Is there anybody there!

The UK 'Sunday Herald online' of 2 October 2005, published an article written by Elizabeth Nash, entitled "Spain's borders strengthened after African refugees storm European frontier". She said:

"African refugees have been tramping north and hammering on the doors of Europe for years, desperate to flee poverty, war and oppression to reach the promised land of plenty and freedom. But last week's bloody border raids on Spain's tiny Moroccan possessions of Ceuta and Melilla showed that today's would-be immigrants are more resolute, more organised and more numerous than ever before.

"On Thursday, five were killed trying to force their way through Africa's only land route to Europe. Eight died in total in September. Survivors tell of death-defying odysseys across Africa, with many risking drowning in packed, rickety launches that wash up on Spanish beaches two or three times a week.

"Last week, thousands of strong, young men at the razor-wire frontiers of these half-forgotten Spanish possessions launched their most spectacular raid yet upon fortress Europe. Up to 600 Africans stormed Ceuta's barbed perimeter using primitive ladders improvised from branches lashed together with belts. Last Tuesday and Wednesday, similar human avalanches assailed Melilla to the east. Scores were injured, hundreds got through, and thousands remained to try again."

(The "African refugees" to whom Nash referred, who have travelled as far north as Morocco, originate from many African countries including the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic, Gabon, Cameroon, Nigeria, Ghana, Guinea Bissau, Mali, Senegal, Mauritania, Algeria, Morocco, and so on.)

One of these, Boubacar Baldé, 24, left his country, Guinea Bissau, in March 2004. He traversed Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso and Algeria to reach Morocco, and succeeded to scale the fence and illegally enter Spanish Melilla during the September 2005 assault. He said, "In my country I earned no money and couldn't get a decent job. If I get to Europe, I can earn money for my parents, who don't work, so they can buy a nice house and a little car."

Recent news in this regard has focussed on Spain. Little attention has been paid to the inflow of economic immigrants into Italy, another European country close to Africa. It seems that by 2003, so concentrated was the inflow into Italy, that a Cabinet Minister, Umberto Rossi, leader of the Northern League, felt obliged to react as would have earlier Italians to the threat of an African invasion by forces led by the Carthaginian general, Hannibal. Allegedly, he advocated the use of maximum military force to stop the "invaders".

Rossi is reported to have said that the right way to respond to illegal immigrants trying to enter Italy by sea was, "After the second or third warning, boom...the cannon roars without any beating about the bush. The cannon that blows everyone out of the water. Otherwise this business will never end. Illegal immigrants must be hounded out, either nicely or nastily...The navy and the finance police are going to have to line up in defence of our shores and to use guns. Those are the proper regulations for implementing the law. No escape clauses and no postponement."

One of the outstanding poets of the 20th century, TS Eliot, was moved to compose a poem he entitled "To Walter de la Mare". In part he wrote:

"When the familiar is suddenly strange
Or the well known is what we yet have to learn,
And two worlds meet, and intersect, and change;
When cats are maddened in the moonlight dance,
Dogs cower, flitter bats, and owls range
At witches' sabbath of the maiden aunts;
When the nocturnal traveller can arouse
No sleeper by his call; or when by chance
An empty face peers from an empty house;
By whom, and by what means, was this designed?"

He composed these lines in response to the poem "The Listeners", written by the "minor" English poet, Walter de la Mare. Here are some of the lines of this poem, to which Eliot referred when he wrote about a "nocturnal traveller" and "an empty face (that) peers from an empty house".

"'Is there anybody there?' said the Traveller,
Knocking on the moonlit door;
And his horse in the silence champed the grasses
Of the forest's ferny floor...

"And he smote upon the door again a second time;
'Is there anybody there?' he said.
But no one descended to the Traveller;
No head from the leaf-fringed sill
Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,
Where he stood perplexed and still.
But only a host of phantom listeners
That dwelt in the lone house then
Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight
To that voice from the world of men...

"And he felt in his heart their strangeness,
Their stillness answering his cry...
Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,
And the sound of iron on stone,
And how the silence surged softly backward,
When the plunging hoofs were gone."

The books of the historians tell us of the distant past when the Moors of North Africa occupied Spain. An internet website says:

"The fact that people of African descent, or specifically the Moors, were in Western Europe from 710 AD until the late 1400s, is indisputable. It is noteworthy that these Moors were in Europe as conquerors and served as a 'civilising force,' as opposed to being enslaved by the Europeans. The Moors had a tremendously positive impact on European cultural, socio-economic and political institutions...

