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Zambia After Twenty Years: Recession and Repression Without Revolution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 August 2021

Timothy M. Shaw
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Extract

Zambia’s contemporary experience of recession without resolution is, alas, quite typical of the majority of African states over the decade; for since the celebration of ten years of independence in 1974, its national income has been in almost continuous decline. But this economic decay has had an uneven impact, between both time periods and social groups: occasional injections of foreign aid or loans have been permissive of relative affluence for elements in the bourgeoisie and labor aristocracy along the line-of-rail. The full impact of negative growth has been felt in the more distant rural areas and among the peasantry and the unemployed.

Type
Research Article
Information
African Issues , Volume 12 , Issue 1-2 , Spring/Summer 1982 , pp. 53 - 58
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1982 

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References

Notes

An earlier and shorter version of this essay appeared as “The political economy of Zambia,” Current History, March 1982, 125-128 and 144.

1. On the incidence and origin of such decline see OAU, Lagos Plan of Action for the Economic Development of Africa 1980-2000 (Geneva: International Institute for Labour Studies, 1981) and IBRD, Accelerated Development in Sub-Saharan Africa: an agenda for action (Washington: World Bank, 1981). For comparisons of these analyses and prescriptions see Shaw, Timothy M., “OAU: the forgotten economic debate,” West Africa, 3375, 12 April 1982, 983–984 Google Scholar and “Which way Africa? ECA and IBRD responses to the continental crisis,” (Uppsala: Scandinavian Institute of African Studies, 1982).

2. But not yet anarchic; see Shaw, Timothy M., “Beyond Underdevelopment: the anarchic state in Africa,” African Studies Association Conference, Washington, D.C., November 1982 Google Scholar.

3. For an overview of these problems see Shaw, Timothy M. and Angiin, Douglas G. “Zambia and the crises of liberation,” in Carter, Gwendolen M. and O’Meara, Patrick (eds.), Southern Africa: the continuing crisis (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1979), 199–222 Google Scholar. For a succinct introduction to national history and society see Kaplan, Irving (ed.), Zambia: a country study (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1979)Google Scholar.

4. Holman, Michael, “Zambia,” in Africa Guide, 1981 (Saffron Walden: World of Information, 1980), 402 Google Scholar.

5. Ibid., 395.

6. See Martin, David and Johnson, Phyllis, The Struggle for Zimbabwe: the Chimurenga War (Harare: Zimbabwe Publishing House, 1981)Google Scholar.

7. On this period see Angiin, Douglas S. and Shaw, Timothy M., Zambia’s Foreign Policy: studies in diplomacy and dependence (Boulder: Westview, 1979)Google Scholar, passim.

8. World Bank, World Development Report, 1981 (New York: OUP, 1981), 78 Google Scholar.

9. On this decline in industrial output because of reduced raw material imports see Accelerated Development in Sub-Saharan Africa, 19. An on the general, as well as particular, difficulties facing industrialization in Eastern Africa see Gulhati, Ravi and Sekhar, Uda “Industrial strategy for late-starters: the experience of Kenya, Tanzania and Zambia,” World Bank Staff Working Paper, Number 457, (Washington, May 1981)Google Scholar.

10. Africa Research Bulletin, (political, social and cultural series) 18 (1), 15 February 1981, 5939.

11. “Zambia: a coup in every plot,” The Economist, 1 August 1981, 38.

12. Accelerated Development in Sub-Saharan Africa, 29.

13. World Development Report, 1981, 79.

14. “Zambia: a coup in every plot,” 37.

15. Africa Research Bulletin, 18 (6), 15 July 1981, 6089.

16. On the 1971 and 1976 incidents see Burawoy, Michael, “Consciousness and contradiction: a study of student protest in Zambia,” British Journal of Sociology, 27 (1), 1976, 78-97CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Lulal, Y. G-M., “Determinants of Third World student political activism in the seventies: the case of Zambia,” in Altbach, Philip G. (ed.), Student Politics: perspectives for the eighties (Metuchen: Scarecrow, 1981), 234–266 Google Scholar.

17. For an uncritical apologia for the Zambian state by the first Professor of Human Relations at UNZA see Hatch, John, “Zambia: a special Third World case,” Contemporary Review, 240 (1392)Google Scholar, January 1982. Cf. a somewhat more critical philosophical discourse by Mwaipaya, Paul A., African Development: a critical analysis of the fundamental theoretical principle of Zambian Humanism (Washington: University Press of America, 1981)Google Scholar.

18. Africa Research Bulletin, 18 (2), 15 March 1981, 5962.

19. Accelerated Development in Sub-Saharan Africa, 20.

20. On this fractional debate see Shaw, Timothy M., “Dilemmas of Dependence and (Under) Development: conflicts and choices in Zambia’s present and prospective foreign policy,” Africa Today, 26 (4), Fourth Quarter 1979, 43-65Google Scholar.

21. World Development Report, 1981, 79.

22. “Zambia: a coup in every plot,” 38.

23. Cf. Hatch, “Zambia: a special Third World case,” Hitchcock, Bob, “Southern Africa: detente may be dead but Kaunda keeps marching on,” New African, 177, June 1982, 22-23Google Scholar, and “Zambia: united reaction to Kaunda-Botha talks,” Africa Now, 14 June 1981, 37-38.