Tunde Zack-Williams

Africa from SAPs to PRSP: Plus ca change plus C'est la Meme Chose

We write this editorial as news is breaking that the people of Latin America are standing up to Big Brother to the North at the 34-country Summit of the Americas. The BBC pointed to the discomfiture of George Bush with what The Economist (5 November 2005) described as ‘a rally against ‘imperialism’, by which is meant him personally, the Iraq war and the Free Trade Area of the Americas which he espouses’ (p13). Contributors to the meeting included Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan leader, who called for the death of NAFTA, the Argentinean football maestro Diego Maradona who criticised Bush’s war record, while the Argentinean leader Néstor Kirchner accused the ‘Washington consensus’ for his country’s woes.

Africa's Future is up to Africans. Really?

As this volume was being put together, President Barack Obama, the first African American to hold this high office paid his first official visit to sub-Saharan Africa – to Ghana – where he made a major policy statement on US–Africa relations. So Africa is no longer to be treated with benign neglect, or is that just cunning? The feverish expectation of the speech was not unlike Harold Macmillan’s ‘Wind of Change’ Speech of February 1960 to the South African Parliament, and the message was just as candid. This time it was not an old colonial coming to ‘talk down’ to the rulers of modern Africa, but a son of Africa, who happens to hold the most powerful office in the world.

When Children Become Killers: Child Soldiers in the Civil War in Sierra Leone

There is a preponderance of child combatants, both boys and girls in modern warfare, both new wars and traditional interstate conflicts. The phenomenon of child soldier is a universal feature of modern interstate wars as well as new wars, which has caught the attention of many writers on child soldiers.1 Child soldiers are no longer the project of exotica—globalisation has meant that children of refugees and asylum seekers from war-torn societies are now part of the caseload of many social workers in Western countries.2

State, class & civil society in Africa

In the first week of 2006 the British press reported on two events relating to Africa: one emblazoned on front pages, but of little real significance, and the other tucked away on an inside page, of potentially greater significance. The former was the recruitment of Bob Geldof to the newly branded UK Conservative Party to advise on poverty and Africa. He was appointed for his presumed ‘expertise’ on Africa even though he is strongly non-partisan in a party political sense, implying that the causes and cures for Africa’s underdevelopment are agreed upon between the major UK political parties. However, the appointment of a high profile media campaigner disguises the underlying theme of neoliberal consensus across the political spectrum in the UK and indicates that any change of government will bring about little change in policy towards the developing world. Thus, the point is not that there are many better qualified experts in Africa and beyond, but the Conservatives (like New Labour) are happy using concern for Africa as evidence of their ethical credentials. ‘Caring for Africa’ is proof positive of your humanity and respect of human rights, while all the time treating vast swathes of the globe with derision.

Agendas, past & future

This issue marks the 30th anniversary of the birth of The Review of African Political Economy in 1974. At the time, its founders were unsure if it would get off the ground and they certainly never thought it would last thirty years! Apart from debate about what its role would be, there were doubts about their own stamina, and about whether successor generations would emerge to take it on. The challenge was set out by Anderson in relation to another Left Review: …political journals have no choice: to be true to themselves, they must aim to extend their real life beyond the conditions or generations that gave rise to them (Anderson, New Left Review, 2000).

Wars of Plunder: conflicts, profits and the politics of resources by Philippe Le Billon (review)

into the diamond mines is significant. Indigenous people were first able to make claims for sites in Kimberley but soon lost their rights to such claims, eventually reducing their opportunities to wage labour. This story gives us a concrete example of a form of dispossession that came with colonization. Cleveland further shows how diamond-generated capital was soon concentrated in only a few hands, leaving the workers in a weak bargaining position. Even so, diamond miners engaged in various forms of resistance and negotiation to improve their situation. However, a shortcoming of the analysis is that little attention is paid to how the new diamond industry affected groups other than mine workers. Most glaringly, there is no discussion of how it affected men and women differently. Questions left unaddressed include what jobs were available to women versus men at the mines, to what extent women’s experiences of mine-related work differed from those of their male colleagues, and how the fact that many male family members left their households for long periods to work at the mines affected the livelihoods and security of women. Compared with the colonial history, Cleveland’s account of diamonds in postcolonial Africa is generally less fulfilling. This part is less original, including in its use of morally loaded terms such as ‘greed’ for explanatory purposes. The discussion of diamonds and conflict would have been more relevant had it positioned itself in relation to important recent contributions, such as Cederman et al.’s Inequalities, Grievances, and Civil War (2013) and Le Billon’s Wars of Plunder (2012). Given Cleveland’s critical edge in his outline of myths of Africa in times past, it is also surprising that less analytical distance is taken from common stereotypes of our era. For example, the Democratic Republic of Congo is depicted in a classical heart-ofdarkness fashion, with claims of an ‘ongoing chaos’ there as well as a ‘remarkably wide and continually shifting... array of entities involved in the looting’ (p. 140). Andwhile the author pays considerable attention to agency, it would have made for a more comprehensive analysis of postcolonial trends had structural issues been better illuminated. For instance, it would have been useful to discuss the nature of the global trade system into which diamonds have been channelled and the economic options of postcolonial rulers at various stages. This might have helped address questions such as why it is that several of Africa’s diamond-rich countries continue to rank among the world’s most unequal societies. That said, for readers interested in learning more about how diamonds have come to shape Africa’s political economy in significant ways, or about the history of African labour, this is a well-written and informative book that will give much food for thought.