OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Tuesday 8.45am
PRESIDENT Thabo Mbeki accused the West on Monday of failing to do enough to tackle Africa’s economic and political problems.
“Not enough is being done about that. There needs to be taken a decision really without equivocation,” Mbeki told CNN in his first television interview of the year, and one of the few he has given since succeeding Nelson Mandela in June last year.
Mbeki, who in his New Year message urged Africans to “aim for the stars” in the new millennium in line with his vision of an African renaissance, reckons Africa’s problems of debt, disease and war are being largely ignored by the West.
Africa’s debt service payments were about $31,5-billion, or some 25% of its exports, at the end of 1998.
“Ways and means must be found to wipe out this debt as quickly as possible,” said Mbeki.
“You can’t disengage the poor countries from the richer countries and you can’t guarantee continued growth and expansion of the economies of the developed world if you don’t address the matter of the further enrichment of these other billions of people who have no access to what is being produced because they are poor.”
Mbeki said the debt issue was closely related to the Aids pandemic which is threatening to wipe out a large portion of the African continent.
At least 11-million people have died of Aids in Africa and 22-million more are infected, according to the Joint United Nations programme on HIV/Aids.