabemos, éste tipo de sucesos se han tornado violentos en los últimos años. Basta recordar el genocidio de Rwanda en 1994 o la situación humanitaria en la República Democrática del Congo.

Pues es así, violenta, como se plantea la liberación nacional que debe tener el continente. Si bien se señala que la descolonizaciónpropone cambiar el orden del mundo, nos la muestra como un programa de desorden sin importar de la manera en qué se dé. Es por eso que desde dicho punto me he encontrado en contra del autor, ya que no nos puede exponer que las soluciones del llamado Tercer Mundo se deben basar en una revolución, sin importar qué tipo de revolución, violenta.


II. Grandeza y debilidades del espontaneísmo
Continuamos resaltando la importancia de las élites en la liberación de los pueblos áfricanos. El autor separa claramente la burgesía del proletariado y menciona a éste último como "el núcleo del pueblo". Además, señala a las masas campesionas de los países industrializados como los elementos menos conscientes y menos organizados, por lo que podemos observar como una clara muestra de la falta de pensamientos innovadores que quiere plasmar.

Resulta drástico mencionar como "vendidos" a los habitantes de los pueblos que tratan de llevar una vida fuera del marco del sistema estableciod al terminar la colonia. Éste fenómeno que hemos estudiado como DIASPORA, es señalado por el autor como "traición". Los movientos rurales se nos siguen describiendo como violentos ya que incluso se nos menciona una dictadura necesarios en los países subdesarrollados.

Me comienza a paracer grave que éste tipo de textos lleguen a manos de personas hambrientas de poder y que sólo buscan envolver a las masas con promesas revolucionarias que, al final, nos llevan a desastres nacionales como muchos de los que se viven actualmente en África. Lugares en donde se debe poner más atención a las agendas sociales que a las luchas sangrientas.

Crecimiento anual a nivel mundial por continente.

III.Desventuras de la conciencia nacional
Dos nuevos factores se unen a la lucha nacional y estos son los partidos políticos y el ejercicio militar. Además en esta ocasión la conciencia nacional juega un papel importante ya que se involucra directamente con la movilización popular. La búsqueda de una verdadera indentidad dejando a un lado todo lo que la colonia les llevó. Al seguir hablando de un combate anticolonialista, nos expone tener la vía revolucionaria, como la única salida luego de la independencia de lo contrario, el autro pronostica un estancamiento.

Algo muy importate que he considerado a partir de éste punto del texto es que, en gran medidad, el autor nos muestra una frente que se opone al Estado y que lo describe como un órgano de poder incapaz de comprender a la clase obrera. Gran parte de lo dicho nos hace renegra del capitalismo que vivimos, nos hace aceptar el poder mal distribuido y la falta de democacia en los pueblos de "Tercer Mundo". Además se recomienda ignorara la fase burgesa después de la descolonización cuando sabemos, y la historia lo ha demostrado, que las naciones que acaban de salir de la colonia no puede comenzar su nueva etapa sin bases... y éstas bases deben de ser tomadas, sin duda, del colonizador.

Sin embargo, podemos apreciar como desde cierto ángulo parace que Fanon nos describe, según la estructura neocolonialista a un líder que aún después de la independencia siga buscando el bien del pueblo. De alguna u otra manera en años recientes (e incluso en la época que el libro fue escristo) nos hemos topado en el ámbito internacional como dichos líderes, tarde o temprano, han visto desvanecer su honestidad en búsca de más poder.

Me he encontrado con un capítulo que pone en pie la lucha de dos ideologías que cambiarán a África: ¿Revolución o innovación? Sin duda me inclino por el segundo término, no sólo porque ha sido el hemos estado defendiendo durante todo éste tiempo, sino porque hemos comprobado como la innovación es la respuesta al resurgimiento y por lo tanto al futuro no sólo de África sino de todos los países en vía en desarrollo.

IV. Sobre la cultura nacional

Considero importante como el tema de la cultura es abordado hacia el final del libro, cuando fácilmente podemos ligar la cultura con la educación la cuál debe ser las base de la restuccturación de un país, pueblo, nación o tribu luego de la descolonización. Sin educación, nos seguiremos saltando fases como la propuesta en el capítulo anterior. Fases en donde se debe de establecer el futuro del país con bases económicas, políticas y sociales. Fases con las que lograremos terminar con los líderes "ignorantes" que, al final, se inclinarán por su lado egoísta.

