Scrolling down Pambazuka News 268, I noted with surprise these words in the introduction to “THE HOPES AND ILLUSIONS OF WORLD TRADE LIBERALISATION FOR WOMEN IN AFRICA” (http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/36859: “Africa has faced ten years of unfettered liberalisation that, argues Cheikh Tidiane Dièye, has left the continent on its knees.” Further down, in Sokari Ekine’s REVIEW OF AFRICAN BLOGS (http://www.pambazuka.org/en/issue/current/#cat_6), there was this paragraph from Ethiopundit: “As we discussed in Short Term Memory, Cheerleaders and Sachs & Violence, there is a long tradition of intellectuals 'adopting' African tyrants stretching back to those 'romantic' revolutionaries Nkrumah and Nyerere and their destruction of the Ghanaian and Tanzanian economies and societies. All that is needed from a tyrant is to speak the right progressive language while flattering their ferenji intellectual sponsors - even as boots stomp the faces of and impoverish the 'people' everyone pretends to be so concerned about.”

Just very quickly, the person who wrote the intro to Dièye’s article should reckon on at least 25 years of unfettered liberalisation that has kept Africa on its knees. We can use 1980 as a crude marker for the early “structural adjustment” programmes. We have to keep as long and sharp a perspective as possible in order to recognize old policies in new clothes.

Secondly, Sokari Ekine seems to agree with the Ethiopundit paragraph. I would suggest that Nkrumah and Nyerere did not achieve the destruction of their respective colonial economies and societies but they certainly tried.

This is just to raise a question about the quality of memory, analysis and patience. Looking critically at where we are roughly 50 years after “independence”, perhaps we should take more time when criticizing those early leaders with vision and programmes of qualitative change.