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# Intellectual Networks in the Global South: processes, milestones, figures, ideas<fnref n="89" />

Eduardo Devés

## Presentation

This chapter presents an articulation scheme of Global South intellectual networks, considering the ideas and institutions that allow it, as well as the ideas that circulate through those networks.

Global South intellectual networks (from the peripheral world, the Third World, the underdeveloped world, depending on the denominations), are increasingly being addressed in studies of ideas, circulation, and intellectualities (Alburquerque 2020, Giorgini 2021, Devés 2017). These networks are not established once and for all, nor in a definitive way. The world of the peripheries is quite large and discontinuous, geographically, and linguistically, continents separated by oceans and languages of very distant families.

For the work of eidetic studies themselves, and in particular those carried out on intellectual networks, it is extremely difficult to conceive of the existence of Global South networks (Bayle 2015, Devés and Pereira 2023). The need to know, even briefly, the intellectual trajectories of such large and varied regions of the world is unusual and almost unnecessary in the current works on the intellectual and ideas that, as is known, are normally restricted to a few intellectual ecosystems: a pair from some periphery and another pair from the center.

However, progressively, interest in Global South networks is accompanying the processes of growing globalization, the development of the Internet, the availability of information, greater professionalization, and academic institutionalization in

<footnote n="89">⁸⁹ This work reworks, corrects and expands a paper presented at the VI CHIAL Congress, University of São Paulo, July 2023, with the title "Southglobal intellectual networks: ideas, intellectualities and institutionality".</footnote>
the peripheries, which provides funds and greater demands, and
other conditions dating back just a few decades.

This work is part of a project whose objectives are: the
main one is to develop a work program for the studies of the
ideas and intellectualities of the South, pointing towards the
formulation and development of four problems, which are
expressed in its specific objectives: first highlight the main figures
originating from the South who participate and/or organize
and/or influence South-South conversations; the second, to
highlight the institutionality –organizations, networks, NGOs,
publications – that have been created to deal with the interaction
between the academies and intellectualities of these regions; the
third, determine the themes around which the conversations have
been carried out; the fourth is to also determine the theoretical
frameworks from which the conversations are structured.

There is a history of figures from the Global South who
tried to think not only beyond their countries, but also beyond
their geo-linguistic regions. That is, a group of people who have
carried out work, since the mid-20th century and even before, in
areas such as cultural diplomacy, activism, political organizations,
international organizations, NGOs and universities, among
others: Rabindranath Tagore, Raúl Prebisch, Léopold Senghor,
Frantz Fanon, Leopoldo Zea, Samir Amin, Gamani Corea,
Enrique Iglesias, Kwame Nkrumah, Jawaharlal Nehru, Julius
Nyerere, Ernesto Guevara, Osvaldo Sunkel, to name a few
figures.

These people have managed to transcend their region
towards others, which does not mean that they have always aimed
at the Global South as a whole. There are those who tried to
articulate some parts of Asia with other very different ones
(Rabindranath Tagore), parts of Asia with parts of Africa (Yamal
al Din Afghani), the Arab world with South Saharan Africa
(Cheick Anta Diop), South Saharan Africa with Latin America
and Caribbean (Léopold Senghor, Aimé Césaire, Leopoldo Zea),
the Indian Subcontinent and East Africa (Mohandas Gandhi),
Africa, Latin America and Caribbean and Asia (Raúl Prebisch,
Samir Amin, Gamani Corea, Enrique Iglesias, Julius Nyerere), the
Caribbean with parts of Africa (George Padmore, Ernesto
Guevara, Fidel Castro).
Within this framework, conceptual formulations, intellectual networks and institutions are being developed that allow us to better conceive and advance in this task: Bandung Meeting (Ahmed Sukarno, J. Nehru, Zhuo Enlai), UNCTAD (Raúl Prebisch, Gamani Corea), Organización Latinoamericana de Solidaridad – OLAS (Ernesto Guevara, Fidel Castro), Third World Forum (Samir Amin, Enrique Iglesias), Congress of Black Writers and Artists (Alioune Diop), Ecumenical Association of Third World Theology – EATWOT (Sergio Torres, Virginia Fabella), Agrarian South Network (Sam Moyo, Paris Yeros, Issa Shivji).

## The Global South notion

The notions Global South and South-South, periphery and peripheral world, underdeveloped world, or other quite synonymous ones, allude here to the way in which intellectualities are assumed and, only secondarily, to the level of development or the geopolitical location of their nations in the world. This way of assuming intellectualities has to do with various aspects, among which a long-term intellectual career, which far precedes rapid economic growth such as Japan, South Korea, or Chile (keeping the proportions). It has to do with its “neighborhood” in the world, that is, with regions that consider themselves subordinate or marginal: Asia, Africa, Latin America and Caribbean, Oceania on occasions, the Balkans and the East of Europe or some distant islands of central countries: Martinique, Réunion, New Caledonia, among others. It has to do with linguistic and ethnic issues that imply distance from the center. For this purpose, it is a feeling, a self-perception of the intellectuality, not an essence, nor something that would abruptly change self-perception the day the barrier of dollars per capita, which technically marks access to development, is overcome. In addition to what has been said, there is an inclusive will in this project, since more than an analytical concept, it is, primarily, a way of seeing the world in search of better balances, pluralities, participation, and equity.

The South must be understood first as Asia, Africa, and Latin America and Caribbean, but not only like that. The continents are made of subregions in Asia, at least Central Asia,
Near East, South Asia, East Asia; in Africa, at least North of the Sahara, South of the Sahara or English, French and Portuguese colonization; in Latin America and Caribbean, at least Hispanic colonization, Portuguese colonization, and the Caribbean. But the Balkans and, for the same or other reasons, Eastern Europe must be included for many reasons as semi-peripheral regions. In this sense, “Global South” is more synonymous with periphery, with distance from the absolute center, with exclusion from power, than with underdevelopment or poverty, although they are related realities.

It would be inappropriate to exclude or “expel” from the “Global South” notion those who rise in their quality of life or in their power as states, excluding them for being “winners” and bringing together only “losers” or those who would form an “absolute South”<fnref n="90" />, an irremediable periphery without possible redemption. To avoid this option, only those states that seek to take the place of the hegemonic ones should be excluded, transforming themselves into renewed global hegemonies. Therefore, it is necessary to guard against eidetic expressions that appear in peripheral or semi-peripheral countries, formulating new hegemonies. For example, one should observe the cases of Russian Pan-Slavism around 1870, which sought hegemony over the other Slavic peoples, the equivalent Japanese Pan-Asianism in its desire to hegemonize the peoples of East Asia and establish itself as an Asian empire, the “Brazil Great Power” school and the Chinese “ideogloby” of *tianxia*. Even so, since these are very large countries in terms of population and territory, they are highly heterogeneous and, in many ways, will continue to be Global South or allies<fnref n="91" />. This is even more so if we are considering long-term processes, where places that may currently be hegemonic were not previously hegemonic, and vice versa.

<footnote n="90">⁹⁰ I take this concept from Fernando Estenssoro.</footnote>

<footnote n="91">⁹¹ The Afro-Asian Writers' Association (AAWA) inaugurated in 1956 and a reimagining of Japan. Existing until the 1990s, the Afro-Asian Writers' Association does not easily lend itself to a comprehensive treatment (See Kwak 2018).</footnote>
The constitution process

In the process of creating international intellectual
networks that articulate all the regions of the various peripheries
and peripheralities, a decisive moment consists of the prior
constitution of regional networks and the easiest to detect are the
“panist” ones (Pan-Africanist, Pan-Asian, Pan-Latin American,
Pan-Slavic, Pan-Arab), around “panisms” (Pan-Africanism, etc.)
according to criteria of geo-cultural and ethnic proximity.

Pan-Hispanic American intellectual networks appeared in Europe in the early years of the 19th century within the framework of the decolonization processes, the Pan-Slavic and Pan-Arab networks in the mid-19th century, the first in defense of Russian and Ottoman aggression, the second in defense of the Ottoman and European ones (Martín-Muñoz 2020), the Pan-African or Pan-Negros, the Pan-Asian from the Far East and the Pan-Islamic around 1900, the former in defense of almost everyone and the latter of Western Europeans and Americans (see Devés 2017). Among the PAN networks, the Pan-Asian ones with Sun Yat-sen and Uchida Ryohei should be highlighted; the Pan-Africans with J. E. Hayford, Marcus Garvey and W.E.B. DuBois; the Pan-Islamic ones with Mohamed Abduh and Rachid Rida; and the Pan-Hispano-American ones with Manuel Ugarte, José Vasconcelos, Gabriela Mistral, Joaquín García Monge and Víctor Haya de la Torre.

These four ideas were developed in these networks: the first, conceived after 1905, after Japan's victory over Russia, was that a peripheral town can defeat a European one (See Coloma 2010). The second idea: that some peripheral peoples can learn from other peripheral peoples in their struggles for sovereignty. The third: that there are similarities between peripheral peoples, which derive mainly from subordination to the West. The fourth is that peripheral peoples must unite through ethnic-cultural affinities to present a more powerful front against the North Atlantic hegemony. Given the above, it was less difficult to move towards south-global networks that, even today, are barely established.

These ideas, somewhat reworked and clustered with
others such as anti-colonialism and anti-imperialism, later
converged in the Bandung meeting and in Third World thought (Lee 2010). With the Bandung meeting in 1955 (in which, among other figures, Sukarno, J. Nehru, Zhuo Enlai, Gamal Abdel Nasser, and U. Nu of Myanmar participated), a conceptual leap occurred: it was possible to imagine units of analysis that were not limited to geo-cultural regions, as in the case of panism, but to the broadest one: violated by Western powers.

This conceptual leap has been operating slowly and gradually in the effective configuration of Global South intellectual networks, given the weakness of the intellectualities themselves, such as the lack of knowledge and disinterest of some Souths in others. Bandung was emblematic, but it was far from being sufficient to enhance these networks. Thus, we had to wait for international organizations to appear: UN, UNESCO, World Bank with headquarters in intellectual ecosystems of the North, to which professionals from numerous countries in the South came, where they had the opportunity to meet and talk about their regions of origin.

Simultaneously, centers for studies on Asia, Africa, Latin America and Caribbean, and journals on the Third World (Alburquerque and Vilches 2019) appeared in the North, with a greater geopolitical perspective than that was possible in the peripheries, and which welcomed young people with study scholarships and/or expelled from the South. In some of the most important universities of the colonial powers, England, France and Belgium, meetings took place between the intellectual youth of regions belonging to the colonies or former colonies: in Cambridge Amartya Sen and Mahbub ul Haq; in the CETRI of the University of Leuven by François Houtart, the meeting between theologians from Latin America and Caribbean, Asia and Africa became possible (Dussel 1984), which would allow the EATWOT; at the Institute for Development Studies from the University of Sussex directed by Dudley Seers, the meeting between economic-social scientists from Latin America and Caribbean, Asia and Africa: Osvaldo Sunkel, JJ Villamil, Oscar Braun, Edmundo Fuenzalida, Carlos Fortín, among others, and numerous professionals from Asia and Africa, and especially the British who later carried out educational or advisory missions in a large number of former colonies (Devés 2004); at School of
Oriental & African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London, among Caribbean, African and Asian people and where Walter Rodney studied in the early 1960s (Lewis 1998, Devés 2021), in addition to specialists from the North, supportive and interested in decolonization, in development and other causes desired by the intellectuals of the South. This also happened with professionals at the World Bank, such as the meeting of economists from Pakistan like Mahbub ul Haq, and India like Amartya Sen (Haq and Ponzio 2008).

Although the intellectualities of the South were reaching, in the 1950s and 1960s, various consensuses on an agenda, they continued, roughly speaking, being incapable to articulate themselves directly towards the other peripheries, lacking information about who is who, the institutionality and the means to travel. We then had to wait until there were enough shared languages and similar agendas, such as total decolonization, anti-neocolonialism and, above all, developmentalism, and a new regional institutionality: Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO) and Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA), etc., so that agreements could be imagined and begin to be managed between intellectual figures from various regions of the South.

At the same time, although timidly, institutes, chairs and publications have been created in some places in the South about the other Souths, for language teaching, for studies of culture and society, such as: the Center for Afro-Asian Studies of the University Candido Mendes and the Center for Asian and African Studies of El Colegio de México, Center for Latin American Studies at Busan University of Foreign Studies in South Korea, Center for Arab Studies of the University of Chile, Centre d'Études et de Recherches Afro-Ibéro-Américaines (CERAFIA) of the Université Omar Bongo of Gabon, as well as national and international networks on the study of languages and cultures of other souths, such as the Association of Hispanists of Egypt, which includes research on the languages and literature of Latin America and Caribbean.
In summary, conversations between South-South intellectuals have been taking place within the framework of a varied institutional framework:

1. International organizations: UN, UNESCO, WHO, UNEP, World Bank, UNCTAD, UNDP, Nyerere South Centre, Rio Summit, Women's Summits...

2. Interstate organizations of peripheral or South countries: Bandung, Non-Aligned, BRICS, Afro-Asian People's Solidarity Organization (AAPSO), the Organization of Solidarity with the People of Asia, Africa, and Latin America (OSPAAAL)...

3. Forums, intellectual research networks and publications, in-person and/or virtual meetings or congresses, of intellectual civil society (non-state): World Social Forum, 1893 World's Parliament of Religions, Third World Forum, Congress of Black Intellectuals and Artists, Pan-African Congresses, Global Social Sciences, EATWOT-ASETT, Agrarian South Network, Red Intelectual Sur-Sur (RISUR), SEPHIS, among others.

4. Research institutions in southern regions where in turn a certain concern for the other south is cultivated: CLACSO, CODESRIA, CEPAL, CELADE, ILPES, Focus on the Global South, Getulio Vargas Foundation.

5. Faculties or university programs where South studies are cultivated: Institute of Development Studies (Sussex), School of Oriental and African Studies – SOAS (London)...

6. Churches, political internationals, parties, and other proselytizing organizations: meetings of bishops, delegates, representatives, and advisors.

## Periodization of Global South networks

When periodizing the constitution of these networks, which are still very scarce at the beginning of the 21st century, I highlight three moments in history.

A first period of antecedents between the first years of the 20th century and the Second World War of very precarious networks, among very few people, of few places and ephemeral duration, with a political nature, promoted by the Third
International, or religious, promoted starting from the Vatican,
and with very few systematic activities.

Only from the middle of the 20th century, with the
creation of international organizations for economic and social
affairs and with people from countries with a more developed
university and scientific-technological system, were networks
established with support (institutional and economic) that it
operated as a condition of possibility and energizer of said
networks and the systematic circulation of ideas by agents from
the South.

Only at the end of the 20th century and the end of the
Cold War, there was a relatively massive increase in interest in
global matters in relation to previous times, although still very
scarce, when compared to the interest in national or subregional
issues. This was enhanced by the cessation of polarization in the
peripheral regions and the blatant interference of the great
powers and the correlative strengthening of the
professionalization of intellectual fields, in addition to the
enormous growth of university systems, in particular
postgraduate programs and systems of research funding and
incentives for academic meetings and publications.

The virtuous circle of Global South intellectualities'
networking: circulations and ideas at the beginning of
the 21st century

The very development of the notion “intellectual
networks” has allowed the autonomies of the intellectual field to
be expressed more explicitly. The very fact of conceptualizing
these realities as “intellectual networks” performatively makes it
easier for them to constitute themselves as an autonomous field,
without feeling compelled to respond to the calls of international
political and scientific societies of the North, although without
necessarily renouncing them, their management, and their
financing.

Through these networks, a multitude of tremendously
heterogeneous ideas certainly circulate. I try to point to a few that
are more relevant from the point of view of their own dynamics
as Global South networks, without imagining that it would be the
only and definitive thing. In addition to ideas, people circulate,
with some economic resources, very few, since the main
energizers of these networks are the participants themselves and
the institutions where each person works, which contribute to
financing these tasks. This should not make us forget, however,
the role of the states and the population in general that finance
such institutions and, in various cases, the financing that comes
from Northern agencies.

Concepts such as center / periphery (Raúl Prebisch 1996), dependency (Fernando H. Cardoso and Enzo Faletto 1996, and numerous authors), Human development (Mahbub ul-Haq 1995, Amartya Sen, 2000), Southern ecofeminism (Vandana Shiva 1993), orientalism (Edward Said 1978), Decoloniality (Walter Mignolo 2000), colonial experience (Frantz Fanon 1952) Eurocentrism (Samir Amin 1989 and numerous authorships), subalternity (Ranahit Guha and Gayatri Spivak 1988, Homi Bhabha and numerous authors), Southern theory (Raewyn Connell 2014), land rights (Vandana Shiva 2004), necropolitics (Achille Mbembe 2003), postcolonial (Achille Mbembe 2001, Edward Said and numerous authors), Indianist or community feminism (Francesca Gargallo 2014, Lorena Cabnal 2018), geopolitics of knowledge (Aníbal Quijano 2000), internal colonialism (Pablo González-Casanova 2006), among others, as a whole gain an epistemic right of citizenship that they had not obtained before, often punished as expressions of revisionism or communism.

There are at the same time ideas or notions that I will call
“wild cards”: capitalism, neoliberalism, exploitation,
neocolonialism, human rights, which have been applied for
decades and other more recent ones such as extractivism,
women's rights, which are not presented in precise terms but to
locate or give greater force to the statements.

