State, agricultural policy, and rural development in a developing country: The case of post-1965 Zaire

This study evaluates the overt and underlying relevancy of the priority which the state in post-1965 Zaire has accorded to the agricultural and rural sector for socioeconomic development. The study examines the indicators provided by the conventional agricultural and rural development theories. These indicators show over time that that sector has not received a necessary and a sufficient financial support, and lacked political will and commitment, to materialize its assigned and intended goals.;The study demonstrates that the failure of the agricultural policy to carry out rural socio-economic development in Zaire is rooted in the nature and the role of the state in this country. The state in post-1965 Zaire is a socialistic superstructure, which stands on a capitalistic economic infrastructure set up by the Belgian colonial administration during the expansion of capitalism on a world scale. This incompatible juxtaposition of a socialistic superstructure with a capitalistic infrastructure, in the same social formation has engendered the structural conflicts and blockage of the Zairean system in favor of the few who hold the key state offices and have utilized them to establish their economic bases and expand their ideologico-political influence.;The study calls for the mastery of the state in post-1965 as the sine qua non and a minimum achievement without which there is considerable doubt as to whether post-1965 Zaire can proceed beyond its present stage of national and rural socio-economic underdevelopment. It encourages the development of microstrategies, which have been productive and have been providing the rural people with some income. The rural people must be very cautious with whatever development initiatives and policies which the state in post-1965 Zaire would undertake on their behalf.;The study indicates that the basic objective of the agricultural and rural policy in Zaire has been political, not socio-economic. It has been a political mechanism of mobilization and control of the rural people who have been attempting to overthrow the state because of its inability to carry out national and rural socioeconomic development.