Dorothy-Grace Guerrero and Firoze Manji (ed) (2008) China’s New Role in Africa and the South: A search for a new perspective. 
Back Issues
Pambazuka News 240: Globalisation, trade and justice: special issue
The authoritative electronic weekly newsletter and platform for social justice in Africa
Pambazuka News is the authoritative pan African electronic weekly newsletter and platform for social justice in Africa providing cutting edge commentary and in-depth analysis on politics and current affairs, development, human rights, refugees, gender issues and culture in Africa.
To view online, go to http://www.pambazuka.org/
Want to get off our subscriber list? Write to unsubscribe@pambazuka.org and your address will be removed
CONTENTS: 1. Highlights from this issue, 2. Features, 3. Comment & analysis, 4. Pan-African Postcard, 5. Letters, 6. Books & arts, 7. Blogging Africa, 8. African Union Monitor, 9. Women & gender, 10. Human rights, 11. Refugees & forced migration, 12. Elections & governance, 13. Corruption, 14. Development, 15. Health & HIV/AIDS, 16. Education, 17. Racism & xenophobia, 18. Environment, 19. Land & land rights, 20. Media & freedom of expression, 21. Advocacy & campaigns, 22. News from the diaspora, 23. Conflict & emergencies, 24. Internet & technology, 25. eNewsletters & mailing lists, 26. Fundraising & useful resources, 27. Courses, seminars, & workshops, 28. Jobs
Support the struggle for social justice in Africa. Give generously!
Donate at: http://www.pambazuka.org/en/donate.php
Highlights from this issue
Featured in this issue
2006-02-02
EDITORIAL: Can trade in the era of globalisation be ‘just’? We introduce a series of articles on the topic of trade and justice.
COMMENT AND ANALYSIS:
- Charles Abugre on plugging the leakage of Africa’s resources
- Manu Herbstein, author of ‘Ama, a Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade’, reflects on the historical background to his novel and some of its contemporary implications
- A court case has been filed over “the modern equivalent of slavery" in Liberia, reports Robtel Pailey
- Can US$777 trillion ever be repaid? M.P. Giyose makes a case for reparations
- Women bear the brunt of the effects of trade liberalization, argues Jennifer Chiriga
- Water, health care and every other essential service is up for trade - with enormous implications for the lives of the poor and vulnerable. Oduor Ongwen explains
LETTERS: Pambazuka News readers want action on Darfur and reason from Mugabe
BLOGGING AFRICA: Hamas win sparks African blog debate
PAN-AFRICAN POSTCARD: Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem narrowly escapes road robbery in Nigeria
BOOKS AND ARTS: Review of ‘Silences in African History’ by Jacques Depelchin
CONFLICT AND EMERGENCIES: Instability in Nigeria, “barbaric” beating at Darfur talks
HUMAN RIGHTS: AU talks tough on human rights violations
REFUGEES AND FORCED MIGRATION: Egyptian government agrees not to deport Sudanese detainees
ELECTIONS AND GOVERNANCE: Amnesty tells Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf to act on Charles Taylor; No court martial for Besigye
WOMEN AND GENDER: Rwandan genocide survivor writes hope into law; MPs scrap pregnant schoolgirl ban in Zanzibar
DEVELOPMENT: 30 years later, a celebration for "How Europe Underdeveloped Africa"
CORRUPTION: Kenyan government rocked by resignation of finance minister over corruption scandal
RACISM AND XENOPHOBIA: Multiple discrimination for women from minority groups, says report
HEALTH AND HIV/AIDS: US abortion policy from a global perspective
EDUCATION: African UNESCO gets go ahead
ENVIRONMENT: Farmers in Mali reject GM crops
MEDIA AND FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION: "The net will soon close", Zimbabwean minister warns remaining journalists; Crackdown on independent radio station
NEWS FROM THE DIASPORA: Following a Pambazuka News editorial on Haiti last week, news comes in that Father Gerry has been released
LAND AND LAND RIGHTS: Tension increases in ongoing Central African land dispute
INTERNET AND TECHNOLOGY: Blogging mentoring project starts up in Nigeria
PLUS
e-newsletters, fundraising, courses, books and arts.
* This edition was produced with the assistance of Hivos, www.hivos.nl
* What do you think of the articles in this edition? How have you used them? Have you forwarded them to friends or colleagues? Let us know by sending an email to editor@pambazuka.org We'd love to hear from you!
Pambazuka News launches French edition
2006-02-02
Pambazuka News launches French edition
Pambazuka News, the newsletter and website with a focus on social justice issues in Africa, recently nominated by PoliticsOnline and the 6th Worldwide Forum on Electronic Democracy as one of the top ten websites internationally “who are changing the world of internet and politics”, is to begin publishing of a French language version of it highly popular electronic newsletter on January 31, 2006.
“The newsletter has succeeded in creating a pan-African community, uniting people working in human rights, conflict prevention, health, social welfare, environment and social justice right across the region,” said Kenyan Director of Fahamu and Editor of Pambazuka News, Firoze Manji. “But there is a significant and unfortunate gap between those working in English-speaking and French-speaking countries, and we intend to bridge that gap through producing a French language version of Pambazuka News. ... But publishing in these languages is only the first step,” he said. “In the longer term we want to publish an Arabic edition, and then look at other African languages such as Kiswahili.”
Existing Pambazuka News subscribers are asked to:
- Inform Pambazuka News if they, as existing subscribers, would also
like to receive the French version of the newsletter by sending an email
to frencheditor@pambazuka.org with ‘subscribe French edition’ in the subject line and their full name in the body of the email.
- Inform French colleagues, networks, family and friends that they can subscribe to the upcoming French version of the newsletter by sending an email to frencheditor@pambazuka.org with ‘subscribe French edition’ in the subject line.
Watch out for more information in subsequent editions!
Click on the link to read the full press release.
Pambazuka News launches French edition
Press Release: 19 January 2006
Fahamu
www.fahamu.org
Pambazuka News, the newsletter and website with a focus on social justice issues in Africa, recently nominated by PoliticsOnline and the 6th Worldwide Forum on Electronic Democracy as one of the top ten websites internationally “who are changing the world of internet and politics”, is to begin publishing of a French language version of it highly popular electronic newsletter on January 31, 2006.
Produced by Fahamu, Pambazuka News currently has more than18,000 subscribers and a readership estimated at 100,000 across Africa and internationally. The weekly newsletter, which is now five years old, has become the most widely known forum for debate, commentary and insightful analyses of current affairs in Africa.
“The newsletter has succeeded in creating a pan-African community, uniting people working in human rights, conflict prevention, health, social welfare, environment and social justice right across the region,” said Kenyan Director of Fahamu and Editor of Pambazuka News, Firoze Manji. “But there is a significant and unfortunate gap between those working in English-speaking and French-speaking countries, and we intend to bridge that gap through producing a French language version of Pambazuka News.”
“But publishing in these languages is only the first step,” he said. “In the longer term we want to publish an Arabic edition, and then look at other African languages such as Kiswahili.”
Early editions of the French language version of the newsletter will consist of translated commentary, analysis and snippets from the English version of the newsletter. Soon, however, staff in West Africa will be providing original French content for the French version of Pambazuka News. “It is hoped that in the future the French edition will rival its English counterpart in terms of reach and content,” said Manji.
The Pambazuka News website has also been overhauled to allow for French content to be displayed and visitors will soon be able to choose their language preference.
For further details contact:
Firoze Manji: + 44-7786-628686
Patrick Burnett: + 27 73 232 3043
Atieno Ndomo: + 254- 733 912930
[ends]
Those interested in subscribing to the French e-newsletter can do so by sending an email to editionfrancaise@pambazuka.org with ‘subscribe’ in the subject line and their full name in the body of the email. All requests for subscriptions are considered confidential and Fahamu has a strict policy of not sharing email addresses with third parties. From the beginning of February, a subscribe function will also be available from the Fahamu website.
Issued by:
Fahamu – Networks for Social Justice
www.fahamu.org
Pambazuka News website
www.pambazuka.org
Write to editor@pambazuka.org for queries.
ABOUT FAHAMU
Fahamu has a vision of the world where people organise to emancipate themselves from all forms of oppression, recognise their social responsibilities, respect each other’s differences, and realise their full potential.
Fahamu is committed to serving the needs of organisations and social movements that aspire to progressive social change and that promote and protect human rights. We believe that civil society organisations have a critical role to play in defending human rights, and that information and communications technologies can and should be harnessed for that cause. We are committed to enabling civil society organisations to use the internet to promote social justice.
Formed in 1997, Fahamu uses information and communication technologies as a tool for social change by developing supported distance learning materials for human rights and civil society organizations; innovative ways to make information and learning for change accessible; being a catalyst for critical social debate; producing social justice e-newsletters; and undertaking social policy research on Africa.
Fahamu comprises a small core of highly skilled and experienced staff based in Oxford (UK), Nairobi (Kenya) and Cape Town (South Africa). We also have an international network of Associates. Our work is also made possible through the commitment of volunteers and interns.
Pambazuka News is a project of Fahamu.
Fahamu is registered as a company limited by guarantee in the UK (4241054). Fahamu Trust is registered as a charity (1100304). Fahamu is also registered as a trust in South Africa (IT 372/01).
Fahamu’s work has been supported by the following: Article 19; Australia Aid; Commonwealth of Learning; Commonwealth Secretariat; Christian Aid; DANIDA; DFID; European Union; Ford Foundation; Foreign and Commonwealth Office; Foundation for Human Rights (South Africa); Geneva Foundation; HIVOS; International Development Research Centre, Canada; JG & VL Joffe Charitable Trust; New Field Foundation fund of the Tides Foundation; NOVIB; Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights; Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa; Oxfam GB; SIDA; Sigrid Rausing Trust; TrustAfrica; University of Oxford; University for Peace; and many individual donors.
ABOUT PAMBAZUKA NEWS
Pambazuka News means ‘awaken’ or ‘arise’ in Kiswahili. The service is published by Fahamu (www.fahamu.org) and is a weekly electronic newsletter and complementary website for social justice in Africa with a subscriber base of over 18 000. Pambazuka News is widely forwarded and reposted and it is estimated that the newsletter therefore reaches some 100,000 people on a weekly basis. This number excludes those who read the newsletter online at www.pambazuka.org or at www.allafrica.com where the newsletter appears in full each week.
Pambazuka News has:
- Supported for the campaign for the ratification of the Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa.