La cultura es importarte para cada nación ya que con ella se representa a nivel mundial y llega a ser el más grande símbolo de cualquier pueblo. Además no podemos negarnos a la influencia y a la apreciación de la cultura negra alrededor del mundo. Incluso nos apunta específicamente a la diaspora negra y nos ejempliza con los negros de América Central, América del Sur y de Estados Unidos; lo cuál resulta importante sobretodo si lo comparamos con el recién estrenado presidente Barak Obama.

Al inicio del capítulo se resalta que cada generación tiene que descubrir su misión y cumplirla. Bien, pues considero que ha quedaddo claro que la misión de ésta generación, nuestra generación, es innovar. E innovar es la respuesta a los conflictos del mundo.

V. Guerra colonial y transtornos mentales

Si bien no podemos negar que, en la mayoría de los casos, la colonzación ha dejado consecuencias graves en las poblaciones (como las enfermedades) debemos de dirigirnos con una mentalidad que nos represente por dejar atras cualquier tipo de mal del pasado. Rumbo al final del libro, el autor hace incapie en dejar a un lado las influencia de Europa y construir un continente que vaya más allá de la misma nación que los colonizo.

Sin embargo considero que debemos tomar en cuenta, como lo he mencionado anteriormente, que en gran medida es imposible dejar de lado por completo toda la influencia que Europa le llevó a África. Mejor aún, lo que el continente tiene que hacer es tomar como modelo el esquema que los países desarrollados han llevado a cabo y mejorarlo... INNOVAR a base de ello, pero no dejarlo a un lado.

Olvidar parte de la influencia Europea, no sólo a África sino al resto del mundo, es realmente olvidar y negar parte de lo que somos.

Land Use and Land Tenure in Africa: towards an evolutionary conceptual framework by Gear M. Kajoba

Sedentary agricultural land use also includes the various indigenous agronomic complexes such as those of the Kuba and Zande peoples in the Congo involving cassava - cereals - legumes rotations; the Sonjo sweet potatoes - cereals - irrigation complex in Tanzania; the Lugbara cassava - cereals - legumes - bananas complex in Uganda and the West African Rice - Tubers- Legumes based agronomic complex (Kajoba, 1993). In other agronomic systems,

different types of cereals, legumes, root crops, cucurbits and fruit trees were cultivated, and irrigation, crop rotations, cattle and green manuring were practiced to ensure agricultural sustainability.

Hunting and Collecting practiced by the Bushmen in the Kalahari desert and other nomads such as the Pygmies in the Zaire/Congo.

Shifting cultivation which is still widely practiced in the Miombo woodlands of sub-Saharan Africa.

Bush Fallowing in which the cultivator returns to an abandoned patch of land once the soil and vegetation has recuperated. In this system, the cultivation of root crops such as yams and cassava have led to semi-permanent cultivation and settlements as the cassava fields are extended annually and the crop remains stored underground and is only harvested when required.

Sedentary/permanent agriculture have been found to exist in the Sahara

among the Souafa populations who cultivate palm trees, rice, fruit, cotton, vegetables, eucalyptus trees and keep sheep, goats and camels in areas where fossil underground water is available.

Shifting axe and hoe cultivation is the original mode of land use practiced in higher rainfall regions. This is the shifting cultivation mode of land use in which crops are sown in the ash, which results from burning felled trees. The period of agricultural use is limited to a few years (not more than four years).

Semi-permanent hoe and ox-plough cultivation is the next stage in the evolutionary development among the Luvale, Lozi and Mambwe peoples. Among the Lozi and Mambwe, cattle raising offers an opportunity for ox-drawn ploughing which facilitates expansion of cultivated areas. Soil fertility is maintained by the application of cattle manure.

(a) Societies in which an individual obtains land rights by residence, without allocation

through a hierarchy of estates:- This was the most prevalent type of land tenure in pre-colonial Africa (and in Zambia) where land was generally plentiful and the populations were sparse.

b) Land holding under the control of lineages:- In this system, access to agricultural land

was exclusively reserved for the use by the members who traced their heritage from a common

ancestry. As a rule, transfer of land rights among the Luvale was between matrilineal relatives or friends, and the land rights of a deceased person were most likely taken over by a matrilineal relative.

(c) Societies in which Chiefs exercised direct control over allocation of land with a

descending hierarchy of estates:- This form of land tenure was associated with the emergence of centralised pre-colonial states or kingdoms. This system of semi-feudal land tenure made some members of the aristocracy (the indunas) very powerful since they controlled personal/regional military personnel.

