APARTHEID is a social and political system of racial segregation and discrimination that was popularised and institutionalised by white minority governments in South Africa for a 46 year period from 1948 through 1994.
The term apartheid (from the Afrikaans word for “apartness”) was introduced in the human vocabulary in the 1930s and used as a political slogan of the National Party in the early 1940s, but the philosophy underpinning it was an integral part of the colonial South African experience that dated from 1652. In 1948, apartheid was institutionalised and supported by a complex legal and economic system that stratified citizens along racial lines.
At the core of the apartheid system was an economic model that condemned the majority of Africans to an inferior standard of living. The late Ian Smith, President Mugabe’s last colonial predecessor, who died last week believed strongly in responsible government justified on the assumption that natives could never be trusted with the democratic project not only because of their illiteracy, but because their culture and values militated against their assimilation into a Eurocentric system and constitutional order.
Through apartheid architecture, the colonial state managed to build a sophisticated industrial, mining and agricultural system to serve the interests of the settler community. In the main, apartheid in the context of South Africa did manage to accomplish the objectives it was created for and successfully positioned whites to be the ultimate victors in the post colonial state. The irony is that the real harvesters of the anti-apartheid struggle have not been the victims of the system; rather the apartheid system remains intact in many if not all post-colonial African states.
The change of political systems in the post colonial state has done little to change the economic relations that underpinned the colonial state. The majority continues to be marginalised and yet independence was meant to confer real and tangible benefits to them.
To what extent has post-colonial Africa delivered on its promise to the majority remains an issue that has to inform any conversation among people who are passionate about Africa. In a few weeks, African heads of state and government will gather in Lisbon to engage Europe on key strategic issues that will hopefully shape the future of the continent.
What stake do the majority of Africans have in post colonial Africa? What investment has been made by Africans to make Africa what they want to see? Who controls Africa’s resources for whose benefit? If it is the case that the majority of Africans have no stake in Africa’s future, can we say that apartheid is over?
Africa is well endowed with rich mineral and human resources and yet its citizens are alienated from the means to exploit such resources in a manner that advances the African cause. Knowledge, capital and execution gaps exist in post colonial Africa and the tragedy is that collectively, we have failed to invest in bridging these gaps to the advantage of Africa.
If we take sector by sector in post colonial Africa without taking into account the individual nation states, we see an Africa that is heavily dependent on donor funds to finance national budgets and a continent that is incapable of mobilising its own resources to exploit what God has deposited in its belly. As a result, the champions of Africa’s renaissance are not Africans themselves who through state and non-state actions have resigned themselves by willingly accepting that they are inherently incapable of leveraging their resources to eliminate the apartheid system that was crafted and executed by an organised mafia.
The small steps that post colonial Africa has made over the last 50 years in the march towards the objective of a better and prosperous continent have lacked the momentum required to give direction about where Africa is heading under self government. Yes, we may be in control of our arms of government, but are we really in control of the business and economic model that feeds and sustains post colonial Africa?
What is the hope for an African child who finds himself/herself embedded in an apartheid system underpinned by a political architecture that is seemingly under the control of blacks but in reality is designed to serve the same interests that a colonial state was meant to serve? The psychological impact of apartheid on its victims is telling and it is not unusual to find the majority of Africans constructively accepting that they have no role to play in Africa’s future.
Apartheid was underpinned by a well thought out legal system that conferred property rights on the system’s intended beneficiaries. The post colonial system has exposed itself as an ideologically infantile construction in which the driving force has tended to be a bureaucratic political system that is often obsessed with political power and less concerned about human progress. The institutional issues that should form the basis of any successful nation building project are often missing in post colonial conversations in Africa.
The contestation for power in post colonial Africa is less informed by vested and defined interests of organised citizens. We have not been good at creating our own institutions to support the democratic direction that we purport to subscribe to. Many post colonial political parties particularly those in control of the state are sustained more by state resources than by member dues. The life of political institutions in Africa is less determined by members but by the state or external forces. If you want to dislodge the ruling party, it is not unexpected for you to seek financial and material resources from without.
The role of Africans in the diaspora is also an issue of concern in entrenching the apartheid system that is omnipresent in Africa. How many of the Africans in the diaspora are organised in the same manner the settlers were organised in colonial Africa? The number of Africans in Europe may exceed the number of European settlers in Sub-Saharan Africa (excluding South Africa) and yet in terms of organisation, we have to agree that the settlers were good at establishing institutions to support their civilization. We have a number of Italian, Greek, Portuguese, German, English clubs still existing in colonial Africa and yet you will find no such thriving institutions set up by the diaspora African community in Europe.
When one considers the role of London as a financial hub in creating and sustaining the apartheid system, it is noticeable that Africans in London today are less concerned about their contribution to Africa than their colonial counterparts were in mobilising the required capital to exploit African resources. Indeed, the name Anglo American Corporation is derived from the recognition of American and English finance in developing Africa’s rich resources.
The only power we ultimately have is the power to organize. As we continue the conversations on Africa’s future, we cannot avoid looking at ourselves in a frank and honest manner. There is no-one who will invest in the change that we want to see. Apartheid was a consequence of human conversations informed by objective circumstances and the end of apartheid can never be a consequence of no conversations and human action. We all have a part to play in this conversation, for Africa belongs to all who have invested in its future. It is not enough to carry a black skin and call yourself an African.
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Sunday, November 18, 2007
Does indigenisation threaten law of succession?
THE political destiny of Africa is now notionally in the hands of the natives in all of its states while the key economic decisions about Africa’s future continue to be made by non-Africans notwithstanding the last five decades of uhuru.
The democratisation of Africa’s economic space is the enduring challenge that confronts the continent with equal measure, irrespective of the stage of economic development of the individual states.
The impact of the colonial state on Africa’s current asset ownership patterns is well acknowledged as is the dualistic nature of its economies. Although many of Africa’s individual states are registering positive growth rates, what is evident is that there is little or no positive impact on poverty.
