[PEN-L:29494] Re: Southern Africa worse off than five years ago

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

> SOUTHERN AFRICA: Southern Africa worse off than five years ago
> UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
>
> JOHANNESBURG, 14 Aug 2002 (IRIN) - A leading UN agency on Wednesday called
> on aid groups to rethink how they tackle humanitarian crises in Southern
> Africa following indications that people are poorer than they were five
> years ago.
>
> In its latest report on the current food security crisis in Southern
> Africa the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)
> said that for a variety of reasons the region had "slipped back in terms
> of political, economic and social development, all of which has increased
> the numbers of people living below the poverty line".
>
> Compared with 1996 statistics, many more people in Swaziland, Zambia and
> Zimbabwe did not have enough money to satisfy basic food needs in 2001,
> according to the report.

This reminds me. Yesterday's NY Times
(http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/15/business/15SCEN.html) had a think-piece
by the dreadful Virginia Postrel, the libertarian who co-hosted a
conference at the New School last year with Frank Furedi's gang. (For an
interesting take on the evolution of this crew, check the Aug. 12 New
Statesman article by Nick Cohen, who writes "Furedi, a sociology lecturer
at the University of Kent, is now the Wackford Squeers of
Broadcasting House. Whenever bullying or the protection of children is
discussed, he storms the radio stations to damn mollycoddling and warn that
children need to be toughened up for hard, adult life - if not world
revolution.")

Postrel relies on the findings of a Columbia economics professor named
Professor Sala-i-Martin who has assembled data proving that "From the point
of view of individuals, economic liberalization has been a huge success."
Sala-i-Martin's website is at: http://www.columbia.edu/~xs23/home.html and
beyond belief--a mixture of juvenilia and free-market fundamentalism. He
claims that things are not as bad as they seem, since the cost is living in
those African countries on the brink of disaster. He says, "When I started
looking at the numbers, I saw a lot of mistakes...Some agencies didn't
adjust for the fact that Ethiopia is cheaper than the U.S." One can only
fervently pray that someday this professor endures for one week in his
miserable life what the Ethiopian poor have to endure. Fat chance.

He admits that things have gotten worse in Africa, especially Nigeria.
Postrel muses, "Fully 95 percent of the world's 'one-dollar poor' live in
Africa, and in many countries they make up the vast majority of the
population. That poverty, not the rising wealth of Asian countries, is the
global economy's real problem."

I have a different attitude toward African suffering. I don't think that
rapid gains in India and China (arguable as that is) excuses for even one
day the kind of misery Africa has been plunged into. All of the
libertarians and their friends in the social democratic left like Brad
DeLong who see things getting better day by day in a Panglossian fashion
seem to accept some exceptions to the rule here and there, especially
Africa. Poor kaffirs. Can't get their act together, can they.

I look at it differently. If there was a family that was raising 10
children and one or two of them were kept in a dark basement where they
were beaten every day and fed bread and water, the cops would not excuse
the parents' behavior because the other children were prospering. Their
children would be taken away and they would be put in prison for child
abuse. That for me is the way to view capitalism.







Louis Proyect
www.marxmail.org