Imperialism and the Democratization Process in Africa

Election monitoring might be big business in the West for consultants, researchers, travel agents and so on, in Africa is creating diversions, confusions, false hopes, and a wrong emphasis on the superficial and easily containable aspects of political change. Procedural democracy and the politics of election monitoring has made it easy for dictators with legendary reputations for waste, corruption, and a total disregard for civil liberties to “use multi-party elections to relegitimate (themselves) in international terms,” (Ellis 1993: 138). And the West expects the people- students, workers, women, human rights activists, social critics, farmers, and scholars who had been brutalized for so long to accept these leaders and reach accommodation with them just because they organized multi-party elections and have been accepted by the West. In fact, the West naively believes that such elections have changed these corrupt dictators. Hence, though General Ibrahim Babangida was presiding over one of the most directionless, corrupt, and repressive regimes in modern history, Western scholars continued to believe that he was actually organizing a transition to democracy (Sandbrook 1993: 89, 106). As well, given that the West had to find a new agenda or basis for its relations with the wretched of the global capitalist system, democracy fitted the bill adequately. It enabled the West, with its past reputation of being on the side of the most ruthless dictators in Africa (Mobutu, Babangida, Nguema, Banda, Amin, Moi, Nimeiri, Bare, Bokassa) to come out in new clothes: democracy rather than dictatorship.
The end of the Cold War required a new basis for consolidating the gains of capitalism and for entrenching American hegemony. But doing this required a new commitment to a political agenda which would be acceptable to all, or to at least the majority of nations in the global system. The manipulation of the United Nations e.g. reporting to the Security Council after bombing Iraq; unilateral actions; refusing to put U.S troops under international or UN command; the ruthless destruction of Iraq in the name of liberating Kuwait (no one ever considered this, not even comprehensive sanctions in the case of South Africa) and a misguided intervention in Somalia were just elements in this new program. In declaring a new global order following the defeat of Iraq, the world has not been presented with a global economic agenda for reconstruction, growth and development. In Europe, North America, and the Pacific Rim what have been developed are exclusionary trade blocs designed to consolidate regional markets. Of course, the Western media has been conveniently silent on the fact that African initiatives had been concluded in Lagos in 1991 long before Europe ’92 and NAFTA and that more than earlier initiatives, it include a provision for the election of an African parliament in AD 2025. The development of such trade blocs provides legitimacy to discriminatory international programs and foreign assistance and enables Western governments to discriminate against debt-ridden, poverty-stricken, and marginalized actors in the global system. By ignoring African initiatives, and by not providing it with the required support, such efforts are doomed to fail.
It is common in the literature and in speeches by leading officials of the Fund and Bank to admit that Africa is experiencing a crisis of deep and dangerous proportions; that by the mid-1980s it was already a continent in “free fall: no goods on the shelves, no spare parts, no chalk in the classrooms, no drugs in the clinics and so on. Budgets were out of control, debt was piling up, institutions were decaying, social indicators were falling, and, in substantial parts of Africa, famine stalked the land,” (Jaycox 1992: 2). However, this has not stopped lenders and creditors from extracting huge surpluses from Africa. Arrears in interest payments to creditors rose from $1 billion in 1982 to $11 billion in 1990. While maturity period for short-term loans shortened from 6.7 to 4 years in the same period, grace period for loan repayments was reduced by 36 percent. While net transfers of resources to Africa declined precipitously to a low of $1.1 billion in 1990, the net outflow between 1983 and 1990 was $30 billion and debt servicing obligations continued to eat up foreign exchange earnings and in the case of the poorest countries, they had to borrow to meet their basic imports. (Africa Recovery March 1988; UN 1991; Ihonvbere 1994). It is no wonder that Michel Camdesus confessed in 1987 that the IMF was taking more resources out of Africa than it was putting in (Africa Recovery December 1987). For instance Africa today owes about $300 billion dollars. The question Africans should ask is where is the money? What did Africa purchase with this money? The money is the vaults of western banks and western governments know it. If it was easy to freeze the assets of Marcos of the Philippines, of Iraq and Iran, why not seize these clearly stolen monies and use it to pay off these debts, many of which are dubious anyway? African leaders took loans and encouraged by western governments and suppliers, sunk these loans into the purchase of military hardware which only intensified conflicts and human rights abuses in the continent. The monies did not go into food or cash crop production, infrastructural development, or the provision of basic human needs for the people. What did not go into the military, security, and a few elitist urban-based projects went into foreign banks to the full knowledge of the West. Now, it is fashionable to complain of corruption as if it is natural or endemic to Africa alone and as if the West has not and does not continue to benefit from the waste, mismanagement and corruption of African leaders. The bottom line is that in spite of all the complaints about poverty in Africa and the like, Africa’s poverty, underdevelopment, dependence, vulnerability, and backwardness is very good business for the West. In so far as this is the case, the West cannot be expected to push an agenda for recovery, growth and development that will sufficiently empower the region and its peoples to pose challenges to the West in the market place or be independent of western control and exploitation. If there is a lesson for the western powers in their experiences with the Japanese and the Newly Industrializing Countries (NICs) it is in the fact that alternative markets erode their market hegemony.