- Produced special editions on women’s rights for broader dissemination and for lobbying at African Union meetings. One of these editions was also produced as a pamphlet and in .PDF version and entitled ‘Not Yet a Force for Freedom’. Pambazuka News acted as a platform for the news and views of the coalition campaigning for the ratification of the protocol.
- Pambazuka News has developed and hosted a petition on the Pambazuka News website in support of women’s rights. This has also involved the development of an SMS function that enables people to sign the petition by SMS and receive SMS updates about the campaign. News about the petition has been covered by VOA, BBC, Reuters, SABC, UN-IRIN and African radio and newspaper outlets in at least 20 countries.
- Supported the campaign for the Remembrance of the 10th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide in 2004 by producing a special issue that profiled the genocide through a series of ten editorials. Pambazuka News also acted as a forum for the distribution of news and information on the commemorations.
- Produced an editorial book entitled ‘African Voices for Development and Social Justice’ profiling key editorials carried in the newsletter during 2004. The book is distributed internationally through African Books Collective.
The production of a French language version of Pambazuka News has been made possible by a grant from the New Field Foundation, a fund of the Tides Foundation.
More...
Features
Globalisation, trade and justice
Introducing a special issue on trade and justice
2006-02-02
So, can trade in the era of globalisation be ‘just’? Pambazuka News will carry a series of four special issues during 2006 that include articles designed to raise awareness and debate on issues of trade and justice. In this, the first issue, we have a range of articles that examine diverse issues related to slavery, colonialism and reparations. Other articles look at how trade impacts on women, provide pointers for civil society in their campaigning activities and examine new forms of trade injustices currently facing the continent.
It’s one the smallest states in a world were seemingly everything and everyone is globalised. That makes mountainous and landlocked Lesotho, with a population of just under two million and an unemployment rate of 50 percent, both vulnerable and dependent on the whims of market super powers to maintain its economy.
A January 1 termination of a previously little known agreement - the Multi-Fibre Arrangement (MFA) - resulted in Lesotho’s fragile textiles industry losing 13,000 jobs out of 54,000 and the closure of 10 factories. The 1970s MFA was a series of quotas set up to protect indigenous producers from import surges, but since 1995, the WTO began phasing out quotas to bring trading agreements governing textiles into line with global free trade regulations. It’s abolishment resulted in a surge of imports, mainly from China, where production costs were far lower.
In a country where one worker may be responsible for feeding, clothing and schooling a large extended family, the impact for Lesotho has been harsh. “The country is in crisis. We are in a real crisis,” said Daniel Maraisane, the General Secretary of the Lesotho Clothing and Allied Workers’ Union.
The reality of the 13,000 workers in Lesotho or the 250 000 others in Africa who lost their jobs as a result of the MFA (http://www.icftu.org/displaydocument.asp?Index=991223274&Language=EN), is that all of them were part of a complex trade web linking countries of the world that no-one could have imagined a century ago, a system where justice and the interests of ordinary workers often take backstage to global trade policies dictated by global powers. Countries like Lesotho and even entire continents like Africa, frequently appear to be on the losing end of the equation.
It’s in this context that 2005 saw a cacophony of calls for ‘trade justice’, defined as a commitment to lobbying for the introduction and implementation of trade rules that work for all people, instead of benefiting those who already have the most (http://www.tjm.org.uk/about/statement.shtml). Campaigners for trade justice argue that existing trade rules are damaging to many people, especially the poor and vulnerable, the environment and social policies. They maintain that the global trading system must be rebalanced, taking into account the needs of the poor, human rights, and the environment.
But can trade in the era of globalisation be ‘just’?
The world market has long been conquered, controlled and dominated by metropolitan capital. This was not achieved by economic means alone, but also by the use of brutal force. The metropolitan countries imposed unequal treaties, demolished existing manufacturing industries, enslaved, robbed, seized by tricks, exploited, and carried out wholesale colonization. Once the conquest of the world market had been achieved, and the North had ensured its domination, and only once that had been guaranteed, did the dogma of ‘free trade’ get imposed on a world scale. Just as the industrial revolution led to massive over-production and the voracious appetite to conquer the world and seize its markets, so the more recent revolutions in micro- and bio-technology have led, in their own way, to an era of conquering the world through a massive restructuring of economies – which was what the period of structural adjustment programmes and PRSPs was all about.
And it is no surprise that ‘free trade’ is once again the banner of the neoliberals and neocons. This new voracious surge is what is currently referred to as ‘globalisaton’. It is what has led to the rich getting richer, and the poor poorer. It is what has condemned us to be consumers, not citizens, and commercially degraded every aspect of our lives. And since only a minority have the capacity to consume, the vast majority of Africa’s people are effectively disenfranchised.
Trade in the era of globalization is neither ‘free’ nor ‘just’. 'The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist. McDonald’s cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas…And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley’s technologies to flourish is called the US Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps.' (Thomas L Friedman: The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization, New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1999, p 373)
'There is a notion gaining credence,' writes Arundhati Roy, 'that the free market breaks down national barriers, and that corporate globalization’s ultimate destination is a hippie paradise … What the free market undermines is not national sovereignty, but democracy. As the disparity between rich and poor grows, the hidden fist has its work cut out for it. Multinational corporations on the prowl for sweetheart deals that yield enormous profits cannot push through those deals and administer those projects in developing countries without the active connivance of state machinery – the police, the courts, sometimes even the army.” (Arundhati Roy: The Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire. Harper Perennial, 2004. p 37).
Leading up to the 200th commemoration of the abolition of the slave trade and the 50th anniversary of independence in Ghana – both crucial points in terms of marking Africa’s historical relationship to the rest of the world - Pambazuka News will carry a series of four special issues that include articles designed to raise awareness and debate on issues of trade and justice. In this, the first issue, we carry a range of articles that examine diverse issues related to slavery, colonialism and reparations. Other articles look at how trade impacts on women, provide pointers for civil society in their campaigning activities and examine new forms of trade injustices currently facing the continent.
- Patrick Burnett and Firoze Manji, Pambazuka News
- Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org
Contents list
1. A leaking ship: The role of debt, aid and trade
2005 was supposed to be a year of action for Africa, with demands for “more and better aid, debt cancellation and more just trade policies”. What happened? Charles Abugre from Christian Aid offers some insights into the demands of the last year and provides pointers on where African civil society should focus their energies in the related areas of aid, debt and trade.
Full article: http://www.pambazuka.org/index.php?id=31754
2. A Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade
Manu Herbstein’s first novel, ‘Ama, a Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade, recently published in South Africa by Picador Africa, won the 2002 Commonwealth Writers Best First Book Prize. Set in the late eighteenth century, it tells the story of a young woman who is captured and enslaved in the West African savannah and transported to Brazil. Here, Herbstein reflects on the historical background to his novel and some of its contemporary implications.
Full article: http://www.pambazuka.org/index.php?id=31755
3. Modern-day tyranny and slavery in Liberia
In late 2005, the International Labor Rights Fund filed an Alien Tort Claims Act case in the US District Court in California against Bridgestone, alleging "forced labor, the modern equivalent of slavery" on a Firestone Plantation in Harbel, Liberia. The lawsuit states: "The Plantation workers allege, among other things, that they remain trapped by poverty and coercion on a frozen-in-time Plantation operated by Firestone in a manner identical to how the Plantation was operated when it was first opened by Firestone in 1926." Robtel Pailey investigates modern-day slavery in the "land of the free".
Full article: http://www.pambazuka.org/index.php?id=31756
4. Trade, justice and the case for reparations
Are claims for slavery reparations of US$777 trillion, as made by a 1999 African World Reparations truth commission in Accra, realistic? How does one begin to conceptualise claims for reparations in a broader historical and social context when it comes to centuries of exploitation? M.P. Giyose from Jubilee South Africa makes the case for understanding reparations as a transformation of the way the world functions, ultimately serving to restore and sustain human civilisation.
Full article: http://www.pambazuka.org/index.php?id=31757
5. Trade, gender and the search for alternatives
It is women who bear the brunt of the effects of trade liberalization on social development through a lack of access to basic social services. But, writes Jennifer Chiriga from the Alternative Information and Development Centre, one of the major impacts of trade on women is how the capitalist ethic plays into building masculinity while at the same time playing down the role that women play in society. Alternatives are in the offing, she argues.
Full article: http://www.pambazuka.org/index.php?id=31758
6. Vulnerable and poor face up to the implications of GATS
The time is fast approaching when water, health care and every other essential service become tradable - with enormous implications for the lives of the poor and vulnerable. Oduor Ongwen, the country director of SEATINI Kenya, describes the international agreement that is going to regulate trade in services, the General Agreement on Trade in services (GATS), noting that it is a “dangerous instrument for the externalisation of resources of underdeveloped countries such as those in Africa”.
Full article: http://www.pambazuka.org/index.php?id=31759
* What do you think of the articles in this edition? How have you used them? Have you forwarded them to friends or colleagues? Let us know by sending an email to editor@pambazuka.org We'd love to hear from you!
Comment & analysis
A leaking ship: The role of debt, aid and trade
2006-02-02
Charles Abugre
2005 was supposed to be a year of action for Africa, with demands for “more and better aid, debt cancellation and more just trade policies”. What happened? Charles Abugre from Christian Aid offers some insights into the demands of the last year and provides pointers on where African civil society should focus their energies in the related areas of aid, debt and trade.
The rationale behind the “more and better aid, debt cancellation and more just trade policies” is that these will create the conditions to ensure adequate resources to finance Africa’s development. Undoubtedly, if fully addressed, these will put more money in the hands of governments and people and ease the resource constraint. We will argue however that on their own – never mind the quality of aid, the speed of debt cancellation, the degree of market opening in the north and the end of export subsidies - these demands will not provide the resources adequate for Africa’s development.
These demands, though relevant, are slightly misplaced in their singular focus on sources of “inflows” to the total denial of the mechanisms of “outflows”. It is the balance of inflows and outflows that create the net resources for development. We will also argue that the singular focus on “inflows” entrenches the sense of Africa’s dependence and perpetuates the myth of Africa’s resource poverty and powerlessness. In addition, in focussing on trade policy per se at the exclusion of what underlies trade, we miss a fundamental explanation for government’s persistence on liberalisation – beyond the view that they are reckless, ignorant, powerless or uncaring.
