The new partnership for Africa's development: Social, economic and environmental contradictions

In August-September 2002, 190 heads of state and 60,000 delegates will attend the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg. Under South Africa's leadership, a "New Deal" is being proposed for North-South relations on global environment and poverty issues. Top G-8 politicians, managers of international financial institutions, UN bureaucrats, and high-profile capitalists all claim they want to open up globalization "so the benefits can reach everyone." The evidence thus far is that "equitable and sustainable growth" and Africa's "rapid integration into the world economy" are mutually exclusive. Although Africa's share of world trade declined during the 1980s-1990s, the volume of exports increased, while the value of sub-Saharan exports was cut in half relative to the value of imports from the North.⁴ Such marginalization occurred not because of lack of integration, but because of too much, of the wrong sort. For while integrating more rapidly into the world economy via "export-led growth," as demanded by Washington, Africa's ability to grow - either equitably and sustainably, or even inequitably - actually declined, in comparison to the period prior to structural adjustment. Thus, the reform strategy will fail, although not because of Pretoria's lack of positionality and international credibility to carry out Nepad and win endorsements from global elites. Instead, the failure is already emanating from the very project of global-reformism itself, namely, Mbeki's underlying philosophy and incorrect analysis, ineffectual practical strategies, uncreative and inappropriate demands and counter-productive alliances. But if, in the process, Mbeki cannot establish a new framework of interaction with the rest of the world, and instead merely fronts for a slightly modified residual version of "global apartheid," we are obligated to suggest more hopeful analyses, strategies, demands, and alliances as alternatives.