A PBS Production

July 24, 2005: Professor George Ayittey, distinguished economist from the American University in Washington, DC, discusses social, political, and economic development in Africa with Anchor, Bill Moyers.

BILL MOYERS: With me now is Professor George Ayittey. He's originally from Ghana -- a noted economist -- who teaches now at American University in Washington, DC. Welcome to WIDE ANGLE.

GEORGE AYITTEY: Thank you for having me.

BILL MOYERS: What goes through your mind when you watch that film?

GEORGE AYITTEY: It's a very heart-breaking film, if you look at the refugees and people were starving in Zimbabwe. And they're crossing the border and they're destitute and have to come up with an electrified fence. It's sort of like a throwback to the apartheid era when the racist regime in South Africa threw an electrified fence against the border in Mozambique and even Zimbabwe to prevent them from coming in. But it's a horrible situation in Zimbabwe that we have right now.

BILL MOYERS: When I saw the film, I thought, of course, of refugees on the border between Mexico and the United States trying to leave their destitution to come to golden opportunity -- the golden arches -- of California. Is there any similarity between those two situations?

GEORGE AYITTEY: Well the similarities sort of vanish when you consider the fact that Zimbabwe used to be the breadbasket of the region.

BILL MOYERS: How long ago?

GEORGE AYITTEY: Well, this was about ten years ago, 15 years ago. But the situation has reversed completely. And the main reason why it has reversed is because you've had bad policies and a bad regime and misgovernance in Zimbabwe.

BILL MOYERS: Well, you've got a tyrant, a despot, a scoundrel, a thief as the --

GEORGE AYITTEY: Well, yes. Mugabe's become a disgrace to Africa. And I must say this because I am an African and a lot of us looked up to him back in the 1980s when he was the liberation hero. But he's now turned himself into a murderous despot. But, see, there's another thing about Zimbabwe and that is it is a repeat of the same African script where we moved out the white colonialists. And then we have black new colonialists. And country after country, they run their countries down an economic slump. Ghana, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Zambia. All these countries are following the same script. And that is what is very disappointing about Zimbabwe.

BILL MOYERS: Can you explain that to me? Because the common argument for so long was that this was the heritage of colonial rule. That the colonial whites who ran these countries did not allow Africans to emerge into positions of responsibility and authority. So there was no one prepared when the white colonialists left to take over and run the countries efficiently.

GEORGE AYITTEY: Oh, no. That argument is really a red herring because Botswana was colonized. Mauritius was also colonized. But yet these two African countries are doing very well. The reason why Botswana has done very well is because it's the only black African country which went back to its roots and built upon its own indigenous institutions.

BILL MOYERS: What do you mean went back to its roots?

GEORGE AYITTEY: Back to its roots in the sense that if you go to an African village and there's a chief and there is, let's say, a political crisis for example, the chief will call a village meeting. Put the issue before the people. It's called a kgotla. Now put the issue before the people. The people will debate until they come to a consensus. In Botswana, cabinet ministers are required to attend weekly kgotla meetings.

BILL MOYERS: I was in Botswana many years ago for the Peace Corps. And I actually went with a Botswana official out to the village council. Fascinating.

GEORGE AYITTEY: Yeah, this is how you take development to the people. And you build up on the local institutions. Only Botswana did this.

BILL MOYERS: Why did they -- ?

GEORGE AYITTEY: Well, see, in the rest of Africa they assume that the market system was a capitalist institution. So they don't want to have anything to do with the market system. Not knowing that the markets were in Africa even before the colonialists came to Africa.

BILL MOYERS: At a very local level.

GEORGE AYITTEY: Yes. At a local level. I mean, if you go to West Africa, for example, market activity has always been dominated by women. There was free trade in Africa. There was free enterprise in Africa before the colonialists came. But anyway, they identified markets and capitalism with the West. So they rejected that. And many of them also associated democracy with the West and rejected that as well. So they went to the East and copied Socialist and Marxist models. Mugabe, for example, determined to turn Zimbabwe into one party -- Marxist/Leninist state.

BILL MOYERS: Right.

GEORGE AYITTEY: But everybody can tell you that Marx and Lenin had very little relationship with black Africa. They were not black Africans. But anyway, they copied all these alien ideologies to impose upon their people.

BILL MOYERS: But not Botswana.

