that are experiencing the same effects of neoliberal economic policies.
africa is not the exception, it is the same story elsewhere. your
response wants to set the issue with africa facing an outside pressure.
there is no outside, it is a system in which africa and the rest of the
world are all enmeshed. maybe n korea excepted.
ken
On 12/15/10 1:23 AM, Chikwendu Christian Ukaegbu wrote:
> Yes, makes sense to me. The global economy is not an "iron cage" from which African
> leaders and followers cannot extricate themselves. To blame the global economy
> implies that the African is devoid of agency i.e. no capacity to think and act
> independently and courageously for the public good. Yet he/she has capacity to think
> and act in self-interest. The postcolonial state may be more culpable than the
> global economy. But even that still places doubts on the efficay of African agency.
> Might it be that the postcolonial state is an iron cage? The continued
> externalization of the African condition after 50 years of independence is
> troubling. When will the child grow up?
> Cu
>
>
>> Ken, unlike you, I have little sympathy for the notion that the the crevices
>> of the machine of inequality called the global economy are too narrow for
>> competent and selfless African leaders to maneuver in. Or that, given all
>> that we know about the despicable ways of Africa's ruling elites, we can
>> heap all the blame of Africa's political and economic stagnation on the seen
>> and unseen hand of global capital. That tale is stale, tired, and of little
>> comfort under today's circumstances. I would not want to put all my
>> explanatory eggs in that one basket, valid as the global structural
>> restrictions on African political initiatives may be. How does the tired
>> tale of dependency theory and its mechanics *alone *explain the rampant,
>> mindless corruption of the African political class, or their serial erosion
>> of the democratic will and rights of citizens? Yes, several decades ago,
>> that explanation cast a spell on African(ist) scholars because these were
>> they heydays of foreign interference and the forgiven follies of
>> postcolonial infancy. Now, it's explanatory value has diminished. The notion
>> that African states and peoples are entrapped in some sinister, monstrous,
>> global capitalist hegemony from which they cannot escape and which
>> inevitably and consistently determines their economic and political fates is
>> a little passe. That's too much determinism than I can stomach. It fails to
>> account for the fact that, skewed as the global capitalist structure may be
>> and as asymmetrical as the resulting relationships and structural
>> connections may be, African states hold a few cards that they can play
>> selflessly and cleverly to benefit their citizens and the fact that even
>> within the constraints of the foundational economic structure in which they
>> operate African leaders can and should privilege their quotidian
>> governmental obligations to their own citizens. To be sure, I always make
>> sure to remind my students who tend to gloss over these overarching
>> realities of the global political economy and their constraints on the
>> people and institutions of the South that these structural impediments are
>> real and limit the political and economic wiggle room available to countries
>> of the South. But I don't subscribe to the idea of a global neoliberal
>> economic system in which African leaders or citizens cannot negotiate,
>> maneuver, or act in their self-interest, or in which localized political
>> action and selfless political conduct is impossible. Where is African
>> political agency in this picture? Where is accountability for Africa's vast
>> army of rulers? I am sorry, but your position, once again, strikes me as the
>> familiar alibis and easy excuses for African leadership failure. We're not
>> talking about the ability of African leaders to wrought transformative
>> change in their domain or to overturn their countries' fundamental
>> relationship with the North's economic and political system. Obviously that
>> would require giving much weight to what you're describing. We are talking
>> about the need for leaders to keep faith with the mundane, basic obligations
>> of leadership. Don't African citizens deserve these from their leaders? Are
>> these very basic obligations of leadership unrealistic in the context of the
>> global forces you describe?
>>
>> You wrote:
>>
>> *"Why do the poor continue to vote for those who strip them of the means of
>> living?"*
>>
>> Good question. However, I do not believe that it can be answered from a
>> structural, ideological perspective alone. One of the abiding imperfections
>> of Western liberal democracy is that it is an elite business in which flawed
>> elite choices are presented to poor, voting citizens who then have to choose
>> the person that they perceive to be the less bad of the two or more choices.
>> I agree that the system, by its nature is rigged, ab initio, to throw up
>> elite choices--people who for the most part possess no pro-poor experiential
>> or ideological pedigree. But I disagree that this is necessarily a function
>> of an omnipotent global capitalist hegemony. It is the nature of Western
>> liberal democracy and its emphasis on representation, one-man-one vote, etc.
