B009THJ1WI EBOK

by Young, Crawford

  State decline and even failure was the dominant theme of the 1980s. Not all African states succumbed, but many confronted a deep, even existential, crisis by the end of the decade. The anatomy of state decline is the focus of this chapter. In my reading, a core factor was the excess embedded in the state expansion ambitions of the 1970s: what I have termed the integral state project.

  LOGIC OF STATE EXPANSION

  The point of departure is the would-be integral state, whose portrait I sketch in chapter 2. There is no need to add further layers of detail to the schema set forth in that chapter. It is worth recalling, however, that although the 1970s were marked by projects of state expansion almost everywhere, their actual scope varied considerably. But the pattern of overreach was sufficiently general by the 1980s to shape the widespread perception of state crisis afflicting much of the continent. The marriage of the integral state project with the dominant pattern of patrimonial autocracy, whose corrosive effects were becoming fully evident, was a toxic pairing for the African polity. I endeavor in the following pages to unravel the results and consequences of the shattered illusion of the integral state.

  The state expansion ambitions that became visible across the continent at the beginning of the 1970s drew inspiration from several sources, some already noted in chapters 1 and 2 but worth underscoring here. Ideology mattered, and a second wave of developmental socialism washed over Africa.7 In its earlier 1960s version, socialist orientation stressed its singular rooting in African communal values rather than emphasizing confrontation with capitalism.8 Thus even a robust practitioner of a market economy such as Kenya could represent its guiding doctrine as African socialism in an official document.9 But second-wave socialism was more rigorous, inflected with Marxism-Leninism. Eight countries made official declaration of Marxism-Leninism as ruling doctrine, five of them the military autocracies examined in the preceding chapter and two more (Angola and Mozambique) issuing from prolonged armed liberation struggles against intransigent Portuguese colonial occupation. In a number of other countries, a discursive radicalization emerged: the call for agrarian revolution in Algeria, jamahiriyya (state of the masses) in Libya, the Arusha Declaration in Tanzania, the Mulungushi charter in Zambia, the call for radicalization of the revolution in Congo-Kinshasa, the move to the left in Uganda. In still others, an intensification of nationalist self-assertion was evident in the form of indigenization measures in Nigeria and elsewhere.

  The importation of dependency theory from Latin America at this juncture, noted in chapter 1, crystallized diffuse suspicions of the workings of global capitalism into a coherent philosophical critique for many African political elites.10 Third worldism was at its peak, epitomized by the success of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting States after the 1973 Arab-Israeli war in driving prices upwards more than 500%, following on the heels of the earlier nationalization of the Middle Eastern holdings of the Western oil majors. The Arab oil boycott of Western powers backing Israel in the wake of the war had astonishing short-term impact. A cascade of African diplomatic ruptures with Israel followed the surprising summons to solidarity with Arab brother nations by Congo-Kinshasa president Mobutu Sese Seko at the UN General Assembly on 4 October 1973; “Between a brother and a friend,” he declared, “the choice is clear.”11 The Group of 77, formed by the developing nations to achieve a collective voice at the UN, flowed together with the nonaligned movement to formulate the demand for a new international economic order. Among the core theses of the the new economic order was a sacred right to national ownership of natural resources within the sovereign territory, which served as a doctrinal stimulus to a number of nationalizations of mining corporations in this period.12

  In the intoxicating moment of state expansion, contagion played no small role. Africa had become an intensely intercommunicating universe. Leaders frequently encountered each other at international events and exchanged regular visits. Informed publics closely followed events in neighboring countries and were often surprisingly attentive to more distant events. My Congolese students at the University of Lubumbashi in 1975 showed astonishingly detailed knowledge concerning the decolonization then unfolding far away on the Comoros Islands and expressed indignation at the success of Mayotte in detaching itself from the other three islands in the archipelago in its attempt to remain in the French fold. Diffusion was such that a successful act of nationalist self-assertion in one country both served as inspirational example and exerted pressure on its neighbors to engage in a comparably energetic defense of national interests.

  The ambitious enlargement of the social infrastructure that marked the 1960s continued in the state expansion phase. State budgets still gave priority to schools, rural health facilities, and other social amenities. In turn, state employment figures continued to swell, as personnel to staff these facilities was recruited.

  Expansive dispositions also drew sustenance from a brief moment of ready international bank financing for those countries with major resources to serve as implicit collateral. Western economies were entering a decade of relative stagnation, even “stagflation,” and major international banks had accumulated large reserves, especially of “Eurodollars,” that they were seeking to place. African external debt in 1970 was still very small, and the end of civil wars in Nigeria and Sudan, the restoration of seemingly strong centralized rule in Congo-Kinshasa, and an abundance of ambitious projects in planning ministries made Africa appear a fertile terrain for international bank engagement. Thus funding was available for an array of ambitious development projects in Congo-Kinshasa, Zambia, Sudan, Nigeria, and Gabon, among others.

  International bankers were not alone in their sympathy for expansive developmentalism. The World Bank was then led by Robert McNamara, who promoted policies aimed at uplift for the rural poor in the most impoverished countries.13 Many academic analysts of the day shared the view that the turn to more aggressively expansive development policies, informed by a nationalist commitment, was in keeping with historical necessities.

