South African President Thabo Mbeki has ruled out staying in his post beyond the end of his second term in 2009. He said the governing ANC would not use its two-thirds parliamentary majority to change the constitution to allow a third presidential term. Formerly deputy president, Mr Mbeki succeeded Nelson Mandela as president in 1999 and was re-elected in 2004. Some ANC supporters have called for a debate on a constitutional change, promoting speculation over a third term. But in an interview with South African television, Mr Mbeki moved to crush such speculation.

The International Finance Corporation, the World Bank's private-sector lending arm, on Tuesday (January 31) approved $125 million in loans for gold major Newmont Mining Corp.'s Ahafo project in Ghana, but not all countries on the IFC's 24-member board agreed it was a good move, reports Reuters. Board officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said three countries abstained and one objected during discussions on the project, amid concerns about the environmental impact and resettlement of families that were living on the mine's site.

Nigeria deserves to become a permanent member of the Security Council, partly because of its outstanding record of contributing to international peacekeeping and also since it is "the largest black democracy in the world, which respects the tenets and principles of human rights of her citizens," Emmanuel Onwubiko, a commissioner on Nigeria's National Human Rights Commission, writes in the Daily Independent.

The judge due to hear the treason trial of Uganda's opposition leader has withdrawn from the case, saying there was a perception he would be biased. Judge John Bosco Katutsi described the view as "absolute rubbish" but said a judge should be above suspicion. He said he had had sleepless nights and his health had suffered. He is the second judge to withdraw from a case concerning Kizza Besigye - expected to be the strongest challenger in elections due on 23 February.

The National Assembly Joint Committee on the review of the 1999 Constitution succumbed yesterday (February 1) to massive public pressure and stepped down the controversial report recommending a third term for the President and governors. Moments before the committee’s resolution, the Northern Members Forum in the National Assembly had declared that it remained undaunted in its opposition to the plan, in spite of its endorsement by state governors at their Abuja meeting on Monday. After a charged meeting, the enlarged Mantu Committee resolved to adopt the 1999 Constitution as the working document during the proposed public hearing on the new Constitution.

At least two million registered voters are expected to turn up at polling stations without voters' cards, Daily Monitor has learnt. The Electoral Commission announced last week (February 2) that, due to delays in cleaning up the national voters' register, registered voters will be allowed to cast their votes in the forthcoming elections even if they do not have cards, as long as they can identify themselves. "People who registered in the recent update do not have cards and they are about two million," the EC Database Manager, Mr Pontius Namugera said in an interview. Namugera said the number is likely to be higher because the Commission has not distributed all the 8.5 million voters' cards it ordered.

Proposals for a long-awaited U.N. Human Rights Council call for 45 members and beefed up standards for any nation wanting a seat on the new body, according to a draft resolution circulated on Thursday (February 2). World leaders agreed at a U.N. summit in September to create a new body to replace the 53-member Geneva-based Human Rights Commission, known for giving seats to countries such as Sudan and Zimbabwe and blocking criticism of rights abusers. The aim of the 191-member General Assembly is to approve the document by February 15 so that the new council, which will also sit in Geneva, is ready to take over from the commission that is to have its final session, beginning in mid-March, according to Reuters.

Zimbabwean NGOs said they were ‘disappointed’ that the African Union (AU) had failed to acknowledge a resolution passed by its rights body, criticising the Harare regime. The AU summit in Khartoum, Sudan, which concluded this week, declined to take up the resolution tabled by its African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights (ACHPR), saying the Zimbabwe government had not had time to react. ‘We understand that the government has to be given time to respond, but at least the summit should have noted the report,’ said Tor-Hugne Olsen, international office coordinator of the Zimbabwe Human Rights Forum, a coalition of 17 Zimbabwean NGOs.

"King Mswati's time is up," headlined South Africa's Sunday Times last month after arrests and reports of torture of banned opposition party members in Swaziland. But with inauguration of a new constitution entrenching the powers of the monarchy, the prospects for democracy in this small country neighboring South Africa do not seem promising. Despite popular discontent with the country's poverty, and the contrast with its ruler's lavish lifestyle, Swazis are reported to be afraid to speak out as well as preoccupied with immediate issues such as AIDS. The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and Amnesty International have condemned the stepped up repression, but there has been no public concern expressed by the South African government.

Free Primary Education was introduced in Kenya in 2003, enabling 1.3 million poor children to obtain schooling for the first time. However, a UNESCO/OECD Early Childhood Policy Review Mission noted that the policy had a negative impact on early childhood development centres serving poor children. The main reason for this phenomenon is that poor parents are now keeping their children at home until they reach the age of primary school. They refuse to pay for early childhood education on the grounds that this, like primary education, should also be free.

Donors and recipient governments are increasingly preferring General Budget Support to other forms of aid: development aid delivered directly into national budgets. This now accounts for 20 to 40 percent of government aid in many African countries. The results for development and poverty reduction have been mixed.

At least five candidates have registered to contest the presidency of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in elections set for April while about 300 political parties are expected to participate in the polls. As preparations for DRC's first democratic elections in over 40 years swing into gear, the country's interior ministry announced that it has so far registered some 300 political parties keen on taking part in the polls.

