NEXT: A WORLD CONFERENCE AGAINST FINANCIAL RACISM

Naturally, we mourn for those whose lives were lost. It is not the method
of our various Global Justice Movements to deploy any kind of `terror'
against local or global sites of financial and military power. Our durable
strengths are mass mobilisation and civil disobedience. Terror attacks
provoke fascist repression and strip the progressive forces of the
confidence we have in people-power. Given George W Bush's
psychology and his backers in the military-industrial complex, our
movements for social change can expect tough days ahead.

But last week in Durban showed that we will encounter additional
obstacles from our very own leaders in Pretoria. First, the lesson that
comes from Thabo Mbeki is that you cannot succeed in mediating
between African demands for justice, and US/European denials that
they owe us for the crimes of slavery and colonialism. Mbeki's
performance searching for a non-existent middle- ground was shameful,
and repeats similar episodes of failure at the World Bank and World
Trade Organisation over the last few years.

It is time for Pretoria to demand, firstly, the full, unconditional
cancellation
of Africa's illegitimate debt--which after all mainly accrued to corrupt,
Western-oriented dictators, through which the World Bank and IMF
financed the West's geopolitical games. If the answer from the creditor's
cartel is no, the rebuttal from Africa must be debt repudiation and a
debtor's carte.

After all, the broader strife we face in society follows in large part from
international financiers' advice. In January this year, I was in Porto
Alegre, Brazil, and over a satellite hookup I accused George Soros of
contributing to the 100 000-case cholera outbreak by pressuring our
government to be fiscally conservative, he agreed that I was `actually
correct.'

And I am not alone in discovering the racial bias associated with what is
called `neoliberal' economic policy. South Africans have become
concerned that the drive to privatise our society's most valued assets--
water, electricity and telecommunications systems which are vital to
reconstruction and development--is based on international financial
clout.

There are two kinds: financial speculators raiding the currency
periodically (February-March 1996, May-August 1998, February-
November 2000) and `policy advice' which is extremely difficult for weak
politicians in Pretoria to resist.

The latter pressure is most evident in persistent demands for
macroeconomic policies conducive to South Africa's increased global
vulnerability, but also for social policies and even political outcomes
that weakened the state, the working-class, the poor and the
environment.

Reflecting the pressure to conform to international neoliberal dictates
associated with financial power, the ruling African National Congress
implemented a controversial, misnamed Growth, Employment and
Redistribution (Gear) strategy in June 1996. In part because of the
impact of international financial liberalisation, Gear failed miserably in
reaching what were, in any case, quite modest targets.

The only two goals achieved reflected finance minister Trevor Manuel's
cutting of the budget deficit (including social programme spending in
real per capita terms) and the Reserve Bank's ability to keep inflation
under control by imposing the highest interest rates in South Africa's
history and hence limiting consumer buying power.

Tellingly, both were targets overwhelming reflective of the power and
interests of financiers. And the World Bank participated in the economic
modeling and drafting of Gear.

In addition, there were several areas of social policy where an
enormous influence was exerted by consultants from the World Bank,
which advised that market-oriented solutions would fix problems
caused by market failure. The first five years of ANC rule included
adoption of the following controversial policies:

* The Minister of Land Affairs and Agriculture adopted a `willing-seller,
willing-buyer' policy similar to the 1980-2000 Zimbabwean model,
following World Bank advice from 1992-94. Because of the policy's
failure, our rural future may follow the examples of Bredell or of the
Zimbabwe war vets.

* The Housing Minister gave R16 000 grants fit only to build kennels, not
houses, and relied massively on banks for credit to `top up' the
structures. Both fatally flawed decisions followed World Bank advice in
1994.

* The Welfare Minister attempted to cut the child maintenance grant by
40 percent, until protested by social activists. In 1995-96, the World Bank
seconded a member to the commission which recommended the
draconian cut.

* The Minister of Local Government allowed municipal water and
electricity cut-offs, some of which led to the cholera epidemic, promoted
the privatisation of services, and adopted low infrastructure standards
such as mass pit latrines in urban areas. A World Bank mission wrote
the first draft of infrastructure policy in late 1994 and helped design
several infrastructure privatisations.

* The Water Minister not only privatised rural water, but stubbornly
championing the unneeded multibillion-dollar Lesotho Highlands Water
Project expansion, which was based on a mid-1980s World Bank
design. The Bank's 1999 Country Assistance Strategy claimed that its
`involvement was instrumental in facilitating a radical revision in SA's
approach to bulk water management.'

The time has come for South Africa to break the chains of our new,
unwanted class-apartheid. The first crucial step is getting solidarity from
international allies who can help change the power balance to fight the
emergence of `global apartheid.'

The most important institutions of global apartheid are financiers, since
they have vast resources, speed, communications capacities, pressure
points, and an unrelenting ideology that allows them to justify their
actions: neoliberalism.

But resistance is emerging too, from Seattle to Prague to Washington,
DC. In addition to joining street protests against international financial
pressure, activists can participate in the World Bank Bonds Boycott
(http://www.worldbankboycott.org). South African progressive activists in
Jubilee and other movements have helped to catalyse these
campaigns. The possibility for democracy and development in South
Africa and across the world relies upon a people's victory over
international finance.

It happened once before--when international activists forced foreign
banks to stop supporting apartheid in South Africa--and it now must
happen at a higher scale, to reverse global apartheid.

The next stop for the struggle against racism may be the non-violent
demonstrations against financial oppression, in Washington at the end
of this month. But if the IMF/Bank meeting is cancelled in coming days, it
only means we will be consolidating with more passion here in Africa, in
our campaigns to send IMF/Bank staff home from their plush offices in
the capital cities, instead of allowing them the legitimacy they require
from Pretoria to carry on with the misguided, Washington-oriented New
African Initiative.

* Trevor Ngwane is a leader of the Anti-Privatisation Forum:
http://www.cosatu.org.za/samwu/apf.htm

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Neil Watkins
World Bank Bonds Boycott
Center for Economic Justice
1830 Connecticut Ave., NW, 4th floor,
Washington, DC 20009
Tel: (202) 299-0020 / Fax: (202) 299-0021
Web: www.worldbankboycott.org

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