The Failure of African Socialism (George Ayittey) - The Turney Collection - Libertarianism.org

he was born in Ghana Africa he's written for numerous journals I was impressed he sent me a huge packet of articles that have appeared all over the world and asthma in fact right after we had lined him up as a speaker I opened the San Francisco Chronicle one day and there was a half page article dealing with Africa and the economies of Africa and some of the critiques and the hypocrisy z' of the Western world concerning it dr iet is working on a book for the cato institute which is tentatively called africa betrayed i would like to introduce to you dr. george iet first of all I like to thank Jim for very wonderful introduction and I also like to thank you for finally some time to come here and listen to me I think any casual observer of Africa we realized that things have gone so wrong in Africa let me give you a few statistics 1985 for example 2 million Africans perished needlessly from funny currently Africa imports about 40% of its food it used to be able to feed itself in the 1950s now currently more than 10 million African peasants are fled their countries they're refugees now not even counting those were trapped in their own countries we have civil wars I call them senseless civil wars raging on in at least 15 African countries in Angola Mozambique Ethiopia Sudan income per capita for many African countries today a much much lower than what they were in the 1960s now why did this go so wrong in Africa now if you ask the leaders and the elites of Africa intellectuals of Africa to tell you that uh it was the colonialist was American imperialism it was the IMF it was the international monetary system which was against Africa for years and for decades this is what we had and got to a point where even the so called backward and illiterate peasants got fed up with it and this is what he said true external factors have played a role in Africa's crisis but by far the most important factors were internal does not come to a time where Africa has to look at itself and the leaders have to look at themselves and saying that the leaders have to look at themselves does not mean that you hold him grief for colonialism or for encouraging more for what if you take say a cup and the cup is full of holes obviously that common sense tells you that a cup is not going to hold water for a long time no matter how much water you put in it it's not going to drain away and to the extent that you have internal leaks in Africa this is very important to the extent that you have internal leaks in Africa no matter how much foreign aid you pour into the region it's not gonna it's not gonna be of any use what do you do again common sense suggests that as the first order of priority you should plug those leaks now if you plug those leaks then the little foreign exchange or foreign aid that comes in can stay now what are the internal leaps one incompetent leadership to corruption three misguided ideologies for civil wars obviously I cannot discuss all these internal factors I'd like to pick one of them and that one was the imposition of socialism on Africa the socialism that we had in Africa was a very very very peculiar type of socialism now this is how many African officials defined to socialism there was one minister in Kwame Nkrumah's cabinet in Ghana when asked to define socialism he said socialism does not mean if you have made a lot of money you cannot keep it there was also another ministry in Mugabe's government he was asked to define socialism now he said in Zimbabwe socialism means that what is mine is mine but what is yours we share now this is the peculiar kind of socialism that was imposed upon Africa a peculiar type of socialism which allowed a head of state and the failings of kleptocrats to rate them plunder the estate Treasuries for deposit in Swiss bank accounts under Mobutu ISM the president of Zyra president Mobutu has more than 8 billion in Swiss bank accounts now his personal fortune alone can pay off the entire foreign debt of his country and when Africans were starving in 1985 Mobutu who himself boasted on 16-minute CBS you know 60 men did not lift a finger to help his own fellow African people why did so many African governments or leaders choose socialism the reason why the choice of socialism was because they felt colonialism and capitalism where the same fat Lenin said capitalism was the extension of colonialism and imperialism so when we gained our independence an African leaders didn't want to have anything to do with capitalism it was exploitative we wanted socialism because socialism was what we needed to fight the imperialist now this is what Nkrumah organicide and also in your area of Tanzania said well capitalism encourages individual acquisitiveness and competition we don't want that we want social justice so we want socialism so a lot of African leaders adopted socialism as an ideology and by that ideology socialism meant state participation in the economy smarter Cooma Organa say that under socialism state participation in the economy was to be taken to a point of complete ownership of the economy by the government very very very frightening and accordingly and cumin nationalized all foreign companies set up state enterprises and post price controls gagged oppress anybody will spoke out against the most locked up at a time of independence Ghana's per capita income was two hundred dollars per herder and Ghana also had a respectable foreign exchange reserves of four hundred million three years into Nkrumah socialist experiment Ghana was bankrupt and borrowing money now one increment was overthrown in 1966 Ghana had a foreign debt of about a billion with nothing to show for we had all these