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30 DPMF Occasional Paper No. 13while, at the same time, endorsing radical alternative economicstrategies and policies at the OAU level. Schizophrenia becamea standard political behaviour among African political leaders, abreakdown occurring between OAU resolutions, with distinctpan-African leanings, and actions taken at country level. In thisrespect, the following statement by Prime Minister MelesZenawi is quite apt:“African states have been given names such asneopatrimonial, prebential, vampire and various otherexotic names. The underlying fact is that African states aresystems of patronage and are closely associated with rentseekingactivities. Their external relationship is designedto generate funds that oil this network of patronage. Theirtrading system is designed to collect revenue to oil thesystem. Much of the productive activity is mired in asystem of irrational licenses and protection that isdesigned to augment the possibilities of rent collection.Much of the private sector in the continent is an active andcentral element of this network of patronage and rentseekingactivity’ 23 .(v)Given this situation, the more the crisis deepened in Africa andthe more countries became indebted, the easier it became for theexternals to ensure that the traditional economic strategies andpolicies inherited from the colonial period continued to prevail.Indeed, as the crisis deepened and African countries becameweaker, the externals had a unique opportunity to intervenestrongly at country level and to direct economic strategies andpolicies, often literally managing and administering keyinstitutions in African economies. This was particularly the casein much of the 1980s and some would even argue this continuesto be the case at present – at least in many small countries ofAfrica.(vi) However, this strong interventionist role of the “externals” hadto have an ideological and intellectual basis in the new era. Andthis was provided by the WB and IMF through their various23 Prime Minister Meles Zenawi. 2002. Speech made at the NEPAD Symposium in AddisAbaba, 27 th May 2002. The Ethiopian Herald, June 2.
Abdalla Bujra. Pan-African Visions of Development 31strategic reports (at country level) and major publications onAfrica. These included the Berg Report (1981), the Long TermPerspective Studies (1989), Adjustment in Africa (1994) andmore recently Can Africa Reclaim the 21 st Century? (2000).(vii) At the cost of repetition, it is necessary to point out at this stagethat there is a fundamental difference between all pre-NEPADAfrican Initiatives (especially since the Monrovia/LPA of1979/80) and the NEPAD initiative of 2001/2. All pre-NEPADAfrican initiatives had, at the core of their plans/agendas, thefollowing principles which, needless to say, are absent fromNEPAD:a. Self-reliance as an organising principle of economicand other forms of development;b. Equality as a fundamental principle and goal ofeconomic development;c. A strong role for the public sector;d. The continuous interrogation of the presentinternational economic order and the fight, by variousmethods, for a NIEO;e. Much stronger efforts towards economic co-operationand integration.From the perspective of the externals, the above principles obviouslymake African initiatives radical and ideological i.e. leftist. Moreimportantly, if African countries were to practically follow theseprinciples, their economies would become difficult to exploit and to bringunder the hegemony of external powers driving globalisation. Hence, thestrong opposition of the externals to African initiatives and, since NEPADhas dropped any pretence to following the above principles, it is notsurprising that the G8 have welcomed it with open arms and given it moralsupport so far.Finally, the African people and even the peoples of the externals arenowhere to be seen in this struggle for the development soul of the Africancontinent.
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