Practicalities of radical thought and protest in contemporary African contexts

INTRODUCTION: A GLOBAL REALITY

For most of us today, our lives are bound by the laws of the state, or internationally-enforced laws that define terms of trade, sovereign independence, and political involvement. Recently, the enforcement of these laws is faced with increasingly violent protest, as the continued rise in economic inequality, and the negative impacts of consumption destroy the earth’s ecology.

Through demand and supply variables that define market value, through formal and informal agreements that dictate the acquisition, allocation and reallocation of natural resources and human labour, and a complex blend of monetary theory and application, an increasingly complex system of exchanges is created (manipulated by financial institutions, and enforced by policing agencies). In recent times, this system of exchanges has been understood to rely primarily on exploitation and accumulation of perceived capital / wealth. However, contestations of access and privilege to resources (land for all people) come up against the rapidly increasing power of dominant, military-backed political groups and corporate monopolies.

Therefore, for many people around the world, most of the laws that enforce state and ‘international’ politics and trade tend to be repressive and counter-productive, in political and economic terms, and in relation to the interests of indigenous claims and rights. Yet, evidence suggests that these effects and impacts are formally denied, distorted through the media, and repackaged to mask a disturbingly rapid rise in poverty and ecological disaster.

The staggering amount of wealth that is amassed by certain economic institutions and associated corporations at the cost of war, environmental disaster, and social dysfunction has created very unsettling perspectives and realities: have and have nots, First World and Third World, developed and under-developed, etc. In both colloquial and serious study, these dichotomies have generated popular debate and protest that poses challenging questions to the state and the sustainability of a perceived economic ‘world’ system.

A WORLD SYSTEM IN CRISIS, OR A CRISIS IN WORLD SYSTEMS’ THEORY?

Perceived as a World System, Capitalism, as a paradigm defining the dominant system or mode of exchange and production today, generates critical perspectives within African contexts. As a concerned observer noted recently, ‘the superficiality of capitalist globalisation has… nowhere been more evident than in Africa whose nations had no alternative but to bow down to the economic dictates of the West.’[1] Thus, for example, after ‘seven long years of refusal to ‘sign’ with the IMF, the government of Mwalimu Julius Nyerere was forced to accept the conditionalities of (Structural Adjustment Programs) SAPs in the mid 1980’s. Debt and donor dependence of the post-colonial state left little room for manoeuvres. The resulting combination of SAP and trade liberalisation and privatisation… led to a radical change in patterns of ownership and controls of basic natural resources, including land, minerals, wildlife areas and water […] transnational corporations (TNCs) gained far more control over basic resources in the 1990s and 2000s than they ever had in the colonial era which ended in 1961 (italisised input mine).’[2]

Cash crop / Petro-economies, developed over decades in Central, West, and North Africa, put the finishing touches to a picture depicting rapid ‘accumulation by dispossession’. Of course, these realities were not endemic or particular to the African political economy. Recent history revealed that this dispossession of material wealth spanned the globe, and the ensuing struggles (driven by political and economic interests) forced the migration of billions of people around the world, often due to the pressures of slavery, wage labour and limited or restricted access to knowledge and resources. Eric Williams was succinct in his conclusions about the motivations of British-led slavery and its subsequent abolition when he stated that ‘the commercial capitalism of the eighteenth century developed the wealth of Europe by means of slavery and monopoly. But in so doing it helped to create the industrial capitalism of the nineteenth century, which turned round and destroyed the power of commercial capitalism, slavery, and all its works.’[3]

This rapid accumulation of wealth by the Western world had no conscientious motive other than to establish imperial control over its conquered terrain. The impact has been devastating, as these actions continue to polarise equitable distribution of resources and political freedoms.[4] As Eric Hobsbawm argued, the danger of this polarisation now is that,

‘… as the world is integrated in one way by globalization, it is increasingly divided in another way into a permanently inferior majority of states and a privileged and self-satisfied minority of states. This minority enjoys a self-reinforcing superiority of wealth, technology, and power (including military power), and such superiority and complacency are just as likely to be resented now as they were in the old days of imperial supremacies – perhaps more likely, since today’s greater availability of information can more easily reveal the discrepancies.’[5]

These observations therefore suggest that where there are resources that can be exploited for profit, struggles between the state and the citizenry become particularly fierce. Human rights violations, territorial invasion, economic sanction, and political destabilisation are recurring experiences, which prevent constructive ideas on human development from taking root.

The bottom line is revealed in the growing concern about the sustainability of this current economic order (in its structural and functional senses), which then inevitably looks past the proposed structural and functional benefits, and focuses on the processes of value definition and an equitable re-distribution of wealth, in order to nurture the diversity of human creativity, and sustainably address negative impacts on the social and natural environment.

In a typical example of populist opinion on neo-liberal economics, N. Beams writes that ‘the IMF notes that real interest rates have been declining since the 1980s and are ‘now in slightly negative territory’. But this has failed to boost productive investment. On the contrary, what it calls ‘scars’ from the global financial crisis ‘have resulted in a sharp and persistent decline in investment in advanced economies’. Between 2008 and 2013, there was a two-and-a-half percentage point decline in the investment to GDP ratio in these countries. The report adds that ratios ‘in many advanced economies are unlikely to recover to pre-crisis levels in the next five years.’ This conclusion is of immense significance given the critical role of investment in the functioning of the capitalist economy. In what are deemed ‘normal’ conditions, investment—the expansion of productive capacity—is the key driving force of capitalist economic growth. Undertaken in anticipation of future profits, investment creates new demand in labour markets and the markets for machinery, raw materials and the means of production in general. This, in turn, creates further demand and expanded profit opportunities, stimulating additional investment, thereby setting in motion a virtuous economic circle. But if investment stagnates or declines, the circle turns vicious. This is what is now taking place.’[6]
As Africans, we are aware that this kind of analyses only finds refuge in a small group of financial elite, propped up by dummy / puppet functionaries around the colonised world, to serve the vagaries of risk investment and hedge funding. This vicious cycle then takes all aboard deeper into the pits of credit value, which is always dependent on availability of exploitable labour and natural resources. This all ends up tearing the ‘natural’ fabric of society apart, as the pressure of living wages and prices squeeze peoples’ lifestyles further.

