In preparation for the G-8 meeting in Kananaskis, Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien has prepared a proposal for how the leaders of the worldÕs eight wealthiest nations will direct African economies in the coming years. South African president Thabo Mbeki has also been preparing for this event with his "New Partnerships for African Development" (NEPAD) plan, drafted in highly secretive consultation with the leaders of the World Bank and the G8.
Both initiatives represent an attempt to draw more capital to the continent, support entrepreneurship in Africa and accelerate the free-market globalization agenda. As in other periods of colonialism, these initiatives are being cloaked in the guise of philanthropy, democracy and human rights. In reality, they will benefit a multinational ruling elite and create greater poverty for most Africans.
The present situation stems largely from the huge crisis in the global economy that began in the early 1970s. This crisis lead to the abandonment of the developmental state model which saw the state playing a role in stimulating economic growth, providing infrastructure for industrialization as well as basic social services.
By the early to mid-70s, however, factory owners around the world found themselves with more products than available markets could consume. As a result, the demand for African commodities, and thus the price paid for them, seriously declined. By the end of the 70s, the revenue of most African countries had dropped so much they were forced to approach the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund for loans that were often simply to pay the interest on already existing ones. Since then Africa has become the most indebted area in the world.
In an attempt to increase profits, capitalists generally need to lower costs of inputs and find larger markets. Global capitalist powers used the opportunity of debt financing as a means to dictate a gradual break down of the developmental state in order to meet these needs. In order to access new loans, African states have been forced to forfeit economic control by accepting the Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) developed by institutions like the Washington-based IMF and the World Bank.
For the past two decades these SAPs have proven totally incapable of generating earnings high enough to pay down the debt. Africa generates more exports today than in 1980, yet their value has declined by more than 40%. During this same period sub-Saharan African debt rose from $60 billion to $206 billion US - not to mention the additional burden of compounding interest rates that pushed the repayment burden to $229 billion. Today debt repayment is still higher than the value of new incoming loans. As a percentage of the value of exports, this debt went up from 97% in 1980 to 324% in 1990.
For the first time in decades a serious food shortage is being experienced throughout Southern Africa, with the exception of South Africa. This is despite the fact that some countries are only using around 10% of arable land. Peasant production in these countries is simply incapable of competing with the highly mechanized South African farms Ð farms that happen to be owned by people who made their fortunes from apartheid labour.
Countries like Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe are all in the early stages of famine. More disturbing still is the fact that South African farmers are benefiting from the famine by selling their surpluses to aid organizations like the World Food Program. The food aid is dumped on the surrounding markets in order to alleviate hunger, but in effect continues to erode future food security. Meanwhile, the disintegration of rural economies fuels urban migration, adding to the masses of unemployed people living in squalid shacks on the perimeter of growing cities.
There are few jobs in the cities to absorb the displaced peasantry. Local producers are incapable of competing with the flood of imports. Hundreds of textile manufacturers, for example, have been forced into bankruptcy over the past decade by scores of second-hand clothes dumped on the market as a by-product of over-consumption in advanced capitalist economies.
Low Intensity Democracy
Structural adjustment means that numerous state-owned enterprises are being auctioned off for private sale. While the larger acquisitions have gone to multinational corporations, the smaller ones are being bought by a ruling class that generated its initial wealth from raiding the state purse in the post-colonial years.
The introduction of multi-party democracy that has also corresponded with SAPs in the 1990s has meant that these forces have galvanized themselves into political parties. While these parties are almost unanimously in favour of further structural adjustment, they are increasingly dividing along ethnic lines. With declining revenues, the competition for control of state resources becomes more intense and a balance between various tribal groups becomes harder to maintain. In some ways, countries are even more susceptible to civil war.
Liberal democratic institutions are able to create some rules to mediate the competition between elites and give a veneer of legitimacy to the structural adjustment and privatization agenda, but it does not alter the fundamentally parasitic relationship between the elite and the majority of citizens.