Now, if the above is something like a skeleton, there are
a number of ideas attached that give shape to various possibilities
over the decades: promoting a Third Worldism a la Bandung is
not the same as a New International Economic Order, or the
formula of the Tricontinental, or that of the South Center of
Julius Nyerere, among other possibilities. For the rest, neither are
the same ideas that are always handled in networks of economists
such as those of Foro Tercer Mundo and agricultural specialists
such as the Agrarian South Network<fnref n="92" /> where people like Sam
Moyo have participated, Paris Yeros, Lyn Ossome, Archana
Prasad, Issa Shivji, Praveen Jha, Walter Chambati, among others
(Moyo et al 2013). On the other hand, these networks intersect,
as for example in the issue of agriculture and the environment,
especially in the “agroecology” version of Víctor Toledo and
Miguel Altieri (Altieri 2008).

For the rest, the notions African thought, Asian thought,
Latin American thought, Arab thought, Indian thought,
Caribbean thought, and many others involved in thought of the
peripheries, peripheral thought, epistemologies of the South and
Global South thought, have been revealing eidetic expressions,
both plural and unified by virtue of this same plurality, a plurality
that is viewed and assumed from multiple epistemic-geopolitical
perspectives.

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Tendencias socialistas en la cooperación Sur-Sur.
Tipología de los sistemas estatales, independencia y
desarrollo<sup>93</sup>

Marek Hrubec

La idea del Sur es relevante porque vivimos una época en
la que las interacciones y la cooperación entre pueblos, países y
regiones del Sur Global son cada vez más importantes. El
potencial de la actual y futura cooperación debe analizarse a partir
de pasadas experiencias. Ello implica casos históricos, su
generalización teórica y análisis de trayectorias temporales que
persisten al presente (Pereira da Silva, 2023).

En gran medida, la cooperación Sur-Sur se ve facilitada
por la proximidad tipológica de los modelos económico-políticos.
Pudiéramos ponderar cómo una filosofía política de tipología
estatal puede ayudarnos a comprender las realidades de la actual y
potencialmente futura cooperación Sur-Sur entre pueblos, países
y regiones. Al mismo tiempo es necesario definir las posibilidades
y los límites de la proximidad tipológica. Aunque la proximidad
tipológica sea una motivación para la cooperación entre países del
mismo grupo categórico, la realidad tiende a ser más compleja. Es
necesario enriquecer los modelos tipológicos con especificaciones
de las condiciones históricas de diferentes épocas, en particular,
desde la Segunda Guerra Mundial, pasando por el auge de lucha
anticolonial y las épocas de desarrollo, hasta la actualidad.

En el presente texto procedo en la siguiente secuencia de
pasos. En primer lugar, explico la tipología de los sistemas
estatales en el Sur Global, y lo hago específicamente utilizando la
tipología comparativa de los países socialistas del África, América
Latina y Asia. Algunos países socialistas fracasaron en el pasado,
mientras otros continúan y se transformaron en la realidad o
como inspiración en el mundo multipolar, como, por ejemplo, se
explica en “De la pluripolaridad al socialismo: Un manifiesto”

<footnote n="93">⁹³ This chapter was written as part of the research activities of the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague.</footnote>
(The International Manifesto Group, 2023). El enfoque socialista (socialismo democrático, democracia socialista, etc.) fue importante en el período poscolonial en África y sigue desempeñando su papel, tanto en el socialismo de mercado de China, como en las mareas de izquierda en América Latina y en varios otros Estados del Sur Global. Es relevante identificar las proximidades tipológicas de los países socialistas para comprender su cooperación.

En segundo lugar, identifico las clases básicas de los periodos de lucha por la independencia y el desarrollo desde la Segunda Guerra Mundial para así especificar su tipología a manera cronológica. Diferentes tipologías son útiles de acuerdo con los diferentes objetivos. Mi propósito es explicar los principales modelos de la real y posible tendencia socialista en la cooperación Sur-Sur, basado en la tipología de los sistemas de Estado (países socialistas), su independencia y desarrollo.

El análisis de este texto no agota todo el tema a tratar. Al analizar los Estados de orientación socialista, los movimientos sociales y los gobiernos que avanzan hacia el socialismo y su cooperación, será necesario centrarse sistemáticamente también en los países y tendencias no socialistas y en las tendencias del Sur Global. Incluso será importante analizar otras unidades territoriales como las regionales, macrorregionales y continentales, así como a las uniones de redes transnacionales (Nedjar & Salhi, 2022; Rodrigues Teixeira, 2022).

El enfoque teórico de este texto se basa en mi teoría de la injusticia social en el marco de los conflictos del capitalismo global (Hrubec, 2012; ibid, 2016). Desde la perspectiva de la filosofía social y política, la teoría crítica parte de la metodología tricotómica que interconecta internamente crítica social, explicación y normatividad, siguiendo análisis de autores de las perspectivas del Sur Global y del Norte Global. Aplicado en interdisciplinarios estudios históricos y contemporáneos globales, los análisis críticos siguen los órdenes coloniales, los globales y sus alternativas en países individuales, así como en más amplias unidades multipolares y multilaterales.
## Tipología de modelos de países socialistas

Comenzaré mi análisis tipológico con África: Los distintos países africanos no siguieron el mismo camino tras su exitosa lucha contra el colonialismo; algunos tuvieron más o menos opciones. Al principio, tras la Segunda Guerra Mundial, sus caminos se dividieron en tres trayectorias: (a) experimentos con el socialismo, (b) experimentos con el capitalismo, y (c) experimentos con una especie de independencia de las grandes potencias, especialmente dentro del Movimiento de Países No Alineados. Estas tres vías no se excluían mutuamente y, a veces, se superponían parcialmente. Por un lado, la interconexión de estos experimentos tuvo diversos grados de intensidad de cooperación con la URSS y/o con China; y, por un otro lado, con los EE. UU. y las antiguas potencias coloniales europeas. Aunque, por supuesto, otros países del Este, del Oeste y del Sur también participaron en la compleja red de interacciones de la Guerra Fría (Muehlenbeck, 2016).

Una diferenciación más sutil debiera tener en cuenta cómo fueron los experimentos adoptados y sus diferentes formas, en función de las versiones del socialismo y del capitalismo con las cuales cooperaron los países africanos. En este texto me centro en los experimentos con el socialismo y hago una comparación conceptual de cada una de las principales versiones socialistas en lo que respecta a su realización.

Los países africanos vinculados a los experimentos socialistas corresponden principalmente al desarrollo dirigido por el Estado, incluidas las reformas agrarias y la nacionalización de las empresas coloniales. Podemos distinguir cinco tipos principales de experimentos (Hrubec, 2022): Primero, el socialismo africano, es decir, un intento por construir versiones africanas del socialismo, a partir de las condiciones locales que puedan servir de inspiración para otros lugares, como, por ejemplo, Tanzania y Ghana tras obtener su independencia, siendo casos paradigmáticos del África subsahariana (Mwakikagile, 2006; Grilli, 2018; Chachage, 2010). Segundo, el socialismo indígena (étnico), es decir, el socialismo árabe en los países musulmanes del norte de África, con Libia como paradigma (John, 2017). Tercero, el marxismo-leninismo, a la manera de la Unión
Soviética en Angola a partir de 1975, y en Etiopía, especialmente desde 1977 (Shubin, 2008). Cuarto, en las últimas décadas se ha producido una transformación del socialismo del tipo soviético, siguiendo la versión china del socialismo de mercado, junto con las condiciones locales africanas, como lo ha sido el reciente caso de Angola. Quinto, es posible añadir un modelo de orientación social – aunque no se trate de un socialismo pleno – en las últimas décadas en Tanzania.

Para especificar las principales personalidades quienes intentaron crear modelos originales del sistema estatal africano, es posible mencionar a Kwame Nkrumah en Ghana y a Léopold Senghor en Senegal, mismos quienes crearon las versiones africanas de la modernidad (el-Malik, 2016), así como los esfuerzos de Mwalimu Julius Nyerere para construir Ujamaa en Tanzania, así como la creación del Jamahiriya socialista árabe de Muammar Gadafi en Libia.

En América Latina también podemos identificar cinco tipos principales de experimentos socialistas que son, tipológicamente considerados, similares a los de África. En primer lugar, el socialismo latinoamericano, es decir, los esfuerzos por crear una versión original del socialismo a partir de las condiciones locales de América Latina, con el Socialismo del Siglo XXI en Venezuela desde 1999, como ejemplo paradigmático. En segundo lugar, el socialismo indígena, con Bolivia como paradigma. Tercero, el marxismo-leninismo, siguiendo a la Unión Soviética, con Cuba desde los años 60. Cuarto, en las últimas décadas, una transformación del socialismo del tipo soviético siguiendo tenuemente la versión China del socialismo de mercado, junto con las condiciones locales latinoamericanas, como es el caso de Cuba. En quinto lugar, el socialismo democrático o una política socialdemócrata más fuerte, el Brasil de Lula como ejemplo.

En Latino América, Fidel Castro, Hugo Chávez y Evo Morales fueron líderes socialistas paradigmáticos. Además, por ejemplo, durante las dos mareas rosas con el mencionado Lula da Silva en Brasil, algunos partidos políticos laboristas o socialdemócratas han tendido a construir algo más exigente apuntando al socialismo democrático (Lampter, 2023). Se está en camino del capitalismo al socialismo.
En Asia también hay cinco principales tipos similares de experimentos con el socialismo. En primer lugar, una versión única del socialismo derivada de las condiciones locales, una versión original del socialismo que puede aplicarse también a otras partes del mundo: el socialismo de Asia Oriental, particularmente la China desde Deng. Segundo, el socialismo indígena: La India de Gandhi. Tercero, el marxismo-leninismo: principalmente la Unión Soviética, China bajo Mao, la primera era socialista en Vietnam y Laos. Cuarto, siguiendo vagamente la versión china del socialismo de mercado junto con las condiciones locales asiáticas: la era contemporánea de Vietnam y Laos. Quinto, el socialismo democrático, con la India de Nehru como ejemplo paradigmático.

En anteriores análisis he mencionado a algunas personalidades socialistas del Asia: Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping y Xi Jinping han sido conocidas y destacadas personalidades de las versiones clásica, actualizada y contemporánea del socialismo chino, respectivamente (Hrubec, 2020).

En las diversas épocas del África, Asia y América Latina se han seguido las cinco principales rutas socialistas o versiones del socialismo. La presente tipología sincrónica ofrece un básico panorama analítico. Por ende, la siguiente Tabla explica a manera general los tipos de socialismo, permitiéndole a un país ser incluido en varios modelos a lo largo de su historia. Cada país cooperó en función de su proximidad tipológica, por ejemplo, durante la Guerra Fría, la Unión Soviética cooperó intensamente con Cuba y con Angola. Sin embargo, en las últimas décadas, fue sobre todo China quien cooperara estrechamente con Cuba y con Angola, siendo que los tres países habían actualizado su propio modelo y, en particular, los dos últimos siguieron parcialmente al primero.

En la Tabla, hay países también no plenamente socialistas, mas, al menos, aspiran a una idea regulativa del socialismo. Y, por supuesto, hay muchos más países socialistas que los enlistados en la Tabla. De entre sus diferentes tipos he seleccionado los que pudieran considerarse ejemplos paradigmáticos.
<table><caption>Tabla 1: Tipología de países socialistas en el Sur Global; con ejemplos de países</caption><thead><tr><td>Tipología de socialismo</td><td>Africa</td><td>Asia</td><td>América Latina</td></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>(1) Soviético</td><td>Etiopía y Angola tempranas</td><td>China, Vietnam y Laos tempranas</td><td>Cuba y Nicaragua tempranas</td></tr><tr><td>(2) Local original</td><td>Ghana y Tanzania postcolonial</td><td>La China posterior, desde Teng</td><td>Venezuela de Chávez</td></tr><tr><td>(3) Indígena</td><td>La Libia de Gadafi</td><td>La India de Gandhi</td><td>Bolivia de Morales</td></tr><tr><td>(4) Socialismo de mercado a la China posterior</td><td>Angola y Etiopía posteriores</td><td>Vietnam y Laos posteriores</td><td>Cuba desde Raúl Castro</td></tr><tr><td>(5) De orientación Social</td><td>Tanzania posterior</td><td>La India de Nehru</td><td>El Brasil de Lula</td></tr></tbody></table>

Fuente: Elaboración propia.

## La lucha por la independencia y el desarrollo

La proximidad tipológica es un criterio muy importante para la cooperación entre países; pero, por supuesto, no es el único (y, en algunos casos, ni siquiera el principal), por ser la cooperación un complejo fenómeno. Dentro de un mismo tipo tipológico puede haber contradicciones entre países, así como una limitada cooperación. Por el contrario, en algunos casos puede desarrollarse una mejor cooperación entre países no sólo clasificados en diferentes clases tipológicas del mismo sistema; sino, incluso, entre diferentes sistemas políticos (socialismo vs capitalismo), a causa de: (a) las épocas de lucha por la independencia y por el desarrollo, (b) la cooperación a largo plazo, o (c) razones pragmáticas, por ejemplo, cómo, temporalmente, y de manera dialéctica, el enemigo de mi enemigo pudiera ser mi amigo.

En algunos casos es bastante fácil de entender; porque, mientras un país puede estar en la misma categoría tipológica que otro, uno de ellos puede estar saliendo de su tipo, al tiempo que uno otro se mueve en dirección opuesta. Entonces es comprensible la cooperación con aquel país cuya categoría de modelo de Estado sea similar, especialmente la situación del país cuyo modelo socialista corresponda al más próximo
esquematizado tipológicamente, es decir, gobiernos cuyas
tendencias se muevan hacia un mismo tipo categórico.

Pero también existen relaciones mucho más complejas entre países. En primer lugar, la clasificación de un Estado en un particular tipo de organización estatal también se ha debido, en algunos casos del pasado, al hecho de que los Estados colonizados se han visto motivados a adaptar sus disposiciones estatales según su aliado de influencia crucial, para así defenderse de las potencias coloniales con el fin de, al menos, conseguir parcial soberanía y disposiciones estatales más apropiadas. En segundo lugar, la cooperación ha tenido lugar, no sólo sobre la base de la proximidad tipológica, sino también sobre la base de alianzas estratégicas y tácticas pragmáticas entre países incompatibles, es decir, la cooperación incluso puede tener lugar entre países con diferentes clasificaciones tipológicas. En tercer lugar, en otras ocasiones, los Estados marginados han tratado de unirse entre sí formando grupos de cooperación poco estrictos.

Las relaciones entre países pueden esclarecerse empíricamente observando las relaciones históricas de China y de la Unión Soviética con otros países del África y de otros países en desarrollo (Friedman, 2015; Henderson & William, 1984), lo cual tiene implicaciones actuales debido a que ahora, en el contexto de otros países emergentes (socialistas y otros), vuelve a haber no sólo influencia occidental en África, sino también y de manera significativa, influencia de China y de Rusia. Mientras China y la URSS tuvieron esencialmente el mismo modelo económico y político durante los dos periodos de la Guerra Fría hasta 1978; posteriormente y, en la actualidad, cada uno de estos países ha aplicado un modelo diferente, aunque ambos, en cierto modo, están construyendo bajo su anterior influencia en el Sur Global. Los países africanos son conscientes de su pasada cooperación con ambas superpotencias y, también, en cierta medida, la construyen conscientemente.

La Unión Soviética y China, siendo dos países con gobiernos comunistas, habían cooperado en el pasado; pero, como es bien sabido en distintas épocas, sus interacciones fueron diferentes, e incluso a veces conflictivas. Sus relaciones entre sí y con los países asiáticos, africanos y latinoamericanos pueden explicarse por el hecho de que, en un momento dado, estas
relaciones estaban determinadas por las diferentes épocas de
desarrollo de las dos grandes potencias (Mazov, 2010). Esta
perspectiva nos permite comprender los actuales modelos en
diferentes escenarios, así como las potenciales alternativas en
diferentes escenarios futuros.

A partir de la Segunda Guerra Mundial y en las siguientes
décadas, la URSS fue el principal oponente ideológico de
Occidente. Con su revolución socialista, su desarrollo y su apoyo
a los países colonizados inspiró a muchos de ellos (Yordanov,
2016). Muchos de los países colonizados querían desafiar a las
potencias coloniales occidentales, a la vez que establecer una
versión del socialismo (Babu, 1981). Aunque existían fuertes
relaciones entre la URSS y los grupos anticoloniales buscando
derrocar el colonialismo en sus países, también había diferencias.
La principal diferencia consistía en que la URSS había firmado un
acuerdo de coexistencia pacífica con Occidente tras la Segunda
Guerra Mundial, el cual incluía esfuerzos de desarme. La URSS
estaba muy agotada tras haber desplegado con éxito muchas de
sus fuerzas durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial y prefería
entonces un desarrollo económico pacífico. Por el contrario, los
gobiernos en ciernes de los países colonizados buscaban el
derrocamiento armado del colonialismo occidental. En Argelia,
por ejemplo, consiguieron expulsar a los colonizadores franceses
en 1962, y Argelia se convirtió en un ejemplo de éxito del cambio
de régimen armado hacia el establecimiento de orientación
socialista del país.