RADICAL THOUGHT IN AFRICAN CONTEXTS

Lasana Keita thus correctly questions the foundational aspects of this observed World System in the following manner; ‘Neoclassical economic theory is to be viewed essentially… as an ideology that presents a particular theory of human behaviour. It is this theory that serves as the foundations of modern capitalism and its practice as neoliberal economics. This is the anthropological question then: is such an ideology socially optimal for humans as social animals in terms of efficiency and equity?’[7]

Analysing the historical development of capitalist relations within African and Afro-Caribbean contexts, many distinguished Africanist scholars deconstructed the intricacies of a World Systems’ theory and its connection with Africa, and brought the rise of Capitalism, and its related crises into sharp focus.[8] Central to most of their arguments were the antagonisms related to the rise of imperialism within Africanist contexts, the problems of classical economic theory in its relation to the African political economy, as well as the necessary processes of decolonialisation facing all African development initiatives.

Added to this perspective, Toyin Falola recently argued that ‘the linkages between colonialism and culture are not always obvious, but they are not hard to delineate. If Europeans regarded the colonized Africans as the ‘Primitive Other’, the colonial experience enabled Africans to construct themselves as a terrorized race, raped and exploited by the patriarchal, powerful ‘White Other.’ The colonial encounter enabled Europe to define itself in ways different from Africa, to fall on language, food, race, and habits to construct ideas of superiority to the colonised. The so-called high culture connotes authority, refinement and civilisation, in opposition to so-called primitive cultures of Africa. Colonialism served to create and reinforce this dichotomy between high and primitive cultures, between elitist and popular cultures.’[9]

Therefore the idea of Sankofa, of a cultural revival, a ‘de-Othering’, a critical and vigilant consciousness, and a de-linking of key economic institutions from profit-based enterprise, to enterprise based on remuneration for ‘restoration’ and creative ‘capacity building’, would apply value to the social and natural environment, and inevitably become an important and necessary act of radical change. The processes of valuation, in which ‘funds’, or in this case, support services are sourced, can be easily networked in Africa.

CONCLUSION

We are in an era in which the ‘world system’ as we know it is collapsing, and therefore changing philosophies must find new avenues for human development. World systems theory has reached its logical conclusion in that imperialism must fall (not out of inefficiency, but out of the monstrosities it allows, and the rising popular awareness of human indignity and injustice). But when it does, the tragedy allows for re-birth and life.

[1] Hirji, K. F. (ed.)(2010). Cheche; Reminiscences of a Radical Magazine. Mkuki na Nyota, Dar es Salaam; P.163
[2] Evans Rubara. (6 March 2014). Uneven development: Understanding the roots of inequality. (http://www.pambazuka.org/en/issue/668): Recent media reports such as one titled ‘Zimbabwe: IMF Relaxes Restrictions On Zimbabwe’, in 2012, indicate that these trends have not changed. Apparently, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) had ‘eased technical assistance restrictions on Zimbabwe in a move seen as moving towards normalising relations with the southern African nation... In a press statement, the fund… confirmed that it decided to ‘resume IMF technical assistance in certain new areas to support Zimbabwe's formulation and implementation of a comprehensive adjustment and structural reform program that can be monitored by the staff’. The country will now continue to get assistance in areas such as financial sector reform, central bank reform, tax policy administration, public financial management, expenditure policy, monetary and exchange policies, macroeconomic statistics and anti-money laundering.’ See Victor Chipato. (31 October, 2012). Zimbabwe: IMF Relaxes Restrictions On Zimbabwe. (http://allafrica.com/stories/201210310995.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&u…): Also see: Reuters (22 October 2013). IMF approves Sierra Leone for $96 million, 3-year credit facility. (http://www.theafricareport.com/West-Africa/imf-approves-sierra-leone-fo…): Reuters (24 January 2014). IMF plans to discuss loan with Central African Republic. (http://www.theafricareport.com/Central-Africa/imf-plans-to-discuss-loan…)
[3] Williams, E. (2010 edition). Capitalism and Slavery. University of South Africa Press, Pretoria; P.210
[4] See Olivet, C., Eberhardt, P. (March 2014). How corporations and lawyers are scavenging profits from Europe’s crisis countries. (Transnational Institute and Corporate Europe Observatory); (http://www.tni.org/profiting-crisis)
[5] Hobsbawm, E. (2000). The New Century; in conversation with Antonio Polito. Abacus, London; P.165
[6] Beam, N. (8 April 2014). IMF report: No end to economic breakdown. (http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/04/08/pers-a08.html)
[7] Keita, L. (2012). Revealed Preference Theory, Rationality and Neoclassical Economics: Science or Ideology. (Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa {CODESRIA}; Africa Development, Vol. XXXVII, No. 4, 2012, pp. 73 – 116); P.73
[8] See Eric Williams, Claude Ake, Dani W. Nabudere, Walter Rodney, Archie Mafeje, amongst many others.
[9] Falola, T. (2008). The Power of African Cultures. University Rochester Press, Rochester, NY; P.5

* Kwesi Dzapong Lwazi Prah is based at Thabo Mbeki African Leadership Institute, University of South Africa

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