Africa must seize this opportunity for progress

At the end of last week, on June 1, the members of the Steering Committee of the NEPAD Heads of State and Government Implementation Committee attended the G8 Summit Meeting in Evian, France. This was the third G8 Summit Meeting we were attending as the NEPAD Steering Committee, having been at the 2001 Genoa, Italy and 2002 Kananaskis, Canada Summits.

At the conclusion of the Summit, the Chair, President Jacques Chirac of France said: "Our discussions with the Presidents of Algeria, Nigeria, Senegal and South Africa, the Leaders of countries represented on the NEPAD Steering Committee, demonstrated our common will to contribute to the development of Africa. We endorsed the report prepared by our Africa Personal Representatives. We agreed to widen our dialogue to other African Leaders on NEPAD and the G8 Africa Action Plan. We invite interested countries and relevant international institutions to appoint senior representatives to join this partnership."

The Report of the G8 Africa Personal Representatives referred to by President Chirac says, among other things: "NEPAD presents a bold and clear-sighted African vision of how Africa is assuming responsibility for its development and full integration into the world economy. The G8 countries encourage and support this important endeavour and therefore fully commit themselves to strengthening their partnership with Africa. The United Nations and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development have adopted NEPAD as the basis upon which to build future relations with Africa. We particularly welcome the UN General Assembly resolution adopting NEPAD as the general framework around which the international community including the United Nations system, should concentrate its efforts for Africa's development."

In the G8 Africa Action Plan they adopted at Kananaskis in 2002, the G8 had said: " Together, we have an unprecedented opportunity to make progress on our common goals of eradicating extreme poverty and achieving sustainable development (in Africa).G8 governments are committed to mobilise and energise global action, marshal resources and expertise, and provide impetus in support of the NEPAD's objectives. As G8 partners, we will undertake mutually reinforcing actions to help Africa accelerate growth and make lasting gains against poverty."

The Report of the Africa Personal Representatives seeks to detail the work done by the G8 since Kananaskis to give effect to these commitments. This is in keeping with the understanding arrived at in Kananaskis that as partners, we have a shared responsibility regularly to give an account of what we are doing to meet our obligations as contained in NEPAD and the Africa Action Plan (AAP).

In this context, correctly, the Report of the Representatives says: "Accountability is central to NEPAD and the AAP: the accountability of African Leaders to their people and to each other as well as the determination of developed partners to match that commitment."

The Implementation Report of the Africa Personal Representatives deals with such issues as Overseas Development Assistance, peace and security, strengthening institutions and governance, trade, investment, debt relief, education, information and communication technologies, health, including HIV and AIDS, agriculture and biodiversity, water and sanitation.

The G8 Africa Personal Representatives are appointed by the G8 Heads of State and Government and report directly to their principals. They work directly with the Steering Committee and Secretariat of NEPAD to implement decisions agreed by NEPAD and the G8.

Of course NEPAD has other international partners, in addition to the G8. These include the UN, the Nordic countries, and multilateral organisations such as the World Bank, the IMF and the WTO. President Chirac's statement cited above extends an invitation to these countries and institutions to delegate Personal Representatives of their Leaders to join the Standing Committee of Africa Personal Representatives.

This would facilitate the coordination and integration of the international effort to act in partnership with us to address the development challenges of our continent. It would take to a higher level the focus of the international community on the task to meet the Africa goals this community has already agreed, including those contained in the Millennium Development Goals, the Monterrey Consensus on Financing for Development, and the Plan of Action adopted at the Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development.

The work done by our continent both among the African countries and within the international community has led to a unique and important result. This is that Africa is the only part of the world that has a continent-wide political and economic development and integration programme. It is also the only continent that has managed to unite the peoples of the world to act as partners in the struggle to achieve the developmental and integration objectives that our continent has set for itself.

The further expansion of the Standing Committee of Africa Personal Representatives as proposed by the G8, indicates the seriousness with which the rest of the world is approaching the issue of acting in partnership with us to help produce concrete developmental results in Africa.