Creeping Global Apartheid
According to the WTO, world income has increased by $510 billion over the past ten years. World Bank reports, however, show that per-capita income in Africa has continued to fall over the same period, making the average income less than a fiftieth of what it is in OECD countries. This process is in fact endemic to the free market. Poverty is considered a positive aspect of the system, serving to motivate people rather than establishing barriers to their participation in the economy.
In sub-Saharan Africa, however, this now means that more than 50% of the population live in absolute poverty. Life expectancy at birth has been decreasing over the past two decades, even though most people die from easily preventable and easily treatable diseases related to poverty and malnourishment. AIDS is also continuing to wipe out vast numbers of the population in their most productive years. The burden of this disaster has disproportionately affected women, as they tend to be the last recipients of limited resources.
Despite the fact that sub-Saharan Africa has over 10% of the world's population, it contributes only 2% of global trade - a figure no greater than it was 20 years ago. Many corporations continue to get higher returns on investment in Africa than any other region in the world (according to World Bank statistics). Nevertheless, the continual development of synthetic alternatives to Africa's natural resource commodities, along with the greater mechanization of production elsewhere in the world, means that the continental economy is increasingly marginalized.
The case of Africa shows capitalism's extreme disregard for people's needs. The free market has never developed the continent and present trends make the need for a socialist alternative greater today than at any other point in history. Unfortunately, despite the serious failures of SAPs, resistance to them has been limited. This is in part because the revolutionary left has been seriously weakened in recent years. One result of this is that political life in Africa, as elsewhere in the world, has been plagued by a surge in religious fundamentalism and the politics of identity. In the context of liberal democracy, people are more likely to attribute political problems to the poor morality, corruption or ethnicity of political leaders, rather than to the policies dictated by the international financial institutions and global capitalism in general.
As with other parts of the world, trade unions are being weakened by economic liberalizations and as a result, conciliation and co-operation have dominated their relationships with employers and the state. Sub-Saharan Africa's swelling number of unemployed, urban youth are willing to take drastic steps to push for radical change, but their energies are often misdirected by politicians who will recruit them for militia-like service in exchange for a little food. International non-governmental Organizations also tend to be much more interested in promoting things like small enterprise through micro-credit schemes (and therefore tying people's interests to the success of capitalism) than they are in helping people fight for a radical re-organization of production. In some radical thought, there is a perspective that increasing poverty eventually produces its own revolutionary response as people get fed up with being poor. The case of Africa shows that poverty poses serious barriers to revolutionary action.
Fortunately, there are some encouraging initiatives to overcome these barriers. In many parts of the continent, people are attempting to build networks within and between diverse social movements, including rank and file trade union activists, Jubilee chapters that call for debt relief, women's organizations, environmental groups, students and intellectuals who propose alternatives to NEPAD and other elite-led solutions to Africa's problems. These relationships are beginning to take shape as people increasingly protest the neo-liberal agenda, despite what is often severe repression from the state.
Longer-term strategic work is also emerging, building on the experience of past efforts, yet also increasingly recognizing the need to start new struggles from below. Two inspiring examples of grass-roots, internationalist initiatives include the sub-regional Southern African People's Solidarity Network, and the continental Dakar 2000 process that has sought to promote an "African People's Consensus" in opposition to the NEPAD.
As activists, we cannot settle for social clauses within international trade deals. We must challenge the legitimacy of the kinds of economic plans that arrive from elite-led summits. As socialists, it is essential that we support the reparations movement, the "drop the debt" campaign, call for the end of structural adjustment, and for greater democratization of public services rather than their ongoing privatization.
We must also continue to build our own movements in North America. In doing this, we should be working with coalitions and promoting an anti-capitalist perspective within them. At the same time, activists should be aware that being attuned to anti-oppression politics does not mean people should be dissuaded from speaking to these issues if they do not happen to be Africans themselves. The struggle for global justice is more necessary now than ever before H
Any discussion of global justice in the African context must begin by recognizing the brutal history of the Atlantic slave trade and colonialism. Yet at last fall's UN Conference Against Racism in South Africa, many delegates were unwilling to address this history. The American delegates walked out of the conference to avoid it. Even South African President Thabu Mbeki was unwilling to pursue it, despite the 30-year legacy of armed struggle against apartheid in that country.