In the quest to alleviate poverty and the marginalisation of its citizens in the economic space, many African governments subscribe to the notion that the state has a role to play in engineering the democratisation of the economy in as much as the colonial state was underpinned by an undemocratic political order whose sole purpose was to facilitate, promote and protect white capital accumulation.
The need to improve the standard of living of Africans in general cannot be overstated. The property rights that were legitimately or illegitimately acquired during the colonial period have endured in the post colonial state notwithstanding the changing of the guard in African statehouses.
If there are any lessons to be drawn from the last 50 years of Africa’s post colonial experience, it is that there appears to be no real strategy to deal with Africa’s economic question and legacy issues.
To whom does the African economy belong? Who is an African? Who should own African resources? What are the implications on development if asset ownership patterns are politically determined rather than market determined? Can Africa be transformed through market solutions or through state engineering? Can the state be a trusted nation building agent?
These are some of the questions that should occupy our minds as we continue the conversation about the future of our beloved continent.
Legacy is defined as that which is inherited; a title or property or estate that passes by law to the heir on the death of the owner, similar to a gift that is acquired without compensation. Acquisition without compensation forms a key part of the law of succession and as such, indigenisation is often cast as an integral part of the national democratic revolution.
Whether you call it indigenisation or black economic empowerment, the end game is the same. Opponents of indigenisation programs and strategies often use the arguments that inheritance of assets in the case of blacks should necessarily be merit-based while accepting that inheritance at its core has little to do with competency and capacity of the beneficiary than with blood lineage or wishes of the deceased. The successors of settler colonialists in Africa are today respectable businessperson in Africa and yet their inheritance may have been founded on looting.
How then should Africa deal with the economic challenges that confront it where the absence of serious African capital formation in the post colonial state is often attributed to the colonial legacy? Is it the case that Africa’s post colonial poverty is explained by colonial legacy or by the lack of vision of Africa’s own post-colonial elites? Is there any causal link between Africa’s cultural architecture and the lack of development?
The responses of Africa’s post colonial regimes to the colonially inherited dualistic economic structures have been varied ranging from outright expropriation to black economic empowerment programs. The last 50 years of post colonial experience gives us an opportunity to begin to reflect on the success or failures of such initiatives. The impact on poverty has been significant in the negative direction from indigenisation or economic empowerment particularly where the state has been involved as the agent for transformation.
Notwithstanding, many African governments have invested in undermining their own local capacity not only in terms of denying such capacity to meaningful public sector contracts but through a belief that the private sector cannot be trusted to be an honest partner in nation building.
The interest on Zimbabwe globally apart from obvious governance concerns arises from the fact that the government of Zimbabwe has positioned itself as the champion of economic justice. Faced with an unprecedented economic crisis, the need to find explanations and provide hope to its citizens has contributed to the radicalisation of economic policies. Given the poverty atmosphere that characterises many of the developing countries, Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe has emerged as the Robin Hood of the poor.
It is for this reason that anyone interested in the African story cannot avoid dealing with the Zimbabwean issues not only because the country is now a laboratory of some recycled ideas of how economies should be managed but because it has now become a theatre for experimentation using untested and unorthodox economic management tactics.
Indigenisation has, therefore, taken centre stage as the only medicine capable of restoring the economy to its former self or at least to the same level of sophistication and efficiency as at the time of independence.
To what extent was indigenisation part of the policy thrust of the post colonial state or a craftily engineered politically expedient move to divert attention to policy bankruptcy will remain a subject for future generation to debate.
What is evident is that indigenisation was neither an imperative that informed the first 20 years of Zimbabwean independence nor is it the driving force today when juxtaposed with the attitude to investment from China and other so-called friendly states.
The Indigenisation and Empowerment Bill that seeks to create an enabling environment for indigenous people in Zimbabwe in their economic activities has been passed by both houses of Parliament. The intention is that an environment will be created in which at least 51% of the shareholding in the majority of businesses in all sectors of the economy is in the hands of indigenous people. An indigenous person is defined as any person that was at independence classified as historically disadvantaged.
The focus of my article is to provoke a conversation on the implications of indigenisation of the law of succession. While segments of the black African bourgeoisie act like a capitalist class, the primacy of kinship and ethnicity limits their effectiveness as agents of capitalist transformation in terms of property rights beyond underdeveloped capitalism. This presents a challenge to indigenisation particularly when the first generation of property owners who happen to be lucky as beneficiaries of the policy expire or die.
The passing of property or legal rights after death has to form part of the conversation among us as Africans as we begin to deal with the consequences of indigenisation. To what extent should inheritance laws be amended to provide for indigenisation is an issue that needs interrogation.
The distribution of property under a state’s intestate succession laws determines who inherits property when someone dies without a valid will and many Africans are found wanting in the area of wills preparation. Succession of property at law covers the two distinct concepts of inheritance (a gift made by will or other testamentary document on death) and heirship which applies where property passed to one or more dependants according to a formula set out in law, religion, custom or under the terms of a trust.
The familial mode of production elevates ethnicity and extended family identity and loyalty above class, tradition and custom above capitalist economic rationality, and the extended family above the conjugal nuclear family to the extent that the successor of the beneficiaries of indigenisation may not have the technical and financial capacity to promote and protect the legacy. How many of us have relatives who can step into our shoes and carry own our legacies seamlessly?
Many of the best educated and most influential Africans still see themselves first as members of their village and tribes, and their major areas of life are governed by these traditions and values. Succession stresses the importance of the nuclear family as the most important unit in modern Africa as opposed to the extended family. It favours intergenerational capital accumulation by the propertied families. Rather than promoting the concentration of wealth, customary law functions to redistribute wealth or unbundle the wealth created by the deceased among his/her numerous claimants.
In the case of Zimbabwe, where race has now been elevated to the most significant national question, it is not evident what will happen to black Zimbabweans married to whites who may qualify as beneficiaries of indigenisation. Would their successors who may well be white be eligible to keep the rights and transfer them in line with succession laws with no risk of the state seeking to negotiate such rights on account of race?
