ANC Today

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Volume 4, No. 42, 22-28 October 2004

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THIS WEEK:

* Letter from the President: Dislodging stereotypes
* Approaches to Poverty Eradication and Economic Development II: Rescued by the
Marshall Plan

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LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT

Dislodging stereotypes

(EDITOR'S NOTE: On 21 October, President Mbeki answered questions in the
National Assembly. One of these, about HIV and AIDS, was posed by a Democratic
Alliance MP, pretending to be following up observations made by the President in
his Letter in ANC TODAY Vol 4 No 39. In the light of the MP 's reference to
matters published by this journal, and the importance of the issue of racism
discussed in the Vol 4 No 39 Letter and revisited by the President in his
response to the DA MP, the President has agreed that we can use his response to
the DA MP as this week's Letter. That response therefore follows below.)

Let me start with some preliminary comments. The remarks to which the Honourable
Member refers appeared in a recent edition of the weekly journal, ANC TODAY. As
I stand here today, as on previous occasions, I do so as President of the
Republic and not as President of the ANC.

Ordinarily, when I speak as President of the Republic, I would decline to engage
any Honourable Member of the House to speak on matters I have raised as a member
of the ANC. However, in the light of the important matter at issue, I will,
today, somewhat depart from this rule. This is my first preliminary comment.

Secondly, I will only address the central issue raised in the Letter in ANC
TODAY. This is the issue of racism. Contrary to this, the Honourable Member
wants us to discuss questions that refer to the Government's attitude towards,
or information about various matters that relate to HIV and AIDS.

Among other things, the Honourable Member wants us to discuss what he describes
as "pervasive rape in South Africa" and "prevailing sexual practices and the
attitudes of some men towards women", asking whether these "do not account, in
large part, for the spread of HIV in the country".

With regard to the third part of the question, which asks whether I "will now
play a more active role in leading the fight against HIV/AIDS", whatever this
means, I would like to inform the Honourable Member that the Government has
taken no decision to change the manner in which it is handling the challenges of
better health for our people, both with regard to HIV and AIDS and all the other
health conditions we have to confront. We will continue to intensify our efforts
to ensure that our people have better access to quality health care. This is my
third preliminary comment.

As was the case when I was Deputy President of the Republic, with Nelson Mandela
as President, the Deputy President, supported by the Minister of Health, the
Ministerial Committee on HIV and AIDS, and the Cabinet, chaired by the
President, will continue to lead the Government's response to HIV and AIDS.

In the Letter to ANC TODAY to which the Honourable Member refers, which
discussed the serious, continuing and pervasive challenge of racism in the
context of particular responses to the Annual Report on Crime Statistics, I
said:

"Despite the advances we have made, all of us know that the problem of crime
persists. Among other things, we must therefore use the Crime Statistics to
improve our effectiveness in both areas of preventing and combating crime.

"In this context we must take note of the concern of the SAPS at the continuing
high levels of crime. We must also express our appreciation for the commitment
made by the National Commissioner that the Police Service would make a special
effort to give additional attention to the crime categories that continue to
increase.

"For those genuinely interested and involved in the national effort to improve
the safety and security of our people, the crime statistics must indicate that
more work needs to be done to prevent the commission of these "contact crimes"
especially in their areas of concentration, as identified by the Crime
Statistics.

"All those of us who are engaged in the fight against crime have to find the
ways and means successfully to motivate and mobilise even the most depressed
communities not to impose additional pain on themselves by allowing for the
perpetuation of a permissive atmosphere that encourages members of the community
to do crime."

Even a perfunctory study of the Annual Crime Report would show that one of the
"contact crimes" to which I referred is the crime of rape. I would like to take
this opportunity once more to call on all our people to do more work within our
communities to combat the terrible crime of rape, as well as violence and other
forms of abuse against women and children.