The G8 Africa Action Plan adopted at Kananaskis in 2002 says: "The case for action (with regard to Africa) is compelling. Despite its great potential and human resources, Africa continues to face some of the world's greatest challenges. The many initiatives designed to spur Africa's development have failed to deliver sustained improvements to the lives of individual women, men and children throughout Africa."

When our continent decided to form the African Union to replace the OAU and to adopt the AU's development programme, NEPAD, it proceeded from the same positions stated in the G8 AAP. We also stated that the case for action with regard to our continent is compelling, and that despite its great potential and human resources, Africa continues to face some of the world's greatest challenges.

Since their establishment after the Lusaka 2001 Summit Meeting of the OAU, the NEPAD Heads of State and Government Implementation Committee (HSGIC), the Steering Committee and the Secretariat, working together with the Headquarters of the OAU/AU, have worked hard urgently to respond to this compelling situation.

After its last meeting on May 28th, just before the G8 Evian summit meeting, the HSGIC said, among other things:

"The HSGIC took the opportunity (of its meeting) to review the NEPAD/G8 partnership, and to review progress made in the implementation of the G8 Africa Action Plan announced in Kananaskis at the last G8 Summit in June 2002. The HSGIC deliberated on the matters to be addressed by the African leaders invited to attend the G8 Summit and how to maximise the gains from the interactions with the G8 in the future.

"In particular, the HSGIC discussed a number of specific issues such as peace support operations, deadlock on trade negotiation and market access issues, support for infrastructure projects, debt relief, progress on the Millennium Development Goals, progress on implementation of the G8 Africa Action Plan etc., that are to be raised with the G8, and how to maintain the momentum generated by NEPAD as Africa finds itself challenged on the global agenda by other competing international considerations. They also noted the need to maintain a system of structured engagement with the G8."

The G8 Evian Summit Meeting responded positively to the project proposals presented by the NEPAD representatives. These also included priority agricultural, water and infrastructure projects.

Apart from endorsing the Report of the Africa Personal Representatives in his Summary, the Chairperson of the Summit, President Chirac also referred specifically to such matters as famine, water, health, financing for development, debt, and e-government, all of which include Africa.

Accordingly, as a continent, we must acknowledge with appreciation the sustained commitment of the G8 to honour the commitments they have made to work with us as our partners for development. At the same time, we need to respond to this engagement by ensuring we, the Africans, take advantage of the favourable conditions that have emerged, forcefully to meet the commitments we have made to ourselves to extricate our continent out of its long period of poverty and underdevelopment.

We have taken all the necessary steps to make the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) operational. This includes the appointment of the APRM Panel of Eminent Persons. Our task is to make certain that the APRM starts working to create the possibility for all our countries to achieve the best practices in political, economic and corporate governance visualised in the Constitutive Act of the African Union, various Conventions and Protocols on which we have agreed, and the benchmarks guiding the work of the APRM.

We must also work to encourage those African countries that have not yet acceded to the APRM to do so, in the common interest. We must spread the understanding that the APRM is not intended to be an instrument of punishment for any country.

It is a mechanism to assist our countries, individually and collectively, to achieve the objective of good political and economic governance to which we have agreed, and thus create the conditions for us to achieve sustained economic growth and development, generating the resources to end poverty and underdevelopment.

We must work for the earliest possible establishment of the Pan-African Parliament. This will enable the elected representatives of the peoples of Africa to come together both to help formulate the agenda for Africa's development, as well as exercise an oversight function over the system of governance throughout our continent, so that we improve our performance in the interest of the masses of our people.

Similar considerations relate to the African Court of Justice, which would provide the continent with the judicial organ to adjudicate justifiable matters that are part of the complex of measures on which we have agreed, that relate to issues of good political and economic governance, human rights and the observance of the rule of law.

