Written by MIKI TASSENI, first published in Business Times, Dar es Salaam:
FORMER Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa has been making the rounds in various institutions taking up what appears to be an urgent
problem, that is, what the European Union shall be deciding about
stalled partnerships with African countries, now that most other ACP
(Africa, Caribbean and Pacific) zones have initialled such accords.
Though there was still some ACP talk in the BW Mkapa article (last
issue of this newspaper) most of it related to Africa – and should
indeed be seen as an African problem. In the Western hemisphere only
Haiti could compare with demands being raised by most African
countries with exception of the Seychelles and Mauritius, which isn\’t
quite an accident.
What comes up in the write up by the former president is that African
countries want the status quo to remain, and offers the not so
brilliant idea that it is geared to development, while the European
Union offers vast liberalisation, ruin of agricultural capacity on the
continent, and the collapse of a breadth of its industries. That is
what ex-President Mkapa would have us believe, that when poor and rich
countries have an economic partnership accord, that is a free trade area backed by a common market, the poor countries lose out and their industry, agriculture collapses. These are the issues that the write up, especially at the end, treats as \’fundamental concerns\’ of African countries which should be taken on board by the EU. A preliminary question that doesn\’t come up in the former president\’s stance on EU-ACP merging at the economic level is why Africa has failed to break barriers of poverty 50 years after independence, and how far a continuation of the status quo resolves that situation.
There is no apparent awareness in the write up that Africa is in deep crisis, and explodes in all sorts of directions owing to that crisis,as most of the UN bourgeois or middle class write ups are all letting off smiles on the \’rise of an African middle class\’ and see it as a paragon of the continent\’s progress.Economies based on extractive industries like Tanzania register 6.3 per cent growth and all experts are happy, that projected growth shall be achieved. They key issue that the former president raises is the supposed impact that opening up to the EU, to sell goods and services without let or
hindrance shall have on “African countries\’ ability to develop and industrialise.” In what manner has integration with the European Union diminished the ability of European countries to the east of the old EU (shifting from 12 to 25 countries in the mid 1990s) to “develop and industrialise,” and if the converse is the case, why should it be different for Africa? The reason is clear: bureaucrats in Africa, and ex-president Mkapa is their eloquent spokesman, want the same \’Africanisation\’ privileges to continue, expel the white man\’s presence, not see him again. Even if Africa is crumbling with hunger covering more than 50% of the population, they will still seek excuses.What the African bourgeoisie is rejecting in the EU-ACP pacts is simply the higher chances that more Europeans will be coming to Africa, take up land and start farming, as well as opening up other trades and services. Despite the clear benefits of infusion of capital and massive elevation of the value of land that a peasant could obtain– compared with the present or in 1996 when the former president\’s bulldozers quite simply tore people away from Bulyanhulu to make way for predecessors of Barrick Gold – the top bureaucrats, ambassadors,heads of state, top bankers, don\’t see the point. \’Europeans won\’t come back\’ is the motto they seem to be offering, as their claims of ruin in farming and industry are but a shibboleth.
This is a point that needs to be underlined instead of making excessive efforts to trace the former president\’s supposed list of grievances, as all of it is based on one fault line evident in lacking any notion of capital transfer and changing in a dramatic way the mode of circulation of credit in the continent. The former president is locked up in a trader\’s imagined world, where it is either products from Africans or Africa that are being sold or those of Europe that shall flood Africa, as in this sort of mindset there is no capital circulation involved, nor indeed new companies and products for both the local, regional and world markets. The point is that African rulers are clear on not seeing whites around.
Why should they be so adamant? Because under rules of reciprocity, companies that will be working in Africa, or indeed any EU citizen,will expect to be treated in the same way as in Europe, as the treaty will be about merging legislation in all directions, including taxation, opening a business, licensing, right of establishment –precisely the same thing that Tanzania is rejecting in East African Common Market arrangements. The first casualty of such a situation is arbitrary government, that standards of accountability of government at all levels shall be gradually brought close to obtaining standards in Europe, which is to African bureaucrats an unacceptable loss of sovereignty, so they opt for the status quo, for famine.