To the extent that dual citizenship is illegal in Zimbabwe, what will happen to beneficiaries of land reform whose children may all have acquired foreign citizenship and in doing so will no longer be Zimbabwean in terms of inheritance? Suppose you acquire 51% of a company and the next day you die and in your will you have given the shares as a gift to a white or foreign national. Would the shares be safe? If not, what are the implications on investment? Even in the case of land reform, I am not convinced that a lot of thought has been applied to the succession issue.
The decisions that are made by our generation have an enduring impact on the future of our continent and yet little or no thought is applied to the unintended consequences of policy instruments that may have conflicting and multiple objectives.
Colonialism invested in its own demise and I am sure that the policies of post-colonial Africa will generate their own revolutionaries if the continent is to move forward.
The democratisation of Africa’s economic space is the enduring challenge that confronts the continent with equal measure, irrespective of the stage of economic development of the individual states.
The impact of the colonial state on Africa’s current asset ownership patterns is well acknowledged as is the dualistic nature of its economies. Although many of Africa’s individual states are registering positive growth rates, what is evident is that there is little or no positive impact on poverty.
In the quest to alleviate poverty and the marginalisation of its citizens in the economic space, many African governments subscribe to the notion that the state has a role to play in engineering the democratisation of the economy in as much as the colonial state was underpinned by an undemocratic political order whose sole purpose was to facilitate, promote and protect white capital accumulation.
The need to improve the standard of living of Africans in general cannot be overstated. The property rights that were legitimately or illegitimately acquired during the colonial period have endured in the post colonial state notwithstanding the changing of the guard in African statehouses.
If there are any lessons to be drawn from the last 50 years of Africa’s post colonial experience, it is that there appears to be no real strategy to deal with Africa’s economic question and legacy issues.
To whom does the African economy belong? Who is an African? Who should own African resources? What are the implications on development if asset ownership patterns are politically determined rather than market determined? Can Africa be transformed through market solutions or through state engineering? Can the state be a trusted nation building agent?
These are some of the questions that should occupy our minds as we continue the conversation about the future of our beloved continent.
Legacy is defined as that which is inherited; a title or property or estate that passes by law to the heir on the death of the owner, similar to a gift that is acquired without compensation. Acquisition without compensation forms a key part of the law of succession and as such, indigenisation is often cast as an integral part of the national democratic revolution.
Whether you call it indigenisation or black economic empowerment, the end game is the same. Opponents of indigenisation programs and strategies often use the arguments that inheritance of assets in the case of blacks should necessarily be merit-based while accepting that inheritance at its core has little to do with competency and capacity of the beneficiary than with blood lineage or wishes of the deceased. The successors of settler colonialists in Africa are today respectable businessperson in Africa and yet their inheritance may have been founded on looting.
How then should Africa deal with the economic challenges that confront it where the absence of serious African capital formation in the post colonial state is often attributed to the colonial legacy? Is it the case that Africa’s post colonial poverty is explained by colonial legacy or by the lack of vision of Africa’s own post-colonial elites? Is there any causal link between Africa’s cultural architecture and the lack of development?
The responses of Africa’s post colonial regimes to the colonially inherited dualistic economic structures have been varied ranging from outright expropriation to black economic empowerment programs. The last 50 years of post colonial experience gives us an opportunity to begin to reflect on the success or failures of such initiatives. The impact on poverty has been significant in the negative direction from indigenisation or economic empowerment particularly where the state has been involved as the agent for transformation.
Notwithstanding, many African governments have invested in undermining their own local capacity not only in terms of denying such capacity to meaningful public sector contracts but through a belief that the private sector cannot be trusted to be an honest partner in nation building.
The interest on Zimbabwe globally apart from obvious governance concerns arises from the fact that the government of Zimbabwe has positioned itself as the champion of economic justice. Faced with an unprecedented economic crisis, the need to find explanations and provide hope to its citizens has contributed to the radicalisation of economic policies. Given the poverty atmosphere that characterises many of the developing countries, Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe has emerged as the Robin Hood of the poor.
It is for this reason that anyone interested in the African story cannot avoid dealing with the Zimbabwean issues not only because the country is now a laboratory of some recycled ideas of how economies should be managed but because it has now become a theatre for experimentation using untested and unorthodox economic management tactics.
Indigenisation has, therefore, taken centre stage as the only medicine capable of restoring the economy to its former self or at least to the same level of sophistication and efficiency as at the time of independence.
To what extent was indigenisation part of the policy thrust of the post colonial state or a craftily engineered politically expedient move to divert attention to policy bankruptcy will remain a subject for future generation to debate.
What is evident is that indigenisation was neither an imperative that informed the first 20 years of Zimbabwean independence nor is it the driving force today when juxtaposed with the attitude to investment from China and other so-called friendly states.
The Indigenisation and Empowerment Bill that seeks to create an enabling environment for indigenous people in Zimbabwe in their economic activities has been passed by both houses of Parliament. The intention is that an environment will be created in which at least 51% of the shareholding in the majority of businesses in all sectors of the economy is in the hands of indigenous people. An indigenous person is defined as any person that was at independence classified as historically disadvantaged.
The focus of my article is to provoke a conversation on the implications of indigenisation of the law of succession. While segments of the black African bourgeoisie act like a capitalist class, the primacy of kinship and ethnicity limits their effectiveness as agents of capitalist transformation in terms of property rights beyond underdeveloped capitalism. This presents a challenge to indigenisation particularly when the first generation of property owners who happen to be lucky as beneficiaries of the policy expire or die.
The passing of property or legal rights after death has to form part of the conversation among us as Africans as we begin to deal with the consequences of indigenisation. To what extent should inheritance laws be amended to provide for indigenisation is an issue that needs interrogation.