More and Better Aid
Our demand that governments in the north fulfil their obligation to deliver 0.7% of the gross national products for international development is right. It is indeed a right of African countries in particular, to demand it in view of the fact this promise has been used repeatedly in the past as a bait to secure economic and social reforms in Africa. But realistically, we know it won’t be delivered. The slow pace and low volume of aid increases committed at the 2005 G8 meeting in spite of all the noise, and the subsequent threat by the US to undermine the 0.7% target itself, shows how difficult and risky it is to rely on increasing volumes of aid for Africa’s development. The explanation is simple, to the extent that traditional aid continues to depend on taxpayers in the north, its ebbs and flows will depend on the political temperature and economic performance in the north, especially Europe.
But the key problems of aid are its purpose, its governance and its impact on the psychology and accountability of our governments and elite. Official development aid is hardly ever completely altruistic or single-purpose or hardly ever completely divorced from foreign policy. Consequently, we are constantly going from opposition to one thing or the other associated with the provision of aid, e.g. tied aid, policy conditioning; human rights conditioning, policy leveraging and more recently the increasing link with the war on terror.
Regardless of the rhetoric, aid cannot be separated from foreign policy objectives and to the extent that these shift, the purpose of aid will shift. In any case why not? Why shouldn’t taxpayers in the north demand that their taxes serve values and goals they hold as dear to them? Why shouldn’t they expect their governments to account for the impact of aid, therefore put in place measures to ensure that their money delivers the purpose for which it is given.
Conditionality is an important issue for Africa largely because aid forms too large a share of budgets, therefore risks associated with aid policy are more significant for African than other continents where aid forms a minuscule proportion. Whilst it is proper to keep ensuring that the conditions associated with the provision and management of aid do not exacerbate Africa’s development problems, the real challenge is to reduce its importance to Africa’s development.
The more debilitating impact of development aid is what it does to the mentality of the African elite and to the democratisation and accountable governance process. Governments have developed the myth that their economies cannot survive without aid. In reality it is their governments and the patronage systems that maintain them which are under threat without the aid machinery.
The competition among African governments for inclusion in the club of favoured nations leads to wilful abandonment, to donors, of sovereignty won at the cost of lives in the anti-colonial struggle. The multi-donor budget support arrangement is one manifestation of this loss of sovereignty. Without a break in the aid dependency mentality Africa stands no chance of building democracy based on accountability to citizens. Worst still, the imagery that aid agencies – private and official – find necessary to deploy in order to sustain domestic political interest for aid is often an affront to the African personality and spirit, diminishes the African self-worth and perpetuates negative stereotypes. Whilst we cannot ignore aid, we should not be glorifying it.
Sometimes we in civil society contribute unconsciously to the erosion of sovereignty and the loss of self-worth. We are sometimes quick to demand or endorse “governance conditionality” where aid and debt relief is made conditional to progress in these areas. To monitor compliance often requires even greater involvement and power of donors in domestic governance. It is like saying that new forms of colonisation are acceptable on human rights grounds. This is dangerous. Yet, there are cases where human rights abuses, dictatorship and corruption are at such a level that the impact of debt relief and aid will be to strengthen repression and enrich a few than promote development. What do we do under this situation?
A solution could be based on the principle that regional political bodies are better placed to manage political problems in member states. This is the principle applied by ECOWAS, SADC and the AU in conflict resolution and peace building/keeping. This is also the principle underlying the Africa Peer Review Mechanism (APRM). We propose a Peer Trust Fund to be managed by the AU and used as the financial muscle behind the APRM. Debt relief and humanitarian funds meant for countries abusing the citizens will be paid into this Fund, to be held in trust for the country and be released by the AU as the country makes progress in the governance areas of concern. Such a mechanism will:
- Strengthen and give teeth to the AU’s desire and capacity to promote accountable and democratic governance in the region;
- Act as a muscle and an incentive for the APRM;
- Take away the excuse of creditors not to write off debts owed to Africa or withhold aid needed for humanitarian purposes but which, for reasons outlined above, cannot be channelled directly to an abusing country or to NGOs;
- Allow Africans and their political institutions to drive their own political reforms;
- End the arbitrary and selective means by which donors apply governance conditionality.
-
So what should we do about aid:
- Support our northern partners’ efforts to make their governments fulfil their part of the global compact but scale down its importance in Africa’s plan of action;
- Support the establishment of a Peer Trust Fund to assist the AU to deal with the governance issue;
- Increase domestic CSO interests and involvement in budget processes so as reduce the influence of donors on budget governance and steer budgets to deliver public services and fight corruption;
- Oppose donor-driven budget management arrangements that undermine parliamentary oversight and propose parliamentary oversight procedures that are transparent and inclusive of civil society.
Whilst these actions are necessary to improve the quality of aid and reduce its damage, they do not address the resource deficit problem per se.
Debt
The issue of debt is not so much what we demand but whom we address with what messages. First the message of ending the debt burden has been directed largely at one direction – the creditors. The message itself has been one of appealing for understanding whether based on justice or empathy. There is nothing wrong with this in as far as this appeal is coming from our northern partners directed at their publics and governments. Whatever strategies they find as feasible to exert pressure for action should be welcomed by us as long us these strategies neither diminish the African dignity nor undermines the messages coming from Africans.
But directing our energies at appealing to northern creditors suggests our lack of belief in the power of the debtor. However, the Nigerian debt relief effort, no matter how unsatisfactory, and the Argentinean debt restructuring initiative suggest that debtors do have power and can force change. In the Nigerian case, it was the threat by Parliament to withhold appropriation for debt servicing and the subsequent road show that the joint committees of parliament undertook in Europe and America to drum home their threat that forced the Paris Club to rush through a debt relief package. In Argentina’s case, an economic and political meltdown resulting from years of faithful compliance with the IMF’s conditions and faithful debt servicing, forced Argentina to impose a unilateral moratorium on debt servicing and then subsequently unilaterally discounted its debt instruments by 75%. After heaving and puffing both the IMF and the private creditors accepted their lot and Argentina’s economy rebounded.
Africa’s debt overhang of over $200bn provides the muscle for a successful collective African threat. This is the task for the African Union and we should make that forcefully clear. The cancellation of $200bn poses no threat to the global financial system but can save millions of lives. Even a threat of a collective moratorium will send the message clear and loud, especially if this threat were accompanied by an enforceable commitment to transparency and anti-corruption and the channelling of the money so saved into revamping public services. We should not celebrate divisive debt relief initiatives like the one delivered at Gleneagles although we can celebrate the victory in terms of the comprehensive principle, i.e. that all debts, including the debt stock owed to the IFIs must be cancelled.
So where do we go from here in relation to debt:
- Welcome the principle of debt stock cancellation agreed at Gleneagles and at the annual meeting of the IMF/Bank but condemn the selectivity and divisive approach;
- Develop a strategy to pressurise the AU and its member states to adopt a debtor-led strategy;
- Campaign for an International Law to regulate international debt.
Trade
The trade policy focus has been in four areas:
- Defending our domestic markets from further harmful liberalisation;
- Defending our producers – especially our farmers – from demise resulting from “dumping” of subsidised imports;
- Seeking market access without reciprocal market opening obligations;
- Promoting regional integration.
These demands are relevant and we should continue to maintain a focus on them. We should prioritise, in particular:
- The defensive interests of our people: For example, our focus on agriculture should be driven by food security and rural development objectives rather than export promotion. Not only is the latter not realistically attainable in a significant way (except traditional commodities) but detracts from what Africa’s needs are at this moment. In this sense, the key policy focus is to prevent any further market opening (liberalisation) whether this is through aid and debt deals or through multilateral negotiations. Better still, the goal should be to protect the space for flexible policy whereby countries can vary tariff policy to meet development goals, starting with consumer goods and shifting to intermediary inputs of capital goods – whilst relaxing consumer good imports – as the economy develops. It is this flexible and progressive use of tariffs that is essential as an industrialisation strategy.
- Conditions for industrialisation: This intersects with the defensive interest. The key constraining factor for industrialisation is demand - the competition from foreign consumer goods which makes it impossible for local produce to carry on producing let alone innovate. Investing in infrastructure including roads and energy will contribute to reducing transaction cost but are not, at the most constraining to industrialisation. We should not be detracted by the so-called supply-side argument that suggests that investments in infrastructure will correct for competitive pressures. The policy demand is to not give any more market access through the Non Agricultural Market Access (NAMA) negotiations and others whilst securing the policy space necessary to allow for flexible use of trade policy.
- Defend public services: The aggressive push embarked on by the EU and the US at the on-going talks to open up the services sector reflects the shift in the structure of these economies into services. It also reflects the increasing importance of services for profits and services as a means of gaining control of scarce natural resources such as water. Without the universal provisions of public services by the public sector, Africa stands no chance of reducing poverty, managing inequality and conflict and growing the labour force of the future. We should put in all the energy we can marshal to campaign for the universal provision of public services by the public sector, the minimisation of commercial ethos in basic services and the avoidance of market opening commitments.
- Regional markets: The key issue here is to support the AU and sub-regional trading blocks to resist the pressure to make market opening and third-party tariff concessions before the dynamics of intra-regional trade are worked out, not least in the Singapore issues. This suggests the need to postpone the market access aspects of the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) with the EU and to shift energy into campaigning for a reform of Article 24 of the Regional Trade Agreements component of the WTO in order to protect the principle of less than full-reciprocity. In the interim we should back the Stop EPAs campaign’s call for a reform of the rules of origin aspects of the Everything But Arms (EBA) to make it meaningful for African LDCs.
- The Mandate of the WTO and dispute settlement: Developing countries, and Africa in particular, stand to lose with a WTO saddled with a broad rather than a narrow agenda. This is because Africa has the least capacity to defend, let alone promote their interest in multiple negotiating forums. The continent’s heavy dependency on the IFIs for resources exposes it to unilateral liberalisation pressures. Once unilateral liberalisation has been embarked upon, there is always the risk of easily committing liberalised sectors to the lock-in mechanism of the WTO. In addition, making commitments at several fronts imposes an implementation burden, the cost of which is relatively higher for poorer countries than richer ones. It is therefore in the interest of Africa to see a slimmer WTO.
However, the decision to focus on trade to the exclusion of investments is a serious limitation. In the first place, the Services Agreement and the Singapore agenda are essentially about investment. It is important to note also that underlying the market access concessions that African governments give to the north, especially in services, is an expectation of foreign direct investments and its mythical value as the solution to underdevelopment. Similarly, FDI expectations underlie the anti-inflationary macroeconomic policies of governments and debt servicing compliance.
