GLOBAL APARTHEID:

RESPONSES TO GLOBAL RULE IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA

Hélène Passtoors*

Africa’s marginal place in the global economy is rooted as much in political and

economic as in ideological – deeply racist - patterns that go back several centuries

and are subsumed under the notion of global apartheid. Drawing parallels between

globalisation and the system of apartheid gives clues about its sophisticated nature

and ways of resisting global apartheid. Independence in Africa meant political power

but not economic power, a problem compounded by the weakness of the African

state. A country like Mozambique, the ‘success story’ of the IMF and the World Bank,

shows that pro-poor growth remains elusive – if not actually receding under present

global practices – while it is also vulnerable to regional domination. The debate

around credit ratings is particularly illuminating. The African reply to western

domination has long been in terms of empowering solidarity fed by pan-Africanist

ideals. In the early post-colonial days, continental unity remained a dream but

regional co-operation and economic integration came off the ground. These regional

economic communities are now the building blocks for a future African economic

community. Since the liberation of South Africa in 1994, the pan-Africanist dream of

a genuine liberation of the continent, an African Renaissance, has taken root again.

It is laid down in the new African Union and its developmental platform, the New

Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD). African citizens are organising as

* Passtoors is a journalist, a linguist (of African languages) and a veteran

of the South African liberation struggle of the African National Congress

(ANC). This article was written for IJLE at the request of Centre

Tricontinental CETRI, Belgium. www.cetri.be. The author is, however, entirely

responsible for the views expressed in the article.1

actors in a democratic setting and finding their voice. The unity of the southern

countries, which caused the collapse of the WTO negotiations in Cancun, shows a

way forward. But in global apartheid like in apartheid, inequality between different

groups of countries could lead to conflicts of interests very similar to the obstacles to

regional economic integration.

2

I. INTRODUCTION

‘Africa’ and ‘exclusion’-- stringing up those two words feels

like insisting on a tautology. Cynics might say that Africans

have been very much a part of the world economy ever since the

times of the Atlantic slave trade. In fact, there is no doubt

that African exports have fed into world trade circuits since

well before European expansion to the New World. Yet the notion

of Africa as the same dark, scary continent that Sir Henry

Morton Stanley set out to ‘discover’ in the nineteenth century

in order to ensure its ‘inclusion’ in the ‘civilised’ world is

still widespread. Africa’s exclusion is rooted in a mindset of

non-Africans-- a mindset with the flavour of Greek tragedy, of

inescapable destiny. Or, in the words of South African

academic, Hein Marais (2001, pg.2): “The racist notion that the

continent’s travails are unique and express a primal hobbling –

that they are mysteriously ‘terminal’ and ‘distinctly

African’”. Like many mindsets, this notion is no more than a

cover-up, a justification for the unjustifiable. It has settled

in the realm of the unconscious where its racist edge has been

revamped by a variety of negative images such as backwardness,

violence, misery, passivity and natural disaster. These then

have met with responses invariably along the lines of support

for ‘strong rulers’ (dictators), ‘well-intentioned’ charity,

unequal ‘partnerships’, and especially foreign supervision of

governments and foreign management of strategic economic

sectors. Almost everyone seemed to agree that those were

adequate responses to the ‘poorest’ continent that is, in fact,

3

not poor at all. If local elites of the early post-colonial

days did not agree to give up hard-won sovereignty, they were

either killed (like Lumumba), stripped of all material means of

government (like Equatorial Guinea at the time of the departure

of the French), overthrown and marginalised, or else simply

corrupted with privilege or bare money, like one gives a

lollypop to nagging children. Thus neo-colonial rule in Africa

turned out to be cheaper and more profitable than colonial

rule, which implied a set of obligations towards the

population. In the process, many African elites – regardless of

whether they felt they were fighting against a wall or whether

they allowed themselves to be co-opted in the race for personal

gain - made the underlying mindset their own as well. Today

this mindset is called ‘Afro-pessimism’.

It has often been said that Africa’s richness has been its

curse. From gold to slaves to cotton to space era minerals to –

nowadays – oil, the continent continues to attract raw,

unmitigated greed. In the context of the Cold War, some of the

rebels against neo-colonialism sought support in the socialist

countries and the Non-Aligned Movement. However, the only

countries who could try this road were those, like Tanzania

(formerly Tanganyika), with little natural resources which were

therefore of little economic or strategic interest to the West.

A rich country like Angola was immediately faced with a bloody

war.

4

This paper sets out to show that the key to reversing this

state of affairs is African unity and solidarity, to be rooted

in African culture and history. Long ago, Africans decided that

they would no longer acquiesce in the role of victims. But with

so many of their elites affected by the spread of greed and

self-defeating Afro-pessimism, the future remained bleak. The

year 1994 was a turning point. The liberation of South Africa

had the effect of a catharsis. A wind of democratic change

swept across the continent. However, while the first democratic

elections in South Africa brought Nelson Mandela to power, in

Rwanda all that could go wrong, did so and culminated in the

horror of genocide. The best and the worst of Africa stood, as

it were, eye to eye, sizing each other up. And a new generation

of African leadership took up the challenge.

II. THE ROOTS OF AFRICAN EXCLUSION

Proof of early inter-continental trade is the introduction of

bananas – the plantain is believed to have entered Africa from

Malaysia via Madagascar during the first millennium AD – and

later the introduction of cassava, yams, beans, rice and maize,

none of which were indigenous to Africa but all of which were

staple crops across the continent long before European

explorers ‘opened up’ the interior in the nineteenth century.

Thus in the 1870s, the French explorer, Count Pierre Savorgnan

de Brazza was astonished to find manufactured goods of European

origin in local marketplaces in the middle of Central Africa.

He need not have been so amazed: great trade routes

5

crisscrossed the continent from north to south and east to west

from times immemorial. In the north, the Sahara desert, rather

than being a barrier, witnessed uncountable caravans carrying

sub-Saharan exports – mainly gold, ivory and slaves -

northwards and a variety of merchandise southwards. Centralised

West African kingdoms with lively cities expanded and declined

like everywhere else. Present-day Ethiopia with its pre-Islamic

Coptic Christian religion, resisted Islamic expansion as did

many West African peoples. Bantu speakers, with their cultures

and iron metallurgy, expanded from West Africa south- and

eastwards to arrive in present-day South Africa well before the

arrival of the Dutch in the Cape. On the east coast, favourable

monsoon winds along the coast of present-day Tanzania and

Mozambique brought intensive trade with South-east Asia and

Arab traders, and left many cultural remnants, such as the

widely spread Swahili trade language. In the interior, the

archaeological remains of the Monomatapa empire in Southern

Zimbabwe contain not only a big stone city (the ruins of ‘Great

Zimbabwe’) but thousands of gold mines and hundreds of copper

mines. Its export of gold - and presumably also already copper

- to the East Coast was at its height during the fourteenth and

fifteenth centuries, before the main east-west trade routes

moved up north to the Great Lakes region and the new Trans-

Atlantic slave trade gained impetus.

It is the next period of European expansion to the Americas

that drastically changed the terms and conditions on the basis

6

of which Africa participated in the world economy and excluded

its peoples from the benefits. Those conditions still prevail.