I trust that the Honourable Member [Ryan] Coetzee will also devote time to work
among the people, to promote the achievement of this objective, centred on the
fundamental task to improve the safety and security of all our people, as I said
in ANC TODAY.

As the Honourable Members are aware, and as I have said, rather than discuss the
central issues I discussed in ANC TODAY, the Honourable Member Coetzee wants me
to engage in a televised debate that will help some people in our country to
perpetuate the very dangerous pretence that racism in our country died with the
holding of our first democratic elections 10 years ago.

I do not agree, and neither do many concerned South Africans, black and white.
Neither do many people everywhere else in the world, who are deeply troubled
about racism and xenophobia in human society globally.

Whatever the circumstances, and regardless of the regularity of catholic
incantations about "playing the race card", I, for my part, will not keep quiet
while others whose minds have been corrupted by the disease of racism, accuse
us, the black people of South Africa, Africa and the world, as being, by virtue
of our Africanness and skin colour - lazy, liars, foul-smelling, diseased,
corrupt, violent, amoral, sexually depraved, animalistic, savage -and rapist.

The question posed by the Honourable Member, arising out of a Letter to ANC
TODAY about racism, suggests that he believes that this particular matter,
racism, is not serious enough to deserve his attention. Accordingly, in the
parliamentary question we are now discussing, he does not raise even one query
about racism, the subject matter of the ANC TODAY Letter to which he refers.

He wants me to cooperate with him to put the challenge of racism in our country
out of sight, and therefore out of mind. As I have already indicated, I have
absolutely no intention to cooperate with the Honourable Member in this
dishonest and dangerous exercise.

Recently, death robbed us of a distinguished and humble South African, Dr Franz
Auerbach, a first generation citizen of our country, who was born a German Jew.
May he rest in peace. Speaking in 2001, he said: "Beliefs based on fixed
impressions we call stereotypes are quite hard to dislodge.If you believe MOST
young black men are criminals, the experience that a majority of petty thieves
and hijackers in your town are in fact young black males (of whom there are in
any case about six times as many as young white males, quite apart from poverty
and unemployment), will make you think that your stereotype of them is correct,
even though it's clearly not true."

Referring to two 19th century Western theoreticians of racism, Count Joseph
Arthur de Gobineau and Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Franz Auerbach said, "The
racism built on the Gobineau-Chambelain foundation permeated much economic,
social and political thought and practice, particularly during 1850-1950. I
believe it remains widespread in many heads in many parts of the world."

In the same year that Franz Auerbach made these comments in 2001, about racist
beliefs that are widespread in many heads in many parts of the world, including
our country, another honest white person, but this time an American, Cynthia
Kaufman, published an article in the journal 'Radical Philosophy Review',
entitled "A User's Guide to White Privilege". She wrote:

"Because of our racist history, in the United States, we have a cultural system
that often creates the meaning of whiteness as good, through a complex
dialectical dance with the identities of people of colour, constructed in our
imaginary worlds as 'the other'.

"Somewhere in our cultural unconscious lies the image of the brutal,
animalistic, sexual, savage. This image was created long ago as part of the
cultural work that was done to make whites feel better about slavery. But even
now, with slavery long gone, the images are still part of our cultural system
and they impact the cultural meanings of white and black especially. Stereotypes
of African-Americans as savage leads many whites, often against their conscious
intention, to fear blacks and to mistrust them.

"When I walk into a store and the clerks look at me with respect and assume that
I am not going to steal anything, the trust that I receive is at least partially
built upon the foundation of my distance from the image of the savage. When an
African American walks into the store, that unconscious material comes into play
in the opposite way. The tom-toms start to beat in the subconscious mind of the
clerk."

This year, in an article entitled "The Continuing Miseducation of the Negro", an
African American Associate Professor at the University of Massachusetts-
Dartmouth, Dr Edward Rhymes, wrote, "We are portrayed as oversexed or
lascivious, and yet the porn and adult entertainment industry is dominated by
whites.It is African Americans that get accused of being rampant sexual beasts,
unable to control our urges, unable to keep our legs crossed, unable to keep it
in our pants.