state enterprises but it was so hopelessly inefficient that in 1983 for example about 20 percent more those state enterprises were producing using 40 percent of their capacity industrial capacity the rest were just you know making losses upon losses upon losses we had you know a Black Star Line shipping agency and it had so much redundant stuff that in 1984 about two hundred and eighty four of them were paid for three years to stay home it was not only in Ghana that you had all these state enterprises Tanzanian Somalia Somalia for example under socialism state enterprises Somalia build a plant to box bananas but the amount of bananas the plant needed to break even exceeded the entire national output of bananas a lot of the industries that were acquired under state ownership and also under state socialism was so apparently acquired that they were inefficient and very very poorly designed God also bought a state sugar factory it took three years to complete that Factory in 1979 when it was completed in a factory laid idle for a year because somebody forgot to install a water supply system if you go to Tanzania for example if I could give you a few statistics many of the state enterprises established under Herrera have been so grossly bloated and also many of them are simply just not paying their way besides that enterprises African governments also set up state farms to produce food for their people and the state farms that ganna set up was so inefficient that it could not even produce enough food to feed its own workers let alone the nation now the same experience also occurred in Tanzania where under what was known as Operation DOMA many peasants were uprooted and forcibly settled under some village community programs which I never called in JAMA after that experiment in 1973 between 1974 and 1975 agricultural production plummeted Tanzania used to be able to feed itself but by 1983 it was important close to a third of its food needs there is no question and I'm not gonna bore you with you know giving you lots and lots of statistics and there's no question that the socialist experiment in Africa was a complete failure why did it fail in Africa there were four reasons one socialism created a very huge and unwieldy state bureaucracy and a bureaucracy was characterized by waste inefficiency and mismanagement the second reason why I am socialism failed in Africa was because the ideology itself created a whole paraphernalia of controls and regulations and this is important the controls and regulations breed corruption my problem is when corruption appeared in Africa because of controls African governments wanted to crack to correct the corruption so they imposed more controls as if more of the bad medicine will cure the push that would cure the patient the third reason why I am socialism failed in Africa was because it resulted in an extreme concentration of powers in the hands of a tiny minority as the ruling elites and this power in much of Africa was used to suppress I should say that that power was abused used to suppress the present majority if you take a look at across Africa there two classes you have the elite minority when you have the percent majority in almost every African country the elite minority has concentrated all the planets of an associate power the present majority now there are 41 black African countries and only two of them allow the person majority the right to vote we know these African leaders calling upon South Africa to give blacks the right to vote which they should have nobody questions that themselves do not allow their own black African people the right to choose and vote for the earth leaders the fourth reason this is most important why socialism failed in Africa is because the ideology itself is alien to indigenous African culture very important now ideology is alien to indigenous African culture in indigenous Africa all the means of production with a possible exception of land is privately owned the fishing canoes their nets the hats the bows and arrows they owned by peasants they are not all my achieves the peasants go about the economic activities on their own initiative not at the behest of their Chiefs and what a person's produce in a surplus to take these surpluses to village markets and are these village markets have always been open and free the Chiefs do not impose price controls on their peasants and when the peasants make any profit is theirs to keep not for the chief to expropriate there are free markets in Africa before the white man set foot on the continent and it was free trade on the continent before the European colonial is arise before the explorers arrived in Africa there were free trade routes criss-crossing farthing was a you know dense there was a dense web of trade routes crisscrossing the continent the most notable ones were those crossing the Sahara and he have you know trans-saharan trade these trade routes were in existence as far back as the 9th century Africa was quote-unquote discovered in the 16th century along the southern terminal of these free trade routes with such market towns as Timbuktu Timbuktu was the great market on free trade market town and candle insalata there were also empires in Africa it was the Mali Empire there was the Ghana Empire there was the sungai Empire and also the Great Zimbabwe Empire the fortunes of these empires were built on free trade this was what was there before Africa was colonized the peasants enterprising individuals and engage in trade and sell their produce on open free markets and a traditional system the Chiefs do not operate state enterprises and a traditional system the Chiefs also do not lock up dissidents in the traditional system also the Chiefs do not impose foreign ideologies on