En esta situación, los países colonizados sintieron más
admiración por la República Popular China, quien, tras su
experiencia de la ocupación japonesa en la Segunda Guerra
Mundial, prefería la armada y antiimperialista concepción contra
los países occidentales. Por ello, en la época del anticolonialismo,
durante la lucha por la independencia, desde los años cincuenta a
los setenta, muchos países africanos buscaron la cooperación con
China.

Sin embargo, después de que los países colonizados se
liberaran del yugo colonial, les interesaba algo más que las
radicales y antiimperialistas declaraciones chinas. Después de
todo, entonces, China no tenía un muy atractivo modelo de
desarrollo que ofrecerles a los países africanos independientes, el
cual pudieran seguir durante el Gran Salto Adelante *Great Leap Forward* (de fines de 1950s a principios de 1960s) y la Revolución Cultural (de 1960s a 1970s). Por aquél entonces, en cambio, la URSS ya había elaborado su modelo de desarrollo y lo estaba aplicando. Por lo tanto, tras la independencia, los países africanos y otros países en desarrollo empezaron a gravitar hacia la URSS y a su cooperación económica, política y de seguridad. Pero, por ejemplo, a raíz de la Crisis de los Misiles de 1962, Cuba quedó admirando el antiimperialismo chino y desilusionada por la retirada del equipo militar soviético de Cuba. Posteriormente Cuba abraza la coexistencia pacífica y el desarrollo recomendados por la URSS.

Pueden identificarse varias eras socialistas y sus planteamientos. En primer lugar, los 29 países en desarrollo de Asia y África que se reunieron en la Conferencia Asiático-Africana de Bandung, Indonesia, en 1955 promoviendo principalmente la búsqueda de la no alineación y la neutralidad (Khudori, 2022). Posteriormente, en Egipto, Guinea, Tanganica y Yugoslavia (Belgrado), las actitudes fueron cambiando gradualmente, al tiempo que se celebraban conferencias donde los participantes formaron coalición contra el colonialismo y el imperialismo en la Organización de Solidaridad de los Pueblos Afroasiáticos, Afro-Asian People's Solidarity Organization (AAPSO, por sus siglas en inglés). En la conferencia de Ghana de 1965 se apoyó la inclusión de países latinoamericanos también. Las luchas anticoloniales de los países africanos radicalizaron la situación paso a paso y en la Conferencia Tricontinental de La Habana de 1966 prevaleció el apoyo antiimperialista a las luchas antocoloniales armadas (Parrott & Lawrence, 2022). Subsecuentemente, sin embargo, tras la independencia volvieron a prevalecer las aspiraciones de los países en desarrollo. Los gobiernos en ciernes lucharon por el fin del colonialismo hasta finalmente conseguir el poder. Derrocar al régimen ya no era un problema para ellos, y el desarrollo se convirtió en prioridad. Por supuesto, a pesar de que algunos países no se desarrollaron en estas épocas obtuvieron su independencia antes o después. Sin embargo, la corriente principal del anticolonialismo y la creación de países poscoloniales siguieron una trayectoria temporal con estas épocas.
Según esta interpretación, puede verse que la principal razón para adoptar un enfoque armado o uno pacífico fue, en muchos casos, la específica época ideológicamente concebida del país; y no sólo su ideología del momento. Así pues, depende tanto de la ideología como de las condiciones del momento. Es importante observar estos desarrollos, no sólo desde la perspectiva de las grandes potencias de los EE. UU., la URSS, China, etc., como es lo más común en los análisis de la Guerra Fría, sino también considerar las perspectivas de los países más pequeños, quienes se vieron atrapados entre sus interacciones (Gerőcs & Pinkasz, 2018). Como argumentado anteriormente, se implicaba no sólo a los gobiernos quienes dirigían a sus países tras sus independencias, sino también a los movimientos anticoloniales y a los gobiernos en formación, mismos que se encontraban en los países antes o durante el proceso de descolonización.

El análisis de las condiciones de una determinada época también puede explicarse en términos de revolución y transformación. Tradicionalmente se ha considerado que una revolución es un cambio fundamental, rápido y violento; mientras una transformación es un cambio parcial, lento y pacífico. Sin embargo, se conocen casos de fundamental cambio (es decir, revolucionario) producido de forma gradual, lenta y no violenta, por ejemplo, en China desde 1978 a la actualidad, cuando China, en su nuevo modelo, añadió el mercado y la propiedad privada a la planificación estatal central y a la propiedad común. La histórica Iniciativa de la Franja y la Ruta china (Belt and Road Initiative, BRI), reconocida como la Nueva Ruta de la Seda, también puede considerarse un avance revolucionario logrado mediante un cese pacífico y gradual. En otras palabras, puede haber una revolución transformadora, la cual es un cambio fundamental tomando lugar gradualmente (Arnason & Hrubec, 2016). Por lo tanto, también el desarrollo de, por ejemplo, los países africanos después de la independencia podrían en algunos casos conducir a un cambio transformador pacífico de una manera bastante fundamental. En contraste, en otros países se produjo formalmente una revolución en distintos momentos de la historia; pero sin que condujera como resultado un cambio fundamental alguno en el sistema; volviendo a la trayectoria al
antiguo régimen; y, por ende, se tratara, efectivamente, de una transformación en términos de contenido.

Tras el fin de la Guerra Fría, que marcara el final de la lucha bipolar entre EE. UU. y la Unión Soviética, desde iniciada la década de 1990, a nivel global, los EE. UU. comenzaron a promover su visión unilateral del mundo. Sin embargo, esto no duró mucho; las potencias emergentes empezaron a crecer significativamente, especialmente a partir del 2000; la llamada crisis financiera y económica mundial de 2008, siendo principalmente crisis de EE. UU. y de Europa Occidental, fortaleció a los países emergentes y propició el desarrollo de un orden multilateral mundial. Sin embargo, Estados Unidos no aceptó el auge del multilateralismo, aun comprendiendo que la era del unilateralismo global había terminado. EE. UU. intenta – al menos – consolidar su influencia en su alianza militar, la OTAN, y en los países donde tenga la posibilidad de imponerse. EE. UU., intenta contener – en la medida de lo posible – a sus principales competidores (la China socialista y la Rusia capitalista) y a sus socios, limitando la cooperación con ellos. Desde el punto de vista conceptual, esto, de hecho, entrelaza tres dinámicas, a saber, la presión *unilateralista* estadounidense en favor de un acuerdo lo más *bipolar* posible dentro del *multilateralismo* real de los BRICS y de otros países.

Aunque China y otros países no quieran la impuesta bipolaridad, no tienen más remedio que aceptarla parcialmente (Marten, 2019; Gruzd & Ramani & Clifford, 2022), así como también formar asociaciones basadas en el destino, es decir, sobre la base de la libre cooperación con países contra los cuales los EE. UU. y otros países occidentales aplican sanciones y restricciones varias. Sin embargo, al mismo tiempo, China y otros países influyentes forjan sus relaciones bilaterales con países africanos, latinoamericanos y asiáticos menos influyentes.

Desde la perspectiva actual, es notable que China y Rusia hayan cambiado sus roles en sus planteamientos. Mientras que, después de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, durante el periodo de descolonización, la URSS procuraba de la coexistencia pacífica para con el desarrollo económico; mientras China abogaba por la armada lucha antiimperialista. Hoy China aboga por la coexistencia pacífica del desarrollo económico; mientras Rusia no
es más un ejemplo de desarrollo para los países en desarrollo; sino un modelo de resistencia armada contra los Estados Unidos y otros países de la alianza militar de la OTAN. Los países en desarrollo cooperan tanto con China como con Rusia, según la época, el nivel de independencia y de desarrollo en que se encuentren en la actual alterada situación de conflictos del capitalismo global.

Hay intentos por abordar la crisis del Estado desarrollista desde las múltiples perspectivas del Sur Global (Gerócs & Ricz, 2021) y desde los múltiples puntos de vista relativos a los aspectos económicos, políticos, de seguridad, culturales, entre otros. Aunque, en la actualidad China sea la gran y más importante potencia alternativa (no occidental), por supuesto, también hay más países semejantes, especialmente los países dentro de los BRICS, ahora los BRICS+ (incluso Egipto, Etiopía, Irán, Arabia Saudita y Emiratos Árabes Unidos) y países que buscan ser admitidos a este grupo (Argelia, Bolivia, Indonesia etc.). Los nuevos actores en el campo emergente de la cooperación internacional al desarrollo igualmente aportan nuevas normas (Taylor, et al. 2023). Grandes agrupaciones macrorregionales como la Organización de Cooperación de Shanghái, la Unión Económica Euroasiática, la ASEAN, la Liga Árabe, la Unión Africana, la Comunidad del África Oriental, la CEDEAO, el ALBA y el Mercosur. A escala global, las Naciones Unidas, el G77 + China y la Iniciativa la Franja y la Ruta, participan activamente. El reconocimiento mutuo de culturas y civilizaciones también desempeña su papel. Así pues, la comunicación y la cooperación del Sur Global es plural contribución al actual y futuro mundo global multipolar y multilateral.

## Conclusión

En la historia y en el presente, los pueblos del Sur global, en particular en África, América Latina, Asia y otras partes del mundo como Europa del Este, pueden emprender un mutuo aprendizaje a partir de sus experimentos y experiencias socialistas (tanto positivas como negativas). En base a la filosofía social y política y en los estudios globales del Sur Global podemos
comprender mejor la explicación tipológica de los modelos de Estados socialistas recién analizados en este texto. La tipología nos ayuda a identificar los intereses comunes y sus diferencias. Posteriormente, otro criterio considerará las complejas interacciones entre Estados y regiones.

Para superar la actual hegemonía y para incrementar los niveles de la vida cotidiana en el Sur Global, los países de África, Asia y América Latina desarrollan relaciones y cooperación Sur-Sur basadas en ambas similares características tipológicas, así como en niveles adecuados de lucha por la independencia y el desarrollo. En los esfuerzos contemporáneos por un mundo multilateral, los pueblos y los países del Sur Global no sólo tienen que superar las contradicciones externas, sino también sus propias contradicciones internas; en la actualidad ya desempeñan un papel de mayor relevancia que en los antiguos mundos unipolares y bipolares de la historia. No obstante, la automatización, la robótica y la inteligencia artificial que sustituirán gran parte del trabajo humano situarán tales esfuerzos en nuevos contextos.

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Une lecture déconstructive de l'influence de la
France et de la Grande Bretagne sur la politique
étrangère du Cameroun (1960-1990)

Cyrille Aymard Bekono

Introduction

L'étude de la politique étrangère du Cameroun, dans ses
relations avec ses anciennes puissances tutélaires (France et
Grande-Bretagne), met en exergue l'influence de ces dernières sur
le jeune Etat camerounais. C'est pour cette raison que bon
nombre d'analystes n'hésitent pas à affirmer que les prises de
position du Cameroun sur la scène internationale, tout au moins
durant les deux premières décennies de son indépendance, sont
décidées depuis Paris ou Londres. Cette approche du
comportement du jeune Etat camerounais sur la scène
internationale, non moins pertinente, a souvent la faiblesse
d'occulter des situations où le Cameroun s'est affirmé à
l'international en opposition aux lignes directrices tracées par ses
anciennes tutelles. Pourtant, la réalité des relations camerouno-
françaises et camerouno-britanniques présente de nombreux
moments d'émancipation de l'Etat camerounais dans le champ
des relations internationales. On peut également observer sa
distanciation progressive et raisonnée de la tutelle de ses anciens
« maîtres ».

A la lumière de l'approche diachronique et synchronique,
notre réflexion, à travers une variété de sources, entend décrypter
les motivations réelles qui structurent les tentatives de
déconstruction permanente du monopole de Paris et Londres sur
le processus décisionnel du Cameroun sur la scène internationale,
de 1960 à 1990.
Les relations Cameroun/France : la manifestation
audacieuse de la volonté de Yaoundé d'affirmer son
autonomie sur la scène internationale

La réalité des relations franco-camerounaises, en matière
de politique étrangère, révèle une double attitude des pouvoirs
publics camerounais. Sur des questions de politique internationale
qui impliquaient directement ou indirectement l'intérêt national,
les autorités camerounaises se sont montrées intransigeantes vis-
à-vis du partenaire français. Toutefois, sur des questions « sans
danger réel » sur l'intérêt national, Yaoundé pouvait alors
observer un alignement stratégique aux positions de Paris.

a) L'intransigeance camerounaise sur des questions de politique internationale impliquant l'intérêt national

Le discours sur la marginalité pathologique de l'Etat-
nation africain occulte sa capacité à agir sur la scène
internationale, comme un acteur intelligent et autonome. Avant
les indépendances des pays africains, l'Afrique, dans la science et
la pratique des relations internationales, fut ravalée au rang
d'objet subissant les politiques d'autres acteurs, notamment les
puissances impérialistes. L'accession à la souveraineté nationale et
internationale des pays africains, ne résolut pas totalement le
problème de la marginalité de ce continent dans le concert des
nations. L'Afrique, dans cette perspective, est surtout une « partie
prise du système international global, un enjeu de puissance
plutôt qu'un acteur comme les autres » (Sindjoun, 1999). En
insistant sur la marginalisation du continent, les tenants de cette
approche, essentiellement instrumentale de l'Etat africain,
considèrent l'Afrique comme un objet passif dont les puissances
extérieures ou les institutions internationales se jouent les unes
contre les autres (Ntuda Ebode, 2003). Ainsi, selon cette
approche analytique de la place de l'Afrique dans les relations
internationales, l'Etat africain est dépourvu de toute capacité à
défendre ses intérêts, et donc à conduire une politique étrangère
réaliste et autonome (Ntuda Ebode, 2003). Pourtant, le défaut
majeur de cette approche est qu'elle ne rend toujours pas compte
de la réalité, tout au moins la capacité affichée par les Africains,
dans certaines situations de politique internationale, à agir en
opposition des vues et intérêts des ex-puissances coloniales.

En matière de politique étrangère, quand l'intérêt national était en jeu, le gouvernement camerounais prenait parfois des décisions qui contrariaient les intérêts français. Ainsi, les relations franco-camerounaises sont marquées, depuis 1960, par l'expression d'une quête permanente de l'autonomisation du processus décisionnel de l'Etat camerounais en politique étrangère. Cette volonté d'agir en acteur autonome et souverain se lit dans les principes qui fondent la doctrine extérieure du Cameroun. Le décryptage des déclarations officielles, des discours, des manifestes, des programmes ou chartes constitutives des partis dirigeants, structurent la politique extérieure du Cameroun autour de l'affirmation et de la défense de sa souveraineté.

Les relations diplomatiques sont, pour les Etats, une
expression de leur souveraineté et de leur caractère indépendant
(Chouala, 2014). Suivant donc ce principe doctrinal et cardinal de
sa politique étrangère, le Cameroun, dans ses relations avec
d'autres nations du monde, se devait, en tous lieux et, en tous
temps, d'agir comme un acteur souverain et indépendant. Le tout
premier chef de l'Etat camerounais, Ahmadou Ahidjo, fit de ce
principe le point de départ à partir duquel son pays pouvait nouer
des relations diplomatiques avec un autre Etat. Il affirma à cet
effet que « ... les nations du monde avec lesquelles nous
souhaitons entrer en relation doivent nous considérer en
partenaire égal et respecter notre souveraineté. Le Cameroun est
ouvert à tout pays qui entend nouer des relations avec lui sur la
base de l'égalité, de la réciprocité, du respect mutuel des
souverainetés et de la non-ingérence. » (Ahidjo, 1964).

L'option de Yaoundé pour le non-alignement comme
principe fondateur de sa politique étrangère, dans un contexte
mondial alors dominé par la rivalité de deux blocs idéologiques
(communiste et capitaliste) et dont les anciennes puissances
tutélaires avaient clairement affiché leur appartenance au bloc
capitaliste, apparut, théoriquement, comme l'expression de son
libre arbitre, de sa souveraineté et de son indépendance. Le non-
alignement est ainsi appréhendé comme le corollaire de
l'affirmation de la souveraineté nationale.
Il n’est pas vain d’admettre que l’affirmation discursive de la souveraineté et de l’indépendance du Cameroun, en politique étrangère, peut s’expliquer aussi par le fait que les autorités de Yaoundé, malgré qu’elles fussent choisies par la France à la veille de la proclamation de l’indépendance<fnref n="94" /> ne perdirent pas de vue que, contrairement à d’autres pays francophones d’Afrique, le Cameroun ne fut pas une colonie française, mais un territoire à statut juridique international. C’est sans doute aussi la raison pour laquelle les autorités camerounaises pouvaient se permettre de contrarier Paris, sur certaines questions de politique internationale qui mettaient en jeu l’intérêt national.