"As we, as a community, declare war on irresponsibility, ignorance, crime,
poverty and the vast number of concerns that we face, we must be circumspect. I
would think that we, who live in present-day America, would know exactly what it
means to declare war on flawed and unproven information."

In the Letter in ANC TODAY to which the Honourable Coetzee refers in his
question, I cited two instances of people, one of them a white South African
woman, who have written that our cultures, religion and social norms as Africans
condition us to be "rampant sexual beasts, unable to control our urges, unable
to keep our legs crossed, unable to keep it in our pants" -the rapists the
Honourable Coetzee says that, "in large part.(account) for the spread of HIV in
the country".

I would like to assure the Honourable Coetzee that the millions of Africans in
our country, in Africa and the world did not fight against apartheid racism and
white domination to create space for them to continue to be subjected to
dehumanising, demeaning and insulting racism.

On the eve of our liberation, in 1993, a fellow South African, Frank Meintjies,
wrote: "The only way to dismantle (our) racist system is by working for
increased understanding in the society of the insidious and pervasive ways in
which racism functions. It calls for a willingness to re-examine what would be
regarded as normal and everyday. It presupposes opening up the subject of racism
- no longer isolating and alienating those who dare to raise it. It involves
listening and creating the spaces to hear the hurt, anger and aspirations of
those expressing race oppression. It means dragging racism from the hushed
conversations and murmurs and silences, into the arena of public discussion."

I pray that one day, the Honourable Coetzee, and others like him, will discover
within themselves the intellect, the courage and the humanity to hear and
understand what Frank Meintjies, Franz Auerbach, Edward Rhymes, Cynthia Kaufman,
as well as millions of people in our country and elsewhere on our globe are
saying, about the hurt, anger and aspirations of those who know the meaning of
race oppression, which the Hon Coetzee clearly does not.

In the interest of all humanity, including those who are unwilling to free their
minds of the stereotypes that Franz Auerbach said are "quite hard to dislodge",
which encompasses those who believe that the African male is conditioned to
commit the crime of rape, I do indeed pray that sooner rather than later, all of
us, South Africans of all races, will dare to drag racism from the hushed
conversations and murmurs and silences, into the arena of public discussion.

When that happens, we will all of us, at last and in rage, confront the insult
that K. Wailoo wrote about, as reported by Shalini Bharat of the Indian Mumbai
Tata Institute of Social Sciences, which portrays the non-European peoples as "a
social menace whose collective superstitious, ignorance and carefree demeanour
(stand) as a stubborn affront to modern notions of hygiene and advancing
scientific understanding.(a people best understood as) .a disease vector."

MORE INFORMATION:

Letter from the President, ANC Today Vol 4 No 39
http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/anctoday/2004/at39.htm

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APPROACHES TO POVERTY ERADICATION AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT II

Rescued by the Marshall Plan

Let us consider the post-war European Recovery Programme, the Marshall Plan.

Speaking at Harvard University on 5 June 1947, US Secretary of State George C.
Marshall said: "The truth of the matter is that Europe's requirements for the
next three or four years of foreign food and other essential products -
principally from America - are so much greater than her present ability to pay
that she must have substantial additional help, or face economic, social, and
political deterioration of a very grave character."

This had been preceded by President Harry Truman's 12 March 1947 address to the
US Congress, when he asked for funds to help Greece and Turkey, which the U.S.
government believed would fall victim to socialist revolutions. He said:

"The seeds of totalitarian regimes are nurtured by misery and want. They spread
and grow in the evil soil of poverty and strife. They reach their full growth
when the hope of a people for a better life has died. We must keep that hope
alive. The free peoples of the world look to us for support in maintaining their
freedoms. If we falter in our leadership, we may endanger the peace of the world
- and we shall surely endanger the welfare of our own nation."