World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz, who has sought to cast himself as a champion of transparency, is facing accusations that his office is suppressing a report on a Bank-backed mining project in Africa that allegedly contributed to the deaths of dozens of people. Watchdog groups say that violence has marred the Dikulushi Copper-Silver Mining Project in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) where the bank's guarantee arm, the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA), provided 13.3 million dollars of political risk insurance to the Australian company, Anvil Mining, running the mine.

The rhetoric may be flying, with outbursts over "a fool's agreement" and "neo-colonialist and imperialist behaviour," but most observers believe the oil row between the Chadian government and the World Bank will end in a face-saving compromise. The stand-off began in December when Chad's parliament passed an amendment to the law governing how oil revenues can be spent, prompting the World Bank to suspend $124 million in loans and cut the flow of petrodollars to the landlocked, impoverished country.

One year after the implementation of the East African Customs Union, its top decision making body has met only once. This has left an array of problems plaguing the economic bloc unresolved. The Council of Ministers has not met since June 2005 after it met in December 2004. The Customs Union came into effect on January 1, 2005.

The new administration in Tanzania has weathered its major political test after the Government declined to heed MPs' demand for higher salaries. The MPs were demanding salaries and other perks that would bring them at par with their counterparts' in other East African countries. Western envoys in Tanzania were reportedly relieved when the Government made its position on MPs' salaries public.

The Law Society of Kenya plans to sue those adversely mentioned in the Anglo Leasing and Goldenberg scandals. The Society's chairman said the organisation would start private proceedings against suspects in the two scandals once it has gathered enough evidence. In 1994, LSK sued individuals it believed had participated in the Goldenberg scandal.

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 [email protected] 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 [email protected] 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.

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 services that aren’t delivered on a commercial basis or in competition with other suppliers.

The logic and significance of GATS is easy to comprehend. All human activities are to become, in the fullness of time, profit-oriented commodities that can be invested in, bought and sold. And the Agreement makes this irreversible since it is not a finished treaty but an open-ended framework agreement that mandates “successive rounds of negotiations” with the goal of attaining “progressively higher” levels of liberalisation.

This means that what is not opened today will be dealt with tomorrow until, presumably, all services are opened to all consumers by all countries in all “modes” of delivery. Even more alarming is Article IV. It gives GATS powers to interfere, via WTO’s Dispute Settlement Body (DSB), with government efforts to pass “measures” – laws, rules, regulations, procedures, administrative actions or any other forms – that are deemed to be “unnecessary barriers to trade in services”. In other words, let not your pesky national standards stand in the way of foreign corporate interests.

As an example, one of the sectors that have been presented as being of great benefit to African countries is tourism. It has been posited that with full or substantial liberalisation of tourism, African beaches, nature parks and cultural attractions would be bursting in the seams with overseas visitors, who would bring in an abundance of the “scarce yet much needed” foreign exchange. These benefits are at best exaggerated and worst non-existent. Leakages are encouraged thanks to the inordinate dominance of foreign ownership in the tourism industry. Leakage is described as a process through which part of the foreign exchange earnings generated by tourism, rather than being retained by tourist-receiving countries, is either retained by tourist-generating countries or remitted back to them. This foreign domination of the tourism sector in Africa has intensified under the GATS framework.

Liberalisation of Financial Services: Casino Economy

A typical Third World lesson in financial liberalisation could be distilled from the case of Uganda Commercial Bank (UCB). Having yielded to the pressure from International Financial Institutions (IFIs), the Uganda Government sold off this national asset to Stanbic Bank. UCB had an extensive network all over the country, catering for rural farmers, teachers and civil servants. Most of the branches operated in UCB’s own premises.

No sooner had the sale agreement been concluded than Stanbic closed down all the rural branches, sold the buildings (in the process realising more than four times what it had paid as purchase price) and repatriated the proceeds. No one cared that teachers who used to earn their salaries through the bank now had to spend a two days every month and more money to reach the nearest bank. This is done at the expense of their pupils.

A good number of WTO Members have made commitments in financial services. These cover banking, insurance, securities and capital accounts. A smaller number has made commitments regarding insurance intermediation and transfer of financial information. Fewer still have made commitment with respect to derivatives trading. African countries and China have been cautious. The following could explain the reason why.

On July 2, 1997 Thailand's currency, the baht, had to be floated. Far from being an isolated single country issue, this ignited the financial and currency crisis that was to engulf the East Asian sub-region. This crisis thrust millions of workers, small business enterprises, children and other vulnerable segments of the human race into dire poverty and desperation. The crisis quickly spread beyond the sub-region. Russia virtually succumbed to financial collapse; the Republic of South Africa had to intervene with a raise in interest rates so as to defend its currency. In quick succession, Brazil joined the ranks of crisis countries.

The crisis and its bushfire-like spread have forced certain issues into the domain of international discourse. The question arises as to what extent are the flaws inherent in the current dominant economic order responsible for the trend of slowing economic development and worsening of global income distribution. This issue informs present debate over the global financial architecture.