We have to move speedily to get the requisite number of countries to approve the Protocol establishing the Peace and Security Council, leading to the establishment of the Council and all its structures. These include a continental early warning system, an African standby force, a military staff committee, and a Panel of the Wise. With these institutions in place, we will be better able to address the continuing challenge of peace and stability on our continent, without which we will not achieve the development goals we have set for ourselves.

Work is also proceeding to constitute the Commission of the African Union, the permanent executive organ of the Union. The Commission will be a critically important African institution, which will ensure that we carry out the important objectives for which the African Union was established. The July Maputo Summit of the AU should elect the Commission, which should be constituted of the best representatives of our continent and its peoples.

It also seems clear that the structures of NEPAD will have to be further strengthened to ensure that they are able to work with the African Regional Communities, such as SADC, to implement our development programmes and effectively utilise the assistance and support extended to us by our international development partners.

The moment is upon us to make a determined advance towards meeting the aspirations of the masses of the African people for peace, democracy, development and prosperity. We dare not lose this opportunity to achieve the progress we seek. If we do, because of our failure to live to our commitments, it will take another generation of a miserable life for the millions of our people, before it presents itself again. No genuine leader of the peoples of Africa would ever accept such an outcome.

The joint Africa/G8 decisions taken at the Evian Summit have strengthened the platform we must use to meet the objective - forward ever, backward never!

Growth and Development

Summit seeks practical steps to accelerate job creation

The Growth and Development Summit of 7 June provides a platform for all stakeholders in the economy to agree on immediate and practical steps to hasten economic growth and job creation.

While the ANC has managed to halt the economic decline of the apartheid years and create conditions for economic development, the South African economy is still not creating jobs at a fast enough rate.

Through its policies, the ANC-led government has achieved levels of economic stability and resilience impressive at a time of global economic uncertainty. Through a renewed focus on transformation at a 'micro-economic' level, government policies are supporting the development of a number of key growth sectors in the economy.

In its position paper in preparation for the summit, government noted that several important conditions for improved economic performance are in place. These include macro-economic stability, decent labour standards and institutions for social dialogue, sound public finances, a robust legal and financial infrastructure, well-developed transport, communications and logistical networks, an open trading environment, surplus energy capacity, rising quality in the schooling system and a set of dynamic higher education and research institutions.

Yet unemployment remains among the most important problems facing our country today. While the ANC has made great progress in bringing services and development to the people, without the creation of greater number of quality jobs our vision of a better life will be harder to achieve.

While the number of jobs in the economy has grown by more than a million, the number of people seeking work has grown even more. We need therefore to be creating more jobs at a faster rate.

As the position paper notes: "South Africa has experienced a persistent structural unemployment problem and associated household poverty and vulnerability. The pace of investment, job creation, productive asset distribution and institutional development remain inadequate to overcome the legacy of disadvantage and marginalisation that keeps millions of our people out of the mainstream of economic opportunity and progress."

These challenges cannot be overcome by government alone. All sectors in society need to work together to increase levels of savings and investment, improve skills levels and create opportunities for job seekers.

While government continues to pursue policies on a number of fronts that are effectively expanding the opportunities of all South Africans, this can only be helped by a concerted effort from all stakeholders to unite behind a set of actions to reinforce these policies and hasten progress.

The aim of the summit is to agree on practical measure which increase the numbers of people who rely on normal economic activity for their livelihood, rather than social grants.

The summit's objectives include the building an enduring partnership among all stakeholders with a shared vision of South Africa's growth and development strategy. It aims to addressing urgent challenges by choosing interventions which will rapidly accelerate investment and job creation, improve efficiency, productivity and greater social equity, and a ensure fairer distribution of economic opportunities and rewards. Above all it is aimed at securing the commitment and active participation of all social partners in those areas identified for action.