With regard to the Marshall Plan, the 26 August 1947 US State Department
document we cited in part one said: "Program submitted for U.S. consideration
must contain these elements: Concrete proposals for area-wide recovery of
agriculture and basic industries - coal, steel, transport, and power - which are
fundamental to viable European economy. Proposals must correlate individual
national programs and individual industry programs and give priority to projects
promising quickest expansion of output."

In a contemporary report, the U.S. Marshall Foundation says, "the Marshall Plan
was a rational effort by the United States aimed at reducing the hunger,
homelessness, sickness, unemployment, and political restlessness of the 270
million people in sixteen nations in West Europe. Marshall Plan funds were not
mainly directed towards feeding individuals or building individual houses,
schools, or factories, but at strengthening the economic superstructure
(particularly the iron-steel and power industries.) The program cost the
American taxpayers $11,820,700,000 (plus $1,505,100,000 in loans that we repaid)
over four years, and worked because it was aimed at aiding a well-educated,
industrialised people temporarily down but not out.

"Over its four-year life, the Marshall Plan cost the U.S. 2.5 to 5 times the
percent of national income as current foreign aid programs. One would need to
multiply the program's $13.3 billion cost by 10 or perhaps 20 times to have the
same impact on the U.S. economy now as the Marshall Plan had between 1948 and
1952."

The report also makes the important point that, "Americans were reluctant to
invest in Europe because their profits were available only in local currencies
that were little desired by U.S. businesses and investors."

The May 2003 edition of the US 'Harper's Magazine' published an article by
William Finnegan entitled "Economics of Empire". Finnegan wrote:

"(The) pillars of the postwar international financial order were conceived
during the latter part of World War II at a conference of American, British, and
European economists and civil servants held in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, and
dominated intellectually by John Maynard Keynes. The World Bank was originally
intended to help finance the reconstruction of postwar Europe - a project that
neither private capital nor shattered states could be expected to undertake.
After the Marshall Plan made that purpose redundant, the Bank, looking for a
raison d'être, began to concentrate on Asia, Africa, and Latin America, where it
loaned money to poor governments, usually for specific projects."

To explain Finnegan's comments, including his reference to the World Bank, we
would like to quote a portion of a 1 May 1947 Memorandum written by a State
Department official, Joseph Jones, to the then Under Secretary of State, Dean
Acheson. Jones wrote:

"An important omission in this outline is a discussion of why the World Bank
cannot do the job, or why the American banking community cannot do it; also why
the expenditures must be largely in terms of grants-in-aid rather than loans. I
quote Walter Lippman, May 1, on this point: 'In acting to forestall this (West
European) collapse, we can afford to have no illusions. The deficit of the
western European countries cannot be met, as Mr McCloy's recent address makes
clear, by the World Bank, or by the American banking community. The sums needed
are too large. The transactions are abnormal and altogether outside ordinary
private finance. Nor can the deficit be met by government loans because in fact
these sums cannot be paid back. They will have to be contributed as a national
investment in peace and prosperity.' "

In an article in the May 1997 edition of 'Harvard Magazine', entitled "From Plan
to Practice: The context and consequences of the Marshall Plan", Professor
Charles S. Maier says:

"The young economists who staffed European Recovery Programme agencies had
learned the new Keynesian doctrines just before the war. They appreciated large
and integrated markets, but understood that sometimes government spending was
required to help markets function. World War II had further demonstrated that
governments could plan purposeful economic activity and mobilise productive
resources.

"By 1951.Americans had supplied about $14 billion in aid, probably between 1 and
2 percent of our gross national product for the period - roughly five times the
proportional share we now allocate to foreign assistance.

"In the first two years of the program, American aid provided a major share of
German and Italian gross capital formation; then it fell, as in Britain and
France, to a much smaller share. In quantitative terms, Europeans were soon
accumulating their own capital.

