Not every measure advocated by the IMF and World Bank is
socialistic. Some of them even appear to be in support of the private sector, such as the reduction of government subsidies and welfare.
They may include tax increases to reduce budget deficits. These policy changes are often described in the press as 'austerity measures,' and they are seen as hard-nosed business decisions to salvage the failing economies of underdeveloped countries. But, as the wolf (in sheep's clothing) said to Little Red-Riding-Hood, 'All the better to fool you with, my dear.' These austerity measures are meetly rhetoric. The borrowing nations usually ignore the conditions with impunity, and the World Bank keeps the money coming anyway. It's all part of the game.
Nevertheless, the 'structural-adjustment' conditions provide a scapegoat for local politicians who can now place the blame for their nation's misery on big, bad 'capitalists' from America and the IMF. People who have been taught that it is government's role to provide for their welfare, their health care, their food and housing, 1 'The International Monetary Fund,' by Ken S. Ewert,
I
98 THE CREATURE FROM JEKYLL ISLAND
their jobs and retirement—such people will not be happy when they hear that these 'rights' are being threatened. So they demonstrate in the streets in protest, they riot in the commercial sections of town so they can steal goods from stores, and they throng to the banner of leftist politicians who promise to restore or increase their benefits. As described by
National strikes, riots, political upheavals and social unrest in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, Egypt, Haiti, Liberia, Peru, Sudan and elsewhere have at various times been attributed to IMF austerity programs....
Some came to the fund with domestic trouble already brewing and seized on the fund as a convenient scapegoat.1
Quite true. An honest reading of the record shows that the IMF, far from being a force for austerity in these countries, has been an engine of socialist waste and a fountain of abundance for the corrupt leaders who rule.
FINANCING CORRUPTION AND DESPOTISM
Nowhere is this pattern more blatant than in Africa. Julius Nyerere, the dictator of Tanzania, is notorious for his 'villagiza-tion' program in which the army has driven the peasants from their land, burned their huts, and loaded them like cattle into trucks for relocation into government villages. The purpose is to eliminate opposition by bringing everyone into compounds where they can be watched and controlled. Meanwhile the economy staggers, farms have gone to weed, and hunger is commonplace. Yet,
Tanzania has received more aid per capita from the World Bank than any other nation.
In Uganda, government security forces have engaged in mass detentions, torture, and killing of prisoners. The same is true under the terrorist government in Zimbabwe. Yet, both regimes continue to be the recipients of millions of dollars in World Bank funding.
Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia) is a classic case. After its independence, the leftist government nationalized (confiscated) many of the farms previously owned by white settlers. The most desirable of these lands became occupied by the government's senior ruling-party officials, and the rest were turned into state-run collectives. They were such miserable failures that the workers on 1. 'IMF Hands Out Prescription for Sour Economic Medicine,'
NEARER TO THE HEART'S DESIRE
99
^ese farmlands were, themselves, soon begging for food. Not daunted by these failures, the socialist politicians announced in j991 that they were going to nationalize half of the remaining farms aS well. And they barred the courts from inquiring into how much compensation would be paid to their owners.
The IMF was represented in Zimbabwe at the time by Michel C a m d e s s u s , the Governor of the central Bank of France, and a former finance minister in Francois Mitterrand's Socialist government. After being informed of Zimbabwe's plan to confiscate additional land and to resettle people to work on those lands, Camdessus agreed to a loan valued at 42 billion rands with full knowledge that much of it would be used for the resettlement project.
Perhaps the worst violations of human rights have occurred in Ethiopia under the Marxist regime of Mengistu Haile Mariam. The famine of 1984-85, which threatened the lives of millions of people, was the result of government nationalization and disruption of agriculture. Massive resettlement programs have torn hundreds of thousands of people from their privately owned land in the north and deported them to concentration- camp 'villages' in the south, complete with guard towers. A report by a French voluntary medical-assistance group, Doctors without Borders, reveals that the forced resettlement program may have killed as many people as the famine itself.1 Dr. Rony Brauman, director of the organization, describes their experience:
Armed militiamen burst into our compounds, seized our
equipment and menaced our volunteers. Some of our employees were beaten, and our trucks, medicines and food stores confiscated. We left Ethiopia branded as enemies of the revolution. The regime spoke the truth. The atrocities committed in the name of Mengistu's master plan
FINANCING FAMINE AND GENOCIDE
In the 1980s, the world was saddened by photographs of
starving children in Ethiopia, but what the West did not realize was that this was a
~ 'Famine Aid: Were we Duped?' by Dr. Rony Brauman,
'1986, p. 7]
1