The belief in FDI is so strong that governments have happily adopted negative taxation policies to attract foreign companies. To have a chance of developing trade and macroeconomic policies that promote development, restrain our governments from giving away market access concessions recklessly and channel attention towards domestic resources for investments, we must first effectively champion a more realistic and less jingoistic expectations associated with FDI.
So what do we do in relation to trade and investment?
- Encourage national governments to be more proactive in protecting their markets especially in the area of consumer goods, agriculture and essential public services. They will not necessarily suffer punitive action. Even if they did, their economies may still come out better-off.
- Drum home to national governments that opening markets will not necessarily bring FDI and even if it did, FDI will not necessarily bring about development. Encourage the AU to promote a critical debate on the role of FDI in Africa’s development.
- Continue the campaign for policy flexibility and an end to coerced liberalisation. This is crucial for defending Africa’s producers.
- Scale down the export focus of agriculture (market access in the north) and emphasise its food security and rural development objectives.
- Support the Stop EPAs campaign
Financing Development: Beyond aid debt relief and trade
What matters for ensuring that governments have adequate resources to finance development are net flows. This means factoring in not just inflows such as earnings from trade, or aid or remittances but also what is lost to the rest if the world. Debt servicing is one outflow. But there are several other ways in which resources are lost to the continent. Indeed, the reality of Africa is that the resources that leak out far exceed those that flow in. This is why Africa is a net exporter of capital.
And the sums are staggering. Njukumana et al estimate that between 1970 and 2000, whereas Africa received about $100bn id aid (including loans) it lost $274bn in capital flight induced by debt, trade mis-invoicing and imputed interests. Add cumulative losses due to terms of trade of non-oil producing Sub-Saharan African countries, estimated by the World Bank to be in the area of $400bn or 120% of combined GDP. Add also losses that African countries have incurred simply by opening up their markets.
Africa was made to reduce their rates of protection at a pace three times as fast the countries of the OECD. This has left the continent ridiculously open, relative to its stage of development. Christian Aid recently calculated that over the past two decades, Africa lost in income terms the equivalent of over $270bn from the negative growth effects alone of trade liberalization. This amount alone more than matches the accumulated value of grants, loans and net FDI channelled into the continent.
Add losses due to tax competition, tax evasion and tax avoidance. Taxation which has served developed countries well as a means of redistribution and source of investment capital but which has been undermined through the enforced deregulation which has promoted tax competition, tax avoidance and tax havens. As a result, whereas government revenue from taxation in developed countries average 30% of GDP between 1990 and 2000, in sub-Saharan Africa this has declined over the years to an average of 17.9% of GDP.
Losses from tax competition have largely benefited multinational corporations whilst the tax burden has been transferred to wage earners and small businesses. Some analysts suggest that African oil producers command less than 20% of the profits. The rest are lost to a complicated network of unfair trade practices. The transfer of revenues to tax havens by these corporations and rich individuals further exacerbates the revenue loss. It is estimated that at least $11.5 trillion is currently held in about 74 tax heavens – lost to tax authorities – by wealthy individuals. This does not include laundered profits of businesses which operate through tax havens to avoid tax, nor does it include money illicitly transferred abroad through corruption, drugs and money laundering. These latter elements in any case comprise a much smaller share of resources losses than is generally believed.
As is obvious from above, Africa is not as poor or as helpless as is often presented. Instead, it is a continent that leaks heavily. The task is to plug these leaks. To do so, African civil society must turn attention to addressing:
- Support for campaigns aimed at corporate transparency;
- Campaigns against tax concessions and for progressive tax policies;
- Work with relevant networks to campaign for the end to banking secrecy and tax havens;
- Follow-up on the recommendation of Africa Commission report to pursue and return stolen wealth from Africa and to put in place measures to discourage illicit transfers abroad.
Incidentally, taxation and reliance on domestic sources for financing development also provide a more conducive environment for promoting democratic accountability than the dependence on aid. We have an obligation to plug the leaks.
* Charles Abugre is currently the head of policy and advocacy at Christian Aid. He has been a development activist in Ghana and many parts of Africa and Asia. This is a shortened version of a paper presented to an Africa consultation of the Global Call to Action Against Poverty, held in Harare, Zimbabwe from 7-10 November, 2005.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org
A Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade
2006-02-02
Manu Herbstein
Manu Herbstein’s first novel, ‘Ama, a Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade, recently published in South Africa by Picador Africa, won the 2002 Commonwealth Writers Best First Book Prize. Set in the late eighteenth century, it tells the story of a young woman who is captured and enslaved in the West African savannah and transported to Brazil. Here, Herbstein reflects on the historical background to his novel and some of its contemporary implications.
Some forty years ago the distinguished British Professor of History, Hugh Trevor-Roper, told a BBC audience: "Perhaps in the future, there will be some African history to teach. But, at present there is none: there is only the history of the Europeans in Africa. The rest is darkness
"
In 1772 or thereabouts, Ama is quietly going about her business at her home in the West African savannah. She is about to be overwhelmed by waves, tsunamis, of history, African and European history, of which she is almost entirely ignorant. Living, as she is, in a quiet, rural, pre-industrial society, we may excuse her ignorance. Given Trevor-Roper’s profession and status, his ignorance was inexcusable. Regrettably, except amongst specialists, that ignorance of African history remains widespread today.
I am not an historian. Indeed I am not any sort of academic. So I ask you to approach the potted historical background which I am going to offer you with some reserve. For one-stop access to the texts I have used you might like to look at the book’s companion web-site, www.ama.africatoday.com One further caveat: you should bear in mind that much of our knowledge of West African history is derived from European sources, which may be distorted by their unwitting ideological baggage.
Returning to my metaphor of tsunamis, what I am going to do is to describe briefly the dry land on which Ama (or Nandzi, to give her her birth-name) stands as the novel opens and then, again briefly, to describe each of the several waves of history which threaten to engulf her: the histories, if they can be separated, of Dagbon, Asante and Europe; and of gold, kola and sugar.
Human settlement in the West African Sudan
Until very recently conventional history has had it that the peopling of West Africa is, in terms of palaeontology, quite recent, beginning, perhaps, during the last ice age, a period when the Sahara was green. The recent discovery of hominid fossils in Chad may demand a major reassessment of this part of the story.
Be that as it may, the early immigration would in all likelihood have been gradual and slow and the numbers small.
Let me now slip into the historical present tense.
Over the course of many centuries the Western Sudan, the savannah country to the south of the Sahara, becomes populated. Many people live in acephalous societies, some of which, beloved of anthropologists, still exist. Ama’s people, who call themselves Bekpokpam, but are known to others as Konkomba, are one such. They develop, as one might expect, a culture which is intimately connected with their physical environment. So, to give just one example, their religious practices are concerned with protection from a sometimes hostile climate and with encouragement of fertility, both of the soil and of their womenfolk.
History is recorded, by and large, to reflect the glory of strong rulers. Since the Konkomba have no strong rulers, they preserve little of their history. What they remember, principally, is their “tsunami,” when they were overwhelmed by mounted invaders from the north.
Dagbon
The invaders call themselves Dagomba; their state is known as Dagbon.
In the 16th century or earlier, perhaps, the ancestors of the Dagomba live in the vicinity of Lake Chad. They are troubled by the depredations of the “white men from the desert,” that is, Bedouin raiders; and decide to migrate. For a generation or more they wander within the bend of the Niger River, surviving from the proceeds of occasional brigandry. In due course they settle in the vicinity of what is now the city of Tamale, in northern Ghana and towards the Togo border to the east, where they establish their capital, Yendi. This is the country of the Konkomba, some of whom submit and are absorbed by the invaders while others stubbornly retain their own separate identity.
In the early eighteenth century, through the influence of Hausa traders, Dagbon adopts Islam. The Hausa traders arrive each year, after the rains, in search of kola.
Kola
In early times, the tropical forest bars migration from the savannah down to the Atlantic coast; however the Volta River offers one way through. So we have a populated coastal strip separated from the savannah by a 200km wide belt of forest.
The natural environment of the tropical forest is a major factor in determining how, and how quickly, it is penetrated by man. The canopy of the forest is so dense that little light penetrates to the ground. The vegetation at ground level is consequently light. Adventurous hunters in search of game are the first humans to enter the forest. In due course some of them establish small settlements. The trees are enormous and closely spaced. It requires a great input of labour to clear areas for agriculture. The problems are exacerbated by the poor quality of tropical soils. After only three or four crops the nutrients are exhausted and decreasing yields force the farmer to clear new areas.
Powerful economic incentives are needed to make settlement viable. Of these there are two: kola and gold.
The kola tree is indigenous to these forests. Its seeds fall to the ground, where they may be collected. The kola “nut” is a pink and white seed about the size of a thumb. It has a mildly narcotic effect and is reputed to stave off hunger and thirst. Its economic value stems from the fact that Islam does not prohibit its use. In order to realize this value, labour is required to clear the ground beneath the kola trees, to gather the seeds and to transport them in head-loaded baskets to entrepôts beyond the northern extent of the forest. The market for kola encompasses the entire Muslim world.
Gold
From around the eighth century of our era, the kingdoms of the western Sudan, first, ancient Ghana, and then Mali and Songhai, are the most important suppliers of gold to the Mediterranean, exporting, on average, a ton of gold across the Sahara each year. West African gold makes a vital contribution to the monetization of the medieval Mediterranean economy.
School children in West Africa learn of Mansa Musa, the king of Mali who died in 1337. In making the hajj, Mansa Musa takes with him 100 camel-loads of gold and distributes so much of the precious metal in Cairo and Mecca that the bottom drops out of the market.
The trans-Saharan trade in gold reaches its peak around the end of the 17th century. In due course, the local surface deposits of gold become depleted and the Malians send exploratory missions throughout West Africa in search of new supplies. They discover a rich source in the forest of what is now the modern state of Ghana. By that time there is competition from European buyers at the coast.
The kola trade requires labour; so does the mining of gold. And so, too, does the establishment of agriculture, to support the miners and porters and the new aristocrats who are the descendants of the first settlers. Guns and powder purchased from the Europeans at the coast offer the means of obtaining that labour.
By the second half of the seventeenth century, gradual development of the forest economy has reached a level at which the establishment of a large centralized state is a viable project.