(d) Feudal systems with landlords and tenants:- Feudal systems of land tenure and feudal relations of production emerged in many different parts of Africa.

(e) Individualised land tenure under commercial production:- The imposition of colonial rule in many parts of Africa, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, led to land alienation and the settlement of European commercial farmers. This was the case in Kenya, Malawi, Zimbabwe and Zambia, where this process created two different legal systems, the long established customary land law and English land law.

With the passage of time, commercial agricultural production by European settlers in

Zambia soon began to diffuse in the 1930s to African subsistence farmers who adopted new

technologies such as hybrid maize and ox-drawn ploughs.

• The policy implications arising from this conceptualization is that in order to resuscitate agricultural sustainability in sub-Saharan Africa.
• These indigenous agronomic systems should be modernized and brought into the market through attractive producer prices for the traditional crops and other supportive infrastructure including markets, extension and input supply through appropriate private sector, donor, NGOs and state interventions.

Traditional Leaders In Modern Africa: Can Democracy And The Chief Co-Exist? by Carolyn Logan (Working Paper No. 93)

The role of traditional leaders in modern Africa is complex and multifaceted. The debate is defined by “traditionalists” and “modernists”:

• 
  
  “Traditionalists” regard Africa’s traditional chiefs and elders as the true representatives of their people, accessible, respected, and legitimate, and therefore still essential to politics on the continent.


• 
  
  “Modernists,” by contrast, view traditional authority as a gerontocratic, chauvinistic, authoritarian and increasingly irrelevant form of rule that is antithetical to democracy.

TRADITIONAL AFRICAN WORLDVIEWS FROM A COSMOVISION PERSPECTIVE by David Millar

• Land was an ancestral trust, committed to the living for the benefit of the whole community, in particular the unborn generations.
  

• African traditions best express their cosmovisions.
  

• When the focus is on 'The Triad', and the focus is on land as a common property, a common vocabulary and knowledge, and therefore a common culture, sweeps through Africa.
  

• The cosmovision notion originates from a culture which has a holistic worldview, integrating the world with the cosmos. Africa’s perspective of cosmovison --> the whole of nature is conceived as a living being, like an animal, with all parts interrelated and needing to perform.
  

• 1.- Cosmovision is a social construct that includes the assumed interrelationships between spirituality, nature and mankind. It describes the role of supernatural powers, the natural processes that take place and the relationship between mankind and nature.


• 2.- Cosmovisions often indicate a hierarchy in divine beings, spiritual beings (especially the ancestors), natural forces (such as climate, diseases, floods), soil, vegetation, animals, man and woman.

• The worldviews of traditional African societies --> influence of development interventions by Professor Kofi Asare Opuku in
  * 'Traditional attitudes towards nature in Africa' [1993]
  * 'The traditional foundations of development' [1989].
  


• Endogenous development. - working through indigenous structures and institutions.

• The people are governed by unwritten laws and regulations that are guided by history, posterity, and their spirituality.
  


• Their 'best option scenario'--> protracted efforts to resolve the problem - an endeavor they would continue with or without us.
  * For them it is a question of survival and continuous existence within that environment.
  * For us, it is one of plugging in and plugging out.

The Search for Grounds in African Oral Tradition - Autor: Lee Haring

In the past, classic approaches to African oral traditions have sought their ground in anonymous social forces, “primitive” mentality, the entextualizing of words, or metaphysical presuppositions.

The ground was an organic conception of literature and a separation of literary criticism from sources, social effects and backgrounds, history of ideas, and politics, for the sake of attention on the object called literary, which was separated from its producer and sociohistorical setting (Leitch 1988:26-35).

This “objectivism,” now generally rejected in African studies, was classically refuted by a zealous, penetrating researcher of Tanzania, T. O. Beidelman: “if folklore has any lasting merit as a field of study by anthropologists, it is in its relation to other spheres of society and social action. Indeed, this too is the relevance of literature”.

Literary critical theories, commentary on African oral traditions always “exhibits a discernible orientation” to artist, audience, or universe (Abrams 1972:4). Performance research in Africa promises to achieve what Derrida claims for deconstruction, “a general displacement of the system” that opposes informants to investigators and text to context.

