From a crooked angle of the developed global north countries, the state of underdevelopment in the ‘postcolonial’ environments results from primitive lifestyles.
‘What does this mean?’ You quip! It means that the global north, in the majority, believes that the ‘postcolonial’ environments – especially Afrika: utilises outdated lifestyles which do not match the needs of the fast-paced contemporary 21st century lifestyles.
In our journey discussing life, politics and economies in the ‘postcolonial’ environments, it can be said that this ‘notion’ is both true and false. It is clear that the underdevelopment of the ‘postcolonial’ environments, in Afrika in particular, resulted from a systematic and systemic colonial and neo-colonial strategies, apathy and blind greed on the part of the intellectuals and political figures.
To make sure that the colonial economic structures of domination remains, we saw how the proponents of global capitalist economy keep on updating such systems. Colonialism is therefore fluid and up-to-date with the ever changing times. Alas! colonialism is as ‘evergreen’, discreet, canny and brutal as ever. It is never outdated.
When the SAPs, the Washington Consensus and other strategies became ‘obsolete’ for the purposes they were formulated, a new cliché was found. This time, it was the manufacturing of the civil society and production of non-governmental organisations (NGOs). In a twinkle of an eye, came yet another set of upgrade, the social capital.
In the latter concept, the global north imposed foreign policies, taking the bottom-up governance approach in the ‘postcolonial’ environments as well as other nation-states in the global south. This comes after the NGOs style of top-bottom formula failed. Just as the previous strategies.
This ‘new’ strategy was the most direct method of deculturisation on the one hand, and making governments in the ‘postcolonial’ environments irrelevant to its citizenry on the other. History reclaiming its place yet again!
In the midst of all these system upgrades, geared towards ‘alleviating’ poverty in the global south, the term “developing economies” or “Third World” has not changed! A glance at Asian countries and China, even though economically they seem to be doing better than other countries in the global south, they are nevertheless still encroached by poverty of a kind.
With a prior example of Mwalimu Nyerere’s Tanzania in Ujamaa regime, the story is so different in Argentina. The American economic conspiracy, which was supposed to help rekindle faith with the financial actors led to the isolation of Argentina. Left to smoulder in the heat of economic crisis, with one aim: to come back on its knees pledging allegiance to the architect of economic hitmen and women.
This is similar with the situation witnessed in today’s Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe. In capsule form: developing underdevelopment, a classic way of making dependency scenarios in the global south. Hence, the impoverishment of the developing countries remains to be “a historical pattern of relationships”, Hite and Roberts (2007).
What seems as social, political and economic silver bullet for the global south’s economies in the eyes of the greed-filled global north is ignorance of the highest level to Gunder Frank (1986) and Fernando Cardoso (1979). In their views, the imperialistic global north rushes into formulating ‘adequate’ development theories and policies without a clear understanding the roots of underdevelopment in the ‘postcolonial’ environments.
I dare say that the global north really understand the roots of underdevelopment of the global south. However, since this is how they keep their economic domination they bamboozle the global south into believing that these are new occurrences. And the global south is truly fooled if not foolish.
The massive introduction of new development theories, formulations and transformations of economic policies had twofold objectives: to act as a divide and rule tool among local communities, and sell-out central government organs in expanding global capitalist economic territories.
Even though there are well informed human capacities in the ‘postcolonial’ environments, there is still widespread ‘ignorance’ on “unequal terms of trade between exporters of raw materials and exporters of manufactured materials”, Valenzuela’s (1998).
The practical implementation is evident in the manner in which State organs are used to protect the interests of foreign businesses at the expense of the wellbeing of the citizenry. Even more puzzling, is how the State in the ‘postcolonial’ environments and elsewhere in the global south, still shudder at the sound of the colonial master whose rule ‘fell’ over half a century ago.