The Europeans: Portuguese, Dutch and British
During the period 1400-1600, Europe, emerging from the lethargy of the Middle Ages, witnesses the renewal of nationalism as well as the political transformation from feudalism to nation states. The exploration of the Atlantic leads to the establishment of Europe's commercial empires; and, in due course, to the industrial revolution. The Atlantic slave trade plays an important role in the growth of the European economy.
The Portuguese know that there is gold in West Africa: they aim to bypass the Saharan trade and get access to the gold through the back door. In 1482, five years before Bartholomew Diaz rounds the Cape, the Portuguese aristocrat Dom Diego d’Azambuja arrives, with several ships, at a village on the coast of what is now Ghana. His ships are laden with building materials and after negotiating with the local chief, he starts to build a brick and stone castle, which the Portuguese name Elmina. By 1486 d’Azambuja’s castle of St. George is substantially complete.
St. Georges Castle at Elmina is the oldest surviving European building in the tropics. It is a useful symbolic marker of the beginning of the process of the worldwide expansion of European power which we now call globalization.
In 1637, fifteen years before Van Riebeeck’s arrival at the Cape, the Dutch expel the Portuguese from Elmina Castle. They are to stay there for 235 years, until 1872, when, seeing neither economic nor political advantage in remaining, they sell the building, by then much extended, to the British.
I first visited Elmina Castle in 1961 or ’62. At the time it was being used as a training college for the Ghana Police Force and was not open to the public. I was living and working at Cape Coast, some 15km to the east of Elmina. One of the small colony of South African schoolteachers there, Manilal Moodley (who was later to become Zimbabwe’s first Ombudsman), was friendly with the Commander of the Police College. Mani took me with him on my first visit to the Castle. I was totally ignorant of its significance and that of the many other slave castles which line the Ghanaian coast. I have to admit that I remained in that state of ignorance for many years. I am comforted by the thought that I was not alone in this respect. My sister, the distinguished Ghanaian novelist, Ama Ata Aidoo, told me many, many years later: “I grew up in the shadow of those castles, but no one ever told me what they were or what they meant.”
The first chapter of Ama which I wrote is set in Elmina Castle and is based upon a story which the tourist guides still tell. It is now chapter 13. It had the advantage that, unlike the rest of the book, it required little research.
Asante
We return to the forest.
In the year 1700 Nana Osei Tutu establishes the Asante Confederacy, Asanteman, with Kumase as its capital. Its economy is based upon the export of kola and gold. It sells gold to the Dutch in exchange for guns. It uses the guns to expand its empire by conquest. Conquest of the surrounding states provides it with the labour it needs to mine the gold and gather and export the kola. It sells the captives in excess of its labour requirements to the Dutch and the English at the coast.
Asante imposes strict limitations upon the activities of foreign traders within its territory. The Europeans are confined to small areas around their castles and forts on the coast. The kola markets are on the north bank of the Volta River, which the Hausa traders are not permitted to cross. In order to consolidate its control of the kola trade routes, Asante invades Dagbon, first in 1744 and again in 1772. It stations a consul in Yendi, the Dagomba capital, to ensure delivery of an annual tribute. The tribute comprises so many sheep and goats, so many pieces of cotton cloth and so many of silk cloth; and 500 slaves. Asante concedes that none of the slaves will be Dagomba. So every year the Ya Na, the Dagomba ruler, sends out raiding parties to capture slaves for delivery to Kumase. Many of the captives are Konkomba. Nandzi, later to be known as Ama, is one.
The labour of slaves makes a substantial contribution to the Asante economy. However the slavery practised by the Asante differs so fundamentally from the chattel slavery of the Europeans, that it hardly makes sense to use the same word for the two practices. In Asante, slaves are absorbed into the population within a generation and became all but full citizens. Indeed Asante law encourages integration by prohibiting the public disclosure of the origins of any citizen.
By the end of the eighteenth century Asante has established political supremacy over the territories that comprise most of modern Ghana and east-central and south-eastern Cote d'Ivoire. It is a sophisticated, complex and wealthy state. It maintains large monetary reserves including its treasury's Great Chest, which when full contains some 200,000 oz., say 5 or 6 tons, of gold.
Europe and Africa
It is instructive to consider some aspects of the state of Europe at this time, the last quarter of the eighteenth century. Britain, emerging as the pre-eminent power, serves as an example.
In 1775 George III signs an order releasing from bondage the women and children, many of them younger than eight years old, who work in British coal and salt mines in conditions not much removed from slavery. The following year the British Parliament debates (and rejects) the first motion to outlaw slavery in Britain and her colonies. Another 32 years are to pass before the slave trade is outlawed and yet another 27 before the practice of slavery itself becomes illegal.
In Britain at this time, Roy Porter tells us, criminals are publicly whipped, pilloried, and hanged; until 1777 Jacobites' heads are spiked on Temple Bar. In 1800 there are some two hundred capital offences in England. Many specify death for small-scale theft such as pick-pocketing goods worth more than a shilling. The penalty for poaching is often transportation.
The British seldom bathe. Before cottons become cheap, clothes are difficult to wash; children in particular are often sewn into theirs for the duration of the winter. The use of underclothes is recent and not widespread. Chamber pots are provided in the dining-room side-boards of the wealthy, to save interrupting the conversation of the gentlemen. Food hygiene is no better than personal hygiene. The streets are full of the excrement of humans and horses. This is a world lit by candles and rush-lights.
There is not a single bathing establishment in London in 1800. By way of contrast, Thomas Astley, writing in 1745 of the ‘Gold Coast Negroes, their Persons, Character and Dress’, says: “They are very careful in washing their bodies morning and evening, and anointing them with palm-oil.”
In 1771 one hundred and seven slave ships sail from Liverpool, transporting 50,000 slaves from Africa. Colonial trade at the time amounts to one third of British commerce. In the 1780’s British slave traders top the international league, carrying more slaves from Africa than those of any other country. By 1790 British capitalists have invested some £70 million in the West Indian sugar economy, an economy which is based almost entirely on slave labour. During the 18th century British slave-traders transport a million and a half Africans. The slave trade is a vital pillar in the eighteenth century economy of the port city of Liverpool, underpinning the growth in its trade and shipping. It is not surprising that Liverpool merchants are amongst the most vocal opponents of legislation outlawing the slave trade in 1807.
Sugar and the slave trade
What was the slave trade all about? Here is one banal, if partial, explanation. In their voyages of discovery the Europeans found and took home three beverages: cocoa, coffee and tea, all of them bitter to the taste. This is what accounts for the dramatic rise in European consumption of sugar (In Britain, for example, 200,000lbs. in 1690; 5,000,000lbs. in 1760.) Add tobacco, rice and cotton, and the labour needed to cultivate these crops in the tropics, and there you have it.
Ama and the Legacy of the Slave Trade
The historian John Hunwick has written that he would “like to see slavery viewed from the perspective of the Africans who were victims of it.” But those Africans are long dead and have left hardly any documentary records of their experience. Who will speak for them?
The French historian Claude Meillassoux writes: “While the slave trade devastated the peasantry who saw their children, and especially their daughters, taken away by brigands or armed bands to be sold to dealers, it enriched the agents and traders in the towns as well as the nobility, the battle-hardened soldiers and the sycophants attached to the royal courts. By a perversion of memory, the sumptuousness of the plundering kings has left its mark on the area in its remembrance of the flourishing slave trade and the glories of the past, while the memory of their peasant victims has been effaced by their poverty.”
In Ama, I set out to recreate such a memory.
Lord Hugh Thomas, writes: “Any historian of the slave trade is conscious of a large gap in (the) picture. For the slave remains an unknown warrior, invoked by moralists on both sides of the Atlantic, recalled now in museums in one-time slave ports from Liverpool to Elmina, but all the same unspeaking, and therefore remote and elusive.”
I have attempted, in Ama, to give that unknown warrior a voice.
It is not for me to judge whether I have succeeded. The late Paul Hair, also a historian of the slave trade, believed that: “The feelings and sufferings of the slaves are partly unimaginable
Standard descriptions which concentrate on those aspects easily comprehensible to modern middle class sentiment cannot tell the whole story.” Perhaps he was right.
Four hundred years is a long time in human history as we perceive it. It is less than four hundred years since the disembarkation of Jan van Riebeck changed the course of South African history.
The trans-Atlantic slave trade lasted for four hundred years.
African slaves were sold in Lisbon as early as 1441. It was 1850 before the slave trade became illegal in Brazil and 1888 before slavery itself was finally made unlawful in that country. During those four hundred years European and American ships forcibly transported some twelve million African men, women and children to the far shores of the Atlantic. Millions more died on the journey to the coast, in the dungeons and barracoons in which they were assembled and in the course of the notorious Middle Passage.
By accident or good fortune, the Atlantic slavers by-passed South Africa: they took many slaves from Angola and some from Mozambique but none, to my knowledge from this country. We have, of course, our own story of the slave trade; but it is a different story.
I believe that Ama is an important book. In saying that, I make no claims for its literary merit: that is for others to judge. However, with the exception of perhaps two other somewhat obscure texts, both out of print, it is to the best of my knowledge the only attempt to tell this story from the point of view of an enslaved African, using the results of historical research now available to us. It is a story which should perhaps have been written by a Ghanaian. But West Africa is only now slowly beginning to emerge from a long period of collective amnesia regarding the slave trade. The damage to the psyche caused by the slave trade is buried deep in the individual and collective subconscious. One historian traces the institutionalized corruption endemic in West Africa back to practices developed during the period of the slave trade.
The situation on the other side of the Atlantic is quite different. When black pilgrims from the Americas visit the slave dungeons at Elmina and Cape Coast Castles, they are often overwhelmed by the experience and emerge tear-stained and emotionally drained. Many of them carry the pain of their families’ histories within them. It is transmitted from generation to generation. And the reason is not far to seek. From Argentina to Canada, in Brazil, Columbia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Peru, Uruguay, even Venezuela and, some say, even in Cuba, the descendants of African slaves are socially and economically disadvantaged; many suffer from chronic poverty and experience discrimination in every field. In the United States, the issue of slavery is one which few whites are at ease discussing with their black compatriots and vice versa. This is just one symptom of a deep and hardly recognized malaise in that country. Until the US, and in particular its educational system, comes to terms with the fact that it was constructed on a foundation of the gross abuse of generations of unwilling African immigrants, not to speak of the genocide inflicted upon its native inhabitants, that country will not sleep easy.