The distribution of property under a state’s intestate succession laws determines who inherits property when someone dies without a valid will and many Africans are found wanting in the area of wills preparation. Succession of property at law covers the two distinct concepts of inheritance (a gift made by will or other testamentary document on death) and heirship which applies where property passed to one or more dependants according to a formula set out in law, religion, custom or under the terms of a trust.
The familial mode of production elevates ethnicity and extended family identity and loyalty above class, tradition and custom above capitalist economic rationality, and the extended family above the conjugal nuclear family to the extent that the successor of the beneficiaries of indigenisation may not have the technical and financial capacity to promote and protect the legacy. How many of us have relatives who can step into our shoes and carry own our legacies seamlessly?
Many of the best educated and most influential Africans still see themselves first as members of their village and tribes, and their major areas of life are governed by these traditions and values. Succession stresses the importance of the nuclear family as the most important unit in modern Africa as opposed to the extended family. It favours intergenerational capital accumulation by the propertied families. Rather than promoting the concentration of wealth, customary law functions to redistribute wealth or unbundle the wealth created by the deceased among his/her numerous claimants.
In the case of Zimbabwe, where race has now been elevated to the most significant national question, it is not evident what will happen to black Zimbabweans married to whites who may qualify as beneficiaries of indigenisation. Would their successors who may well be white be eligible to keep the rights and transfer them in line with succession laws with no risk of the state seeking to negotiate such rights on account of race?
To the extent that dual citizenship is illegal in Zimbabwe, what will happen to beneficiaries of land reform whose children may all have acquired foreign citizenship and in doing so will no longer be Zimbabwean in terms of inheritance? Suppose you acquire 51% of a company and the next day you die and in your will you have given the shares as a gift to a white or foreign national. Would the shares be safe? If not, what are the implications on investment? Even in the case of land reform, I am not convinced that a lot of thought has been applied to the succession issue.
The decisions that are made by our generation have an enduring impact on the future of our continent and yet little or no thought is applied to the unintended consequences of policy instruments that may have conflicting and multiple objectives.
Colonialism invested in its own demise and I am sure that the policies of post-colonial Africa will generate their own revolutionaries if the continent is to move forward.
Sunday, November 11, 2007
Defining the role of the state in post-colonial Africa
THE purpose of this article is to assess the role of the state in light of the last 50 years of post-colonial experiences.
The extent of the state’s role in the transformation and development of Africa continues to be debated particularly in light of the unorthodox institutional arrangements that seem to have facilitated economic development in the East Asian economies.
Post colonial African politics have been heavily shaped by controversies over the role, size and strength of the state.
What is the role of the state in post-colonial Africa? This question is fundamental to the debate over the failure of post-colonial Africa to deliver a sustainable and economically viable alternative to a colonial model.
There is a need to interrogate whether political factors in the past 50 years have positively or negatively impacted on poverty alleviation in Africa. With 53 countries and a variation in political regimes, it should be possible to make an objective assessment whether political regimes do make a difference on poverty reduction policies, expenditure patterns and outcomes in Africa.
The post-colonial African experience has not had any material positive influence on poverty reduction to the extent that the continent’s political and economic challenges are high up on the global agenda that is dominated by the continent’s former colonial powers as if to confirm that there was no serious appreciation of the implications of political independence on transformation and economic development by the architects of the decolonisation project. There is no doubt that colonialism was underpinned by a clear agenda whose outcomes were predictable. What is less clear is the agenda of Africa’s post-colonial masters.
In attempting to analyse the role of the state in post-colonial Africa, I am aware of the existence of two trends that tend to marginalise or question the role of the state. The first of these is the inherent anti-statism that is informed by neoliberal, managerialist, and communitarian agendas, each of which in their way has influenced approaches to development and poverty alleviation in Africa. The second stems from a complex assortment of radical and critical ideas associated with the anti-colonial struggle that challenge the global ascendancy of capitalism, liberal democracy, Western culture and neoliberal welfare theories.
Should the post-colonial state be an impartial, omnipotent and act merely as a social guardian or should it be a “predator” or a vehicle for primitive accumulation for politically powerful groups including state actors, comprising politicians and bureaucrats? Whether the post-colonial state has acted in the interests of the people it purports to serve and from whom it draws its legitimacy is a question that ought to occupy the minds of all Africans.
Can we safely say that the motives of Africa’s political actors in the post-colonial era have been informed by the maximisation of collective or material self interests? Does Africa’s post-colonial experience serve to denounce the role of politics as a legitimate way to correct the colonially determined market outcomes according to the collective will?
Many of the post-colonial African leaders have not been shy to bring politics into economics using a technocratic view of the role of the state. Arguments have been advanced that seem to suggest that only enlightened and educated people should govern Africa notwithstanding the absence of any empirical evidence confirming the proposition that poverty can be materially alleviated through state intervention. There is a need, therefore, to expose the fundamental problems with the technocratic view of the role of the state that has prevailed in post-colonial Africa that attempts to crowd out the role of economics in the transformation process.
The post-colonial state as a successor to the colonial state was fundamentally a political construction. The institutional framework that has informed the post-colonial state has its foundation in a colonial state whose interests cannot be said to be the same as the post-colonial state and yet after 50 years of “uhuru” it is evident that the contemporary African market cannot be defined except with reference to the inherited and specific rights/obligations structure of the colonial state.
For example, many African leaders easily retreat into an argument that even after extended terms in office, the lack of development is a consequence of colonialism and often refuse to take any responsibility for their own policy bankruptcy. Arguments are frequently advanced that since the rights/obligations in post-colonial Africa were determined through a colonial political process, and not by any scientific or natural law as many apologists of colonialism may want to believe, all markets in Africa have a fundamentally political origin.
Therefore, it is then argued that it is politically naïve to make the neoliberal arguments about the need for a free market in Africa without exposing the ideological position of the person(s) making such arguments regarding the correct boundary for state intervention in a post-colonial state. It is often argued that if so-called free markets that existed in the colonial state were not able to produce socially and inclusive optimal results how can the same ideological framework be expected to address the needs of the poor in the post-colonial state.
