Whatever one might have to say about the shortcomings of the post independence governments in Africa - whether of the first or second waves - whatever we might think about the shortcomings of some of the social and political policies, whatever we might say about the undemocratic nature of their regimes that were established, we have to acknowledge their extraordinary achievements over a relatively short period of time after independence: the establishment of universal health care, education and social welfare, the expansion and development of transport and communications, establishment of grain marketing boards, cooperatives, and so on. In the space of less than two decades, there were dramatic improvements in parameters such as life-expectancy at birth, infant and child mortality, material mortality, and many other parameters of social progress. All these gains were the gains of hard fought independence struggles through which many lives were lost and much blood shed. The regimes that came to power had in effect struck a social contract with the mass movement that brought them to independence, and to some measure, as part of a modernisation project, they sought to deliver on their promises, albeit in an uneven way. Albeit in an uneven way, our countries were exhibiting a level of self-reliance.

But over the last 30 years, countries in the global South, and in particular in Africa, have been faced with coping with the systematic reversal of the gains of independence.

The development of these reversals emerged in the context of a number of major world events: the spiraling worldwide recession of the 1970s; the defeat of the US in Vietnam; the de-linking of the dollar from the gold standard and floating of currencies; the emergence of OPEC which enabled oil-producing states to control the world price of oil; the rise of the debt-crisis of countries in the global South as their currencies became devalued; and the establishment of the hegemony of the New Right and its neoliberal policies under the tutelage of  Margaret Thatcher in the UK and Ronald Reagan in the USA in the 1980s.

Almost without exception, the same set of social and economic policies were implemented under pressure from the IFIs (international financial institutions) across the African continent – the so-called structural adjustment programmes (later rebranded as Poverty Reduction Strategy Programmes), all ostensibly to enable African countries to repay the growing debt. But the real agenda was arguably that of creating extreme privatisation aimed at opening up new avenues for capital expansion. The state was declared ‘inefficient’ (despite its considerable achievements in the short period since independence), and public services were first run down before being sold off to the oligopolies for a song. The state was prohibited in investing in social infrastructure, from subsidising agricultural production, with prohibitions on capital investment in health, education, transport and telecommunications, until eventually public goods were taken over by the ‘private’ sector. Tariff barriers to goods from the advanced capitalist countries were removed; access to natural resources opened up for pillaging; tax regimes relaxed; and ‘export processing zones’ established to enable raw exploitation of labour without any regulations from the state or trade unions. Over time, privatisation was extended to agriculture, land, food production. Landlessness, unemployment, increases in child, infant and maternal mortality rates, decline in life expectancy rates, impoverishment on an unprecedented scale came to be the lot of the majority of citizens, while a minority accumulated and enriched themselves through their alliance with international corporations. Deregulation of all constraints on capital was the mantra of the day, supposedly the precondition for encouraging foreign ‘investment.’ (Habitat 2010).

The net effect was to reduce the state to having no role in economic affairs, and precious little in the development of social infrastructure, its role being primarily to ensure an ‘enabling environment’ for international capital and to policing the repayment of debt to international finance institutions. But the most serious consequence of these policies was not only to reverse the many gains of independence, but especially the erosion of the ability of citizens to control their own destiny. Self-determination, and the associated idea of self-reliance, originally such a powerful motor force for mobilisation in the anti-colonial movement, was gradually lost. Economic policies were no longer determined by citizens and their representatives in government, but by technocrats from the international finance institutions and the World Bank, with hefty support provided by the international aid agencies. As the state was forced to retreat from the provision of social services, the space was avidly occupied by the development NGOs (non-governmental organisations). What citizens once had a right to expect by virtue of the gains of independence was replaced by charitable acts of agencies whose work was now supported by international aid.

Over time, one of the consequences of neoliberalism was to gradually transform citizens into consumers. Those with the resources could exercise choice on where they bought their services, education, healthcare. Power and influence over social policy was increasingly determined by wealth. But those who had no means to participate in consumer society – the pauperised, the landless, the jobless, the never-employed – those unable to consume, were left effectively disenfranchised. And those that were able to find employment were forced to accept poor working conditions and low wages. Attempts to organise or protest were discouraged by the knowledge that outside stood a reserve army of labour ever hungry to take jobs from those fortunate enough to have them.

The scale of looting that was opened up as a result of neoliberal policies is well-known. Third World repayments of US$340 billion each year flow northwards to service a US$2.2 trillion debt, more than five times the G8's development aid budget.  At more than US$10 billion a year since the early 1970s, collectively the citizens of Nigeria, Ivory Coast, the DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo), Angola and Zambia have been especially vulnerable to the overseas drain of their national wealth. As Brussels-based debt campaigner Eric Toussaint concludes, 'Since 1980, over 50 Marshall Plans worth over $4.6 trillion have been sent by the peoples of the Periphery to their creditors in the Centre'

Research by the Tax Justice Network (TJN) estimates that a staggering US$11.5 trillion has been siphoned 'offshore' by wealthy individuals, held in tax havens where they are shielded from contributing to government revenues. 'Around 30% of sub-Saharan Africa's GDP is moved offshore', writes John Christensen of TJN: 'As several studies have suggested, this rate of capital flight means that Africa - a continent we are continually told is irrevocably indebted - may actually be a net creditor to the rest of the world.' And finance capital and the corporations do all they can to hide their wealth in offshore tax havens. A UNDP report on illicit funds estimates that illicit flows from least developed countries (LDCs) have increased from US$7.9 billion in 1990 to US$20.2 billion in 2008. (The top ten exporters of illicit capital account for 63 percent of total outflows from the LDCs while the top 20 account for nearly 83 percent).

