one in ten children born in sub-Saharan Africa today will not live beyond their first year;



one in twenty of these children’s mothers will die in childbirth; and



Africa’s people are poorer today than they were thirty years ago.

What is remarkable about these figures is that the emiseration of Africa’s people is occurring at a time when the continent, according to many, is making a remarkable economic turnaround. A recent World Economic Survey of the economic performance of twenty-four African states revealed that the continent reported a two per cent growth rate between 1990 and 1996 after a decade of negative economic growth. The breakdown for individual countries is even more revealing. Between 1994 and 1996, Lesotho’s economic growth has averaged more than ten per cent. Between 1990 and 1996, Mozambique’s average economic growth rate stood at 6,58 per cent. Over the same period, the annual economic growth for Uganda and Botswana averaged 6,54 per cent and 5,06 per cent respectively.2

How does one account for this paradox? What is clear from the contributions by Cornwell, Thompson, and Sadie and Loots is that economic growth (growth in Gross National Products) does not translate into economic security for the poverty-stricken masses; that such growth which does occur, is often at the expense of the most marginalised in society (for example, rural African women) and benefits a tiny élite which constitutes a "neocolonial oligarchy", in the words of Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja.3 In many cases, the African state either actively assists this national élite in their acquisition of an ever-larger slice of the pie or, as Cornwell notes, is too weak to challenge their economic domination. Either way, the result is the same: an ever-widening gulf between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’.

This socio-economic polarisation of African society, as Thompson eloquently argued, is assisted and reinforced by the hegemony of the neoliberal paradigm. For progressive intellectuals this raises important challenges. According to Maxi Schoeman in the first chapter, "... the ultimate purpose of knowledge and its application is aimed at improving the human condition." In this vein, it becomes the responsibility of intellectuals to articulate an alternative discourse, a discourse of emancipation which challenges the prevailing dominant orthodoxies around development, a discourse which reflects the concerns of the most marginalised communities. In doing so, we find practical expression of our common humanity. But, this plea for a more inclusive security and development discourse is motivated by more than ‘mere morality’. Practically, there is no other alternative. History indicates that any system which privileges the few at the expense of the many is bound to lead to social polarisation and conflict. If there is one lesson which is to be gleaned from the recent demise of Suharto’s Indonesia, it is this: economic liberalisation uncoupled from broader socio-economic and political emancipation is not sustainable for both political stability and economic development in the long term.

Endnotes

F Obeng, Economic Dimensions of the African Crisis, paper presented to the Preparatory Workshop on South Africa and the Non-Aligned Movement in the Era of Regionalisation and Globalisation, co-hosted by the Foundation for Global Dialogue (FGD) and the Department of Foreign Affairs, Pretoria, 29-30 April 1998, p. 1.



Sunday Times, 22 March 1998.



G Nzongola-Ntalaja, The Role of Intellectuals in the Struggle for Democracy, Peace and Reconstruction in Africa, African Journal of Political Science, 2(2), December 1997, p. 4.