Pascal Bianchini, "The schooling process: a central issue to the development of social movements in Africa, 1960-2000.".
Paper presented at the New Socialist Approaches to History seminar, Institute of Historical Research, October 13th 2004
The process of 'school crisis' which has affected every Subsaharan African during the postcolonial decades has to be understood in a large perspective combining in particular historical and sociological approaches.
These events have often turned chronic and they have been described by some observers through the expressions of 'students' unrest' in English-speaking Africa or 'années blanches' in French-speaking territories.
But before looking at these events, it's necessary to remind some basic facts about the schooling process in Africa. Even if African countries still lag behind most of the rest of the world, the efforts made to bridge the gap have been really substantial:
- in 1960, it was just a little more than one third of the children with the requested age who was at primary school ;
- in 2000, it was more than 4 out of 5.
Considering a country like Burkina Faso formerly named Upper Volta, the figures are also very striking: in 1960, after more than a half century of French colonisation, the rates of primary school enrollment was only 8% a long way to the 50% overtaken in 2000; regarding at higher education, the two hundreds of students sent abroad in the year of independence were the 'happy few' compared to the crowds of students - more than 20 000 - at the Universities of Ouagadougou (created in 1974) or Bobo Dioulasso (created in 1995). The failure of African education systems contrary to some 'afropessimistic' views has not to be measured in quantitative terms.
But as the school system has expanded, it has become more and more diversified. It has become more and more unequal and selective not only in terms of 'cultural capital' - as in Bourdieu's famous thesis - but also on a material level since the scholarship system developed in the last years of the colonial period and the two first decades of independence has often disappeared in the eighties with the debt crisis and structural adjustment. This importance of the schooling process for the emerging class structure has to be kept in mind when we examine the importance of social movements around the school crisis.
Notwithstanding the influence they have on African politics, these social movements have been relatively neglected by scholars - especially in France - focusing on standard issues: formal institutions during the sixties (with constitutionalist or developmentist studies) then religion or clientelism to explain grassroots politics (with a more or less culturalist approach) since the eighties.
Then if we look at these different actors, we can sum up their main features in the following terms :
The student movements: they often play a vanguard role introducing new ideologies or new ways of action. They started to be organised in diasporic intelligentsias with 'exile politics (pretending to change the social structure but ignoring sometimes inner realities); they were also in the recent decade the spearhead of mass protests against the one party regimes.
Teachers' trade unions: They have a more grassroots existence especially with primary school teachers; however, there is a high level of politicisation among teachers that can explain some historical splits combined with corporatist cleavages (primary school teachers / secondary school teachers / university teachers)
Secondary school students; maybe the less organised actors of these movements; they often play an auxiliary role especially for the student movement; but in some occasions they can mobilise for themselves; however the history of these mobilisations is underestimated by official records or academics who considered these events as 'rackets' and not real social or political protests; it is also to be noticed that these movements are the 'preparatory class' to student activism over the following years…
We must also consider that other social movements or social activities can be related to the schooling process (urban skilled workers' trade unions, 'independent' press, human rights associations etc.); they have common values and common interests opposed to the ruling class…
I put all these socio-political groups in a category named 'counterhegemonic actors'. The expression refers to Gramsci's but in a way which is different and even opposed to Bayart who used the writings of Gramsci (and Foucault) in a way that underestimate the role of violence in African politics (not to speak about the fact that he plays down of the role of Western imperialisms especially the French one).
The expression 'counterhegemonic' means that in some situations the hegemony of the ruling class on society is weak; its members are not in the same hegemonic position as the bourgeoisie in Western countries. Power is still exercised through violence often illegally by the ruling class which makes more effort to find support abroad among Western countries or multinational companies than to be accepted by an internal 'civil society' (an approximate and ambiguous term but there is no choice !).
In this second part, I will study these school crises from a chronological point of view.
