Teacher don’t teach me nonsense; the Bretton woods chieftains, corruption & austerity

It was the great Afrobeat maestro, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, or Abami Eda, for those that used to gyrate to the soul-lifting rhythm of his comprehensive show at the Africa Shrine, many years back, who sang that evergreen song; Teacher. He was of the opinion that government is the teacher of citizens, while “culture and tradition” are the teachers of government, but finally declared to the teacher that; “make you no teach me, I go know. Person you teach finish, yes, abi e don die o”. Looking closely at where most governments in the so-called Third World get their teachings from (and many countries in Europe are now getting similar lessons, in the “post-crisis” classes of the Great Recession), one cannot but see the rather surly faces of the two evil twins of Bretton Woods; the IMF & the World Bank.

The lessons they teach come in the high street language of neo-classical economics, but at their crux are diagnoses and prognosis that they claim are unfaultable. The main reasons why countries get themselves into economic predicaments, we are told, are poor judgments of the rulers and corruption. The way out of such quagmires, they insist, must always be paved with austerity measures. Many Nigerians that were of age during the Second Republic might not remember the fine details of the Shagari government’s Economic Stabilization Act of 1981, but they will surely remember the era of “austerity measures” it introduced. The masses groaned under its weight, enjoined to “tighten their belts”, while those in the corridors of power kept popping champagne. Indeed, during that austerity period, Chief Adisa Akinloye, National Chairman of the ruling National Party of Nigeria had champagne specially made for him with his name on the label, shipped in from France, to mark his hitting the billion naira mark. This was at a time when one naira could buy you two dollars!

The fangs of the IMF got sharper in the mid-1980s into the 1990s in Nigeria, and across the underdeveloped world. The colour of its bloodied talons was spelt as SAP. The Structural Adjustment Programme ruthlessly instituted austerity measures, structurally adjusting belt tightening into the lives of the immense majority of our populations, as its cardinal programme. Corruption had to be stamped out and the correct judgments made in steering the economy aright, we were told. The neoliberal order that the IMF & World Bank have since then become the chief priests of, was unrolled. A leaner state meant privatization with millions thrown to the throttling mercilessness of unemployment. Funding of social services were drastically cut, truncating the minimal access to quality healthcare and education that the further impoverished immense majority of the population used to have some access to.

The Bretton Woods Institutions would later agree that their SAP strategy was a failure, as if it was not at all obvious from the very beginning, when all right thinking persons in Nigeria and the other 30 odd countries that implemented it in Africa protested to no avail. The Poverty Reduction Strategy they came out with after this acceptance of failure, and which was domesticated as the so-called National Economic Empowerment & Development Strategy (NEEDS) in Nigeria, with its self-fooling National Poverty Eradication Production adjunct, is merely SAP in new garbs. The lessons our Bretton woods class teachers continue to teach us, or more aptly put; continue to teach our hapless rulers, leaving us no choice in the matter, remains the same.

These teachers though, do anything but practice what they teach. They are like the preacher who asks you to do what s/he says and not what s/he does. The recent Sofitel hotel incident in New York, where the Managing Director of the IMF, Dominique Strauss-Khan (DSK as he is fondly called by his supporters), is alleged to have forced a 32 years old Guinean maid to give him a “blow job” raises a lot of questions beyond sexual propriety. It challenges the self-acclaimed toga of teacher that the IMF and World Bank have donned since the end of the second European World War.

Now, one could argue that it is unfair to judge a man’s sense of judgment on economic matters by the extent of rudeness of his crotch and not be far from being right. The argument could be further stretched; the institution a man (or woman) heads should not be crucified on the cross of her/his indiscretions. This too would not be a wrong line of argumentation. It would however be naïve to believe that some extent of moral uprightness is not to be expected of those who come to equity, supposedly with clean hands. The (sexual part of the) issue here is not that he slept with or tried to sleep with the woman concerned. DSK’s dalliances are legendary as it were, without his having to sleep in police custody before now. He had publicly apologised to his wife over an affair with a Hungarian subordinate of his and IMF had merely considered that as a case of an error of judgment.

