South South Summit 1999 Document: Message from the Archbishop of Cape Town
Posted on November 18 1999 |
It's a great joy to be here with you. To me so many faces from different parts of the South. Friends, I know well from Africa, and friends I first got know In Honduras, after my visit there to witness first hand the devastation of Hurricane Mitch. It's a great pleasure for me to welcome our friends from Peru and Bolivia here to South Africa. I hope that our hospitality, of which we are proud, can match the warmth and generosity of the hospitality I received from our Central American friends, at the launch of the Jubilee 2000 Latin American campaign in Tequcigalpa last year.
I was so sad to bear recently, on the first anniversary of Hurricane Mitch, that Nicaragua and Honduras are still spending as much on debt service as on reconstruction of their devastated economy. That while western government creditors have declared a moratorium on payments, these poor countries still pay the IMF and World Bank $1 million a day.
I think of my friends there; of the devastation of Tequcigalpa, of the ruined homes, the people buried by the floods, of the flattened banana plantations - and my heart cries out at the heartlessness of the international financial institutions in Washington.
It comes as no surprise to me that our friends from Honduras cannot be h~ today. Nevertheless, I thank them once again and welcome those that can be with us.
We are honoured to have you all in our beloved South Africa.
Honoured that you have found the money - as we all know, its so hard for people In the South, particularly in Africa, to find the money - to attend these conferences. Honoured that you have both found the money, and given us of your precious time. The sacrifices that he behind your presence here, place an obligation on all of us to ensure that this conference is constructive, that it is something more than just another talking shop; and that it has as its first aim: an objective improvement in the living standards and life charm of the people of Africa, Latin America and Asia. Too often these conferences simply become venues for those who agree with each other to talk to each other, once again, in a warm, comfortable and complacent way. I hope that this meeting will be one that engages with the outside world; with hostile forces; with power, with those that we do not agree. Only then can we be acting responsibly on behalf of those who lack power, those we claim to represent.
Many of you are caught up in the heat of baffle against an international financial system that so impoverishes the majority of people of the South, while enriching elites in both North and South. Struggling to raise awareness of foreign debts and economic issues amongst ordinary people, many of them illiterate, and most of them living In deep poverty. And I know for some, like our friends in that wonderful campaign, the Peruvian Jubilee 2000 campaign, you struggle too against the censorship and the authoritarianism of Fujimori's government.
In Argentina Alessandro Olmas has for years resisted the might of the military, by exposing how they have corruptly borrowed money, for repression and war. And how western banks, including British banks helped to finance the Argentinean military during the Falklands war. His work in exposing Argentina's odious debts parallels the work we have done here In South Africa on odious debt, and the work done in the Philippines on the odious nature of the Marcos debts; and is one more example of how important it is for campaigns in the South to work together, and draw strength from each other.
These are struggles which take people like you and Alessandro 0lmas from your family; which deny you the carefree life that many others enjoy. Struggles which involve work and tasks which may lack drama and excitement; which probably do not give you much status - with university academics or with politicians or the media. But Its your struggles that will Change our world In the new millennium. Those changes won't come about because of academics or politicians or the media. They will come about because of your mobilisation of ordinary people.
I salute you for work that you are doing to raise awareness amongst millions of ordinary people - awareness of the foreign debts their countries owe to the world's richest countries. And for the work you will do at this conference: strengthening the ties between Jubilee 2000 movements in Latin America, Africa and Asia.
The struggle of the campaign in Ecuador is of great significance to us all here, and I would like to add my congratulations to the leaders of the Ecuadorean campaign, who sadly, cannot be with us today either. Ecuador became one of the first countries to default on her private debt in September this year, with the tacit approval of the IMF.
The finance ministers that control the IMF, which has for so long bailed out private western creditors, while nationalising debts and burdening the poor, those G7 finance ministers recognised in Cologne, that they need to respond to widespread criticism of the way in which the IMF protects western private creditors. Perhaps they haw been stung by the accusation that the IMF's Washington telephone number is now known as 1-800-- BAILOUT. So the Ecuadorian campaign, as I understand It is supporting the decision of the Ecuadorian government to prioritise the interests of the people - over the interests of foreign creditors.
