Looting of Africa continues to this day
STATISTICS SA released figures that show more than 50% of South Africans – 30 million – have been condemned to poverty, with about 13 million living in extreme poverty.
Who or what is responsible for so many people living in penury? Has our struggle to bring a better life for South Africans failed?
We have, fortunately, not yet reached the spectre of famine haunting parts of Africa again, where more than 20 million people face starvation across Somalia, Nigeria and South Sudan.
The question is, how is it that South Africa, with its excellent infrastructure, gold reserves and modern economy, has collapsed to this level 23 years after liberation?
How does such a scale of suffering occur on a continent of 1.2 billion people, so rich in mineral wealth, oil and land mass, that it can hold almost every other continent?
While poverty afflicts many countries and famines are a regular occurrence across the world, a closer examination of the recurrence of this misery in Africa suggests there is very little natural about it.
South Africans should have learnt from other liberated countries such as Angola, Mozambique and Zimbabwe and avert the pitfalls.
Former and current imperial and colonial powers such as France, Britain, the US and Israel, all of whom supported apartheid South Africa that prolonged the oppression of its people, use the military-industrial-corporate complex, the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and the UN to exploit and capture Africa’s resources.
African governments have been forced, through structural adjustments, to divert funds from agriculture, health and education, into infrastructure that benefits the West. Are we headed that way?
A major cause of poverty and famines is corruption, conflict and war. Geographically strategic Somalia has been at war since 1995 and famine has been a parallel occurrence. It faces its third famine in 25 years. South Sudan has half of its population facing starvation and is a country floating on oil.
Western oil companies in cahoots with corrupt government officials loot some $140 billion (R1.8 trillion) a year of Nigeria’s black gold while nearly two-thirds of its people live on less than R30 a day.
Yet, Nigeria has the largest, best-equipped army in West Africa, benefiting mostly Western military industries. Instead of being wealthy and the envy of the world, its cities are filled with homeless children begging.
At independence in 1960, the Democratic Republic of Congo was the second-most industrialised country in Africa, after South Africa. It has been plundered to such an extent that most of its population is ravaged by poverty. The same scenario afflicts 14 West African states, where France holds $500 billion of the wealth of these West African countries, in its treasury.
African leaders who dare resist the West are killed or become victims of coups. Those who obey are rewarded with security and a lavish lifestyle while their people endure extreme poverty.
Many revolutionary leaders who freed their people from colonialism now rule through the same oppressive structures they overthrew.
How is it then that we in Africa cannot polish our own diamonds that must be sent to Israel?
Why can’t Africans refine their own oil but buy back refined products at exorbitant costs from the West? Why is it that no African country can produce a car, train or plane or computers, that are bought from Japan, China, Germany or the US? And why is it that to fly within the continent, 80% of the routes are controlled by non-African airlines?
Combating poverty will involve political, economic, cultural and social change, and eradicate institutional corruption. This requires a paradigm shift. A higher socio-economic order needs to evolve where wealth is deployed to meet human needs and not political leaders’ greed. This requires a significant change in mindset of those who own, control and manage corporations and businesses.
Dr Osman is an executive member of Media Review Network, an advocacy group based in Johannesburg