their peasants or impose themselves on their peasants nor does the chief declare himself president for life the Chiefs are appointed they do not appoint themselves as reference and when achieved as no rule according to the will of the people is thrown out in the indigenous system of government that was participated democracy if you go to Ethiopia or addis ababa you find a portraits of Max and Lenin it says a lot and this is what it says now here we are black Africans in the 60s we said we did not want the white colonialist so we hold on the portraits of the European monarchs in Ethiopia we put up the portraits of another set of white aliens the peasants look at this and they say that is basic stupidity 101 I like to stop here and if you have any questions you can ask I have read this book after a party the solution I think it is a very important step in this matter of fact I reviewed that book and I could send people copies of the review if they are interested what I like about that book is it's a it's a it's its emphasis on free markets but there are a couple of things which I didn't like about the book and what I didn't like about the Pope is that the model that he proposes for South Africa is a Swiss model and in a book he says that even the Swiss model is much more appropriate for South Africa than for Switzerland than for Switzerland itself I didn't think that was necessary because you see this is what we did after independence when we gained our independence we never sat down and use our brains to devise a system which is suitable to our own circumstances and conditions we hopped from one foreign country to another and borrowed copy the foreign systems implanted them in Africa they never worked Somalia now says that here is a Swiss model which is appropriate for South Africa I certify hesitate we ought to be able to create our own system which will work in in South Africa and there's one thing which I like to put across to you and that is whatever the system whatever system that is installed in South Africa there's one condition which must be demanded and that is anybody who runs for federal office in South Africa must win at least 20% of his vote from a race or a tribe other than his own think about it if we had done this in independent Africa and if we if you needed you know 10% of your vote from a tribe other than your own we would have built bridges to the other tribes to try and win their votes instead of slaughtering them the sons of the elites to go to school you well most of the Socialists got their training from the West from Harvard and from the London School of Economics and from the so born as Senegal and Botswana corruption I mean now yes let's take a jib for example before you get a permit to build a house you must go through 32 separate stages of you know getting approval I think we just care about government well we had no chance that all most of the power was concentrated in the hands of just one individual you know take a look at Zimbabwe for example you can't criticize Mugabe perhaps a man who set himself on a course of Maxis and led in his path can't criticize him now in all those African countries they are 51 African countries the freedom of expression assists in only four of them for Botswana Senegal Mauritius and possibly Nigeria King is beginning to unravel beside I personally believe that the most effective aid that American can have a render for Africa is to hobb reinstitute africa's own indigenous freedom of expression because there are many Africans like me who like to speak and I can speak like this in Africa there's no way but I'd like to be able to speak like this in Africa it's a combination of incompetence and corruption it is almost everybody alright this is where this is this is important almost everybody realizes that things have gone wrong and almost everybody else realizes that Africa will be indispensable to the West Africa is the source of many strategic minerals gold dance cobalt some oil manganese bauxite vanadium rhodium so the West can't do without Africa Africa is too vital for the worst economic security but it places racked up by you know ravaged by crisis how do you solve it two problems one the causes of the crisis have been both external and internal what are the African leaders of course we like to say that all the input would like to put all the blame on the external factors they don't want to look at the internal factors now if the internal factors are important and obviously we have to devise internal solutions for them but we can't because the freedom for us to do so doesn't exist so what happens this Americans and the IMF and the World Bank which draws up solutions and give these solutions to African leaders but now we don't work because there's only so much Americans in the IMF can do in Africa without being accused of interfering in a domestic affairs of a sovereign African nations so what we have to do the solution lies in telling the Africans are right if you don't like our solutions we'll draw one up yourself the real solution is for the Africans himself to come up with their own solutions but they can't because of autocratic you know leaders oh yes you take a look at Xavier for example in Zahra of every $1 that crime scene a swollen ate the fish's take 20% of the top for their own personal cut foreign aid has you know supported and has underwritten oppressive policies in Africa for a very very very long time you know take a look at it feel pure for example what are you doing Ethiopia shall Americans cut off foreign aid many will say no there are people starving in Ethiopia we can cut off foreign aid we have to give them aid we have to save the children we have to save the Ethiopian people but if you ship the foreign aid