  In such circumstances, the lure of the spectacular giant development project was irresistible. I profile a pair of striking multibillion dollar examples in this chapter, the Inga project in Congo-Kinshasa and the Ajaokuta steel mill in Nigeria. Many major public investment projects became mired in corruption. Nigeria again is an apt specimen. An urgent need in the early 1970s to construct barracks for an army that had swollen from 10,000 to 250,000 during the civil war and that then was to be maintained at 150,000 permanently led to huge imports of cement. For a time, Nigeria accounted for a large fraction of global trade in cement, with cement-laden ships spending one hundred days or more collecting demurrage fees awaiting a berth to discharge the cargo, a good portion of which spoiled on the docks. A morass of corruption surrounded the cement scandal, an initial impetus to a soaring place for Nigeria in the global venality tables.14

  Another mark of the times was a vigorous enlargement of the parastatal sector. Partly this reflected a systematic effort to displace the colonial enterprise sector with national institutions. Moreover, the absence in most countries of an indigenous capitalist class with resources to launch enterprises meant that sectors earmarked for industrial development projects by planning ministries required state-owned enterprises to fulfill the public ambitions. These in turn needed finance from state development banks, using public capital. Often factories were constructed as foreign contractor turnkey projects. The debt at once became the obligation of the state when the facility was turned over to its operating parastatal. Often prestige played a role in project choice, notably in the instance of national airlines.

  The sum of these different factors produced a general pattern of state overreach by the end of the 1970s. The momentum of state expansion had carried it far beyond sustainable levels. A heavy debt burden now overhung the continent, placing a number of countries in virtual receivership; Congo-Kinshasa, for example, had an external debt of $311 million in 1970, which had soared to over $4 billion by 1982. O
ver the same period, Madagascar’s debt rose from $93 million to $1.6 billion and Algeria’s from $937 million to $13.9 billion.15 For most, a turn to the international financial institutions, then in process of designing new “structural adjustment” programs as a condition for assistance, was ineluctable. Embattled rulers could no longer manage politics through minor manipulation of state resource flows as was possible in the early phases of neopatrimonialism; more direct predation now became visible. Social infrastructure began to decay as a consequence of state budgetary crises. The idea that an integral state had been achieved was exposed as an illusion.

  EXCEPTIONS TO STATE DISTRESS: IVORY COAST AND KENYA

  By 1980, there were some exceptions to the general pattern of state distress. A few countries had performed reasonably well through the 1970s. One was Cape Verde, which gained its independence in 1975 in union with Guinea-Bissau. Though many Verdeans were involved in the mainland Guinea-Bissau armed liberation struggle from 1961 to 1974, and the two countries were theoretically united, in reality Cape Verde always functioned as a separate state, officially so beginning in 1981. The radical liberation ideology associated with PAIGC did not override the acute sense of the limits of these small, impoverished islands devoid of resources. Thus islanders adopted a cautious rhetorical socialist orientation, and prudent management combined with generous aid flows kept the islands afloat. Contrary to patterns in Guinea-Bissau and in much of Africa, the discipline of self-financing was imposed pon the state enterprise sector.16 A unique factor for Cape Verde was the size of its diaspora, three times the size of the island population, mostly in the United States. Originating in nineteenth-century recruitment of Verdean hands for whaling vessels, what became a Cape Verde diaspora then took up residence in the whaler ports of origin. The Verdean diaspora retained a strong sense of its identity and an attachment to the islands. Remittances from the diaspora provided an invaluable revenue supplement to the new state.

  Ivory Coast and Kenya also avoided state crisis until the 1990s. Though both were within the crosshairs of dependency theorists owing to their robust capitalist orientation, until a series of misadventures in the 1990s both stood out in performance on both economic and social indicators, even though they lost momentum in the 1980s.17 In the first two independent decades, Ivory Coast had annual growth rates averaging 7–8%. This success was rooted in the agricultural sector and not in high-value mineral or hydrocarbon deposits. A modest industrial sector was built on developmental resources originating in the agricultural sector, often through parastatals, though these were better subject to market discipline than in most countries. A 1978 World Bank study concluded with a ringing encomium to Ivory Coast performance: “Few countries, developed or developing, can match the economic growth record of the Ivory Coast. Its annual growth rate of over 7% in real terms during the past twenty-five years is unique on the African continent.”18

  Critics hastened to add that the ransom of success was the privileged position of the numerous French expatriates. The single-party rule was mildly authoritarian, though President Houphouët-Boigny until his death in 1993 retained the respect of the populace, in no small part by basking in the success image. Ivory Coast was virtually the sole African polity in the more ideologically charged decades after independence that openly flaunted its commitment to a market economy, and indeed it invites comparison with Ghana in particular and the socialist orientation of Nkrumah. At the same time, Houphouët-Boigny gave voice to elements of integral state reasoning in denying a preference for undiluted market liberalism and favoring instead a planned economy, or what he termed “state capitalism.”19 My concluding judgment in Ideology and Development in Africa was that “the economic liberalism that undergirds Ivorian policy is permeated with statism.”20

