The G8, Live 8 and Africa
west africa |
anarchist movement |
opinion / analysis
Wednesday July 06, 2005 16:03
by Chekov - WSM (personal capacity)

Taking hypocrisy to new levels
There is always a temptation to welcome any well-intentioned efforts to make the world a better place and those who concentrate on criticising others' efforts to improve the world can find themselves being easily dismissed as cynics, knockers and “nay-sayers”. Thus, although large numbers of people probably found the idea of a movement against poverty and for social justice being fronted by some of the richest people on earth (Bono and Bill Gates to name but two) to be a little bit odd, most people acknowledged that they were 'at least doing something' and thus should be supported. However, it is important to ask ourselves what they were actually calling for and whether that was a good thing in itself.
The G8, Live 8 and Africa
Taking hypocrisy to new levels
There is always a temptation to welcome any well-intentioned efforts
to make the world a better place and those who concentrate on
criticising others' efforts to improve the world can find themselves
being easily dismissed as cynics, knockers and "nay-sayers". Thus,
although large numbers of people probably found the idea of a
movement against poverty and for social justice being fronted by some
of the richest people on earth (Bono and Bill Gates to name but two)
to be a little bit odd, most people acknowledged that they were 'at
least doing something' and thus should be supported. However, it is
important to ask ourselves what they were actually calling for and
whether that was a good thing in itself.
One of the stated aims of Live 8 and MPH was to raise
consciousness about Africa. That's all very well, but what
consciousness is being raised? There is hardly a person in the world
who doesn't realise that Africa is poor. Beyond the simple message of
Africa's poverty - not too useful in itself - the message of the
mobilisation seems to have been that the G8 leaders might be
persuaded to help Africa by forgiving its debt. Unfortunately, this
message is so deceptive and wrong-headed that rather than raising
consciousness it only serves to reinforce delusions about how the
world works.
The G8 leaders are far from being people who spend their days
worrying about how to raise Africa from poverty and just need a bit
of encouragement from well-meaning celebrities to push them into
action. In reality, they spend their working lives actively ensuring
that Africa remains poor and they do so quite consciously.
Historically, the rich nations colonised Africa and set up imperial
administrations precisely to ensure a steady flow of wealth from
Africa to the West. Since the end of direct colonisation, little has
changed in reality. The rich nations still regularly intervene
militarily to prop up their favoured military dictatorships and to
ensure their economic interests remain secure. Western governments
were directly and consciously responsible for the brutal and corrupt
reigns of such monsters as Mobutu, Moi, Bokassa, Taylor and many,
many more brutal dictators. All the historical evidence suggests
thatthey are quite happy to cause vast amounts of suffering to secure
their economic interests and there is no evidence that their policies
have any other aim at all.
While today they are less quick to use military force (although
they still do - Liberia and Cote D'Ivoire have both been 'invaded' by
Western troops in the last 3 years) this is only because they don't
have to. The Third world debt crisis of the 1980s left most African
countries massively indebted to the international financial
institutions such as the world bank and the IMF. Many of these debts
were originally loaned by Western banks to African dictators (mostly
hand-picked by Western governments) so that they could brutalise
their populations and ensure the continuing flow of wealth and
natural resources from Africa to the West. International finance
being what it is, African states have to pay hefty interest rates and
today most of them have repaid far more than they were ever loaned
yet still owe several times more.
This debt has been used as a very powerful stick by the Western
nations. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s they imposed Structural
Adjustment Programs on African countries which were having difficulty
in repaying their loans. These programs were designed to ensure that
countries where the population was starving were able to repay the
interest on their debts to Western banks - macroeconomic stability in
economic jargon. They essentially forced African countries to cut
back on social spending, fire large numbers of public employees and
divert more of their money into repayment. As a result, most African
countries today give much more money to Western banks than they spend
on health or education.
But surely, despite their shameful past, forgiving the debt would
at least be a start in the right direction? This might be the case if
the G8 were actually considering forgiving debt, but in reality their
debt relief program is little more than the discredited structural
adjustment dressed up as charity. Only a small number of countries
qualify for the debt relief program (currently 18 in Africa) and they
are chosen basically for their loyalty to Western capitalism.
The debt relief also has a number of 'conditionalities' attached
which demand "the elimination of impediments to private investment,
both domestic and foreign."[*1] This is another way
of saying that they demand an end to such things as free water
services, free public education and health care as all of these
things are clearly an impediment to private investment. So basically,
governments that are loyal to the G8 will be forgiven their debts as
long as they promise to stop spending money on the poor - hardly a
very good plan for dealing with poverty. When it comes down to it,
debt relief is just another macro-economic stability measure. Debts
to banks that were never going to be repaid will be repaid by Western
taxpayers and African governments will be prevented from running up
such debts in the future by ensuring they are not tempted to spend
money on the poor. Good for the banks, bad for everybody else.
A good example of the effects of these debt relief programs on the
ground is found in Uganda. In the late 80s, the IMF and World Bank
forced Uganda to impose "user fees" for basic healthcare and primary
education. The purpose appears to have been to create new markets for
private capital. School attendance, especially for girls, collapsed.
So did health services, particularly for the rural poor. To stave off
a possible revolution, Museveni reinstated free primary education in
1997 and free basic healthcare in 2001. Enrolment in primary school
leapt from 2.5 million to 6 million, and the number of outpatients
almost doubled. The World Bank and the IMF -which the G8 nations
control - were furious. At the donors' meeting in April 2001, the
head of the bank's delegation made it clear that, as a result of the
change in policy, he now saw the health ministry as a "bad
investment". Counties who qualify for debt relief will find
themselves forbidden from putting in place such social programs in
the future, or to use the capitalist's Orwellian jargon "impediments
to private investment".
There are literally countless examples of such obviously damaging
policies being forced on African countries by the West, yet somehow
we are supposed to ignore these and pretend that Bush, Blair and
their cronies are really going to help the poor?
At the end of the day, the Live 8 and MPH campaigns are part of
the problem rather than the solution. They build up a myth about debt
and the role of the rich nations in it. For Bob and Bono, this was
down to a mix of political naivety and out-of-control egos. For the
charities and NGOs involved it was simply a very effective PR tool
and a nice little earner, so although many of them probably knew how
wrong headed the whole thing was, they weren't going to rock the boat
and scupper the best chance to fundraise of the decade. It was left
to the small number of radicals, anarchists and socialists to point
out that the emperor had no clothes. A bunch of aging rock stars
hanging out with politicians is not going to change the world,
especially when the politicians are the same people who spend their
working lives ensuring that Africa stays poor. At the end of the day,
any movement against African poverty in the west will be no more than
a means of rich and hypocritical people appeasing their guilt unless
it addresses the glaring contradiction. To help Africa, a bit of
charity is not the first step. The first step is to stop kicking
them.
[
*1] G7 finance ministers statement, June 11th, 2005.
First published on Anarkismo.net
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