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Date: Mon, 23 Sep 2002 15:43:18 +0000
From: Charlotte Utting <[log in to unmask]>
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To: [log in to unmask], [log in to unmask]
Subject: [WASAN] FW: Boudreau / Beard On Fire / REAL AFRICA
Long but very interesting. The author is an RPCV (Ghana 95-97)
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ZNet Commentary
Beard On Fire (1) September 22, 2002
By Ned Boudreau
When I lived in Ghana I trekked some 1,200 miles into deep bush in search of
or leading clients to tourism assets - waterfalls, traditional villages
where crafts are made, sweeping vistas and the like. High in the hills I
encountered what my guides and friends told me is "real Africa."
This phrase means farms and small villages spangled along the steepest
slopes, where children fled in terror at their first sight of an Obroni, a
white man. It means 'African air conditioning' - shade and a breeze. It
means dense fog and mist rising from the trees and maize fields as, come a
Sunday, unearthly harmonies of voices raised in songs of praise wafted from
churches made of palm fronds and bamboo.
'Real Africa' means the wild winds, thunder and lightning of rainy season
storms, storms from a Viking's laughing dream of Ragnarok. It means the
wonderful hospitality of dirt-poor, subsistence farming families who simply
would not let me leave without 'chop' - that is, food. They could ill afford
it.
Today, I am stunned when otherwise intelligent, informed folks wonder what
the Seattle, Washington, Genoa and Prague protestors have against the World
Bank, the IMF, the WTO and globalization in general.
Leave aside the fact that not one of the countries that accepted IMF money
has experienced long-term economic stability, even as they amassed huge debt
owed to the IMF and other creditors. Leave aside issues of national, state
or local sovereignty, which the IMF, World Bank and WTO - non-democratic,
non-representative - suborn outright in favor of corporate interests.
Yet consider the following: First, a rising tide decidedly does not lift all
boats. Just look at the United States. Even after a decade of spectacular
economic growth, one in five American children goes to sleep malnourished or
hungry. Further, over the last twenty years the poverty rate among working
families has risen 50 percent, while forty-three million Americans have no
health insurance of any kind and more than 20 million people - eight million
of them children - sought emergency food aid in 1999 and 2000. Note that the
federal poverty standard is $16,700 for a family of four.
Now look at Africa. One Ghanaian saying goes like this: "If you see a man
with his beard on fire, fetch a gourd of water and hold it close to your
face." This is apt because all of Africa is - with other scourges - aflame
with debt, over $370 billion worth. Despite fifty years of so-called
'developmental aid', the 2000 GDP per person in Africa was somewhere between
$350 and $700 per year (estimates vary).
Those figures factor in the very wealthy; and, yes, Africa has its own
millionaires and a handful of billionaires. So for many people the average
yearly income is much lower than $450. Yet debt per person in 1999 was $375.
Further, many African nations actually pay many times more in debt service
to commercial banks and aid agencies than they do on education and health
care.
Even so, in 1998 Sub-Saharan Africa paid $1.40 to creditors for each $1 in
grants, with a net negative transfer from Africa to the IMF of $1 billion in
1997 and1998. This is in addition to the billions per year taken out of
Africa by the multinationals. But don't be encouraged: African governments
have submitted since the early 1980's to IMF austerity measures as
conditions for blank-check Structural Adjustment Loans from the World Bank.
These programs, as Columbia University development guru, Jeffrey Sachs,
admits, "Don't work." Sachs maintains that the IMF should get out of
development altogether. He is also on record as saying that the IMF and
World Bank are "pre-consular" rulers of their debtor nations, but that they
rule them "very poorly." How can this be? What the heck is going on?
Well, it's simple, really. Remember the "Great Game" of Benjamin Disraeli,
British prime minister from 1874 to 1880? The Great Game referred to
geo-political strife engendered during the Napoleonic wars, as well as by
British empire building, Russian expansion east and south, and a general
carving up of Africa, the Middle East and the Orient by European powers.
(Latin America and great tracts of the East Indies already were hostage to
the Spanish, Portuguese and Dutch.)
The whole point of the Great Game, as played by any 'Great Power', was to
control the life-blood of Empire - colonies, sea lanes, ports and trade
routes. Any other so-called great power wanted to control them, too. One
version of the Great Game followed another through the end of World War II
and beyond, by which time the Bretton Woods Conference had shaped the
post-war financial institutions (IMF, World Bank, others), the Cold War - a
struggle for global dominion, global hegemony - was hotting up, and African
'colonies' were liberating themselves.
In attempts to make developing nations amenable to the West and thus
anti-Communist, the U.S. began dumping surplus food, calling it "food aid."
That famous liberal, Hubert Humphrey, said, in 1957, "If you are really
looking for people to lean on you and to be dependent upon you, in terms of
their cooperation with you, it seems to me that food dependence would be
terrific." (Also, look up U.S. Public Law #480 from 1954.)
