Occupied territory: Africa and the oligopolies

An interview of an African in the French weekly news Politis (9 February 2011) caught our attention. It was titled ‘Emancipation not development’. Firoze Manji, the Kenyan editor of Pambazuka News, was strongly against the mystification represented by the new technologies and ‘development’. This position is in contrast with the mainstream ideologies, even of the left of the left. Interested, we got in touch with Firoze Manji.

LA DECROISSANCE: You assert that in Africa, ‘NGOs unconsciously take part with the current oppression’ and you go as far as comparing that with the French collaboration of the Vichy regime. What could we say to all those well-wishers from the rich countries who think they are helping Africa with those NGOs supporting development?

FIROZE MANJI: Some have criticised me for the use of the analogy about collaborators and the Vichy regime in France. It is true that Vichy was a collaboration with an occupying force. But I would argue that African countries, like many countries of the global South, are also occupied territories. Only in this era, we are dealing not with colonial occupation, but with occupation by corporations and oligopolies. They control production of almost all aspects of life.

Our governments, once the product of our liberation struggles, have been rendered supine clients of corporations and of the international aid system over the last thirty years as a result of the neoliberal structural adjustment programmes. Our governments are more accountable to Northern governments and to the international financial institutions than they are to citizens.

Social and economic policies are all set by these institutions, not by the citizenry. And the implementation of neoliberal policies involved forcing the state out of support for the social sector – health, education, sanitation, water , communications, agricultural production (at least small scale production) etc, leaving these sectors to be privatised by international corporations: The health sector is effectively privatised, with good health care for the rich, but facilities worse than under apartheid for the vast majority.

Water, energy, communications – all these profitable sectors have been privatised. And as the state retrenched from the provision of services, it was left to the other private sector – the development NGOs – to provide services to the poor, with the assistance of the aid industry. What was once our birthright, won through the struggles for independence and liberation, are now charitable services provided not as a right, but nobless oblige by the NGOs who are accountable only to their funders.

But let me make my point clear here: I am not concerned with the motives of the people who work for these NGOs: I am sure many of them do the work out of genuine concern for the poor. But objectively what they end up doing is being the sweet pill, the 'human face' of neoliberal policies. The NGO sector is not homogeneous: There are a few who genuinely act to speak truth to power, to challenge the process of pauperisation that has condemned the vast majority of our people to misery. But the majority of the NGOs speak about 'poverty', but actually do little to challenge those forces, including the oligopolies, who create pauperisation. So back to the Vichy state: If you don't challenge the legitimacy of these occupying forces, then many would be justified in describing your actions as collaborators in the process of pauperisation.

LA DECROISSANCE: In France there is an ‘anti-development’ or ‘post-development’ movement. It is composed of persons who, like you, have contributed to development and have then changed their minds. For those like Serge Latouche or Majid Ranemah, development is the new name of colonialism. Are those ideas a reality in Africa today?

FIROZE MANJI: I think there is growing discontent about the whole idea of development. Supposing we were living in a time of slavery: Would we be building schools and hospitals for slaves, digging wells for slaves? Or would we be challenging the very system of slavery?

I don't think the idea of development as the new name of colonialism is new: Nkrumah and others wrote about the process of neocolonialism – and the aid industry is very much part of the infrastructure of neocolonialism. What I think we should be outraged about is that what is called 'development' is in fact the use of public funds to subsidise and facilitate the work of the oligopolies, the transnational corporations who are the principal beneficiaries of functioning 'development'.

But I don't think this is colonialism: this is a form of imperialism, a way of extracting wealth from our countries, subsidised by public taxes. Imperialism has evolved over the last hundred years, and the accelerated financialisation of capital has created conditions in which there is a frantic drive for accumulation by dispossession. That is fundamentally what is going on.

And the aid industry is providing the oil to make that machinery work effectively in the interest of capital. Instead of using euphemisms like 'development', we should be calling it what it really is: Capitalism in the peripheries in the age of financialisation and the centralisation of capital on a global scale. This is important, because it allows clarity about what is going on, and at the same time poses the question: If accelerated pauperisation of the many is a characteristic of capitalism in the peripheries, what then should be the anti-capitalist alternative?

LA DECROISSANCE: You criticise the new technologies, but even among European ecologists, they are presented as the means that could topple the regimes of Ben Ali and Hosni Mubarak in North Africa. Those new technologies aren't more of a problem than a solution?

FIROZE MANJI: We should be careful to avoid fetishising technologies – that is, we should stop pretending that inanimate objects have some kind of social or other magical power. Technologies like the mobile phone are tools, nothing more. Ben Ali and Hosni Mubarak were overthrown by a social revolution – primarily led by the youth. They used these new media technologies to further their cause. To attribute their success to mere technological things is to take away agency from social movements, from the oppressed and the exploited. If it was just the existence of tools that was sufficient to topple despotic regimes, how come we have not seen the same thing happen in the US or France where the penetration of mobile phones is much larger than in Egypt or Tunisia! People make revolutions, not toys – however technologically 'sexy' they might be.

LA DECROISSANCE: Do you know the Degrowth movement in France ? The ‘growth objectors’ are supporting a relocalisation of the economy but most of all a way out of an accounting and quantitative vision of the world, ‘less but better’ for the rich countries. Degrowth follows the ideas of Gandhi, Schumacher or Illich. Could it be a solution for Africa?

FIROZE MANJI: Look, we have lived the last hundred years in Africa with 'less is better'. So enthusiastic have the ruling classes been about less-is-better that the last 30 years have witnessed massive pauperisation – the poor have got poorer, while a minority have got richer. Solutions have to address the problem. The escalating pauperisation of the global South has not been the product of growth, but of grand scale larceny and exploitation. So 'degrowth' is not a solution to that problem.

Certainly there is much to be explored about localisation of the economy: Africa produces almost exclusively for the capitalist oligopolies of the North, but has very little trade with its own neighbours, and indeed does not even produce for the needs of its own population. I would argue that far from having de-growth, what we need is a democratisation of production, democratisation of the economy, so that citizens themselves decide what is produced, how it is produced, how much is produced and under what conditions the production takes place, and what is done with the surplus. We actually need a growth in this form of production.

But that said, I believe that many of the adherents of the degrowth movement reflect the level of discontent with the way in which capitalism operates, and I can see that they are seriously trying to work out another way of running the economy. I may not agree with their solutions, but I respect the reason for the discontent they have with a system that threatens the future not only of humanity but of the planet itself.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* This article was first published by La Decroissance.
* Firoze Manji is editor in chief of Pambazuka News.
* Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at Pambazuka News.