The colonisation of the Americas brought the plague of the

Atlantic slave trade causing great demographic and social

upheavals in Africa. Subsequently, the colonisation of Africa

in the late nineteenth century set the pattern of exploitation

of natural resources and the exclusion of the great majority of

Africans from the world economy. Colonialism, neo-colonialism

and the current neo-liberal globalisation form a continuum

whereby globalisation has meant a worsening of the standards of

living as compared to the post-independence decades of the

1960s until the 1980s.

Physical and economic domination, however, never stand on their

own. The conquest of Africa in the late nineteenth century was

not only boosted by the needs of an expanding European economy

along with a strong taste for cultural and religious

proselytising. Both are common features of empire building. But

it happened at a time when the Darwinist revolution of European

thought, combined with an absolute belief in technological

progress as the great leap forward for mankind, to fix in the

European mind a stratification of the human races and their

civilisations. All that was unknown, strange and

technologically ‘backward’, was automatically ranked on the

lowest steps of the Darwinist ladder. While history had taught

Europeans a certain respect for Asian civilisations and

religions, Africans – e.g. in Congo - were for some time in

7

danger of undergoing the same fate as the indigenous peoples of

America, viz. genocide, were it not for the intervention of the

nineteenth century humanists who had already successfully

campaigned for the abolition of the slave trade. However,

theirs was a Darwinist humanism fed by a paternalistic concern

for the inhuman treatment of black slaves. Worse, even those

humanists knew no Africans other than humiliated slaves. Just

like the captains of the slave ships had once convinced

themselves that the humiliated young Africans they collected on

the slave markets would be better off in the plantations of the

New World, so the nineteenth century humanists set about

‘civilising’ the Africans under ‘beneficial’ colonial rule. The

image of Blacks as ignorant, helpless ‘children’, was further

enhanced by the missionaries whose recruitment predominantly

took place among poor Africans, with the African elites more

often than not resisting domination and conversion. This deeply

racist image of Blacks – albeit often shrouded in paternalism -

thus got firmly anchored in western mentality and remains

basically unchanged today. It is also the dominant image spread

by Europeans to Asia, while Latin Americans had their own black

slaves to look down upon. And as usual, physical domination

both reinforced the image of superiority in the minds of the

dominating, and caused its mirror image to be interiorised by

the dominated. The stage was set for a self-fulfilling

prophecy.

8

Today it is as obvious as ever that Africa’s ongoing backstage

role is not merely due to economic domination. Africa has also

become the ‘forgotten continent’. The specific problem of

Africa is its overall absence in the world’s great debates.

Africans are being spoken of and for. Africans are also spoken

about, especially in the media and by people watching the

stream of negative images that seem to leave little space for

hope. So many people seem to know what ‘is wrong’ with Africa -

or that everything ‘goes wrong’ in Africa. But in all this talk

about Africa, Africans’ own voices seem irrelevant. Normally

speaking, the responsibility for forgetting lies with the one

who forgets, not with the one who is forgotten. Yet the ones

who are forgotten are the ones who have to bring forgetfulness

to an end.

III. GLOBAL APARTHEID

It is the whole of Africa’s historical relations with the rest

of the world that South Africa’s president Thabo Mbeki has

coined ‘global apartheid’. Of course, the term embraces global

rule by the North over the South, and not only Africa. But the

analogy to apartheid is also meant to remind us that

globalisation is not a simplistic, black-and-white form of

domination, as it is often made out to be by its opponents.

Apartheid was a system designed for minority rule, conceived

along the lines of colonial strategies of domination. But it

was far from simplistic. Apartheid was an intricate piece of

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social and economic engineering in a vicious four-tier

stratification based on race as well as class and mini-

nationalism (ethnicity or ‘tribalism’). The watertight legal

and institutional system called ‘apartheid’ - as opposed to the

more loosely defined colonial institutions - came about in the

first place in order to protect the poor, unqualified whites of

the white rural exodus during the first half of the twentieth

century against competition from Black workers. It was called

‘separate development’ in English and created a white labour

aristocracy based on race rather than on qualifications. (The

constituency of the National Party, in power from 1948 till

1994, consisted basically of white Afrikaner workers and

farmers.) This singling out of the white working class for

special privilege was part and parcel of the nationalist

endeavour to ‘uplift’ the Afrikaner ‘nation’. The other leg of

this State policy was the creation of ‘volkskapitalisme’

(ethnic capitalism), with the extensive intervention of the

State, in order to allow the Afrikaners to compete with the

‘English’ ownership of mines and industry.

If transferred to the level of global apartheid, the analogy

would be with the protection of living standards, agriculture,

etc. as well as immigration laws, designed to protect the jobs

and ‘separate development’ of the ‘own’ people in the northern

countries nowadays. However, apartheid did not simply pitch

whites against people of colour. There were intermediate race

groups, the so-called Indians (of Indian descent) and

10

‘Coloured’ or Brown people.1 Each of these had their own

privileges as opposed to the Blacks and each group had its own

socio-economic classes.2 The Black people, the overwhelming

majority, were further divided up geographically and socially

(e.g. in mining compounds) in ethnic groups. Each was assigned

a ‘home land’, also called Bantustan, earmarked for

‘independence’ such that Black people were robbed of their land

as well as of South African citizenship. They were only allowed

to settle or work outside the ‘homelands’ to the extent that

the white economy needed them. In other words, they were

subjected to immigration laws. As for socio-economic strata, a

Black middle class did exist already before apartheid (For

instance, Mandela was a lawyer) and developed further but they

were not allowed to infringe on the terrain of the white middle

classes, unless they were needed.

1 People of mixed descent but also for example, the ‘Cape Malay’ and the

Griquas, basically descendants of the original people, the Khoisan, with

minor mixing but whose mother tongue had become Afrikaans.2 In the ‘Indian population group’, for example, there was the class of

merchants of mainly Muslims and the generally much poorer to extremely poor

Hindu workers. But up to today, the Black prejudice survives that ‘Indians’

are all ‘rich shop owners’. Indians were not allowed to live in the

province of the Orange Free State. The ‘Coloureds’ were assigned greater

Cape Town as the place where they would not be confronted by Black

competition for jobs. Blacks were not allowed to settle in or around Cape

Town and when they nevertheless did, from around the early 1980s onwards,

this created great tensions with the ‘Coloureds’, which in some quarters

continues even today.11

Several parallels with current global rule come to mind: the

status and greater freedom of movement of elites of the South

(and brain drain); the status of the ‘emerging countries’ of

the G21 to which we will return later on; the northern

preference for one-to-one ‘negotiations’ and agreements

whenever Southern group solidarity threatens to gain impetus.

Parallels between the apartheid system and the current

globalisation provide useful feelers for a more subtle analysis

of global rule than the rather sweeping characterisations that

are all too common in anti-globalist circles today. And from an

African perspective, they also point to ways of fighting the

system. Struggles for independence, and the struggle against

apartheid in particular, implied alliances that effectively

broke the pattern of the divide-and-rule policy and created

solidarity amongst all the oppressed.

IV. ECONOMIC POWER OUT OF THE REACH OF BLACKS

South Africa is the most developed country in Africa. But,

importantly, this development was facilitated not only by a

system that provided for cheap and yet skilled labour and by

its great mineral wealth (gold, diamonds), but by wide ranging

protectionism and government intervention. The South African

industry was protected by high tariff barriers. Capital flight

was made extremely difficult due to strict regulations.

