ANC Today --------------------------------------------------------------------- Volume 2, No. 23, 7 - 13 June 2002 --------------------------------------------------------------------- THIS WEEK: * Letter from the President: NEPAD is Africa's response to globalisation * World Environment Day: People acting locally to build better, cleaner lives --------------------------------------------------------------------- LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT 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 pre-condition 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 cooperation 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 cooperation 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. Thabo Mbeki --------------------------------------------------------------------- WORLD ENVIRONMENT DAY People acting locally to build better, cleaner lives All South Africans have the power to improve their local environment through social action and popular participation in local government. This was the message of the ANC on the occasion of World Environment Day on 5 June; a message which was given practical expression by the announcement of the first Cleanest Town Award by Public Works minister Stella Sigcau. The competition was launched last year to encouraging people to be proud of their environment by joining in efforts to clean it up and keep it clean. "It is aimed at restoring people's pride in their surroundings and in themselves, as an unclean environment speaks volumes about the attitude of the people who live in it," Sigcau said. "The R1 million prize that will be received by the cleanest metro, and the R2 million-worth of funding for waste management programmes to be received by the cleanest transitional local council and the cleanest district council, serve as incentives to get South Africans to clean up their act", she said. The Klein Karoo District Council in the Western Cape was awarded the cleanest district council, while Newcastle in KwaZulu-Natal was voted the cleanest local council in the country. The R1 million cash prize for South Africa's cleanest metro went to the Eastern Cape's Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Council. In a statement on World Environment Day, the ANC saluted all the women and men who, across our country and the world, are working to build sustainable development in action. Sustainable Development means joining together economic growth, social upliftment and environmental protection as three mutually reinforcing pillars of development. During the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 world leaders, business and civil society agreed to promote sustainable development through Agenda 21. Although South Africa was still rule by the apartheid government, the ANC was represented at the Rio Summit and its outcome was an important milestone in the drawing up of the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP). Our country's efforts to achieve universal access by all to adequate housing, energy, education, health, water and sanitation are a beacon to the world. Through these programmes, living conditions have improved for millions in a short space of time. We have established democratic and non-racial local government, which, in partnership with local communities, has the potential to develop and implement truly sustainable Integrated Development Plans (IDPs). These changes have created more space for ordinary citizens to seize the initiative to change the lives of those around them and provide the impetus for sustainable development. The ANC statement called on all South Africans to: * participate actively in the preparation of Integrated Development Plans at local level; * make ward councillors accountable to the community and make development participatory at local level; * put the environment on the agenda of community meetings, including ANC branch meetings; * act to stop the wastage of water, by among other things reporting leaking pipes; * act to reduce waste by composting, re-using and recycling. The progress made in South Africa over the last eight years to foster sustainable development will receive a boost in August this year when the country plays host to over 180 heads of state and 60,000 delegates at the Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD). This important meeting will review the decisions taken at Rio, and will need to build new partnerships for a world free of poverty, underdevelopment and environmental degradation. Concrete global action The WSSD provides a unique opportunity for governments, UN bodies, business and civil society to agree on concrete actions to eradicate poverty, to change unsustainable patterns of consumption and production, and promote environmental protection in resource management. Addressing these issues will require a fundamental change in the relationships between the North and South. For this to be achieved, the WSSD needs to agree on a practical set of actions which will significantly improve the lives of the poorest and ensure the sustainability of the world's resources. Launching an awareness campaign last month in the build-up to the WSSD, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan identified five key areas where such concrete results could be obtained. He said the WSSD should aim to make progress in the areas of water, energy, health, agricultural productivity, and biodiversity and ecosystem management. "These are five areas in which progress would offer all human beings a chance of achieving prosperity that will not only last their own lifetime, but can be enjoyed by their children and grandchildren too," he said. Annan said that within five years, the world should aim to: * Provide access to at least one billion people who lack clean drinking water and two billion people who lack proper sanitation. * Provide access to more than two billion people who lack modern energy services; promote renewable energy; reduce over-consumption; and ratify the Kyoto Protocol to address climate change. * Address the effects of toxic and hazardous materials; reduce air pollution, which kills three million people each year, and lower the incidence of malaria and African guinea worm, which are linked with polluted water and poor sanitation. * Work to reverse land degradation, which affects about two-thirds of the world's agricultural lands. * Reverse the processes that have destroyed about half of the world's tropical rainforest and mangroves, and are threatening 70 percent of the world's coral reefs and decimating the world's fisheries. New efforts are needed, he added, because the present model of development, which has brought privilege and prosperity to about 20 percent of humanity, has also exacted a heavy price by degrading the planet and depleting its resources. High-consumption lifestyles continue to tax the Earth's natural life support systems, research and development are under-funded and neglectful of the problems of the poor, and developed countries "have not gone far enough", he said, to fulfil either of the promises they made in Rio to protect their own environments and to help the developing world defeat poverty. "Together, we will need to find our way towards a greater sense of mutual responsibility. Together, we will need to build a new ethic of global stewardship. Together, we can and must write a new and hopeful chapter in natural and human history," he said. MORE INFORMATION: World Summit on Sustainable Development http://www.environment.gov.za/ --------------------------------------------------------------------- This issue of ANC Today is available from the ANC web site at: http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/anctoday/2002/at23.htm To receive ANC Today free of charge by e-mail each week go to: http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/anctoday/subscribe.html