There are two ways of envisaging decontextualization: either the interviewee has prepared and facilitated decontextualization of his speaking, as the Pathmasters have done, or the interviewee, under the pressure of the moment, has offered fragments of a belief system, a literary discourse, or a style in order to satisfy an interviewer.

Decontextualization is sometimes misunderstood to mean the mere removal of words from a performance setting, as though the words then were nowhere, or in limbo. African societies in the post-colonial era seem constantly to be seeking homeostasis, a temporary balance, which is bound to be upset and will again require rectification.

Poetics and politics reveal another facet of their identity in study of variation in performance of Igbo epic under the impact of what Alan Dundes (1966) calls oral literary criticism.
The three final articles on the oral traditions of African women show three ways in which the arts of the word help to constitute African social life. Here, perhaps, is a ground for the study of African oral traditions. In Africa, perhaps more than any other region, gender speaks loudly as a “persistent and visible cultural resource in folk models of difference” (Mills 1992:2).

The “groupiness” of their traditional performance style contrasts oddly with the increased individual emphasis in the content. Reading their economic situation all too correctly, the women encourage men to achieve material prosperity and benefit their spouses by working in the city. The paradoxical results are twofold: to the extent that men are so persuaded, they will attenuate the marriage relation by living apart from wives and children, and they will enlarge the pool of “paracapitalist labor,” thus throwing into doubt the all-important status of agriculture in Ghana (cf. Spivak 1988). Oral tradition becomes a tool for modernization, though the women are not yet aware how much they are complying with the ideology of the world economic system.

What contribution is the study of African oral traditions making to literary theory? Though critics have long acknowledged the importance of the fundamental folkloric topic of variation in their understanding of Yeats or Henry James, the study of oral tradition, with its local knowledge (Geertz 1983) and its passion for the politically disenfranchised, occupies an oppressed position lower even than feminism.

The great contribution of oral tradition study to criticism is its insistence on the importance of the actual artistic behavior of oppressed peoples.

Links: http://journal.oraltradition.org/files/articles/9i/1d_Introduction_9_1.pdf

Alternative Media and Political Change in Africa: Analytical Schemes for Assessing Significance and Potential - Autor: Dr. Temba S. B. Masilela

The purpose of this paper is to construct frameworks, informed by insights from pertinent bodies of scholarship, that can be used to assess the significance and potential of alternative media for political change in Africa. In its construction of these conceptual frameworks, the text takes into account the predisposition of various bodies of scholarship to ascribe agency to different social actors ie. social movements, classes, elites, and protest groups.

The first section constructs a conceptual framework which is informed by development communication theory and practice. The second part constructs a conceptual framework drawn from political communication theory that can be used to explore the potential of alternative media for political change in Africa. These two frameworks are proposed as analytical schemes for an empirical investigation of the significance and potential of alternative media for political change in Africa.

The past 40 years of development communication theory and practice can be conceptualized in terms of four basic models that have at different periods held sway over the discipline:
• Development as modernization and communication as innovation adoption,
• Development as liberation from dependency and communication as cultural action,
• Development as meeting basic needs and communication as social marketing, and
• Development as human development and communication as a support function.

In an analysis of the question of development and cultural values in the history of Africa, authors asks if African intellectuals are to answer the call for the re-instatement of culture in development studies, justified as this call is in the context of anti-imperialist and nationalist struggles, where should they begin?

Behind the practice of agricultural extension, was an implicit ideology of paternalism, social control, and non-reciprocity. This ideology was based upon "an unjustified lack of faith in the people, an underestimation of their power of reflection.

The fortunes of the conception of development as one of liberation and the attendant role of communication as one of cultural action were also tied to (a) the political trajectories and successes and failures of post-colonial African nation-states (Davidron, 1992).

The work undertaken by CIESPAL was premised on a recognition of the dependent character of the theory of communication and methodologies of research being utilized in contemporary Latin America. CIESPAL proposed the search for theoretical and methodological alternatives and "prioritized research into two issues: the role of communication in education and in popular organization and mobilization" (Marques de Melo, 1988:441). In Africa, the debate about participatory communication strategies has in part been conducted under the auspices of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA).

The notion of alternative media incorporates a variety of dimensions (difference, independence, opposition, and representation) whose importance is determined by the parameters of particular struggles. Broadly defined, alternative media are "those forms of mass communication that avowedly reject or challenge established and institutionalized politics, in the sense that they all advocate change in society or at least a critical reassessment of traditional values" (O'Sullivan et. al., 1994:10).