And what of Europe? Every person who lives in the countries of the Atlantic rim carries within him or her, the marks of the slave trade, like some unrecognized gene. We are all the descendants of those who suffered and those who, in one way or another, benefited. The Atlantic slave trade is the bedrock upon which the mighty edifice of globalization has been constructed.
We are diminished by our failure to confront this history. So long as a single person of African descent suffers discrimination on account of his descent, all Africans are diminished, Nelson Mandela is diminished, Thabo Mbeki is diminished, John Kuffuor, President of Ghana, is diminished. And it is not only blacks, not only Africans who are diminished: all human beings are diminished, we are all diminished.
Some Englishman has had the chutzpah to establish an African Commission. Has the time not come for Africa to set up its own Commission, a Commission on the State of the African Diaspora, a Commission tasked with the identification and exposure of all discrimination against people of African descent, whatever their nationality, in all countries; and the elimination of all forms of such discrimination? Perhaps we need an international Truth and Reconciliation Commission, charged with bringing into the open the great harm the people of Europe and their descendants worldwide have inflicted on other peoples in the course of their conquest of the planet. That might achieve some sort of catharsis which might lead us to a new world based on human solidarity rather than greed, patronage and charity.
In March 2007, I predict an epidemic of dislocated shoulders amongst members of the British establishment. This will be the consequence of their attempts to pat themselves on the back in celebrating the bicentenary of legislation making the slave trade unlawful. Would it be too ambitious to aim to celebrate in 2034, two hundred years after slavery was made illegal in the British Empire, the total elimination of its psychological and material effects? My hope is that the publication of this novel, might make a small contribution to that end.
© Manu Herbstein
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org
Modern-day slavery in Liberia
2006-02-02
Robtel Neajai Pailey
In late 2005, the International Labor Rights Fund filed an Alien Tort Claims Act case in the US District Court in California against Bridgestone, alleging "forced labor, the modern equivalent of slavery" on a Firestone Plantation in Harbel, Liberia. The lawsuit states: "The Plantation workers allege, among other things, that they remain trapped by poverty and coercion on a frozen-in-time Plantation operated by Firestone in a manner identical to how the Plantation was operated when it was first opened by Firestone in 1926." Robtel Pailey investigates modern-day slavery in the "land of the free".
In the early 1820’s, Liberia transformed into a land of exile for repatriated American slaves. In fact, the country was a proverbial refuge from the dehumanizing, deplorable conditions of chattel slavery in the United States. So any mention of the word “plantation” should have Liberians visibly shuddering from the historical legacy that many of its descendants endured.
Ironically enough, a recent development suggests that Liberia itself has served as a breeding ground for modern day slavery disguised in the form of what some would call indentured servitude for the American corporation, Firestone. Declared Africa’s first republic in 1847, Liberia has been embroiled in an asymmetrical relationship with the rubber giant since the corporation first landed on the shores of the country in 1926. Eighty years later, human rights groups have sidestepped Firestone’s alleged abusive practices and lodged a class action suit against the American company for violations of child labour laws, cruel and unusual labour practices, and environmental degradation. Practices, they claim, are no different from the moment the plantation opened. Since 1926, Firestone has allegedly relied on forced labour, involuntary servitude, recklessness, negligence in hiring and supervision, unjust enrichment and unfair business practices.
The lawsuit, filed on behalf of workers and their children at the plantation under pseudonyms, names Japanese parent company Bridgestone, Bridgestone Americas Holding, Bridgestone Firestone North American Tire and other units as defendants.
The International Labour Rights Fund (ILRF) filed the class-action suit in the name of 12 Liberian workers and their 23 children, who remain anonymous to protect themselves from retaliation. The plaintiffs are bringing their case to the US because the Liberian judicial system has been eroded in the mire of civil breakdown. “The plantation workers are stripped of rights, they are isolated, they are at the mercy of Firestone for everything from food to health care to education, they risk expulsion and certain starvation if they raise even minor complaints, and the company makes wilful use of this situation to exploit these workers as they have since 1926,” the lawsuit claims. ILRF and its allies - Liberian human rights lawyers and activists - serve as an advocacy apparatus for the health and legal rights of Firestone workers in Harbel, Liberia.
The history of Firestone in Liberia is revealing. In 1926, the company signed a concession agreement with the government of Liberia for a period of 99 years. That agreement covered one million acres of land, leased for six cents per acre for a total annual price of $60,000. Large sectors of the indigenous population were displaced to pave the way for setting up Firestone’s largest plantation in Harbel. Even in the company’s infancy, Liberians were recruited to provide forced labour to harvest and cultivate the rubber trees, after which they engaged in “tapping,” the labour-intensive act of using primitive tools to tap the raw latex out of rubber trees for export. Labourers were initially conscripted at gunpoint, and many of the descendants of those labourers serve as plaintiffs in the case against Firestone today.
Despite a surge of civil dissent and democratic outcries in 2005, Firestone signed a new 37-year agreement with the Transitional Government in Liberia to lease the land for 50 cents per acre, a “hike up” from the original leasing agreement. According to a recent report published by the Save My Future Foundation, Firestone exported 167,165 tons of rubber between 2000 and 2003. The price of rubber reaches astronomical highs today at $486 per ton. In the measurement of trade regulations at present, Firestone is receiving $81,242,190 from its production in Liberia. All of the rubber produced in Liberia is sent to the United States for processing into tires, and other materials. No processing, manufacturing, or other value added production is done in Liberia.
The level of poverty in Liberia is so astonishing that people flock to the plantation for a mere pittance. The average tapper generates $900 monthly for the company yet receives barely a tenth of that as compensation from Firestone once fees and services are deducted from wages. As a result, the tappers slog for a mere $3.19 a day. After having worked for Firestone for over 50 years, some retired plantation workers apparently collect less than $50 a month in pension earnings.
Aside from dealing with the poverty of indentured servitude, Firestone labourers must contend with health-related infirmities. The tappers expose their eyes to the potentially blinding latex, applying dangerous pesticides and fertilizers to the rubber trees. The raw latex from the rubber trees is fatal when applied to the eyes, as there have been countless reported cases of workers suffering from permanent eye damage due to exposure. They are forced to carry 75-pound buckets overflowing with the collected latex quota of the day. Unschooled about the dangers of the products they are handling, the workers know not to ask for safety equipment. Many of the tappers have severe scars and bone muscle abnormalities as a result of the tapping.
The labourers work 12-15 hour days, then must enlist the help of their families (including young children and wives) to complete a daily quota in order to ensure a weekly wage. No days off, no paid holidays, no sick leave. A shameful phenomenon in the Firestone scheme is its implied support of child labour. Most of the children are working on the plantations instead of attending school. The few that do attend go to substandard schools in dilapidated conditions. Firestone claims that it provides free education to the children of its workers, but in actuality the workers must pay an income tax automatically deducted from their monthly wages to cover the costs of so-called educational expenses.
The children and their families toil on the plantation by day, and return to the squalor of primitive living conditions at night with no electricity or running water. Firestone blames the country’s more than a decade long civil war for the breakdown of infrastructure, yet members of the Firestone clan aided and abetted the rebel leader-turned president Charles Taylor so as to avoid damage to the plantation when the war raged on. Some of Taylor’s rebel armies were even stationed at Harbel, enjoying the fruits of their fellow countrymen’s literal blood, sweat, and tears.
Miles away from the deplorable living conditions of the Liberian labour force, the company’s managerial staff benefits from the rubber wealth, luxuriating in air-conditioned bungalows and even stopping from their “backbreaking” work as overseers to play a round of golf on the erected course nearby. Mud huts and shanty huts coexist with big, immaculate looking makeshift houses. Firestone claims that the mud huts that exist on the land were created by internally displaced Liberians who flocked to the plantation during the height of civil war in the country. Yet, Firestone owns the land and retains all the responsibilities of its upkeep. Furthermore, some of the conditions existed before the civil war and were entrenched for years.
The entire scenario represents a microcosm of inequitable trade rules benefiting large Western corporations that exploit raw material within the developing world, leaving the indigenous people with environmental spills, physical ailments, and broken morale. The Firestone case in Liberia is a microcosm of American corporate takeover and a flagrant disregard of indigenous rights. It is an extension of the transatlantic slave trade, and should be exposed as such.
* A native of Buchanan, Liberia, Robtel Neajai Pailey currently serves as Assistant Editor of The Washington Informer, a Washington, D.C. based community newspaper.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org
The case for reparations
2006-02-02
M.P. Giyose
Are claims for slavery reparations of US$777 trillion, as made by a 1999 African World Reparations truth commission in Accra, realistic? How does one begin to conceptualise claims for reparations in a broader historical and social context when it comes to centuries of exploitation? M.P. Giyose from Jubilee South Africa makes the case for understanding reparations as a transformation of the way the world functions, ultimately serving to restore and sustain human civilisation.
When a victorious Roman army returned from its conquests, both before as well as after republican times, it entered the city of Rome in a triumphal march. Of course the triumph was bedecked with all manner of loot that came back as the spoils of war. Some of the best treasures forcibly taken from vanquished peoples were entered into the Roman treasury as part of the material gains of war. The conquering imperial armies of England, France and Germany in the 18th and 19th Centuries followed the old Roman tradition. This kind of “revenue” has to be distinguished clearly from what in this discussion we call reparations. By the 19th Century, European war makers had already long developed the custom of a reparations levy. A nation defeated in war was a nation to be doubly punished. At the point of signing a Peace Treaty for the purpose of ending the war, the vanquished nation was given a huge bill or levy which it had to pay the victorious party, not as a form of tribute, but rather as compensation for “losses” or “the expenditure of war” suffered by the victorious nation in the course of prosecuting the given war. With this levy the victors were supposed to repair whatever damages they had endured in war. Of course this was a purely retributive measure, oppressive in every sense. As a result the defeated nations always understood it to be a form of vengeance.
We need to disclaim altogether any connection between what we are discussing with this type of tradition. The nearest parallel we can adduce to the notion of reparations is that of damages as is defined in relevant branches of the law. Put succinctly in legal practice, the aim of damages is to restore the injured party to that position where he would have been if he had not suffered injury. And whilst this is possible in legal practice, and measurements can come close to scientific exactness, the similar process is a lot more complex in the arena of political economy. Damages carried out through history are highly rapacious at the point of commission. They carry with them extensive loss of life as well as incalculable material harm. They also carry a historical legacy that puts back a nation scores of years in time.
