The Politics of One-Sided Adjustment in Africa

Politics has been defined variously as organizing for human projects, struggle for power, or about who gets what, when, and how. Organizing for human projects gives politics a broader spectrum involving whatever humans do, the notion of struggle for power narrows the definition to the arena of authority in society, and the notion of who gets what, when, and how links politics to economics (the production and distribution of wealth) as close allies. The politics of one-sided adjustment in Africa embraces all three of these definitions. The author expresses the view that structural adjustment in Africa does not conform to natural justice, is one-sided, and not primarily concerned with solutions to economic problems in Africa but about organizing for human projects in which decisions about who gets what, when, and how have become the source of the power struggle between the Bretton Woods institutions and African leaders. This struggle may be conceived as an attempt by the Bretton Woods institutions to recolonize Africa on behalf of their allies while African leaders strive to resist that new form of colonialism. The allies of the Bretton Woods organizations are the Western governments, international businesses, the commercial banks of the West, and some neoliberal intellectuals. Colonialism is a relationship in which the weaker people in one country are subject to the authority, dictatorship, and control of more powerful people from outside the territory of that country. In a colonial relationship, the colonizer is not accountable to the relatively weak colonized people and may do whatever it pleases