GEORGE AYITTEY: Not Botswana. It went back and built upon its own local institutions. There were markets. There were participatory democracies in their villages. This is what Africa needs to return to and build upon it. Botswana did it. And it is doing very well.

BILL MOYERS: Are the people who are trying to get across that fence, are they following an illusion? Because some people say that Botswana's success is only relative. That Botswana's wealth is held by a relative handful of people at the expense of the many, particularly the diamond trade. So are these people trying to get across the border following an illusion?

GEORGE AYITTEY: Oh, no, no. They're not following an illusion. Look, any economy has its own troubles. But Botswana's doing well. It is the fastest growing economy in the world. It's doing well.

BILL MOYERS: Fastest growing in the world?

GEORGE AYITTEY: Yes. And it's because for a long time its economic rate of growth has been clocked at eight percent.

BILL MOYERS: Eight percent a year?

GEORGE AYITTEY: Eight percent a year. Back in the 1970s, in fact, the economic rate of growth was at a dizzying 14 percent. So it's one of the few African economies that is doing extremely well. Yet it has some problems. And that we have to face. Number one, income distribution in Botswana. And number two, we have an AIDS problem.

BILL MOYERS: You mean the gap between the rich and the poor.

GEORGE AYITTEY: Yes. And also you have some unemployment.

BILL MOYERS: That's growing here, too.

GEORGE AYITTEY: Yes, of course. All the economies have problems. But then compared with other African countries, Botswana is just the star.

BILL MOYERS: So there is a reality that's pulling these people.

GEORGE AYITTEY: Yes.

BILL MOYERS: That fence is not up there just to guard against cattle.

GEORGE AYITTEY: Oh, no. No. It's sustainable and it is not just a mirage. Botswana's economic prosperity and success is real.

BILL MOYERS: Would you say that the main reason for the destitution, the poverty, the mess that exists in Zimbabwe is because Robert Mugabe has imposed one-man, one-party rule and there's no transparency, there's no openness, there's no rule of law?

GEORGE AYITTEY: Oh, precisely. There are very little freedoms in Zimbabwe. There are three newspapers in Zimbabwe. They are all state-owned. And the DAILY NEWS, for example, the private independent newspaper, has been shut down. There's no rule of law. Mugabe has packed the bench with his own cronies. And there are Draconian press curbs that even restrict journalists. Foreign journalists have been kicked out of the country.

BILL MOYERS: We tried to get in a couple years ago and, of course, we couldn't. We were refused at the border. Our producer --

GEORGE AYITTEY: Yeah. And it is even very, very difficult to organize any political activity in Zimbabwe because according to Zimbabwe election laws, you can't have a political rally of more than nine people. I mean, imagine, it's also the same law that you have in Uganda, for example. But at any rate, Mugabe's Zanu-PF has taken over most of the critical institutions and sort of subverted them to serve his interests and interests of his cronies. So, in other words, what you have in Zimbabwe is a kind of a political apartheid system.

BILL MOYERS: Political apartheid --

GEORGE AYITTEY: Yes. Where if you don't belong to the Zanu-PF, you're excluded. And even when food aid is sent to the country, Mugabe's cronies distribute the food aid to their supporters. If you're not a member of them, you're excluded.

BILL MOYERS: This is something that puzzles me, and I've been to Africa often. Why do the other African leaders let him get away with it? Why don't they call him on the carpet, as we say?

GEORGE AYITTEY: Well, there are two reasons for this. Number one, if you look at certain African leaders, say Thabo Mbeki of South Africa and Nujoma of Namibia. See, they form the frontline states in the struggle against apartheid. Back then, in the 1980s, Mugabe provided sanctuary to the ANC guerilla fighters.

BILL MOYERS: They could operate out of Zimbabwe.

GEORGE AYITTEY: Yes. And, therefore, there's a huge debt of gratitude or indebtedness towards Mugabe. And which is why Mbeki finds himself unwilling to criticize him publicly.

BILL MOYERS: He says he's practicing quiet diplomacy.

GEORGE AYITTEY: Why didn't he apply that quiet diplomacy when he was trying to mediate a crisis in Sudan, for example? Or the Congo, for example? Or Ivory Coast, for example? Now there, Thabo Mbeki wanted negotiation with the warring factions in Ivory Coast. Why is he not using the same negotiation tactic in Zimbabwe?

