Page 51 - Msingi Afrika Magazine Issue 4

ECONOMY ECONOMY

opment would have commenced African population purports to resources together to build and
much earlier than it did. But they live under the value systems of care about their neighbors and
were not. Instead, preexisting in- Western capitalism, whilst many family members”. This suggests
dustries were almost all eradicat- Africans still feel that where that what is central in the whole
ed by the importation of cheap they belong is in the traditional debate is the importance and es-
and even better substitutes from communal setting that is mostly sence of culture.
Europe and India, while Africans dominated by traditional values. With Africans, culture is about
were driven out of the mining in- The traditional African econom- how the past must interact with
dustry as it became an exclusive ic world remains foreign to the the future. It is about how social
preserve of Europeans. This ne- Western, urban economy. These values are transmitted and indi-
glect of industrialization, destruc- two worlds have remained sep- viduals are made to be part of a
tion of the existing industries and arate because their values are society.
handicrafts in Africa, and elimina- not compatible. The emphasis on
tion of Africans from the mining community that has dominated
field further explain Africa’s pres- traditional community-based eco-
ent technological backwardness. nomic relations is contradictory to Africa does not benefit
Prof. Herbert Vilakazi (2001), modern economic relations built from Western capitalism
writing in the New Agenda journal on Western individualistic values. because it has failed
(a South African Journal of Social Whilst African traditional econom- to emulate the West in
and Economic Policy) of 2001 ic relations emphasise commu- how to produce capital,
had this to say: “We must realize nal well-being and individual be-
that what is called ‘economics’, longings, economic relations that and this is a fact that
as it is taught in our universities, are based on Western capitalism has been proven beyond
is simply a reflection of the eco- emphasise individual autonomy, any doubt.
nomic experiences of the White the individual pursuit for personal
community, which in itself is an gain and the primacy of rational
extension of the economic ex- choice. African communitarian
periences of developed Western values are making it impossible “
countries. The challenge for us in for modern capitalism to be inte-
Africa, is to develop a new eco- grated into traditional African life.
nomics, which shall be a reflec- Therefore, Western capitalism
tion of the economic experiences disrupted and distorted the Afri-
of the overwhelming majority of can normal way of life. An African
society, the African people…Our had to learn to be a white person,
economics must begin with an i.e. imbibing the Western values
accurate knowledge of the situa- and also keeps his African normal
tion and needs of the overwhelm- life – a clash of values, were and
ing majority of Africans in rural still are, inevitable. As a result it
and semi rural areas, and in the is an African who suffers because
townships of urban areas”. capitalism was not negotiated by
It is in this sense, that the Afrinom- was forced through his throats, as
ics Theory explores ways and part of colonization. It is, again, in
means of creating an econom- this sense that capitalism is either
ic-cultural synergy, which would replaced or adapted to the African
achieve an integral economy, that cultural milieu. That is why when
would, in turn, create an integral delivering his paper entitled “The
and holistic human person. End of African Socialism” in May
When Western capitalism was 1, 1990, at The Heritage Foun-
introduced in Africa, which was dation in the USA, Ayittey, posed
part of the colonisation process, this question: “Why impose on
Africans failed to reconcile their black Africans an economic sys-
culture with Western capitalism, tem which is alien to their cul-
hence capitalism failed or still ture? True, African peasants are
fails to thrive in an African setting. communalistic and socialistic
A significant percentage of the in the sense that they pool their

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