Chapter 5 (continued)

The example of conservation and development strategies in Amboseli National Park, considered in depth by Lindsay (1987) and Western (1994b), provides an excellent illustration of the ways in which East African policy decisions in the postcolonial era have failed to conserve the ecological diversity of the park and have failed to provide for the land-use and grazing needs of the pastoralist Maasai in the area, based on a colonial British mindset that continues to manifest itself in the actions of indigenous officials and administrators all too clearly in the modern era. Amboseli National Park is located on the Kenya-Tanzania border and is well known through photographic images of elephants moving in a herd across vast savannas with the snowy peak of Mt. Kilimanjaro rising out of the clouds in the distance. The watershed formed by Kilimanjaro 30 km. to the south in Tanzania has created a complex ecological zone renowned for its biodiversity and concentration of African wildlife. Lindsay (1987) documents the colonial history of Amboseli to demonstrate convincingly how the interests of the Maasai people who have lived in the area for centuries and rely upon its watering holes and rangeland for sociocultural survival, have historically been alienated by the British from development and conservation strategies that affect them directly. Lindsay (1987) offers a map (shown below) of the area to illustrate this process of alienation throughout the colonial period (153). In the early 1900s the Maasai were forcefully removed from traditional grazing areas "in an effort to pacify the Maasai and to clear preferred land for European settlers" (152), and were placed in the North and South Masai Reserves by colonial plans to restructure human-environmental dynamics in the East Africa Region according to British, capitalist designs of natural resource exploitation and extraction in the area. Throughout the twentieth century the size of these reserves were decreased to make possible further colonial exploitation of resources in the area (by setting up agricultural schemes that proved disastrous for the fragile soil fertility in the primarily semi-arid region). In the post-WWII era, colonial planning for the Amboseli region focused on the construction of national parks and reserves to provide environmental protection for wildlife according to a separationist model that prohibited human habitation and resource use within the parks and reserves. British colonial involvement in Amboseli was consistently characterized by alienation of the Maasai, from grazing rights in the area, from taking part in the organization of conservation and development strategies in the area, and from economic benefits accrued through the preservation of Amboseli as a national park visited by "Northern" tourists. British alienation of the Maasai was based on a colonial ideology that: dehumanized the pastoralists as "backward" and "barbaric;" disregarded the sustainability of traditional land-use strategies in favor of an emerging model of economic growth for the nation through eco-tourist activities in the region; and based conservation strategies on a notion of "man vs. nature" that failed to apply to the East African context of a natural world that had been managed by the pastoralists for millennia.

As Western (1994b) and Lindsay (1987) demonstrate, the parallels between British colonial land management and postcolonial conservation and development strategies in the Amboseli region, are revealing of how fully indigenous government officials have internalized a modernizing, capitalist approach that has continued to be riddled with failures in the East African context. Although postcolonial conservation and development strategies have attempted to integrate Maasai land-use needs and environmental protection agendas in theory, these strategies have continuously failed in practice because they perpetuate colonial policies and philosophies. Lindsay (1987) recognizes that all of the attempts at postcolonial development and conservation schemes "have ultimately failed to provide the Maasai community with continuous appreciable benefit in return for compromises in the use of their land" (161). In an overview of conservation and development policies in the Amboseli region, Western (1994b) supports this by saying that, "unquestionably, the biggest single failing was at governmental and institutional levels. The strong persistence of colonial preservationist policies, coupled with a continuing paternalistic attitude toward nomadic pastoralists among senior administrators, put the brakes on an open dialogue" (47). The perpetuation of a destructive colonial mentality has been further compounded by the postcolonial acceptance of capitalist philosophies of socioeconomic organization and "development" that concentrate on the eco-tourist profitability of national parks for the nation and not on the sustainability of specific cultural groups such as the Maasai living in the Amboseli region. This national focus on capitalist, economic growth exists in direct opposition to the sustainable use and local control of Amboseli's resources by the Maasai people. Although community ranchers, farmers, and indigenous entrepreneurs organizing safaris in Amboseli have been encouraged to take advantage of ecotourist revenues pouring into Amboseli with "Northern" tourists every year, it is unclear if a focus on capitalist expansion of economic growth and markets can ultimately provide a lasting answer for the sustainable use of natural resources in the area. Western (1994b) is aware of this when he explains that "neither ecological nor cultural factors favoring coexistence will persist in the face of development" (48). Based on Western's (1994b) observation, and based on the evidence of environmental degradation and human impoverishment realized by the exploitative, capitalist focus imposed during the colonial era and perpetuated during the postcolonial era, the scope of human and ecological problems in East Africa becomes much more profound. It is not merely a question of corrupt politicians or of paternalistic officials that must be addressed, but a questioning of the global, capitalist framework of human and ecological exploitation that is demanded. The deconstruction of the continuing involvement of "developed" nations within the East African context (considered below and throughout Chapters 6 and 7), will demonstrate that the colonizing and extractive mentality introduced by the British and perpetuated in the name of a "global capitalist economy," has failed to provide lasting social and ecological solutions for Kenya and Tanzania and is directly opposed to the realization of sustainable forms of coexistence between people and the environment in the East Africa Region.