"Community media, in reaction to the mass media, attempt to redefine the communication realm (i.e. the relations between informer and informed) and to enhance, through the acquisition of simple technology, the possibilities that people have of intervening in the process of information production" (Council for the Development of Community Media, 1977:397). Alternative media are distinguished by their ownership and management structures, their financing, their regulation, their programming and their policy stances on issues of access and participation.

Link:http://archive.lib.msu.edu/DMC/African%20Journals/pdfs/africa%20media%20review/vol10no1/jamr010001007.pdf

THE DECENT WORK AGENDA IN AFRICA: 2007–2015

This report may also be consulted on the ILO Internet site
www.ilo.org/public/english/standards/relm/rgmeet/africa.htm

This is a practical policy document put at the service of the ILO’ s tripartite constituents to advance the Decent Work Agenda in Africa. This effort gained unprecedented momentum with the landmark African Union Extraordinary Summit on Employment and Poverty Alleviation in Africa which took place shortly after our last African Regional Meeting.

The report presents three areas of focus:
- Linking the Decent Work Agenda to the Millennium Development Goals and the wider global development agenda.

- Shaping ILO support to the Ouagadougou follow-up through a decent work policy portfolio for Africa within a framework of time-bound targets.
- Reinforcing the ILO’ s Africa constituents. If the world is committed to national ownership of poverty reduction strategies, then we have to be serious about reinforcing the social and economic arm of governments and helping African social partners to organize and exercise their voice as the real actors of the economy. This is integral to good governance and making decent work a national reality.

· In most African countries, economic growth has been relatively buoyant over the last few years. According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the African region grew by 5.4 per cent in 2005 and 2006, and is projected to expand further in 2007 by 5.9 per cent.[1]

· In order to accelerate their integration into the global market, many African countries have opted for trade liberalization policies by removing tariff and non-tariff barriers. It is however important to note that despite increases in volumes of trade, most African countries, being exporters of low-value agricultural products and importers of high-value goods and services, have experienced a long-run deterioration in the terms of trade.

· Migration is a further important link between Africa and the global economy. It contributes to regional economic integration as migrant workers continue to move in search of more decent working and living standards than those prevailing at home. Trade liberalization measures should be preceded by impact assessments aimed at identifying opportunities for job creation.

· Poverty is a multidimensional phenomenon. Joblessness and the poverty associated with it cause people to feel useless and excluded from their family and community. This underscores the fundamental subjective dimension of work.

· Social protection seeks to protect workers at their workplaces in the formal and informal economy against unfair, hazardous and unhealthy working conditions. It seeks to provide access to health services, a minimum income for people whose income puts them beneath the poverty line, and support for families with children.

· In extending coverage of social security schemes, a variety of challenges need to be addressed. These include, from an economic perspective, limited productivity, persistently high inflation rates, high and increasing rates of informal economy employment and skewed income distributions.

· In this context, social security arrangements tend to be characterized by fragmentation and the lack of a clear vision for their extension to as yet uncovered groups within the population. Although there is a great need for social security in Africa, factors such as limited formal economy employment, high rates of inflation and the impact of HIV/AIDS, make meeting this need, even partially, particularly difficult.

· The trend towards political liberalization and democratization in Africa and endorsement of efforts to achieve good governance, as in the AU and NEPAD, are indications that Africa is rethinking its approaches to development management.

· Several countries in the region are emerging from long periods of conflict, with the associated challenges of restoring not only individual and family security, dignity and relationships but also productive capacity, following the destruction of social and economic infrastructure. Armed conflicts erode productive assets, destroy workplaces and weaken labour markets. Ensuring that women and men can go back to work in conditions in which their basic human rights are respected represents a major step in the process of recovery and rebuilding, not just of physical, but also social, infrastructure.

· A series of high-level meetings of national and international aid agencies held after the Monterrey Conference provided a critical impetus for changes in aid modalities at the country level, based on the following principles:
o Ownership
o Alignment
o Harmonization
o Mutual accountability.

· Accelerating globalization and the importance of coherent international policies notwithstanding, most of the decisions that shape people’ s daily working environment and livelihood are taken at the country level.

· National development priorities such as poverty reduction lead to vast agendas.

· Support for the Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work is gaining momentum within several international financial institutions such as the regional development banks, the World Bank, and its private sector finance arm the International Finance Corporation.

[1] IMF World Economic Outlook Database Sep. 2006.