A number of themes have been prioritised:

• Increasing investment in the economy and creating conditions for growth. This will include addressing factors which constrain investment and mobilising investment from business, government and pension funds.
• Broadening the country's skills base and improving the representation of all South Africans in the economy;
• Creating jobs and encouraging entrepreneurship through, among other things, an expanded public works programme; youth brigades; enterprise support; and increasing the number of learnerships in the private sector and government.
• Encouraging local action and development, including removing the obstacles that often block the implementation of programmes at local level.

Government can play an important role in this process by guiding the allocation of state resources to those areas that encourage economic growth and help tackle poverty. But growth and development cannot be tackled by government acting alone, and everything that needs to be done cannot be done at once. It is therefore proposing to its social partners, specifically business and labour, that a joint programme of action be developed to accelerate the pace of change.

In this task, the ANC sees a role for its own organisational capacity. Building on its experience of the letsema volunteer programme, the ANC will play a role in mobilising people who can be involved in the projects and programmes that emerge from the summit.

More Information:

• Growth and Development Summit documents

Pondoland Revolt

Martyrs reburied at site of 1960 massacre

Twenty-three people who were executed for their part in the 1960 Pondoland uprising will be reburied at the site of the Ngquza Hill massacre, 43 years to the day after one of the most violent acts of repression committed by the apartheid regime.

On 6 June 1960 thousands of the people of east Pondoland met beside Ngquza Hill, between Bizana and Lusikisiki, to discuss the state of affairs under which they were suffering. This peaceful gathering met with a violent response from the state.

Two military aircraft were dispatched to bombard the people with teargas and smoke bombs. Then, ignoring the white flag the people raised, policemen emerged from various points around the gathering and fired live ammunition into the crowd. When they had finished, 11 people lay dead. Several of them had been shot in the back of the head.

A number of people were arrested, and in the following year 30 were sentenced to death for complicity in the Pondoland revolt. The bodies of 23 of those executed have been exhumed and will be re-buried alongside those killed in the massacre.

This murderous episode was but once instance in the long story of the brutal suppression of the democratic demands of our people. Not three months earlier, 69 unarmed protestors were murdered outside the police station in Sharpeville. This was followed by the banning of the liberation movements, the detention of more than ten thousand activists and the declaration of a state of emergency.

It is against this chilling background that we begin to understand the bravery of the martyrs of Ngquza Hill. Their peaceful defiance was part of a determined uprising throughout East Pondoland against Verwoerd's plan to deprive all Africans of their citizenship through the Bantustan system.

This system rested on the foundation of earlier violence. In the nineteenth century independent African polities throughout South Africa had been systematically subjugated. Following the discovery of gold and diamonds in the 1870s the British colonial authorities intensified their programme of defeating free Africans and annexing their land.

These campaigns aimed to impose foreign sovereignty on the whole of Southern Africa so the region's mineral wealth could be exploited by British mining interests. They aimed to deprive Africans of their land, their means of their livelihood, and thereby guarantee the supply of cheap and dependent labour to these mining houses.

The process of dispossession culminated in the Land Act of 1913, under which only white people could own, buy or sell land in 'white' South Africa. The remaining 7.3% of the land, areas that Africans had been herded into by force of arms, would become African reserves. Over the following decades the situation in these reserves became increasingly desperate as greater numbers of Africans were forced to eke out a bare minimum of subsistence from the increasingly infertile soil.

With the election of the National Party in 1948 this situation became substantially worse. Faced with rising popular demands for equality, led by an increasingly well organised and militant ANC, the apartheid state sought the final solution to South Africa's long-standing 'Native Problem'.

The 'Natives' would cease to be South Africans. They would be forced to accept citizenship of 'countries' created out of the reserves into which colonialism had forced their ancestors. These areas would be forced to accept 'independence' from South Africa. The territorial authorities created for each ethnic group would be given 'independence' only on the basis of their perpetual subordination to the white state.

