Architects of poverty
Moeletsi Mbeki’s book, Architects of poverty, analyses the causes of the African economic disease, which has firmly rooted the continent to the bottom of global wealth creation. While this type of analysis has become somewhat cliché, repeated endlessly in almost every public economic report, the significance of this book is that it applies to South Africa, the most industrialised country in Africa, which was supposed to lift the rest of the continent out of economic desolation.
In the 1960s when most African countries achieved independence, there was a spirit of optimism that after decades or centuries of colonial regression the new nations would rise again, and the continent would join the rest of the world as a place where hundreds of millions of men and women would again become part of history. After the assassination of Lumumba, the bloody overthrow of the Nigerian government and the forcible removal of Nkrumah, this optimism was dented.
But hope was not completely lost as analysts, mostly on the left, believed that if the CIA, IMF, World Bank and other instruments of neo-colonialism were got rid of, patriotic leaders could emerge to mobilise the masses and achieve the promised land. In this hopeful atmosphere, intellectuals sought heroes to lead the fight and attain the promise of the national independence struggle. After winning the civil war and gaining fortunes from the oil boom, Nigeria became an unlikely bearer of this optimism.
With its huge population, abundant oil revenues, and an intelligent population suffused with entrepreneur values, the country was considered to possess the essential ingredients for rapid development. Its leadership had shown the independence of mind and nationalist sentiments to ignore the advice of its former colonial masters in how it pursued the civil war, and the reconciliation afterwards.
And it adopted an aggressive attitude toward Portuguese colonialism and South African apartheid, which had attempted to carve it up in alliance with French imperialism in the Biafran tragedy. But Nigeria proved a false dawn, which developed into a social, economic and political nightmare. Under brutal military and venal civilian dictatorships, the country used its intelligence, entrepreneurship and oil wealth to reduce its population to beggars and thieves.
Then the African dream became embedded in the anti-apartheid struggle, through which not only Africans on the continent but also those in the diaspora would achieve liberation. Europeans, who had exploited Africans for the past five centuries through slavery, colonialism and neo-colonialism, were now oppressing and exploiting Africans through a system akin to slavery, with less social and political space than colonialism. On the back of this racist oppression the apartheid regime had created industries that could compete with Europe and European standards of living for its white minority.
Mbeki now contends, however, that the governing class in South Africa, dominated by former ANC freedom fighters, far from using capital to liberate indigenous and foreign Africans, has succumbed to the neo-colonial manoeuvre of earlier African nationalists. Through the Black Economic Empowerment policy, South Africans of European origin who dominated the country since the mid-17th century, made the new rulers very junior partners in the economy in exchange for ceding political control.
This system is leading to the de-industrialisation of the country as the ANC governors are not interested in developing the economy but in accumulating capital for their own consumption. With competition from China and other Asian producers, South African industries have retreated so that industry now contributes much less to GDP than it did two decades ago.
The coalition of economic and political rulers favour this: European industrialists desire inexpensive Chinese goods to allow workers to reproduce their labour power more cheaply, while the ANC desires political peace through handouts to dispossessed workers. Xenophobia is valued as it divides native workers from immigrants of countries which sacrificed blood and treasure to help the ANC gain independence.
In Zimbabwe, de-industrialisation was quicker, more brutal and dramatic because of Mugabe’s and Zanu-PF’s obsession with maintaining political control. The rulers destroyed white commercial farming, not to make space for black farmers, but to get rid of farm workers who favoured the Opposition MDC. They dispossessed and expelled millions of workers and trades people from the urban areas for the same reason. And they killed thousands in the Ndebele areas to stop them from voting for ZAPU.
Mbeki’s diagnosis and his suggestions for solution are good as it goes. Eliminating corruption, fostering democratic values and entrepreneurship are almost clichés, repeated endlessly even by those who preside over many of the basket cases of the continent. The real problem is that people like Fanon analysed the problem and proferred solutions far more incisively and dramatically at the dawn of independence.
The Wretched of the Earth is still a powerful, revolutionary testament to oppression and futility almost 50 years after it was written. It could have been written today, so contemporary is its impact. The author’s analysis of the contemporary ANC is a pale reflection of Fanon’s denunciation of the national bourgeoisie in 1961, which revealed how the “freedom fighters” betrayed the people.
The dilemma for Mbeki and other intellectuals today is that they see the problem, know the solution and feel obliged to speak words of truth to their oppressors, but know that the exercise is entirely futile.
Patrick Wilmot writes from London.