La recherche de l’autonomisation du processus décisionnel de la politique étrangère du Cameroun se fonde sur des motivations, aussi bien endogènes qu’exogènes. Sur le plan national, le régime Ahidjo entendait diluer les accusations des nationalistes de l’UPC qui le considéraient comme un instrument du néocolonialisme français en Afrique. En effet, le jeune Etat camerounais, du point de vue de sa sécurité intérieure, faisait face à une opposition armée conduite par l’aile radicale de l’UPC. Pour cette opposition armée, le régime Ahidjo était dépourvu de toute légitimité, et il ne pouvait y avoir d’indépendance véritable tant que les attributs du pouvoir étaient entre les mains des hommes que la France avait choisis (Oyono, 1990). Cette légitimité contestée du régime Ahidjo dépassa même le cadre national, dans la mesure où la plupart des pays d’obédience socialiste se refusaient de reconnaître la souveraineté internationale du Cameroun. Dans ce contexte, le régime Ahidjo devait prendre les « upécistes » à contre-pied, en se positionnant comme véritable défenseur de la cause des peuples africains encore sous le joug du colonialisme et de l’apartheid. Cette stratégie de musellement de l’UPC prit le risque de contrarier les vues de la France, sur la question de la libération totale de l’Afrique.

En effet, le président Ahidjo était conscient de ce que l’influence de la France sur son pays constituait une entrave à son engagement effectif dans la lutte de libération africaine. Cela était d’autant vrai que la France et certains de ses alliés du bloc capitaliste étaient les principaux soutiens des gouvernements

<footnote n="94">⁹⁴ Il s’agit de la partie du Cameroun placée sous la tutelle de l’administration française et qui accéda à l’indépendance le 1er janvier 1960.</footnote>
portugais, espagnol, rhodésien et sud-africain. Pour avoir les « mains libres » dans son soutien aux nationalistes africains, le président camerounais sentit le besoin de sortir progressivement de l'étau français. Cette recherche de l'autonomie diplomatique s'accompagna d'un changement de tonalité du discours camerounais vis-à-vis de la France.

Si au début de la décennie 1960 le Cameroun se contentait de simples condamnations verbales, il est à observer qu'à la fin de cette même décennie, et au début des années 1970, la tonalité du discours des dirigeants camerounais se faisait de plus en plus dure et la condamnation du soutien de la France aux gouvernements colonialistes et racistes devenait de plus en plus véhémente. Salomon Bakoto fournit une preuve de ce changement d'attitude du président camerounais, en ces termes :

> En 1976, il est en visite d'Etat à Paris. Répondant au toast de son hôte, Giscard d'Estaing, il fustige avec véhémence tous les Etats qui entretiennent des relations commerciales et autres avec l'Afrique du Sud. Son discours jette le froid dans la salle des fêtes de l'Elysée. Fait inhabituel dans les usages diplomatiques : lors du dîner de retour, le lendemain, Giscard d'Estaing ressent le besoin de reprendre la parole pour justifier, dans son monologue la politique française en Afrique ! De retour à l'hôtel de Marigny, résidence des hôtes de la France, Ahidjo reçoit au téléphone de très nombreux messages de félicitations de ses pairs africains, tant anglophones que francophones, qui lui disent en substance : « vous avez dit tout haut ce que, tous, nous disons tout bas » (Bakoto, 2001).

La stratégie du régime Ahidjo de contrarier la France, aux fins de diluer les accusations des nationalistes de l'UPC, s'était également exprimée par le malaise camerounais au sein des organisations africaines francophones (UAM et OCAM). Créées à l'initiative du président ivoirien, Houphouët-Boigny, l'UAM et l'OCAM servirent d'instruments du néocolonialisme français en
Afrique francophone. Pour les nationalistes de l'UPC, l'avènement de l'OCAM n'était qu'« un nouveau complot impérialiste contre la révolution africaine ». La France se servit, en réalité, des regroupements des pays africains francophones pour imposer les orientations de sa politique africaine à ses anciennes colonies. De toute évidence, le maintien du Cameroun au sein de telles structures du néocolonialisme français ne pouvait que renforcer les récriminations de l'UPC. Il devint donc urgent, pour le régime Ahidjo, d'atténuer l'influence de la France sur le Cameroun.

Rapportant la raison qui amena le président Ahidjo à se tenir à l'écart des sommets franco-africains, l'ambassadeur Salomon Bakoto affirme que :

> En réalité, c'est pour de tout autres raisons que le Cameroun s'était tenu à l'écart des sommets franco-africains. Ahidjo me le révéla au cours d'un long entretien, courant 1976. Il s'offusquait de ce que la parole ne pût être libre dans les sommets franco-africains comme c'est toujours le cas au sein du Commonwealth. Il n'admettait pas que le Ghana ou le Nigeria pût dénoncer publiquement les relations entre le Royaume-Uni et l'Afrique du Sud alors que cela n'était pas concevable pour les chefs d'Etat d'Afrique francophone à l'égard de la France. Il ne se sentait pas à l'aise lorsque ses homologues anglophones, s'agissant de l'apartheid, déplorait l'action timorée de leurs pairs francophones en direction de Paris (Bakoto, 2001).

Ce malaise exprimé par Ahmadou Ahidjo au sein des organisations francophones et francophiles explique à suffisance pourquoi, pendant de nombreuses années, le Cameroun s'était tenu à l'écart de la francophonie. Cette auto-marginalisation, historiquement justifiée, s'appréhende en réalité comme l'attachement résolu du Cameroun à son indépendance. Ainsi les autorités camerounaises s'appuyèrent-elles sur des motivations de politique intérieure pour expliquer et justifier leur défiance à
l'égard des constellations d'Etats établies autour de la France
(Mouelle Kombi, 1996).

La préservation de l'unité nationale constitue, d'autre
part, l'une des raisons qui justifie la quête permanente de
l'autonomie diplomatique de Yaoundé vis-à-vis de Paris. En effet,
la rhétorique politique, durant les deux premières décennies de
l'indépendance du Cameroun, étant fondée sur la construction et
la consolidation de l'unité nationale acquise avec la réunification
du 1er octobre 1961, le président Ahidjo allait s'opposer à toutes
les manœuvres françaises susceptibles d'accorder du crédit aux
velléités sécessionnistes et remettre en cause l'unité du pays. D'où,
en guise d'illustration, l'opposition des vues entre Yaoundé et
Paris sur le problème de la partition du Nigeria au cours de la
« guerre du Biafra », dès 1967. Pendant que la France soutenait
l'Etat sécessionniste et son armée et incitait les pays africains
francophones à reconnaître le Biafra comme Etat souverain, le
Cameroun s'opposa systématiquement à l'initiative de Paris et
offrit plutôt son soutien au gouvernement fédéral nigérian. Cette
attitude de Yaoundé vis-à-vis de Paris, est une preuve que les
autorités camerounaises, tout en « sacralisant » le monopole de la
France dans les domaines économique, financier, technique et
culturel, essayèrent tant bien que mal de s'affirmer sur des
questions internationales qui impliquaient directement ou
indirectement l'intérêt du pays.

Les motivations d'ordre exogène ayant suscité la
recherche permanente de l'autonomisation de la politique
étrangère du Cameroun, se structurent autour des principes de
non-alignement, de la solidarité africaine et la coopération
internationale. En réalité, l'option du Cameroun pour la politique
de non-alignement, alors que la France appartenait clairement au
bloc capitaliste, amena les autorités de Yaoundé à se distancer,
dans certains cas, des vues françaises, quand celles-ci s'inscrivaient
dans la logique de la rivalité Est/Ouest. Usant des atouts
qu'offrait la « politique de la bascule », pendant la guerre froide,
les autorités camerounaises pouvaient faire « chanter » la France
et ses alliés du bloc capitaliste, quand l'intérêt du Cameroun était
en jeu.

La « sacralité » de l'intérêt national pouvait ainsi amener
Yaoundé à coopérer avec les pays de l'Est, idéologiquement
opposés à la France. Le rapprochement avec la Chine, dont le Cameroun bénéficia de la construction du barrage de Lagdo et du Palais des Congrès, en est une parfaite illustration. Dans ce cas, l'influence de la France sur le Cameroun ne fut pas suffisante au point d'empêcher le rapprochement sino-camerounais. De même que la diversification des relations diplomatiques avec d'autres pays, pourrait également être interprétée comme une « volonté symbolique » de diminuer le « monopole » de Paris. C'est dans ce registre que s'inscrivit la déclaration du président Paul Biya en Allemagne, en 1986 : « Le Cameroun n'est la chasse-gardée d'aucune puissance étrangère... ». L'expression de la solidarité africaine en faveur de l'Egypte, dont une partie du territoire fut envahie par l'armée d'Israël (le Sinaï), amena Yaoundé, sans l'aval de Paris, à rompre ses relations diplomatiques avec l'Etat hébreux, allié de la France et des pays du bloc capitaliste.

Si sur des questions de politique internationale, le Cameroun put contrarier la France quand ses intérêts étaient à préserver ou à promouvoir, il convient de noter que, dans des situations contraires où le Cameroun n'avait aucun intérêt à défendre, les autorités de Yaoundé offraient leur soutien au partenaire français.

b) L'alignement stratégique de Yaoundé sur les positions de Paris « sans danger » réel sur l'intérêt national camerounais

Tout Etat, en politique étrangère, agit en fonction de ses intérêts. Lorsque l'intérêt du Cameroun n'était pas engagé, Yaoundé pouvait agir dans le sens voulu par Paris : soit le Cameroun suivait la ligne de la France, notamment quand il s'agissait de voter en sa faveur au sein des organisations internationales, soit le Cameroun observait un silence coupable.

Le lien de dépendance généralement évoqué entre le Cameroun et ses anciennes puissances tutélaires, n'a de sens que dans les relations que Yaoundé entretient avec Paris depuis 1960. C'est à travers le contenu de l'accord de coopération diplomatique du 13 novembre 1960 que ce lien de dépendance est plus visible. Toutefois, l'implémentation de certaines des dispositions dudit accord amène à observer que le lien de
dépendance sus-évoqué était atténué quand l'intérêt du Cameroun était directement mis en cause. Le principe de la représentation diplomatique et consulaire du Cameroun par la France, dans certains pays ou organisations internationales, peut nous servir d'illustration.

En effet, une des dispositions de l'accord précité, stipule que la France pouvait être amenée à assurer, à la demande du gouvernement camerounais, sa représentation auprès des Etats et des organisations où il n'avait pas de représentation propre. Cette disposition conventionnelle est révélatrice de l'influence et du rôle déterminant que devait avoir Paris, quant à l'orientation de la politique étrangère d'un Etat fraîchement affranchi de sa tutelle (Mouelle Kombi, 1996). Certes, le Cameroun avait accepté que la France puisse le représenter dans certains pays ou organisations, mais, en réalité, ce fut généralement dans des Etats ou organisations où son intérêt était pratiquement nul. La même réalité nous fait observer que là où le Cameroun avait des intérêts à défendre ou à promouvoir, il se faisait représenter directement par ses propres diplomates. Ainsi, en fonction de l'intérêt national défini par ses autorités, Yaoundé pouvait décider d'ouvrir ou ne pas ouvrir une représentation diplomatique auprès d'un pays ou organisation. Le cas de la représentation du Cameroun par le truchement de la France au Portugal et en Afrique du Sud, au plus fort moment de la lutte de libération totale de l'Afrique des derniers bastions du colonialisme, en est une parfaite illustration.

En effet, la détermination des autorités camerounaises à éradiquer le colonialisme en Afrique alla jusqu'à l'interdiction de toutes relations diplomatiques ou consulaires avec le Portugal et l'Afrique du Sud, suite à une résolution des chefs d'Etat africains réunis à Addis-Abeba le 25 mai 1963 (Bekono, 2006). Cette décision ne laissa pas indifférents les dirigeants portugais. Lors de la conférence internationale de l'instruction publique qui se tint à Genève, en juillet 1963, le porte-parole de la délégation portugaise indiqua que cette mesure fut accueillie avec indifférence par le Portugais moyen. Commentant la décision du Cameroun, il fit remarquer que : « Entre le Cameroun et le Portugal, il n'avait jamais, d'ailleurs, existé de rapport diplomatique ou consulaire soit directement, soit par le truchement d'une nation. Quant aux ports camerounais, ils n'ont
jamais été utilisés par les vaisseaux portugais, si l'on excepte les galions des découvertes. Les avions portugais n'ont jamais fait escale sur les aéroports camerounais ».

S'il est vrai que le Cameroun n'entretenait aucune relation diplomatique directe avec le Portugal et l'Afrique du sud, il convient, cependant de rappeler que, par le truchement de la France, il y était représenté conformément à l'article 3 de l'accord diplomatique du 13 novembre 1960. Le président Ahidjo en fit la précision, au cours d'une conférence de presse, en ces termes : « Nous n'avons pas de relations diplomatiques et consulaires avec l'Afrique du Sud et le Portugal. C'est la France qui nous représentait dans ces deux pays. Nous avons officiellement demandé à la France de cesser de nous représenter » (Ahidjo, 1964).

La représentation diplomatique et consulaire du Cameroun par la France n'était pas automatique. C'est « à la demande du Cameroun » que cela pouvait être possible. En outre, le fait de représenter le Cameroun dans un pays ou organisation ne donnait pas carte blanche à la France. L'article 3 l'accord diplomatique susmentionné précise que « Dans ce cas, les agents diplomatiques et consulaires français et les délégués français agissent conformément aux directives et instructions du gouvernement de la République du Cameroun qui leur sont transmises par l'intermédiaire du gouvernement de la République française. » Pour des directives et instructions du gouvernement camerounais présentant un caractère évident d'urgence administrative, ce même article indique qu'elles « pourront être échangées directement entre le gouvernement camerounais et les agents diplomatiques français ». L'insertion d'une clause sur la représentation diplomatique du Cameroun par la France, met en évidence le fait que l'ouverture et l'entretien d'un poste diplomatique ou consulaire exigeait de gros moyens, surtout pour le jeune Etat camerounais qui venait de s'affranchir de la tutelle de la France et dont les moyens financiers et humains étaient bien limités. On serait même amené à penser que, c'est la partie camerounaise qui demanda l'insertion de cette clause dans l'accord.
Les relations Cameroun/Grande-Bretagne:
l'indépendance consacrée de Yaoundé vis-à-vis de Londres ?

La « volonté » d'autonomiser la politique étrangère du Cameroun vis-à-vis de ses anciennes puissances tutélaires, n'eut de cesse de marginaliser la Grande-Bretagne dans le dispositif diplomatique camerounais. En réalité, depuis 1960 et du fait de certaines pesanteurs d'ordre historique, les relations entre les deux pays sont timides et empreintes d'hypocrisie.

a) Les contours d'un rejet réciproque dans les rapports camerouno-britanniques (1960-1963)

Contrairement à la France, la Grande-Bretagne, depuis 1960, ne détient aucun monopole d'influence réelle sur le Cameroun. Elle ne conditionna pas l'accession à l'indépendance de ses colonies africaines, par la signature des accords de coopération. En outre, elle ne suscita, auprès de ses ex-colonies, la création de regroupements d'Etats africains anglophones dont elle se servirait pour imposer ses vues en matière de politique internationale.

Cette attitude des autorités britanniques tient son explication, en partie, à la politique coloniale d'Indirect rule qu'elles implémentèrent dans la plupart des colonies britanniques. Cette politique coloniale accordait une certaine marge de manœuvre aux indigènes, qui pouvaient ainsi s'auto-administrer. L'accession de ces territoires à l'indépendance ne changea pas de donne, puisque, contrairement aux pays africains francophones, les pays anglophones pouvaient librement déterminer leurs politiques étrangères. C'est dire que, du côté britannique, il n'y avait manifestement pas une volonté d'influencer la politique extérieure des ex-colonies de la Couronne.

Malgré l'établissement des relations diplomatiques entre le Cameroun et la Grande-Bretagne, on peut observer l'absence d'accord (au sens diplomatique du terme) liant les deux pays du 1er janvier 1960 au 23 juillet 1963. Plusieurs facteurs objectifs peuvent expliquer ce désintéressement réciproque des deux Etats.
Le premier facteur relève du fait que la Grande-Bretagne a toujours considéré la République du Cameroun comme la « chasse-gardée » de son allié français. Cette considération des relations camerouno-britanniques relèverait, sans doute du pacte colonial franco-britannique qui structura l'entente cordiale entre les deux empires coloniaux. En effet, les Français et les Britanniques signèrent des accords de coopération devant garantir leur coexistence pacifique en matière coloniale. L'accord de 1904 sur l'entente cordiale entre les deux puissances coloniales, fut considéré, par les spécialistes des relations franco-britanniques, comme un coup de théâtre sur la scène diplomatique. Impulsé par les autorités françaises, cet accord intervint dans un contexte où l'anglophobie était fortement ancrée dans l'opinion publique française, suite à certaines querelles coloniales observées en Afrique et en Asie. L'incident de Fachoda (1898), entre les troupes coloniales françaises et celles de la Grande-Bretagne, en est une parfaite illustration. Cependant, les dirigeants français comprirent qu'ils devaient contenir ce sentiment anglophobe, voire le combattre, car il en allait de l'intérêt de la France. L'entente cordiale marque, à ce titre, un tournant majeur ; la France et la Grande-Bretagne comprirent qu'il fallait abandonner les vieux antagonismes.

Signé à Londres en avril 1904, l'accord franco-britannique permit de régler, entre autres, par le compromis, le contentieux colonial (partage des zones d'influence en Afrique et en Asie). Cet accord mit en évidence la communauté de valeurs et d'intérêts qui lient les deux pays et posa les premiers jalons d'une coopération qui devait garantir les relations de bon voisinage, surtout en ce qui concerne la gestion de leurs empires coloniaux. Cet accord fut redynamisé, en ce qui concerne les deux Cameroun sous tutelle, en 1952, lors des discussions ministérielles anglo-françaises sur la politique coloniale. Le mot d'ordre de cette rencontre fut la promotion d'une coopération plus étroite entre les administrations françaises et britanniques (Bekono, 2014).