>> The problem encapsulated in your question inheres in the nature of democracy
>> itself. Choices are determined by elite consensuses and trade-offs. The
>> system and its ritualistic elections require that poor people take a chance
>> on one elite candidate over another, not knowing whether the candidate of
>> their choice would not "strip them of the means of living" and sometimes
>> knowing that they would. They have little choice in the matter. The poor
>> can't control the processes by which the choices emerge. One of the reasons
>> for this is their financial handicap vis-a-vis the rich, but it is not the
>> only reason. It is sometimes a function of inherited status, education,
>> ethnicity, etc. Besides, in these local political dynamics, the reach of
>> global is only a partial, limited factor. In my opinion, it is not the
>> be-all-and-end-all that explains all. The poor are presented with a highly
>> constrained choice in the name of democracy and they have to choose someone.
>> Democracy, not neoliberal economic hegemony, is the operative construct
>> here. The alternative is to reject Western liberal democracy altogether,
>> which is not feasible.
>>
>> Anyway, my two cents so far.
>>
>> On Tue, Dec 14, 2010 at 8:55 AM, kenneth harrow<harrow@msu.edu> wrote:
>>
>>> i would appreciate an astute political scientist making an evaluation of
>>> the united states taking the sentence below: "we, the elite of africa [the
>>> u.s.], are the primary enemies of ordinary africans [americans]" and "the
>>> tragic role African [congressional] leaders have and continue to play....
>>> etc"
>>> in a recent conference mamdani made the astute, if obvious, statement that
>>> it isn't individuals in africa who are different from those elsewhere. it
>>> isn't bad luck, bad elites, bad leaders, but rather the conditions that
>>> frame the creation of elites, leaders, politicians.
>>> why not face it: there are systems of exchange and production that produce
>>> not just goods and wealth but conditions that account for social structures.
>>> those conditions today generate the possibility of enormous wealth for a
>>> small group, who try their best to hold on to and accumulate as much as
>>> possible, while the larger numbers go to hell.
>>> which country am i talking about??? the US? Nigeria? Congo? Rwanda?
>>> Senegal? south africa? china? Guatemala? Morocco? ireland? russia?
>>> name a continent that is not relatively described by the "mess" created by
>>> the international economic order?
>>> do you think the conditions created by neoliberal global capitalism are not
>>> fundamentally responsible for the abominable social and economic
>>> imbalances??
>>> it is time to STOP flagellating africa for the ills that follow the
>>> dynamics of an unjust economic order. stop talking about how rich the congo
>>> would be, only if...
>>> so here is my fundamental disagreement with many on this list who call for
>>> better leaders. it isn't the people, it is the system within which they take
>>> power that needs to be rethought. if we do that, we might then rewrite the
>>> headline to be, "Why does the IMF put africa into such a mess," or "why do
>>> we have a global economic order that results in misery for the majority?" or
>>> "Why do the poor continue to vote for those who strip them of the means of
>>> living?"
>>> a tea party question indeed
>>> ken
>>>
>>> On 12/14/10 9:00 AM, Toyin Falola wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> *Why is Africa in such a mess?*
>>> http://www.monitor.co.ug/OpEd/Commentary/-/689364/1071802/-/view/pri
>>> ntVersion/-/156btsfz/-/index.html
>>>
>>> By Harold Acemah
>>>
>>> Posted Tuesday, December 14 2010 at 00:00
>>> In October 1993, I bought a little book titled, Tiny Roland: the ugly
>>> face of Neo-colonialism in Africa by an EIR Investigative Team. EIR stands
>>> for Executive Intelligence Review, based in Washington DC, USA.
>>> The thesis of the book, which at that time I found outrageous, but which
>>> I am now more sympathetic to, was that Africa is on its deathbed, its people
>>> relentlessly mowed down by starvation and disease. Among the perpetrators of
>>> this holocaust are the International Monetary Fund, the former colonial
>>> powers, the transnational corporations and commodity cartels such as the
>>> Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries.
>>> On this list, one should add African leaders and the elite. Increasingly,
>>> I believe we, the elite of Africa, are the primary enemies of ordinary
>>> Africans. We, and especially our leaders, have let Africa down, very badly.
>>> Current events in Ivory Coast confirm the tragic role African leaders have
>>> and continue to play in the destruction of Africa. I fear Uganda is next.
>>> According to EIR, one man above all the rest, bears special personal
>>> responsibility for turning the 1960s dreams of independence into a
>>> nightmare. His name is Roland Walter "Tiny" Roland, boss of a British
>>> Transnational Corporation, LONRHO. LONRHO is acronym for the London Rhodesia
>>> Company. For decades this shrewd fellow was the most powerful Western
>>> businessman in Africa. He had access to all African Heads of State and
>>> government as well as African freedom fighters, guerrillas and even bandits.
