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Intellectual Lynch-mobs

An obstacle to progress

Repressive actions and Human Rights violations were not invented in Africa. Repressive

actions and Human Rights violations on the part of African governments cannot and
should not be swept to one side by the use of this 'explanation' or that 'excuse'.

But development in Africa will produce pressures that can so easily produce societal

conflict and instability. And any form of accelerated development will surely intensify
these. And so we know from the outset that there will be problems.

Are you in the business of 'human rights' or are you in the business of improving 'human
rights' in Africa's least developed countries?

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Where were you ?

Throughout these pages, you will see certain recurrent themes
 The bludgeoning by Bretton Woods Institutions in the dogmatic imposition of 'structural
adjustments', 'conditionalities' and other such.

(Even after decades of pushback from all aspects of African political and societal
Leadership,'pushback' widely supported by eminent INGOs, and more latterly by academic studies,
Bretton Woods Institutions use one of the most distasteful euphemisms in the form of 'reduced policy
space' as their admission of guilt in this)
 The apparent absence of any form of 'measuring tool' to inform Bretton Woods Institutions
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and the major 'zuŋ u aid donors how to phase in their 'demands'. How to make sure that
their 'demands' are commensurate with a particular African country's ability to absorb these

As set out in Underdeveloped Africa, leaders of Africa's least developed countries face a
bewildering range of Challenges, Realities and Distortions when trying to steer their

country's development.
'Debt Overhang' coupled with 'Illicit Finance Flows' inevitably leads to Low Tax

Revenues and the need to meet external foreign currency obligations inevitably leads to a

vicious cycle of Rolling Power Blackouts, Unpaid Wages, Ghost Workers - and a whole range
of 'self-serving' actions as people and organisations take steps to 'look after themselves'

How can any government be expected to deliver in these circumstances ?

And when governments in Africa's least developed countries fail to deliver those ever-
present societal potential 'fault-lines' can open up and create a 'push me, pull you', which in

a school playground can be dealt with by the adults, but which in a far-off African country