Afin de préserver l'amitié franco-britannique issue de ce pacte colonial, la Grande-Bretagne se réservait d'intégrer la zone d'influence de son allié français. Ce comportement de Londres vis-à-vis du Cameroun s'étend également à d'autres pays africains francophones, dont l'influence de Londres est pratiquement
insignifiante. Aussi les régimes Ahidjo et Biya confortent-ils la
position de la Grande-Bretagne, par leur attachement à la France.

Le deuxième facteur explicatif relève du retrait du
Cameroun occidental du *Commonwealth* et sa décision de se retirer
de la zone *sterling*, après la réunification du 1er octobre 1961. En
effet, la Grande-Bretagne avait elle-même « signé » la fin de son
influence sur le Cameroun, notamment la partie jadis sous sa
tutelle. Ayant perdu le Cameroun occidental, à la suite du
plébiscite de février 1961, et considérant la République Fédérale
du Cameroun comme relevant de la sphère francophone, la
Grande-Bretagne décida de sortir le Cameroun occidental de la
liste des pays du *Commonwealth* bénéficiant de la préférence
impériale en matière de commerce, ce malgré la demande des
autorités camerounaises qui souhaitaient le maintien de ladite
préférence et son extension sur l'ensemble de la République
fédérale.

En effet, la préférence impériale est un système
économique et douanier par lequel la Grande-Bretagne accordait
des tarifs préférentiels aux produits en provenance des pays du
*Commonwealth*, et obtenait de ces derniers des facilités pour
l'exportation des produits britanniques (Nlate Ndongo, 2017).
Malgré moult tractations entre Yaoundé et Londres, le
gouvernement britannique, sous la pression des Antilles
britanniques<fnref n="95" />, décida que le système de tarif impérial
préférentiel, destiné exclusivement aux seuls membres du
*Commonwealth*, devrait être retiré à la République fédérale du
Cameroun à compter du 30 septembre 1963. Le retrait du
Cameroun occidental du *Commonwealth* et de la zone *sterling* eut
donc comme conséquence, la fin de l'influence britannique sur le
Cameroun. A ce propos, Victor Julius Ngoh affirme :

<footnote n="95">⁹⁵ Malgré la réunification du 1er octobre 1961, la Grande-Bretagne décida de maintenir en vigueur, jusqu'au 30 septembre 1963, le système de tarifs préférentiels dont jouissait l'exportation de la banane camerounaise vers le Royaume-Uni. Cette initiative de Londres ne plut pas à d'autres pays du *Commonwealth*, producteurs de banane. Les Antilles britanniques firent pression auprès du gouvernement britannique, afin que le retrait du Cameroun occidental du *Commonwealth* s'accompagne de l'arrêt des bénéfices dont il jouissait du système de tarifs préférentiels réservé aux membres de ladite organisation.</footnote>
L'influence britannique au Cameroun fut beaucoup moins importante que celle des Français. L'absence de la présence britannique au Cameroun, notamment dans l'ancien Sud Cameroun britannique, était en partie due au retrait du Cameroun du Commonwealth à la suite de la réunification du Sud Cameroun britannique et de la République du Cameroun en 1961. Par ailleurs, la décision du Cameroun Occidental de se retirer de la zone sterling en faveur de la zone franc, obligea beaucoup de sociétés britanniques à quitter le marché camerounais. Le retrait du Cameroun occidental signifia la fin de la préférence du Commonwealth pour les produits du Cameroun Occidental, ce qui eut un effet négatif sur les exportations du Cameroun Occidental (Ngoh, 1990).

Le troisième facteur souligne que le désintéressement de Londres vis-à-vis de Yaoundé n'est que le prolongement de l'attitude de la Grande-Bretagne sur l'administration du *British Cameroons* pendant les périodes de mandat et de tutelle. En effet, n'ayant pu obtenir la zone du port de Douala qui servirait d'une future base très avantageuse à inclure dans le territoire britannique (Eyelom, 2003), la Grande-Bretagne décida d'administrer sa portion du territoire comme partie intégrante de sa colonie nigériane. Toute l'histoire de la présence britannique dans cette portion du territoire camerounais, se caractérisa par un désintéressement affiché par la Grande-Bretagne à l'égard de ce territoire. Le retard observé sur tous les plans et à tous les niveaux au Cameroun britannique, est généralement présenté comme la preuve que la Grande-Bretagne avait peu d'intérêt à administrer ce territoire. Rien d'étonnant que d'observer l'attitude du gouvernement britannique après la réunification du 1er octobre 1961.

A ces trois facteurs objectifs qui expliquent l'attitude des gouvernements britannique et camerounais durant la période 1960-1963, s'ajoute la controverse historique au sujet de la perte de la partie septentrionale du Cameroun britannique à l'issue du
plébiscite de 1961. Du fait du contentieux post-plébiscitaire porté à la CIJ par le Cameroun, la Grande-Bretagne allait occuper le bas de l'échelle dans la hiérarchie du dispositif diplomatique camerounais. Quoiqu'on dise, ce contentieux affecta sensiblement les rapports entre le Cameroun et la Grande-Bretagne.

b) Les tentatives de normalisation d'une coopération « lâche » et pleine d'hypocrisie

Le désintéressement réciproque manifesté par Londres et Yaoundé est suffisant, pour que le Cameroun et la Grande-Bretagne ne parviennent à aucun accord pouvant les lier. Cependant, le réalisme politique des autorités des deux pays, surtout la partie camerounaise, aboutit à l'établissement des relations diplomatiques dès 1960. La Grande-Bretagne ouvrit son ambassade au Cameroun en 1960 et son tout premier ambassadeur fut Patrick Murdoch Johnston, accrédité le 1er février 1960. Le Cameroun avait, quant à lui, nommé Martin Epie comme premier ambassadeur à Londres dès 1962.

Malgré le jeu trouble de la Grande-Bretagne lors du plébiscite de 1961 au Cameroun Britannique, et surtout le peu d'intérêt que Londres portait à la République fédérale du Cameroun, le régime Ahidjo accepta de courtiser l'ancienne puissance tutélaire du Cameroun occidental. Deux raisons peuvent justifier l'attitude du président Ahidjo. D'une part, les liens historiques entre la Grande-Bretagne et le Cameroun occidental, notamment l'existence d'une communauté anglophone, déterminèrent le choix de Yaoundé de nouer des relations diplomatiques avec Londres. La question de l'unité nationale étant une préoccupation majeure de politique intérieure au lendemain de la réunification, toute absence de liens diplomatiques avec la Grande-Bretagne était susceptible d'irriter la communauté anglophone du pays. D'autre part, confronté à d'énormes difficultés économiques et financières, le jeune Etat camerounais ne pouvait se passer du soutien de la Grande-Bretagne dont le poids économique et financier sur l'échiquier mondial n'est plus à démontrer.

C'est effectivement en date du 29 juillet 1963 que le Cameroun et la Grande-Bretagne signèrent leur tout premier
accord de coopération. Ratifié un an plus tard par le Cameroun, le 16 juillet 1964, cet accord porte exclusivement sur la coopération commerciale et économique entre les deux pays. Avec l'entrée de la Grande-Bretagne au marché commun européen, cet accord devint invalide, dans la mesure où la coopération entre les deux pays, en matière économique et commerciale, allait s'effectuer sur la base des conventions de Lomé (Nlate Ndongo, 2017). Le 3 mars 1967, l'Etat du Cameroun signa une convention avec le *British Medical Research Council*, en vue du fonctionnement du Centre de Recherches Médicales de Kumba.

A l'exception de ces deux accords (1963 et 1967), il est à noter que les instruments juridiques qui encadrent les relations économiques entre les deux pays sont assez récents. Ainsi en est-il de l'accord relatif aux transports aériens, signé à Londres le 24 juillet 1981 ; l'accord tendant à éviter la double imposition des revenus de l'activité commerciale du transport aérien, signé à Londres le 22 avril 1982 et ratifié par le Cameroun le 4 février 1986 ; l'accord relatif à l'établissement de la Grande Commission mixte entre les deux Etats, signé à Yaoundé le 4 décembre 1987 (Nlate Ndongo, 2017).

Un rapport de la Direction Europe-Amérique-Océanie du ministère camerounais des Relations extérieures, en date du 12 juin 1976, montre clairement que, en matière de politique étrangère, le Cameroun était pratiquement indépendant de la Grande-Bretagne. Cette indépendance s'illustre par l'opposition de leurs vues sur plusieurs questions de politique africaine :

> Les relations politiques bilatérales entre le Cameroun et la Grande-Bretagne (...) sont satisfaisantes. Ceci étant, il faut dire que sur le plan africain les points de vues britanniques et camerounais ne sont pas toujours identiques, parfois même, ils sont diamétralement opposés. En effet, la libération totale de l'Afrique étant l'un des principes fondamentaux de notre politique étrangère, il va sans dire que ces préceptes sont opposés à l'action de la Grande-Bretagne dans ce domaine. Sa responsabilité totale dans la situation qui prévaut en Rhodésie,
son soutien inconditionnel au régime raciste de Pretoria, ne font que confirmer s'il en était encore besoin, ce qui vient d'être dit<fnref n="96" />.

Cet extrait sur l'état des relations camerounobritanniques montre à quel point la libération totale de l'Afrique du colonialisme et de l'apartheid, constituait un axe important de la politique étrangère du Cameroun de 1960 à 1990. C'est précisément sur cette question que le Cameroun s'opposa diamétralement aux vues britanniques. En effet, la complicité de la Grande-Bretagne avec le Portugal et les minorités racistes blanches d'Afrique australe fonda l'irritation du Cameroun envers son ancienne puissance tutélaire. Cette complicité fut régulièrement dénoncée par les autorités camerounaises qui, par voie de communiqués officiels ou d'interventions au sein des organisations internationales, tenaient la Grande-Bretagne pour responsable de ce qui arrivait aux populations noires de la Rhodésie du Sud. Critiquant l'attitude de Londres après la proclamation unilatérale de l'indépendance de la Rhodésie du Sud, en 1965 par la minorité blanche, le gouvernement camerounais publia un communiqué officiel indiquant que « rien ne saurait diminuer la responsabilité de la Grande-Bretagne en cette affaire »<fnref n="97" />. Il est donc clair que, malgré le facteur historique que constitue le Cameroun occidental, et qui aurait pu renforcer les relations entre les deux pays, l'attitude néfaste de Londres dans la lutte de libération totale de l'Afrique ne pouvait que les opposer.

## Conclusion

Au terme de cette étude, les réflexions issues de l'analyse du poids des anciennes puissances tutélaires du Cameroun sur sa politique étrangère suggèrent une approche nouvelle qui rende compte de la capacité des autorités camerounaises à formuler des politiques indépendantes des positions françaises et britanniques. Si le monopole de ces puissances est établi dans les interactions

<footnote n="96">⁹⁶ Archives MINREX, dossier 2h500/976, Coopération Cameroun/Grande-Bretagne 1972-1980, pp.1-2.</footnote>

<footnote n="97">⁹⁷ La Presse du Cameroun (1966), n°4985, 13 décembre : p.1.</footnote>
diversiformes qui structurent les politiques publiques au sein de la nation camerounaise, la mobilisation internationale des dirigeants camerounais, dans le cadre de la politique étrangère, témoigne par contre de ce qu'il est possible d'amorcer une rupture structurelle et ontologique à la mesure de l'ambition d'une émergence à l'horizon 2035. La sacralisation de l'intérêt national, associée à l'émancipation politique des dirigeants camerounais, se présente comme la voie idoine d'une sortie tant souhaitée de tels rapports dominants-dominés.

## Bibliographie

Ahidjo A. (1964), *Contribution à la construction nationale*, Paris, Présence Africaine.

ARCHIVES DU MINREX, dossier 2h500/976, Coopération Cameroun/Grande-Bretagne 1972-1980.

Bakoto S. (2001), *Un certain itinéraire*, Paris, Editions des Ecrivains.

Bekono C. A. (2006), *Le Cameroun et les mouvements de libération nationale africains (1960-1990)*. Mémoire de Maîtrise en Histoire, Université de Yaoundé I, Cameroun.

Bekono C. A. (2014), *La politique migratoire de la France au Cameroun (1916-1990)*. Thèse de Doctorat/Ph.D. en Histoire, Université de Yaoundé I, Cameroun.

Chouala Y.A. (2014), *La politique extérieure du Cameroun. Doctrine, acteurs, processus et dynamiques régionales*, Paris, Karthala.

Eyelom F. (2003), *Le partage du Cameroun entre la France et l'Angleterre*, Paris, L'Harmattan.

*La Presse du Cameroun* (1963), n°3958, 15 juillet, pp.1-2.

*La Presse du Cameroun* (1966), n°4985, 13 décembre, pp.1-4.

Mouelle Kombi N. (1996), *La politique étrangère du Cameroun*, Paris, L'Harmattan.

Nlate Ndongo U.C. (2017), *Les relations Cameroun/Grande-Bretagne (1946-2011)*. Thèse de Doctorat/Ph.D. en Histoire, Université de Yaoundé I, Cameroun.

Ntuda Ebodé J.V. (2003), « La politique étrangère des Etats africains : ruptures et continuités d'une diplomatie contestée ». *Revue Juridique et Politique*, n°2 : pp.131-154.

Ngoh V.J. (1990), *Cameroun 1884-1885 : cent ans d'histoire*, Yaoundé, CEPER.
Oyono D. (1990), *Avec ou sans la France ? La politique africaine du Cameroun depuis 1960*, Paris, L'Harmattan.

Sindjoun L. (1999), « L'Afrique dans la science des relations internationales : notes introductives et provisoires pour une sociologie de la connaissance internationale ». *Revue Africaine de Sociologie*, 3(2) : pp.142-167.
# Land for Development? Neoliberal Restructuring and the Dynamics of Land Reforms in the Agrarian South | Uganda

Ashiraf Mugalula

## Introduction

In the early 1960s, Frantz Fanon argued that “[f]or a colonised people, the most essential value, because the most concrete, is first and foremost the land: land which will bring them bread and, above all, dignity” (Fanon 1963:44). These words have never lost credence in Africa; a continent that is still dominated by people whose existence is premised on subsistence activities based on land. Reflecting on peasants’ anti-colonial struggles, Fanon insisted that the peasants’ approach to the colonial question, of giving primacy to land and food questions, “may seem shrunken and limited, [but it] is, in the end, the most worthwhile and the most efficient mode of procedure” (1963:50). No late colonial context can disprove Fanon’s cogent observations, for late colonial political modernity was first and foremost a project propelled not just plainly by flagrant land dispossession but, most importantly, by the redefinition of social relations based on land (Mamdani 2017).

Fanon wrote in the early 1960s. But the issues he articulated are as relevant today as they were for the generation of the 1960s. In Uganda today, the catalogue of cases relating to what critics of call “land grabbing” are hard to exhaust (see for example Zeemeijer 2011; Grainger and Geary 2011; Martiniello 2013, 2015; Carmody and Tailor 2016; Ahikire et al. 2017; LASPNET 2019). In many of these cases, state bodies, private companies and organisations, foreign countries, finance capital and individual actors are involved in what one may call a “land-grabbing enterprise”. Any serious critical scholarly engagement with these practices in Uganda automatically takes one to the debate generated by the government’s attempts to make a law on Compulsory Land Acquisition.
Thus, this chapter aims at a preliminary theoretical
critique of discourses on Compulsory Land Acquisition in
Uganda. I critically analyse the centrality of “development” in the
proposed Compulsory Land Acquisition programme in the
context of the changing form of the state and state-society
relations because of neoliberalism. I argue that to fully grasp the
rationality behind Uganda’s proposed Compulsory Land
Acquisition programme, it is necessary to come to terms with the
present conjuncture of neoliberalism, and the implications of this
conjuncture for the state and its activities, including attempts to
engineer top-down legalistic reforms on land.

Discourses on Compulsory Land Acquisition in Uganda
are silent on the question of the form of the current state. There
is an overwhelming acceptance of the “developmental”<sup>98</sup> claims
of the current state as embedded in the official talk of needing
“land for development”. Current critical discourse on the
Compulsory Land Acquisition programme in Uganda merely
concentrates on the details of the programme, especially the
process of compensation. However, I argue in this chapter that
not only does the present conjuncture suggest a shift in the form
of the state, but the kind of “development” the Ugandan state is
pursuing has also changed. As previous cases of Compulsory
Land Acquisition in Uganda (explored later in the chapter) will
demonstrate, neoliberalism, despite its outspoken assault on the
state, actually requires, for its formation and consolidation, a
particular kind of state interventionism, one in favour of
neoliberal developmentalism. The implications of the proposed
Compulsory Land Acquisition programme, thus, cannot be
understood outside these shifts – shifts in the form of the state
and the nature of “development” it is pursuing.

