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Bond, Patrick & Mhone, Guy & Olukoshi, Adebayo & Amri-Makhetha, Judica & Edigheji, Omano & Mutasah, Tawanda & Mkandawire,
Thandika & Codesria (2007) Beyond Enclavity in African Economies:
The enduring work of Guy Mhone
. Centre for Civil Society : 1-57.
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Contents
1. GUY MHONE’S LIFE
Patrick Bond
2. LABOUR MARKET DISCRIMINATION AND ITS AFTERMATH
Guy Mhone
3. ENCLAVITY
Adebayo Olukoshi
4. GUY MHONE AT WORK
Judica Amri-makhetha
5. GUY MHONE AS MENTOR
Omano Edigheji
6. GUY MHONE AS TEACHER
Tawanda Mutasah
7. PERSONAL REFLECTIONS ON GUY MHONE
Thandika Mkandawire
8. HONOURING THE MEMORY OF GUY MHONE
Codesria
The renowned development economist Guy Mhone, a Wits University
professor, passed away at a Pretoria hospital on 1 March 2005, at the age
of 62. Born in Luanshya, Zambia and raised along the border with Malawi
(the country of his citizenship), Mhone resisted colonial Central African
Federation repression and then the brutality of the Banda era. His early
education was at Gloag Ranch Mission in Zimbabwe and Livingstonia
Secondary School and Junior College in Malawi. He excelled, winning
both the national student essay competition and a scholarship to the Ivy
League’s Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, USA. His masters and
doctoral degrees in economics were awarded by Syracuse University in
New York.
While completing his thesis on ‘The Legacy of the Dual Labour Market in
the Copper Industry in Zambia’ (1977), he also served as associate
professor at State University of New York. He later lectured at the New
School for Social Research in New York City, Howard University in
Washington DC, and the University of Zimbabwe, before coming to Wits
Graduate School of Public and Development Management as a full
professor in 1998. He was also director of the school during the early
2000s.
In the meantime, Mhone earned a reputation as a prolific and insightful
analyst of social and economic problems across Southern Africa. He
worked for the International Labour Organisation in Lusaka, Harare and
Maseru; the Southern African Political Economic Series Trust in Harare;
and the South African Department of Labour, where he was chief director
for research in the first post-apartheid government. He also worked for
numerous international agencies, for the Belize Ministry of Finance, and
for the City of New York’s Treasury.
His books included The Political Economy of a Dual Labour Market in Africa
(1982); Malawi at the Crossroads (edited, 1992); The Case for Sustainable
Development in Zimbabwe (coauthored, 1992); and The Informal Sector in
Southern Africa (1997). He published dozens of articles and chapters in
major journals and academic books, on structural adjustment, labour
markets, agriculture, industrialisation, the informal sector, women
workers, HIV/AIDS, and other facets of socio-economic policy. He
worked in and wrote about every country in the region. The Council for
the Development of Social Science Research in Africa also commissioned
a book-length study of African economies, which Mhone completed late
in 2004 in spite of illness.
Throughout, Mhone’s gentle temperament, quiet dignity, extensive
experience, courage and powerful intellectual contributions - especially
his theory of Africa’s dysfunctional ‘enclave’ economies - inspired
colleagues and students. He explored the limits of neo-classical economics
applied to African conditions and in the process questioned dogmas
associated with labour and capital market theory.
His last major address to his professional colleagues was ten weeks ago,
as a concluding plenary speaker at an Addis Ababa conference of the
Ethiopian Economics Association, the Dakar-based Council for the
Development of Social Science Research in Africa, and the New Delhibased
International Development Economics Associates. With
characteristic humility and patience, he carefully balanced social-justice
instincts and rigorous economic analysis, fusing conference themes on
rural development with his own long-standing inquiries into linkages
between workers and peasants; capitalism and non-capitalist spheres; the
capital-intensive sectors and the mass of underutilised labour; and inputs
and outputs. In the process, Mhone revived the best of the 1950s-era
development economics subdiscipline, and merged into it highly
sophisticated critiques of mainstream economic theory established during
the 1960s-70s, and policy lessons of neoliberal failures from the 1980s-90s.
His contributions will be valued for generations to come.
He is survived by his wife Yvonne Wilson and two children, Tamara
(1970) and Zimema (1978).
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