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Debt and the One-Party State in Zambia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Kenneth Good
Kenneth Good
Affiliation:
Visiting Senior Lecturer, School of Social and Economic Development, University of the South Pacific, Suva, Fiji.
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Extract

In the debate over relief for Africa and the Third World, the situation of dictatorial, corrupt, and mismanaged régimes is often subsumed with the rest. It is rather uncritically accepted that indebtedness chiefly results from the impact of international factors, such as falling commodity prices, International Monetary Fund conditionalities, and rising metropolitan interest rates. The independent national state, whatever its policies and form, is seen as simply the passive victim of such forces, and little or no differentiation is made between the régime and the groups and classes of the domestic society.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 27 , Issue 2 , June 1989 , pp. 297 - 313
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1989

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References

1 For an elaboration of this approach, see George, Susan, A Fate Worse than Debt (Harmondsworth, 1988).Google Scholar

1 Although the focus of this article is on the recent and present functioning of the Zambian one-party state, its origins lay in the fairly smooth transition from colonial to post-colonial authoritarianism through the 1960s, albeit bereft of the bureaucratic capacity which has strengthened it in East Asia and Latin America. According to Jackson, Robert H. and Rosberg, Carl G., Personal Rule in Black Africa (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1982), p. 30,Google Scholar ‘personal rule in Africa is characterized by the seeming paradox of relative autonomy or freedom for the ruler and his clique to make policies but great constraints and incapacity to implement or enforce them’. For a study of bureaucratic authoritarianism, see Cumings, Bruce, ‘The Abortive Abertura: South Korea in the light of Latin American experience’, in New Left Review (London), 173, 01–02 1989, pp. 5–32.Google Scholar

2 Times of Zambia (Lusaka), 30 08 1984,Google Scholar and Republic of Zambia, Report of the Committee on Public Accounts (Lusaka, 1987), p. 39.Google Scholar

The official exchange rate for the Kwacha was $1 = K2·2 in late 1985, but after the introduction of the auctioning system in December of that year it immediately fell to around $1 = K6 and continued downwards to reach $1 = K21 in May 1987, when the Government revalued the currency at the fixed rate of $1 = K8.

1 Times of Zambia, 25 June and 27 July 1985.

2 Zambia Daily Mail (Lusaka), 23 11 1987.Google Scholar

3 Times of Zambia, 22 August 1987.

4 Ibid. 14 December 1987.

5 Ibid. 7 February 1986.

6 Republic of Zambia, Report of the Auditor-General for the Financial Year Ended 31 December 1986 (Lusaka, 1987).Google Scholar

1 Ibid. p. 55.

2 Ibid. p. 58.

3 Zambia Daily Mail, 8 September 1987.

4 Ibid. 17 November 1987.

5 Ibid. 26 October and 1 December 1987.

1 The Economist (London), 8 06 1985,Google Scholar and South (London), 07 1985.Google Scholar

2 Times of Zambia, 11 February 1985 and 4 May 1987, and The Economist, 12 September 1987, 20 February, and 18 and 20 June 1988.

3 Times of Zambia, 11 February 1985.

4 Ibid. 2 December 1986.

1 The Economist, 8 March 1986, and Zambia Daily Mail, 13 March 1986.

2 Times of Zambia, 24 December 1986.

3 ‘Business Review’, in Ibid. 30 December 1986.

4 Times of Zambia and Zambia Daily Mail, 17 February 1987.

5 Zambia Daily Mail, 28 June and 9 December 1986, and Times of Zambia, 18 November 1986 and 12 February 1988.

1 Report of the Committee on Public Accounts, pp. 109–11, and Zambia Daily Mail, 18 July 1986.

2 Zambia Daily Mail, 21 September 1987, and Times of Zambia, 31 December 1987.

3 Times of Zambia 21 November 1987.

4 Ibid. 8 June 1987.

5 Ibid. 14 March 1988.

6 Ibid. 10 February 1987. Harold Messenger also said that ‘the only thing donors can do is to present options and talk about their consequences’.

1 For further consideration of these moves, see Good, Kenneth, ‘Zambia: back into the future’, in Third World Quarterly (London), 10, 1, 01 1988, pp. 37–53.Google Scholar

2 Zambia Daily Mail, 18 July and 26 November 1987.

3 Britain had suggested two months earlier that this might occur if the reform programme were abandoned; Times of Zambia, 14 March 1987.