There is no difference between opting for the status quo and choosing famine because Africa is at the moment both ecologically and environmentally tired as a singular zone of agriculture and the only way in which things could change is massive infusion of capital on the basis of long leaseholds of land. Our bureaucrats, incorrigibly tied to villages in their mental frame and reflex of discussion, quickly point out that we would \’lose our land\’ and don\’t pose the issue of how many of the 4m plus residents of Dar es Salaam, or 3m youths among them are likely to actually return to farming in some distant rural place. Nor do they pose the issue of \’land\’ for 10m residents of any major metropolis in the world.
Bureaucrats also repeatedly and consistently see the change in land ownership as \’grabbing\’ rather than sale, for another reason, that they have an indigenous population mindset where if one gets 10m/-by selling an acre or two of land, he shall drink (and marry) with the cash and thus remain poor at the end of that transaction. This bottom-line of culture could as well be true and valid but it will not be allowed to stop all those who would use the 10m/- to purchase some other piece of land at 1m/-, build a small house at 3m/- and still retain an excellent balance for a business activity within the vicinity. The latter scene is the sort of credit circulation that arises from land purchases, but bureaucrats prefer stagnation.
There is a clear reason why stagnation is preferable to credit circulation on land, that is, the dream of most bureaucrats is that by the time they retire at 60 they should find the land nearly as cheap as they know it, since most of them dream of double or triple residences, in the capital city and countryside. It isn\’t inconceivable that with credit circulation this would still be manageable and feasible, but they do not wish to share the limelight as social notables with Europeans, as they know the social impact of having even 10,000 Europeans in active farming, industry or commerce. Despite that most of them are hypocritically happy to see Barack Obama elected US president, they won\’t countenance a white MP.
The former president disingeniously says that research by the South Centre has established that for East Africa integration with EU would lead to risk in producing maize, cereal bran (sic), barley (for the beer manufacturers?) and animal feed preparations. One would wish to see a more credible research outfit put out such conclusions, and not the South Centre for it unavoidably would be tasked by its directors like the former president to give them ammunition against the proposed EU-ACP pact. It is clear that commercial farming by settled farmers would produce more and more of those agro products, but the bureaucrats want them to be farmed by a selected number of investors, to protect their own social positions in a poorly populated investment environment.
The former president noticeably descends on contradictions within the EU decision making machinery, where plenty of resistance is being put up against removing free access to EU markets for non-LDC African states like Kenya, our next door neighbor. Sections of the EU Parliament have begun protesting on its insisting on signing of EPA by early 2014, and the trade negotiating committee which is noticeably more important (than the development committee which objected to lifting free access to goods of non-LDC states if no pact is signed by January 2014) has proposed the date for negotiations to be shifted from early 2014 to early 2016. This enthuses Ben Mkapa to clear satisfaction that it is a step in the right direction – which should be compared with the earlier completion date of negotiations, December 2007.
That Europe can afford to engage in interminable negotiations without cutting the rope and going away is a colonial logic, that many countries in the EU have entrenched interests in Africa and could not push things to the limit, as nothing can be assured if property is seized, etc. Africa has had its Iddi Amins and Robert Mugabes who have seized foreigners\’ property and thrown their countries into chaos, but as North Korea amply demonstrates, not to speak of Niger or elsewhere, it isn\’t the starvation or otherwise of people that matters but ensuring certain values, property, power, underlining a regime. That is the case in Syria, where regularly the world updates how many thousands have been killed, so that the Alawite regime stays on.
So the European Union is compelled to be careful, even when ex-colonial interests are not at issue, to maintain their guard against pushing Africa to the limit, as its reaction wouldn\’t be rational but more or less atavistic. The point is that liberalisation will not be forced upon Africans on the basis of needs of cooperation with Europe but only as a last resort for African states when economies collapse and they do not have a dictatorship option like Amin or Mugabe. That is of course hard to imagine, but it only goes to show how many falsehoods on economic growth and potential of development are being aired by the most exposed, articulate sections of the African bureaucracy – just to keep Europeans out of Africa.