THE AFRICAN continent is currently being swept by a wave of social unrest that speaks
International Viewpoint #181 • March 26, 1990
BLACK AFRICA
N THE SPACE of a few weeks, Niger has been swept by a series of led to appalling damage generating very rapid and brutal social mutations;
harshly repressed student volumes on the state of political and economic strikes and Benin has experi- decay in these countries. At a moment when enced profound political insta- the victory of capitalism over socialism is bility after a wave of strikes by students and workers. After supposedly being celebrated, it is important to Senegal, which has been for review the damage wreaked, and more bluntly several years the setting for a the crimes committed, by imperialist social and political crisis punctuated by student and high school strikes, Gabon and the Ivory Coast now experience in their turn political troubles and riots. Finally, Kenya and Mozambique are facing problems of the same order.
Of these six countries currently experiencing. political disorder, four belong to the French-dominated area of Africa. Four, Senegal, Gabon, the Ivory Coast and Kenya have openly pro-Western regimes. The Mozambique of the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (FRELIMO) claimed adherence until recently to the socialist camp and to Marxism'. As for Benin, a tiny French neo-colony and a member of the Franc Zone, its regime had opted some time ago for "Marxism-Leninism", or rather a derisory caricature of the Stalinist model perpetrated by a populist military team. Despite their differences, all these countries have been affected by grave social conflicts.
Students and high school students have most frequently been at the heart of these mobilizations but, depending on the country, teachers, civil servants and blue collar public service workers have also participated. At least in the case of Senegal, Gabon and the Ivory Coast, the mobilizations have taken the form of a popular explosion with street occupations. In these three countries as in Benin, the movements have taken as their target the head of state, demanding his resignation, whilst also attacking the corruption of the regimes and opposing a series of austerity measures3
Some general lessons can be drawn from these popular opposition movements. Firstly, in none of these countries does there exist a genuine political force organizing the mobilizations, whether or not a structured opposition exists to the regimes in power. Some political groups or personalities can have an important influence on the demonstrations, but it is necessary to bear in mind that these are countries where the workers movement is extremely weak and often has no organic 5 Anti-imperialist consciousness, • independence from the regime in power.
not to domination in black Africa.
### CLAUDE GABRIEL mention class consciousness, remains very weak.
Secondly, it is important to underline the ease with which these social move. ments have rapidly evolved into full scale riots with looting, mobilizing the youth of the poor areas. Thus it would be mistaken to conclude that what has been happenrepresents a simple mounting of political and social radicalization in these countries. The process is more complex and more ambivalent to the extent that, in the absence of an alternative to the regimes in power, these movements also express forms of social decomposition. Today, there is a serious risk of these states suffering what it is now fashionable to call an "implosion", without any social force existing in opposition which is capable of expressing a true alternative.
External factors overwhelm internal efforts
The destructive effect of the capitalist crisis on these societies is one of the principal causes of these events. Their destabilization and their decomposition as an effect of exogenous factors is today proceeding far more quickly than their ability to engender political and social forces capable of representing an alternative project to neo-colonial chaos. The fate of black Africa today must be at the centre of any indictment of imperialism.
This is because capitalist anarchy has 1. Mozambique is also the scene of a civil war against the South African backed Mozambique National Resistance (RENAMO). This devastating war has brought the country to its knees. 2. In Senegal the crisis of relations with neighboring Mauritania allowed the regime to benefit for a time from the social and racial outlet represented by the fury directed against the Mauritanian community. In the Ivory Coast, the press has reported looting directed against Lebanese traders. 3. Senegal is the only one of these countries where a genuine structured political opposition exists, although it gives neither leadership nor perspectives to the mass
• The long term debt of black Africa is today 19 times greater than it was in 1970. It is now equal to its gross national product (as a comparison, the Latin American debt represents 60% of GNP). Despite the negotiation of a hundred reschedulings in the course of this period, the arrears continue to grow4. • Two thirds of the rural population and one third of the urban population live below the poverty level. The rate of infant mortality was 104 per 1,000 in 1985, against 71 per 1,000 in the third world as a whole. In the same year, "only 65% of the urban population and 26% of the rural population had access to clean water, against 75% and 42% for the developing economies as a whole. Life expectancy at birth was 49 for men and 53 for women, against 60 and 62 respectively for the developing world as a
• To this poverty must be added a terrible oppression of women, a very low rate of use of contraception, and massive illiteracy amongst women. The rate of demographic growth has increased regularly in the course of the last period to reach 3.2%, the highest figure in the world. If these tendencies maintain themselves, the population of black Africa will be more than a billion by 2010°.
• Because of this demographic growth and the general situation of very great penury, ecological problems have taken a dramatic turn. The use of firewood as the sole popular means of cooking has led to a rate of deforestation 29 times greater than the speed of replanting. Sahelian Africa has been the most affected by this, losing 4% of its trees per year. At the same time, 55 million Africans face a shortage of wood Moreover we are witnessing an erosion and a chronic exhaustion of cultivated land leading in many places to a lowering of agricultural productivity, and thus a colossal deficit of food production. movement. It is again in Senegal, but also in Benin, that the trade unions have played a more or less significant role in the recent events. 4. See "From Crisis to Lasting Growth", published by the World Bank, Washington 1989. 5. Ismael Serageldin, "Poverty, Adjustment and Growth in Africa", published by the World Bank, Washington 1989. 6. These figures imply a rate of fertility of 6.5% per woman. 5% of couples use contraception against 30% in India and 70% in China. African women grow around 80% of foodstuffs, but receive only 10% of monetary income and possess around 1% of property.
