Transcripts
"Against the Crisis"
by Leo Zeilig, London
WHAT has happened to the ‘African renaissance’? In 1994 after the multi-party elections in South Africa there was talk of a new dawn for the continent. For some time this looked like a reality, old regimes collapsed and new ones promised democracy and stability. Often these changes came about by a resurgence of popular struggle, the case of South Africa is well known but general strikes and mass demonstrations rocked many countries on the continent. New leaders heralded by the West - who after years of supporting dictatorships in Africa had suddenly discovered ‘democracy’ - were seen as the means of carrying forward this ‘new dawn’. Nelson Mandela, Yoweri Museveni in Uganda and Meles Zenawi in Ethiopia would improve the lives of ordinary Africans.
One of the indications of a fresh start on the continent was the overthrow of the American backed dictator Mobuto Sese Seko in 1997. He was ousted by an armed coalition lead by the old associate of Che Guevara, Laurent Kabila. Within months Kabila was fighting a civil war that involved six African nations all who are competing for a slice of the mineral wealth inside the Democratic Republic of Congo, while nine rebel groups in the DRC are seeking to overthrow bordering countries. Another statesman heralded by the west in the mid-nineties, Ethiopia’s Meles Zenawi, helped precipitate a war with Eritrea that has cost thousands of lives. The Ethiopian government has even attempted to spread the war by backing rebels in Somalia. Uganda, celebrated by the World Bank and the IMF as an example of sound ‘fiscal discipline’ and good governance, has played a key role in the war in the DRC and has backed rebel movements in Sudan.
Following from this picture the fashionable opinion on Africa is that it is a ‘hopeless continent’ unable to solve its own problems and beset by ‘tribal’ or ‘ethnic’ warfare, a dangerous melting pot of ‘international terrorism’ and failed states. The reality for ordinary Africans is abysmal. The United Nations says that the average household in Africa is consuming 20% less today then it did in 1975. Almost 200m people on the continent have no contact with even rudimentary health care and more then 2m children die across the continent every year. This is not surprising when almost half of the population of Africa live in poverty. The only hope for the continent, the argument goes, is for some form of Western enlightenment – epitomized by Blair’s speeches on the subject.
The patterns for Western involvement in Africa are often said to be the ‘humanitarian’ involvement in Sierra Leone and the programme of debt ‘relief’ for compliant regimes, who meet the requirements of the World Bank and the IMF. These politics crystallized this year in the new ‘plan’ for Africa. The much celebrated (and widely ridiculed) NEPAD (New Partnership for Africa Development) - developed by the presidents of Nigeria, South Africa and Senegal – represents this thrust. It advocates the opening up of African markets to the ‘opportunities of globalization.’ The argument of NEPAD is simple: Africa must expose itself to the rigors of the free-market while undertaking a commitment to ‘good governance’. In return the West will invest in Africa’s development. There is nothing new with these prescriptions; they formed the backbone of the ‘conditionalities’ attached to the IMF and World Bank structural adjustment programmes for more than 20 years, which have often disguised the involvement of Multinational companies, that in the oil rich Niger Delta threatens local communities with extinction. Femi Aborisade the famous Nigeria labour activist speaks for most of civil society, ‘NEPAD is a scandal – pushing more of the so-called ‘globalization’ and the promise of prosperity that have decimated Africa for a generation – it makes perfect sense that the biggest bully in Nigeria is behind it.’
The effect of these policies has been to destroy the social fabric of African societies. Take the example of debt. In the 16 years between 1980 and 1996 the continent paid 170 billion dollars in capital repayments and interest. Africa has paid its original debt twice. A debt, which according to the World Bank has increased threefold from 84.3 billion in 1980 to more than 250 billion dollars today. The payment of interest alone is more then four times the complete budget on health and education for the whole continent.
However here is another side to these statistics and wars that needs to be told. The story involves the political struggles against the ‘dictatorship of markets’ by those written out of contemporary accounts of the continent. Many argue that the ‘links’ between these struggles extend beyond the continent. The resistance against the market has combined those who defeated the World Trade Organization on the streets of Seattle, the demonstrators in Genoa last year and the protests against the United Nations Earth summit in Johannesburg in August. These are not hypothetical links but proof of the emergence of an anti-globalization movement in Africa.
The most striking example of these developments is in the rise of grass root activists in South Africa, culminating in the protest outside the recent summit in Johannesburg. Since the multi-racial elections in 1994 the South African government has followed an extremely conservative fiscal policy. They copied the IMF by adopting a self-imposed structural adjustment package Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR). This insisted on a pattern of privatization and ‘fiscal discipline’ to attract foreign investment. The result has been the astonishing vicious privatization of local services. Thousands of township residents have had water and electricity cut, many more than under the previous apartheid government. Out of this chaos two important community groups have emerged, the SowetoElectricityCrisis Committee SECC) and the Anti-Privatization Forum (APF). Both groups have been at the forefront of organizing ‘illegal’ reconnections of electricity and water supplies to black householders. They also spearheaded the anti-globalization demonstrations in Johannesburg. Trevor Ngwane - an ex-ANC activist – has emerged as one of the movements’ most eloquent spokesman. Ngwane places the movement clearly within the global assault on neo-liberalism.
There was no clearer example of the impact of grass-roots activism than the recent Summit. Interestingly the language of the counter conference - which ran parallel to the official conference - used an anti-globalization vocabulary familiar to many activists in the North. Protestors carried placards with the same slogans: ‘Another world is possible’ and ‘People not profit’. Their influence has already rippled across the continent, including in Zimbabwe community groups and many on university campuses.
The international solidarity linking the anti-globalization movement tantalizes us with the prospect of radical social change. However the question for activists in Europe and Africa is how do we achieve another world and what would will this world look like? For a generation Africa has been coming out of the ‘crisis’ that has distorted any understanding of the continent. Instead many today understand that Africa will not be liberated by Western politicians, northern activists or enlightened NGOs but through the same, stumbling and brave movements - North and South - that have marked the start of our century.
Leo is editor of: "Class Struggle and Resistance in Africa", New Clarion Press
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