NEPAD: SOUTH AFRICA, AFRICAN ECONOMIES AND GLOBALIZATION
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Subject: [unioNews] NEPAD: SOUTH AFRICA, AFRICAN ECONOMIES AND GLOBALIZATION
NEW AFRIKAN MILLENNIUM
29, JANUARY 2004
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FROM: PAMBAZUKA NEWS 141
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Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 16:42:25 +0000
NEPAD: SOUTH AFRICA, AFRICAN ECONOMIES AND GLOBALISATION
Henning Melber
With its successful democratic transition, South Africa emerged during
the second half of the 1990s as a new political and economic factor on
the continent. Within this process, Thabo Mbeki's foreign policy
approach could be characterized as 'a complicated and sometimes
contradictory mixture of ideology, idealism and pragmatism' (Gerrit
Olivier in International Affairs, no. 4/2003). South Africa's Finance
Minister Trevor Manuel, in a keynote address to the German Foundation
for International Development, characterized as early as December 1998
the emerging South African strategy in a revealing way by asserting
'there is a new resilience and a new will to succeed in the African
continent. We in South Africa have called it a renaissance, a new
vision of political and economic renewal. It takes the global
competitive marketplace as point of departure.'
Such understanding gave birth to The New Partnership for Africa's
Development (NePAD), for which Thabo Mbeki and his team can be
considered to be the midwives (if not fathers - due to the absence of
women in the male dominated process). NePAD has managed to obtain -
after some diplomatic manoeuvring and a number of strategic compromises
- the blessings of the African Union and subsequently the United
Nations General Assembly. It can be considered as a blue print for
Africa's further socio-economic integration into the dominant global
market.
Critical assessments of this strategy, which had been successfully
promoted as the development paradigm by a number of African governments
with the backing of the G8, have pointed out that its concept blends
nicely into the neo-liberal mainstream of globalisation. It is fully in
line with the economic strategy of South Africa's present government,
seeking closer integration into the dominant structures of the world
economy. As Ian Taylor and Philip Nel have warned (in Third World
Quarterly, no. 1/2002), the inherent danger of such a strategic move
might lie in the message that it serves to legitimise instead of aiming
to restructure the existing global power relations, to which African
countries have been a victim. They further articulate the suspicion
that the driving force behind such a policy might be the 'linkage
between globalisation, export-driven trade policies and a nascent
transnational elite', and maintain that 'making neoliberalism somehow
"work for all", rather than rethinking the overall global trading
system, is the key strategy of South Africa particularly and New Africa
more generally'.
As if to confirm, South Africa's Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel, in
his capacity as the Chairman of the Development Committee to the
International Conference on Financing for Development in Monterrey on
18 March 2002 stated: 'There is general consensus that globalisation
provides an opportunity for countries to improve standards of living,
but its not an end in itself . The key challenge is to attempt to
manage globalisation in such a way that it does lead to poverty
reduction' (http://www.dfa.gov.za/docs/ffd253b.htm). But clearly so,
NePAD will not be able to replace demands for a fair share in the
world's resources by those who have been the victims of domination and
exploitation for far too long. At best it might be able to slightly
increase the far too tiny piece shared from the global cake with
stakeholders in Africa (stakeholders should in this context of course
read as shareholders). Instead of a meaningful radical alternative,
NePAD seems to be much closer to "more of the same" - namely capitalism
as a new form of global apartheid, as Patrick Bond keeps on warning in
his recent writings. Along similar lines, Ian Taylor reminds of the
active role elites in the South have played in this recent process of
capitalist expansion termed (misleadingly) "globalisation" by
supporting the new Washington Consensus, resulting in the promotion of
the liberalisation of trade and capital movements. It remains to be
seen if there is from the point of view of those outside of these
elites any substance in the pragmatism, which argues: better this
capitalism than no capitalism at all.
Such affirmative response to re-structuring the access to potential
resources among others through a "trade as aid" paradigm has been
articulated by the South African Foreign Minister Dlamini Zuma in an
address on 22 March 2002 to the University of Alberta, in which she had
the following to offer: 'To the private sector, the continent of Africa
is endowed with the human capital, mineral wealth and unlimited
opportunities for trade, investment and partnership as proposed in the
NePAD programme. Other countries are taking advantage of this
burgeoning market; it is imperative that you are not left behind. The
opportunities abound in Africa.'
(http://www.dfa.gov.za/docs/unal253a.htm) She did not need to send such
a message to the capital at home: the windows of opportunity had
already been discovered by the big companies operating from a South
African base.