BILL MOYERS: Is it just gratitude? The gratitude that Mugabe gave Mbeki and others sanctuary?

GEORGE AYITTEY: Yes. That's part of it. The second reason is that Mbeki also faces the same inequitable distribution of land problem in South Africa. So he has to be extremely careful in terms of how to deal with Mugabe. Among the poor in South Africa, Mugabe is very popular because he is seen as doing something to right a colonial wrong.

BILL MOYERS: By what? Doing what?

GEORGE AYITTEY: That colonial wrong is the inequitable distribution of land.

BILL MOYERS: In what used to be Rhodesia, now it's Zimbabwe, five percent of the whites owned 90 percent of the land.

GEORGE AYITTEY: Yes. And then the poor in South Africa tend to see him as a hero because they see him as trying to right a colonial wrong in Zimbabwe. So Mbeki has to be extremely careful in terms of how he publicly criticizes or praises Mugabe because he also faces sadly the same problem in his country. Now, the third reason, if I may?

BILL MOYERS: Sure.

GEORGE AYITTEY: You see, across Africa there is what I call a colonialist mentality or orthodoxy. Orthodoxy in the sense that a lot of things have gone wrong in Africa in the post-colonial period. And time and time again, any time something went wrong, the leadership claims that it was never their fault. It was always the fault of some external forces, some external evil, external colonial, new colonial forces.

BILL MOYERS: You could blame the outsider.

GEORGE AYITTEY: That's right. Never themselves. So Mugabe comes across as the epitome of this particular orthodoxy. Anything that went wrong is always the fault of some white conspiracy, what he calls the white snakes in Zimbabwe. He never takes responsibility for his own failures and incompetence. He blames the World Bank. He blames the IMF. He blames the British neo-colonialists. So that sort of argument plays well among the African leaders who are also refusing to take responsibility for their own mistakes.

BILL MOYERS: Even if the other African leaders wanted to oust Mugabe, could they pull it off?

GEORGE AYITTEY: They could.

BILL MOYERS: They could?

GEORGE AYITTEY: As a matter of fact, there's been a precedent. Back in 1979, when Idi Amin was terrorizing his neighbors.

BILL MOYERS: In Uganda.

GEORGE AYITTEY: Yeah, in Uganda, Julius Nyerere said, "I'm not going to take this anymore." And he sent his troops over to Uganda

BILL MOYERS: From Tanzania.

GEORGE AYITTEY: Yeah, from Tanzania to kick him out. And so there is what I call an African solution. Now, even recently in Togo when Eyadema died, the military staged some sort of a coup to impose the son on the people. The Regional Organization of West Africa -- ECOWAS -- said, "No way, this will not stand." And the military was forced to back down. So there you had the regional sort of organization taking a very strong stance against something that they called a rape of democracy in Togo.

BILL MOYERS: And it worked.

GEORGE AYITTEY: It worked. So this is why Africans are also asking the Southern regional organizations today to also take a strong stance against Zimbabwe. But so far, they have disappointed the people.

BILL MOYERS: Is it conceivable to you that if the African leaders do nothing and Mugabe continues his repressive rule there could be a coup?

GEORGE AYITTEY: There could be a coup or the country could blow up. We've had this so many times. And this is one of the things which is so maddening because it seems that these leaders learn nothing. Somalia has blown up. Rwanda has blown up. Burundi has blown up. Zaire, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Togo, Ivory Coast. Now, must we sit there and wait for Zimbabwe also to blow up?

BILL MOYERS: But it seems unimaginable to me that those poor, destitute, frightened people we saw trying to get across that fence from Zimbabwe into Botswana are the fuel for an explosion.

GEORGE AYITTEY: They could be the fuel for explosion, judging from the experiences that we've seen in Somalia, Rwanda, et cetera, et cetera. But quite often, there's always an element of discontent. And it could come from the military as you suggested and to have a military coup, for example. But then time and time again, military coups don't solve the problem. I mean, we've had so many of them in West Africa. And they remove the civilian dictators. And then --

BILL MOYERS: Liberia is a perfect example.

GEORGE AYITTEY: Yes. And then these military dictators, you know, turn out to be worse. You can either have a military coup in Zimbabwe. You could either have a rebel insurgency. It could start from the outside. If you look at Rwanda, for example, Paul, their current president Paul Kagame, led a simple rebel force to remove the Hutu-dominated government.

