Army rule in Egypt rejected by new movement

With the brutal murder of 74 – probably more - pro-Morsi supporters and persecution of thousands of Muslim Brotherhood members by the army leadership, the Egyptian revolution enters a dangerous and crucial phase.

The shootings on Friday night by Egypt’s military have been condemned by Human Rights Watch as targeted killings by snipers. Minister of Defence and coup leader general Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s call for support in dealing with “terrorism”, gave the army the green light to deal brutally with the Brotherhood.

Live rounds were fired directly into protesters’ heads and chests from buildings overlooking the Muslim Brotherhood’s sit-in in Rabaa al-Adawiya in eastern Cairo. Brotherhood supporters are demanding the release of detained former president Mohammed Morsi – elected after the fall of Mubarak - during a 30-day sit-in and are clearly prepared to die to achieve their objective.

But a new movement, the Third Square, has emerged in the city of Giza, which represents people-revolutionaries who support neither the military’s June 30 coup nor Morsi’s regime.

One of the protesters,  Ahmed Adel, said: "We are a group of young people whose views are not represented either in Tahrir Square or Rabaa al-Adawiya." He was critical of Egyptians being forced to choose between two camps "just because the Muslim Brotherhood failed" saying that he wants neither "religious fascism nor the army." 

Meanwhile, Fatma Ramadan, a member of the executive committee of the Egyptian Federation of Independent Trade Unions (EFITU), has denounced the EFITU's decision to support al-Sisi's call for pro-military demonstrations as well as the Muslim Brotherhood’s attack on Egyptian workers and trade unions, saying: 

“Did not the military forcibly end your strikes in Suez, Cairo, Fayyoum, and all over Egypt ? Did not the military arrest many of you and subject you to military trials just for practising your right to organize, strike, and protest peacefully? Have they not adamantly worked to criminalize this right through legislation banning all Egyptians from organising peaceful protests, strikes, and sit-ins? Do not be fooled into replacing a religious dictatorship with a military dictatorship.” 

The new status quo has been satirised by anti-Mubarak film-maker, Aalam Wassef. He has made a surreal music video in which he does his laundry in front of a banner saying “Resist”.  The pre-Mubarak world has been turned upside in two years, he says.

The former revolutionaries, Wassef’s song goes, are now members of the Couch Party, while the Brotherhood are now the “felool” – the remnants of the old regime, and the old regime – the army – is playing at being revolutionaries.

Many hailed the removal of the elected government of Morsi in June by Egypt’s powerful army leaders as a victory for the people. But Egypt’s army officers, as Jadaliyya website says, “are promoting a narrative in which they have (once again) intervened heroically to save the day and ‘protect the revolution’.”

Meanwhile, the demands for bread, freedom and social justice, which lay behind the revolutionary toppling of Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year autocracy in February 2011, remain unfulfilled.

The January 25 revolution – and indeed the Egyptian revolution itself – goes far deeper than the search for an elected government. As far as Jadaliyya is concerned, “it encompassed a host of demands for far-reaching institutional reforms and social and economic rights”.

The partisans of “bread, freedom, and social justice” represent a huge swathe of people-revolutionaries who back neither the Brotherhood nor the army. Egyptian writer Khaled Alkhamissi, author of the prophetic novels Noah’s Ark and Taxi, which foretold the fall of Mubarak, said last week:

 “We are living in a vibrant social era in Egypt. . . We are not in a process of transformation from A to B, as representative democracy is dying everywhere. We need to properly analyse the revolutionary process that has been going on for almost ten years ... and we need a manifesto of demands.”

The Third Square and Egypt’s revolutionaries face the challenge of moving beyond subversion and resistance.  The battle is on to grasp the nettle of state power. That means creating new democratic political and social institutions that can express the needs of Egypt’s workers, farmers, professional people and youth.

Corinna Lotz

A World to Win secretary

Corporate plunder of Mozambique threatens millions

Two recent reports on Mozambique offer a shocking insight into the nightmare model of growth being forced on the continent in this new phase of global corporate neo-colonialism. Millions of small farmers and peasants are its victims.

The first looks at mining in the northern province of Tete, which has 23 billion tons of coal reserves. The government wants it to be producing 25% of the world's coal supply by 2030. To achieve that, mining concessions must pour out of the economics ministry, and thousands of the province's 1.5 million population face dispossession.

In a taste of what is to come, 1,500 formerly self-sufficient farming families have been forcibly removed from their homes, to arid areas, far from rivers and markets, to make room for the miners. They have lost access to fertile land, water and work and now rely on food aid, says a report from Human Rights Watch.

The second report looks at the ProSAVANA plan, presented as an aid partnership with the Japanese and Brazilian governments, but in reality a massive corporate land grab cooked up by “experts” with close connections to the corporations. It would seize over 10 million hectares of land in three provinces – Nampula, Niassa, and Zambézia – where four million people currently live and farm.

The plan has been made in secret, with no consultation whatsoever. A copy was leaked to a group of civil society organisations and their report deserves to be read in full because it exposes what is happening throughout Africa and parts of Asia too. The group says:

Corporations are the big beneficiaries of this Master Plan. They will get control over land and production and they will control the trade of the foods produced, which will be exported along the roads, rail lines and Nacala port that other foreign corporations will be paid to construct with public funds from Mozambique and Japan. Foreign seed, pesticide and fertiliser companies will also make a killing from this massive expansion of industrial agriculture into Africa.