  Kenya as well merited positive assessment on balance at this point and was widely regarded as a well-governed polity through the first two postcolonial decades, an image badly eroded since that time.21 Particularly until the 1978 death of Jomo Kenyatta, Kenya managed the biggest challenges of postcolonial adaptation, the disposition of lands occupied by white settlers, with relative skill. A significant fraction of the land went in large blocks to prominent Kenyans, especially Kikuyu, but African smallholders also received substantial amounts; the settlers recuperated their capital and more, and a painfully large number of landless peasants came out empty handed.22 But African agriculture, the main basis for the Kenyatta success narrative, prospered overall. As in Ivory Coast, the government avoided the temptation to extract its livelihood primarily from the agricultural sector through high export taxes, artificially low state-set prices, or state marketing monopoly profits. State support for rural social provisioning remained strong, with exceptionally high outlays for education and a network of free rural clinics. Students of comparative bureaucracy generally gave high marks to the Kenya administration; the central bank and key ministries had competent technocratic management. In the Kenyatta years, an active nexus between the Nairobi political class and their rural constituencies was maintained both through competitive elections within the dominant party (Kenya African National Union [KANU]) framework and the harambee (pull together) movement. In harambee sessions, political figures were expected to sponsor some local amenity (a new school, for example) by making substantial personal contributions and by soliciting others to do the same. These virtuous traits declined during the rule of Daniel arap Moi, who succeeded Kenyatta in December 1978. Moi was much less politically secure than Kenyatta and turned KANU into more of a neopatrimonial political machine; cronies replaced technocrats in key government positions. Even diminished in the 1980s, Kenya remained less afflicted by state crisis than most other countries and experienced reduced but still tangible economic growth.23

  A few other countries in 1980 gave the appearance of relative developmental health. Malawi was sometimes still claimed to be enjoying respectable performance, though its image had been impaired by the harsh autocracy of Hastings Banda and the notorious personal mercantile empire, Press Holdings, which he had assembled.24 Cameroon as well was still cited by some as an exception to the emerging pattern of stagnation. The Arab tier of states in the north became more clearly defined by their security apparatus, but they were not on the verge of crisis at this time. In addition to these relatively respectable performances, the pair of exceptional success narratives noted in chapter 1, Botswana and Mauritius, again merit notice. I defer until the final chapter an effort to identify the distinctive elements of statecraft that permitted the two to resist the continental temptations of the integral state and avoid the consequent decline.

  By the end of the 1970s, harbingers of a darker future for much of Africa were clearly evident. The OAU 1979 summit took formal note of the failure of expansive developmental efforts to produce anticipated results. Yet this summit in Monrovia and the following 1980 conference in Sierra Leone were themselves indicators of the impending crisis; both involved exorbitant expenditures that virtually bankrupted the host states. Lavish new conference sites, residential villas for the fifty-odd heads of state attending these ceremonial spectaculars, plus other sparkling ornamental infrastructure, were a ruinous extravagance. In the Sierra Leone case, the projected outlays for the OAU summit totaled $200 million, or half the state budget.25

  EARLY EXAMPLES OF STATE FAILURE: CHAD, GHANA, MOZAMBIQUE

  Thus by the beginning of the 1980s, clear signs of the impending crisis were visible in a number of countries. Among them were the three debilitated by the most catastrophic tyrannies of the epoch, briefly profiled in chapter 1: Uganda, Central African Republic, and Equatorial Guinea. These three at the time could be set aside as ghastly but exceptional instances of misrule by paranoid dictators. But warning signals were visible elsewhere in more “normal” polities: Congo-Kinshasa, Tanzania, Somalia, and Mali are examples. Worth further exploration for their illustrative value are three cases in which different forms of state excess had already produced deep crises: Chad, Ghana, and Mozambiq
ue.

  “In Chad,” Le Monde reported at the end of 1980, “the modern state inherited from the colonial period no longer exists.”26 Gali Ngothe Gatta, a Chadian economist and former minister, concurred: “Since the combats of February 1979 . . . the Chad state has ceased to exist. . . . However, there does exist a multitude of armed bands that roam about the country and ransom the populations.”27 Indeed, the term “warlords” that gained currency in the 1990s as a label for the leaders of illicit militias first appeared in the context of Chad at this time. William Foltz offers an eloquent and succinct summation:

  As revolt produced reprisal, reprisal in turn produced rebellion—then civil war, coups d’état, foreign military intervention, regional secession, and the division and recombination of alliances and futile governments. No part of the country escaped armed violence; no Chadian family escaped the violence unscathed. State authority collapsed definitively in 1980 when civil war touched virtually every corner of the country, reaching a ferocious peak in the battles fought back and forth across the capital, Ndjamena. Government functionaries—and the entire diplomatic corps—fled the capital. What remained of the administration lost contact with its agents in the countryside: the last government salaries were paid in August 1979. In those few localities where schools and clinics kept their doors open, they did so on local initiative and without supplies. Banks and post offices were looted.28