BILL MOYERS: A few hundred people --

GEORGE AYITTEY: Yes. And in Uganda, President Museveni started out with only 27 men from the bush. And so it doesn't take much to --

BILL MOYERS: Overthrow the government.

GEORGE AYITTEY: Yeah. To overthrow the government. It doesn't take much. And Charles Taylor of Liberia started out with less than 200 men.

BILL MOYERS: I was intrigued recently. President Bush said, quote, that, "Zimbabwe poses an unusual and extraordinary threat to the foreign policy of the United States." Why do you think you'd make such a statement?

GEORGE AYITTEY: Well, as a matter of fact, Condoleezza Rice, the Secretary of State, called Zimbabwe "an outpost of tyranny". And the administration's feeling is that if you have such an output of tyranny, it will always act as a breeding ground for terrorists or maybe pose a threat to US security interests in the region.

BILL MOYERS: Well, we saw that in Afghanistan when a destitute and failed state was taken over by the Taliban and converted into a terrorist operation. You think that's what the president fears in Zimbabwe?

GEORGE AYITTEY: Well, there's that possibility. And let's not forget that back in 1998, U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya were blown up by terrorists because the prevailing type of environment, which is so hostile towards the West, may allow such anti-terrorist activities to ferment in the region. So there is that concern.

BILL MOYERS: Let's talk about Africa as a whole. I recognize it's a huge continent with many differences from country to country, tribe to tribe, people to people. But why is Africa so poorly governed?

GEORGE AYITTEY: Well, to understand Africa, consider Africa made up of two people, two groups of people. There are the elites and then there are the real people. I call them the peasants. Now, the problem is with the elites. Now, quite often, people don't want to criticize the leaders for fear that they may be labeled as racist. So they shy away from criticizing African leaders. Look, the problem is with the leaders and the elite. After independence, they took over power from the departing colonialists and established two defective systems: a defective economic system and a defective political system. Defective political systems of one party state systems, which were un-democratic, which concentrated a great deal of power in the hands of one individual. Now, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to recognize that if you create a political system in which power is concentrated in the hands of one individual, that system, no matter where you are, would always degenerate into tyranny.

BILL MOYERS: Because there's no free press. There's no rule of law.

GEORGE AYITTEY: Precisely.

BILL MOYERS: There's no court system it's all governed under the thumb of --

GEORGE AYITTEY: One person. That's where you have the maximum leader. Now, back in 1990, out of the 54 African countries, only four of them were democratic. Today, the number is 16. Which means that the vast majority of the African people still live under oppression. Okay?

BILL MOYERS: I read somewhere that something like 90 percent of the countries below the Sahara have experienced despotic rule in the last three decades.

GEORGE AYITTEY: Precisely. So you're talking about a continent where political freedom has been elusive. Even intellectual freedom has been elusive. Out of the 54 African countries, only eight of them have a free press. Which means that Africans are not free to speak or criticize their governments. Now, to me, freedom of expression is very, very important. The media is extremely important because, you see, you need the media. The first thing to solve a problem, the first thing that a society has to do is to expose that problem. And that's the job of the media. And even if you want to fight corruption, you have to expose it. But you can't expose corruption if the media is muzzled.

BILL MOYERS: And if you don't have transparency, if you don't have a free press, this means the elites, as you call them, can just steal everything--

GEORGE AYITTEY: Of course, they can, you know, stand on the necks of their people and the world wouldn't know about it. Especially -- this is exactly what is going on in Zimbabwe. People have been crushed, they've been starved, they've been suppressed. And yet we hear very little about what's going on in that country.

BILL MOYERS: I was in Europe just a couple of weeks ago. And I was astonished to see huge play given on the front pages of the European newspapers about a recent report from Nigeria that said since Nigeria's independence from Britain in 1960, almost $400 billion has been stolen or misused. That's astonishing because it's almost as much as all of the West has given to Nigeria in foreign aid in that time. And it's nearly six times the help that America gave Western Europe under the Marshall Plan. Stolen.

GEORGE AYITTEY: It's so disgusting. If you look at the statistics in Nigeria, Nigeria should not be in the position as it is now. Nigeria ought to have been the giant of Africa. Between 1970 and the year 2004, more than 400 billion in oil revenue flowed into the coffers of the Nigerian government. Nobody knows what happened to that oil revenue.