ProSAVANA will wipe out seed saving, local knowledge and food cultures and traditional land management. It will force peasants on to fixed parcels of land, ending traditional, itinerant, mixed agriculture. They will be forced to produce under contract to the corporations and go into debt to buy seeds, fertilisers and pesticides. Many will be forced to sell up, allowing big local farming concerns to step in, and the friends of the government will be at the front of the queue.

Some Mozambicans will profit from this. Portugal's richest family has set up a joint venture with a company controlled by the friends and family of Mozambique's president. Mozambicans struggled for a decade in a bloody war against Portuguese colonial rule, which ended with independence in 1975. The party leading that struggle was FRELIMO, the governing party now colluding with the land-grabbers.

The claim is that farmers' rights will be protected by the World Bank's RAI (Responsible Agricultural Investment) standard but this is rubbish. Every land grab in the world claims to be operating on RAI and it has not prevented millions being driven out to let the corporations in.

Hot money is pouring into Africa, with some countries experiencing rapid increases in gross domestic product, but at the expense of millions of lives crushed in the rush for profit-driven growth. Mozambique is currently achieving growth of around 7.5% per year but its people remain amongst the poorest in the world.

The kind of farming being imposed is unsustainable and short term. It will lead to the creation of a dustbowl and will emit huge quantities of CO2. It will not increase access to food but will only speed up the export of calories from Africa to the rest of the world.

The movements that led the independence struggles throughout Africa have degenerated into pro-capitalist parties with no vision other than enriching the few at the expense of the many. They have no more conception of democracy than our own rulers here. Only a surge towards the formation of real democracies, in Africa and also here in the UK, can transform the situation. Then, together, we can co-operate for each others' development and end corporate plundering once and for all.

Penny Cole

Environment editor

Zambian miners resist new colonialists

In the 21st century version of the scramble for Africa, the copper miners of Zambia are leading the resistance to a modern form of colonialism that is being driven from Beijing.

Copper exports are the lifeblood of Zambia, representing 75% of the total. Last year, Zambia’s exports into China hit a record high of $2.8 billion. Most of the government’s revenues are derived from the trade in the metal.

A Chinese state company owns and runs four copper mines in Zambia, supplying production enterprises back home dependent on the metal. And the mines are run in a ruthless fashion.

In a recent report, Human Rights Watch accused Chinese-run copper mines of breaking the law with poor health and safety conditions, hostility to trade unions and regular labour shifts of 12 and even 18 hours

Not only that, the companies have imposed Chinese-level wages on the workers at the mines, leaving many to complain that they are the worst employers in the country (there are Swiss and Canadian-owned mines too).

But they are fighting back following a change of government towards the end of 2011. Michael Sata was swept to power as president with working class support after promises to spread the benefits of Zambia’s mineral wealth, although he toned down previous anti-China rhetoric during the election campaign.

Sata’s election, however, led to renewed demands for wage increases and the management at the Chibuluma copper mine – one of the four Chinese plants – has just acceded to a 17% wage rise for 500 workers. While higher than the rate of inflation, it still leaves most workers having to work extraordinary hours to try and make ends meet.

Zambia’s dependence on inward foreign investment from China was reinforced yesterday when the two countries signed a new economic and technical agreement in Lusaka. To sweeten the path to exploiting the country’s resources, China is building a hospital and a football stadium in the capital for nothing.

None of this can disguise the reality of working conditions in the mines, however. A miner at one of the plants told HRW: "Sometimes when you find yourself in a dangerous position, they tell you to go ahead with the work. They just consider production, not safety. If someone dies, he can be replaced tomorrow. And if you report the problem, you'll lose your job."

Another worker said: “It’s difficult to handles these hours. We work 12 hours a day, five days, and 18 hours on the day of the change shift. It’s very tiring.… And we never get a break; they say it’s a continuous operation, so no break. It’s very tough. If we eat, we have to while we work, or have a friend cover for a few minutes. There are times where you’re just so tired. And after transport to and from work, it’s 14 hours at least. My life is only my work here.”

Between October 5 and October 12, 2011, miners at three of the four Chinese-run copper mining operations began strike action, hopeful that the new government’s election would create an environment for improved conditions. Production ground to a halt.

The response was draconian. On October 19, Non-Ferrous China Africa, the longest-operating Chinese-owned copper mine, fired at least 1,000 striking workers. After government pressure, NFCA agreed to reinstate them. Reuters reported that NFCA’s chief executive officer said that the reinstated workers would be screened and the “troublemakers” disciplined.

“Many of the poor health and safety practices we found in Zambia’s Chinese-run mines look strikingly similar to abuses we see in China,” HRW Africa director Daniel Bekele said. “Respecting labour laws and ensuring workers’ safety should be standard operating practice both in China and abroad, not treated as an irritating barrier to greater profits.”

Some Zambian workers are surprised to hear that many Chinese miners in China aren’t treated much better. But resistance is growing in China too, bringing miners in different continents together against the same bosses.

Paul Feldman
Communications editor