‘renaissance’
Ebrahim Harvey
The African National Congress-led government has to take a clear, strong and bold stand in support of the anti- debt Jubilee 2000 campaign.
Much is at stake in the campaign for this country, the African continent and other poor countries. Onerous debt servicing lies at the heart of the intractable socio-economic problems afflicting these areas.
The noble objective of the campaign is the cancelling of all apartheid-inherited debt, now standing at about $26-billion. In the face of the enormous poverty, starvation and death in this country, Africa and the entire Third World rescheduling of debt or minor debt relief is a miserable concession. Total debt cancellation, which is not what President Thabo Mbeki called for in his address to the United Nations last week, is the only appropriate remedy.
What will be more difficult and costly for the government – continuing to service this burdensome debt or facing predictable pressure from financial markets if it comes out in support of this campaign?
The issues raised by the campaign go beyond the burden of financial debt. There are social, political and moral issues which are more important.
On the one hand we have the hypocritical and unacceptable morality of the West, which holds our new government responsible for apartheid debt. On the other hand we have to rebuild this country, which apartheid almost destroyed, with severely limited funds, in part due to having to pay this huge debt.
This situation was captured well in the South Africa Jubilee 2000’s slogan: “Won’t pay for apartheid twice! Cancel the apartheid debt.”
This government cannot continue to bow to the profiteering dictates of market forces. We need to resist this market, which Mbeki has critically referred to as the “great leveller”, and subject it, for a change, to our collective will and interests.
Just imagine what this government could do with $26-billion (more than R150- billion).
If apartheid was a crime against humanity, is the debt inherited from that terrible system not equally criminal?
Notwithstanding their moral condemnation of apartheid, all the advanced capitalist countries benefited from the exploitation of cheap black labour. The decision to disinvest was more because of mounting pressure than because they believed in the moral or economic necessity to disinvest.
There cannot be a more ignominious insult than for us to have to pay for what it cost to bail out the previously hated apartheid system during moments of crisis. We cannot allow our country to be held accountable for debt which we not only did not incur, but which was incurred to be used against us.
The ANC-led government will give our transformation and the “African renaissance” a powerful boost if it decides to support Jubilee 2000. It will have earned fresh and much-needed broad public confidence in its rule.
Already NGOs, churches and unions have come out in support for debt cancellation. With the Congress of South African Trade Unions and the South African Communist Party already supporting Jubilee 2000, it is high time that the ANC and our president add their powerful voices to the demand for full debt cancellation. This will add strength and legitimacy to the campaign.
Furthermore, our responsibility for this debt seriously questions our independence and sovereignty. Most of the perpetrators of apartheid atrocities who got away scot free, thanks to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, now get away with the huge debt they incurred effectively against us. Just as there was no justice with the truth commission process, so is there now no justice in this debt burden.
Were we comfortably in a position to pay this debt it would be no less an injustice.
That the World Bank and International Monetary Fund could hold the ANC-led government accountable for this apartheid debt confirms once more the imperialistic role of these institutions. The full story of how these institutions collaborated in breaking the anti-apartheid financial sanctions against this country during the Seventies and Eighties has still to be told.
We need a powerful mass movement in this country to unite around the banner “Down with Apartheid Debt”. Surely we have not forgotten the great wonders mass struggles can achieve?
If this campaign succeeds, it will release funds to enable the government to fulfill its promises to the electorate: accelerating delivery, poverty reduction and job creation. Then perhaps the whole country can vote for the party in 2004.
If Mbeki and the ANC cannot or will not declare their full support for Jubilee 2000, then they must not utter another word to the public about the virtues of the “African renaissance”.
Jubilee 2000 is a critical test for the “African renaissance”. If we cannot root this renaissance in the real conditions we face then indeed, it is a lot of hot air.