The Perpetuation of Imperialism: Developed Nations in East Africa

In his discussion of the exploitative and destructive tendencies of the globalization of capitalism, Korten (1996) makes a clear connection between "North/South" relationships in the colonial and postcolonial eras: "Traditional colonialism came to an end after World War II, and the new corporate colonialism - advanced through foreign aid, investment, and trade - stepped into the breach... It was more subtle, more sophisticated, and more appealing than the old colonialism, but the consequence was much the same - ever greater dependence on the money economy and thus institutions of money that could be controlled by the few" (253). Korten's (1996) observations are particularly applicable in the East African context, where a dependency relationship imposed by the British during the colonial period has been replaced by government "assistance" from the U.S. and Western Europe - advanced through developing ecotourist strategies, "foreign aid, investment, and trade" - in the postcolonial era of East African "modernization." Although "Northern" nations no longer physically occupy Kenya and Tanzania as settler colonies, the socioeconomic pressures of "assistance" and "aid" programs, and the perpetuation of foreign investment and Northern-dominated trade practices, preserve the dependency and the resource exploitation of East Africa with the same consequences of environmental degradation and human impoverishment in Kenya and Tanzania.

A number of examples clearly illustrate the perpetuation of "the new corporate colonialism" in the East African context, and the ways in which this "neo-colonialism" continues to be beneficial for "Northern" capitalist interests at the expense of long-term East African economic, social, and ecological sustainability. Juma's (1991) discussion of "exotic genetic resources" - referenced earlier in the colonial context of the British imposition of cash crops and livestock upon the Kenyan and Tanzanian environment - is instructive of the ways in which colonial domination and control of Kenya's agricultural sector continues to be perpetuated in the postcolonial era. Juma (1991) recognizes that in Kenya,

"over the 1964-1985 period, the country imported nearly 64 percent of all genetic resource accessions used for breeding... the country is largely dependent on foreign sources for most of the major crops. Nearly 88 percent of the cereal accessions stored in the country are imported. This is not a surprise because the agricultural sector is based on exotic genetic resources. None of the major crops are indigenous and therefore imports have to be done to maintain breeding programs. Food crops in which the country has relatively high local accessions include cassava, sweet potato, pasture species and oil crops. None of these are major crops and their contribution to the economy is still marginal" (128).

Juma's observations provide sound, statistical evidence of the preservation of a dependency relationship between "Northern" and "Southern" peoples and socioeconomic systems. The supply of exotic crops such as cereals, grains, and wheat imposed upon the East African context during the colonial era is still dependent on "Northern" exports. Within the context of a globalized capitalist economy, Kenya is pressured to concentrate agricultural efforts on the production of these "major crops" to preserve an important GNP earner for Kenya as a nation. However, the focus on the production of these crops has many negative impacts on the Kenyan people and environment. Wheat and cereals are extremely degradative of soil fertility. These crops also take up a significant amount of space for cultivation even though they are not primarily consumed by indigenous peoples but by "Northern" consumers. Because supply and demand of these crops are controlled by "Northern" business interests and consumers, African farmers are forced to buy the exotic imports at high rates and sell at low prices to remain "competitive." Under the guise of capitalist development and "modernization," this dynamic has the effect of perpetuating East African poverty and land degradation, and continuing the expansion of economic growth markets in the "North," begun with the dependency relations manifest in the colonial era.