where does that go mangu insists that you know the foreign aid has has to pass through the government and in 1985 when millions of it Europeans were starving this man found a way with all to import 100 million dollars worth of scotch whiskey from London to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Soviet imperialism in Ethiopia nobody said anything I think it was more of an accident more of an accident because let me explain this see when we gain our independence and we wanted to develop there was so many let me use the word foreigners who wanted to help us which road should we take should we take the capitalist road or should we take the socialist road or should we take what road at that time nobody had any idea of the psychological makeup of the African peasant the majority of Africans nobody understood him a lot of there were a lot of you know misconceptions and myths about this peasant nobody even knew that there were village markets in Africa so we had planners who came to Africa and said well you can't rely on the market because the market doesn't function you can't rely upon the market because the person doesn't respond to to market incentives what you got to do is you have to stick plan this and plan that and plan that so African governments drew a very ambitious development projects and plans came to Washington handed it over to the American gap and American government said yes we're gonna support you because the see the American government itself didn't understand what was there so what I'm saying that if you want to help their presence common sense says that you gotta understand those that you're going to help and you gotta understand your system what is the air system the air system is a free-market system they have the peasants have free enterprises what they grow and there are plots of land now for their own individual decisions to make now for the chief to dictate to them that system the indigenous system came under on relentless assault after independence my own leaders as recently as 1983 the government of Ghana was blowing up indigenous markets yes and burning down indigenous markets why because the person food traders would not sell their produce at covent dictator prices and the government was locking them up the government was locking up and throwing up these food producers in jail in 1984 after so many of them have been thrown into jail the government realizes realized that it didn't have the food to feed them common sense of course if you jail up all the food traders where where the hell are you going to get your food 30 of them by the way died in prison it is both of those regimes military and I personally do not go for military regimes in Africa because the military has been the scourge of Africa if you take the economic with the African countries which are considered to be economically the economic basket cases Ethiopia Angola Ghana Liberia Nigeria sorry Uganda Somalia all these are economic basket cases they all being ruled by military dictatorships there's a correlation between military regimes and you know the economic performance soldiers do not know how to run economies even the soldiers the military that we have in Africa they can even do battle with armed robbers in their own countries let alone defend the air countries ganas derives about 65% of his foreign exchange earnings from cocoa now cocoa is produced by individual peasant farmers now listen to this individual peasant farmers can serve their cocoa to only one buyer and that is the state cocoa Marketing Board now steak cocoa Marketing Board sets the price is going to pay the producers all right so if you produce cocoa and you don't like the price that the state is paying here that you have very little choice now the price that the government of Ghana pays the farmers it's politically determined so I determined by market forces in 1984 what the government was paying the you know farmers was about 20 percent of the world market price for cocoa of course the peasant were no fools they took their cocoa elsewhere where they could get a better price to smuggle it took their cocoa to Ivory Coast now what did the government of Ghana do the government of Ghana said ha these smugglers a nation records their economic saboteurs if we catch the smugglers we're going to shoot them by firing squad 1985 the government of Ghana came to his senses and offered better prices to the farmers and cocoa Marketing Board was able to sell more cocoa the world market yeah this is a philosophical question I'm an economist and I believe in us how many economies and I believe in free market system yeah but you know when we come to development it happens that the indigenous people are free enterprises no well the the thinnest you know if you plant what is suitable to your own conditions the fact that California grows apples does not mean that we should grow apples in Africa the tennis you know we have a system which is part of our culture it wasn't perfect our responsibility was to take that system and build upon it and improve upon it when African leaders wanted to do was what they did was they went to China and Russia and so many other countries and borrows the Simpson planted them there they were alien and they didn't survive so we wasted a lot of money time energy and so forth so what I'm saying that let's go to the indigenous system what is there is free enterprise

Channel: Libertarianism.org

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Keywords: libertarian, libertarianism, libertarianismdotorg, philosophy, politics, george ayittey, african socialism, zimbabwe, mugabe, ghana, tanzania, african development

Id: I9SFIxC0w-Y

Length: 41min 0sec (2460 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 07 2013