The legitimacy of the inherited rights/obligations structure becomes an issue that is often used to obscure the abuse of the state by post-colonial African leaders. The reversal of the rights to land, minerals, and other resources that often have a colonial and political origin becomes the preoccupation of the post-colonial state with little or no regard to the consequences on poverty alleviation and economic progress. Yes, we can have rights to our land and minerals, but do we have a plan to meet the obligations inherent in exercising such rights to the benefit of the collective?
Without sounding like an apologist of colonialism, it is important that we critically examine whether political engineering of economics necessarily produces better outcomes. Is the state the most optimal vehicle for addressing the colonial injury? If so, what has been the experience of post-colonial Africa is redirecting the benefits of economic progress, if any, to the majority? Would Africa have been better served with a minimal or maximal state? The preoccupation with who occupies State House is just about one of the symptoms of the misplaced priorities in Africa about where real power to address poverty should reside.
One has to draw on philosophical constructions that Locke and Hobbes considered in attempting to understand the proper role and form of the state i.e. “the state of nature”. The “state of nature” was the world before laws, institutions or agreements of any sort. Much of human activity was directed at self sustenance and this was followed by minimal social contracts between citizens designed to promote collective social welfare. The state was merely an instrument designed by sovereign citizens to enforce their own basic social contracts and not to oppress them.
In short, a state should exist at the behest of citizens to enforce a mutually beneficial truce and its justification should not permit the state to do what citizens in their self interest can do better or permit the expropriation of private property or permit the violation of human rights. However, many African states believe that they can be referees and players at the same time with no regard to the outcomes.
What is evident is that the post-colonial African experience has failed to produce desired and positive outcomes that help to promote and protect the brand. As a result, the bar has been lowered by us collectively to the extent that it becomes difficult for citizens to objectively decide on who should lead them, what kind of institutional framework to inform the state’s actions, the role of non-state actors, and make choices on the correct boundary for state intervention.
Often in looking for leadership, confusion reigns on what choices to make and invariably incumbents become the beneficiaries. Whoever becomes the first to control the post-colonial state makes it his mission to raise the bar and constructively prevent anyone from taking over the baton while he is still alive.
The attempt to monopolise wisdom by political leaders is not unique to Africa but is a universal phenomenon that can only be mitigated by informed and vigilant citizens. The economic outcomes generated by our own leaders suggest that Africa has to look beyond the state for salvation.
It is also important to recognise that it will never be easy to objectively assess the effectiveness of post-colonial African leaders as long as the rights or obligations matrix is regarded as a political construction. In other words, colonialism is a useful and convenient ally for bankrupt leaders who often have no other excuse of remaining in power.
The extent of the state’s role in the transformation and development of Africa continues to be debated particularly in light of the unorthodox institutional arrangements that seem to have facilitated economic development in the East Asian economies.
Post colonial African politics have been heavily shaped by controversies over the role, size and strength of the state.
What is the role of the state in post-colonial Africa? This question is fundamental to the debate over the failure of post-colonial Africa to deliver a sustainable and economically viable alternative to a colonial model.
There is a need to interrogate whether political factors in the past 50 years have positively or negatively impacted on poverty alleviation in Africa. With 53 countries and a variation in political regimes, it should be possible to make an objective assessment whether political regimes do make a difference on poverty reduction policies, expenditure patterns and outcomes in Africa.
The post-colonial African experience has not had any material positive influence on poverty reduction to the extent that the continent’s political and economic challenges are high up on the global agenda that is dominated by the continent’s former colonial powers as if to confirm that there was no serious appreciation of the implications of political independence on transformation and economic development by the architects of the decolonisation project. There is no doubt that colonialism was underpinned by a clear agenda whose outcomes were predictable. What is less clear is the agenda of Africa’s post-colonial masters.
In attempting to analyse the role of the state in post-colonial Africa, I am aware of the existence of two trends that tend to marginalise or question the role of the state. The first of these is the inherent anti-statism that is informed by neoliberal, managerialist, and communitarian agendas, each of which in their way has influenced approaches to development and poverty alleviation in Africa. The second stems from a complex assortment of radical and critical ideas associated with the anti-colonial struggle that challenge the global ascendancy of capitalism, liberal democracy, Western culture and neoliberal welfare theories.
Should the post-colonial state be an impartial, omnipotent and act merely as a social guardian or should it be a “predator” or a vehicle for primitive accumulation for politically powerful groups including state actors, comprising politicians and bureaucrats? Whether the post-colonial state has acted in the interests of the people it purports to serve and from whom it draws its legitimacy is a question that ought to occupy the minds of all Africans.
Can we safely say that the motives of Africa’s political actors in the post-colonial era have been informed by the maximisation of collective or material self interests? Does Africa’s post-colonial experience serve to denounce the role of politics as a legitimate way to correct the colonially determined market outcomes according to the collective will?
Many of the post-colonial African leaders have not been shy to bring politics into economics using a technocratic view of the role of the state. Arguments have been advanced that seem to suggest that only enlightened and educated people should govern Africa notwithstanding the absence of any empirical evidence confirming the proposition that poverty can be materially alleviated through state intervention. There is a need, therefore, to expose the fundamental problems with the technocratic view of the role of the state that has prevailed in post-colonial Africa that attempts to crowd out the role of economics in the transformation process.
The post-colonial state as a successor to the colonial state was fundamentally a political construction. The institutional framework that has informed the post-colonial state has its foundation in a colonial state whose interests cannot be said to be the same as the post-colonial state and yet after 50 years of “uhuru” it is evident that the contemporary African market cannot be defined except with reference to the inherited and specific rights/obligations structure of the colonial state.
For example, many African leaders easily retreat into an argument that even after extended terms in office, the lack of development is a consequence of colonialism and often refuse to take any responsibility for their own policy bankruptcy. Arguments are frequently advanced that since the rights/obligations in post-colonial Africa were determined through a colonial political process, and not by any scientific or natural law as many apologists of colonialism may want to believe, all markets in Africa have a fundamentally political origin.
