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23 October 1997 Edition

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New in print

Killing a revolution



Peace without Profit: How the IMF blocks rebuilding in Mozambique
By Joseph Hanlon
Published by Irish Mozambique Solidarity and The International African Institute in association with James Curry (Oxford). Heinemann
Price: £9.95 stg. Paper.

In this book we are introduced to a world where economic independence is completely gone, where shop windows are stocked full of luxury goods with nobody to buy them, where poverty has reached enormous proportions, where in 1988 half of the urban and two-thirds of the rural population were ``absolutely poor'', and where the situation has worsened since. It is a world where only 42% of children aged 7-14 attend school, and where 22% of children aged 7-9 are already working.

There are far more export-import companies than there are companies actually producing goods. Corruption is everywhere because people at the bottom do not get paid enough to feed their families, and at the top officials and members of the ruling circles have become tools of a vast industry where they act as go-betweens for companies and international bodies of one sort or another. In the meantime Mozambique's agriculture, on which any real development would be dependent, has been placed in hock to repay loans which are not going towards the benefit of the country or its people, but rather to inflate the lifestyles of a new wealthy elite who buy luxury goods, build big houses and drive expensive cars.

Over this chaos preside the IMF and World Bank (and behind them the US and Western powers) whose policies as far as Mozambique is concerned, consist of reducing domestic credit in terms of bank lending and government spending. Such deflationary measures mean that the economy can only contract and not expand. Meanwhile, in this atmosphere an important road programme sees key roads remaining closed and open roads deteriorating faster then they can be rebuilt.

At the same time the gap between rich and poor is increasing. As the author comments: ``It is not accidental that IMF policies are widening wealth differentials... (The) new rich will buy Western goods and play a role in administering the recolonisation being imposed by the IMF.'' This book gives a good insight into the dismemberment of a revolution.

By Peter Moore

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