Government invested huge sums in key areas of technology

(energy, nuclear, arms). Commercial farmers paid no land tax,

had very easy access to cheap government credit and a central

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commercialisation system. Strategic export sectors such as coal

mining and agriculture were heavily subsidised, allowing for

cheap exports and a good share of the world market, UN economic

sanctions notwithstanding. Thus South Africa was an economic

achiever not because economic power was in the hands of whites

but because, unlike other African countries, ever since the

beginning of the twentieth century, they were not subject to

colonial and neo-colonial plunder and could maintain huge

padlocks on their economy. South African accumulation was

performed under the same or even better conditions as European

and American accumulation. Moreover, they received precious

support from Europe. Very few Western governments ever enforced

UN sanctions, and if so, only partially. Most kept a lively

trade going with South Africa and encouraged investment in the

country. The argument was outright hypocritical: isolating the

apartheid regime would bring suffering to black people and the

regime might react with even tougher apartheid. Never mind that

black South Africans themselves asked for the pressure of

sanctions. Yet sanctions caused nervousness in business

circles, the apartheid system itself ended up putting too many

constraints on economic expansion, and most of all, there was,

of course, the increasing unrest and instability caused by the

intensifying liberation struggle. Under those conditions, the

business community began to perceive the ANC as an alternative.

However, once negotiations came into sight, the biggest South

African company, Anglo American, moved its headquarters to

Europe and was subsequently quoted at the London Stock

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Exchange. Others followed suit. The last apartheid government

hastily did away with regulations and, in general, with all key

elements of government and state power over the economy. With

the majority rule becoming unavoidable, business and the

apartheid leaders made sure that a democratic government would

have its wings clipped. No Western government protested.

Transferring political power was fine, but not so economic

power. Yet without enough power over the economy, the power

necessary for development and poverty reduction was also taken

out of the Government’s hands.

To finish the South African story: once in power, the ANC was

offered huge credits by the World Bank to implement its

development agenda. However, wary of the debt trap and not

willing to lose its independence, the ANC refused. The only

alternative, the leaders were convincingly told by consultants

of the World Bank and the IMF, was attracting huge sums of

foreign investment to bring about substantial growth. South

Africa was given a good rating and the prospects for job

creation were set at more than a million jobs in a few years

time. Thus in 1996, the new South Africa went for voluntary

structural adjustment.3 In the following years, low levels of

investment were associated with low levels of growth, declining

levels of domestic savings and income, and increasing fiscal

deficit. Real per capita income decreased and 1.5 million jobs

were lost instead of new jobs being created. Substantial

3 The policy is called GEAR, Growth. 14

advance was made in health care, housing, education and access

to basic services but people got poorer and the AIDS pandemic

caused additional havoc and misery. In March 2003, 5.3 million

people, or 31.2 per cent of those who were economically active,

were unemployed. In the expanded definition of unemployment --

including the so-called discouraged job-seekers -- the rate

stood at 42.1 per cent (8.4 million people). All these rates

are up from 2002 and have been steadily rising during the last

years (SAPA, 2003).

The example of South Africa shows that the forced – and brutal

– transition from a highly protected national economy to an

open market economy in the current context of globalisation

takes place at the expense of development, even in an emerging

country, and moreover, in a country that inherited, in

principle, a strong state. Unlike South Africa, the former

African colonies started their independence with the handicap

of a very weak state. They were much more vulnerable to neo-

colonial and later global rule.

V. SOUTHERN AFRICA AND MOZAMBIQUE

Southern Africa was the region of the great liberation

struggles, including Mozambique, Angola, Zimbabwe, Namibia and

South Africa. The only countries to become independent in the

1960s were Zambia, Malawi and Tanzania while Botswana,

Swaziland and Lesotho were independent but intimately linked to

apartheid South Africa by a customs union. South Africa was the

15

economic centre of the region, and all roads literally led to

South Africa. The economy of neighbouring countries like

Mozambique had been almost completely oriented by the

Portuguese to service the South African economy in harbour

facilities, energy supply, labour supply for the mines, etc.

Upon national liberation, Angola (1975), Mozambique (1975) and

Zimbabwe (1979) decided to embark on a socialist experiment.

The apartheid regime, having lost its cordon sanitaire and

being surrounded by countries sympathetic to the South African

liberation movements, launched a theory of ‘total [communist]

onslaught’ and replied with large scale economic and military

destabilisation, ultimately leaving Angola and Mozambique in

ruins.

While overseas investors have been hesitant to invest in Africa

despite exceptional returns, South African capital has been in

a great rush to establish its corporate presence all over the

continent. To cite just a few examples, the electricity giant

Eskom is involved in big dam projects in Angola, Botswana,

Cameroon, RD Congo, Ghana, Mali, Mozambique, Swaziland,

Tanzania and Zambia, helped along with credits from the World

Bank (See Bond, 2002, and also Bond 2001; Sinai, 2002). By mid-

2001, Standard Bank had a corporate presence in more than 15

sub-Saharan countries and SA Breweries, in 11 others. Telecom

companies have seized almost virgin markets, sometimes in the

absence of landline telephones such as in Rwanda. Vodacom has

invested $15 million in Mozambique and hopes to attain a 50 per

16

cent share of the cellular market in a country where outside

the cities, telephones are all but non-existent (Mabanga,

2002).

According to neo-liberal tenets, all this investment should be

a tremendous contribution by South Africa to the development of

the continent. But the case of Mozambique, a favourite among

South African investors, throws serious doubts on the capacity

of these global policies to achieve much more than corporate

benefits. Let us look at the case of Mozambique. Mozambique was

already a very poor country under Portuguese rule. After

independence in 1975, the war – instigated and supported by the

apartheid regime - that lasted until 1992, destroyed social and

economic infrastructure and devastated agriculture, the main

economic activity and export earner at the time. Now the World

Bank and the IMF look back at ten years of structural

adjustment and are very proud of themselves: phenomenal growth

of 12 per cent in 2002 and an average growth rate of 8 per cent

per annum during the last ten years (despite a year of natural

disaster), a more or less stable currency, and inflation coming

under control. Mozambique is definitely their success story!

The Economic Report for Africa 2003 (ERA) of the UN Economic

Commission for Africa, however, gives its chapter on Mozambique

a disturbing title: ‘The Elusive Quest for Pro-Poor Growth’.4

On page 127, the report says, “An estimated 64 per cent of the

population was below the poverty line in 2001, down from 69 per

17

cent in 1996”, and continues optimistically, “If Mozambique

sustains the current average GDP growth rate, spurred by

manufacturing, and implements effective pro-poor action

programmes, poverty could be reduced from 64 per cent to

between 32 and 36 per cent by 2006.” But on page 146 ff, the

authors try, in vain, to pinpoint internal causes for the slow

progress of poverty reduction despite an exceptional growth

rate. It seems that none of the prevalent causes including

demographic factors, low productivity in agriculture, or lack

of access to markets and social services explains the lack of

spread of economic growth. Even if the phenomenal growth rates

can be maintained, a record of 5 per cent poverty reduction

during five years of sustained growth does not seem to warrant

the prognostic of a plunge in poverty rates of more than 30 per

cent during the next three years. Besides, the ‘basic

consumption poverty line’ in Mozambique is only about 14

dollars a month – far below one dollar a day – and 12 million

out of the country’s 17 million people live under that line.

