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NEPAD is Africa's response to
globalisation
This week
our country and people have been exposed to two important events. The
first of these was the swearing in of the democratically elected Prime
Minister of Lesotho, Mr Pakalitha Mosisili. The second is the holding
of the Annual WEF-SADC African Economic Conference in Durban.
The ceremony in Maseru, Lesotho, marked the conclusion
of a long process aimed at the normalisation of the political situation
in Lesotho. Its crest was the holding of free and fair elections, and
the celebration of the swearing in of a democratically elected Prime Minister,
in the presence of regional elected African democrats.
We mention Lesotho to congratulate the sister people
of this neighbouring country for what they have done to advance democracy,
peace and stability in their country, our region and continent. Lesotho
also indicates what the peoples of our continent are doing practically,
in keeping with the commitments Africa has made in the context of both
the African Union (AU) and NEPAD.
These central African initiatives have put as priorities,
issues of democracy, human rights, peace and stability. The governments
on our continent have said that we need to achieve these objectives as
a matter of urgency. They have also said that we need to realise these
goals to create the conditions for us to address the equally urgent question
of the eradication of poverty and underdevelopment on our continent.
These are some of the matters that are being discussed
at the current Durban WEF-SADC African Economic Summit. Following on the
International NEPAD Business Conference held in Dakar, Senegal, earlier
this year, Durban seeks further to deepen this interaction and the commitment
of business to the attainment of the goals of the New Partnership.
Legitimate questions have been raised by members of
civil society at home and in the rest of Africa, that African civil society
has not been involved in the NEPAD process. Indeed, the last OAU Summit
Meeting, held in Lusaka, directed all member governments actively to engage
their peoples in further work on both the AU and NEPAD, bearing in mind
that African Parliaments had approved the Constitutive Act of the African
Union. This enabled the Lusaka OAU Summit to decide that the legal and
democratic basis had been established for the AU to be launched in Durban
in July this year.
Happily, in our own country, the elected representatives
of our people at the national level, have engaged the AU and NEPAD initiatives,
understanding that NEPAD's parent body is the AU, and confirmed their
support. Currently, our parliamentarians are involved in more detailed
work on these programmes. Our government is very determined to interact
with them to ensure that, within the continental and other inter-governmental
fora, it is able properly to represent their views.
I am also pleased that the ANC, the biggest political
formation in our country, fully supports both the AU and NEPAD, consistent
with resolutions adopted at its Mafikeng 50th National Conference in 1997.
At its own Johannesburg 1999 7th Congress, jointly hosted
by COSATU and NACTU, the Organisation of African Trade Union Unity (OATUU)
addressed the urgent matters facing our continent. It decided to take
action to advance the African development perspective on which it agreed.
Among other things, in its Programme of Action it said:
"We the delegates of the OATUU 7th Ordinary Congress are mindful
of many decades of internal strife and instability brought about by colonialism
and military and civilian dictatorships that have subjected millions of
African inhabitants to the worst forms of pain, humiliation, poverty,
diseases, and violence."
The Programme of Action went on to say: "Political
and social stability is a precondition to the development of the continent.
The African Renaissance should be biased towards uplifting the conditions
of the poor and the marginalised sections of our society. We dream of
a new Africa where her children shall be free from unemployment, poverty,
deprivation, and socio-economic marginalisation and inter as well as intra
state conflict."
Both the AU and the NEPAD initiatives have taken exactly
the same positions adopted by OATUU at its 7th Congress as indicated in
the paragraphs we have just quoted. Obviously what this indicates is that,
on these matters, a common policy base exists between the OAU and OATUU.
There should therefore be no obstacle to co-operation between Africa's
governments and the progressive trade union movement on our continent
on these matters.
The 7th Congress of OATUU also said that: "The
economic marginalisation of the African continent, as reflected by the
unjust distribution of the world resources, should be an issue that should
not be taken into the new millennium. We note with regret the dominance
of the neo-liberal prescriptions of the financial institutions to African
countries and the rest of the developing world. We further note the devastating
impact of these anti-development prescriptions on the workers and the
poor. We recognise the critical role the private sector can play in development
and call for a new spirit of tripartism between trade unions, governments
and employer bodies. Partnership and participation can only take place
if there is a conscious effort to empower trade unions."
The challenge to end the economic marginalisation of
Africa, and therefore to attract the necessary resources into our continent
to ensure its development, stands at the heart both of the vision of an
African Renaissance and NEPAD.
