Lord Peter Hain’s new book is published by Jonathan Ball Publishers. 
With the unique perspective of having navigated both the streets of protest and the corridors of power, Peter Hain reflects on the challenges of staying true to the values of liberation struggles in his new book, Liberation and Corruption: Why Freedom Movements Fail.
Liberation and Corruption offers a rigorous analysis of freedom movements by examining global examples from Africa to Latin America, Russia, the Caribbean, China and India. Here is an overview of the book in Hains’s words.
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Why does it seem that post-colonial liberation or independence struggles are invariably betrayed when the movements leading them get into government?
It is a question that has haunted me, having been an anti-apartheid campaigner and supportive of these struggles for well over half a century.
Globally, the values of freedom struggle parties seem often to have been perverted once they assume power – a trend evident in countries that have successfully gained independence across Africa, Asia, Southern and Latin America, as well as in East and Central Europe. In South Africa, the African National Congress (ANC) evolved from respect under Nelson Mandela to contempt under Jacob Zuma.
And today its corruption remains from head to toe, albeit less brazen, with key institutions like SARS and the NPA clawing their way back to rule-of-law enforcement credibility.
My new book looks to examples from around the world, including South Africa, Zimbabwe, Nicaragua, Cuba, Haiti, Britain, Spain, China, Russia and India, to understand why and how things have gone wrong.
To offer clarity and help debunk common myths – for example, those found in social media posts that claim corruption is intrinsic to black majority rule, when it was endemic under white colonialism and occurs under white majority rule too.
With others on the “New Left” I backed Czech resistance to invading Soviet tanks crushing their 1968 “Prague Spring”. In that period of 1968-1969 – the years of the Paris uprising, of student agitation and campus occupations throughout Europe and the United States – our “New Left” was iconoclastic: “Neither Washington nor Moscow” was our slogan. I was also among those expressing solidarity with Palestinians demanding self-determination in a state of their own alongside a secure Israeli state.
But all of this was viewed by Western governments and media through a Cold War prism: for or against Soviet, sometimes Chinese, communism, with those of us supporting democratic self-determination for repressed peoples denounced as “communists” when only a tiny minority actually were.
In that way the Cold War was “weaponised” by repressive regimes who cloaked themselves in anti-communist credentials to successfully divert opprobrium for their blatantly anti-democratic behaviour.
Although apartheid rulers consistently and conveniently positioned themselves as a bulwark against communism, the readiness of London and Washington, DC to accept that may also have been because South Africa was at the time the sole pro-Western supplier of the uranium necessary for nuclear weapons.
I stand by my youthful stance, proud that we helped defeat apartheid, helped drive the United States out of Vietnam, and supported the Sandinistas in supplanting corrupt fascism in Nicaragua.
For me, the abiding values of those struggles were self-governing democracy, human rights, social justice, integrity and equality – the values instilled in me by my parents in Pretoria while defiantly under siege from the apartheid police state.
All of which makes me frustrated about the betrayal of those liberation struggles and especially freedom fighters like Nelson Mandela who sacrificed so much.
It leads me to ask: why did liberation or independence movements like the ANC in South Africa, the Zimbabwe African National Union, the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola, the Sandinistas in Nicaragua or Gandhi’s Congress Party in India become – once in government – perverted shadows of their former selves, mired in self-enriching corruption and worse?
My new book attempts to provide answers. It describes the oppressive history and legacy of colonialism, as well as the endemic corruption in authoritarian colonial regimes and how that morphed into corrupting newly liberated nations.
It also shows the nefarious role of business, happy to pay bribes to secure contracts, not least to avoid losing out to competitors also willing to do so. This includes both local businesses and global corporates, some of which are household names.
In South Africa, it is becoming more understood that the apartheid state was itself deeply corrupt and that this continued almost seamlessly into the post-apartheid society.
Some liberation fighters were also corrupt and found new opportunities once in government – Jacob Zuma’s shamelessly corrupt presidency reflected his conduct during the ANC’s fight for liberation.
Moreover, as the neoliberal fashion for marketisation and financialisation spread globally, the anti-colonial mission for liberation and social justice receded.
This was to be replaced in parts by right-wing populism, for example, in India under Narendra Modi, first elected in 2014 on a platform of Hindu nationalism which contrasted with the secularism of independence struggle leader Mahatma Gandhi, and there have been comparable developments in other Global South countries from Brazil to the Philippines.
As Forrest D Colburn argues in his Colonialism, Independence, and the Construction of Nation-State: “Rebels in the colonies achieved a narrow self-determination,” and since then “solidarity and cosmopolitanism have given way to a resurgence in nationalism, and sometimes even of ethnic chauvinism.”
From Indonesia to Nigeria and Angola, awash with oil and other high-value resources, corruption has soared while millions of their citizens are left behind in abject poverty. The plundering of Venezuela’s state-owned oil company PDVSA allegedly siphoned off $1.2-billion through European and US banks.
While aid linked to security from the West – especially the United States – is said to have contributed to the surging economic success of Taiwan and South Korea, elsewhere (particularly in Africa and Latin America) there has been a more mixed picture, including a worrying dependence on donor country trade, imported armaments and debt-ridden loan agreements.
The fusion of state and party has also been key. After independence or liberation, political parties intended to be instruments of people’s power usually became corrupt agencies of a new elite, in turn giving rise to a political culture continuing for decades, for example in Zimbabwe, Kenya, Angola and Mozambique.
But since corruption is universal, present in every country (the UK, US, Europe included) and invariably protected by the political class, the question remains how to confront it.
And the answer surely is that both the fight against corruption and the fight for democracy and justice, equal opportunities and human rights, are never permanently won. They are battles which have to be fought forever, with constant vigilance and fortitude by new generations.
So, a luta continua (‘the struggle continues’): initially the rallying cry of the Mozambique liberation movement, Frelimo, but one since widely adopted elsewhere by human rights movements. DM
Former anti-apartheid campaigner and UK Labour cabinet minister, Lord Hain is a Daily Maverick contributor. His new book, Liberation and Corruption: Why Freedom Movements Fail, is published by Jonathan Ball Publishers and is available at a retail price of R375.