Volume 33 2006 Issue
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Review of African Political Economy No.108:175-184 © ROAPE Publications Ltd., 2006 North Africa: Power, Politics & Promise Ray Bush & Jeremy Keenan It is six years since this journal dedicated an issue to power and politics in North Africa. Number 82 in 1999 explored the significance of North Africa which is often seen to be different from the rest of the continent and also why the region is integral to it. It looked at themes of economic reform, stalled political liberalisation and failed transition to independence for Western Sahara. Many of the contemporary themes most pressing for peoples in North Africa remain the same. There have also been several alarming new developments notably around issues of labour, security and resources. In short, imperialist aggression and militarisation that we have witnessed in Iraq is also evident in its accelerated build-up in North Africa stretching from Western Sahara east to Djibouti. The issues of similarity that bedevil the opportunity for democratic economic development in North Africa relate to persistent, combined and uneven incorpora- tion of the region into global capitalism and the pull of globalisation. Here there is one issue that relates both to the continuity of past issues in the region and the contemporary new pressures that confront it. Central to the processes of (dis)incorporation, the power of capital and the dominance of international and local capitalist elites to shape national and regional development is the ability to access labour power, control its spatial and employment location and the ability for it to be socially reproduced with minimal cost and maximum security for employers. The role of migration from the region into Europe and also between countries in the region (and from sub-Saharan Africa), as relative economic power determines access to new sources of value, persists as a crucial motor for development. Control of labour as the sole source of value and political opposition to the power of the State continues to shape economic policy in the region. It received new impetus, however, after the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington. Europe’s, and more specifically the US’s security agenda, seeks to keep African labour in the continent for fear that it will contaminate order in Europe. Thus the emphasis by European ministers who speak on immigration is of the need to reduce ‘illegal’ entry, to regularise the immigration of skilled workers and to reduce the push factors encouraging migration to Europe by increasing aid to Africa. No mention of the loss of skills in Africa, of the centrality of remittances for families depending upon such flows and no mention of the contradiction between the free flow of goods, capital and services in a supposedly global world economy and the frontiers and barriers of entry to labour in Fortress Europe. European ministers use a language of rights to defend their national constituents and promise asylum for the persecuted. Yet they repeatedly fall short in delivering responsibility of governments to protect and ensure decent living conditions for those escaping persecution. European states fail repeatedly to also ensure security and safety for employed foreign workers and those who work in the twilight world ISSN 0305-6244 Print/1740-1720 Online/06/020175-10 DOI: 10.1080/03056240600842586 176 Review of African Political Economy of gang-masters and employment pimps. Many of these issues are referred to by the far-reaching essay by Baldwin-Edwards and they are pursued by Keenan. It remains the case that State policy in the region and the region’s political economy cannot be assessed without looking at the ongoing social crisis promoted by structural adjustment. Tadros provides an evocative and illuminating case study of a densely populated area of Cairo where access to health and education provision has been significantly and adversely affected by the economic reform agenda since 1991. She explores the extent of social upheaval and household distress experienced by a large community that struggles to access efficient and caring health and education services. The essay conjures a dramatic feel for life that is important to capture at a time when most discussion of the impact of reforms seems ironically not to include references to the people who are suffering shortfalls in service provision. The essay by Tadros is also important for another reason; namely, that most debate among orthodox commentators on North Africa, and especially the broader Middle East North African (MENA) region, talk favourably about the region’s ability to keep widespread poverty at bay and promote policy that retains relatively equal income distribution. Poverty in the region is less acute than it is in sub-Saharan Africa. And the pace of immiseration is slower than in other regions of the world, partly because of safety nets from the State, now challenged by the consequences of economic reform. A mushrooming of Islamic welfare organisations has also protected the most poor from worsening health and a lack of education provision, thereby subsidising inefficient and fragmented State provision. Work much cited by the influential Arab Human Development Report stresses MENA’s comparatively low incidence of poverty for a developing region, defined as $1 or $2 a day. These measures indicate an increase in poverty in the MENA region from 22 per cent living on $2 and 1.8 per cent on $1 per day in 1996 (Adams and Page, 2001:24) to 29.9 per cent and 2.1 per cent respectively in 1998. The UNDP Report explains relatively low levels of poverty in the region as being the result of a history of egalitarian distribution practices (UNDP, 2002:90) and the ability of the poor during hard times to draw on income and assets from the relatively prosperous period 1970-1985. Yet, the situation is worsening. The region may also have some of the world’s most equal income distribution, the result of high shares of income accruing to the bottom quintile of income distribution, namely 7.2 per cent, the same proportion that accrues to this group in the OECD. Nevertheless, even defenders of economic reform recognise that relieving the vulnerability of the poor is a Herculean task. Egypt, for example, needs to create 900,000 jobs a year just to employ new entrants into the job market, and this is without coping with existing underemployed and unemployed in a population of 68.5 million. And globalisation does not offer labour intensive employment opportunities, in Egypt or elsewhere. But there is much wrong with the way in which poverty is assessed in North Africa. Real Purchasing Power Parity for the average citizen fell between 1975-1998 from 21.3 per cent to 13.9 per cent, or one-seventh of that of the average person in an OECD country (UNDP, 2002:89). Uneven development in the region has also seen living standards fall in Morocco, Egypt and Sudan and there have been increases in income inequality particularly between town and countryside. It is especially noticeable that commentators on the region seem to have forgotten ‘crucial issues of money and power’ (Le Vine, 2002:2), and such has been the ascendancy of neo-conservative North Africa: Power, Politics & Promise 177 policy-making that there seems to be an amnesia that the growth figures of the 1960s and 1970s, under authoritarian populist regimes, were certainly as high, if not better, than in the contemporary period. Such has been the hegemony of neo- liberal thinking that peasants and workers have become invisible in discussion of the politics and society of the region. To mention these social forces and classes would mean referring to a period of populism and the social contract of the State delivering its responsibilities to the poor that it can no longer meet (Beinin, 2001:147-8). A further issue that continues from debate in this journal is the failure of political liberalisation. Egyptian political life is in turmoil. Demonstrations supporting the independence of the judiciary and support for two judges who have argued for the autonomy of the judiciary from the executive branch have offered a real challenge to the authority of the Egyptian State. Street demonstrations, mass arrests and running battles between internal security forces and protesters have led to optimistic opposition press headlines like The Regime Falls and Expecting a sudden collapse of the regime. But how the increased frequency of demonstrations has emerged in the region’s most populous country, and one that is the most closely allied along with Israel to the US, needs exploring further. There might be optimism in the air about ‘regime change’ but there is also a feeling that the Mubarak regime et al. will not accept even limited political reform. In September 1999 we noted the optimism of Hosni Mubarak’s third unchallenged Presidential campaign. He promised reform and called for greater political participation to accompany economic liberalisation, but the old guard, literally the aging male monopoly’s grip on power, continued. On the eve of his fifth term election in 2005, it is unsurprising that Mubarak again promised reform. But on this occasion there were nine rival candidates, although only two, Ayman Nour of the Ghad and Noaman Gomaa of the Wafd, were considered serious contenders. A multi-candidate presidential election resulted from US pressure, but at the same time, Washington was appalled at the arrest and shameful treatment of Nour. He lost his appeal in May 2006 and was sentenced to five years in prison for what most believe are trumped up fraud charges. A local Cairo-based grassroots movement for constitutional change also added to reform pressure. Continuing in power, the ruling National Democratic Party begun during the end of 2005 to try and reconstitute itself as a reforming organisation.