Blog 8 - Lumpenproletariat Kenya and Malawi

Blog 8
January 26

Seven days ago we left Makupo and arrived in Nairobi. A week of distance and yet Makupo was brought fresh to my memory by an article in the Globe and Mail today. I read all of Stephanie Nolen’s material and her report “Into the Valley of Death” covered a 2 page spread with 3 large pictures. 1 picture was of a frightened mother leading her 3 small children past the debris of collapsed buildings – the women and children who are the vast majority of the victims of violence everywhere.

I was more struck by the other 2 pictures. One was of a bloodied male victim standing behind soldiers – all were young men in their 20s. The other was described as “A mob from the Kalenjin tribe armed with sticks and machetes confronts soldiers in Nakuru yesterday…” Again the group was large numbers of young men, not one woman or child was in sight.

So what is the connection between the peaceful, hard working, church going people of Makupo and the violence in Kenya and for that matter in Ivory Coast, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Congo … or any other conflict zone in Africa?

Structural Poverty – Stephanie Nolen is a wonderful writer and I appreciate her good work on AIDS and her sensitive insights into the nature and impact of poverty. This article it was much more of the war correspondent driving into the valley of death and facing down the bloodthirsty warriors. At one point she went beyond the high drama of the moment to reflect on the root causes. In one paragraph she pointed the way to a very important element of what is really wrong. She writes that,

“This crisis is about much more than the election. Anger at vote-rigging has worked to rip a thin scab off many years of frustration at poverty, corruption and inequitable land ownership that dates from the colonial era. A handful of politicians have seized on ethnicity (Kenya has 37 different ethnic groups) as the most efficient way of mustering support, and incited people to "protect their own." There is evidence that some degree of ethnic-based violence was planned before the vote, that opposition supporters wanted revenge against government supporters if they won, and anarchy if they didn't.”

That third picture of the armed mob showed a lot of men smiling. Violent yes, but having fun, having something to do. This is the most action many of them have ever seen, fighting back against an unseen enemy that frustrates them and keeps them down. An undefined enemy, more easily identified as other people than a system.

They are the unemployed and the underemployed, the lumpenproletariat[1] in villages and small towns throughout Africa. They become the cannon fodder for rich men’s ambitions. Many of them have been to high school and some even further but they have no work in a handicapped economy that produces huge rates of unemployment. They are the reserve army of the unemployed.

You see them any place in the rural areas of Malawi, gathering anywhere when something is happening because anything is more interesting than just hanging around. In ChiChewa the word for hanging around bored is kungokhala. A person starts working on a project and 5 men stop to watch him work, because they have nothing else to do.

Surely they could take the initiative and start doing something? That is always so easily spoken from the comfort of North America. There is no economy, no work, no land, no access to resources, no capital, no future and precious little hope of ever escaping the never-ending poverty. J.K. Galbraith wrote that there is no greater limit to freedom than the lack of money. He also stated that "The first and most obvious consequence of poverty is social and civil instability…."

In Makupo, a small family based village, the list is long and ever-evolving as young men come in and out. Kenny, Bwelezani, Chitani in one family. Mwayi, Francis, Fred, Palije and Peter. Every one of them is waiting for some opportunity, waiting for something to happen, waiting to leave. And should one succeed in leaving, another one is always coming back forced by circumstances to fall back on the minimal comfort, shelter and food provided by returning to the family home.

And ours is one small family of about 60 members inside a much bigger village and there are villages all over Malawi and Africa with young frustrated men just like them. They face a serious injustice and have a legitimate complaint against a system that deprives them of the right to earn a living, put bread on the table, marry a partner and raise a family, have a career and rise up the socio-economic ladder.

Malawi has thankfully been spared the violent reactions of the conflict zones of Africa. But the cannon fodder is there and who knows what will be the catalyst? Will they identify their neighbours of a different ethnicity as the problem or will they see through to the structural causes of their impoverishment? And how can frustrated people take action on the root causes of their disadvantage when structural poverty is such an abstract concept?

More to come.

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[1] Lumpenproletariat: Now do not get excited by the use of the term. Marxian and even some non-Marxist sociologists now use the term to refer to those marginalised people they see as the victims of modern society, such as welfare recipients, beggars, and homeless people, who exist outside the wage-labor system, or people who make their living through disreputable means… but depend on the formal economy for their day-to-day existence. (Wikipedia)