Therefore, it is then argued that it is politically naïve to make the neoliberal arguments about the need for a free market in Africa without exposing the ideological position of the person(s) making such arguments regarding the correct boundary for state intervention in a post-colonial state. It is often argued that if so-called free markets that existed in the colonial state were not able to produce socially and inclusive optimal results how can the same ideological framework be expected to address the needs of the poor in the post-colonial state.
The legitimacy of the inherited rights/obligations structure becomes an issue that is often used to obscure the abuse of the state by post-colonial African leaders. The reversal of the rights to land, minerals, and other resources that often have a colonial and political origin becomes the preoccupation of the post-colonial state with little or no regard to the consequences on poverty alleviation and economic progress. Yes, we can have rights to our land and minerals, but do we have a plan to meet the obligations inherent in exercising such rights to the benefit of the collective?
Without sounding like an apologist of colonialism, it is important that we critically examine whether political engineering of economics necessarily produces better outcomes. Is the state the most optimal vehicle for addressing the colonial injury? If so, what has been the experience of post-colonial Africa is redirecting the benefits of economic progress, if any, to the majority? Would Africa have been better served with a minimal or maximal state? The preoccupation with who occupies State House is just about one of the symptoms of the misplaced priorities in Africa about where real power to address poverty should reside.
One has to draw on philosophical constructions that Locke and Hobbes considered in attempting to understand the proper role and form of the state i.e. “the state of nature”. The “state of nature” was the world before laws, institutions or agreements of any sort. Much of human activity was directed at self sustenance and this was followed by minimal social contracts between citizens designed to promote collective social welfare. The state was merely an instrument designed by sovereign citizens to enforce their own basic social contracts and not to oppress them.
In short, a state should exist at the behest of citizens to enforce a mutually beneficial truce and its justification should not permit the state to do what citizens in their self interest can do better or permit the expropriation of private property or permit the violation of human rights. However, many African states believe that they can be referees and players at the same time with no regard to the outcomes.
What is evident is that the post-colonial African experience has failed to produce desired and positive outcomes that help to promote and protect the brand. As a result, the bar has been lowered by us collectively to the extent that it becomes difficult for citizens to objectively decide on who should lead them, what kind of institutional framework to inform the state’s actions, the role of non-state actors, and make choices on the correct boundary for state intervention.
Often in looking for leadership, confusion reigns on what choices to make and invariably incumbents become the beneficiaries. Whoever becomes the first to control the post-colonial state makes it his mission to raise the bar and constructively prevent anyone from taking over the baton while he is still alive.
The attempt to monopolise wisdom by political leaders is not unique to Africa but is a universal phenomenon that can only be mitigated by informed and vigilant citizens. The economic outcomes generated by our own leaders suggest that Africa has to look beyond the state for salvation.
It is also important to recognise that it will never be easy to objectively assess the effectiveness of post-colonial African leaders as long as the rights or obligations matrix is regarded as a political construction. In other words, colonialism is a useful and convenient ally for bankrupt leaders who often have no other excuse of remaining in power.
Monday, November 5, 2007
Mushore's ordeal and the New Zimbabwe we want
JAMES Mushore, one of three professionals who founded the first merchant bank controlled and managed by blacks in Zimbabwe, the National Merchant Bank of Zimbabwe (NMB), made history in 2004 when like the late Vice President Joshua Nkomo, he fled to the former colonial power, England, for fear of his life in post colonial Zimbabwe.
Like Nkomo before him, Mushore is passionate about Zimbabwe and his role as a trail blazer in the quest for black economic empowerment remains unshaken.
Together with Dr. Julius Makoni, whom I consider the father of black banking in Zimbabwe having pioneered the establishment of the first black owned bank in Zimbabwe, and William Nyemba, Mushore’s place in black corporate history is secure and yet he finds himself behind bars for a crime that is difficult to explain to any rational person who is not a Zimbabwean.
The late Joshua Nkomo was the first icon to be a victim of the post-colonial state and he could find no refuge in the country that he had fought so hard to liberate. The accusations against Nkomo and his colleagues when critically examined are no different from the accusations against Mushore, Chris Kuruneri, James Makamba and others. Essentially, the allegations center on actions that are deemed to undermine national interest.
National interest, often referred to by the French term raison d’Etat is multi-faceted and is concerned with the state’s survival and security as well as the pursuit of wealth and economic growth and power.
In early human history, national interest was usually viewed as secondary to that of religion or morality. To engage in war, rulers needed to justify their actions in these contexts. The primacy of national interest came later to dominate European politics and states found a convenient avenue to embark on wars purely out of self interest.
In the case of post-colonial Zimbabwe, the country is regarded by those who persecute their perceived enemies through prosecution as an independent polity with an identity jealously defined by the ruling elite as anything other than a vague geo-political and historical concept. The geography known as Zimbabwe is a politically and culturally diverse collection of polities and dependencies with no generally agreed and shared sense of common history, destiny or culture.
The Matabeleland region is just as culturally and historically Ndebele as is Manicaland just as Manyika. In such an environment, any strategic thought on national interest cannot be rooted in nationalist ambitions for glory or protection. What post-colonial Zimbabwe has advanced may be regarded as a ruthless political paternalism or a nationalised future even Nkomo could not have conceived of, borrowed liberally from and put to the service of self serving nationalist ambitions.
When Nkomo fled the country, his enemies now in control of the state could not have been motivated by a nationalistic sense of Zimbabwean-ness at heart. Rather it may have been motivated by a strategy to increase the power of the Great Leader for whom he worked as Minister of Home Affairs. In this case, it is arguable whether the reasons for Gukurahundi were real or manufactured for political expediency.
Zimbabwe, like many post colonial states, has failed to invest in an institutional framework to ensure that no despot – whether that despot be a single dictator, a political pressure-group (party) or a befuddled democratic majority of the moment – may usurp the powers of government, and turn its machinery upon any of its citizens, each and every aspect of government action is codified, and carried out, according to objectively defined laws.
