The depoliticisation of poverty

Firoze Manji

1998 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which emerged from the triumph over genocide in Europe. Ironically the anniversary occurs in the aftermath of genocide in Africa which claimed the lives of more than one million men, women, and children in the space of nine months. It was a tragedy made more painful by the criminal failure of the international community to take action to prevent its occurrence or to deal effectively with its consequences.

Reflecting on the achievements of the last 50 years, some might be forgiven for feeling that the UDHR offers little cause for celebration. That is not to say that there have not been victories over that period. But in spite of them, the conditions of the people of the Third World are desperate. The social gains of independence from colonial rule have been rapidly eroded, as economies collapse under the combined weight of debt and structural adjustment programmes. Meanwhile the rich get richer, the poor poorer. While the average income of the top 20 per cent of the world's population was 30 times higher than that of the bottom 20 per cent in 1960, by 1994 it was 78 times higher. Nearly one quarter of the world's people have an income that is less than US$1 a day — a proportion which is rising. Each year, the UN Development Programme (UNDP) calculates the human-poverty index, based on a series of measures including the prevalence of illiteracy, life expectancy, degree of malnourishment, and access to health services and safe water. In 1996 over one billion people fell below this point, the position deteriorating in 30 countries; these were the worst figures since UNDP began calculating the index in 1990 (UNDP, 1997). Development, it seems, is failing.

The anniversary occurs in the context also of increasing number of conflicts in Africa. Such conflicts are frequently portrayed as being the result of apparently 'irreconcilable ethnic differences' which not only pervade the continent today, but are also viewed as intrinsic to its history. Mass violations of human rights are seen, therefore, as an 'inevitable', if regrettable, consequence of these 'ethnic' conflicts.

Growing impoverishment and conflict, and the increasing incidence of apparently ethnically based violence, have a common origin. They are the products of a process which began as popular mobilisation against oppression and exploitation — a movement for rights — which ultimately became warped into a process which became known as 'development'. Far from helping to overturn the social relations which reproduced injustice and impoverishment, the main focus of development was to discover and implement solutions which would enable the victims to cope with impoverishment, or find 'sustainable' solutions for living with it. Over the last few decades, development NGOs have played a critical role in that process. Their roles have gradually changed from articulating an embryonic anti-imperialism to becoming an integral part of postcolonial social formations.

Africa is a lens which discloses the general characteristics of development. The features are not particular to that continent. They are to be found also in Asia and Latin America, albeit tinted by the specific histories of those regions. By focusing on Africa, the complex inter-relationships between rights, poverty, and development can be revealed, with the knowledge that those in Asia and Latin America will hear resonances which chime with their own experience.

This paper discusses the historical processes which transformed the struggle for rights in Africa into an arena for a particular model of development. That model itself is, it is argued, the cause of some of the major conflicts which have arisen in Africa, including those which led to the genocide in Central Africa. The role of NGOs in the depoliticisation of poverty is examined in the context of these developments.

From rights to 'development'

The story of independence in Africa is frequently portrayed as the story of the machinations of nationalist leaders in mobilising popular agitations against the colonial powers, and their prowess at the negotiation tables. What is frequently omitted in such an account is the story of what was happening on the ground, in the forests, villages, urban ghettos, classrooms, and workplaces, in spite of — not because of — these leaders.

The period following the Second World War witnessed an unprecedented level of popular mobilisations and the formation of numerous popular organisations throughout the continent. Such developments were informed at the grassroots not so much (at least, not initially) by desires for abstract concepts of self-determination, but more by struggles for basic rights that we're part of the everyday experiences of the majority. The initial spark for most people was provided by the desire to organise to claim rights to food, shelter, water, land, education, and health care, and the rights to freedom of association, freedom of speech, freedom of movement, freedom from harassment and other forms of human-rights abuses. Different social groups focused on issues with which they were themselves most preoccupied — aspiring local capitalists organising to oppose restraints on their freedom to accumulate, while squatters organised to claim their rights of access to land.

It was these civil agitations (urban and rural) which provided the impetus to the liberation movements. Political independence was achieved through the ability of the leadership of the nationalist movements to capture the imagination of these formations, uniting them in the promise that only through self-determination and independence could all their aspirations be achieved.

The struggle for independence in Africa was thus informed, at the base, by the experience of struggles against oppression and brutal exploitation experienced in everyday life. These struggles...