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EPAs, African protests and Newton's laws
2007-12-15 08:56:01
By Ani Jozen
Listening to Foreign Minister Bernard Membe`s remarks over BBC as delegates to the African Union and European Union penultimate gathering before the newly approved Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) was interesting.
There was a note that Africa wasn`t happy with the manner regional groupings like the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) had been sidelined in getting countries to sign, in favour of more reliable groups like COMESA or the East African Community - which many would find natural.
The point is that EPAs aren`t ``diplomacy as usual." There was something distinctly ``imperial`` about the manner in which the new pacts were being thrashed out or being brought to the signing table, with clear discomfort on the part of African states, which are used to seeing their point of view endorsed.
For decades they have skirted fundamental reforms because they have plenty of allies in the West, especially among influential quasi-governmental organizations like Oxfam UK, or equally sympathetic voices in development agencies from the World Bank to the Scandinavia.
This time the voices were not of much use, strictly. Most notable in that expression of discomfort was much less Minister Membe`s late remarks but earlier, in the fortnight to the signing, a leak from the Kenyan press as to what happened when Trade Minister Dr Mukhisa Kituyi was protesting the ``terms of trade`` that were being presented to him at Brussels.
Top officials there are said to have been strict and to the point: 'take our deal or hit the highway....!' leaving the minister more or less short of breath, but as his hosts were also aware, not much to choose from was available.
That would qualify to what we here know as ``insults...`` Yet there are practically no chances that either Kenya or Tanzania, and farther on with any of the concerned countries, can the idea of rejection and requiring some re-negotiation come to mind, as in any case EPAs weren`t ``negotiated.``
They were more or less explained in a one sided manner, so that these countries comprehend the issues, but they remained agitated about the terms, as they are used to having it both ways: preferential trade, subsidies (to governments, for price declines) and able to protect their industries.
The sticking point is really the market opening, just. That is where there is need for retreating to fundamental rules of psychology to see the rationality of EPAs, given the background of what has for decades been known as the `development dialogue.`
The current pacts are the proper outcome of this process, just as they are also a concluding point in the context of internal dialogue, our ability to make policy, and the results of those policies to define, alter, improve prospects of development, foreign trade. In both aspects, dictation is unavoidable.
Frederick Engels mapped out this situation in a remark that when there is a change in economic relations in society, the old (political) order, if it is intelligent enough, would go of its own accord.
But as that isn`t usually the case, then obviously a set of actions are needed to bring the `legal and political superstructure` in line with the change at the level of ownership relations, namely, force.
Thus if Africa had since independence been able to choose what is good, it wouldn't need EPAs at the end.
The core about EPAs is that everyone in the world understands that open markets lead to national development - except Africans - and when they are shown cases of rapid development owing to openness, they allege other causes, chiefly education.
The reason is that they are only interested in the sort of things that attract more aid, in a cynical and cyclical manner, as all failure on their part isn`t wrong strategy, but even greater reason for more aid. Africa has no reason to think; just show poverty.
That outlook wasn't entirely underlined in Minister Membe's remarks but definitely in an interview with former Finance Minister Edwin Mtei, who insisted that aid has to be delivered as ``compensation for unfair terms of trade.``
One wonders why the likes of Vietnam prosper in trade, and have entirely forgotten catastrophes like the Vietnam War, even square up with Brazil in coffee exports, not to speak about rice and other products, and Vietnam is but a coastal strip of land, not a big continent.
Just why Vietnam's development isn't held back by prices and it ever needed aid? The whole point is that reciprocity with the European Union is the only situation in which Africa will be forced not just to give full legal rights to its citizens to own and trade in land, but also allow foreigners - and immigrant populations within it - to do the same.
This sort of outcome should have been the case at the time we arrived at independence, as suggested in a bill to the Legislative Council by the governor, Sir Edward Twining in 1958.
The idea was that had it been done earlier Africans would say Europeans are grabbing the land; now they would be supervising the process.
If at that time we had a reason to fear, then 1967 should have provided the ``vision`` needed to move forward, compared with Malaysia where Dr Mahathir Muhammad started rallying people to such outlook, and took over power in 1972.
It was just in time for the oil price surge in 1973, and capital flowed from Europe to Malaysia and other Asian countries prepared to receive capital, that is, where foreigners could invest and live there, as equals.
Right means ability to purchase property, first of all.
This is the error that Africans cannot correct on their own, because psychologically they are totally closed out, owing to the character of the colonial interaction, where history talks about selling land for clothing or the sort, not aspiring to equal Europe.
Since Europe can no longer allow preferential trade, it now has to seek reciprocity, which in Newtonian formulation is the sort of external force needed to move Africa out of a stationary motion within eternal structures of underdevelopment, tied to the ownership of land.
Newton was right; outside EPAs, Africa can never change at all.
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