Africa Beyond Bretton Woods, Indigenized will Rise: Justina Mutale

Africa’s progressive future must reject Bretton Woods-IMF-World Bank-Washington Consensus oppression
From a Zambian’s interview with Press TV

Editing by Carolyn Bennett

“The Western world has been built on African resources

 

[Built] …using African’s toil, African sweat, African labor, African intellect from slavery to colonization and now we have foreign investment, which comes with tax dodging and land grabs - always taking away from Africa.

 

“We have let other people control the economy, that is why we are so rich – and yet so poor,” Zambian Justina Mutale said in an interview last fall with Press TV.

 “If Africans can hold the industries, the economy, the wealth and everything in their own hands and control that, then Africa has a chance to develop and be what it needs to be to find its rightful place in the world.”

With the 15-member states Southern African Development Community (SADC) together with the whole of Africa, Mutale said, “We have the bargaining power, if only African leaders can realize that. We have what it is that builds the world, that which has always built the world.”

 

Progress blocked must be overcome

Mutale recalled her homeland “soon after independence. She said “Our own President Kaunda (Kenneth David Kaunda, Zambia’s first president, 1964-1991) and his government embarked on what we called ‘Zambianization’ in which he hoped that eventually Zambians would be able to take over the industries, take over the management of everything that we needed to do.”

 

Kaunda had been a teacher, having walked in the footsteps of his father, a teacher and an ordained Church of Scotland missionary. The son led the struggle for independence from British rule, founded the Zambian African National Congress and later headed the United National Independence Party.

 

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fter Zambian independence, Mutale said, President Kaunda and his government insisted that there must be an emphasis on “free education for all – every school, growing child was eligible to be educated free of charge by the government.” She said there was a governmental provision for “free health … to keep people healthy and to educate people.”

Then foreign intervention drove back the country’s attempt at progress, self-sufficiency, access to education, and the rise of its people. Halfway through Kaunda’s plan came “structural adjustment programs” – trade policies imposed by a global order driven by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) through the Bretton Woods system and Washington Consensus.

 

The term Washington Consensus coined in 1989 by English economist John Williamson references a set of 10 relatively specific economic policy prescriptions Williamson considered the ‘standard’ reform package promoted by Washington, D.C.–based institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, and the US Department of the Treasury – “for crisis-wracked developing countries.”  Among these imposed prescriptions (brutishly disregarding indigenous needs and traditions, skills and talents) were: “macroeconomic stabilization, economic opening with respect to both trade and investment, and the expansion of market forces within the domestic economy.” [Wikipedia]

 

The Bretton Woods system of monetary management – the first example of a monetary order to govern monetary relations among independent nation-states – is known for having established global rules for commercial and financial relations among major industrial states in the mid-20th century. Chief features of the Bretton Woods system oblige countries “to adopt a monetary policy that maintains the exchange rate” by tying currencies to gold and enabling “the IMF to bridge temporary imbalances of payments.” [Wikipedia]

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eyond Bretton Woods, rejecting the Washington Consensus, what is imperative for Africa’s progress, Justina Mutale says, is “the indigenization of industries, of the economy, of the wealth of Africa.” This, she said, “is a good economic model for Africa.”

Sources and notes

“West advances agenda to hold Africa back: Justina Mutale” Press TV interview with Justina Mutale, September 23, 2013, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/09/23/325579/west-seeks-to-hold-africa-back/

  

Justina Mutale of Zambia is the recipient in 2013 of the WAF-MDG Award in recognition of her efforts toward the actualization of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals presented by the Women Advancement Forum; and the International Honorary Award presented by the Global Women Inventors and Innovators Network Conference (GWIIN) in Accra, Ghana. Mutale has worked with the London (England)- based Gender Section of the Commonwealth Secretariat, a membership of 54 countries that promote the advancement of gender equality; and with the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women. Justina Mutale is currently affiliated with and/or advocates for World Leaders Forum Dubai, International Women’s Think Tank, and Enough Food for Everyone Campaign IF. She was educated at the London Metropolitan University.

Enough Food for Everyone IF campaign: “The world produces enough food for everyone, but not everyone has enough food. In 2013, the IF campaign – with the support of tens of thousands of people across the UK – called on governments to take action on global hunger.”

http://enoughfoodif.org/about-campaign

The Southern African Development Community (SADC) is an inter-governmental organization headquartered in Gaborone, Botswana. Its goal is to further socio-economic cooperation and integration as well as political and security cooperation among 15 southern African states. It  complements the role of the African Union. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_African_Development_Community

Kenneth David Kaunda (also known as KK, b. April 28, 1924), first President of Zambia (1964-1991), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Kaunda

Bretton Woods system, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretton_Woods_system

Washington Consensus, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Consensus

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A lifelong American writer and writer/activist (former academic and staffer with the U.S. government in Washington), Dr. Carolyn LaDelle Bennett is credentialed in education and print journalism and public affairs (PhD, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan; MA, The American University, Washington, DC). Her work concerns itself with news and current affairs, historical contexts, and ideas particularly related to acts and consequences of U.S. foreign relations, geopolitics, human rights, war and peace, and violence and nonviolence. Dr. Bennett is an internationalist and nonpartisan progressive personally concerned with society and the common good. An educator at heart, her career began with the U.S. Peace Corps, teaching in Sierra Leone, West Africa. Since then, she has authored several books and numerous current-affairs articles; her latest book: UNCONSCIONABLE: How The World Sees Us: World News, Alternative Views, Commentary on U.S. Foreign Relations; most thoughts, articles, edited work are posted at Bennett’s Study: http://todaysinsightnews.blogspot.com/ and on her Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/carolynladelle.bennett. http://www.prweb.com/releases/2014/08UNCONSCIONABLE/prweb12131656.htm http://bookstore.xlibris.com/Products/SKU-000757788/UNCONSCIONABLE.aspx Her books are also available at independent bookstores in New York State: Lift Bridge in Brockport; Sundance in Geneseo; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center in Buffalo; Burlingham Books in Perry; The Bookworm in East Aurora

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