The debate is carried from two poles. On the one hand, is the Washington Consensus or Wall Street pole which maintains that the crisis - and indeed global economic growth generally - is best addressed by more open trade, export-led, greater deregulation, and more liberalised financial markets. According to this school of thought all that is required is a minor tune-up of the international financial system.

On other hand, is the "main street alternative" which thinks the Washington Consensus model is irreparably flawed and fundamentally bankrupt. This viewpoint contends that the issue is not one of recalibrating the model, but rather of designing a new model that is stable, equitable and pro poor.

When it comes to financial architecture, the fundamental differences between the main street alternative and the Washington Consensus become clear. The latter promotes and uses institutions it controls to impose opening up of the domestic financial markets, better accounting standards, more financial transparency and disclosure and more International Monetary Fund (IMF) surveillance.

On its part, the main street alternative maintains that while improved accounting standards, financial transparency and disclosures are necessary, there is an acute need to reduce speculation and make long term investment, giving proper regard to risk. This requires taxes on the buying and selling of currencies to reduce speculative trading, as well as requiring the investors to commit their investment to a minimum time period.

Water For Life or Profit?

A key concern is that through liberalisation schemes, water is treated like any other commodity to be sold at a profit. Yet we know that water is essential to life and nature. Indeed, water is our common heritage and a public trust. According to a report in the East African newspaper, the water provision in the port city of Dar es Salaam has not improved since it was privatised, yet the World Bank-funded British firm-Biwater has increased the charges manifold.

Today the global water industry is dominated by less than 10 companies – the leading two being French firms, Vivendi and Suez (with water revenue of US$ 11.9 and 8.84 billion respectively in 2001). In 2001, Vivendi and Suez were ranked at positions 51 and 99 respectively on the Global Fortunes 500. The two French companies are facing stiff challenge from German company, RWE, which recently purchased Thames water of UK and American Water Works of the US. RWE is ranked 53 in the Global Fortune 500 with US$ 2.8 billion water revenue in 2001. Other key players in the privatisation of water services include Bouygues (France), Bechtel (US), Severn Trent, Anglian Water and Kelda (all of UK).

Hiking of water prices is not the only concern. Most of the companies entrenched in the water sector have bad records. In 1999, the UK’s Drinking Water Inspectorate declared the Suez subsidiary, Northumbrian Water, the second worst company in terms of operational performance in England and Wales. The main reason was poor quality – high levels of iron and manganese were found in the water Northumbrian was delivering.

In the UK, five water companies – Anglian, Severn Trent, Northumbrian, Wessex, and Kelda Group – were successfully prosecuted 128 times between 1989 and 1997. On one count in August 2001, Thames Water pleaded guilty and was fined 26,600 Sterling pounds for allowing raw sewage to pollute a stream within a few metres of a residential estate.

Liberalisation and Health Care

Gradually but steadily there has been a major shift in global health strategy in recent years. Thanks to the Washington Consensus, the responsibility for health care provision has moved from the state to the “market forces.” The defining feature of this shift is many deaths from otherwise preventable and treatable diseases; resurgence of diseases that humanity thought were already conquered like tuberculosis and detention of decomposing corpses in ghettoes christened “private clinics” for lack of payments.

David Werner, the author of the renowned and best-selling book, ‘Where There Is No Doctor’, is very clear on why the public should be worried about the shift in global and national health strategies. He recalls how the celebrated concept of universal primary health care had been adopted by virtually all governments at the landmark global health conference that endorsed the Alma Alta declaration.

To advance toward ‘Health for All by the year 2000’, the Declaration promoted the principles that all people are entitled to basic health rights and that society (and thus the government) has a responsibility to ensure that the people’s health needs are met, regardless of gender, race, class, relative ability or disability. The centrepiece of the Declaration was primary health care, a comprehensive strategy that included an equitable, consumer-centred approach to health services and also addressed underlying social factors that influence health.

Hong Kong: The Last Nail

At the recently concluded WTO meeting in Hong Kong, developed countries bulldozed a framework for GATS negotiations that compels countries to negotiate a minimum number of sectors with targets and indicators. These proposals will seriously erode the current flexibilities embodied in the GATS Agreement. These flexibilities were the very reason for African countries’ agreement to the GATS during the Uruguay Round. Furthermore, these proposals would completely change the very architecture of the GATS and the approach to the negotiations as agreed in the Negotiating Guidelines.

Annex C introduces plurilateral and sectoral approaches to the negotiations, which would force African and other developing countries to enter into negotiations in certain sectors, even if they are not yet ready to do so. Sectors that have been mentioned for sectoral negotiations include energy, water (through environmental services) and health (through financial services) - all of which are crucial and sensitive in African countries. Given Africa’s level of development, selling out these sectors to the market forces would pose serious threats to affordability and accessibility to these services by the poor and vulnerable.

* Oduor Ongwen is the country director of the Southern and Eastern Africa Trade Information and Negotiations Institute (Seatini) in Kenya. Previously, he was the Executive Director of EcoNews Africa and chaired the National Council of NGOs in Kenya. He holds a masters degree in Economic Policy of Developing Countries.

* Please send comments to

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

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