The regional disparities are, in fact, very great. In the

northern provinces of Sofala, Tete and Inhambane, 80 per cent

of the people are poor, while in the capital Maputo, this

figure is 48 per cent (ERA, 2003, p.146). When the figures of

health and education are broken down, they show that only the 4 Economic Report for Africa (ERA) (2003). For a good introduction to

similar problems in seven African countries based on an analysis of the ERA

report, see the Africa Policy E-Journal of Africa Action, August 2003,

www.africaaction.org. 18

capital is a decent place to live in. The further one moves

northwards, the worse it gets. In the province of Zambezia, for

example, 65 per cent of the children under five years of age

are chronically or acutely malnourished, 83 per cent of the

households drink from unsafe sources of water and 75 per cent

of the adults are illiterate. Health care networks and schools

had been the prime targets of the rebels during the war and the

government takes pride in restoring and expanding them at a

fairly rapid pace. Despite this, only 16 per cent of the rural

dwellers – who constitute 80 per cent of the total population -

are within half an hour’s walk from the nearest health unit.

The school situation is a little better: 57 per cent of the

rural population is within half an hour’s walk of a primary

school (Fauvet, 2002).

One of the answers to the question of elusive poverty reduction

lies in the collapse of the production of cashew nuts. It is

estimated that 80 per cent of the Mozambicans live directly or

indirectly on agriculture. Since the 1960s, cashew nuts were

the most important livelihood and export earners. Mozambique

accounted for half the world production of cashew nuts. In the

1980s, the government prohibited the export of raw cashew nuts.

The nuts had to be processed in the country in order to add

value to the export product. There were 14 processing plants

with a total of 11,000 workers. In 1992, the prohibition of

export of raw nuts was withdrawn. Producers became dependent on

fluctuations in the world market prices (and on local traders),

19

all the processing plants closed down, and an unknown number of

peasants, workers and their extended families lost their source

of livelihood. Something similar occurred in local manufacture.

Over the last four to five years about forty per cent of local

medium and small industrial firms have closed down.

During the last couple of years, Mozambique received foreign

aid amounting to no less than 16 per cent of the GDP and 60 per

cent of the government’s budget. With this aid, the government

has repaired and extended infrastructure and social services.

Mozambique has attracted considerable foreign investment and,

thanks to a good credit rating, the country could expect to

attract even more and reduce poverty rates. That may not

happen. A third of this inflow of foreign investment is South

African, of which the most visible sectors are banks,

breweries, cell phone companies and tourism. But the real manna

consists of three mega projects for the exploitation of primary

mineral products including aluminium, gas and titanium. The

aluminium smelter Mozal I on the outskirts of Maputo is

starting its first phase of production. The other projects

relate to gas export through a 900 km long pipeline to South

Africa and titanium extraction from mineral sands in Nampula.

To give an idea of the size of these projects within the

national economy, Mozal I consumes 400MW of electricity as

against a total consumption in the country of 650MW. In the

whole of Mozambique, only 60 per cent of the households have

electricity (Fauvet, 2002).

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But more alarming is the impact of those mega projects on the

national economy. The following arguments are from the so

called ‘Fitch Debate’, a widely circulated e-mail debate

between economists Prof. Carlos Nuno Castel-Branco of the

Universidade Eduardo Mondlane of Mozambique and Dr. John

Cameron of the University of East Anglia, Britain. A crucial

factor for attracting foreign direct investment (FDI) is the

country’s credit rating. Until recently, only South Africa and

Botswana (a small but stable country rich in diamonds, copper

and nickel) along with Senegal in 2000 applied for the services

of rating agencies. But now the UNDP and other donors are

willing to finance those services for other African countries

as well (Breuillac, 2003). If FDI is to be the engine of ‘pro-

poor growth’, the quest is crucial; in 2002 FDI in Africa

accounted for only about 0.9 per cent of the global FDI, of

which about 70 per cent flows to the extractive industries in

six countries.5 Thus though Mozambique is one of the poorest

countries in the world (HDI 170), it approached the US-based

agency Fitch Ratings, as did countries like Benin, Cameroon,

The Gambia, Kenya, Mali and Lesotho, which are eager to attract

foreign investments. Last July Fitch claimed:6

“Long-term foreign and local currency ratings to the

Republic of Mozambique of 'B' and 'B+', respectively.

The outlook is stable. The short-term foreign currency

rating has also been assigned at 'B'. The ratings

reflect Mozambique's impressive growth record of 8 per

cent on average over the past decade as a result of

21

sustained reforms and increasingly large-scale foreign

direct investment (FDI), directed at exploiting its

natural resources. Fast export growth and debt relief

under the highly indebted poor country initiative (HIPC)

have led to a rapid improvement in the country's

external debt indicators. Furthermore, export growth has

been accompanied by a diversification away from

traditional exports of agricultural and fish products,

making the economy less vulnerable to external shocks.

The country's various natural resources have

considerable potential for further exploitation.”

Economists Castel-Branco and Cameron bitterly attack the Fitch

report as well as the IMF’s jubilant claims.7 The economy is

5 Such as oil producers Angola, Nigeria, Sudan, Equatorial Guinea. Actually

about 15 per cent of the US oil imports come from Africa which is expected

to possess 8 per cent of the world crude reserves, most of them

conveniently ‘offshore’, and only Nigeria is a member of OPEC. Countries

like Equatorial Guinea are said to be the ‘Kuwait’ of Africa. Exploration

is about to start off the coast of several countries such as poor Tanzania.6 The Fitch Debate from widely circulated e-mails in July 2003 in reply to

the rating report from the IMF. The full text can be obtained from Prof.

Carlos Castel-Branco cn.castelbranco@tvcabo.co.mz or from Dr. Joseph Hanlon

j.hanlon@open.ac.uk.7 The following quotes are taken from a public discussion (a widely

circulated e-mail discussion) in July 2003 between amongst others Professor

Carlos Castel-Branco, Universidade Eduardo Mondlane, Maputa, Mozambique

(cn.castelbranco@tvcabo.co.mz) and John Cameron of the University of East

Anglia, UK (John.Cameron@uea.ac.uk).22

not diversifying at all, claims Castel-Branco, it is

dangerously narrowing down instead. He says:

“Aluminium alone represents almost 50 per cent of the

industrial exports and about one-third of the total

export of goods. Mozambique has never before had one

single product as dominant as aluminium in both

production and export patterns. When the mega projects…

gas and mineral sands, come into operation, then about

75 per cent of Mozambique's exports will be three

primary mineral products. Could Fitch (or the IMF)

explain how they came to identify this pattern of

production and exports as a dynamic and diversified

one?” Later on he adds, “Dependency of the economy on

exports of three or four primary products with little

linkage potential may increase economic instability and

vulnerability to the same extent as the economies that

are dependent on coffee or cocoa.”

Dr. Cameron talks of “immiserising growth”. He adds:

“The mix of criteria for a healthy developmental

situation should not be so unbalanced in favour of a few

aggregate macro-economic indicators. Better not to

pretend any concern with people's well-being, than be so

hypocritical… It does not require sophisticated

economics to make the case that capital-intensive

mineral extraction will drive up the exchange rate

without creating local jobs and direct production-

23

related incomes. A higher exchange rate pulls in

relatively cheap imports that damage local economic

activity - perhaps the cause of the loss of domestic

firms… This ‘immiserising’ growth in turn then means

that government revenues are heavily derived from large

‘royalty’ payments by a small number of TNCs. These

revenues from economic rents entail no domestic

political accountability and therefore governance is

negatively affected. So we end up with high under-

employment and unemployment and ‘pork barrel’ politics.”