If we understand reparations to be a broad genus, we will also accept that it has a number of species. It is difficult, in the result, to define reparations both in terms of its general features as well as its specifics. And the problem is brought about by both the historical as well as social content in the entire process. We will therefore have to satisfy ourselves with a purely descriptive indication of reparations and proceed into our analysis in terms of both the general as well as the specific. Overall, the aim here will be to chart out an economic future for the countries of the South, in terms of a global economic model that is designed to override in mitigation the woeful history of conquest, economic plunder and financial pillage.
Global Reparations – Are They Possible?
Let us begin by delineating the entire historical and social process from which reparations are now being determined. From a purely European point of view capitalism first begins to flex its muscles in the course of the crusades, thus securing a passage for exchanges in goods through Asia Minor to the Indian sub-continent and China. This was reinforced later in the passage around the African continent. Simultaneously other tentacles spread far and wide into the Atlantic and Caribbean and later, onto the Pacific Islands. The ancient Italian City States of Venice, Florence, Genoa, etc., were thus able to make a rapid transition through feudalism onto a capitalist base. The slave trade is one of those reinforcing factors that integrated an African economy, which was at the same time being retarded together with the Caribbean Islands and the Americas. The road was now open for a transfer of wealth and power from the bankers of the Mediterranean and the Iberian peninsula to an assumption of economic power by the merchant classes in England, Holland and France.
Second, by this time the question of foreign conquest with concomitant ecological brigandage was a settled issue. Thirdly, from quite early on, the 20th Century foreign acquisitions took on a financial and industrial colouration. And it was a perfection of this process that took matters a stage further towards the end of the 20th century. The age of globalisation has been the age of subjugation strictly through the sheer power of money.
Each of these four stages of capitalist development has put to the sword, not just the liberties of other nations; it became crucial in the expropriation of their wealth. At each stage the bonds of enslavement have been taking on a variety of means, namely: the ecology, labour, trade, debt, investment. Throughout this history, the true indebtedness of Northern societies has stood in direct proportion to the changes in these means.
The question we have to pose at this stage is – how can the North discharge the settlement of so monumental a debt to Southern societies? Is such a discharge practicable? The question has to be posed quite regardless of the lies and deliberate promises given in mendacity by such ruling classes as those in the USA, when they pretended restorative programmes of upliftment to the slaves whom they took out of the plantation economy of the South. Can the North truly work out a programme of reparations for the South in the emerging economy of our times?
Let us illustrate these questions by offering two examples of claims by representative groups of people from the economic South of the world. In 1999 a truth commission deliberating under the aegis of the African World Reparations in Accra, made a demand from Northern nations for compensation over the slave trade in the amount of US$777 trillion, to be paid over 5 years. Immediate questions which arise are as follows: Who exactly is liable for this bill? What are the direct particulars of the offence? To whom are the debtors liable? Has the process for these types of reparations been able to establish the actual number of slaves that were extracted out of Africa; the actual number that died in the middle passage; the actual number that were landed in America; the actual societies from which the slaves were drawn in Africa? Are these numbers a hundred million, or ten million, or another number in between? Has there been a determination made of exact losses in labour hours from any particular nations or groups of nations in Africa? Or, is the quantum of this claim a shot in the dark?
These problems are indicated quite articulately in the second example to be cited. In a remarkable document submitted before the nations who had “discovered” a discovery which had been made 40 000 years before, the Native American Chief Guaicaipuro Cuautemoc makes a deposition that is full of scorn, sarcasm, wit and intelligence. At the height he declares: “On this basis, and applying the European formula of compound interest, we inform our ‘discoverers’ that they only owe us, as a first payment against the debt, a mass of 185,000 kilos of gold and 16 million kilos of sliver, both raised to the power of 300. This equals a figure that would need over 300 digits to put it down on paper and whose weight fully exceeds that of the planet Earth. What huge piles of gold and silver! How much would they weigh when calculated in Blood?”
This is a masterful performance. It refers to one small claim covering a short period of time in historical plunder in a particular location in America, that is, 1503 to 1660. Taken on a world scale, the claims of the countries of the South are literally both astronomical and immeasurable.
On this basis it is perhaps not too difficult to conclude that current Northern societies do not possess a capacity, in spite of their incredible wealth, to repay the debt that they owe the South. In a punitive understanding of reparations equal to that of European powers in the 19th Century, the combined capacities of all Northern societies would not be able to satisfy a pound by pound repayment of all that they owe the South. This is not only a measure of the gargantuan proportions of the Northern debt; it is an indicator of the unimaginable degree in conspicuous consumption that has become the lot of Northern societies in the last six hundred years. Clearly, a rational method has to be designed and adopted so that the scales of history should be re-weighted in a manner that would enable the sustained survival of human civilisation in terms of obligations admitted by all sides in current society.
Immediate Practical Proposals
The question of reparations therefore is definitely beyond dispute. What begins to concern us now as an immediate practical measure, is the vehicle on which we seem to depend for negotiating the reparations question. Given the fact that this matter needs to be viewed from the point of view of the whole world economy, it becomes clear that this issue can only be dealt with in terms of a systemic solution.
During our time the question of one form or another of reparations has posed itself before our policy makers. Currently, the most verbose intellectual among the nationalist tendencies on the African continent, is President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa. Speaking at the World Economic Forum at Davos in 2001, Mbeki pooh-poohed the very idea of projecting the question of economic development in Africa on any such notion. Now, the key thing is that there is a Thabo Mbeki in the heartbeat of every other leader in the countries of the South – save one or two exceptions. How can that crop of persons then become our agents for a reparations programme, whatever its character may be? That is why we have to fall back for the development of strategy and the discharge of tasks on this question on dynamic political movements operating both in the South as well as elsewhere in the world.
Sometimes reparations work occurs in terms of piece meal measures in favour of restorative justice. Some of these may be life and death struggles fought by rural people for land redistribution. At other times conflicts may be joined which are based on some aspects of the debt question. Important examples of this are the struggles over odious debt. These are particularly germane in Southern countries where the debt creating regimes may have been constituted by dictatorships, or at the very least, there might exist a continuing legacy from colonial rape that might compel successor democratic governments to plunge into a debt with corrective intentions. And yet at other moments restorative justice could obtain in the sphere of extending human rights in law. Politically, all these efforts need to be given support especially if they happen on the basis of a fundamental programmatic position.
In terms of advancing a systemic reparations programme, the ideas now on offer are premised on the integrative forces in the current world situation. That situation consists of three parts. We are presented with a single world political system. This under-girds one economic system that exists on the basis of, and in turn, should feed one ecological system. The three parts make one total world system. It is no longer possible therefore, for us to offer any solutions to the problems of the nations of the South, if these are segregated and can only be expressed through division. A cardinal tenet of an integrated world consists in an understanding that separation and separate means with “their own” institutions, can only lead to inequality.
Given these circumstances, measures working in favour of reparations can only be based on the building and sustaining of one world economy - not several pieces thereof. Egalitarian features within the building of the nation will actually express themselves at their very best when they work in conformity with other expressions of the same principle on a world scale. We therefore come to the conclusion that the reorganisation of the world has to occur on the basis of new social foundations – the foundations of a post-capitalist society. This is a society where the forces of equality are universal; they have become the very life force of economics, of the ecology and of politics.
Conclusion
Reparations therefore can be understood to be a means by which social life in the current nations as we know them today can be reformed. In that way they could be seen as an agent for creating “a better life” for impoverished sections of humanity. The need for reparations of this kind is most urgently felt in the countries of the South. However, in the longer view of human history, reparations cannot be viewed as purely ameliorative measures even if they are seen in terms of restorative justice. There is an inbuilt system of “diminishing returns” in this method of sustaining reparations. In the longer view of historical development, reparations should be seen as an agency for restoring and sustaining human civilisation. And in this manner they cannot be a purely national issue. They are an international phenomenon encompassing the combined fortunes of all humankind and all the fauna and flora that keep pace with us in our natural domain.
* M.P. Giyose is chairman of Jubilee South Africa
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org
Trade, gender and the search for alternatives
2006-02-02
Jennifer Chiriga
It is women who bear the brunt of the effects of trade liberalization on social development through a lack of access to basic social services. But, writes Jennifer Chiriga from the Alternative Information and Development Centre, one of the major impacts of trade on women is how the capitalist ethic plays into building masculinity while at the same time playing down the role that women play in society. Alternatives are in the offing, she argues.
The defining trends of current trade and economic relations across the globe and the process through which current international economic relations are played out, and markets for products and services are increasingly being defined, all fall under the rubric of globalisation.
International trade expansion has in the last few decades been manifesting a profound transformation, with the emergence of integration of economic activity, including elimination of restrictions on the free movement across borders of capital, goods, resources, technology and services. All regions of the world are coming closer together through intensified trade, investment, financial transactions, and information technology. Unfortunately the global expansion has not affected developing regions evenly, and Africa continues to lag behind.
The main feature of globalisation is a surge in the power of global capital and reorganizing of global production through multi-national corporations that wield tremendous influence over economies. Globalisation has been quite aptly cited as “largely the game of the powerful…the strong do what they will, and the weak must surrender what they cannot protect” (Tandon, cited in Vale and Maseko, 1998).
Other defining characteristics of globalisation are a more integrated global economy with interdependencies among nations, but the benefits of which accrue to developed economies; decline in investment in production, with companies moving more towards speculative investment, which brings faster and higher profits; diminishing public sector, with the state becoming more business oriented through privatisation of state enterprises, and the phenomenal power of multinational corporations that have the clout to drive global trade and influence governments, as seen by the power of the World Bank (WB), International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Trade Organisation (WTO).
The WTO is not just about trade, it is about power and control of resources. Developed countries shape and control the trade regimes that affect developing countries and that lead to de-industrialisation, job losses and worsening of poverty. This is evidenced by the experience of developing countries that are undergoing IMF/World Bank enforced trade through neo-liberal structural adjustment programmes, who have been forced to liberalise their external trade, and have subsequently suffered destruction of local industries leading to massive retrenchments.