In effect - dispossession was and is the order of the day – dispossession of the rights and resources of citizens. Most importantly, during this period there was a critical political dispossession: today our governments are more accountable to the international finance institutions, Banks, imperialist ‘aid agencies’ and their governments than they are to the citizens who elected them.  We have been politically dispossessed. What little self-determination we had gained through the struggle against colonialism has been gradually eroded as a result of neoliberalism.

Many criticise SAPs / PRSPs as being the product of bad policy - neoliberal policies that are said to be dogmatic and an expression of 'market fundamentalism'. But, as Prabhat Patnaik has argued recently, the policies that are being insisted upon by the international finance institutions are the result of the structural needs of financialised capitalism in the present era, something that began as early as the 1970s and today dominates all parts of the global economy.

It is worth quoting Patnaik at length here for he captures succinctly the structural nature of the demands of financialised capital that gives rise to its demands for specific economic conditions to be fulfilled. In the current period, he argues,

‘ … finance capital has become international, while the State remains a nation-State. The nation-State therefore willy-nilly must bow before the wishes of finance, for otherwise finance … will leave that particular country and move elsewhere, reducing it to illiquidity and disrupting its economy.

‘The process of globalization of finance therefore has the effect of undermining the autonomy of the nation-State. The State cannot do what it wishes to do, or what its elected government has been elected to do, since it must do what finance wishes it to do.

‘It is in the nature of finance capital to oppose any State intervention, other than that which promotes its own interest. It does not want an activist State when it comes to the promotion of employment, or the provision of welfare, or the protection of small and petty producers; but it wants the State to be active exclusively in its own interest. It brings about therefore a change in the nature of the State, from being an apparently supra-class entity standing above society, and intervening in a benevolent manner for “social good”, to one that is concerned almost exclusively with the interests of finance capital. To justify this change, which occurs in the era of globalization under pressure from finance capital, the interests of finance are increasingly passed off as being synonymous with the interests of society. If the stock market is doing well then the economy is supposed to be doing well no matter what happens to the level of hunger, malnutrition and poverty. If a country is graded well by credit-rating agencies then that becomes a matter of national pride, no matter how miserable its people are.

‘Since the nation-State pursuing trade liberalization has to cut customs duties, and therefore must restrict excise duties (so as not to discriminate between domestic and foreign capitalists), and since, in the interests of “capital accumulation” it keeps taxes on corporate incomes… low, the limit on the fiscal deficit causes an expenditure deflation on its part. And this provides the setting for “privatizing” not only State-owned assets “for a song” but also welfare services and social overheads like education and health. All this is usually referred to as constituting a “withdrawal of the State” and its rationale is debated in terms of “the State” versus “the market”. Nothing could be more wrong than this. The State under neo- liberalism does not withdraw; it is involved as closely as before, or even more closely than before, in the economy, but its intervention is now of a different sort, viz. exclusively in the interests of finance capital.’

What we face across the continent is a process of massive dispossession: dispossession of land through land grabbing, dispossession of the value of our wages, dispossession of our ability to produce what we, rather than what international finance capital, wants. The scale of land-grabbing that is occurring across the continent illustrates the scale of what is going on: A recent set of reports from the Oakland Institute shows that ‘land grabs encompassing the size of France, displacing thousands of families, building miles of irrigation canals without concern for environmental impacts, allowing crops to be planted that do not improve food security for Africa--done with little or no consultation with those directly impacted, and have no accountability or transparency.’

But perhaps the most serious dispossession that we face is a political dispossession. Our governments are more accountable today to the international financial institutions, to the corporations who extract wealth without restriction, to the international aid agencies that finance institutions such as the IMF, than to citizens. In this sense, our countries are increasingly becoming akin to occupied territories than democracies.

So what is the way out of this? I believe we need to be courageous about democratizing every aspect of our societies. By that I don’t mean just having the ballot box. While we as citizens can vote every four or five years to decide who will rule us, the speculators on the New York, London and Tokyo stock exchanges get to vote every day, and their decisions affect every aspect of our lives – from the price of food to the price of land, seeds, fertilizers, clothes, everything.

What should we produce? How should we produce it? For whom do we produce? What do we do with the product? Who will benefit from the surplus that is generated? What kind of education should we have? Whose history should we be learning? What kind of health care should we have? Who benefits from the extraction of natural resources? Who do we trade with and on what terms? Who decides?

It is these kind of questions that we need to start addressing if we are to seriously consider democratizing our societies. These kind of decisions are too important to leave to governments. These kind of questions are at the heart of the meaning of ‘self-reliance’. Either we make dinner, or we become dinner. Either we set the agenda, or we become someone else’s agenda.

By Firoze Manji

Firoze Manji is founder and former Executive Director of Fahamu and editor of Pambazuka News.