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Africa: Gauteng Declaration on Debt
Africa: Gauteng Declaration on Debt
Date distributed (ymd): 990408
Document reposted by APIC
+++++++++++++++++++++Document Profile+++++++++++++++++++++
Region: Continent-Wide
Issue Areas: +economy/development+
Summary Contents:
This posting contains the text of the Gauteng Declaration
issued by delegates at the Southern African Debt Summit in
Johannesburg, 21 March 1999. It also contains a statement by
the Canadian Ecumenical Jubilee Initiative on new Canadian
proposals for debt cancellation. For additional links and
background see the Africa Policy debt page
(http://www.africapolicy.org/action/debt.htm).
+++++++++++++++++end profile++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
APIC Book Note
**New and Highly Recommended**
Thandika Mkandawire and Charles C. Soludo,
Our Continent, Our Future: African Perspectives on Structural
Adjustment. Trenton, NJ and Asmara, Eritrea: Africa World
Press, 1999. 176 pp. Paperback. $21.95 list price (discount
available on amazon.com). Jointly published with International
Development Research Centre (Ottawa, Canada) and CODESRIA
(Dakar, Senegal). ISBN:
086543705X
Must reading for anyone concerned to understand African
development strategies. Particularly recommended for those
involved in the debate about trade and new U.S. policies
towards Africa. Written as a synthesis of work by leading
African social scientists, this book is concise, clear,
non-rhetorical and solidly based on empirical work. It not
only provides a devastating critique of standard "structural
adjustment" models, but also lays out an alternative strategy
for African-directed growth and development. -- William
Minter, APIC Senior Research Fellow
Mkandawire and Soludo on debt (p. 122):
"All efforts to find out why stabilization or adjustment has
not worked, why investment has not resumed, and why the state
capacity has been further eroded will fail unless this single
but dominant issue -- debt overhang -- is included."
Order Our Continent, Our Future from Amazon.com through
APIC's Africa Web Bookshop (http://www.africapolicy.org/books)
and earn a 15% referral fee from Amazon.com for APIC.
Southern African Jubilee Debt Summit
Gauteng Declaration
Freedom from Debt = Freedom from Domination
[for more information contact Jubilee 2000 South Africa at
aidc@iafrica.com or Jubilee 2000 Afrika at
afrika@jubilee2000uk.org]
On the eve of the new millennium, we are witnessing the rapid
growth of Jubilee 2000 structures and debt coalitions across
the region to tackle the existing problems we face and to move
to a new millennium of hope and change.
The vast majority of the people of sub-Saharan Africa live in
pervasive poverty. In Southern Africa tens of millions of
people are hungry, homeless, jobless, formally uneducated and
die from preventable diseases.
Yet Southern Africa is not intrinsically poor. Indeed, it is
a region rich in natural and human resources. Debt slavery,
the same system of debt bondage that excludes four fifths of
the world's population from economic and social development,
is a central part of this nightmare. Southern Africa is
shackled by debt owed to the same forces which initiated,
enforced, condoned and sustained slavery and colonialism.
Today this debt is both a manifestation and an instrument of
the unjust international economic order in which the North
dominates the South and the elites in our countries are
willing accomplices and beneficiaries. Countries in Southern
Africa pay as much as 40% of its export earnings to service
the debt. This outflow of resources in debt repayments along
with profit remittances have led to the most wretched of human
conditions.
Not only is the debt burden choking the life of Southern
Africa's human potential, indebted nations have also been
pressurised to agree to crippling conditionalities to get
loans to repay the debt in a deepening spiral of indebtedness.
The Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) have caused
increasing levels of unemployment, reduced government
services, higher prices of food and other basic commodities
and intensified poverty.
Through the imposition of export-led growth, financial and
trade liberalisation, fiscal austerity, privatization and
deregulation, our economies remain sources of cheap raw
materials and pools of cheap labour for the interests of the
industrialised North. Through SAPs our governments have become
more accountable to the elites of the North rather than to
their own people. We have been denied the right to be active
participants in the decision making process of our own
development. In this sense we see how debt has come to be an
instrument of control and domination.
The domination of the North over the South has led to
conditions which have spawned wars and conflicts in our region
that have further exacerbated the levels of poverty, human
suffering - and debt bondage.
The legacy of apartheid compounds this situation. Southern
Africa, as a region, suffers the effects of apartheid-caused
debt. Apartheid-sponsored wars and economic destabilisation
forced nations to borrow billions of dollars because of the
international communities' failure to enforce the
international law violated by apartheid.