There is massive expansion of South African capital into the continent
of hitherto unprecedented dimensions. This is illustrated in a chapter
written by John Daniel/Varusha Naidoo and Sanusha Naidu to the "State
of the Nation" volume for 2003-2004, published by the Human Sciences
Research Council. Its title says it all: "The South Africans have
arrived". And an article in the Financial Times (17 November 2003)
identifies 'a strategic shift by South African businesses' through
companies 'striking out in search of bigger profit margins in their
backyard'. Already since 1991 South Africa has been the largest foreign
direct investor (with an annual average of $ 1.4 billion) within the
continent. Large scale operations are undertaken by a variety of
private companies as well as (ex-)parastatals, ranging from Spoornet
and Portnet via Eskom and Sasol to South African Airways. MTN and
Vodacom compete as operators in the telecommunication business also
abroad and invest in the potentially huge markets of Nigeria and the
DRC. Financial institutions such as Standard Bank join the
"traditional" multinationals in the mining sector, which have a
longstanding experience in seeking other profitable opportunities to
accumulate further.
Presumably greener pastures are explored and invaded by the local
giants in the wholesale and retail business. South African chain stores
mushroom all over the continent, South African Breweries owns and
controls large parts of the beverage sector elsewhere. This penetration
of neighbouring and continental markets goes hand in hand with the
particular pro-active role of South Africa in engaging in and
addressing international trade issues through a strategic involvement
of the ministers for trade and for finance respectively in the current
efforts to modify the global economy under the WTO. It is complemented
by a parallel intensification of South-South cooperation seeking the
consolidation of an alliance between the economically more powerful
transitional economies such as South Africa, Brazil, India and China.
The South African economist Stephen Gelb, previously member of Thabo
Mbeki's team drafting the original policy documents preceding NePAD,
reminded in a recent analysis published with his Edge Institute of the
South African president's earlier approach. In a 1997 speech the
then-Deputy President referred to the need for South Africa 'to "walk
on two legs" in its foreign policy - to cultivate strong relations with
the South, as well as strategic relations with the industrialised
countries'. Gelb concludes, that NePAD 'is grounded in the full
realities of South Africa's relations with the continent, including
those beyond its immediate regional neighbourhood in Southern Africa.
At the same time it is also grounded in the realities of globalisation,
especially the unevenness of its impact amongst and within nations, and
reflects an attempt to shift the continent, including South Africa
itself, towards a more effective engagement.' More radical critics, who
had opted to remain outside of the centres of political and economic
power in present South Africa, speak out more directly. This is among
others reflected in a number of articles published in the South African
Labour Bulletin (no. 3/2003) under the thematic title "NEPAD - a wish
to build a dream on". They suggest from a more or less critical
distance that NePAD offers the opportunity for South African capital to
expand further in Africa by creating new market access. NePAD is hence
considered as a lubricant for a South African expansion into other
parts of the continent, which under an Apartheid regime until the early
1990s would have not been conceivable. Almost ironically, only a
politically correct post-Apartheid government allows the promotion of
and greases a process, which is again (though not exclusively) to the
benefit of those who already profited from the previous undemocratic
system at home and can now enter spaces abroad.
Confronted with this view on occasion of a public NePAD seminar in
Stockholm (held on 9 October 2003 on occasion of the 3rd meeting of the
Swedish-South African Binational Commission) the South African Vice
President Jacob Zuma and the Deputy Foreign Minister Aziz Pahad seemed
not amused. Their responses suggested that they perceive the South
African type of capitalism as better suited for African conditions than
other forms of capitalism (or no capitalism at all), and by no means a
problem. The suggestion that the (class) struggle continues also in
democratic South Africa was brushed aside as another example of the
notorious "ultra-leftism". But maybe they should join in with Robert
Zimmermann (aká Bob Dylan) to intonate the meanwhile classical refrain
"and the times, they are a-changing" - or, for that matter, admit that
they (the times) haven't changed as much as one might have thought a
couple of years ago that they would.
* This editorial is a revised short version of a presentation to the
Stockholm seminar mentioned in the last paragraph.
It first appeared in PAMBAZUKA NEWS, an electronic newsletter
for social justice in Africa, at http://www.pambazuka.org
It was based on a considerably longer manuscript on NePAD for a volume
on Africa and International Politics, edited by Ulf Engel and Gorm Rye Olsen,
to be published during 2004 with Routledge. The author is Research Director
at the Nordic Africa Institute in Uppsala/Sweden and has been Director
of The Namibian Economic Policy Research Unit (NEPRU) in Windhoek
from 1992 until 2000.
* Send comments on this editorial - and other events in Africa - to
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