>>> He would do business with African leaders, while funding guerrillas
>>> fighting the very leaders he was wining and dining with. He was a
>>> practitioner of the dictum: Never put all your eggs in one basket.
>>> The introduction to the EIR book on Tiny Roland is prophetic. It begins
>>> with a short three-word sentence: "Africa is dying". It denounces Tiny
>>> Roland and asserts that "the list of African leaders and guerrilla leaders
>>> with whom Tiny Roland has had intimate financial dealings reads so much like
>>> a Who is Who of modern African history. It includes past and present leaders
>>> of Uganda and Kenya. Like all devious types, Tiny Roland had a tragic end
>>> and is no more.
>>> Aside from the treacherous behaviour of African leaders, Sub-Saharan
>>> Africa is simply poorly led, by mediocres, conmen, frauds and drop-outs.
>>> Since the advent of independence in the 1960s, Africa has had far too many
>>> tyrants and gangsters as leaders, far too few statesmen, let alone merely
>>> competent office holders at political and bureaucratic level. Too often
>>> African leaders reject sound policy advice and refuse to take the long or
>>> broad view of their job.
>>> For example, how can anybody justify and rationalise the sale of Uganda
>>> Commercial Bank (UCB), Apollo Hotel, Uganda Hotels and Uganda Electricity
>>> Board, to mention but a few, under the guise of liberalisation and
>>> privatisation. All these parastatals were making profit, but more important,
>>> they were owned by the people of Uganda. UCB was fondly and rightly called
>>> "The People's Bank". UEB was sold to ESKOM, a company owned by the
>>> government of South Africa. It defies logic and one does not need a PhD in
>>> Economics to see through the absurdity of the actions of African leaders.
>>> The few African leaders who seem to be progressive at the beginning of
>>> their tenure of office soon revert to the familiar form of autocratic
>>> one-man rule. Some are literally insane and remind me of the Roman Emperor
>>> Caligula. Take the example, Master Sgt. Samuel Doe and Sgt Jean Bedel
>>> Bokassa. The former became a General and Life President of Liberia while
>>> Bokassa crowned himself Emperor of the Central African Republic. He was
>>> following the footsteps of his hero, Napoleon Bonaparte of France.
>>> Today, another crazy young man called Yahya Jammeh who has terrorised
>>> tiny Gambia for years, now wants to be crowned "King of Gambia" and
>>> establish a dynastic rule in that ruined and impoverished strip of land
>>> which is too small as a runway for the airbus 380 Jumbo Jet. And the
>>> international community is just watching. For the enemies of Africa it
>>> confirms their worst fears and prejudices about Africans. During the 1960s
>>> many of these types used to patronisingly argue that Africans are barbarians
>>> and not yet ready for self-government, let alone independence.
>>>
>>> When one looks at the map of Africa from Zimbabwe to Somalia to Eritrea
>>> and Gambia and in between, it is painful for me as pan-Africanist to nod my
>>> head and in silence admit that these enemies of Africa were perhaps partly
>>> right. We Africans are our own worst enemies. Let us stop blaming
>>> colonialism, the slave trade, imperialism, etc for our own self-made
>>> tragedy.
>>> Our education has failed to remove the village mentality in most of our
>>> leaders. All we think and talk about is "eating" or "manger" in French. Some
>>> allege they have killed an animal and must be given eternity to feast on the
>>> carcass. With such mind-sets Africa may indeed sooner, rather than later,
>>> die. Yes, Africa is dying. Our primary challenge is to save Africa from
>>> imminent death and keep the hopes of our people alive.
>>> *Mr Achema is a political scientist, consultant and a retired ambassador
>>> based in Arua*
>>> *hacemah@gmail.com*<hacemah@gmail.com>
>>>
>>> --
>>>
>>> Toyin Falola
>>> Department of History
>>> The University of Texas at Austin
>>> 1 University Station
>>> Austin, TX 78712-0220
>>> USA
>>> 512 475 7224
>>> 512 475 7222 (fax)
>>> http://www.toyinfalola.com/
>>> www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa
>>> http://groups.google.com/group/yorubaaffairs
>>> http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
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>>
>>
>> --
>> There is enough in the world for everyone's need but not for everyone's
>> greed.
>>
>>
>> ---Mohandas Gandhi
>>
>> --
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>
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