They have gone further. Jubilee 2000 supporters in Ecuador are now leading the battle of ideas for an independent arbitration process, a form of insolvency procedure which will ensure that creditors no longer call all the shots when countries run into difficulties. A process that we trust will evolve the people of Ecuador, and allow them to take some control over their government's borrowing decisions, and their decisions to prioritise foreign debt repayment over the urgent needs of the domestic economy. Above all it should be a process that not only ensures a transfer of funds to the South, but also empowers the poor of the South.
Such an independent process is one I first proposed in my speech at Southwark Cathedral in April 1997, when I called for the establishment of a mediation council. Such a mediation body is essential not just for the people of Ecuador, but also for all the indebted nations of Africa, Latin America and Asia - so we look to you for leadership and experience; and we commit ourselves to solidarity with you as you take on the power of western creditors.
Your work and your struggles are essential if we are to educate the masses of our people in the workings of an international financial system which enriches the few, and impoverishes the many. To transform that system we need to educate, mobilise and organise in support of tour objectives.
What are these? I think it's important for us to continuously clarify our objectives. In my view they include first: massive and immediate cancellation of the unpayable debts of the poorest countries of the world. That, now, thanks to the long struggles against the debt, both here in Africa, but also in Asia and Latin America is now accepted. Building on our struggles in the most indebted nations, the worldwide Jubilee 2000 movement has emerged, in much the same way as the anti-slavery movement in the West grew out of the resistance of slave communities in Africa and the Caribbean. Thanks to this worldwide Jubilee 2000 movement, as President Clinton acknowledged in his speech to the IMF in September, there is now "a global consensus" for debt relief. We need to recognise and acknowledge the work that has been done in the North, to apply pressure on western governments, by Jubilee 2000 campaigns in those countries. We need to acknowledge that the global consensus did not emerge out of thin; it has been constructed through struggle and resistance in our indebted nations; and through the tremendous mobilisation of public opinion in countries like Britain, Germany, Italy and the US.
But while great strides have been made in building a global consensus, there is still not sufficient debt cancellation. Mozambique has had $43.7 bn of debt relief; Uganda $650 million; Bolivia $760 million; Guyana $420 million. These are huge tangible gains. They must not be under-estimated, and the governments that are benefiting from these gains must be reminded that they have come as a result of the struggle of the global Jubilee 2000 movement.
They are gains that make a real difference to the balance sheets of these poor economics. They remove the debt overhang. They release funds that would have been spent in debt repayments - and we all need to be vigilant that these newly released funds are being spent well. That the money will go to the poor of Mozambique, Uganda, Bolivia and Guyana.
But overall while the total debt of each of these countries may be failing, their annual debt payments are still rising, oven after HIPC. Indeed the whole point of HIPC, or at least so it seems to me, HIPC which has been designed and controlled by creditors, is to turn these countries into good debtors; to make them pay. The objective of the Jubilee 2000 campaign of which we are all part is to release these countries from debt bondage and to eternal grip of western creditors biased in Washington, London, Bonn and Tokyo'.
Second we need new economic systems: economic systems which put people, not profits first. I would like at this point to say how much I welcomed the statement the Pope made when he gave his personal backing to the international Jubilee 2000 delegation that met with him in Castelgandolfo in September.
He said, and I quote: "The low of profit alone cannot be applied to that which is essential for the fight against hunger, disease and poverty. The Catholic Church...has consistently taught that there is a "social mortgage" on all private property, a concept which today must also be applied to "intellectual property" and to "knowledge"."
The Pope is right. The law of profit - it has already been proved - cannot put food in the bellies of the millions mothers, fathers, children, grandparents, workers - the millions who hunger and starve, here on the African continent, in Latin America and in Asia. The law of profit Wit not allow them the drugs they need to treat the most stressful and appalling disease known to man: Aids. The law of profit will not help the majority in the world to climb out of the deep well of poverty into which they have been plunged by a ruthless economic system whose main driving force is profit and greed.
That is why we need new economic systems. Economic systems which place human values at their centre; not money values.
Nobel Peace Laureate, Professor Amartya Son, has emphasised that the validity of any economic policy should be judged on whether it takes into account its impact on people who are on the downside of the economy. He says that it is necessary to bring social deprivation into the domain of public discussion and create systems for social opportunities. A guiding principle in designing an economic policy that has, as its major focus, the well-being of humanity is the witness of the common good. In so doing we would ensure that communities and Individuals benefited.