The involvement of the World Bank and the IMF in East Africa - and in the "South" in general - has also been indicative of the continuing dependency characterizing "North/South" relationships in Kenya and Tanzania. Korten (1996) stresses that the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) were intentionally created to represent "Northern" interests and the perpetuation of dependency between economic superpowers - such as Britain and the U.S. - and economic satellites - such as Kenya and Tanzania. "The framework for a post-World War II economy, which had been worked out largely between the United States and Britain, called for the creation of... the World Bank [and] the International Monetary Fund" (Korten, 1996: 173) to represent the exploitative capitalist interests and international policies of the "North" in the East African context. "The World Bank and the IMF have worked in concert to deepen the dependence of low-income countries on the global system and then to open their economies to corporate colonization" (Korten, 1996: 181). In Kenya and Tanzania, as in other African nations, World Bank and IMF activities have been manifested in a number of ways. "The IMF imposes high interests on the principal of loans to African nations" (Jarrett, 1996: 86), but the generation of raw materials such as agricultural products (e.g. the cash crops of wheat, cereals, etc. in Kenya) do not produce a margin of profits for the East African nations (whose resources are owned and operated from overseas corporate control), sufficient to repay the debts. This is compounded by World Bank and IMF loans being provided to developing countries based on the partial use of the loans by the East African people to buy goods and products imported from "Northern" countries, regardless of their practical usefulness in the lives of the Kenyan and Tanzanian people. In addition, World Bank and IMF loans in Kenya and Tanzania are diverted, in part, to banking accounts of the small, wealthy elites representing the sociopolitical structure at the national level, further encouraging political corruption and weakening the possibility of governmental resistance to the perpetuation of "Southern" socioeconomic dependency in relation to the U.S. and Britain. For the majority of the East African people, these "assistance" programs are fundamentally oppressive and exploitative, reinforcing the capitalist dynamics of a global economy meant to preserve Kenya and Tanzania as "economic satellites" producing wealth and economic expansion for Western European countries and the United States. The perpetuation of "Southern" degradation and impoverishment by the World Bank and the IMF acknowledged by Korten (1996), echoes the situation in Kenya and Tanzania clearly, and debunks the myth of Northern "aid" programs providing real and lasting "modernization" and "development" for East Africa.

"Foreign aid, even grant aid, becomes actively antidevelopmental when the proceeds are used to build dependence on imported technology and experts, encourage import-dependent consumer lifestyles, fund waste and corruption, displace domestically produced products with imports, and drive millions of people from the lands and waters on which they depend for their livelihoods - all of which are common outcomes of World Bank projects and structural adjustment programs" (171).

It is important to remember, however, that the World Bank and the IMF are not the ultimate "cause" of degradation and impoverishment in East Africa, but rather represent a manifestation of a globalized capitalist system of socioeconomic organization. Korten (1996) recognizes this when he suggests that "although it seeks to create an image of serving the poor and their borrowing governments, the World Bank is primarily a creature of the transnational financial system" (166), representing the capitalist ethics of economic growth and expansion. As Marx (1996) recognized clearly in his analysis of capitalist dynamics, the capitalist system is predicated upon exploitation and appropriation of resources. The reproduction of the global capitalist system relies implicitly upon the assumption of economic expansion according to never-ending growth (Schnaiberg et. al., 1994). The capitalist mentality is also characterized by the commodification of human and natural resources into "use- and exchange values," according to Marx (1996), and this commodification has justified massive exploitation of people, resources, and the environment, based on an assessment of their profitability and market value. Taken together, the assumptions of never-ending growth as "possible" and the commodification of people (through their labor) and of the environment (through resource production) as "necessary," have proved devastating for East Africa, perpetuating an unsustainable form of socioeconomic organization that must ultimately prove self-destructive, given the limited resources that this finite planet provides (Schnaiberg et. al., 1994). Throughout the remainder of this thesis I will use case studies of real objects, situations, and dynamics in the contemporary, East African context to demonstrate the profoundly self-destructive tendencies of this globalized capitalist system in practice, and I will argue that sustainable solutions that begin to reverse modern trends of environmental degradation and human impoverishment will not be realized until fundamental, systemic alternatives to the neo-colonial dynamics of dependency, exploitation, and domination of cultural groups and ecological systems in East Africa - and worldwide - are embraced.

Go to Chapter 6...

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