(TALKZIMBABWE) Obama should read the history of Africa
COMMENT - Zimbabwe was put on a credit freeze in the year 2002, by among others the present serving Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, the Vice President Joe Biden, Russ Feingold republicans Jesse Helms and introduced by Bill Frist. Read Section 4C of the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act of 2001.Obama should read the history of Africa
Taiwo Akerele - Opinion
Fri, 17 Jul 2009 08:45:00 +0000
I WISH to respectfully disagree with President Barack Obama of the United States on the true cause of the Zimbabwean economic and political crisis. During his recent state visit to Ghana, he was of the opinion that the economic crisis in Zimbabwe was not caused by colonialism but by bad leadership. We all recall that at the heart of this crisis is the land question?
For many years the white minority that ruled Zimbabwe cannibalised and appropriated to themselves the productive agricultural landscape in the whole of Zimbabwe leaving the black majority to become slaves in their own fatherland. As if this is not an evil policy, enough to cause disenchantment, the British Government agreed to finance the land re-distribution policy as part of the negotiation in the advent of the historic independence in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
It is an open knowledge that for the umpteenth time, the British Government reneged on this agreement to the consternation of the African Union and particularly the Zimbabwean Government and its people. In the process, there arose a serious internal insurrection although tacitly supported by the Zimbabwean Government against the white minority holders of the land and in its wake severe sanctions were meted out against the Government amidst violence.
It is very unfortunate and a revisionism of history that the whole world supported by the powerful Western media and new broadcasting technology, rather than condemn the British Government for reneging turned against Robert Mugabe who rightly was fighting for his people. Again whether the strategy is right is another issue entirely.
Against this background, it came to me as a rude shock for President Obama who is an apostle of transparency and equanimity of purpose to outrightly condemn African leaders in our soil and left the oppressor Europe to enjoy their loot from Africa amidst poverty, perpetual economic down-turn and fake boundaries in West Africa, Rwanda, Burundi and Morrocco.
Today in Africa, millions of people are living together against their wishes, this accounts partly for the ethnic clashes all over the continent and this was manifested in the genocidal war in Rwanda, the perpetual religious crisis in Nigeria and the contradictions in Cameroon where one part of the country speaks French the other half speaks English. To Europe and America, the African continent is a commodity that must be shared amongst them for full exploitation- Where is the United Nations?
Because ignorance is not an excuse for breaking the law, like President Bill Clinton, Obama should settle down and read the works of Walter Rodney on "How Europe Underdeveloped Africa" Claude Ake's Democracy and the Crisis of Underdevelopment in Africa and of course compare the situation with Singapore as captured in the work of Lee Kuan Yew " Singapore: From Third World to the First". I am sure these will give him an idea of the difference between what it takes for a people to control their destiny and for a people's destiny to be controlled by others.
For me the African situation is beyond rhetoric and Presidential gallivanting and speaking from an Olympian height amidst claps and cheers from a listening political class who in the words of Claude Ake have no development in their agenda in the first place.
In unmistaken terms, it must be stated that most African leaders have messed up severally post-colonial rule and squandered the opportunities that clearly came to us as a continent to develop and liberate our people from poverty, disease and illiteracy and others too numerous to mention.
In Nigeria we have experienced "strong man" rule as noted by President Obama who attempted to change the constitution rather than strengthen institutions. In Gabon and Zaire, Presidents have died in power trying to equate the destiny of the countries to their own existence and in North Africa, gerontocracy still reigns supreme.
However, the Zimbabwean situation is a classic case of the battle of a people to take over their God- given land. What they do with it is another page for history to foretell. And for America, I hope the analysis of Mahomoud Mandani in his book "Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism or Francis Fukuyuma's treatise on the End of History and the last man is not manifesting already?
* Akerele is with the Center for Values in leadership, Lagos.
This article was first published as an editorial on the Nigerian Guardian News Online under the title "Obama and Zimbabwe".
Labels: BARACK OBAMA, NEOCOLONIALISM
posted by MrK @ 9:12 PM
6 Comments:
Citizens in African countries are sick and tired of leaders and their sympathizers who have continued to find scapegoats for their own failure to address the basic needs and expectations of the common people -- leaders who have continued to attribute failure and mediocrity in governance to what have become traditional and convenient scapegoats; that is: colonialism, neo-colonialism, globalization, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), among others.