In the case of Mushore, he is alleged to be guilty like Makamba, Kuruneri and others before him of a crime that does not exist in the statute books of the country. In the search of a universally agreed definition of externalisation, I searched on the internet and could find no description of the term as a crime. Such a crime only exists in Zimbabwe and can trace its origin to when Gideon Gono was appointed as Governor of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe. Prior to Gono’s appointment, exchange control violations were civil rather than criminal offences and justifiably so.
In any free society each and every man ought to live under a rule of law as opposed to a whim-ridden rule of evil men. The rule of law should only have one purpose: to protect the rights of the smallest minority that has ever existed – the individuals like Nkomo, Mushore, Makamba and others.
Such a body of integrated, codified and non-contradictory laws should form objective legislation, which should ideally hold a man innocent until he can be proven guilty as opposed to a library of irrational regulations which hold a man guilty until he can somehow prove himself innocent, to the gratification of some idiot able to gain a foothold in public office.
Zimbabwe’s still boasts of a constitutional order that is premised on the existence of democracy and the doctrine of the separation of powers. The supreme legal document of any proper society is ultimately its constitution – a citizen’s protection against both private criminals and public officials who seek to imitate the criminal’s methods.
The liberation struggle was primarily motivated by a just cause for just ends and yet Mushore finds himself in this year of the Lord in custody notwithstanding the fact that he has been granted bail by a Court of law while public officials try to pump life to a dead case.
Makamba, Kuruneri and Muderedi were there before, and we were all silent while the collective project to create a New Zimbabwe founded on the rule of law and not rule by law was being massacred by the few who are lucky and privileged to preside over the state.
The purpose of any constitution should not be to grant unlimited power to government or to limit the rights of an individual, but to limit the power of government to its only valid purpose, the protection of individual rights. In other words, a citizen should be free to do whatever he is not explicitly forbidden (under a proper legal system the only act forbidden is the violation of the rights); whereas, a public official is only allowed to carry out what is explicitly permitted.
Mushore is facing charges of authorising the illegal export of foreign currency during his time as Deputy Managing Director of NMB Bank in 2003. It is not clear from the state’s case whether Mushore should in his personal capacity be culpable for an alleged offence that purportedly was to the benefit of NMB, a separate and distinct juristic person with its own rights at law. If Mushore is indeed guilty of the offence, then surely why would the state be selective?
Anyone who has followed the NMB saga closely will know that the bank has already been found guilty and fined for the same offence that Mushore finds himself charged with. In what kind of constitutional order would a citizen be accountable for someone’s offence?
Mushore left the country in 2004 and it is reliably understood that he was assured that he would not be harassed by the state after the conviction of NMB. If Mushore was not patriotic and believed in his country, he would not have dared to come and face his accusers.
As President Mbeki tries to find a solution to the Zimbabwean crisis, it is evident that no lasting solution will take root as long the state operates above the law with impunity. Yesterday it was Kuruneri and today it is Mushore and tomorrow only the Reserve Bank knows. What kind of a society has Zimbabwe come to?
In trying to explain the root cause of the economic crisis, the government has chosen to target selected individuals as economic saboteurs whose actions undermine public interest. The Reserve Bank has been at the forefront of projecting the notion of public interest in policy debates, politics, democracy and the nature of the government itself. While the RBZ claims that aiding the common well being or general welfare is positive, there is little, if any, consensus in Zimbabwe on what constitutes the public interest to justify the actions perpetrated against people like Mushore.
There are different views on how many members of the public must benefit from an action before it can be declared to be in the public interest: at one extreme, an action has to benefit every single member of society in order to be truly in the public interest; at the other extreme, any action can be in the public interest as long as it benefits some of the population and harms none.
The public interest is often contrasted by the government with the private or individual interest, under the assumption that what is good for Zimbabwe may not be good for a given individual and vice versa. This definition allows people in government to "hold constant" private interests in order to determine those interests that they perceive to be unique to the public.
However, Zimbabwean society is composed of individuals with conflicting objectives, and the public interest must necessarily be calculated with regard to the interests of its members. It has now become evident that the notion of public interest as espoused by the government destroys the idea of human rights and it’s about time Zimbabweans interrogated the degree to which the ends of society are the ends of its individual members, and the degree to which people should be able to fulfill their own ambitions even against the public interest.
The Mushore case provides yet another opportunity for Zimbabweans to reflect on what kind of society they want and begin to debate about policies rather than be preoccupied by State House politics at the exclusion of key institutional issues that help define and inform a progressive and developmental state. The debate ought to be elevated from personalities to the foundational aspects of the post-colonial regime.
Like Nkomo before him, Mushore is passionate about Zimbabwe and his role as a trail blazer in the quest for black economic empowerment remains unshaken.
Together with Dr. Julius Makoni, whom I consider the father of black banking in Zimbabwe having pioneered the establishment of the first black owned bank in Zimbabwe, and William Nyemba, Mushore’s place in black corporate history is secure and yet he finds himself behind bars for a crime that is difficult to explain to any rational person who is not a Zimbabwean.
The late Joshua Nkomo was the first icon to be a victim of the post-colonial state and he could find no refuge in the country that he had fought so hard to liberate. The accusations against Nkomo and his colleagues when critically examined are no different from the accusations against Mushore, Chris Kuruneri, James Makamba and others. Essentially, the allegations center on actions that are deemed to undermine national interest.
National interest, often referred to by the French term raison d’Etat is multi-faceted and is concerned with the state’s survival and security as well as the pursuit of wealth and economic growth and power.
In early human history, national interest was usually viewed as secondary to that of religion or morality. To engage in war, rulers needed to justify their actions in these contexts. The primacy of national interest came later to dominate European politics and states found a convenient avenue to embark on wars purely out of self interest.