For Professor Castel-Branco, the benefits of such mega projects

for development remain highly questionable. He avers:

“The government has approved investment fiscal

incentives that reduce considerably the fiscal

contribution of all projects, particularly projects that

are very large and export-oriented, such as the mineral-

energy ones. These large, export-oriented projects

benefit, or can benefit, from industrial free zone

status, which means that they pay little, if any, taxes;

imports are duty free (and they all are import-

intensive) and industrial taxes are around 1 per cent of

annual sales…. Second, whatever foreign currency these

projects may earn, it belongs to them, not to the

economy as a whole. Given that they pay little taxes and

can repatriate their profits, it is not clear that the

Mozambican economy is going to have more uncommitted

24

foreign exchange to further investment in other areas…

As for job creation, one mega project that requires a

sum of investment equivalent to more than 50 per cent of

Mozambique's GDP (more than fifty per cent, it is not a

mistake!), employs less than 1,500 workers (about 1,200

Mozambicans)… One does not even notice the impact of

such a project on the reduction of urban unemployment.”

While claiming that the IMF’s analysis is deeply flawed, Prof.

Castell-Branco concludes, “I can only believe that they make

the claims about our economy being a success story because they

desperately need a success story, even if they have to invent

one.”

VI. FROM WEAK STATES TO CHAOS

Global apartheid implies that developing countries, especially

African countries, may be granted political power – just like

the ‘Bantustans’ were supposed to be ‘independent’ – but they

should not be allowed to rule their economies. Of course the

ideology of the regulating powers of the market assigns to all

governments a mere role of support to the private sector. But,

wisely, nowhere have governments given up as much power as in

Africa.

In Africa, states did not have the strength to withstand the

erosion of their power by globalisation. The South African

political scientist Stephen Gelb explains:

25

“The roots of state weakness in Africa lie in the inter-

state system established by the colonial powers which

was carried over essentially unchanged into the post-

independence period. This system emphasised respect for

sovereignty and territorial integrity (…) but provided

little incentive for states to develop the capacity to

mobilise human and financial resources in order to

bolster defences against external threats.” (Gelb, 2002,

p. 24)

A sharp decline in terms of trade started in the late 1970s.

The African countries that had contracted debts for their

development policies landed in trouble. The Bretton Woods

institutions blamed inappropriate policies and excessive state

involvement in the economy. Their remedy was economic reform

imposed through the leverage of debt rescheduling. But economic

reform failed dismally to bring about growth.

“During the 1990s, when the need for political reform in

Africa gained support, the process of globalisation

gathered pace. The latter has made the former more

difficult. Successful development in the era of

globalisation requires states to pursue a strategy of

‘managed openness’, which involves seeking to influence

the sequencing, speed and scope of the engagement of

their economies with globalisation. However, this

imposes severe demands on the nation-state, so that

states which are already strong will do well and become

stronger, whereas those that are weak – the typical

26

African state – may well prove unable to break into the

‘virtuous circle’ leading to a stronger state.” (Gelb,

2002, p. 25).

Now Africa’s national economies – with the partial exception of

South Africa – are almost completely ruled by foreign capital,

foreign international institutions such as the IMF and the

World Bank, and by foreign donor countries. And not only their

economies but also, crucially, their policy making is

controlled by foreign agencies. The most important policy for

African countries, the development agenda, is imposed by those

foreigners plus, in many cases, directly or indirectly, by

foreign NGOs.

Thus for African countries, globalisation has meant a mere

shift in two instalments from colonial power to a constellation

of foreign institutions and organisations. In the neo-colonial

era, whenever a government resisted the relinquishment of

power, the reply from their northern ‘partners’ was corruption

of the local elites and/or support for a dictator who could

maintain ‘law and order’ (albeit with more decree than law) in

the monolithic, undemocratic state inherited from colonisation

and further enhanced, as Gelb (2002, p. 24) put it, by “a

prebendal or neo-patrimonial mindset which undermined and

subverted depersonalised practices such as uniform application

of rules and predictability of administration (…) leading to

personalised spheres of power and influence, and the extensive

27

use of patronage.” Patronage and corruption are still rife but

dictators are going out of fashion, leaving a void of its own

kind in societies unused to democracy where elected leaders

anyway have no power to change policies.

The first results of this wholesale breaking down of state

power are awesome. The Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo,

formerly also called Zaïre) is but one example of the falling

apart of a whole country due to the collapse of the State.

Ivory Coast, the former ‘shining example of peace and

prosperity’, is the most recent one. In such disasters, it is

not some intrinsically African leaning towards ‘tribalism’ - as

is often assumed – that causes strife and bloody conflict.

Regional or national (ethnic or ‘tribal’) divisions are simply

what is left when all other mechanisms regulating national life

fall away. Recent colonial and dictatorial history actively

intensified and manipulated cultural and linguistic diversity

in order to maintain minority, respectively dictatorial rule.

Peoples were forcibly isolated from each other and forced to

look inward. Post-colonial dictators found it most convenient

to root their army and police force in the ‘loyalty’ of their

own ethnic kin and to oppress the others by the ethnic

antagonisms created by their colonial predecessors.

VII. REGIONAL ECONOMIC COMMUNITIES FOR AFRICAN INTEGRATION

It will be clear that only unity – ‘unity in diversity’, ‘unity

in action’, ‘empowering solidarity’ are the most frequently

28

heard expressions – is a successful antidote against this

atomisation of African society which constitutes not only an

ideal setting for minority and dictatorial rule, but leads to

ever shrinking horizons and the virtual absence of Africans

from the world scene. As we have seen, the absence of such

‘unity-in-diversity’ – and of state and supra-state structures

to embody it - is exacting a very high price: locally, the

implosion of whole countries and regions in fratricidal strife;

globally, crippling ‘afro-pessimism’ concretised by exclusion.

Already in colonial times, African resistance to domination and

discrimination took on the form of pan-Africanism, the so-

called ‘négritude’ movement, a mindset for empowering

solidarity. The first wave of independence in Africa in the

1960s brought to power an elite with pan-Africanist ideals, the

‘Fathers of Independence’: Kwame Nkrumah (Ghana), Leopold

Senghor (Sénégal) and Houphouët Boigny (Ivory Coast). Even

dictators such as Mobutu (RD Congo) thrived on Africanist

discourse. The idea of an ‘African’ socialism attracted many,

with the most notable among them being not only Julius Nyerere

(Tanzania), Leopold Senghor and Kwame Nkrumah, but also social

democrat Kenneth Kaunda (Zambia). However, already in the early

1960s, well before the establishment of the former Organisation

of African Unity (OUA), African leaders had recognised that co-

operation and integration among African countries in the

economic, social and cultural fields were indispensable to the

accelerated transformation and sustained development of the

continent. Since the early 1960s, member states were encouraged

29

to combine their economies into sub-regional markets that would

ultimately form one Africa-wide economic union. In 1980, the

OAU adopted the Lagos Plan of Action as a major step towards

the goal of continental integration. But the Lagos plan was

very slow to come off the ground primarily due to excessive

nationalist tendencies during these first post-colonial

decades.

