style="font-size:15px;"> In essence, neo-colonial society and colonial society do not differ in the least. Thus, we saw the colonial administration replaced by a neo-colonial administration identical to it in every respect. The colonial army was replaced by a neo-colonial army with the same characteristics, the same functions, and the same role of safeguarding the interests of imperialism and its national allies. The colonial schools were replaced by neo-colonial schools, which pursued the same goals of alienating the children of our country and reproducing a society fundamentally serving imperialist interests, and secondarily serving imperialism’s local lackeys and allies.
With the support and blessing of imperialism, Voltaic nationals set about organising the systematic plunder of our country. With the crumbs of this plunder that fell to them, they were transformed, little by little, into a genuinely parasitic bourgeoisie that no longer knew how to control its voracious appetite. Driven only by their own selfish interests, they no longer hesitated at employing the most dishonest means, engaging in massive corruption, embezzlement of public funds and properties, influence-peddling and real estate speculation, and practicing favouritism and nepotism.
This is what accounts for all the material and financial wealth they’ve been able to accumulate on the backs of working people. Not satisfied with living off the fabulous incomes they derive from shamelessly employing their ill-gotten wealth, they fight tooth and nail to monopolise political positions that will allow them to use the state apparatus for their own exploitative and wasteful ends.
Never do they let a year go by without treating themselves to extravagant vacations abroad. Their children desert the country’s schools for prestigious educations in other countries. At the slightest illness, all the resources of the state are mobilised to provide them with expensive care at luxurious hospitals in foreign countries.
All this unfolds in full view of the honest, courageous, and hard-working Voltaic people, mired nonetheless in the most squalid misery. While Upper Volta is a paradise for the wealthy minority, for the majority – the people – it is a barely tolerable hell.
As part of this great majority, the wage earners, despite the fact that they are assured a regular income, suffer the constraints and pitfalls of capitalist consumer society. Their entire wage is spent before it has even been received. And this vicious cycle goes on and on with no perspective of being broken.
Within their respective trade unions, workers join in struggles around demands to improve their living conditions. The breadth of those struggles sometimes compels the neo-colonial authorities to grant concessions. But they simply take back with one hand what they give with the other.
Thus a 10 per cent wage increase is announced with great fanfare, only to be immediately taxed, wiping out the expected benefits. After five, six, or seven months, the workers always end up seeing through the swindle, and mobilise for new struggles. Seven months is more than enough for the reactionaries in power to catch their breath and devise new schemes. In this never-ending fight, the worker is always the loser.
Among this great majority are the peasants, the “wretched of the earth”, who are expropriated, robbed, mistreated, imprisoned, scoffed at, and humiliated every day, and yet are among those whose labour creates wealth. Thanks to their productive labour, the country’s economy stays afloat despite its frailty. It is from their labour that all those Voltaics for whom Upper Volta is an El Dorado line their pockets.
And yet, it is the peasants who suffer most from the lack of buildings, of road infrastructure, and from the lack of health care facilities and personnel. It is the peasants, creators of the nation’s wealth, who suffer most from the lack of schools and school supplies for their children. It is their children who will swell the ranks of the unemployed after a brief stint on benches in schools that are poorly adapted to the realities of this country. It is among the peasants that the illiteracy rate is the highest – 98 per cent. Those who most need to learn, in order to improve the output of their productive labour, are again the ones who benefit the least from investments in health care, education, and technology.
The peasant youth – who have the same attitudes as all young people, that is, greater sensitivity to social injustice and a desire for progress – end up rebelling and they desert the countryside, thus depriving it of its most dynamic elements.
These youths’ initial impulse drives them to the large urban centres, Ouagadougou and Bobo-Dioulasso. There they hope to find better-paying jobs and enjoy, too, the advantages of progress. The lack of jobs drives them to idleness, with all its characteristic vices. Finally, so as not to end up in prison, they seek salvation by going abroad, where the most shameless humiliation and exploitation await them. But does Voltaic society leave them any other choice?
Stated as succinctly as possible, such is the situation of our country after twenty-three years of neo-colonialism – a paradise for some and hell for the rest.
After twenty-three years of imperialist domination and exploitation, our country remains a backward agricultural country, where the rural sector – employing 90 per cent of the workforce – accounts for only 45 per cent of the gross domestic product (GDP) and supplies 95 per cent of the country’s total exports.
More simply, it should be noted that in other countries, farmers constituting less than 5 per cent of the population manage not only to feed themselves adequately and satisfy the basic needs of the entire nation, but also to export enormous quantities of their agricultural produce. Here, however, more than 90 per cent of the population, despite strenuous exertions, experiences famine and deprivation and, along with the rest of the population, is compelled to fall back on imported agricultural products, if not on international aid.
The imbalance between exports and imports thus created accentuates the country’s dependence on foreign countries. The resulting trade deficit has grown considerably over the years, and the value of our exports covers only around 25 per cent of imports. To state it more clearly, we buy more from abroad than we sell abroad. And an economy that functions on such a basis increasingly goes bankrupt and is headed for catastrophe.
Private investments from abroad are not only insufficient, but also constitute a huge drain on the country’s economy and thus do not help strengthen its ability to accumulate wealth. An important portion of the wealth created with the help of foreign investments is siphoned off abroad, instead of being reinvested to increase the country’s productive capacity. In the 1973–79 period, it’s estimated that 1.7 billion CFA francs left the country each year as income from direct foreign investments, while new investments came to only an average of 1.3 billion CFA francs a year.14
The insufficient level of productive investments has led the Voltaic state to play a fundamental role in the nation’s economy through its efforts to compensate for the lack of private investment. This is a difficult situation, considering that the state’s budgeted income basically consists of tax revenues, which represent 85 per cent of total revenues and largely come from import duties and taxes.
In addition to making national investments, this income finances government spending, 70 per cent of which goes to pay the salaries of civil servants and to ensure the functioning of administrative services. What, then, can possibly be left over for social and cultural investments?
In the field of education, our country is among the most backward, with 16.4 per cent of children attending school and an illiteracy rate that reaches 92 per cent on average. This means that of every 100 Voltaics, barely 8 know how to read and write in any language.
On the level of health, the rate of illness and mortality is among the highest in the sub region due to the proliferation of communicable diseases and nutritional deficiencies. How can such a catastrophic situation be avoided when we know that our country has only one hospital bed per 1,200 inhabitants and one doctor per 48,000 inhabitants?
These