Without the achievement of this objective, neither the
African Renaissance, nor the AU nor NEPAD will succeed. As an integral
part of this, NEPAD is focused on the establishment of a New Partnership
between the North and the South, to end a relationship between dominant
Northern donors and subservient Southern recipients of charity.
Once more, the OAU and OATUU are at one on this matter,
which stands at the centre of Africa's future. In this regard, they also
agree on the issue resolved at the OATUU 7th Congress, of the recognition
of the critical role the private sector can play in development.
Again, this establishes the principled basis for co-operation
between Africa' s governments and trade unions to discuss what our continent
should do to attract the resources of which OATUU spoke and to establish
the constructive tripartite relationship that the all-Africa trade union
organisation correctly saw as being important for the development of our
continent.
The New Partnership seeks to achieve the critical objective
of the eradication of poverty on our continent. In this regard, it has
to ensure that our continent overcomes the consequences of all policies
and prescriptions that have resulted in the further impoverishment of
the workers and the poor. It is for this reason that NEPAD has focused
on a number of specific priority programmes, to give expression to what
we have mentioned already.
One of these programmes addresses the matter of capital
flows. This includes the debt question, which was addressed in an OATUU
Congress decision, domestic investment, foreign direct investment and
official development assistance. All this responds to the issue of resources,
agreed at the OATUU Congress.
NEPAD also aims that our continent should achieve the
situation that it does not, once again, sink into unsustainable indebtedness.
It also focuses on the encouragement of public policies such that the
African public and private sectors do not initiate and sustain programmes
that lead to the state having to continue these programmes, or save our
countries from economic and social collapse, by relying on international
loans. This includes borrowing from the Bretton Woods institutions.
This means that NEPAD seeks to achieve the situation
such that African governments do not generate the conditions that result
in their having to accept structural adjustment programmes in order to
access foreign finance, without which they cannot avoid the collapse of
their countries and societies. All this includes our obligation to deal
with the serious matters of African corruption and the unjustified export
of capital by Africans themselves.
For these reasons, which have to do both with politics
and the economy, the AU and NEPAD address issues about political and economic
governance. They seek to ensure that the matters addressed by the OATUU
7th Congress do not remain merely resolutions adopted at a Congress, living
only in the newspaper headlines of the day.
Others of the NEPAD programmes are focused on the development
and modernisation of African economies. One of the most important objectives
that NEPAD seeks to achieve in this regard is ending the historic situation
in which Africa is an exporter of raw materials and an importer of manufactured
goods.
Accordingly, the New Partnership seeks radically to
raise the education and skills levels on our continent. It aims at ending
the health crisis in Africa, through a determined offensive against our
major diseases, including TB, malaria, STDs and AIDS. This includes ensuring
that we deal with such matters as food security, nutrition, water and
sanitation. It is focused on ending the scientific and technological marginalisation
of the Continent.
In this context, it focuses on various sectors including
agriculture, mining, manufacturing, energy, the economic and social infrastructure,
issues of market access and international trade, education, health, tourism,
telecommunications and information technology. Our success in these and
other areas will help our continent to respond to the challenges of globalisation
referred to in the OATUU Programme adopted at its 7th Congress. NEPAD
is Africa's response to globalisation. In this context, the Congress said:
"The era we are in will be characterised by an ever-increasing globalisation
of the world economy. Increasingly the world economies are dominated by
powerful regional and continental economic blocs. Globalisation of trade
has seen a reduction in trade flows from Africa in the last decade. This
century has also seen the increasing gap in standards of living between
Africa and countries of the North."
The 1999 7th Congress of OATUU said Africa's organised
workers "commit ourselves to the call made by several African leaders
to declare the next century the 'African Century'".
This is precisely what the AU and NEPAD are about. As
the African and global business leaders meet in Durban, they will know
that they are involved in an historic process to form a New Partnership
with Africa represented, among others, by the OAU, the African parliaments
and the organised African workers united in OATUU.
It is these circumstances that guarantee the success
of the vision that we, the Africans, have elaborated about our own future,
as represented by the AU and NEPAD. The invitation we extend to all our
partners is to participate in a common struggle for the re-birth of a
Continent.
In this epoch-making struggle, unavoidably, we will
lose some battles. The masses of the African people are determined that
we will not, again, lose the war.
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