But really, can any of these scapegoats be faulted for bloated national governments which cannot live within their means, the electoral malpractices which block cadres of competent potential leaders from the realm of national leadership, the authoritarian leadership of some African heads of state, or the hemorrhage of public resources through corruption and misappropriation?
A few selected views on who is really to blame for Africa’s persistent socio-economic ills is perhaps in order at this juncture:
(a) "We cannot avoid the fact that a lot of our problems in Africa arise from bad governance." -- Julius K. Nyerere, "Governance in Africa: Address, http://www.uneca.org/, Addis Ababa, March 2, 1998.
(b) "The failure of African rulers, African governments, African governance institutions ... account for the emergence of first, political decay, then socio-political instability, followed by social fragmentation, and finally political disorders in contemporary Africa." -- Anice, L., "Descent into Sociopolitical Decay: Legacies of Maldevelopment in Africa," in Mulugeta, A., editor, Africa in the Contemporary International Disorder: Crises and Possibilities (New York: University Press of America, Inc., 1996).
(c) The African continent has, thus far, been led by leaders who lack "creativity and ingenuity" and are slow "to understand how the world system operates." -- Paraphrased from Mathurin Houngnikpo, "Stuck at the Runway: Africa’s Distress Call," Africa Insight, Volume 30/Number 1, May 2000.
(d) According to Alassane D. Ouattara, bad or poor governance can very easily be identified; among other things, it manifests itself through a large public sector and a small private sector, weak public institutions, and weak, complex, inequitable, and arbitrarily enforced rules and regulations. (Ouattara, A. D., "Towards Better Governance: The Next Stage of Africa’s Journey of Economic Reform," International Monetary Fund (IMF), June 27, 1998.
It may, therefore, not be an exaggeration to conclude that it is, by and large, the leadership factor which has made Africa to become a haven for the following kinds of nation-states in post-independence Africa that are cited in the literature, which Kingsley Y. Amoako has discussed in a speech entitled "Governance for a Progressing Africa: Opening Statement at the Second Africa Governance Forum," presented in Accra, Ghana, on June 25, 1998:
(a) The Patrimonial State: A political setting in which government leaders treat the state as their own piece of property;
(b) The Predatory State: A state in which government officials look upon the citizenry as prey for their rapacious greed;
(c) The Shadow State: The kind of state that is generally characterized by informal political networks and a shadow economy punctuated by illegal activities; and
(d) The Collapsed State: A state in which common people are generally left to their own devices while government officials revel in con-spicuous, state-financed luxury.
I do not see anything which Obama could learn from a 1982 book by Walter Rodney, apart from issues relating to the slave trade. Rodney was a socialist thinker, and his writings were characterized by socialist allegations and generalizations concerning the exploitation of the masses (proletariats) by capitalists (the bourgeoisie).
I do not think there is anything one can learn from Rodney's book about Zimbabwe's predicament under comrade Robert Mugabe. The socio-economic decay in Zimbabwe today should be blamed on Mugabe.
Obviously, there are a lot of things wrong with governance in Africa. Too much concentration of power, cobbled together countries of many traditional authorities, with every border dissecting a traditional authority - disunity by design.
However, who owns the wealth? Who owns South Africa's goldfields, the Congo's logging concessions and diamond fields, who is buying coltan/tanzanite from the likes of Laurent Nkunda?
When it comes down to it, many of these governments only exist by the grace of the same West that colonized Africa and is continuing the practice of neocolonialism.
They ensure the exportation of raw materials from Africa through coercion, through financial and military means. As soon as an African leader steps out of line, they are assassinated or overthrown. This happened to Patrice Lumumba, Laurent Kabila, almost to Robert Mugabe. In fact any African leader knows that if they use their mineral wealth for the betterment of their own people, they get the Mugabe treatment.
And so, they choose to live predatory existances, feeding off the people through heavy taxation, handing out the spoils of government to those they themselves patronise. No wonder that anyone who is elevated to government acts as if they have won the lottery, or have been blessed by a hihger power.