Over two million people have been killed in Southern Africa in
apartheid-related wars, millions more have been maimed and
thousands of schools, clinics, bridges and roads have been
destroyed. Today, Southern African nations are paying millions
of dollars annually to service apartheid-caused debt to
creditors who were in the main supporters of apartheid. The
total cost of apartheid-caused destabilisation in Southern
Africa is far greater than the actual apartheid-caused debts.
The former estimated cost exceeds US$115-billion while
apartheid-caused debt is some $27-billion.
Wars have now escalated to the point of forcing states of the
region to borrow even more and thereby further deepen our
dependence on militarised politics and economic management.
Under these circumstances the debt of Southern Africa is
illegitimate and immoral. Yet there is a debt which we do
recognise - a moral debt. This is the debt that our
governments, the governments of the G7/8, multilaterals and
international commercial banks owe us for unbuilt and broken
down schools, for women and girls who continue to bear the
burden of poverty and for the jobs, homes, clean water and all
the fundamental human rights we do not have.
We thus demand:
- the unconditional, immediate and total cancellation of the
debt;
- the immediate termination of the conditions attached to all
the internationally designed debt relief mechanisms to tying
this to further economic adjustment; and
- the scrapping of the HIPC initiative
The only conditions we recognise are those that are developed
by the popular and representative civil society organisations.
We believe that the results of debt cancellation can only
benefit our people if it is accompanied by deep-going
processes of democratisation, the upholding of human rights -
including workers rights - transparency, accountability and
the provision of basic social services.
We reiterate the call for reparations in the 1993 Abuja
Declaration embracing the totality of all the quantifiable and
unquantifiable costs that have been incurred. Reparations must
compensate for economic and social damage incurred by our
people, to finance the rebuilding of our own infrastructure
and society and to restore our dignity. We believe reparations
are long overdue as our initiative to regain control over our
destiny and to ensure that the African holocaust will never
occur again.
We call for the building of a new democratic world order upon
the eradication of the present order that continues to bond us
to debt through the ties of free trade, exploitative and
extractive movement of Transnational corporate investment,
volatile and speculative hot money flows; all within an
ideology concocted by a tiny minority based in the USA, the so
called 'Washington Consensus'.
We see the gathering of Jubilee 2000 coalitions and other
popular forces in Cologne in June as an important step in the
march towards the realisation of the objectives of our
unifying movements. We demand that the G7 and Bretton Woods
Institutions do justice to us but are under no illusion that
this will happen without an intensification of popular
pressure. That is why we deem it necessary to galvanise our
forces in buliding up momentum for a strong South-South
coaliton and our own agenda for total liberation at the
South-South Summit.
We affirm the Accra, Rome and Tegucigalpa Declarations and the
World Council of Churches Harare Statement on Debt and welcome
the forthcoming Asia Pacific Jubilee summit as part of our
South-South Jubilee process. We call on our Church and other
civil society allies in the North to support our struggle and
the process that has led to this and previous declarations.
In so doing they would be transforming themselves, as we
desire, into vehicles of genuine solidarity within a Jubilee
2000 global movement led by the South for a new world in the
new millennium.
On our part we shall continue to build Jubilee 2000 coalitions
that will empower the broad masses of people to respond
effectively to all the challenges posed by the debt crisis and
the Jubilee clarion for a new millennium. We mean in this
regard people-to-people campaigning to build our own power,
capacity and "globalisation of solidarity" networking in order
to ensure the achievement of our goals. We are building our
campaign in such a way that will secure debt cancellation by
all possible means, including exerting pressure upon all those
concerned or by the collective mass action of unified South
debt repudiation if necessary.
We are calling upon everybody to act accordingly and thus
contribute towards realising the above objectives. Most
importantly, let us boost each other's confidence in our
collective ability to achieve these goals through principled
unity, South-to South, and South-to-North.
Finally, we commit ourselves to self-determination in working
for debt cancellation within a broader concept of Jubilee,
including assertion of our sovereignty from Northern
domination and transformation towards an alternative global
economic system.