In West Africa, the hub of most Fathers of Independence,

regional integration advanced.8 Oil- rich Nigeria is the

economic giant pulling the region. It is also the country of

increasingly well-organised and militant labour despite the

weakening of trade unions during the years of military rule

(Beckman n.d.). Meanwhile local communities organise around

development demands. This is notably the case in the oil region

of the Niger Delta where women regularly take on Chevron and

Shell whose installations are like hi-tech islands in a sea of

poverty. Since the early days of the pan-Africanist ideals of

the ‘Fathers of Independence’, African unity has met with many

obstacles but has never been off the agenda. Despite local

8 The preparations for ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States)

started in 1965 and a treaty was signed in 1975. Its aims are a common

market, a single currency, a regional parliament, an economic and social

council and a court of justice. The creation of a single currency by 2003

had to be postponed to July 2005 because not all countries had yet met the

convergence criteria. But integration is well on its way in this region

where the French and British colonial powers had created deep economic and

communicational differences.30

problems and a lack of continental co-ordination, regional

communities have been advancing, some of them reaching

impressive levels of integration. A number of regional economic

community organisations (REC) have been declared the ‘building

blocks’ of the future African Economic Community (AEC).9 With

the founding of the African Union in 2002, the different

regional advances are again concretely integrated into a big

plan for Africa’s future unity, self-sufficiency and endogenous

development. The development strategy is spelled out in the New

Partnership for Africa’s Development, NEPAD (see below). But

the RECs remain the building blocks for African integration and

unity.10

VIII. THE PAN-AFRICANIST MODE: AFRICAN RENAISSANCE

An ‘African Renaissance’ is the new political leitmotif in

Africa, a renaissance led and brought about by Africans. All

over the continent, a proud pan-Africanist discourse is taking

hold, with political leaders as well as well as intellectuals

and artists, workers and peasants, youth and women

9 The biggest regional economic community (REC) is COMESA, the Common Market

for Eastern and Southern African States. Preceded by a Preferential Trade

Agreement, it was formed in 1993. The regional giant is Egypt. The REC for

Central Africa, ECCAS/CEEAC (Economic Community of Central African States)

was formed in 1985 but is inactive since 1992, due to problems of non-

payment of membership fees. It was re-launched in 1998 but is now largely

paralysed by the cross-border conflict in RD Congo. The other RECs are the

Southern African Development Community, SADC, of which South Africa is the

powerhouse, and the Arab Maghreb Union (AMU/UMA).10 For data on RECs and the AEC, see www.dfa.gov.za. 31

organisations. There is a feeling of ‘enough is enough’. As

Prof. Ousseynou Kane, Head of the Department of Philosophy at

the University of Dakar in Senegal, wrote in outrage at the

humiliations surrounding the recent African tour of President

George Bush Jr. and in particular his visit to Gorée, the slave

island from where the slaves crossed the Atlantic and UNESCO

site of World Heritage (Kane 2003):

“ I feel that we have had enough of being considered the

‘mechanics’ and the dustmen of the world. And, rather

than begging to sort out our ‘sans papiers’ [illegal

immigrants] gone to earth in the rat holes of the Bronx,

it is time for us to claim our rightful place in Silicon

Valley. … Rest assured, I am in no temptation to remake

History, but I don’t want it to be repeated either. Tens

of millions of Negroes transported down in the holds,

dead in raids or thrown to the sharks in order to make

America prosperous, that’s enough! … In memory of all

the suffering of my race and all the sacrifice, I

declare that it would have been preferable to let the

Senegalese people die a thousand times of hunger rather

than to teach them once more how to be servile under the

warped stick of the decomposed spook of uncle Tom.” 11

Strong language. But words that were for too long spoken only

between four walls, all over the continent. It is an expression

11 Electronic newspaper Afrik.com, editorial 30 July 2003, www.Afrik.com,

(own translation from French).32

of the mood that is no longer restricted to the African elites.

‘African Renaissance’ or, in the language of anti-globalists,

‘Another Africa’. But how? With what resources? How to kick-

start African reconstruction and development? The idea of

‘reparations’ for past wrongs and exploitation has been muted

for some time, especially by Afro-Americans. The North owes

Africa a large debt to start with slavery, through colonialism

up to post-colonial exploitation and foreign debts paid back

several times over. At the 2001 World Conference against Racism

held in Durban, South Africa, reparations became a hotly

debated issue. It was rejected by the official conference – at

least in the form of financial claims - but not by the parallel

civil society forum. In the Bamako declaration of the African

Social Forum (ASF) 12 social movements and civil society

organisations state (African Social Forum: 2002):

“Africa should, first and for all, demand that its

outstanding debts are cancelled forthwith. Africa has

not only paid the financial debts many times over

already, but it is the countries of the West that owe

Africa debts arising from slavery and colonialism.

Africa demands that the issue of reparations be

addressed seriously.”

12 The first African Social Forum (ASF) met in 2002 in Bamako, Mali, and

its second version was held in January 2003 at Addis Ababa; 250

representatives of social movements and organisations of and more than 40

countries participated.33

But meanwhile internal as well as external investment is

necessary:

“The Forum strongly recommended to African governments

to develop and enforce national and regional regulatory

systems to control capital movements. It also demanded

that the developed countries take seriously their

responsibility to control the capital market, and to

create ways of increasing international liquidity to

help finance the development of Africa.”

The Bamako Forum cautions against negotiating with the North as

long as “Africa is not ready to negotiate” and against the

conditionalities attached to development aid:

“On Overseas Development Aids, the Bamako Forum noted

that these are used to impose economic and political

conditionalities on the governments and peoples of

Africa. As such, overseas development aid as a basis for

Africa’s development should be rejected unless they are

given on Africa’s own needs and conditions… The future

of Africa lies in the hands of African peoples. Africa

has the human and natural resources to shape the

destinies of its peoples and we are determined to break

out of the inherited and imposed dependency on external

forces.”13

13 The Bamako Declaration, 2002. 34

IX. NEPAD: NEW PARTNERSHIP FOR AFRICA’S DEVELOPMENT

Despite their criticism of African elites, ‘collaborators’ and

‘beneficiaries’ of neo-colonialism, of structural adjustment

programmes and neo-liberal exploitation, the language of the

Bamako declaration of the ASF is not basically very different

from that of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development,

NEPAD, which is an initiative of African political leaders,

also adopted as policy by the African Union (UA).14 NEPAD

explicitly assumes African past shortcomings (NEPAD, 2001,

pp.2-5):

“Across the continent, Africans declare that we will no

longer allow ourselves to be conditioned by circumstance.

We will determine our own destiny and call on the rest of

the world to complement our efforts… The impoverishment of

the African continent was accentuated primarily by the

legacy of colonialism, the Cold War, the workings of the

international economic system, and the inadequacies of and

shortcomings in the policies pursued by many countries in

the post-independence era… For centuries, African

countries have been integrated into the world economy

mainly as suppliers of cheap labour and raw materials. Of

necessity, this has meant the draining of Africa’s 14 The African Union was created in 2002, on the model of the European

Union, with the difference that it starts on a basis of political rather

than economic consensus. Progress towards economic integration is made via

regionalisation. The AU is to have 17 institutions, of which a parliament,

an African central bank and a supranational defence structure are still

being created.35

resources rather than their use for the continent’s

development… In other countries and on other continents,

the reverse was the case. There was an infusion of wealth

in the form of investments, which created larger volumes

of wealth through the export of value-added products. It

is time that African resources are harnessed to create

wealth for the well-being of its people… Post-colonial

Africa inherited weak states and dysfunctional economies,

which were further aggravated by poor leadership,

corruption and bad governance in many countries… Today,

the weak state remains a major constraint on sustainable

development in a number of countries.”

