Reparations Towards Another World
Posted on August 30 2001 |
Preamble
Jubilee South Africa and Jubilee South convened a three-day workshop in Durban, South Africa in August 2001 on the occasion of the World Conference Against Racism. The workshop considered the illegitimacy of the debt of the South to the North, the debt that the North owes the South and the case for reparations.
It was attended by delegates from Jubilee structures throughout South Africa, anti-debt and Jubilee coalitions from the Southern African region as well as participants from various organisations in South Africa, Africa and the other continents of the world. This declaration constitutes the agreement reached by the broad range of participants at the workshop.
Slavery, Colonialism and Neo-colonialism
Slavery, colonialism and neo-colonialism have caused inestimable damage to billions of people throughout the world. They have also formed the basis for the accumulation of immense wealth in the hands of a small elite centred in the North.
The slave trade involved the brutal relocation of tens of millions of people in which families, communities and societies were destroyed and in which millions lost their lives in the most inhumane conditions. At the same time, slavery was a fundamental element of the strengthening of mercantile trade and the rapid accumulation of capital that formed the basis for the emergence of the capitalist system as we know it today.
Colonial conquest entailed the further oppression of the people of the colonies in the form of dispossessing people of their land and their livelihoods, destroying their cultures and social and political structures and subjecting them to the rule of the colonial powers.
Colonialism, in both its early expansionary phase and the imperialist phase in which the colonial powers carved up the world amongst themselves, created the conditions for the further accumulation of capital as well as the concentration and centralisation of this wealth into fewer and fewer hands.
Neo-colonialism continues and intensifies this oppression, leading to levels of poverty and destitution in the South never witnessed before. The big transnational corporations, the governments of the North and the international institutions, including the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and World Trade Organisation, are working with new elites in the South to perpetuate the process whereby the rich get richer at the expense of the poor getting poorer.
The Transfer of Resources and Racism
In each instance, slavery, colonialism and neo-colonialism have entailed the massive transfer of resources from the South to the North. The slave trade delivered free labour to the emerging capitalist class. Colonialism entailed the plunder of resources from the South to fuel industrial development in the North. Neo- colonialism creates the conditions for the continued rape of natural resources and the opportunities for transnational company profiteering in thecountries of the South.
Moreover, in each instance, this transfer of resources has been underpinned by exploitation of people on the basis of their race. This is true also of neo-colonialism in which the veneer of non- racism masks the deepening of inequality on racial lines. Racism and the accumulation of capitalist wealth have become inseperable bedfellows.
Debt as an Instrument of Domination
In this period of neo-colonialism, debt is a central instrument used by the elites of the North in ensuring the continued subjugation of countries of the South. The countries ravaged by the historical legacy of slavery and colonialism are now ensnared in debt to the extent that servicing the debt steals resources from meeting people,s most basic needs, resulting in the deaths of 19 000 children every day in the South.
The level of indebtedness requires new loans to pay merely a portion of the interest on existing debt and results in a further downward spiral of indebtedness. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund are manipulating this indebtedness to advance new loans on condition that the affected countries submit to structural adjusment programmes. These programmes are designed in the interest of the elites in the North and further impoverish the poor.
The high rates of interest have resulted in the perverse situation in which countries have paid the debt many times over and are now indebted to a greater degree than before. In 1980, third world debt stood at US$567 billion. Since then, US$3 450 billion has been paid, yet today third world debt stands at US$2 070 billion. In addition, loans have been given to support Apartheid and other dictatorships and they have fuelled corruption. Loans for dam, oil and mining projects have served as a source of profit for transnational corporations and resulted in intense environmental and social damage.
For these reasons, we argue that the purported debt of the South to the North is illegitimate. Instead, it is the North that owes the South for the centuries of exploitation exacerbated by the illegitimate debt in the current period.
Oppression of the South in the North
Suffering at the hands of slavery, colonialism and neo-colonialism has not been confined to people in the countries of the South. People in the rich countries of the North have also faced intense oppression in a number of different forms.
Indigenous groups have fallen victim to policies of genocide and the descendants of slaves continue to be exploited today. As neo- colonialism bites and poverty and conflict intensify, more and more people are forced to pursue their livelihoods in countries of the North. Migrants are dealt with as modern-day slaves and refugees are treated with disregard for their basic human rights.
Resistance, Repudiation and Reparations
The oppressed people of the world have not simply sat back in the face of their oppression. In each instance, they have organised and resisted. People across the world challenged and defeated the slave trade and did the same again to consign colonialism to history. Now again, people are rising to fight neocolonialism and the system of capitalism which feeds off the continued plunder of the countries of the South.
The growing campaign to repudiate the debt and the rapidly spreading demand for reparations constitute two central elements of the broader struggle to replace the corporate global agenda with a people,s global agenda. We need to take the issues of repudiation and reparations into our communities, organisations and social movements, and link these issues to other demands and campaigns.
On the question of debt, we need to build strong national and international alliances to put pressure on the governments of the South to collectively take a stand to repudiate the debt. On reparations, we need to both intensify the general demand for reparations at an international level and develop specific demands in each of our countries and regions. These demands need to be clearly targeted to, on the one hand, the international banks, transnational corporations, the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and the governments of the dominant economies of the world and, on the other, local banks and corporations. On paying for the damage done, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund should be shut down, together with the World Trade Organisation.
Reparations Towards Another World
We are not undertaking these campaigns and making these demands as short-term and single-issue events in isolation from broader struggles. We are only too aware that the forces that damaged us in the past can return to damage us again if we don,t develop these struggles as steps towards dismantling the global system of oppression and exploitation.
We need to move beyond this system to one in which the upliftment of the lives of the poor takes centre stage. This includes delivering on people ,s entitlement to jobs, land, food security, water, electricity, housing, transport, education, health and social security. But it is also far more than this. It is also about workers and the marginalised across the world coming together in social movements and political organisations and taking the lead in shaping their own future.
In this regard, it is important that the Durban Social Forum, coming together at the time of the World Conference Against Racism, continues beyond this conference and broadens to become the South African Social Forum. This forum should encourage the coming together of similar formations the length and breadth of the continent to be part of a growing and strengthening World Social Forum.
We are at one with the people of the world who say with increasing confidence that another world is possible. Our struggles against debt and for reparations are important building blocks for turning this possibility into reality.
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