Third, we need economic systems based on respect for nature and the environment for wildlife and plantlife. Economic system which recognise that there is a "social mortgage" on all property. Such economic systems are deeply embedded in traditional African culture and practice, as they are in the centuries-old experience and practices of the campesinos of the plains and forests of Latin America. Traditional practices dismissed and undermined first by colonisation, by the slave trade; and now by globilisation. We need to have the confidence, we in the South, to believe In our own traditions; in our deep knowledge and understanding of our environments. We need to assert our right to control over those environments, and not have them stripped logged and drained by TNCs from the North.
Professor Klaus Nurnberger from the University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, wrote (in Prosperity, Poverty and Pollution, Page 1 0):
"Economics is too important to be left to economists. Responsibility for the economic and ecological wellbeing of humankind rests with the entire academic community, in fact, with the citizenry at large" He went on to write: "A humanity which has lost its sense of responsibility has abandoned its birthright" (Page 11).
We have to take responsibility for our world, for our economic system - harnessing to serve us, rather than allowing it to enslave US - and for one another. We need a fundamental reappraisal of economics, so that need and capacity, rather than supply and demand, provide our guidelines.
Life Is a challenge to realise our sovereignty, and the responsibility the goes with It. To quote Nurnberger again: "We are not the only one who have a right to live on this singular planet. There are contemporaries in grinding poverty. There are future generations who must be given a chance to enjoy what we are enjoying now. There are nonhuman species which are pushed into oblivion by our mindlessness and greed. In the long run our own worth will be determined by the degree to which we are capable of recognising and defending the dignity of all the creatures of God, present and future' (Page 15).
Fourth, we need systems of democratic accountability and transparency. Here in Africa, and I am sure it is true elsewhere in the South; for every step forward we take towards democratic accountability - and today 80% of Africans live under regimes that have taken the first steps towards democracy - for every step we take towards democracy - globalisation forces us to two steps backward.
Much could be done. in Africa if the people of Africa were in control of their own economic, political and social systems. I am reminded of the words Kwame Nkrumah in his speech to the UN in September, 1960 when he said: "The problem of Africa, looked at as a whole, is a wide and diversified one. But its true solution lies in the application of one principle: namely the right of the people of Africa to rule themselves.
We need democratic political systems - Africa, Latin America and Asia which ordinary people at the heart of our economic systems; and in control of their own economies.
That is what we are struggling for under the banner of the Jubilee 2000 movement.
We went an end to government by the bankers, of the bankers, for the bankers. We want an end to government by the shareholders, of the shareholders, for the shareholders. We want for the people of Africa, Latin America and Asia, what Abraham Lincoln wanted for the people of the United States: government by the people, of the people, for the people.
I want now if I may, to turn my attention to Africa's debt. 34 of the 42 countries defined by the IMF as effectively bankrupt are in Africa. 548 million of the 712 million people that live in HIPC countries live in Africa.
Why are these countries effectively bankrupt? There are many answers of course, and poor governance by Africa's elites is one of the keys to Africa's economic degradation. The conduct of Mobutu in Zaire; of the military regimes that ruled Nigeria; of the autocratic regimes that continue to hold sway In Africa - these leaders and their elites have failed their own people.
But I was very struck by a figure that appeared in this years annual report from UNCTAD, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. According to UNCTAD, citizens living in Western countries gained $60 billion of benefit from the collapse of the oil price in 1998. A bonus of $60 billion, from the collapse in price of one commodity alone. That commodity is produced by countries in Africa. Angola, Nigeria; but also by countries in Latin America like Venezuela and Mexico. In other words the people of some of the poorest, most indebted nations in the world have given, almost free, a gift of $60 billion to the people that live in the rich world. Its no wonder the stock market in Wall Street is booming. The rich are getting richer on the backs of the poor.
And what is significant about the number 560 billion, according to UNCTAD - is that it is less than the rich industrialised nations gave to the poorest countries in aid in 1998.
Of course oil was not the only commodity whose price fell through the floor in 1998. So the gifts of the poor to the rich were more generous than just virtually free oil.
The Ideology, of neo-liberalism; of the liberalisation of capital and trade markets, is working well In Africa, in serving the interests of the rich. Its an ideology whose central premise is that the rich must be allowed to get richer, and if they need to get richer at the expense of the poorest people in the world, then, according to the ideology of neo-liberalism - so be it.
