“We live in one world. Not in the first, second, third, fifth or sixth world,” Michael Sommer, head of the Confederation of German Trade Unions, said in South Africa last week.
Sommer, who wore a blue suit and cuts the image of a wealthy bank manager, is a member of German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s official delegation, currently touring Africa with the leader.
It is Schroeder’s first visit to the continent since becoming chancellor in 1998. The tour — which began on January 18 in Ethiopia — has also taken in Kenya. Ghana is the final stop on the itinerary.
In Johannesburg, Sommer held talks with representatives of South African trade unions. During this meeting, he listened attentively as they complained about a host of globalisation-related problems, including the European Union’s controversial farm subsidies. These are widely held to have an adverse effect on African farmers.
The subsidies led to the collapse of trade talks in the Mexican city of Cancun last year, when the United States and the EU refused to abolish them.
“After the failure of Cancun there was a new thinking in the North about agricultural subsidies,” Sommer said. “I’m going to discuss the issue with the chancellor soon.”
The German union leader is a straight talker who is visibly frustrated at the lack of progress in farm subsidy talks. He described most international conferences as talk shops.
“I’m sick of conferences. They only produce a paper — that’s all. What I need is a result,” he said. He added that most gatherings had missed opportunities to halve global poverty by 2015, one of the UN’s Millennium Development Goals.
According to the World Bank, more than 350-million people, or more than 50% of Africa’s population, live below the poverty line of $1 a day.
“Globalisation has worked for some. It has not worked for the poor,” said Zwelinzima Vavi, secretary general of the 1,7-million-strong Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), after meeting Schroeder this week for 30 minutes of talks.
“Germany is a very significant investor in our country. While we welcome foreign direct investment, we demand that workers’ rights be respected,” Cosatu president William Madisa added.
The latest available figures show that trade between South Africa and Germany totalled about $5,9-billion for 2002. Germany, which has 450 companies in South Africa employing 70Â 000 people, is South Africa’s biggest trading partner after the US.
This trend is not reflected elsewhere on the continent, however.
Sub-Saharan Africa accounts for less than 2% of Germany’s foreign trade, and most of this figure relates to dealings with South Africa.
During their talks, Cosatu and Schroeder also exchanged views on Iraq.
“We thanked him for the role he took on Iraq,” said Vavi, adding: “If Germany and France did not speak out, things would have been even worse. The world would have forgotten about the role of the UN in global affairs.”
In return, Schroeder hailed Cosatu for its role in highlighting human rights abuses in Africa, especially in Zimbabwe and Swaziland.
According to Sommer, “it [is] not normal or usual for a German chancellor to meet with members of a trade union. That’s a sign of his respect.”
Sommer attributed Schroeder’s willingness to meet Cosatu to the role the trade union played in the fight against apartheid. Former Cosatu secretary general Cyril Ramaphosa participated in the historic constitutional talks that paved the way for the all-race elections in South Africa in 1994.
Germany also played an important part in dismantling apartheid.
“Our relations date back to the apartheid days. It was during the darkest days of our struggle,” Vavi said.
Sommer told journalists that the Confederation of German Trade Unions, which has a membership of 7,5-million, will lobby the Group of Eight (G8) industrialised nations to fight child and forced labour, and encourage the right of workers to do collective bargaining.
The G8, which is made up of Germany, Russia, France, Britain, Canada, Japan, the US and Italy, holds its annual summit in the US state of Florida in June.
German union officials said they will send a delegation to Johannesburg in May to hold talks with Cosatu ahead of the Florida meeting.
“We have realised that the struggles of workers worldwide are similar. It doesn’t matter where you come from, they are all the same,” Vavi observed. — IPS