----- pull-quotes on this page -----
austerity
PLANTE
• In 1987, for 450 million inhabitants, the gross domestic product for Black Africa was $150 milliard dollars, scarcely more than that of Belgium. In some countries, the drop in income per inhabitant has reached 25%. In the course of the ten last years, taking account of the fall in discountable profits, numerous African countries have suffered from falling investment and a process of deindustrialization.
• The rapid evolution of techniques of production and changing needs in raw materials in the "developed" economies has destabilized black African economies. The changes in eating habits in the consumer countries and the growing use of substitute products modifies the international division of labour issuing from the time of colonization?. As a result, African countries are experiencing overproduction of coffee, chocolate, peanuts, which leads to a fall in prices on the world market. Thus, Africa's share of world trade tends to decrease, making the possibility of repaying the debt still more
• Corruption is rife among the ruling cliques and constitutes their chief means of enriching themselves. The crisis has not stopped this, rather the opposite, but on the other hand it has limited the extent to which the crumbs can fall down to the masses. Imperialism has maintained and reproduced this situation as an instrument for the control and reproduction of ruling class layers. It essentially consists of a private management of "public" property and a massive diversion of "aid".
• All the regimes of Black Africa, with-
00 8 VOLCANO
AIDS FAMiNE
out exception, are either dictatorships or highly repressive states. Under one form or another, the state is fused with the dominant party (often a single party), and the trade union movement is in the majority of cases subordinate to it.
• Foreign "aid and cooperation" have supplementary reproducing dependence. Far from allowing these countries to "take off", they have facilitated the massive presence of European state functionaries and entrepreneurs. In many countries, they are far more numerous than at the time of independence. Cultural and linguistic domination has enclosed these countries in a total alienation.
In conclusion, it could be said that the last twenty years have cost Black Africa more dearly than the slave trade at the beginning of colonization. At a time when many judge the "successes" of capitalism by the sole measure of the German or Japanese gross domestic product, it is appropriate to remember that the world capitalist economy forms an interlocking whole. The manner in which the imperialist countries have been able to limit the effect on themselves of the long depression which began in the early 1970s is not irrelevant to the fate of the countries of the third world. Part of the cost of the crisis has been displaced towards the latter. Africa's situation today is not a marginal phenomenon. The recurrent factors of the crisis now engender the phenomena of absolute decline and chaos. There is only one defendant at this trial — the world capitalist economy.
BLACK AFRICA It is in this general context that the recent social explosions must be understood. The youth who demonstrate in the streets constitute in a way the generation of "structural adjustments". In the protest movements you will find, for example, students who know that, despite the shortage of technicians and teachers, they will be unemployed when they leave university because of budgetary austerity. The movement also includes those whose standard of living is directly affected when the IMF and the World Bank impose "realistic prices" for everyday consumer goods or demand the reduction of public spend-
This is not to deny the excessive burgeoning of certain sectors of the public services, but it is necessary to understand that this has served the social stability of the neo-colonial regimes for thirty years. Now wage earners are asked to pay the cost of this without any alternative policy at the very moment when foreign industrial investments are declining. And to the extent that there is no decline in the corruption of the ruling layers, the budget cuts hit hardest the already derisory social services bud-
Highest rates of illiteracy in world
In Zaire, for example, 20% of primary school teachers were sacked between 1983 and 1984, although the rate of illiteracy in Africa amongst those over 15 is 54% (as against 36% in Asia and 17% in Latin America®.
It requires all the cynicism of the functionaries of the World Bank to defend the sweeping austerity measures whilst adding that it "is necessary to recognize nonetheless that changes of this importance are accompanied by grave disturbances of the conditions of existence for numerous sectors of the population"?. In a country like the Ivory Coast, the sectors affected by a 25% drop in income between 1980 and 1985 were not the ruling layers and the family of President Houphouet Boigny. The average annual income per inhabitant, which was, according to the World Bank, $1150 in 1980, fell to $650 in 1985. At the same time Houphuet Boigny has had a Pharaonic cathedral built to signify the grandeur of his reign 1°.
Two other lessons are worth drawing from the situation which grips the coun tries of Black Africa. First, it illustrates the failure of the Lomé Convention linking, amongst others, the majority of the African countries to the European Community. The Convention is supposed to remedy the effects of unequal exchange notably thanks to its compensatory mechanisms 7. See IV 140, May 2, 1988. 8. Ismael Serageldin, director of the Department for Western and Central Africa at the World Bank. 9. See Le Monde, March 6, 1990.