4 Zambia Daily Mail, 28 September 1987, and Times of Zambia, 21 November 1987.

1 Times of Zambia, 3 February 1988, and Zambia Daily Mail, 4 February 1988.

2 Times of Zambia, 16 March 1988.

3 Zambia Daily Mail, 6 and 8 January 1988.

4 Times of Zambia, 20 January 1988.

5 Ibid. 27 January 1988.

6 Zambia Daily Mail, 17 February 1988.

7 Ibid. 17 March 1988.

8 See Good, Kenneth, ‘The Reproduction of Weakness in the State and Agriculture: Zambian experience’, in African Affairs (London), 85, 339, 04 1986, pp. 239–65,Google Scholar and ‘Systemic Agricultural Mismanagement: the 1985 “bumper” harvest in Zambia’, in The Journal of Modern African Studies (Cambridge), 24, 2, 06 1986, pp. 257–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

1 Times of Zambia, 22 October, and Zambia Daily Mail, 16 November 1987.

2 Times of Zambia, 15 March 1988.

3 Report of the Auditor-General, pp. 1 and 139.

4 Report of the Committee on Public Accounts, p. 2.

5 On the powers of the President, see Chikulo, B. C., ‘Electoral Politics in Zambia's Second Republic’, University of Zambia, Lusaka, 1986.Google Scholar For an analysis of the direct links between President Mobutu's dictatorship and that country's economic decline and indebtedness, see Callaghy, T. M., The State-Society Struggle (New York, 1984), pp. 194–6.Google Scholar

6 Detention without trial in Zambia is broadly considered in Mwaanga, V. J., The Other Society: a detainee's diary (Lusaka, 1986).Google Scholar

1 Times of Zambia, 24 September 1988.

2 Sydney Morning Herald, 18 October 1988.

3 Times of Zambia, 5 August 1987.

1 Report of the Auditor-General, pp. 67–9.

2 Ibid.

3 Zambia Daily Mail, 24 August and 3 October 1987.

4 Times of Zambia, 12 February 1987. It was subsequently stated in Ibid. 9 September 1987 that the aircraft had been purchased for Kaunda by Zambia Consolidated Copper Mines.

5 The Guardian Weekly (London), 14 02 1988.Google Scholar

1 World Bank, World Development Report, 1985 (Washington, D.C., 1985), p. 228.Google Scholar

2 Makgetla, Neva Seidman, ‘Theoretical and Practical Implications of I.M.F. Conditionality in Zambia’, in The Journal of Modern African Studies, 24, 3, 09 1986, p. 402.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Republic of Zambia, Budget Address, January 1988 (Lusaka), p. 4.Google Scholar

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5 Budget Address, 1988, p. 5.

6 Assessments of Juma Nyirenda, in Times of Zambia, 22 February 1988.

7 Ghai, Dharam and Radwan, Samir (eds.), Agrarian Policies and Rural Poverty in Africa (Geneva, 1983), p. 14.Google Scholar

1 Times of Zambia, 23 November 1987.

2 Ibid. 17 and 26 October 1987.

3 Zambia Daily Mail, 8 January 1988.

4 Ibid. 31 March 1988.

5 Times of Zambia, 16 and 26 October and 5 December 1987.

6 Ibid. 14 January 1988.

1 Ibid. 17 March 1988. Lupunga and Chiwaya were among the sitting M.P.s ousted by the leadership in October 1988.

2 Zambia Daily Mail, 24 March 1988.

3 Ibid. 21 August 1987.

4 Sunday Times of Zambia (Lusaka), 21 02 1988.Google Scholar

5 Times of Zambia, 14 April 1987.

1 Ibid. 26 October 1987, and Zambia Daily Mail, 25 January and 12 February 1988.

2 Times of Zambia, 7 May 1987.

3 Zambia Daily Mail, 9 May 1987.

4 Times of Zambia, 16 June 1987.

5 Ibid. 7 March 1988.

6 Sunday Times of Zambia, 21 February 1988.

7 The Economist, 30 April 1988.

1 Manfred Maxneff, a Chilean economist, has called for the development of a new society in third-world countries that ‘learns from experience – which a repressive, authoritarian society can never do’. Quoted by Walter Schwarz, in The Guardian Weekly, 3 July 1988.

2 Despite George's portrayal of debt as a new form of neo-colonialism in the Third World and talk of ‘financial low-intensity conflict’, she seems ready to support the termination of lending in some cases – for example, in order to end the morass in Zaïre, ‘get rid of Mobutu by turning off the money machine’. Op. cit. pp. 5, 117, and 233.