It is no coincidence that the same government that refuses to tax the mines, lives off income tax from workers. It is safe for them to abuse their own people, it is not safe for them to stop the flow of money TO the west, lest they jeopardize the trickle back of money from the west. Every year, Africa pays $1 trillion in tribute in raw materials, and every year it receives $1/4 trillion, which is intended to keep this racket going.
What happens when they cut out the middle man - the West- and use raw materials for their own people? We could ask Laurent Kabila, except that he is no longer with us - assassinated on the very same day that Patrice Lumumba was assassinated by the Belgians and CIA 40 years earlier.
Most of the wars in Africa are western stooges fighting over the right to be patronized by the West.
So how can we conclude that the West has no malevolent influence and should not be held accountable first?
Like Barack Obama, I am no fan of excuses, which includes excuses made in the West to blame Africa for it's own problems. Especially as 2 of the co-sponsors of the legislation that put Zimbabwe on a credit freeze, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, are in his own cabinet.
I find it hard to believe that Barack Obama is unaware of the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act of 2001, although it is possible. That act put a credit freeze on the country of Zimbabwe and has since 2002, resulting in world record hyperinflation. Something the MDC have been lying about for just as long, even though they helped draft the legislation, preferring in ther rhodesian ways to blame 'incompetence' and 'mismanagement' of the Africans. How is that 'taking responsibility'?
Why should anyone in Africa take responsibility for the crimes committed against the continent?
So Barack Obama has some 'splaining to do', in the words of Ricki Ricardo/Lindsey Graham. :)
Cheers, and have a great weekend.
And I mean that in the most positive and respectful way. Barack Obama is still the best hope the world has for a rational and even fair US foreign policy.
However, I don't understand why the economic sanctions against Zimbabwe have not been lifted.
Land redistribution will not be undone (it would lead to civil war, because land was distributed to over 314,000 Zimbabweans, not the 'friends and cronies of Mugabe' the MDC like to claim), and President Mugabe will leave office whenever, so what is the delay?
South Africa had similar sanctions imposed on it during the Apartheid regime, but the government managed to keep the country's economy ticking. Today, the country is perhaps the wealthiest country on the African continent.
Zambia, like many other African countries, never had any stringent economic sanctions imposed on it, but it has failed to pull itself out of the doldrums, just like many other African countries.
Rhodesian had sanctions on it too, and Ian Smith's 'thousand year' empire expired in 15 years.
Zimbabwe is still standing, and President Mugabe is still in power.
Now as to the details. Hyperinflation was caused by the draining of foreign currency from the Zimbabwean economy. This was one done in two ways. 1) Credit was frozen, meaning that all the facilities governments use to import goods could no longer be used. 2) Zimbabwe was required to keep paying off it's debt, again draining foreign currency from the economy.
To compensate, the Zimbabwean government printed up money, while it was working on a Chinese credit facility.
The Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act is very explicit on this two-pronged approach. I quote:
(c) MULTILATERAL FINANCING RESTRICTION- ... the Secretary of the Treasury shall instruct the United States executive director to each international financial institution to oppose and vote against--
(1) any extension by the respective institution of any loan, credit, or guarantee to the Government of Zimbabwe; or
(2) any cancellation or reduction of indebtedness owed by the Government of Zimbabwe to the United States or any international financial institution.
In other words, foreign currency was no longer coming in, but because existing debt could not be rescheduled, it kept flowing out.
And of course, essentials still had to be imported and paid for in foreign currency - fuel, chemicals, etc.
It was the absence of these chemicals (the money to pay for it)which lead to the cholera outbreak, which the UK/US then tried to use to overthrow the government with.
Just to add, the institutions which this act applied to, all the facilities with which the Zimbabwean government had credit lines, were:
SEC. 3. DEFINITIONS.
In this Act:
(1) INTERNATIONAL FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS- The term `international financial institutions' means the multilateral development banks and the International Monetary Fund.
(2) MULTILATERAL DEVELOPMENT BANKS- The term `multilateral development banks' means the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the
International Development Association, the
International Finance Corporation, the
Inter-American Development Bank, the
Asian Development Bank, the
Inter-American Investment Corporation, the
African Development Bank, the
African Development Fund, the
European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and the Multilateral Investment Guaranty Agency.
These institutions were carefully selected for a maximum impact on the Zimbabwean economy, with help from the MDC (Eddie Cross, Tendai Biti) itself.
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