----- photo credits and running heads -----
8000 LOCUSTS 7
International Viewpoint #181 • March 26, 1990
BLACK AFRICA / HAITI (Stabex and Sysmin) for the African economies loss of export profits. In so far as they amount only to an a posteriori rectification of the effects of the market, these mechanisms have been incapable of remedying the cumulative deterioration of the terms of exchange!!. At a time when the EEC is trying to find the funds necessary for its intervention in Eastern Europe, it is doubtful that it will be able to devote significant resources to the Lomé Convention in the future.
The second point worth making is that the Franc Zone, which supposedly exists to protect its member states through the means of a currency with a rate pegged to the French franc, no longer seems to make any difference to the performance of the economy. Of the six countries hit by open political crisis today, four are members of the Franc Zone and traditionally under the domination of French interests. Indeed it is distressing to note the width of the national consensus in France on the question of relations with Black Africa. The unspoken most often serves as a political line for all the big parliamentary forces and the mass media.
All sorts of excuses and explanations are given to justify the existence of the African dictators. Often it is explained that, in Africa, there has always been a tradition of the "chief", and one of the principal leaders of the & fort to explain that "for countries on the • Jacques Chirac. was able without discompath of development, multipartyism is a political error and a luxury".
Cynical role of social democracy
The attitude of social democracy is no better. The French Socialist government in power between 1981 and 1986 and since 1988, has done nothing to modify the relations of submission between these countries and France. There are still 2,200 French soldiers in Senegal, 3,900 in Djibouti, 500 in the Ivory Coast, 400 in Gabon, and so on. The whole political and ideological arsenal put in place by Gaullism to keep a strict hold over these coun tries has been maintained. The head of the Senegalese regime, Abdou Diouf, is one of the key figures of the Socialist Interna-
It is not by chance that the French government decided on February 28, in the midst of the Gabonese crisis, to extradite one of the principal opponents of the regime through an emergency procedure. Francophone Africa continues to be the scene of numerous scandals and shady affairs which inevitably suck in all those who are in power.
All this is not without consequence for the behaviour of the workers movement, because of the corrupting effects of the so-called French mission in Africa. Whereas the French left should give its complete support to the African people in tackling the economic, political and military problems that face them, instead we have the sad spectacle of a French Socialist Party that wants to be the best possible manager of "French" interests.
In the absence of strong support from the workers' movement in the imperialist countries, the opposition forces, today in Senegal or in the Ivory Coast, tomorrow in Nigeria or Kenya, will have grave difficulties in establishing a relationship of favourable to Instead of asking what the peoples of Africa could do to overthrow the existing regimes, the European workers movement must rather ask itself what it can do to change a world which now condemns 450 million human beings to chaos and slow death.* 10. In 1988-89, the regime in the Ivory Coast attempted to withhold its cocoa so as to put pressure on world prices. The operation was a total fiasco and the regime had to bend to the rules of the market. But political measures show the extent to which disorder and the irrational of this type taken by enfeebled regimes have entered into the relations between these states 12. 14 African countries are members of the Franc Zone. Since 1948, the CFA (African Financial Community) franc is equal to 0.02 French francs. Through a complicated mechanism involving community management of the centralised foreign holdings of the member states, French funds were supposed to guarantee without limit and a priori the deficits and curren-
N JANUARY 20, a state of siege was proclaimed in Haiti, with a duration of 30 days. Scores of people were arrested. Some were deported, others horribly beaten. Already, in November of last year, three officials of popular organizations, including one of the principal leaders of CATH (Independent Federation of Haitian Workers), had been arrested, tortured and displayed, unrecognizable, on the tel-
And yet, on January 30, under the pressure of foreign backers and a part of the Haitian bourgeoisie, General Avril lifted the state of siege. Moreover, on February 7, he announced "a general amnesty in favour of all those implicated in crimes and offences against the security of the state". The three prisoners of November, who he had accused of wishing to kill him, were also released, albeit in very poor condition. Avril called for dialogue and made a formal commitment to respect the rules of democratic functioning"
The Electoral Council has reaffirmed that local elections will take place in April, to be followed in July-August by the election of the two governing chambers and in October-November the election of the president of the republic. Despite Avril's volte-face, which does not conceal the continuing repression, the majority of political parties are refusing to participate in the elections as long as he remains in power. But do they think that the simple replacement of Avril, without touching the state apparatus (and who could touch it?) would give them the guarantee of free elections? The crisis of the "democratic transition" in Haiti exists for profound reasons which we examine below.
A parasitic bourgeoisie
The major part of the Haitian bourgeoisie is parasitic, turned towards the exteriand more particularly towards the United States, where it channels a large proportion of its profits. It has primarily invested in merchant activities or served as a broker for foreign capital. The sector of industry turned towards the interior market is rickety in the extreme. Industrial parks are consecrated to the assembly of imported products and are almost immediately moved abroad. The part of the bourgeoisie that finds itself at the centre of economic power already occupied this under Jean-Claude Duvalier (Haiti's president from 1971 to 1986. His father, François Duvalier, was president from 1957 to 1971). It is an alliance of two components. The first could be called the "modernist" sector of the new bourgeoisie that developed itself under the
Duvaliers after having seized control of the state apparatus. Under Jean-Claude
Duvalier, it was able to expand its activities, in general non-productive. The other