But, in order to give effect to this plan, Verwoerd first needed to address the issue of traditional leadership. The Chiefs had played a heroic and determined role in resisting the colonial onslaught. Despite military defeat and incorporation many had remained loyal defenders of the interests of their people. When the ANC was formed in 1912 its honorary presidents included Letsie II of the baSotho, Dinizulu of the Zulu, Khama of the Becuana, Marclane of the amaMpondo, Dalindyebo of the Tembu, Montsioa of the baRolong, Moepi of the baKgatla and Lewanika of the BaRotse.

To turn these leaders against their people the state used both carrot and stick. Those who refused to cooperate with white domination were imprisoned, deported, deposed as chiefs or replaced by more pliant appointees. Chief Albert Luthuli, president of the ANC from 1954 until his death in 1966, was one such victim of these coercive methods.

For those willing to cooperate with white power the rewards would be significant. Vast sums of money were taxed from the rural population in order to bribe the Chiefs into being agents of the white state. Referring to the huge salaries for chiefs the government introduced after 1950, Govan Mbeki said: "for the first time in South African history, the government is paying a black man more than a white."

Dispossessed by colonial occupation, confined to the most infertile and unproductive tenth of South Africa's land, excluded from any meaningful participation in the law-making processes of the country, forced to pay inordinate taxation to fund their own oppression, the landless peasants of South Africa's Bantustans began to rise.

In Witsieshoek in the Free State, in Marico in the North West, among the Pedi of Sekhukhuneland and in Natal, peasants rose up throughout the 1950s against the intensification of their own oppression. In each instance military force was deployed to quell their resistance.

But the East Pondoland rising of 1960 was the most intense and sustained rural resistance yet confronted by South Africa's racist rulers. A vast popular movement of resistance emerged among the people that coincided with the banning of the ANC and the first nation-wide state of emergency. Although meetings were banned and thousands of activists detained, people came on foot and horse-back from throughout the mountains and ridges of the Bizana district to mass meetings led by the movement known as 'Intaba' (the Mountain) and also 'iKongo' (the Congress).

This open display of people's power through united and open defiance quickly spread to the neighbouring districts. People demanded the withdrawal of the hated system of 'Bantu Authorities', the repeal of the Bantu Education Act, the representation of all South Africa's people in the Republic's parliament, relief from increased taxes and the abolition of the pass system.

While the resistance had its origin in local grievances, the movement quickly developed to embrace the national demands of the liberation movement. The Mountain movement adopted the Freedom Charter, the programme of the ANC, as its own.

The Mountain Committee called repeatedly for government officials to hear the grievances of the people. But the authorities refused to accept the movement's legitimacy. Mass demonstrations by thousands of peasants took place on an unprecedented scale. Boycotts of the institutions of oppression, and refusal to pay taxes, caught on like wildfire. People's courts were established and popular justice enacted as some areas of east Pondoland became liberated zones.

As the movement grew, the government resorted to violence and intimidation. Govan Mbeki records that: "The government suppressed the revolt by bringing in the military to assist the police, by using sten-guns, Saracen armoured cars, and jets against unarmed peasants, by terrorism and mass arrests. By that time, however, the Pondos had successfully smashed the Bantu Authorities system. Members of the Tribal and District Authorities had fled, while the people's courts were dealing with collaborators, and Chiefs were in the protective custody of the government."

Our people's resistance against the homeland system was a cornerstone of the struggle to defeat apartheid. Although the Pondoland uprising was eventually crushed with the overwhelming deployment of military force, the martyrs of Ngquza Hill served to inspire the flame of resistance that continued to organise itself throughout the country.

Our people's answer to poverty, dispossession and fragmentation was to consistently and repeatedly demand the creation of a united, non-racial, non-sexist and democratic South Africa.

These ideals are the legacy of the martyrs of Ngquza Hill. All of those who have paid the ultimate sacrifice, the famous and the unknown, deserve to be honoured as the fathers and mothers of our nation. As we rebury the martyrs of Ngquza Hill alongside their fallen comrades, let us re-dedicate ourselves to the struggle for which they died.

More Information:

• South Africa: The Peasants' Revolt, by Govan Mbeki, 1964

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