The goals of NEPAD, as stated in the founding document of 2001,

are to achieve and sustain an average GDP growth rate of over 7

per cent per annum for the next 15 years, and to ensure that

the continent achieves the agreed International Development

Goals (IDGs) by 2015, viz. reducing extreme poverty by half;

enrolling all children in primary school; making progress

towards gender equality and empowerment; and reducing infant

and child mortality by two-thirds and maternal mortality by

three-quarters. The task is daunting. A cursory examination of

the 2003 Report on Human Development shows a bleak picture. Of

the 33 countries with a Low Human Development level, 29 are

African countries. From number 151 down, all are African

countries with Sierra Leone (at no.175) closing the list. The

only five African countries showing a Medium Human Development

36

index are South Africa plus the four countries, Namibia,

Botswana, Swaziland and Lesotho, with which it forms the

Southern African Customs Union (to which Mozambique has also

been admitted recently). The World Bank estimates that by 1998,

46 per cent of the total population of sub-Saharan Africa, 291

million people, live on less than one dollar a day.15 This

means that about 150 million Africans should, by 2015, obtain a

considerable improvement of their living conditions.

According to a more recent study by UNCTAD, the proportion of

the population living on less than one dollar a day in the

least developed countries of Africa is, in fact, almost 20 per

cent higher. It has increased continuously since 1965-1969,

rising from an average of 55.8 per cent in those years to a

staggering 64.9 per cent in 1995-1999.16 As for the health

IDGs, in 2000, life expectancy at birth in sub-Saharan Africa

was 38.7 years (against 56 years worldwide). The under-five

child mortality rate in sub-Saharan Africa was, in 2001, 172

per 1000 live births (against 7 in high income countries and 81

worldwide). The risk for a woman to die in pregnancy or

childbirth was 1 in 16 in Africa (against 1 in 3.700 in North

America).17 As for economic growth, several countries have

shown good growth figures in recent years but they came from a

very low basis. Moreover, as we have seen in the case of

15 World Bank: World Development Report 2000/2001.16 Economic Development in Africa, UNCTAD, 2002, p.2; See statistics in

UNCTAD, The Least Developed Countries Report, 2002.17 UNDP, Human Development Report 2003, chapter “MDG Indicators”.37

Mozambique, macro-economic growth does not necessarily go hand

in hand with poverty reduction and development.

NEPAD calculates that its members need $64 billion dollar

yearly in aid to jumpstart development, its ‘Capital Flows

Initiative’: “To achieve the estimated 7 per cent annual growth

rate needed to meet the IDGs,… Africa needs to fill an annual

resource gap of 12 per cent of its GDP, or US $64 billion. This

will require increased domestic savings, as well as

improvements in the public revenue collection systems. However,

the bulk of the needed resources will have to be obtained from

outside the continent. NEPAD focuses on debt reduction and

overseas development assistance (ODA) as complementary external

resources required in the short to medium term, and addresses

private capital flows as a longer-term concern.” (NEPAD, 2001,

p. 37).

It needs to be pointed out that not all African countries

participate in NEPAD. NEPAD is like a club with entrance

requirements and rules of good behaviour. At the moment there

are only sixteen NEPAD members, several of which are North

African countries. The entrance requirements are not

economical, but refer to a commitment and progress made towards

democracy, good governance and the respect of human rights in

each country, criteria that are subject to a much debated

mechanism of ‘peer review’ (of which the diagnostics and

38

assessment have actually been transferred to the AU). And

obviously the country may not be involved in armed conflict.

Kneepad

With this policy document and development vision as well as a

stack of concrete projects, mainly for the development of

infrastructure, NEPAD leaders approached the G8. The reaction

was very positive -- Canada in particular became a great

supporter of NEPAD – and the leaders were invited to the G8

meeting in Kananaskis in June 2002. Expectations were high and

the figure of $64 billion made headlines in the media. However,

columnist George Monbiot (Monbiot, 2002) of The Guardian knew

better:

“It is traditional, when empire celebrates, that its

vassal states come to pay tribute and beg for

deliverance. This time, the African leaders who will be

admitted to the summit… are prepared to suffer the final

humiliation by blaming themselves for the disasters

visited upon them by the G8… The discussions will

revolve around a plan called … NEPAD, drafted by the

African leaders and enthusiastically endorsed by the G8.

The enthusiasm is not entirely surprising, as NEPAD

places nearly all the blame for Africa's problems and

nearly all the responsibility for sorting them out on

Africa itself.”

39

NEPAD accepts that colonialism, the Cold War, and "the workings

of the international economic system" have contributed to

Africa's problems, but that the primary responsibility rests

with "corruption and economic mismanagement" at home. Africa's

underlying problem is debt. NEPAD implicitly accepts the rich

world's explanation for this debt: that previous African

leaders have frittered away their economic independence through

poor planning and personal graft. Nowhere is any context given.

Debt affects the entire world, and in the explanation, no

mention is made of the debt-based banking system. The problem

is compounded by the policing system developed by the rich

world at Bretton Woods in 1944, and, as the comment in The

Guardian continued: “This system granted the rich world

complete economic control over the poor world... The

consequences for national democracy are devastating. African

voters can demand a change of government, but they cannot

demand a change of policy.” Democracy in Africa, Monbiot (2002)

continued, is meaningless until its leaders are prepared to

challenge the external control of their economies. NEPAD

blithely promises to eliminate poverty, enrol all children in

primary school, reduce child mortality by two-thirds and supply

the continent with clean water and effective infrastructure,

and intends to do so largely by means of "public-private

partnership", the mechanism which is now failing so

spectacularly in the rich world:

“Apart from a few timid requests for an increase in aid

and a little more debt relief, the continent's leaders

40

absolve the G8 nations of all responsibility. Instead,

they proudly proclaim that ‘we will determine our own

destiny’ and call on the people of Africa ‘to mobilise

themselves in order to put an end to further

marginalisation of the continent’. Self-determination is

an admirable goal, but without control over economic

policy it is bombast… NEPAD could be viewed as a white

lie: the lies of the whites, repeated, with the best

intentions, by the leaders of Africa. But development

cannot be built on a lie, for development is a matter of

reality. So while their plan has admitted them to the

imperial court, it merely reinforces the dispensation

that ensures Africa stays poor while the G8 stays rich.

The continent's leaders will be forced to kneel on the

stony ground of Kananaskis. But at least they've brought

a Nepad.”

The nickname ‘kneepad’ has stuck. And, of course, the African

leaders came home empty- handed.18 Except for a promise, not

yet fulfilled, to increase Overseas Development Assistance

(ODA) flows by $12 billion per annum of which the African

leaders claim that not less than 50 per cent should go to

Africa. In fact, even an unlikely $6 billion more in ODA would

not even take Africa back to the early 1990s. ODA to Africa has

steadily declined from $19b billion per annum in the early

1990s to $12 billion in 2000.19 The relative share of Africa in

the global ODA has thus fallen from 37 to 27 per cent.