BILL MOYERS: What do you think happened?

GEORGE AYITTEY: It was all stolen.

BILL MOYERS: By the elite?

GEORGE AYITTEY: Yes.

BILL MOYERS: By the people in charge?

GEORGE AYITTEY: Especially the string of military rulers. Now, the most galling aspect of this is that Nigeria has been given debt relief. Its debt has been written off. Which means that none of these military looters are being held accountable. Nobody is asking them what did they do with the money that they stole from their people. Now if you look at Nigeria's income per capita, it is about 270, which is about the same level as it was when it came to its independence in 1960. Which means that for that 45 years of independence, nothing has really changed as far as the standards of living of the people are concerned.

BILL MOYERS: If I were a politician, I'd have a hard time looking an American taxpayer in the eye, a working man or woman, and say, "We're going send some of your tax money to Nigeria," or to any one of these countries that is governed by a despot. Is that a fair position?

GEORGE AYITTEY: Well, when you take an African issue, there's this huge obstacle. The obstacle being that there's a huge emotionalism that you encounter. There are many Americans who sincerely want to help Africa. And somehow they think that the best way of helping Africa is by handing money over to their corrupt governments. Perhaps they are misinformed about events in Africa. The second obstacle is political correctness. For fear that they don't want to appear as stingy. For fear that they don't want to appear as not wanting to help black people. So they might say, "Okay, let's help Nigeria." But that's not an effective way of helping Nigeria. The effective way of helping Nigeria is to deal with the people rather than through their corrupt governments.

BILL MOYERS: And how do we do that? You were recently at the gathering of Western governments, the G-8 Summit in Scotland. And you've written and taught and talked a lot about this. What is your prescription for actually doing something serious about the needs and the poverty?

GEORGE AYITTEY: The agreement which was reached at the G-8 was really a sham or hollow. Because number one, Africa debt relief had already been reached before the G-8 Summit. So, it wasn't part of the communiquŽ. Now, the communiquŽ said it would be possible to increase aid to Africa by $50 billion in the year 2010, okay. Now, here's the chicanery and the trickery involved in that political announcement. And that is that the increased aid wouldn't come on tap until the year 2010. But by then all those who signed that communiquŽ will be out of office. So Tony Blair won't be around for him to be held accountable for a statement which he has signed on to. And second important thing was the trade issue was what a lot of people considered to be very critical to the fate of Africa. Now, at the G-8, the G-8 leaders agreed in principle to a sort of phased trade subsidies, farm subsidies and, you know, trade barriers. But they did not commit themselves to any deadline. So, in effect, if you look at the entire package only $20 billion represents new money. And even this new money comes from reshuffling old programs. So, some are saying that what Africa got is what Asia is losing. It is just a reshuffling of the board, not really any new commitments in terms of money going to Africa.

BILL MOYERS: How do farm subsidies and manufacturing subsidies in the West hurt Africans?

GEORGE AYITTEY: Well, the farm subsidy issue is really peripheral to the fundamental cause of African poverty. Farm subsidies, you know, take cotton, sugar, tobacco, for example. They affect only a few African exports, cotton exports from Mali, Niger, Senegal and say Nigeria for example. Now, tobacco subsidies don't affect African tobacco. Look at Zimbabwe. The tobacco industry in Zimbabwe has totally collapsed, not because of U.S. subsidies. And there aren't any trade barriers against Nigerian oil. There are no trade barriers against African mineral exports. There are no trade barriers against gold, diamonds, et cetera, et cetera. So, see again, the subsidies have been utilized by Africa leaders in order to divert attention from their own economic mismanagement.

BILL MOYERS: If the G-8 Summit was a political chicanery as you said, what was the G-8 concert?

GEORGE AYITTEY: As an African, I appreciate the fact that Western rock bands are trying to help Africa. But then, as an African I look at it and I ask myself "has it come to this -- that Africa's salvation rests upon the success of rock concerts? Are we totally bereft of finding solutions to our own problems in Africa?" In other words, there was a lot of feel-good. People went to the rock concerts. But they thought that in putting pressure to bear on the G-8 leaders, they may be able to open up the oppressors and do something for Africa. But you see the real question is why are we not holdi

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