SO African government have been encouraged to open up their markets; to liberalise their trade. The beneficiaries have been rich western traders; the losers have been African traders, mostly agricultural producers, producers of Africa's basic foodstuffs.
While we in Africa are encouraged to remove subsidies from our farmers and from foodstuffs, the European Union and the US continue to provide subsidies to their agricultural sectors. So that when markets in Africa, they are opened up to highly subsidised products, with which we cannot compete. According to Eurostep, a network of European NGOs - the EU is the largest producer and exporter of milk - and has 60% of the world market. These subsidised exports of European milk powder are wreaking havoc in the dairy industries of Jamaica, Brazil and Tanzania. In Jamaica for example, imports of EU milk powder skyrocketed once the government "liberalised" the milk market in 1992. In a few months local production plummeted, as a result of European subsidised competition - there is no level playing field here - and countless farmers have been ruined. Many West African countries - Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso, Gambia, Ghana - after "liberalising" their markets in the mid-1990s has been literally flooded with the heavily subsidised European product. In most of these countries the domestic tomato industry has collapsed, ruining countless farmers and leading to the failure of several local enterprises.
The dumping of European beef in the Sahel countries and more recently in South Africa and Namibia is having the same consequences.
The poor are being robbed - of their self-sufficiency, and their right to fair trade-. The poor are supporting and financing the rich. This is not just immoral; It is amoral.
It is amoral because the poor that are financing the rich are doing so while enduring disease and epidemics. As Prof. Jeffrey Sachs has pointed out, these are unparalleled in Africa since the Bubonic plague of 14th century Europe. The enormity of the Aids epidemic - or is it a pandemic - in Africa is indeed a new kind of Bubonic plaque. Its reflected in one significant fad: businesses in Africa have had to introduce policies to limit the number of funerals their staff can attend during the week. Now if you work in. a company based in Africa, you cannot afford more than one funeral a week.
Take Zambia for example: which spent more than 30% of its national budget on debt repayments to the rich west throughout the 1990s, while spending roughly 10% of as budget on social services. The Zambian government spends approximately $17? per year on health services. Contrast this with the $2,300 per person the (G7 governments spend on health services for their people. In Zambia 20% of the population is now HIV positive, and it is estimated that nearly 10% of all Zambian children under 15 have lost a mother or both parents to AIDS. Half of all Zambian have no access to safe drinking water. 30% of children have not been vaccinated. Infant mortality stands at 112 per 1000 births, compared to 5 per 1000 births in the United States.
Most shocking of all, life expectancy in Zambia is expected to fall to 33 years in the next decade, whereas in most western creditor nations life expectancy is in the high 60's or 70's - and rising.
I is the poor, disease and orphaned people of countries like Zambia that are helping the shareholders in Wall Street, in Frankfurt and in London to get rich. It's the collapse in Africa's commodity prices that is helping hold down inflation in the West. And it's the poor, diseased and orphaned people of Nigeria, Angola, Zambia, Tanzania that are foregoing health care, clean water, sanitation to repay debts to rich western creditors.
This is an economic system, which is the logical outcome of an ideology that places money values above human values. That elevates greed and accumulation over compassion and generosity. That promotes the interest of a tiny minority - the rich - over the interest of the great majority the poor.
This Is the Ideology of neo-liberalism; of monetarism; of a new and more virulent form of capitalism. It is an ideology that is unsustainable, that has within itself the seeds of its own destruction.
However, it is an ideology that continues to inflict grave damage on humanity; that is destroying the life chances of millions of people in Zambia, Nigeria, Tanzania, Zimbabwe to mention a few in Africa; as well as in Indonesia, in the Philippines, in Russia, in Ecuador, in Peru and in Argentina.
But we in Africa have a particular duty to challenge this ideology; to organise and educate our peopel, to ensure widespread understanding of the causes of suffering on our continent. When people do not understand; when people cannot make sense of their disintegrating world, of increasing poverty and suffering, they tend to turn on each other. To blame their neighbour. This, I believe, lies behind the many civil wars now being fought out In Africa.
