We shall control nature! So we, socialist Ethiopians, used to say in the past. Our counterparts in the West, namely (in the eyes of those socialists) “man-eating capitalist sharks”, go beyond the slogan and try to practise it. If at all it is possible to control nature, we could not come closer to controlling technologies. We now live at the mercy of machines because we believe in them.
We seem to have entered, like the rest of the world, into the age of new communication technologies. Though the network is fraught with many technical problems, mobile phones are nearly ubiquitous; these days, people can be seen not only talking but browsing with their handy machines. Internet services, though still a lot remains to be desired, are available in Internet cafes, hotels, government offices, and above all, in colleges and universities.
Technologies are not, of course, merely means to ends, as nature is not. As humans are part and parcel of nature, technologies are also us in many senses. And there is, of course, nothing more difficult than controlling ourselves. Yet we may (or should) have some ways to domesticate and appropriate technologies, as we have done to nature. On the other hand, we must actively work to avoid being completely taken up by the forces of technological devices and systems.
Technologies have scripts. Even buildings, as many architects know, get their imposing figures or the simplicity and air of a shopping mall because of their designs.
But most users do not seem to be aware of this. Search engines, such as Google and Yahoo, look neutral for the ordinary user. Put a key term in there, and there you are – page after page of information appears on the screen. And users think that they get what they want whereas it is Google or Yahoo which is offering (or, better put, dictating) what it actually wants you to have.
Highly critical (or, for the big companies and Western governments, ‘subversive’) websites would be pushed back in the list if not excluded, though there are times when they are entirely barred. Such things happen because of highly sophisticated programming languages. Scripts would be in place so that well-paying or politically correct websites could come first. Searching is a very tiresome task and one would prefer to settle for the first few pages, so one simply mimics and duplicates popular (but ‘powerful’) websites and never reaches closer to the core of the phenomenon one wants (or ought) to know.
In order to solve this predicament, philosophers of technology, and science and technology scholars suggest that we adopt stances that could help us see through technologies and find the scripts behind them. As the Dutch philosopher, Philip Brey, points out, there are lots of “hidden” moral precepts within or behind technologies. A study in exposing this “hidden morality” he calls it “disclosive” ethics, helps us to ferret out what we cannot easily see.
Evaluated in terms of values such as justice, fairness, and privacy, the new communication technologies are materialised forms of moral behaviour. We may think of the Internet and other forms of the new communication media as, to use Ithiel de Sola Pool’s expression, “technologies of freedom”, but they could rather be active participants in suppressing voices of dissent.
It has become increasingly clear these days how governments and powerful companies use the new communication technologies. Not only organisations of powerful countries, such as National Security Agency (NSA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), but also governments of very poor countries spend their meagre resources spying on their own unsuspecting people.
All this is possible because the technologies in use have almost human-like nature in that they embody moral, political, cognitive capabilities, dictating human choices and interests. If we are not well aware of this, that technologies have some kind of agency (better put, derived agency), and just consider that they are merely tools, we the humans may well become the tools; others, through their sophisticated technologies, would easily drive us, use us and manipulate us.
That is why, in using social media such as Facebook or the Internet at large, many Ethiopians, especially young high school and college students – even at times educated adults – are exposed to much trivialities and wastage of time while at the same time they would be easy prey to the consumerist culture that capitalism struggles to establish. People meet in the morning for coffee discussing major news items selected for them by CNN, BBC, and Yahoo. They do not have to worry to present their opinions because they have none of their own. They often carry already formed opinions that the websites they consult offer them. FM radio plays a similar role.
So wake up young people! Knowing the derived agency of communications technologies would definitely enable you to recognise them as cultural forces worth watching. Adopting a cautious stance would in turn help you prevent yourself s from indulging in trivialities, addiction to mimicry and love for the façade.
Setargew Kenaw (PhD) is an assistant professor of Philosophy and Cultural Anthropology at Addis Ababa University (AAU). He can be contacted at setargew.kenaw@gmail.com.
By Setargew Kenaw
A Way to Price Out War in South Sudan
It is no coincidence that South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir cracked down hard on dissent at precisely the same moment he reluctantly signed the Compromise Peace Agreement (CPA) – a deal that should ostensibly bring an end to the last 20 months of fighting with the SPLA in Opposition (SPLA-iO) forces. This also reveals why the tools of targeted financial sanctions, newly fashionable in Washington DC, must be used with extreme caution, lest they worsen the situation they are supposed to redress.