<footnote n="98">⁹⁸ I here draw a distinction between what Issa Shivji (1989) calls the *ideology of development*, or *developmentalism*, and the notion of the “developmental state”. The independent, post-colonial state relied on the ideology of development to legitimize its operations but, at the same time, this state was “developmental” in the sense of its investments in productive activities, social services and so on. In this sense, the “developmental state” has not survived the onslaught of neoliberalism, but what Shivji called the *ideology of development*, or *developmentalism*, has – for up to now, as we shall see, the Ugandan state still finds it important to rationalize its activities in the name of “development”.</footnote>
# Land Reforms, Land Grabbing, and the Law:
A Review of Literature

It has been argued that the development process has been undergirded by the discourse and practice of law (Manji 2006). However, in contexts like Uganda, the centrality of the law in land reforms is a quite recent development. It comes to life only with the advent of colonial rule in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. With colonial political modernity, the law, as Manji (2006) rightly observes, *inter alia* served the development of capitalism. Before colonial political modernity, land reforms took different forms for different purposes. Archie Mafeje, for example, writes that 19th century *Kabakas* (kings) of Buganda Kingdom in present-day Uganda enforced reforms on land to centralise power, particularly by replacing *Bataka* (clan heads) with *Batongole* (centrally appointed chiefs) (Mafeje 1973). This historical insight speaks to the qualitative difference between pre-colonial and colonial (and post-colonial) land reforms. The 19th century *Kabakas* of Buganda Kingdom did not introduce *Batongole* in order to commodify land and human beings. Commodification is the milestone achieved by the colonial land reforms of 1900 in Uganda, thus aiding both colonial state formation and the development of capitalism in the country. It is thus arguable that the crowning moment for the law as the guiding rationality in Uganda's land reforms was 1900, with the signing of the Buganda Agreement. Over time, land reforms became increasingly depoliticised, as a pervasive legalism gradually took the place of politics. This legalism presents land reforms in a technical mould, as an *apolitical* process, which only requires the intervention of supposedly neutral legal experts.

## Land Grabbing and Land Reforms

Practices in which the state, in conjunction with other actors (private companies, foreign states, individual players, finance capital and so on), take over lands on which people live for multiple purposes (setting up large-scale agricultural enterprises, gazetting parks, carbon farming, construct infrastructures, etc.) have been theorised differently. Some writers
cautiously use the term “land grabbing”, while others critique the notion for conceptual inadequacy (see for instance Borras et al. 2010; Amanor 2012; Martiniello 2013; Mamdani 2013; Sachs 2015; Hall et al. 2015; Carmody and Tailor 2016). While emphasising the need to take into consideration changes in land use and property relations in communities subjected to these processes, Borras and Franco (2012:35) write that much as land grabbing was originally a politically loaded term, it has been depoliticised in the hands of international finance circles through the notion of “large-scale land investment” (see also Borras et al. 2010). Writing in the context of Northern Uganda, Martiniello (2013) prefers the term “new enclosures”, insisting that land grabbing should “be understood as a persistent process of capitalist primitive accumulation driven by power interests of (inter)national agribusiness” (2013:1). He generally draws on David Harvey’s conception of *accumulation by dispossession* as a continuous condition of late modern capitalism noting that, in the case of Africa, this is driven by an ideology that portrays the continent as endowed with abundant free land (2013:15). For Martiniello (2013:14), land grabbing is preceded by “a set of legal and political mechanisms as well as new economic disposition and social configurations”. In the case of Uganda, he observes that contemporary land grabbing is driven by neoliberal policies in agriculture (see also Mamdani 2013).

Literature on land reforms is wide-ranging (for instance, De Janvry 1981; Borras 2001; Bernstein 2002; Walker 2005; Moyo and Yeros 2005; Manji 2006; Moyo 2006, 2011). Moyo and Yeros (2005:52) classify land reforms into three broad categories: *state-led*, *market-led*, and *popular*. At different times and places, these models may be combined in different ways depending on the forces and interests involved. Overall, there is a degree of consensus around a distinction between “redistributive land reform” and “tenurial/legalistic land reform” (Borras 2001; Manji 2006; Moyo 2006). In this formulation, Structural Adjustment Programmes in Africa, and the subsequent advent of neoliberalism, led to the displacement of “redistributive land reforms” in favour of the law as a *modus operandi* for land reform. This pervasive legalism is said to be contrary to observed historical experiences in countries like Zimbabwe and Philippines
where social mobilisation in combination with elements of state reformism led to a generally successful land reform programme (Moyo 2006; Borras 2001<sup>99</sup>).

In instances where they are used in this chapter, *land grabbing* and *land dispossession*<sup>100</sup> are used interchangeably. I totally agree with Hall (2011) and others on the fact that not only is what is *grabbed* beyond land – to incorporate water, minerals, genetic resources, “cheap labour” and the like (see also Carmody and Tailor 2016). Additionally, the “grabbers” are not only foreign but also local<sup>101</sup>, not just individuals but also states, private companies, finance capital, to mention a few. If we take seriously what many scholars have observed as the post-1980 perversity of legalism in land reforms, we can think of the proposed Compulsory Land Acquisition programme in Uganda as a legalistic land reform programme – for it seeks to legally alter power relations on land between the state and citizens. To the extent that this legalistic land reform programme seeks to usher in a kind of “redistribution”, that is, from the majority to the few, from the poor to the rich, I argue that these “reforms” have much in common with previous forms of dispossession since the dawn of colonial political modernity. Yet still, to the extent that, through these reforms, the state (armed with the legitimising

<footnote n="99"><sup>99</sup> Borras analyses the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Programme (CARP) of the Philippines, where he dismisses the usual binary of state-centred/society-centred approaches to land reforms. For Borras, the success of the CARP program was premised on the interaction between reformist elements from the state and social mobilisation from society (i.e., from below).</footnote>

<footnote n="100"><sup>100</sup> This entails thinking of “dispossession” in the broader sense articulated by Butler and Athanasiou (2013:3), as “what happens when people lose their land, their citizenship, their means of livelihood and become subject to military and legal violence.”</footnote>

<footnote n="101"><sup>101</sup> In the case of Uganda, Kafureeka's (1992:79-80) work in Mbarara district of Uganda notes the following about local land grabbers: “[they] tend to survey and fence semi-communal lands which they refer to as individually owned land, but to which the rest of people still have some use rights. They avoid areas where there are permanent developments for fear of stiff resistance. Fencing land, which is being used as semi-communal land increases pressure on the rest of the community. This results into conditional sales due to lack of grazing areas or firewood. This is at times followed by punishing anybody caught trespassing fenced land. This itself is in disregard of the fact that they fence off paths and do not allow even goats to graze, under the pretext of disease control”.</footnote>
language of *eminent domain, development*, etc.) confiscates land from citizens only to offer it to private profiteers, it must be emphasised that this process brings in something new, one that cannot be understood without coming to grips with the nature and function of the postcolonial state under neoliberalism.

## “Compulsory Land Acquisition” and the Politics of Naming

Within Uganda's official circles, “Compulsory Land Acquisition” is used to denote the ensemble of state practices involving forced takeover of privately owned and/or communally/customarily owned lands and properties with the claim that these will be used for the “public good”. These processes go back to colonial times. For instance, the colonial state required more land to expand Makerere College (now Makerere University) and to set up an experimental cotton station for the Empire Cotton Growing Corporation, so it moved swiftly to use Article 15 of the 1900 Buganda Agreement, which gave the state powers to compulsorily acquire any land in the colony for “public works”. However, because the language of “public works” could not fit into the purposes for which this land was required, the colonial state moved to amend the language of Article 15 from “public works” to “public purposes”, which was also resisted (LASPNET 2019: 49). Such tactics have continued into the post-colonial period. The independent state's many “development projects” since the 1960s were all rationalised in the name of “development” and the “public good”, even when “a tragedy in the commons” (Toulmin 2005:4731) ensued due to their implementation (see for example Mafeje 1973; Kafureeka 1992; Muhereza 2001). The contemporary debate on Compulsory Land Acquisition in Uganda simply adds another layer to this historical development.

Colonial acts involving state acquisition of large chunks of land and displacement of villages for whatever purpose (whether to “control tsetse flies”, set up “experimental schemes” to mention a few – see Bonneuil 2000) are today rightly conceptualised as *forced removals* (see especially Mamdani 2017). This is because there was a complete disregard for the people
concerned who were, in the colonial political order of things, *subjects* as opposed to *citizens* (Mamdani 2017). Post-colonial equivalents, from the ranching schemes of the 1960s to the present-day sugarcane plantations and carbon forests, are ironically called “development projects”. The reason for the distinction is because a *qualitative* difference is generally assumed between the colonial and post-colonial practice of “development”. The latter is assumed to be a pro-people development, unlike the former, which, as Mamdani cogently observes, was propelled by a regime of compulsions: of forced labour, forced crops, forced sales, forced removals, and forced contributions, all undergirded by a regime of containerised Native Authorities (Mamdani 2017)<fnref n="102" />. The distinction, between colonial and post-colonial practices of development, obfuscates significantly, particularly when it comes to projects in our neoliberal age. Many of these projects share key characteristics with colonial *forced removals*. To maintain a distinction between colonial *forced removals* and post-colonial *development projects* is to overestimate the discontinuity between colonial and post-colonial development practices, and hence foreclose the possibility of colonial elements in the postcolony, as well as missing the point *apropos* of shifts in the form of the state because of neoliberalism (for an elaborated critique, see in particular Moyo and Yeros 2005; Shivji 2008).

**Background to Uganda's Compulsory Land Acquisition Programme**

The most recent top-down legalistic intervention in Uganda's land matters is the proposed law on Compulsory Land Acquisition, through the “Compulsory Land Acquisition Bill 2019” (henceforth, CLAB 2019). The aim of the proposed law is

<footnote n="102">¹⁰² For Mahmood Mamdani (2017), force, which sums up the regime of compulsions, was constitutive of the colonial notion of “development”, and in his view “development” continued to be backed up by force even after independence, particularly in “radical” post-colonial states like Tanzania.</footnote>
to repeal the Land Acquisition Act of 1965¹⁰³. The Government insists that this new law is in the interest of the country's “development”<fnref n="104" />. The immediate context to this law is the failed Constitutional Amendment Bill (2017), which had sought to amend Article 26 (2) of the Uganda Constitution (1995). The point of amending Article 26 (2) of the Constitution was to remove the constitutional requirement for government to adequately compensate land and property owners prior to taking possession of their properties. The larger context is the ruling by the Constitutional Court in 2013¹⁰⁵, and its affirmation by the Supreme Court in 2014¹⁰⁶, on the unconstitutionality of Section 7(1) of the 1965 Land Acquisition Act<fnref n="107" />, which had empowered the line minister to acquire any land and possess it in the “public interest” before adequate compensation to property owners (Muhindo 2017; Parliament of Uganda 2018; LASPNET 2019).

The court ruling in 2013, reaffirmed in 2014, was significant at least in one important sense: it created a disjuncture between the current regime and all previous regimes since colonial times on matters concerning land. All previous regimes had legal provisions enabling them to confiscate people's land and properties in the name of “public good/interest/purposes”

<footnote n="103">¹⁰³ See *Daily Monitor*, March 21, 2019, “Government softens on compulsory land acquisition”, available: https://www-monitor.co.ug/News/National/Govt-softens-compulsory-land-acquisition/688334-5034818-3ax3l7/index.html</footnote>

<footnote n="104">¹⁰⁴ On this point, see next section below.</footnote>

<footnote n="105">¹⁰⁵ For the details of the case, see: “Advocates for Natural Resources Governance and Development; Irumba Asumani; Peter Magelah versus Attorney General; Uganda National Roads Authority”, Constitutional Petition number 40 of 2013. Available:</footnote>

<footnote>https://ulii.org/ug/judgment/supreme-court-uganda/2013/10</footnote>

<footnote n="106">¹⁰⁶ For the details of the case, see: “Uganda National Road Authority Versus Irumba Asumani; Peter Magelah”, Constitutional Appeal No. 02 of 2014. Available: https://ulii.org/ug/judgment/supreme-court/2015/22</footnote>

<footnote n="107">¹⁰⁷ For details of the Act, see: https://ulii.org/ug/legislation/consolidated-act/226</footnote>
and “development”. The colonial government used Article 15¹⁰⁸ of its 1900 Buganda Agreement; the first post-colonial government enacted the 1965 Land Acquisition Act<fnref n="109" />; while the Amin regime enacted the 1975 Land Reform Decree – all to serve similar ends. The current regime, despite making a new constitution in 1995 and a Land Act in 1998, continued to invoke the 1965 Land Acquisition Act to effect compulsory land acquisition before adequate compensation until this was declared unconstitutional.

The suspension of these powers by the Supreme Court in 2014 forced the government to find ways to reinstate the same powers. The first move was to disguise the importation of provisions of the 1965 Land Acquisition Act into the prevailing constitution in the form of a “constitutional amendment”. This move backfired, and the government withdrew the constitutional amendment bill<fnref n="110" />. In the meantime, the government moved to prepare a bill on Compulsory Land Acquisition. This move culminated in an officially sanctioned, NGO-led, “National Dialogue on Compulsory Land Acquisition in Uganda”, with the

<footnote n="108">¹⁰⁸ The key (last) paragraph of article 15 of the agreement states: “Her Majesty's Government, however, reserves to itself the right to carry through or construct roads, railways, canals, telegraphs, or other useful public works, or to build military forts or works of defense on any property, public or private, with the condition that not more than 10 per centum of the property in question shall be taken up for these purposes without compensation, and that compensation shall be given for the disturbance of growing crops or of buildings”. Available: http://www.kituochakatiba.org/sites/default/files/legal-resources/The%20Buganda%20Agreement%201900.pdf</footnote>

<footnote n="109">¹⁰⁹ The controversial article 7(1) of this act, through which the line minister could take possession of any land/property in the “public interest” before compensation, states thus: “Where a declaration has been published in respect of any land, the assessment officer shall take possession of the land as soon as he or she has made his or her award under section 6; except that he or she may take possession at any time after the publication of the declaration if the Minister certifies that it is in the public interest for him or her to do so.” Available: https://ulii.org/ug/legislation/consolidated-act/226</footnote>

<footnote n="110">¹¹⁰ See Parliament of Uganda, 2018, “Government withdraws constitutional amendment bill 2017”, available: https://www.parliament.go.ug/news/2182/government-withdraws-constitution-amendment-bill-2017 see also: *Daily Monitor* September 5, 2018, “Government withdraws land amendment bill”, available: http://www.monitor.co.ug/News/National/Government-withdraws-Land-Amendment-Bill/688334-4743898-e8jcv7/</footnote>
first one held in Kampala on March 21, 2019<sup>111</sup>. Co-funded by the government of Uganda and the Embassy of Germany, the “dialogue” saw a curious convergence of actors and interests: the state, (land) NGOs, the academia, the “donor community”, to mention a few.

Attending this dialogue, one could not help asking: why was LANDnet, a local “Land NGO”, leading the organising of a state-sanctioned dialogue on land issues? What more could a land NGO bring on board that the state could not? Obviously, it could not be financial resources, given the fact that the dialogue was already co-funded by the government of Uganda and the Germans. However, considering the fact that the government failed twice on the issue<sup>112</sup>, the shift from imposing the state’s legal solutions, to “dialogue” before legal reforms, necessarily meant that a “neutral” actor had to be sought after, even if for no other reason than public relations. Yet allusions to “neutrality” became immediately questionable when the same organisers began expressing worries for investors<sup>113</sup>. Moreover, the option

<footnote n="111"><sup>111</sup> See: https://www.landnet.ug/national-dialogue-compulsory-land-acquisition-uganda</footnote>

<footnote n="112"><sup>112</sup> First in the Supreme Court appeal case against the annulment of section 7(1) of the 1965 Land Acquisition Act, and then in the Constitutional Amendment Bill 2017.</footnote>

<footnote n="113"><sup>113</sup> The Ambassador of Germany, in his speech to the National Dialogue on Compulsory Land Acquisition held in Kampala on March 21 2019, gave a brief background to Uganda government's search for a “neutral” actor to organise a national dialogue on land reforms: “Over a year ago, in a discussion with State House representatives who were worried – like myself – about the reluctance of German investors to propose new projects for Uganda, I was asked whether the German Embassy could assist the Government of Uganda to facilitate a national dialogue on compulsory land acquisition. I was made to understand that in view of the complicated and often heated discussions in the local media ever since the first attempts to ease compulsory land acquisition had been made, State House seemed adamant to find a neutral broker to facilitate a technical exchange at national level between experts and key stakeholders from Government, Academia, Civil Society and the Private Sector. (...) Together with GIZ [Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit – a German Development Agency], very experienced in the related sector, my Embassy has taken the initiative for organising this National Dialogue. With the full buy-in of the Government of Uganda and LANDnet as our partner, we established a steering committee, bringing together for a free-wheeling dialogue government agencies, development partners, CSOs [Civil Society Organizations], and the private sector” (see Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany 2019, emphasis added).</footnote>
for a city-based “dialogue” held in English, as opposed to a
countrywide debate in people’s languages, made the neutrality of
the organisers even more questionable.

The Case for Compulsory Land Acquisition in Uganda

The official theme for Uganda's Compulsory Land Acquisition programme is that the government needs “land for development”. From this perspective, the state is portrayed as the harbinger of the “development process”. Here I go through some of the arguments related to this, from both the official and non-official points of view.