Southern African Debt Summit
Johannesburg, 21st March 1999
Jubilee 2000 Southern African Coalitions
Affirmed by delegates from: Angola, Lesotho, Malawi,
Mozambique, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia,
Zimbabwe, Jubilee 2000 Afrika and Jubilee 2000 Coalitions from
Latin America and Philippines
END
The Canadian Ecumenical Jubilee Initiative
Press Release
Toronto, March 26, 1999
The Canadian Ecumenical Jubilee Initiative
P.O. Box 772, Station F
Toronto, ON, M4Y 2N6, CANADA
Tel: 416.922.1592 (x 30); Fax: 416.922.0957
Email:jubilee@devp.org
Government Debt Relief Strategy a Step in the Right Direction,
Say Canadian Churches, But More is Needed
The Canadian government's debt relief strategy announced
yesterday by Prime Minister Chretien is a positive step
towards addressing the twenty year old debt crisis, say
officials with the Canadian Ecumenical Jubilee Initiative, a
coalition of over thirty church denominations and church
related groups in Canada. However, given the urgency of the
problem and the barrier to meeting the human needs of the
world's poorest people that the debt crisis represents, more
must be done.
"We welcome the challenge Canada has put to other creditor
countries for 100% cancellation of the debt owed by some poor
countries," says Jennifer Henry, an official of the Jubilee
Initiative. "We also support Canada's willingness to move
alone if in fact other creditor countries are not up to this
challenge. Canada has raised the bar for meaningful action at
the G-8 meeting in June."
The Canadian proposal begins to fall down, says the Jubilee
Initiative, in the limited number of countries deemed eligible
for 100% debt cancellation. The Canadian churches have called
for urgent and complete cancellation of the bilateral and
multilateral debts of the world's fifty poorest countries,
while the government's announcement covers only about thirty.
In his speech given yesterday, the Prime Minister emphasizes
the need to "forgive debt and grant further credits to
countries that increase spending on education and health for
their people and reduce spending on weapons and the military."
The churches welcome the considerations of human rights in
debtor countries, but point to a bitter irony if structural
adjustment conditions remain in place.
Under the Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative,
the IMF and World Bank oblige poor countries, through
structural adjustment programs, to reduce their spending on
education and health in order to qualify for debt relief.
Alejandro Bendana of the Nicaraguan Jubilee Initiative reports
that "creditor countries have overseen the crumbling of our
social infrastructure with devastating impacts on the poor."
Under the Canadian proposal, the structural adjustment
requirement, while reduced in length, still remains.
"To continue these austerity conditions and then talk of
offering debt relief only to countries prepared to increase
social spending, is equivalent to whacking someone on the head
and then offering them aspirin," says Dennis Howlett of the
Jubilee Initiative. "Another bell here, another whistle there
within HIPC cannot redeem it. A whole new approach is needed."
Bendana notes that to be consistent, the Prime Minister's
concern for human rights must include a rejection of
structural adjustment programs which are themselves causes of
violations of social and economic rights.
Although the churches are calling for a new multilateral debt
cancellation framework, they are pleased that the Canadian
government advocates adding several new countries to the
original HIPC list.
The Jubilee Initiative is opposed to creditors dictating the
terms of debt relief. They propose an international mechanism
whereby creditors and debtors -- including representatives
from civil society organizations -- can negotiate together the
terms of debt relief and the allocation of savings. In
addition, they want to see the list of countries eligible for
some form of debt cancellation further expanded to include
so-called "middle-income countries" which also have crushing
debt loads.
Jubilee officials vowed to keep up the pressure on the
Chretien government as it heads towards the G-8 meeting in
Germany this coming June. They plan to present one of the
largest petitions in Canadian history to the Prime Minister
before the summit. The petition will demonstrate Canadian
public support for a radically new beginning for the world's
impoverished people as they enter the new millennium. Several
hundred thousand signatures have already been collected across
the country.
For more information, contact:
Jennifer Henry, Ecumenical Coalition for Economic Justice,
Canadian Ecumenical Jubilee Initiative
416-462-1613; E-mail:
ecejjh@accessv.com
Dennis Howlett, Ten Days for Global Justice, Canadian
Ecumenical Jubilee Initiative
416-463-5312; E-mail:
tendays@web.net
Dale Hildebrand, Inter-Church Action, Canadian Ecumenical
Jubilee Initiative
416-461-3634; E-mail: daleica@web.net
This material is being reposted for wider distribution by the
Africa Policy Information Center (APIC). APIC's primary
objective is to widen the policy debate in the United States
around African issues and the U.S. role in Africa, by
concentrating on providing accessible policy-relevant
information and analysis usable by a wide range of groups and
individuals.
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