That is why we, in the Jubilee 2000 movement in Africa have a particular responsibility; to end the ignorance of our people; to inform and educate. And through understand to liberate. It is a challenge that has already been taken up by the campaigns in Uganda, where I know Zie Gariyo and his team have done great work; in Tanzania where Christopher Mwakasege and Rogate Mshona have appealed to millions of their fellow citizens. Mwalimu Nyerere said about Tanzania that "there is the constant need to borrow to service debt and the constant need to service debt in order to borrow. That is in order to earn the right or privilege to increase our debt burden further." How right he was.
In Zambia and Mozambique, but also in the nascent, but important campaign in Nigeria. By the heroic efforts of our friends in the Jubilee 20M campaign in Angola.
President Obassanjo's recent calls for debt cancellation for Africa are encouraging. He is amongst the first of the influential African leaders, actually in government, to speak out publicly on this issue, and to challenge western creditors. Too many African leaders have been timid before their western creditors, and unlike the leaders of Ecuador, have preferred to place the interest of foreign creditors over the interest of their own people.
All this is welcome. But more needs to be done. We cannot make excuses. There is too much at stake. If our children are to have a future, then we must take that future into our own hands, and through education and understanding empower our people to take control over their own lives, their own economies and political systems.
We have to challenge this ideology that encourages the idolatry of money and welthe. We have to challenge it with our own humanity, our own compassion. Above all we must challenge it by joining hands across continents, by linking up with like-minded people in the North and in the South; by standing together. We should always be guided by the famous "Lund" principle: "Never do alone what we can do together". "That we may be one as we are one" (Jn 17.11)
Here in South Africa we thank God for the high level of solidarity that existed among various communities - national and international - during the liberation struggle - as well as their continuing co-operation in our new role as midwives of the transformation process in Southern Africa. This solidarity extended through the anti-apartheid movement in Europe and the US that challenged the bankers, politicians and TNCs that backed the apartheid state. Our friends in Europe and the US engaged with Power; and challenged what was being done in the name of European and American citizens.
We need to continue building and constructing high levels of solidarity in our struggle against an international financial system that robs the poor, and rewards the rich. We need to encourage compassion and humanity in people around the world; and through co-operation and mutual support to build confidence in the great human values of love, compassion and generosity.
I know we can do this; I know that already the Jubilee 2000, movement is doing this. That we are a movement that has stung the conscience of world leaders: that has united people of good faith across the world. That has challenged the idolatry of money. That has educated and informed millions of people in the workings of the international financial system. That has achieved real ant! practical debt cancellation.
I want to end by giving you one more reason for doing more. It is this: the life of Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, one of Africa's greatest thinkers and leaders. Mwalimu understood that Africa is caught in a vicious circle. That these debts can never be repaid. That the struggle to write off the debts must continue. He was a passionate supporter of the Jubilee 2000 movement. The international solidarity that is central to the movement brought him some comfort in the lost days of his life; this much we know. His daughter Rose, is a Jubilee 2000 supporter and campaigner in Tanzania.
Nyerere said in his address to the Maryknoll Sisters in New York in 1970 that "Poverty is not the real problem of the modern world. For we have the knowledge and resources which could enable us to overcome poverty. The real problem, the thing which creates misery, wars and hatred among men, is the division of mankind into rich and poor."
Julius Nyerere believed that all institutions were necessary not for their own preservation and power, but for the purpose of sustaining and promoting global co-operation and interdependence. Jubilee 2000 exists not for its own preservation, nor for its power; that for the purpose of promoting global co-operation and interdependence.
We mourn his death: we bemoan Africa's great loss. Let us honour his life, by promoting the very global co-operation and interdependence he believed in.
Together we can do more. Together we can move the mountain of debt. Together we can change the world. We can not do this alone. But we can do it together.
I went to end with a call to all leaders of Developing Countries to stand alongside their people in calling for the cancellation of unpayable debt in their countries. As a fitting tribute to Mwalimu Nyerere, I call on leaders of the G8 countries to hold their meeting next year - the year of Jubilee In Africa - preferably in Arusha, Tanzania, and there make a declaration of their total commitment to cancellation of all unpayable debts of Developing Countries. This will enable these countries to make a fresh start at the beginning of the new millennium.
We have come together to plan our way forward. Finally - a note of advice from Mwalimu.
To plan is to choose.
Choose to go forward.
Let us choose to go forward.
Let us choose
to go forward
together.
Thank you.
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