"WEB Dubois in his work, 'The World and Africa', wrote on this subject, 'The Arabs brought the new religion of Mohammed into North Africa. During the seventh century, they did not migrate in great numbers. Spain was conquered not by Arabs, but by armies of Berbers and Negroids led by Arabs.'

"The truth is that the conquest of the Iberian Peninsula, Spain and Portugal, was an African not an Arab conquest...Many of the Moors' cultural and intellectual influences are still in evidence today. The Rock of Gibraltar owes its name to a man of valour, Tarik ibn Zeyad, a man of extraordinary courage and a true leader."

In the same vein, Runoko Rashidi has written:

"Early in the eighth century Moorish soldiers crossed over from Africa to the Iberian peninsula. The man chosen to lead them was General Tarik ibn Ziyad. In 711, the bold Tarik, in command of an army of 10,000 men, crossed the straits and disembarked near a rock promontory which from that day since has borne his name -Djabal Tarik ('Tarik's Mountain'), or Gibraltar. In August 711, Tarik won paramount victory over the opposing European army. On the eve of the battle, Tarik is alleged to have roused his troops with the following words: 'My brethren, the enemy is before you, the sea is behind; whither would ye fly? Follow your general; I am resolved either to lose my life or to trample on the prostrate king of the Romans'...

"In the aftermath of these brilliant struggles, thousands of Moors (Africans) flooded into the Iberian peninsula. So eager were they to come that some are said to have floated over on tree-trunks."

We do not know whether, as he crossed from Africa across the Mediterranean into Europe, Djabal Tarik was aware of the much earlier defeat and destruction by the Romans of Tunisian and therefore African Carthage during the Third Punic War of 149-146 BC. As he led his troops into Spain, determined to "trample on the prostrate king of the Romans", Tarik might have been inspired by the example of African opposition to Roman domination set by the African Carthaginian general, Hannibal. He might have sought to restore the equilibrium between Africa and Europe that changed with the defeat and destruction of Carthage.

Relying on a powerful African navy and army, Hannibal captured Spain during the Second Punic War of 218-201 BC, and then advanced into Italy. He occupied Italy for 15 years, waiting for reinforcements to enable him to attack Rome, until he was called back to Africa to defend Carthage against an impending Roman invasion. During this encounter in Africa, Hannibal was defeated by forces led by the Roman general, Scipio Africanus. Later, in 183 BC, he killed himself to avoid being captured alive by the Romans.

Perversely, during the last two weeks, the international media has told the tragic story of unarmed Africans who might be described as the modern descendants of those who served in the armies led by Hannibal and Djabal Tarik, who have sought to enter the Iberian Peninsula and Western Europe floating over the Mediterranean on inflatable rubber dinghies.

Diametrically opposed to the period from the 8th century AD onwards, the African immigrants of the 21st century AD seek to enter the Iberian Peninsula and Europe not as conquerors, intent to serve as a civilising force. Rather, they scramble to emigrate from Africa to work as underlings in a modern Europe that putatively offers them the possibility to earn the meagre wherewithal provided by a low wage, which would determine whether they live or die.

Despite the hundreds of years that separate the 8th and the 21st centuries, the new flood of Africans desperately trying to enter Spain, the Iberian Peninsula and Europe, is confronted both by an opportunity and an obstacle that owe their existence to what happened many centuries ago.

In her article, Elizabeth Nash said, "Ceuta and Melilla have been Spanish since the 1490s, the final trench in the mediaeval Iberian stand-off between Moors and Christians. After expelling the Moors, Spain's last conquistadors seized north Africa's rocky outcrops, built fortresses and set boundaries at the range of a cannon-shot, so that Catholic Spain would never again face invasion from the south."

What happened in Ceuta and Melilla in the last fortnight has brought into sharp international focus the fact that, nevertheless, Spain is facing a new invasion from the south. The fortresses she established in Ceuta and Melilla in Morocco in the 1490s provide an opportunity for the "new invaders from the south" to enter Spain without undertaking the hazardous journey across the Mediterranean, by scaling the high security fences that surround Ceuta and Melilla.

At the same time, these fortresses are expected to play the role for which they were established more than four centuries ago, to protect Spain and Europe from invasion by the "Moorish/African hordes".

In this context, Elizabeth Nash reported that, "Spain is now raising the fence in Ceuta and Melilla to 20ft - higher than the Berlin Wall. Madrid has deployed nearly 500 troops to guard the borders of the two territories. High-tech infra-red cameras, sound detectors and sensor pads will be the next 'keep out' devices to be installed."

