African Left populism destroying continent
Economies are collapsing, countries are being recolonised
AFRICAN-STYLE Left populism has in almost all cases in the postcolonial African period led to the collapse of African economies. This resulted in recolonisation by the World Bank or IMF, or industrial country donors or more recently, by emerging powers, such as China, and the mass fleeing of citizens to neighbouring countries or to industrial countries.
Zimbabwe’s Zanu-PF is the poster child for African-style post-liberation Left populism. Former Zanu-PF and Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe has been one of the most adroit exponents of African Left populism.
In 2009, the country dropped its currency the Zimbabwean dollar to use the US dollar as currency.
Since 1990, more than a third of Zimbabwe’s population has fled abroad, seeking safety, food and jobs.
According to Zimbabwe’s Reserve Bank, the country’s external debt is now around $11.6bn.
In 2016, Mugabe declared a state of disaster for agriculture, a declaration which allowed international donors to help. According to the UN children’s agency, Unicef, around 3 million of Zimbabweans needed food aid. Around 40% of Zimbabwean households go hungry.
A decade ago Mugabe, with the country facing economic collapse, and his own leadership being challenged within Zanu-PF, launched a populist land reform programme which saw white-owned land being expropriated. The land reform boosted his and ZanuPF’s popularity, particularly in the rural areas.
Land reform was absolutely necessary in Zimbabwe, to address past injustices when land was forcefully taken by white settlers, but Mugabe’s land reform was using a much necessary policy, for purely populist reasons.
Some of the land was transferred to poor blacks, who had basic farming skills.
But many of the best farms were transferred to Zanu-PF politicians.
Zimbabwe has 92 recorded stateowned enterprises (SOEs), with the latest audit by the country’s Treasury showing that 70% of them are technically insolvent. Zimbabwe has over the years struggled to pay public servants because of its worsening economy.
The health and education systems have virtually collapsed because of mismanagement, corruption and nepotism.
The quality of education has dramatically plummeted.
African Left populism regimes position themselves as “radical left”, “anti-capitalist” and “anti-imperialist” political movements. African Left populists would push for radical “Left” proposals calling for the nationalisation of mines, the expropriation of land and properties of foreign, settler-owned or white-owned companies and the Africanisation or indigenisation of the public services.
African Left populists would themselves be the first to take the best companies, banks and land they have expropriated, or allocate these to political allies and family members.
Similarly, the beneficiaries of black economic empowerment (BEE), are not ordinary Zimbabwean entrepreneurs, employees or surrounding communities, but Mugabe, his family, and Zanu-PF politicians and the military.
Conventionally populism is usually seen as political movements and leaders constructing in the popular image an imaginary battle of “us” (“the people”) or the poor masses, which have little economic and political power, against “them”, the elites dominating economic and political power.
In power, these African Left populist movements positioned their inherited countries as the “underdog”, forever under “enemies” – supposedly former colonial powers, Western “imperialists” and settler, white or foreign owned business, so-called “white monopoly capital”.
No development reforms in an African country will ever succeed without governments and leaders managing their countries honestly, introducing reasonable meritocracy in the public services, giving government contracts and business licences fairly and on merit and governing in the widest interests of the country, not in the interest of the leader, his family or the governing party.