"Nonetheless, Washington's assistance satisfied key needs and was targeted to
eliminate critical shortages. Assistance in dollars allowed Europeans to invest
without trying to remedy their balance of payments drastically through deflation
and austerity. This meant that economic recovery did not have to be financed out
of general wage levels. Working-class voters (at least outside France and Italy,
where strong Communist political cultures still thrived) could thus be rallied
by politicians who offered gradualist social-democratic alternatives and
remained friendly to the West.The Marshall Plan.worked to stabilise the
consensual welfare-state politics that prevailed until the 1970s."

Despite what Professor Maier says about capital inflows into the UK and France,
we must however point out that in the four years 1948 to 1952, the UK and France
received in grants and loans $3.2 and $2.7 billion respectively, while Germany
and Italy received $1.4 and $1.5 billion.

The Marshall Plan had a number of important features.

* It represented a conscious, purposeful and determined response by the then
most powerful country in the world to what it considered an imminent danger to
its survival - developments that President Harry Truman said would "endanger the
welfare of our own nation", if allowed to run their course.
* To ward off this strategic danger, the U.S. was ready to spend whatever was
necessary and required.
* It understood that so big was the challenge it faced that it could not rely on
"the market", the private sector, to provide the resources to meet this
challenge.
* It was accordingly ready and willing to use public funds to provide the
investment and other resources that would enable the West European economies to
reach their "take off" point.
* Rather than argue that governments had to minimise their role in the economy,
it proceeded from the positions explained by Professor Maier, that "governments
could plan purposeful economic activity and mobilise productive resources."
* Accordingly, the European Recovery Programme was based on a carefully prepared
plan, which took into account the immanent capacities of the West European
economies, including the understanding that here the U.S. had to "aide a well-
educated, industrialised people temporarily down but not out".
* It also understood and took the position that such was the level of disruption
and disequilibrium of the West European economies that they could only be
returned to "normality" through grants, rather than loans or dependence on
foreign direct investment.
* It integrated the imperative of social cohesion and stability within the
economic plan, to avoid mass rebellion by the working people, to facilitate the
achievement of the economic and political goals of the Economic Recovery
Programme. It therefore ensured that the economic recovery was not based on
"structural adjustment" and an unsustainable debt burden, but on the avoidance
of the austerity and deflation that would have made the achievement of the goal
of "consensual welfare-state politics that prevailed until the 1970s"
impossible.
* It achieved its objective of providing the "substantial additional help" to
purchase the "food and other essential products" Western Europe needed to escape
from "misery and want" and "the evil soil of poverty and strife."
* It therefore succeeded as a development programme, enabling Western Europe to
develop modern economies, "independent of abnormal outside support".

The success of the Marshall Plan represented the first example in the post-war
years of what could be done to achieve the objective of the defeat of the twin
challenges of poverty and underdevelopment.

Given the level of development reached by many of the West European countries
before World War II, it gave an indication of the larger resources that would be
needed to defeat far worse poverty and underdevelopment in the larger part of
the world that, even at the end of the War, constituted the colonial possessions
of the countries the Marshall Plan sought to assist.

The other strategic challenge the United States faced was the future of a number
of countries in the Asian Far East. Japan, the principal adversary of the US in
this region, like Germany in Europe, had to be neutralised.

Similarly, it had to be rescued from the threat of socialist revolution. The
same consideration applied to South Korea and Taiwan. The first had socialist
North Korea as its neighbour. The second was a province of socialist China. In
addition, both North Korea and China were allies of the Soviet Union.

Accordingly, the 'Truman Doctrine' had to apply both to Western Europe and the
Asian Far East. Logically, the Far East had to have its own Marshall Plan.

** This is part two in a special series of articles about global approaches to
poverty eradication and economic development. Next week: 'The truth & the Asian
Miracle'.

MORE INFORMATION:

Part One: Beware of the Natives!
http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/anctoday/2004/at41.htm#art1

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