Decolonization and Empire: Contesting the Rhetoric and Reality of Resubordination in Southern Africa and Beyond, by John S. Saul, Monmouth and Johannesburg: Merlin Press and Wits University Press, 2008; pp. 202, £11.95 (pb). ISBN 9780850365924.
The common view of the state of the African continent – especially its southern part – is a grim one. Hardly anyone would deny the persistence of diverse crises in this part of the world. Diseases, illiteracy, violence, hunger and underdevelopment are problems that so many times form a negative image of Africa. Despite countless developmental strategies, plans and propositions, which allegedly should have put the continent on track to a brighter future, Africa remains mired in tragedy. John Saul's book Decolonization and Empire: Contesting the Rhetoric and Reality of Resubordination in Southern Africa and Beyond tries to discern the causes of this unpleasant (to say the least) reality for most of southern Africa. The author's main task is to analyse historical and current socio-political developments and systemic arrangements for the continent's resubordination by what Saul terms ‘the Empire of Capital’, which still produces inequalities and injustices. What is more, Saul does not just reveal the functioning of (neo)liberal interventions, but also sets himself an enormous task: how to think about what, in these times of prevailing ruthless capitalist logic, seems almost unthinkable – forms of resistance to the Empire of Capital.
The decolonisation process in southern Africa has been celebrated as a new beginning, which would bring freedom and just conditions to the African people. Although by no means a homogenous process, Saul frames decolonisation in this part of the world as what he calls ‘the thirty years’ war for southern African liberation' (from around 1960–90). The beginning of the decolonisation era is marked by Ghana's independence in 1957, and little more than three decades later this period of liberation struggle is marked by the fall of South Africa's apartheid system. Within this framework the author identifies three ‘broad fronts of political assertion, which were available to southern Africans as they came to heightened political consciousness’ (p. 24). These are the race war, anti-colonial African nationalism and the social/socialist revolution. The author shows, through the cases of Mozambique and South Africa, how each of these fronts became a focus around which Africans organised struggles against colonialists and, as such, were also triggers for mobilising the masses. Decolonisation, however, did not live up to the expectations of many, but rather regressed to something we could call (Saul here follows Frantz Fanon) ‘false decolonization’ (p. 41). The key problem was that liberation brought too little of substance, especially in economic terms, for the vast majority of the population. Instead of being a new emancipating political strategy, decolonisation gradually turned into its exact opposite: ever-deeper resubordination to Western capitalism. As Saul describes it, recolonisation is ‘an ongoing process of reinforced ‘Western’ capitalist ascendancy that has characterized Africa … and also many other parts of the global south' (p. 69). To show the logic behind the prevailing capitalist discourses, the book interprets prominent ideologues of the global neoliberal capitalist order, with special attention to Niall Ferguson and Michael Ignatieff. Both thinkers see the (neo)liberal empire as the best possible solution for societies, because this Empire's modus operandi is ‘one that enhances its own security and prosperity precisely by providing the rest of the world with generally beneficial public goods’ (p. 93). Thus, the Empire of Capital is not based solely on the idea of logic of free market but also relies on the idea of humanitarianism.
In light of the ever more pervading Empire of Capital, Saul poses himself, in a Leninist manner, an obvious question: ‘What is to be done?’ (p. 125). How do we resist and contest global capital? How do we oppose this unjust reality that affects many people in different parts of the world? The author opts for a transformative project, which should mean a revival of socialist practices. Among other presented propositions, the crucial one is ‘the goal of collective ownership of the means of production by a democratically empowered and self-conscious majority of the affected population’ (p. 133). The last part provides a critical reflection on the book's central themes. Saul once again summarizes, by interpreting the cases of Mozambique, Angola, Namibia, Zimbabwe and South Africa, why socialist projects in these countries were more or less unsuccessful and why decolonisation was false, and deviated into subordination to capital.
Although Saul's critique of the currently dispiriting situation in southern Africa is insightful, it includes some problematic analytical undertakings, the most obvious being the use of the concept of the Empire of Capital. The author does explain briefly his understanding and use of this concept at the book's beginning, but it nevertheless persists in the text as ontologically finite and, above all, omnipotent. The latter is especially dubious because it seems that capital is the first and last instance that determines reality. Despite this shortcoming, Decolonization and Empire does address the stark reality of southern Africa with clarity and compassion that calls upon us to reflect on current global hierarchical relations not just with suspicion, but also with the will to change the world for the better.