41

NEPAD is still a big plan as yet hardly implemented. But it

makes headway and is hotly discussed in Africa. The main

criticism of NEPAD is that the people, the first stakeholders,

have not been consulted. So organisations and researchers all

over the continent study and debate the NEPAD plan and make

their opinion known. The Bamako declaration is typical of the

new social movements that are both anti-globalist and pan-

Africanist:

“The Forum rejected neo-liberal globalisation and

further integration of Africa into an unjust system as a

basis for its growth and development. In this context,

there was a strong consensus that initiatives such as

NEPAD, which are inspired by the IMF-World Bank

strategies of Structural Adjustment Programmes, trade

liberalisations that continue to subject Africa to an

unequal exchange and strictures on governance borrowed

from the practices of Western countries and not rooted

in the culture and history of the peoples of Africa.”20

For those critics, what is wrong with NEPAD is not its goals,

but how it proposes to reach them. To their mind, NEPAD is no

alternative. NEPAD is the old kneepad that the African people

are sick and tired of. 21 Yet, though hardcore anti-globalists 18 See the G8 Action Plan for Africa on the NEPAD website www.nepad.org. 19 G8 Action Plan for Africa on the NEPAD website www.nepad.org (published by

the NEPAD secretariat).20 The Bamako Declaration of the African Social Forum, op. cit.21 See also Bond, Patrick (2001). 42

tend to reject anything to do with concessions to neo-liberal

practices, many community organisations decide not to turn

their back on NEPAD. Instead, they insist on having their say

because ‘NEPAD is all we have got’. Alongside the trade unions

– and also certain NGOs - they join the new style ‘corporatist’

forums for discussions with the state and business.

Perhaps not surprisingly, after more than a year with little to

show for their efforts to engage in a ‘new partnership’ with

the North, the very leaders of NEPAD started giving hints of a

turnabout. At the annual congress of the International Labour

Organisation (ILO) last June in Geneva, South Africa’s

President, Thabo Mbeki, who is himself an economist, according

to Coetzee (2003) “cited approvingly John Maynard Keynes and

stressed that the market could not solve deep problems of

under-development. He sang the praises of the European

Structural Fund that supported development among EU members. He

called for a transfer of resources from the industrialised

North to the South and spoke of the ‘curse of the money

merchant’. It was a surprise for those who have expected from

him a hard nosed defence of free markets.”

While divergences may remain between critics and actors of

NEPAD, they are agreed on its most legitimate and urgent target

which suffered a severe drawback at the 2002 summit of the G8.

In the words of Hein Marais (2001, p. 2; see also Marais 1999):

“A first and essential target of African Renaissance discourse

is Afro-pessimism – not only the flippant judgements broadcast

43

in the North but also the self-flagellating versions adopted on

the continent itself.” As long as African leaders are still

seen kneeling on ‘kneepads’ before the global rulers, global

apartheid will strengthen and African peoples will once more

tire of their politicians. But today there is a real chance

that they will find each other.

X. MUTINY IN CANCUN: COLLAPSE OF THE WTO SUMMIT

While this paper was in progress, a global thriller was being

written in Cancun at the meeting of the World Trade

Organisation (WTO). It started off with grim words on both

sides of the economic divide. The issue of immediate concern to

African delegations was the elimination of trade-distorting EU

and US agricultural subsidies. Burkina Faso, Mali, Chad and

Benin, in particular, asked Washington to slash the $ 4 billion

annual subsidies to US cotton farmers. The US, as reported by

Cobbs (2003), replied that “only a comprehensive initiative

that expanded the world market from fibre to garment could

improve the economic prospects for African farmers”, whereupon

one participant sneered, “Create a bigger demand for T-shirts!”

The EU did not want to put a date on the gradual phasing out of

agricultural subsidies either. Instead, the US and the EU tried

to table new issues, the so-called ‘Singapore issues’. These

new issues would require countries with vulnerable economies to

open up their capital markets and remaining protective trade

barriers even more, thus opening the floodgates for even more

cheap imports, capital flight, etc. resulting in the further

44

collapse of agricultural production and local industry, and the

reduced possibility of local re-investment. Southern

participants became increasingly irritated. "The general

feeling is that we're being taken for a ride (by the G-8)",

said an African observer for an international agency. “Why are

we here?" wondered another participant.

Then, on Sunday, the Kenyan and Ugandan delegations walked out.

The talks had collapsed; there was no agreement. The US Deputy

Trade Representative was reportedly ‘startled’ by the mutiny,

but not so South Africa’s minister for Trade and Industry, Alec

Erwin, who concluded (see Cobbs, 2003), “For the first time in

the WTO, the developing world, united not on ideological

grounds but on key and well articulated interests, acted in

concert to advance its developmental agenda."

It is too early to say what this will mean for future

negotiations around Africa’s development and in particular

around NEPAD, now the development platform of the AU. But

African countries were actively organising alliances on

different levels. Senior activist Dot Keet wrote from Cancun,

“Some African governments, led by Kenya, Uganda, [Tanzania],

Nigeria, Zambia and Zimbabwe, are playing a leading role in

developing country alliances against the power of 'the majors',

drawing developing countries such as India, Indonesia,

Malaysia, Philippines and many others around them”.22 On the

other hand, the emerging countries spoke during the whole

45

summit from a common platform, the G21 or ‘G 20 plus’,

represented by Brazil, Argentina, South Africa and Egypt. At

the end of the meeting Nigeria, Africa’s second strongest

economy, (and Indonesia) joined this group.

This structuring around a united stand of the axis of ‘emerging

giants’ of the three southern continents, viz. China, Brazil,

India and South Africa, may indicate a turning point in North-

South relations, “The G21 is the first coherent Third World

economic lobby group to crystallise out of any world body.

Equally significant is the fact that at its head stands China,

a burgeoning economic superpower whose standing and muscle were

crucial to maintaining the solidarity of developing countries

at the talks. The G21 represents more than half the world’s

population and nearly two-thirds of its farmers, while

accounting for about a fifth of total world agricultural

production.”23 It seems particularly important to develop and

strengthen platforms which provide forums for emerging and

poorer countries alike. The concrete interests of the emerging

countries of the ‘G20 plus’ are not always the same as those of

the weaker developing countries.

In order to achieve better and fair conditions of integration

for all into the world economy, the southern giants must

22 Keet, Dot (2003), Zimbabwean researcher Dot Keet is a prominent leader of

the anti-globalist movement in South Africa.23 Editorial Mail & Guardian (South Africa), 19 September 2003.46

abstain from selfish bullying and the dwarfs must stand up for

their rights. But it is at the regional level where the

problems start and socialisation of all actors should take

place. Every region contains its own economic giants and

dwarfs, even if these notions are relative. Inequality of

resources and historical development between countries, often

even between neighbours, is the key obstacle to economic

integration. Integration means that weaker and stronger

countries share resources and play each their role in the

supranational economy. But as long as the market remains god

and the law of the jungle rules the economy, notions such as

good neighbourliness, fair integration and united action in the

interests of all easily fall by the wayside.

XI. POSTSCRIPTUM

Genuine African liberation from the shackles of global

apartheid and under-development is feasible now. Despite huge

problems and valid criticism, there have been important steps

forward. Africa has found a voice again. And Africans are

finding their voice as citizens, workers and community members.

This paper must remain patchy. Crucial areas have received no

attention. Perhaps it was no more than a guided tour-- from the

not-so-attractive historical top levels down to the first floor

to inspect some of the effects of globalisation on one country

with the pretty name of Mozambique, and to the second floor

where regional integration is being built, then up again to the

top levels of the new building where we have arrived just at

47

the moment when a wall was being knocked down to make place for

a new bay window. Like the lucky ones who always happen to be

at the right place at the right moment, let us hope we have

witnessed a historical event that will listen to the name of

Cancun.

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51

Notes

52