In addition, the IMF and World Bank began hawking huge loans to needy or
grasping African, Asian and Latin American regimes, many of them tyrannical
dictatorships. This is textbook Neo-Colonialism: Control of sovereign
nations through economic means.
Food, military hardware and so-called development assistance have been used
as political factors in the Great Game ever since. For instance: Mobuto Sese
Seko was installed by the CIA and its Belgian and French counterparts.
Mobutu ruled Zaire for 32 years, stealing or misusing billions of dollars
with the outright connivance of the Western powers, whose connivance
included arms, food aid, and loans from the IMF, World Bank, commercial
banks and governments. The primary intent of Western powers was to funnel
armaments and money to forces fighting pro-Soviet African regimes.
The debacle in Somalia was caused by another variation of the Great Game
continuing into our era. The Soviets ditched Siyaad Baare of Somalia in1977
in favor of a newly Socialist regime in Ethiopia. Soviet and American arms
and aid flowed into the Horn of Africa. America's key strategic goal was to
gain and retain the abandoned Soviet seaport in Berbera. The U.S. (under
Carter, Reagan, Bush and Clinton) bribed Baare, then Mohamed Farah Aydiid,
with guns, 'free' food and plenty of cash - wrecking the economy while
causing famine and clan warfare.
When the U.N. and other aid agencies decided to pull out altogether - after
botching the humanitarian mission by allowing it to creep into peace
enforcement, and backed by the U.S. - Aydiid and other war lords knew their
sources of power and control (guns, food aid, money) were at an end. What
was left of the country collapsed into chaos caused by all-out factional
warfare over the loot left behind by the Western 'nation builders'.
Most recently, the IMF triggered sovereign default in Argentina by
withholding, on December 5th of 2001, a disbursement of $1.264 billion.
This, despite the fact that successive Argentine regimes had been avid
pupils of the IMF since the 1980's. Yes, the government had, in fact,
overspent. But the hard truth is that the IMF denied Argentina a mere $1.264
billion - which would have all but balanced the budget - and thereby brought
down the economy and the government. One wonders if yet another "IMF coup"
is in the offing; we shall see.
In other words, the Great Game - developmental, financial, military - ruined
Argentina, Somalia and Zaire, to name just three nations. The IMF and the
World Bank are deeply implicated in many such catastrophes or bungled
missions. The policies and practices that lead to such outcomes are the
reasons why we hear of "IMF coups", and of the growing "4th World" - the
millions of people forcibly displaced or otherwise impoverished by IMF/World
Bank programs in developing countries.
As for globalization, we have had it again and again over centuries:
Egypt-Greece-the Middle East; Pax Romana; Marco Polo's Silk Road (all the
way to China); the Age of Exploration; the Great Age of Sail; the Colonial
Period. In the last two decades of the 1800's, England's import-export
trade, as a percentage of GNP, was roughly equal to that of Japan's today.
In fact, Great Britain's exports increased from 10.3% of GDP in 1870 to
14.7% in 1913, while Germany's exports rose from 7.4% of GDP to 12.2%. The
U.S. ratio of exports to GDP in 1999 was 10.6%; imports to GDP, 13.4%.
Today we have the 3rd-World Sweat Shop Era. Each period saw leaders
espousing the mantra of that period. Each period saw conquering armies or
their mercantile partners - pawns, Kings and Queens in earlier versions of
the Great Game - returning home with spoils from their military and
concomitant economic conquests. King Leopold II of Belgium - known as 'The
Butcher of the Congo' into the early years of the 20th century - should
strike you dumb, as should the Dutch record in Indonesia even after World
War II, or that of American, European and Arab or Berber slavers over
centuries.
The Great Game always - repeat, always - brings spoils and great wealth to
the conquerors while benefiting only an exceedingly small minority of the
conquered. This is why, after centuries of trade and 'development', some 70%
of Africans still live on subsistence farms off in the bush; why another 20%
eke out impoverished livings in cities; why there are over three billion
people alive today, world-wide, who survive on two dollars or less a day.
The current term for the Great Game is 'Globalization'. The IMF, World Bank
and their ilk are merely part of that game; they are - protestations to the
contrary be damned - entirely political in nature; and they have precious
little to do with development, alleviating poverty or the betterment of
nations.
Just look at the hard numbers, the results: Debt in Africa rose from $110
billion in 1980 to some $380 billion today. No wonder conspiracy theorists
claim that all aid is a plot by the industrialized North and West to
dominate and control developing countries! Those institutions that deliver
and administer such aid cannot escape blame and responsibility for their
actions: Heroin dealers are felons; they destroy life. If you think
otherwise, I know Ghanaians who can find you a gourd of water.
Anti-globalization protestors are simply trying to put out the fire in the
beard.
Ned Boudreau lived for two years and three months, 1995-1997, in Somanya, in
the Eastern Region of the Republic of Ghana, West Africa. As a Peace Corps
Volunteer assigned to the Yilo Krobo Traditional Council of Chiefs, he
established an indigenous NGO dedicated to ecotourism. He now resides in
Framingham, MA.
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