In the case of post-colonial Zimbabwe, the country is regarded by those who persecute their perceived enemies through prosecution as an independent polity with an identity jealously defined by the ruling elite as anything other than a vague geo-political and historical concept. The geography known as Zimbabwe is a politically and culturally diverse collection of polities and dependencies with no generally agreed and shared sense of common history, destiny or culture.
The Matabeleland region is just as culturally and historically Ndebele as is Manicaland just as Manyika. In such an environment, any strategic thought on national interest cannot be rooted in nationalist ambitions for glory or protection. What post-colonial Zimbabwe has advanced may be regarded as a ruthless political paternalism or a nationalised future even Nkomo could not have conceived of, borrowed liberally from and put to the service of self serving nationalist ambitions.
When Nkomo fled the country, his enemies now in control of the state could not have been motivated by a nationalistic sense of Zimbabwean-ness at heart. Rather it may have been motivated by a strategy to increase the power of the Great Leader for whom he worked as Minister of Home Affairs. In this case, it is arguable whether the reasons for Gukurahundi were real or manufactured for political expediency.
Zimbabwe, like many post colonial states, has failed to invest in an institutional framework to ensure that no despot – whether that despot be a single dictator, a political pressure-group (party) or a befuddled democratic majority of the moment – may usurp the powers of government, and turn its machinery upon any of its citizens, each and every aspect of government action is codified, and carried out, according to objectively defined laws.
In the case of Mushore, he is alleged to be guilty like Makamba, Kuruneri and others before him of a crime that does not exist in the statute books of the country. In the search of a universally agreed definition of externalisation, I searched on the internet and could find no description of the term as a crime. Such a crime only exists in Zimbabwe and can trace its origin to when Gideon Gono was appointed as Governor of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe. Prior to Gono’s appointment, exchange control violations were civil rather than criminal offences and justifiably so.
In any free society each and every man ought to live under a rule of law as opposed to a whim-ridden rule of evil men. The rule of law should only have one purpose: to protect the rights of the smallest minority that has ever existed – the individuals like Nkomo, Mushore, Makamba and others.
Such a body of integrated, codified and non-contradictory laws should form objective legislation, which should ideally hold a man innocent until he can be proven guilty as opposed to a library of irrational regulations which hold a man guilty until he can somehow prove himself innocent, to the gratification of some idiot able to gain a foothold in public office.
Zimbabwe’s still boasts of a constitutional order that is premised on the existence of democracy and the doctrine of the separation of powers. The supreme legal document of any proper society is ultimately its constitution – a citizen’s protection against both private criminals and public officials who seek to imitate the criminal’s methods.
The liberation struggle was primarily motivated by a just cause for just ends and yet Mushore finds himself in this year of the Lord in custody notwithstanding the fact that he has been granted bail by a Court of law while public officials try to pump life to a dead case.
Makamba, Kuruneri and Muderedi were there before, and we were all silent while the collective project to create a New Zimbabwe founded on the rule of law and not rule by law was being massacred by the few who are lucky and privileged to preside over the state.
The purpose of any constitution should not be to grant unlimited power to government or to limit the rights of an individual, but to limit the power of government to its only valid purpose, the protection of individual rights. In other words, a citizen should be free to do whatever he is not explicitly forbidden (under a proper legal system the only act forbidden is the violation of the rights); whereas, a public official is only allowed to carry out what is explicitly permitted.
Mushore is facing charges of authorising the illegal export of foreign currency during his time as Deputy Managing Director of NMB Bank in 2003. It is not clear from the state’s case whether Mushore should in his personal capacity be culpable for an alleged offence that purportedly was to the benefit of NMB, a separate and distinct juristic person with its own rights at law. If Mushore is indeed guilty of the offence, then surely why would the state be selective?
Anyone who has followed the NMB saga closely will know that the bank has already been found guilty and fined for the same offence that Mushore finds himself charged with. In what kind of constitutional order would a citizen be accountable for someone’s offence?
Mushore left the country in 2004 and it is reliably understood that he was assured that he would not be harassed by the state after the conviction of NMB. If Mushore was not patriotic and believed in his country, he would not have dared to come and face his accusers.
As President Mbeki tries to find a solution to the Zimbabwean crisis, it is evident that no lasting solution will take root as long the state operates above the law with impunity. Yesterday it was Kuruneri and today it is Mushore and tomorrow only the Reserve Bank knows. What kind of a society has Zimbabwe come to?
In trying to explain the root cause of the economic crisis, the government has chosen to target selected individuals as economic saboteurs whose actions undermine public interest. The Reserve Bank has been at the forefront of projecting the notion of public interest in policy debates, politics, democracy and the nature of the government itself. While the RBZ claims that aiding the common well being or general welfare is positive, there is little, if any, consensus in Zimbabwe on what constitutes the public interest to justify the actions perpetrated against people like Mushore.
There are different views on how many members of the public must benefit from an action before it can be declared to be in the public interest: at one extreme, an action has to benefit every single member of society in order to be truly in the public interest; at the other extreme, any action can be in the public interest as long as it benefits some of the population and harms none.
The public interest is often contrasted by the government with the private or individual interest, under the assumption that what is good for Zimbabwe may not be good for a given individual and vice versa. This definition allows people in government to "hold constant" private interests in order to determine those interests that they perceive to be unique to the public.
However, Zimbabwean society is composed of individuals with conflicting objectives, and the public interest must necessarily be calculated with regard to the interests of its members. It has now become evident that the notion of public interest as espoused by the government destroys the idea of human rights and it’s about time Zimbabweans interrogated the degree to which the ends of society are the ends of its individual members, and the degree to which people should be able to fulfill their own ambitions even against the public interest.
The Mushore case provides yet another opportunity for Zimbabweans to reflect on what kind of society they want and begin to debate about policies rather than be preoccupied by State House politics at the exclusion of key institutional issues that help define and inform a progressive and developmental state. The debate ought to be elevated from personalities to the foundational aspects of the post-colonial regime.
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