First of all, it has to be reminded that the colonial school had basically two functions: to recruit auxiliaries for civil service and to conquer the heart of the natives (la 'conquête morale'). It's only after WW2, that the colonial had to shift away from its original conception. After decades of malthusianism, African school systems started to expand (at all levels) not as the colonial administration's will but as an answer to raising claims from Africans. What has to be stressed here is the link between the forthcoming moment of state-building, and the creation of new opportunities by the school for upward mobility. This is the reason why this period can be described as the 'primitive accumulation' phase as regards 'schooling capital'.
Two important remarks have to be made here: fast changes in the social structure have generated new occupational status and new social differentiations and privileges among the African population. But it has also nurtured great expectations among the whole society to be deceived in the following decades. This is why the idea of 'primitive accumulation' is essential to understand why the school system is a 'high voltage' area in contemporary African politics
These years just before independence were also important because they were a period of burgeoning political life with political parties, trades unions, etc. The students organised in the metropolis in FEANF or WASU criticised the political leaders of their countries for being too opportunistic and not having a real anti-colonial stance. Besides their criticisms was underpinned by Marxist and panafricanist ideas which gave them an intellectual - not only moral - legitimacy.
Regarding the teachers, there is a paradox: during these years, they were still many in the political elite (especially in AOF with the school William Ponty) but at the same time, they were sometimes the social base of dissident forces opposed to the one party system that was spreading very quickly (in Senegal but also in Guinea). Even the secondary school students played a role in this socio-political process of the fifties with a number of revolts in boarding schools against the colonial order.
This counter-hegemonic attitude has survived independence because during the following years it seemed that nothing had really changed apart from a national flag and a national anthem;
Several phases of mobilisations are to be distinguished during the following decades:
- In the late sixties early seventies, it is essentially the student protests; they take place in the first generation universities (Dakar, Kinshasa, Tananarive etc.) ; there is still a panafricanist aspect in these mobilisations but African governments will be to expel the protesting students back in their home country.
- In the late eighties and the nineties: the context was dominated by the development of structural adjustment programs, the end of the Iron Curtain and the struggles for democracy ; the 'counter hegemonic actors' have played a key role : students and the pupils but also trade unions.
The influence of these social movements on African politics is twofold:
- a direct one in organising the mass protests aimed to overthrow the governments : it is possible if they manage to link bread and butter issues to more general issues ; behind the varying ideological context, there is a distinguishing feature : the delegimisation of corruption associated with patronage from the ruling class ;
- an indirect one which is also very important but has not often been studied : these social movements are organised by a political militancy which reflects generational aspects ; we cannot explain all the political cleavages by generational conflicts but it is an important aspect. This is what we can call « the generative function » of educational crises in Africa. This concept can help to understand why many of the prominent leaders of 'democratic' parties in the nineties had started their political careers twenty years before in the student movement as leaders of clandestine marxist leninist groups…
- Another important thing to examine in the protesters' claims is the issue of school reform : at the beginning in the sixties, the idea of reforming the school system came from the 'counter hegemonic' side (the book of Moumouni published in 1964 is the reference). A second step in this process occured when some 'progressive' or 'socialist' regimes in Africa launch their educational reforms (Tanzania or Guinea in the late 60's, then Benin, Congo in the 70's) with some proposals like introducing the African languages or reshaping the school system in order to have polytechnical institutions or introducing 'productive work' in the curriculum of every school. This program was also backed by the UNESCO in the 70's. In pro-Western regimes, the issue of reform is used to 'tame' the oppositional teachers organisations (Senegal was a case-in-point with the 'Etats généraux de l'éducation et de la formation' in January 1981. The attempts to find a settlement over the issue of education finally failed, considering that in all these countries the reform was not really implemented for different reasons (because the government no longer needed a compromise or because the reform was not accepted by the population.). It is important however because it had created a precedent in a one-party and/or authoritarian context. Then, we can wonder whether these uncertain attempts were not the prefiguration of the 'national conferences' held in the beginning of the nineties …