The basic facts are these. On August 27, 2015, under severe pressure from the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) mediators and their backers, notably the US, President Kiir signed the CPA. Riek Machar (PhD), leader of the SPLM-iO, had seen the writing on the wall earlier and had signed ten days earlier. Kiir came to the signing ceremony with an extensive list of reservations, which the mediators promptly and somewhat insultingly announced they would disregard.
During these same days, Kiir dismissed three governors and cracked down on Equatorian political opponents. The Equatorian leader Peter Abdelrahman Sule was killed, with suspicions falling on collusion between the Ugandan and South Sudanese intelligence services. There are daily reports of disappearances. Kiir himself threatened journalists who did not support the government line, and journalist, Peter Moi Julius, was killed days later.
The events are connected. According to the political-commercial logic of the political marketplace, peace – an end to violent hostilities between belligerents – is a bargain to share out power and resources. There are basically two routes to such an agreement: either the belligerents engineer a buyout, or their financiers do so. The result is as durable as the conditions in the marketplace.
A good example of a belligerents’ buyout is the 2006 Juba Declaration whereby Kiir was able to bring dissident southern Sudanese militia commanders into an expanded SPLA, and their political leaders into the SPLM and the Government of Southern Sudan. It was possible because oil revenues meant that there was enough money to satisfy all. It lasted for as long as the money flowed: when the funds stopped, the deal fell apart.
Today, if South Sudan’s oil production were increasing; and the oil price were high, it might have been possible for a similar bargain to have been struck. Unfortunately, South Sudan’s economic crisis means that Kiir simply does not have the funds to attempt anything comparable.
His available political budget is devoted to maintaining a narrow power base. For a buyout peace, Kiir needs a lot more money. South Sudan’s donors want peace but they do not want to funnel their money into Kiir’s personal bank account, so they are not supporting this well-established route to peace.
Financiers can impose a political austerity package on belligerents, if they have the clout. This is what happened in Somaliland in 1992/93: the businessmen who controlled the livestock trade and remittances compelled the factional leaders to negotiate a peace deal. They could do this because the factional leaders relied on them for money, and because the businessmen could, if they so wished, circumvent the politicians and deal directly with military commanders.
In Somaliland, this was the foundation of a transformational process for building accountability in government. South Sudan’s donors have floated ideas of putting the oil revenues under independent management, but they have not done it, and still less have they worked out how to turn that money into political finance for peace.
Neither of the marketplace routes to peace exists today in South Sudan. The current CPA in South Sudan was drafted and imposed by the ‘IGAD Plus’ group of mediators. They used tools of financial coercion – threats of sanctions including individually targeted sanctions – to press the belligerents into signing an agreement.
Implementing the agreement requires political will and political means. But neither the tools nor the agreement address the question of what the belligerent leaders need for political survival. If anything, targeting illicit financial activities makes the leaders’ predicament worse.
How are Kiir or Machar to maintain their political bases without an expanded political budget?
Their lieutenants are not suddenly going to start demanding a lower price for allegiance, just because their patrons are cash-strapped or have signed a peace deal.
With a tightened political budget, the only way for a leader to stay in position is to narrow his political base. Hence Kiir must reward his closest circle of supporters (who are his most immediate threats), which means discarding others. He must shift from buyout to coercion. That is why an international squeeze on political payments may cause Kiir to increase repression. He will do this because it is demanded by the logic of survival. Kiir is not a good leader, but bad international policies can compel him to become a worse one.
Tackling South Sudan’s pathological political economy requires different ways of organising political finance and controlling violence. Targeted sanctions cannot do this: they are tactical tools that shape incentives at the margin and cannot even compel political elites to hold a ceasefire for more than a few days, let alone promote any kind of transformation of South Sudanese politics. Nor is there a trade-off between democracy and peace – the short-term political reconfiguration in South Sudan will deliver on neither.
International policymakers may find sanctions appealing because they punish individuals who have misbehaved and give the impression of doing something right. But those who advocate targeted sanctions should correctly analyse their context and be aware of other consequences they may have. Those consequences may be deadly, as South Sudanese are discovering.
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