In 2017, during the first attempt to amend Article 26 (2) of the 1995 Uganda Constitution, the lead Ministry (of Lands, Housing and Urban Development – henceforth MLHUD) argued that “compulsory acquisition is a critical development tool for Governments, and for ensuring that land is available when needed for essential infrastructure – a contingency that land markets are not always able to meet” (MLHUD 2017: 2). This initial proposition depicts Compulsory Land Acquisition as a tool with which the state outsmarts market forces.

In this era of the “second internationalised development agenda” (see Banjwa 2017), governments and other entities in the global South feel obliged to align their activities to the blueprint of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), even if mechanically. The SDGs provide an easy legitimation for all sorts of programmes. Thus, the Ministry of Lands insists that Compulsory Land Acquisition is necessary because “sustainable development requires governments to provide public facilities and infrastructure…” (MLHUD 2017:2). For this reason, the Ministry argues that “it is critical [to] expedite the process of land acquisition for strategic and development activities…” (MLHUD 2017:7).

According to the MLHUD, the then proposed amendment was to enable the government to obtain “*land for development* purposes without depriving the property owners the right to prompt, fair and adequate compensation, prior to taking possession of the property” (MLHUD 2017:11, emphasis added). This statement itself is a contradiction in terms, considering the
fact that the government was introducing the amendment to do away with Article 26 (2) of the 1995 Uganda Constitution, which emphasises prior and prompt compensation before the government's possession of private/communal property. The Ministry deeply detested this requirement because, once the amount proposed by the government valuer is “rejected by the property owner or persons having interest in property, Government cannot proceed with payment as per the Constitutional requirement and thus Government cannot take possession to proceed with the development projects” (MLHUD 2017:25).

In their rejection of the above amendment, members of parliament on the Committee of Legal and Parliamentary Affairs (see Parliament of Uganda 2018) did not object to the official position on compulsory land acquisition, but only suggested that it was better to address the issues within the framework of the Land Acquisition Act, instead of amending the constitution. Hence, in replicating the language of the Ministry of Lands (see above), the committee emphasised that “Compulsory acquisition is a critical development tool for governments, and for ensuring that land is available when needed for essential infrastructure, a contingency that land markets are not always able to meet” (Parliament of Uganda 2018:5).

In her ministerial statement to the first “National Dialogue on Compulsory Land Acquisition in Uganda”, the then Minister of Lands, Housing and Urban Development, Betty Amongi Ongom, revealed that “[the Compulsory Land Acquisition Bill 2019] has been drafted [...] to bring it into conformity with Article 26 of the Constitution of Uganda” (Amongi Ongom 2019). The new bill “is expected to facilitate expeditious compulsory acquisition of land by Government or Local Government to avoid delaying Government or Local Government infrastructure and investment projects, while at the same time, allowing for persons dissatisfied with the compensation amount awarded to resolve the disputes in court...” (Amongi Ongom 2019). The idea that matters can be resolved in courts, as the government puts the acquired land to use as per its proposed purposes, is key to the proposed law: it creates the *façade* of prior and prompt payment before acquisition
of private/communal properties as required by the prevailing (1995) Constitution.

In the same forum, the German Ambassador to Uganda, whose embassy co-organised the event, reiterated the Ugandan government's need for “infrastructural development” and overall “further development” of the country. In his speech, the Ambassador revealed why Uganda's “German [development] partners” and investors were not proposing new development projects, an issue that worried the Ugandan government dearly. The problem was land. In particular, it was decried that investor acquisition of land in Uganda is a very cumbersome process, which alienated development partners and investors like those from Germany (Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany 2019).

## Critical Responses to Uganda's Compulsory Land Acquisition Programme

The discourse of (especially Land) NGOs provides the initial critical response to Uganda's Compulsory Land Acquisition programme. Yet still, these NGOs have no quarrels with the official claim that government needs “land for development”. They rightly critique the failure of the government to guarantee rights of the poor and the vulnerable (especially women and children) without interrogating the claim that needed lands are for “development” purposes. Hence the Land and Equity Movement of Uganda (LEMU) talks of the need to find a middle ground, where “Government can implement its development plans, communities can enjoy the infrastructure and services which they need and people can also be secure that their Government is protecting their rights” (LEMU 2009a, 200b. cf. LANDnet 2019; LASPNET 2019; Muhindo 2017; ANARDE 2017).

Yet, even amidst this rather stark image of acquiescence with the official claim of needing “land for development”, there are some voices that went beyond it. In an open letter to the parliament of Uganda over the proposed Constitutional Amendment Bill 2017, Oxfam Uganda reminded the members of parliament: “[Y]ou must not sacrifice your people at the altar of development…” (see Oxfam Uganda 2018). The then head of the
Uganda Human Rights Commission, Med Kaggwa, asked searching questions of the “development” said to be driving the government’s push for Compulsory Land Acquisition: “Development for whom and for what? Closing playing fields and building shopping malls for the public which doesn’t have purchasing power?”¹¹⁴. In his keynote speech to the first “National Dialogue on Compulsory Acquisition in Uganda”, Mamdani (2019) cautioned attendants to be vigilant when it comes to official development discourse. “Developmental talk” argued Mamdani, “needs to be put to public scrutiny: how aligned is it to the public good? Does the half-billion-dollar hospital...[serve] the public good? Does every infrastructural project serve the public good?” (Mamdani 2019).

As I argue in this chapter, the form of the state is key to understanding the rationale behind the proposed Compulsory Land Acquisition Programme. Since the form of the state is taken for granted in many discussions on Compulsory Land Acquisition in Uganda, the version of development pursued by a particular form of state is also taken for granted. Yet any hope for “benefits” from the “land for development” agenda being aggressively pushed must first of all seek to understand what kind of “development” it is. I argue that both the form of the state and the kind of “development” it is pursuing cannot be understood unless one understands fully the implications to both of the present conjuncture of neoliberalism in vogue since the 1980s. Scrutinising both the form of the current state and the developmentalism that accompanies its discourse on land reform is vital if we are to fully grasp, as Bernstein (2004) would put it, what is *changing before our very eyes*.

## Beyond the Official Narrative

Is the current Ugandan state “developmental” as official talk on Compulsory Land Acquisition would have us believe? Are there differences between Uganda’s post-independence state of

<footnote>114See *New Vision*, September 17, 2016. “Hold referendum on compulsory land acquisition”. Available: https://www.newvision.co.ug/new_vision/news/1435535/hold-referendum-compulsory-land-acquisition</footnote>
the 1960s and the current (post-1980) state? These are important questions to ask before buying into the “land for development” talk. The assumption of continuity when it comes to the nature of the state since the 1960s, an assumption that is at the heart of official talk on Compulsory Land Acquisition in Uganda, is one that should be challenged. For much has changed since the 1960s, and, if in this sense only, new dynamics and conjunctures (Young 2004) have to be taken seriously. For our present moment, the 1980s’ decade marks an important dynamic, the rise of neoliberalism, and this has had a definitive impact on the form of the state and its role in society.

Perhaps it is high time we discarded a widely shared certitude according to which 21st century states, especially those in the global South, can be inserted into the category of “developmental states”, similar to their 20th century counterparts in South East Asia and elsewhere. Bagchi (2000:398), for instance, suggests that under capitalism, the state remains “developmental” but it “puts economic development as the top priority of governmental policy and is able to design effective instruments to promote such a goal”. Along similar lines, a recent volume on the subject edited by Michelle Williams suggests that what is different between 20th and 21st century “developmental states” are the conditions that these states must face. In the case of 21st century states, the authors suggest that “economic restructuring” (moving from industry to knowledge and service production), “domestic politics” (democratisation), epistemic shifts (from development as growth to more inclusive social and human development) as well as ecological limits (care for the natural environment) constitute the magic wand for the success of 21st century developmental states (Williams 2014a: xiii, 2014b: 8). Evans, drawing on Amartya Sen, calls such states “capability-expanding developmental states” (Evans 2014: 235).

The idea that “development” continues to be an important language of states in the 21st century is quite incontestable. That does not mean the category “developmental” should follow automatically when it comes to 21st century states especially, in our case, post-colonial states. In an important sense, it seems helpful to draw a distinction between “developmentalism” and the “developmental state”.
*Developmentalism* as a legitimation ideology, what Issa Shivji (1989) has called “the ideology of development”, is different from the “developmental state”. One can say that all post-colonial states in Africa have relied on developmentalism, but all have not necessarily been “developmental”, if by a “developmental state” we narrowly refer to that active state which not only engaged in investment and production (for instance, in Africa, through state-controlled parastatals), but also vigorously engaged in provisioning for public goods and services (such as roads, educational and health facilities among others)<fnref n="115" />. The year 1980 becomes critical in the life of the “developmental state” narrowly seen in this sense.

It seems to me that the common ground for developmental states is to be found not in the reliance on developmentalism as an ideology, which, as I have indicated, is a terrain shared with the state after 1980, but in the direct interventionism of these states in production and investment through state-controlled entities, and in state provisioning for public goods and services. The neoliberal turn since the 1980s marked the end of that kind of developmental state. As Shivji (2007:25) cogently observes, with neoliberalism, “the developmental role of the state is declared dead and buried”. “Instead”, Shivji argues, “it is assigned the role of ‘chief’ to supervise the globalisation project under the tutelage of imperial – now called development partners or ‘true friends’” (Shivji 2007:25; see also Fine 1999). This “chief supervisor of the globalisation project”, or what Frantz Fanon foresaw as “the general president of a company of profiteers” (Fanon 1963: 166), is what we can call the post-colonial neoliberal state.

<footnote n="115">¹¹⁵Shivji (2007) has observed that this “developmental” move was rendered possible by the earlier colonial suppression of the development of an African middle class which would have been at the forefront of production and investment in the period after independence. The independent state had to do it on its own. He writes: “[I]he colonial state had deliberately suppressed and undermined the development of a middle class, which would have become an agency for development. So, it fell to the state. Regardless of the variety of the ideology, whether capitalist or nominally socialist, the state became a site of private and public accumulation. The public sector played the dominant role in all African countries, from socialist Tanzania to capitalist Malawi” (Shivji 2007:14).</footnote>
secure funding from the German “development agency” GIZ/GTZ, and from the African Development Bank (AfDB) (for more on this, see Doss et al. 2014; Borras et al. 2016; FIAN 2016; Ahikire et al. 2017; Vertin 2019).

Another case involves a local sugar corporation, Kakira Sugar Works (owned by a local conglomerate, Madhvani group), moving to establish another sugar estate (Amuru Sugar Works) in Amuru district of Northern Uganda. The contestation was on ownership of the land in question. The District Land Board (DLB) claimed the land belonged to it, while the communities concerned maintained that this was land owned customarily, and that the 1998 Land Act safely protects their rights. Like in the case of Neumann Kaffe, the government and officials from Madhvani group maintained that the land in question was empty! The unspoken reality was that by the time the land was surveyed, people were still being forcefully interned in Internally Displaced Peoples’ Camps as a result of the fighting between government forces and the Lord’s Resistance Army rebels. Madhvani had hoped for 40,000 hectares with government owning 40 per cent shares in the company. However, the initial lease granted in 2008 by the DLB was for 20,000 hectares (see Martiniello 2013: 10; Doss et al. 2014; Ahikire et al. 2017; Madhvani 2012). In this case, the whole government apparatus, including the head of state<fnref n="117" />, was deployed to corner residents into accepting to sacrifice their land in the name of “development”.

As contestation over the land in question continued, Mayur Madhvani (see Madhvani 2012), a Managing Director at Kakira Sugar Works, opined in 2012 that the “Amuru Sugar Project *will bring development to Northern Uganda*” (emphasis added)<fnref n="118" />. Despite reports to the contrary, Madhvani maintained the claim that the land in question was isolated, and “totally free of inhabitants”, and that it had “no infrastructure such as electricity, water or proper roads”. He compares Northern

<footnote n="117">¹¹⁷See *Observer*, August 18, 2017: “Museveni intervenes in Amuru land saga”. Available: https://observer.ug/news/headlines/54460-museveni-intervenes-in-amuru-land-saga</footnote>

<footnote n="118">¹¹⁸See *Daily Monitor*, February 9, 2012. Available: https://mobile.monitor.co.ug/Oped/691272-1322852-format-xhtml-ds78ymz/index.html</footnote>
Uganda (Amuru) with Busoga region, where Kakira Sugar Works is located: while the latter is now “developed”, thanks to his Sugar Works, the former is not. It is for this reason, he argues, that his Sugar Company is taking “development to Northern Uganda” through the establishment of a new sugar plant. However, on the company’s out-grower scheme in Busoga region (celebrated by Madhvani), a study by Martiniello concludes that in areas where the scheme operates, there is a clear “trajectory of agrarian change characterised by social differentiation, dispossession and expulsion of poor or less competitive peasants from sugar agro-extractive poles to make space for capitalist entrepreneurs and more commercially-oriented farmers” (Martiniello 2020: 13; 2017: 15).

Besides Mubende and Amuru cases, there are numerous other cases involving government and big agricultural finance capital. Oxfam International analyses the case of New Forests Company (NFC) in which the government undertook forced eviction of over 22,000 people branded “illegal encroachers” in order to clear land for NFC in Kiboga, Mubende and Bugiri districts (Grainger and Geary 2011). In Mayuge and Dokolo districts, Lyons and Westoby (2014) have written about the “dark side of green”, which they have described as “carbon colonialism”, in which between 8,000 and 40,000 residents have been forcefully evicted by the government since 1996 to pave way for carbon trading forests of a Norwegian plantation forestry company, Green Resources<fnref n="119" />. In the case of Apaa in Northern Uganda, the government demarcated over 20,000 hectares of land for “conservation” and tourist purposes, fuelling a conflict that is still ongoing (Martiniello 2013:13). There is also a case in which the District Land Board awarded highly placed political personalities<fnref n="120" /> huge chunks of land belonging to internally displaced people (Martiniello 2013:13).

A longer version of these cases since 2007 is listed by Zeemeijer (2011:99). Zeemeijer lists 24 cases in the period of four

<footnote n="119">¹¹⁹Available at: https://www.oaklandinstitute.org/sites/oaklandinstitute.org/files/Report_DarkSideofGreen_hirez.pdf</footnote>

<footnote n="120">¹²⁰Specifically, General Julius Oketa and Harriet Aber, wife of General Salim Saleh, the president's brother.</footnote>
years, between 2007 and 2011 (some of the cases he lists, such as Amuru Sugar Works and Neumann Kaffe have an earlier presence as above mentioned). What is striking about this list is the fact that an overwhelming number of cases (18 of the 24) are private companies, local and foreign<fnref n="121" />. Others are collaborations between government bodies and other companies or states (3 cases), investments in Uganda by other states (2 cases) and one case by a government body (Uganda Wildlife Authority). Yet many as they are within such a short period of time, these cases are just a tip of the iceberg. Martiniello (2013:2), citing Friis and Reenberg (2010:12), notes that 14 per cent of the national agricultural land in Uganda is covered by land deals involving foreign corporations and states.

Among other negative implications, critics of these cases
have given primacy to the human rights abuses on these projects;
the gendered nature of these projects (for instance, Ahikire et al.
2017); and exploitation of the locals (including grabbing their
land without adequate and prior compensation). In the end, the
"solutions" they advance do not escape the legalism decried by
writers like Manji (2006). And as Harvey (2005: 70) observes,
legalism fits well into the neoliberal framework, which despises
any democratic exercise.

Learning from Past Experience

*First of all*, the cases above are key to understanding the
changing form of the state and the reconfiguration of the state-
society relations in the “age of globalisation [/neoliberalism]”
(Shivji 2008). These cases are key to understanding what is meant
by “development” in the official rhetoric of “land for
development”. From these cases, we see clearly that debating the
Compulsory Land Acquisition programme with allusions to the

<footnote n="121">¹²¹These include: BIDCO in Kalangala which is already possessing 10,000 hectares and plans for 40,000 hectares; Neumann Kaffe (2,512 hectares, Mubende district); New Forest Company (9,300 hectares, Mubende, Kiboga and Bugiri); Hebei company (40,500 hectares in 8-10 years, Masindi district); Mukwano Group (2,833 hectares, Masindi district); Zziwa ranches (15,378 hectares in Masindi); Nexus Biodiesel Ltd. (400 hectares in Masindi) among others.</footnote>
developmental form of the current state is a very questionable assumption. It is to underestimate the transformative nature of the era of structural adjustment and more recent neoliberal restructuring. These and many other cases thus demonstrate that the contemporary post-colonial state, like its immediate post-independence counterpart, deploys developmentalism as a legitimation ideology (hence the talk of “land for development”). But it is not the active, interventionist state of the 1960s, “doing development” itself through state-controlled parastatals and the like.

If the current post-colonial state in Uganda is interventionist, it is only so to the extent that is necessary to pave way for the march of private capital. This is a particularly important point, considering the conventional view of neoliberalism as an essentially anti-state ideology. Considering these cases, one unavoidable conclusion is that in practice, against the commonplace assumption, the consolidation and reproduction of neoliberalism actually requires an interventionist state, one that can use its coercive instruments to avail land for capitalist development in agriculture. As we have seen in the few cases highlighted above, this state will deploy all tools at its disposal (legal, police, military, and the like) to ensure that nothing stands in the way of private capital. I suggest that the proposed legal fix in the name of Compulsory Land Acquisition must be placed in this context. Ashis Nandy (2010:295) writes that “the state [in third world societies] often looks like some kind of specialised coercive apparatus or private business venture”. To the extent that this is true, such speciality in coercion cannot be delinked from the grand task of safeguarding the neoliberal order.