In the present case, he is being accused of sexual molestation and harassment, bordering on (attempted) rape. One can’t but muse at the metaphorical side of it all. DSK; a 62-year old French President-in-waiting, (attempts to) rape(s) an African maid, 30 years his junior in a $3,000.00 a night hotel in the United States of America. Very much like the rape of Africa by Europe which started with the Trans-Atlantic slave trade and which still continues till today, with IMF, World Bank & WTO holding Africa’s thighs wide open for the endless and brutal violation.

This actually brings me to a cause for concern beyond the quite clearly not unimportant sexual part of this sleazy drama of the absurd. While IMF requests, nay, demands belt-tightening on the part of Greece, Ireland, Portugal, etc –very much as it commands African and other underdeveloped countries- its chieftains live like kings and lords, in $3,000.00 per night hotels! Why wouldn’t a DSK as IMF’s king of kings see himself as being above the laws and moralities of mere mortals?

Perhaps the morale of this sickening play at being god gone awry, is that there are really different standards for different classes of persons in this woe betided world we live in? Perhaps the distinguished state officials of Greece, Portugal, Ireland and Iceland would normally live in such affluence as “rightly” befits their status, in New York, Paris, London, Athens, Lisbon & Dublin? Have we not seen how the high and mighty in Nigeria lives despite all the hue and cry of austerity, poverty, unemployment and grinding destitution of the masses? The teachers be they government that teach us belt-tightening classes or the Bretton Woods Institutions that teach them what to teach us merely teach us nonsense.

It would also be a fairytale to imagine that the questionable character and corrupt practices we now see in a DSK is a localized reality in the Bretton Woods Institutions. A few years back, the World Bank Group Staff Association was forced to accept the fact that the “conduct” of Paul Wolfowitz, who was then the Bank’s President, had “compromised the integrity and effectiveness of the World Bank Group”. This was after “the Wolf” as that hawkish disciple of the free market and gun-boat diplomacy is often called, had transferred his girlfriend, one Shaha Riza to a high-paying job, saddled with defining good governance for developing countries. He had not stopped at that, he had ensured that the belle got arbitrarily fixed, mouth wateringly padded pay rises on the job, at the expense of the World Bank. Of course, Paul Wolf’ was consumed by that scandal, as DSK is likely to be consumed by this seemingly strictly matter of the randy, scandal. But that was not without George W. Bush and other Project American (21st) Century hawks defending him to the hilt.

Not a few have risen to the defence of DSK, as well. Conspiracy theories of different sorts have been woven, centred on his strong likelihood of emerging as the French Socialist Party’s candidate at the next elections in that country and the equally strong probability of his trouncing Mr. Sarkozy if he does so emerge. For a few who confuse socialism with lowering interest rates to save the capitalists from recessions they inflict on the working masses, he represents an alternative to Sarkozy’s liberalism. All these, to me care mere lyrics of a song called balderdash.

The travails of DSK are not only self-inflicted, even if he through this self-flagellation he plays into the hands of his opponents in France. Sexual harassment is not just a matter of sexuality, it is one of power relations, and is a very serious matter, especially when this borders on rape, oral, carnal or anal. Beyond the more lewd forms of DSK’s sexual dispositions, two major lessons we can learn from him, as with “the Wolf”, include the fact that they are no less corrupt than the Third World politicians and; while they teach austerity, they are anything but austere in taking care of themselves, their families and concubines.

It is time to demand, at the very minimum, that the global financial architecture be radically restructured. The hold of the US and Europe on the World Bank & IMF needs to be brought to an end. While Third World countries have been mute in demanding this, Angela Merkel, for example has taken the pre-emptive measure of stating clearly that the time is not yet ripe for countries outside Europe to take the seat of the IMF’s headmaster. This continued Eurocentric imperialism of globalisation must be resisted. But in doing this, we should have no illusion that a black African or yellow Asian President of the World Bank or Managing Director of the IMF would better the lot of the billions of poor working people in the world than a black president of America has been. A programme for radically restructuring the institutions of global governance must be part of a broader agenda at bringing a new, better world to birth. This would include fighting for democracy from below, wherein the masses would be the Lords of their fate.

The capitalist teachers of the world-neoliberal school have failed woefully in teaching us anything but nonsense. The prisoners of starvation, wretched of the earth and captive students of their doctrines now need to go beyond questioning these teachers’ curricular to establishing many more Tahrir Square colleges.