In spite of the conventional understanding about the creation of an “open” global free trade system, there is very limited “free trade”, particularly for African countries. The relevance of the WTO in the world system is that it is seen as the central institution in a centralised global economy. This has major relevance for African countries as they grapple with huge development challenges. The external orientation of African countries has led to opening up of global markets, resulting in flooding of imports and domination of foreign products e.g. agricultural produce and textiles to name a few, and this has led to massive loss of jobs in rural and urban sectors, threats to food security and abandonment of the social development project. The effects of trade liberalisation on social development is evidenced by lack of access to basic social services, a scenario in which women bear the greater burden.
Gender and trade
One of the major factors in gender inequality relates to how negative perceptions mould gender differences and how the capitalist ethic plays into building masculinity while at the same time playing down the role that women play in society where they occupy the role of secondary earners. Gender is a key determinant of vulnerability to poverty. And women, due to their disadvantaged position in the labour market, hold lower paid jobs, which require lower level of skills etc.
Although gender analysts have for a long time emphasised the negative impacts of trade liberalisation, the link between gender and trade has been tenuous, largely because perhaps gender considerations have been perceived as irrelevant and having no place at the negotiation table where trade issues are discussed. Looked at through a gender prism, trade policies have grave implications for development and well-being of women, due to impact on employment, poverty and the social burden carried by women. Although women are an important and significant constituency, trade policy in the WTO is formulated with no evidence of a gender perspective.
A study on policy links between gender and trade (Informal Working Group on Gender and Trade, 1998) emerged with a number of “reality points” that link gender and trade, and make a case for the importance of putting gender analysis at the center of trade policy:
a) Changes in social service delivery affect women to a greater extent
Trade policies and trade liberalisation can affect the ability of governments to finance social sector expenditure. The observation is that any revenue shortfalls leading to reduction of government expenditure affects social service delivery, and the burden is shifted to the households and women. The study states that in 1993 women contributed over US$11 trillion worth of household work to the world economy, and that trade policy should therefore not ignore women’s unwaged work in social reproduction. Gender planning should be built into the design of trade policies. A very important point made is that social development should be the bedrock of trade policy since women’s traditional roles do not make it easy for them to access opportunities to engage in international trade.
b) Entrenched gender inequalities in the labour market are unfavourable to women
The labour market tends to be segmented on gender lines with inequalities in income, career advancement and conditions of work. Traditionally expansion of trade is based on access to low wage labour, which is mainly female labour. Liberalisation of trade and the surge of foreign capital and transnational corporations, maintain competitiveness through minimising costs of production, especially labour costs. While one can generalise the negative effects on the labour market, for women the impact is higher – they have lower wages and less bargaining power because unions tend to be dominated by male leadership. The danger of trade liberalisation bringing more hardship for women is very real – because sub-contracting and flexible work allows corporations to avoid direct financial responsibility for workers.
c) Women have lesser access to economic resources: credit, skills, technical assistance
Institutionalised discrimination affects women’s access to land and credit from financial institutions, and therefore impacts in a very fundamental way on their role in the economy. When trade barriers are reduced and an infusion of cheaper imports come into the market, women may lose out especially when quality control becomes an issue and introduces lack of competitiveness.
One of the major gaps is that while WTO rules encompass all levels of economic development, there is no gender analysis that assesses these rules in a structured way. While there is a ready source of scientific research documenting the realities of women’s lives and how the economy impacts on them, the conceptual and policy links between gender and trade have to be given more attention and attempts to generate further analysis on the link between gender and trade policy, should raise the following questions:
- Are trade policies geared towards elimination of poverty and gender inequality?
- Do trade rules prevent government and private business from formulating gender-sensitive policies;
- Are trade policies based on competition, which ignores reproductive tasks i.e. reinforcing the masculine model of superiority.
Even as we grapple with the specific gender dimensions, trade policy should not be approached in isolation of macro level economic policy. In this context, the discussion on alternatives raises very broad issues.
Alternative strategies for development
Change is possible through a break from the mainstream model of dominant global capital. The emergence of national, regional and international forums such as the Africa Social Forum (ASF) and World Social Forum (WSF) is a sign that there is an increasing trend of organisations and social movements mobilising to reflect and exchange ideas on alternative visions and actions. The WSF was conceived as a response to the growing struggle against neo-liberalism and an alternative to the World Economic Forum where business leaders from all over the world get together to discuss the economic state of the world, and is an arena of debate, as well as an opportunity for social movements and activists from the north and south to meet and exchange ideas.
There is already a powerful discourse, which is however being undermined by concentration of wealth and anti-democratic power of powerful global corporations. Nevertheless, emergence of regionalism as an alternative, is gaining ground as a possible solution to the dislocation of Africa’s economic potential.
The questions to pose in any deliberations on alternatives are:
- how to engender the political will necessary for the regional project;
- how the geo-political concept of regionalism can be harnessed to engage and challenge the globalised system on a stronger footing;
- how Africa can turn regional integration and cooperation groupings into real frameworks for alternative models of development.
Africa already has some examples of a unique regional integration model that have roots in pan African solidarity. There is potential for strengthened regional blocs to encompass development needs of emerging economies. Regional integration has the potential to break the leverage that industrial countries have over Africa, whose governments need to realise that engaging the local with the regional and continental is the future in terms of economic development.
In response to the questions raised above, one of the key considerations is that social mobilisation of strong social movements and organisations can provide the pressure and impetus that will eventually cause a shift in the global balance of power. Social movements should be the foundation of a people-based process that promotes developmental regionalism, centred on human rights, women’s rights and social justice. Commitment should be to a unified region in which local and community-based development is the primary underpinning of national and regional development programmes.
Through strategic interdependencies we need to redirect trade to domestic and regional spaces, increase manufacturing and production and add value to our primary products. In addition the liberalisation and privatisation policies should be replaced and we should create trade and development cooperation agreements which reflect the realities and needs of the people, and which are not pre-determined or constricted by compliance with WTO terms and conditionalities.
Cooperative development would ensure, for example, that shared resources like energy, water etc, could be approached holistically for the benefit of the whole region. But as long as powerful economies like South Africa continue following a sub-imperialist agenda, it will be a lost battle. African governments must cooperate, coordinate and combine. As someone said at a workshop recently, “extroverted economies will get us nowhere".
* Jennifer Chiriga is Unit Coordinator, Globalisation and Alternatives Unit, Alternative Information and Development Centre (AIDC), Cape Town
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org
Article traduit de l’anglais par Frances Chevalier et Kesini Murugesan, de l’Université du Cap, Afrique du Sud.
Vulnerable and poor face up to the implications of GATS
2006-07-24
Oduor Ongwen
The time is fast approaching when water, health care and every other essential service become tradable - with enormous implications for the lives of the poor and vulnerable. Oduor Ongwen, the country director of SEATINI Kenya, describes the international agreement that is going to regulate trade in services, the General Agreement on Trade in services (GATS), noting that it is a “dangerous instrument for the externalisation of resources of underdeveloped countries such as those in Africa”.
The service industry is quickly replacing trade in goods as the motor for global economic activity. From tourism to auditing services and from transport to insurance, the frontiers for economic domination are increasingly shifting from industry - manufactures and commodities - to trade in services. Services are currently the fastest growing component of trade and foreign direct investment (FDI) accounting for nearly 25% of world trade and more than 76% of FDI flows. It is for this reason that it was agreed at the launch of the Uruguay Round of trade negotiations in 1986 to include trade in services in the negotiations, in the belief that this would improve the world trade system.
But liberalisation of trade in services could be an uncontrolled avenue for indiscriminate investment deregulation, privatisation of vital public services as well as giving foreign interests a foothold in Government procurement and thus a dangerous instrument for the externalisation of resources of underdeveloped countries such as those in Africa.
Externalisation of Africa’s Resources
While those in control of the commanding heights of the global economy would like to convince us that globalisation is a new phenomenon made inevitable by qualitative development of productive forces, we know better. Africa and the rest of the third world have been integrated into the global economic system since the mid 15th century. Unwillingly, Africa was part of the then dominant international trading system where its role in the international division of labour was to supply natural resources in the form of gold, ivory, cloves etc and human resources in the form of slaves to the “developed” world.
The second wave of globalization was the 1884 Berlin Conference, where the “scramble for Africa” was concluded with the continent divided amongst the leading colonial powers. The division of labour then assigned Africa the role of producing primary commodities - agricultural products, minerals, wildlife resources - for processing and manufacturing interests in the so-called “mother countries”.
Almost half a century after the formal defeat of colonialism, the division of labour not only persists, but has been revised and reinforced through corporate-led globalization. We can identify thirteen avenues for the externalization of Africa’s resources, which include, but are not limited to: Debt servicing; difference in interest rates between North and South; unfair terms of trade; corporate control of world trade; capital account liberalisation; profit repatriation by TNCs; privatization of state-owned enterprises; intellectual property rights; ecological debt; capital transfer; brain drain; immigration laws; and transfer pricing. Liberalisation of trade in services facilitates all these thirteen avenues of Africa’s resource haemorrhage.
Trade in Services
Defined in broad terms, a service is a product of human endeavour aimed at satisfying a human need, but which cannot be categorised as a good. Others have simply defined a service as “a product that cannot hit your foot.” However the General Agreement on Trade in services (GATS) does not define what constitutes a “service”; instead, a guide to the GATS lists 12 major categories covering more than 160 distinct services. These services cover the gamut from birth to death.
The above understanding of services can be misleading since in reality services can be embodied in tangible products. For instance, a magazine is a good while an advertisement appearing in the magazine is a service. Publishing of the magazine is also a service.
GATS is the first and only set of international rules to open up trade in services to competition from foreign firms. Signed in 1994, it has nothing to do with whether the service is provided efficiently or not. It is a corporate boot sale of essential services ranging from water to electricity and the media.
The Agreement, as pointed out earlier, covers twelve broad categories: communications; construction and engineering; distribution, wholesale and retail trade; education; energy; environment; financial services (including banking and insurance); health and social services; tourism and travel; sports, culture and entertainment; transport; and, in case anything is not covered by the foregoing, it comes under “other”.
But critics warn that the reach of GATS could even extend to essential services such as education and health, resulting in their commercialisation by transnational corporations (TNCs). The naked truth is that in the GATS lexicon, ‘public service’ is an aberration. Article I of GATS starts with a proclamation that the Agreement does not apply to “services provided in the exercise of governmental authority”. This would be great if it was not neutralised by the proviso that such governmental services must be supplied “neither on a commercial basis nor in competition with one or more service suppliers”.
In the real world, perhaps it is only in Cuba or Democratic Republic of Korea that there might be some public