After the victories of the Arab-led African armies in Spain at the beginning of the 8th century, as we have already reported, "thousands of Moors (Africans) flooded into the Iberian peninsula. So eager were they to come that some are said to have floated over on tree-trunks."

The old, reinforced and modernised fortresses of Ceuta and Melilla are now meant to stop the new flood into the Iberian Peninsula, composed of the African poor, who are "so eager to come that some have floated over" on treacherous rubber dinghies, and scrambled over the fortress walls surrounding Ceuta and Melilla.

The African armies of Hannibal and Djabal Tarik invaded Spain and Europe with the deliberate intention to vanquish their European opponents. They sought and required nobody's permission to undertake their bellicose ventures.

The African poor who have tried to enter Spain and Europe through Ceuta and Melilla would prefer that they are given permission legally to enter Spain and Europe, to serve as lowly workers rather than conquistadors/conquerors. Their governments, representing the Member States of the African Union which authorised the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) initiative, have pleaded with rich Europe to enter into a development partnership with the African poor.

These have argued that it is possible to establish an Africa-Europe partnership for development that, by helping to eradicate poverty, underdevelopment and poor governance in Africa, would make it unnecessary for the African poor to tramp north and hammer on the doors of Europe, desperate to flee poverty, war and oppression to reach the promised land of plenty and freedom, to use Elizabeth Nash's words.

Nothing that has happened says that the Europeans have fully understood and accepted the pleas of the Africans. Taking into account the G8 African Action Plan adopted in Kananaskis, Canada in 2002, the decisions adopted at the 2005 Gleneagles G8 Summit, and the outcomes of the recent 2005 Washington IMF/World Bank meetings, it would not be correct to say that Europe and the developed world have completely ignored the pleas of the African poor.

Ceuta and Melilla have however communicated the unequivocal message that in addition to Kananaskis, Gleneagles and Washington, Europe and the developed world rely for their welfare and the defence of their self-interest on yet another response to the appeals of the poor of Africa and the world.

That response is made up of the fortress walls in Ceuta and Melilla that are being further strengthened to repel and exclude the poor of the South, the majority of humanity, from the Northern world of the European nations, which are part of the global prosperous minority.

These are the countries of the North which have the wherewithal, but lack sufficient will, to end the poverty that drives thousands of Africans to walk from as far south as the Democratic Republic of Congo, across many African countries and the Sahara Desert, to reach Fortress Europe, symbolised by Ceuta and Melilla.

Because the prosperous of Europe refuse, still, properly to listen to the poor of Africa, the wretched of the earth died and were injured as they battled to breach the walls of Fortress Europe at Ceuta and Melilla.

However, despite the casualties, and many others that go unreported, including those who perish as they try to cross the Sahara and the Mediterranean, the millions of the poor of the south are massing in the forests, on the hills and the sea shores that surround Fortress Europe.

Their numbers will continue to grow. They will persist in the effort to use their bodies as the assault force that will break down the walls of the Fortress that is maintained to guarantee the privileged lives of the rich, and insulate them from the pressing demands of the poor.

Fully understanding this reality, Spain's Secretary of State for Security, Antonio Camacho, has said: "Peeking over the gates of Melilla and Ceuta is the tip of a human iceberg formed by hundreds of thousands of African citizens 'expelled' from their own countries by hunger, war, poverty or persecution. This creates a delicate, complex and serious problem for (Spain)."

Walter de la Mare wrote:

"And he smote upon the door again a second time;
'Is there anybody there?' he said.
But no one descended to the Traveller;
No head from the leaf-fringed sill
Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,
Where he stood perplexed and still.
But only a host of phantom listeners
That dwelt in the lone house then
Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight
To that voice from the world of men...
And he felt in his heart their strangeness,
Their stillness answering his cry..."

Gravely disturbed by what de la Mare described, of the deliberate, indifferent stillness of human beings to the cries of other humans in need of help, TS Eliot asked the challenging question:

"When the familiar is suddenly strange
Or the well known is what we yet have to learn,
And two worlds meet, and intersect, and change...
When the nocturnal traveller can arouse
No sleeper by his call; or when by chance
An empty face peers from an empty house;
By whom, and by what means, was this designed?"

