The Sunday News
Africa must grow here. Africa must develop there. These are demands that are advanced by the United Nations, International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and other agencies that the international system has appointed as caretakers of African economic and political progress. Yet there is a stubborn possibility that the way we have been taught to understand and pursue development is wrong.
As wrong as our imposed understanding of the fetish of democracy. As such the regular celebrations of Sustainable Development Goals that are regularly championed by the United Nations might actually be the funeral of the Global South.
Development as growth which has been the fundamental message from the UN, the IMF and the World Bank might be, not only wrong, but also a dangerous prescription that is based on a false diagnosis of the problem of underdevelopment and poverty in the world.
What if the drive for growth and more growth is adding fuel to climate change that is threatening to bring the planet and all forms of life to an end? Today I engage with Jason Hickel, an anthropologist at the London School of Economics, who thinks that we should “forget developing poor countries” and understand “it is time to de-develop rich countries.” For me its profitless to agree or disagree with Hickel, except for academic reasons. The point is to engage with his discourse in order to learn and unlearn, and to test our old assumptions. Old assumptions might be comfortable but in their comfort, they may conceal many dangers and falsehoods.
The problem of overdevelopment
I have always, after many other political analysts and commentators of the Global South, noted that Western power and prosperity are directly connected to the theft of resources and slavish labour of the Global South over the centuries. To catch up with western development, economic and political, might require that the Global South commits the same crimes of slavery and colonialism that the colonialists and imperialists committed. Western wealth is the proceeds of crime, in other words. A robber and a looter may not be erected as example of wealth-making and progress if ethics still matter.
Hickel complains that because of its stolen economic growth and development, the West is obsessed with demanding that countries of the Global South should grow as well. Yet growth has not happened, and where it has happened it has not improved the lives of the people of the Global South. In the West where development by growth is supposed to have happened, they are “overshooting the planet’s bio-capacity by more than 50% each year.” They have “already grown too much,” far more than what the earth can hold and carry. It is telling that “scientists are now telling us that we are blowing past planetary boundaries at breakneck speed.” There is overgrowth and “overconsumption in rich countries.” As a result, Hickel thinks that “instead of pushing poor countries to catch up with rich ones, we should be getting rich countries to catch down” and reduce their growth and depletion of the planet.
SDG
This argument is supported by leading economist, Peter Edward. In other words, we are encouraged not to look at the West as a leader and an example when it comes to development options. Following the example of the West will turn us into criminals, enslavers, colonialists and imperialists that become rich and powerful out of proceeds of crime. The western example will also lead us into irresponsible economic practices that will deplete the planet faster.
The West is a wrong model and not a role model when it comes to progress on earth. The power and prosperity of the West, political and economic, is at the dear expense of other parts of the world and the planet. It is for that reason that the West should not be barking at Africa demanding radical measures at curbing climate change because they are responsible for the problem in the first place.
De-Westernising: Can we unlearn the West?
The principal argument of Peter Edward that Hickel valorises is that “we should look at societies where people live long and happy lives at relatively low levels of income and consumption not as basket cases that need to be developed towards western models, but exemplars of efficient living.” Cuba, Peru, Ecuador, Honduras and Nicaragua are recognised as countries where efficient living has been achieved, where there is no excess income and no excess consumption.
The idea is that some countries that are regarded as underdeveloped are actually “appropriately developed,” it is time “we need to start calling on rich countries to justify their excesses.” The overconsumption in high income countries is putting the planet at risk, besides eating on behalf of the billions of people in developing countries that have no access to resources of basic survival. There is a need for a radical shift from the way we look at progress and life itself. Good living should not be defined by excesses that are extracted at the expense of the life of the planet and the many forms of life that depend on a healthy and balanced earth for their survival. Clearly, “what is certain is that GDP as a measure is not going to get us there and we need to get rid of it.” All along we might just have been chasing misdevelopment thinking that it is the best wayfoward. Tellingly, “either we slow down voluntarily, or climate change will do it for us, we cannot go on ignoring the laws of nature” and think we will get away with it. The big job of “rethinking our theory of progress is not only an ecological imperative, but also a development one.” If we continue following the Western example, we are warned that that the planet will start fighting back and we wont like it if we will even be alive to like or dislike anything.
Developmentalism: The west is the worst
Hickel’s averment is that there is development that is alternative to the western model and paradigm of development. This argument reminds me of Boaventura de Soussa Santos’s observation that “western understanding of the world is not the only understanding of the world” because there are many other understandings of the world out there in the Global South. Western economics and developmentalism may actually be an unwanted fundamentalism that should be avoided for true progress to take place.
True progress that is not punitive to the planet and endangering to all forms of life on earth.
The West might actually need to be the follower and not the leader when it comes to human progress.
That there is no alternative to western economics and developmentalism is an artefact of western propaganda that must be dismissed if we are to think courageously about progress. Our education must be based on unlearning western economics and developmentalism in order to re-learn decolonial approaches to more liberating political and economic futures of the earth. It is a decolonial argument to make that there is more economics and more politics out there than what the West has taught and imposed on us.
Cetshwayo Zindabazezwe Mabhena writes from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in South Africa. Contacts: [email protected].