Recognizing this history can help dispel some of the oldest lies that still animate discussions about Africa and influence trade policies. Perhaps the most significant of these lies is the claim that the continent is poor by mere circumstance of geography or because of racial inferiority. The reality is that since the industrial revolution, the growth of the largest European and American industries came from the surplus wealth of free or super-exploited African labour and resources. This is as true for tobacco and cotton farming in America, as it is for the cocoa, tea, and coffee crops that lay at the foundations of companies like Nestle and Cadbury's. The rubber for the tires of all the early automobiles came from Africa, as well as at least half of all the copper needed in every electric motor ever built. Likewise, the phenomenal growth of the telecommunications industry today would have been impossible without the mineral coltan, extracted from central Africa.
Far from being peripheral to the development of capitalism, Africa and African people have held a central role in fuelling the largest industrial growth in history. Furthermore, the growth of poverty in Africa is directly related to this process which undermined the political, economic and social structures and relations in countries across the continent.
Independence: The Developmental State
World War II marked a turning point where Europe's veneer of "civilization" began to vanish for many Africans. The competition between imperial capitalist powers led them into wars that caused loss of life on an unprecedented level. Many Africans participated in the war, and because it was fought under the auspices of self-determination for occupied countries, they were inspired to mobilize for their own political freedom.
Despite extremely difficult conditions, millions of African people mobilized for national independence by building alliances with urban workers, peasants and the unemployed. Many had been inspired by experiences In China, India and the USSR, which were also predominantly peasant societies.
There is a great degree of variation in the histories of African states both before and after the colonial period. During the 1960s, however, most countries in sub-Saharan Africa were granted independence on terms that allowed the former colonizers to maintain control of economic relations.
At this time there was also a general consensus that the state needed to play a role in developing the economy and improving living conditions. The colonial era had left the new countries with little infrastructure such as schools, transport routes and medical facilities. At the same time, formerly colonized people all over the world were demanding better living conditions. Fearing a global socialist revolution, former colonizers encouraged the new elites to spend heavily in the first years of independence, even if it required going into debt to do so.
As was always the case throughout the history of colonialism, some African elites co-operated with the western powers and others did not. Some independence leaders voiced an interest in more thoroughly severing the ties to Europe and the United States and as a result they were often labelled "socialists". Despite what were often very sincere motivations on behalf of political leaders, other self-proclaimed socialist projects were never fully successful at building democratic processes to build class unity and cut against oppression. Nor were they sufficiently rooted in mass movements mobilized from below.
Socialist projects were also violently obstructed by brutal sabotage from the US, Great Britain and South African mercenary forces. Those who clung to the ideals were also often forced into undemocratic, Stalinist economic policies as a condition for financial support. In this way the Soviet Union also undermined many local, grass-roots efforts for social change. These factors underscored the impossibility of achieving revolutionary change in Africa without a corresponding change in the core capitalist economies.
During formal decolonisation, another process was also taking place within virtually all newly independent countries. Because most Africans had little capital to start their own businesses the offices of the state began to be used by a privileged few for the personal accumulation of wealth. While many objected to this, these people generally held onto their positions in power by distributing some of their wealth in exchange for political support. Such "clientalist" relations most often run along "tribal" or ethnic lines. In order to maintain political stability, the state must adequately benefit the most powerful, or at least a coalition of the most powerful tribal groups. As a result, many countries have separatist movements and have experienced war at some point in the past thirty years.
The intensity of this bargaining game was often a factor that motivated African leaders to construct single-party states that would be less likely to fragment along ethnic lines. It was also this process that diverted huge sums of money from the development projects for which they were intended. In countries with valuable mineral deposits clientalist relationships were often formed around the extracting companies themselves and the available sums tended to be far greater than those extractable from peasant production. In these countries there are more likely to be warlordism, military dictatorships and serious political decay as various fractions fight over access to the national wealth. Capitalist interests serve to exacerbate internal wars by directly funding and signing deals with various actors or through the covert and overt operations of foreign governments and organizations like the UN.