*Secondly,* and related to the above, these and other cases clearly demonstrate that by “land for development”, it is not meant that the state exclusively, or even primarily, requires land to establish so-called “public infrastructures”. By “land for development”, what is meant, at least from the above cases, is that the state needs land to facilitate the development of capitalism, particularly the development of capitalism in the countryside. As Mamdani has observed in his contribution to Uganda’s Compulsory Land Acquisition debate (Mamdani 2019),
the guiding ideology in this move is that the panacea to “rural [capitalist] development” is the penetration of capital in these areas. This is the spirit in which a person of Madhvani’s (2012) stature can mockingly write that his Sugar Corporation is “bring[ing] development to Northern Uganda”!

It seems to me that in trying to resolve the agrarian question of transition (to capitalism), Uganda’s post-colonial neoliberal state resorts to force not in the classical Preobrazhensky-ian sense (of “socialist primitive accumulation” – see Akram-Lodhi and Kay 2010), but to root for and protect private companies in these areas. Toulmin (2005) has called this development the “new tragedy in the commons”, a phenomenon peculiar to the age of neoliberalism. Lin Chun (2015:137) observed similar developments in India and China, where “enclosures” since the 1990s are defended “in the name of modernisation”. Like in the Ugandan case, Chun notes that in both China and India, “the deprivation of variously land-dependent communities is the work of big capital-developers, investors, agro-businessmen, financiers, and the like – much as the state” (Chun 2015:137).

Thirdly, the above cases are also illuminating on the question of “land reform” in the context of Uganda’s proposed Compulsory Land Acquisition Programme. Within literature on land reforms, a distinction is drawn between “tenurial/legal” land reforms and “redistributive” land reforms. Manji (2006), for instance, emphasises that under neoliberalism, “tenurial/[legalistic] land reform” has displaced “redistributive land reform”, with the effect that the question of land reform under neoliberalism has been completely depoliticised. For Martiniello (2015:5), “neoliberal land (tenure) reforms switched focus from land redistribution to land reforms, from politics to law, with the effect of depoliticising the debate and neutralising alternative paths of reforms”. The point is to assign “tenurial/legal land reforms” to the post-1980 neoliberal era, and “redistributive land reforms” to an earlier period. In an important sense, the Ugandan cases above reveal a trajectory beyond the “tenurial” vs. “redistributive” land reforms binary. A kind of land “redistribution” can be observed which takes a “consolidative” form, in which the state forcefully dispossesses the majority to
offer such lands to the few, from the “poor” to the “rich” – and
the law is used to facilitate this process. This is precisely what
happens when the government, using the state apparatus (police,
army, lawyers, and the like), evicts thousands and tens of
thousands of people off their land in order to lease it to a single
“investor”.

Conclusion

This chapter has aimed at a preliminary theoretical
critique of the discourse on Compulsory Land Acquisition in
Uganda. In a discursive environment where official
“developmental” claims that accompany the push for
Compulsory Land Acquisition are generally taken for granted,
this chapter has raised the question of the form of the state
prevailing in Uganda today. The chapter has also raised questions
on the nature of development being pursued by this particular
state form on lands acquired by force from citizens. If the idea of
“land for development”, central to the official narrative on
Compulsory Land Acquisition in Uganda, has resulted in a
coupling of a regime of state-led forced land acquisition with the
notion of “state-driven development”, I have argued that today
we need to decouple these to allow for a historically and
contextually informed query on the implications of top-down
legalistic land reforms in a post-colonial neoliberal context. For a
country like Uganda that faithfully implemented the post-1980s
World Bank/IMF-dictated Structural Adjustment Programmes
(SAPs), the “developmental” assumption regarding the current
state is untenable – particularly if one takes seriously the
neoliberal turn SAPs ushered into the country, and its effect on
the form of the state and state-society relations. With the change
in the form of the state and its role in society because of
neoliberalism, the kind of “development” being pursued
ultimately changed. This is what inter alia the cases above
indicate, in which it is often the case that compulsorily acquired
lands ended up in the hands of private profiteers. With this, it
becomes untenable to think of neoliberalism as essentially an
anti-state ideology. It emerges from these cases that the
consolidation of neoliberalism requires an interventionist state,
one that can, for instance, use its coercive instruments to avail
land for capitalist development in agriculture.

To take seriously the current neoliberal conjuncture in
the life of a post-colonial state like Uganda helps us to realise
how such sweeping powers sought after via a law on Compulsory
Land Acquisition can be excessively abused by this state. As it
turns out in the few cases briefly explored above, the post-
colonial neoliberal state cannot, to use Karl Polanyi's (1944)
iconic phrase, champion society's "self-protection" against the
onslaught of capitalism. With issues as these in mind, the
question before us remains whether or not, in a post-colonial
neoliberal context, legalistic land reforms can be meaningful
without state reform.

I also sought to engage two key positions in the debate
on decolonization and land for development in the study of
Uganda. Within nationalist discourse, the debate on land is
effectively locked within the framework of development
discourse – hence the concerns for public land, and so on. The
question of development is not explored beyond these
parameters, which leaves many issues unraised, such as the
implications of having a “national development” to the private
property rights regime in Uganda, and political power, to mention
a few. The work of Mamdani (1996; 2017) raises important
questions to this debate. First, is it possible to think of
decolonization within the sphere of land and development
without taking on the past experiences or colonial legacies by the
nationalist, at times nativist stance of rejecting the whole land for
development language as foreign? In the case of p'Bitek, the
question relates to the possibility of differentiating between
cultural languages and “official” or “national” languages. In my
view, the debate on land for development by the modern state in
the global south in a colonial and postcolonial context like
Uganda cannot be understood outside the structures of colonial
political modernity [colonial legacies]. Even when it manages to
creatively transcend the constraints of indirect rule colonialism
necessarily imposed, it would be analytically reckless in such a
context to render development absolute, unencumbered.

By learning from the past, policymakers, urban planners,
and communities in the Global South can develop strategies that
promote sustainable, inclusive, and resilient land development practices. This involves recognizing the diversity of experiences within and between countries and tailoring approaches to specific contexts. The changing land policy and legislation and increasing constraints to land access for public use call for rethinking in terms of policy and practices regarding land acquisition. This underscores the need for the review of the top-down procedures and practices of land acquisition for public use, for more transparency and accountability.

Thus, my broad base argument is that we should try and understand the land for development claim as a political claim because it is seen to fall under a larger political project. This is not to say that land cannot be taken for development purposes but for the fact that it is a historical fact which has often been used politically and supported, aided, and enforced by the legal apparatus. We have seen dispossession which are conducted with the aid of the state, and this is institutionally and legally undergirded by the state – the post-colonial state. The legal is being used now as a particular form of statecraft aimed at rewarding “private capital” yet inconsiderate of the poor. Ensuring access to land by both the state and investors has been challenging and the result has been resorting to the legal to solve issues which are economic, political, and social. Not all development serves the interests of the public, most of it serves private interest but the legal reform claims it is public and so the public should give in their land to facilitate development. I am not arguing that development is bad or that whenever the state seeks to access land it’s for private interests, I argue that the state has often used legal reform to meet the private interests of individual persons and investors. Society should be at the forefront of defining the development for which they can avail their land. This means reinstitution of a system where society determines its relations with the state as was the case in the precolonial period. I am not saying that the precolonial was better, but we can draw some relevant lessons to better the situation today.
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Autores / Authors

Aline Andriguetto

Doctora en Derecho Público por la Universidade do Vale do Rio
dos Sinos (UNISINOS). Miembro del Centro de Investigaciones
en Derechos Humanos de Unisinos. Tiene Maestría en Derecho
por la Universidade Regional Integrada do Alto Uruguai e das
Missões (URI). Actualmente es profesora de la carrera de
Derecho del Centro Universitario Cenecista de Osório
(UNICNEC).

Ashiraf Mugalula

Doctor en Ciencia Política por la Universidad de Glasgow.
Profesor e investigador en la Universidad Internacional Al-
Mustafa, trabajando con cuestiones agrarias y de la tierra,
neoliberalismo y regímenes de derechos de propiedad privada,
desarrollo económico local, relaciones Estado-sociedad y
poder/autoridad consuetudinarios. Ha sido Investigador Visitante
en el Centro de Estudios Africanos de la Universidad de
Cambridge.

Beatriz Bissio

Vicedirectora del Instituto de Filosofía y Ciencias Sociales de la Universidad Federal de Rio de Janeiro (IFCS/UFRJ). Profesora Asociada del Departamento de Ciencia Política y del Programa de Postgrado en Historia Comparada. Coordinador del Centro Interdisciplinar de Estudios sobre África, Asia y Relaciones Sur-Sur (NIEAAS/UFRJ). Por muchos años ha sido editora de Cuadernos del Tercer Mundo.

Carimo Mohomed

Investigador independiente que colabora con la Universidad Católica Portuguesa, con el Institute for Critical Social Theory, y con el Grupo de Estudios Islámicos de la Universidad de Waikato (Nueva Zelanda). Es Doctor en Teoría Política y licenciado en
Historia. Sus áreas de interés son las relaciones entre Religión y Política en diferentes ámbitos culturales y civilizacionales.

## Cyrille Aymard Bekono

Profesor titular en el Departamento de Historia de la Universidad de Yaundé I. Autor de varios libros y artículos científicos, se interesa por las cuestiones relativas a la dinámica internacional africana, con especial atención a las migraciones y las diásporas africanas. Es presidente del think tank Confluencias Sinoafricanas (SAC), director del Centro de Estudios e Investigaciones sobre las Dinámicas Internacionales Africanas (CERDIA) y coordinador de la Red de Expertos China/Africa Central Francófona (RECAF).

## Daniel Flores Flores

Licenciado en Relaciones Internacionales por la Universidad de Guadalajara (UdeG) con diplomas superiores en Geopolítica y en Estudios Latinoamericanos y Caribeños por el Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales (CLACSO). Asistente de investigación en el Departamento de Estudios Ibéricos y Latinoamericanos (DEILA) de la Universidad de Guadalajara. Principales temas de investigación: Geopolítica de América Latina y el Caribe, integración regional latinoamericana y populismo(s) en el Sur Global.

## Eduardo Devés

Especialista en estudios eidéticos. Se ha ocupado del pensamiento latinoamericano, el pensamiento de las regiones periféricas y las redes intelectuales. Profesor del Doctorado en Estudios Americanos y encargado del Programa de Estudios Postdoctorales del Instituto de Estudios Avanzados de la Universidad de Santiago de Chile.
## Enrique Téllez Fabiani

Doctor por la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, bajo la dirección de Enrique Dussel. Ha sido profesor de varias universidades desde hace más de 20 años. Es autor, coautor, compilador y editor de varios libros en torno a la literatura, la historia y la filosofía. Ha organizado eventos internacionales como miembro de la Asociación de Filosofía y Liberación (AFyL) y de la Asociación Filosófica de México (AFM). Es miembro del Instituto Nacional de Formación Política.

## Fabricio Pereira da Silva

Profesor de Ciencia Política de la Universidad Federal del Estado de Río de Janeiro (UNIRIO). Es Profesor de la Maestría en Estudios Latinoamericanos Contemporáneos de la Universidad de la República (UdelAR). Tiene Doctorado en Ciencia Política por el Instituto Universitario de Pesquisas do Río de Janeiro (IUPERJ), y Postdoctorado por el Instituto de Estudios Avanzados de la Universidad de Santiago de Chile (IDEA/USACH).

## Germain Ngoie Tshibambe

Profesor del Departamento de Estudios de Relaciones Internacionales de la Universidad de Lubumbashi (UNILU). Actualmente es Jefe del Gabinete del Rector de UNILU. Sus publicaciones se encuentran en los ámbitos de la migración, la geopolítica del conocimiento, la integración y la política exterior.

## Jaime A. Preciado Coronado

Profesor-investigador del Departamento de Estudios Ibéricos y Latinoamericanos (DEILA) de la Universidad de Guadalajara. Ha sido coordinador del doctorado en Ciencia Política en el Centro Universitario de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades de esta casa de estudios. Cuenta con un doctorado en Estudios Latinoamericanos por la Universidad de Paris III. Sus líneas de investigación
abarcan la geopolítica de la globalización e integración regional, geografía del poder y la democracia.

## Johannes Maerk

Doctor en Filosofía Política por la Universidad de Innsbruck, Austria. Ha hecho Postdoctorado en la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). Es coordinador académico de la Maestría en Relaciones Internacionales de la Universidad de Ciencias Aplicadas FH Campus Viena. Es Profesor de Estudios Latinoamericanos en la Academia Diplomática de Viena.

## Karina Bidaseca

Tiene un Doctorado en Ciencias Sociales (UBA) y un Postdoctorado en Ciencias Sociales (PUC-Sao Paulo). Es investigadora principal (CONICET), y es profesora de la Facultad de Ciencias Sociales de la Universidad de Buenos Aires y de la Universidad Nacional de San Martín. Coordina el Programa Sur-Sur de CLACSO. En 2010 fundó y es Directora Ejecutiva del Congreso de Estudios Postcoloniales y Feminismos Postcoloniales/Escuela Decolonial de Artísmos del Sur.

## Lamyae Chairi

Doctora por la Universidad de Abdl Malek Essaadi. Profesora de la Unidad de Formación e Investigación "El norte de Marruecos y su relación con la cuenca mediterránea" del Centro de Estudios Doctorales, Letras, Ciencias Humanas y Traducción.

## Latifa Laamarti

Doctora en Lenguas y Culturas Hispánicas por la Universidad Hassan II de Casablanca. Investigadora en las áreas del Feminismo Decolonial. Es profesora de español en ENSAT, Escuela Nacional de Ciencias Aplicadas de Tánger y profesora colaboradora del Instituto Cervantes de Tánger.
## Marek Hrubec

Doctor por la Facultad de Artes de la Universidad Carolina. Es investigador principal del Centro de Estudios Globales del Instituto de Filosofía de la Academia Checa de Ciencias, Praga, y miembro de la Academia Europea de Ciencias y Artes. Ha publicado sobre estudios globales, justicia social y política, interacciones de conflictos locales y globales, diálogo intercultural.

## Mohammed Bensalah

Profesor en Ciencias Políticas y Sociales. Es investigador en casos de Religión y Política, Islam Político, Pluralismo Cultural, los fenómenos del Extremismo y Extremismo Violento, Tolerancia, Migraciones, Renovación Religiosa, Diálogo Interreligioso e Intercultural. Trabajó como experto internacional en la Organización Mundial Islámica para la Educación, la Ciencia y la Cultura (ICESCO).
Esta colección tiene como objetivo publicar volúmenes que expresen las reuniones de figuras de diferentes regiones del Sur. Especialmente, reuniendo trabajos presentados allí donde estas personas han realizado sus exposiciones e intercambiado sus ideas cara a cara y voz a voz. Por ello, no se trata simplemente de reunir artículos procedentes de diversas regiones de personas que nunca se conocieron, sino mostrar estas reuniones y potenciar otros encuentros, con publicaciones que les otorguen nuevo impulso. La publicación viene a ser un acto segundo, respecto del encuentro físico. Articular las intelectualidades de los sures es una tarea inmensa, que ha tenido sucesivos fracasos y algunos pequeños logros. El mayor obstáculo para articularnos ha sido la falta de interés que mostramos unas por otras, cuestión derivada del desconocimiento mutuo, del aislamiento y del peso desmedido que, en los imaginarios, poseen las intelectualidades del centro. A esto se suman, en segundo plano, la escasez de recursos económicos y cierta debilidad de las instituciones académicas. Los trabajos publicados en esta colección normalmente no se traducirán, precisamente para reconocer y explicitar que estas conversaciones obligatoriamente deberán darse de forma políglota, aunque normalmente se trate de las lenguas de las colonizaciones. Comité Académico: Eduardo Devés

## Volúmenes publicados

1. Mbuyi Kabunda Badi y César Ross Orellana (Compiladores), *Tránsitos materiales e inmateriales entre África, Latinoamérica y El Caribe*, Internacional del Conocimiento – Ariadna Ediciones, Santiago, 2018

2. Eduardo Devés, Fabricio Pereira da Silva, Germain Ngoie Tshibambe, Paula Baltar (Compiladores), *Diálogos Sur-Sur: Reflexiones sobre el Sur, las desigualdades epistémicas y la democratización global de los saberes*, Internacional del Conocimiento – Ariadna Ediciones, Santiago, 2022
This book is another fruit of the reflections produced by our South-South Intellectual Network (RISUR). The chapters of the book contribute from multiple perspectives to discuss the Global South, its definitions, its different forms of treatment in social and political thought, and its relations with the North. It does so from our disciplinary multiplicity; our diverse positions on the relationship between our knowledge, our sciences, our beliefs, our activisms; and our linguistic plurality (here we radicalize our political decision to speak in the languages we want, publishing a multilingual book without translation).

After reading the works contained in this book, we hope that the reader will have not only a critical view of North-South relations, but also a nuanced understanding of South-South relations and the idea of the South itself. Our effort is to recognize that the idea of a South is historical, that it succeeds others, that it is one among several possibilities and that it will probably not be the last concept to name the miserable regions of the Earth.

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