When the familiar call for human solidarity suddenly becomes strange, and we have to learn new things about the relations among human beings; when, contrary to universal custom and tradition, even travellers receive no friendly answer when they knock on moonlit doors, the question must be posed - who is responsible for creating the circumstances such that those who live in comfortable homes, used to receiving the occasional traveller, will not even acknowledge that they are at home, even as:

"Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,
And the sound of iron on stone,
And how the silence surged softly backward,
When the plunging hoofs were gone."

At Ceuta and Melilla and elsewhere in Fortress Europe, there will be no silence surging softly backwards, occasioned by the receding steps of the departing African poor. The phantom-like European listeners, the "empty faces peering from (apparently) empty houses", will have no opportunity tomorrow to say that the plunging hoofs are gone.

They will still have to answer the question that TS Eliot posed - when the familiar is suddenly strange, when the nocturnal traveller can arouse no sleeper by his call, by whom, and by what means, was this designed? When the rich close their ears to the cries of the poor, contrary to their own interests, indicating that we have yet to learn what is well known, all humanity will have to answer the question - by whom, and by what means, was this disastrous outcome designed?

The poor will not ride away as did Walter de la Mare's Traveller. The deprived of Africa and the world will not cower like dogs or flitter like bats, when confronted by the prospect of the witches' sabbath of the maiden aunts. They will hammer upon the doors of the rich, including the European rich, for a third, a fourth... time.

Despite the physical barriers, the two worlds of wealthy Europe and poor Africa will continue to meet, and intersect, and change. As they traverse the world, obliged by hunger to cross forbidding deserts and menacing seas, to reach the imagined world of plenty, the itinerant poor, more numerous than ever before, will continue to knock on the moonlit doors calling out -"Is there anybody there?"

Employment

Creating work at the centre of government priorities

The pressing task of economic growth and job creation lies at the heart of the programme of the ANC and its Alliance partners, guiding the work of government and providing an important rallying point for all sectors of society.

In the same week as the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) embarked on its Jobs and Poverty Campaign and the South African Communist Party (SACP) launched its Red October campaign to focus on the problem of hunger and food security, the ANC reaffirmed the centrality of these challenges to its programme and that of the ANC-led government.

Commenting on various province-based actions by Cosatu members, the ANC said in a statement that it shared workers' concerns about unemployment and job losses. It is for this reason that the ANC has placed economic development and job creation at the centre of its programme - and the programme of government - to 2014.

This programme is founded on the collective efforts of all South Africans during the first decade of democracy to build a stable and growing economy and push back the frontiers of poverty.

In 1994, when the ANC was elected into office, the country's economy had deep-seated structural deficiencies and had been in a state of severe decline. Through effective economic management, including measures to reduce public debt, the economy has been turned around. At the same time, more resources have been made available for real increases in spending on health, education, housing, social grants and other services.

The economic recovery of the first decade of democracy, amid significant changes to the structure of South African society and shifts in global employment trends, resulted in the creation of two million net new jobs. However, at the same time, the pool of people seeking working in the economy increased even more, with the result that the number of new jobs created could not keep pace with the number of people entering the job market. Addressing this problem is therefore one of the key challenges facing the country in the second decade of democracy.

Since it was elected in April 2004 with a clear and overwhelming mandate to build a people's contract to create work and fight poverty, the ANC-led government has focused its efforts on accelerating the pace of economic development and intervening decisively to improve the job creation capacity of the economy.

At the same time, the ANC-led government has focused on improving measures to alleviate the impact of poverty on the country's poor and most vulnerable.

Building on the achievement of economic stability in the first decade of democracy and an uninterrupted period of sustained economic growth, and in line with the commitments made in the 2004 election manifesto, the ANC is working to tackle unemployment and poverty by:

• substantially increasing investment - by both the public and private sectors - in economic infrastructure and capacity;
• reducing the costs of doing business in critical areas like transport, energy and telecommunications;
• encouraging, through incentives and other measures, the development of strategic economic sectors with high potential for growth and labour absorption;
• improving finance, support and the regulatory environment to encourage the growth of small and medium business;
• improving the impact of the human resource development strategy, by, among other things, improving the functioning and reach of the Sector Education and Training Authorities (SETAs);
• implementing the Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP), providing training and work experience to a million South Africans within five years.

Rates of economic growth continue to improve, improving the capacity of the economy to meet the needs of our people and to draw greater numbers of people into formal employment. These achievements need to be consolidated, and complemented by measures to encourage an even higher trajectory of growth.

Progress in the economic sphere is taking place alongside the ongoing work of government to push back the frontiers of poverty. Among other things, this includes the provision of social grants to all those who qualify, accelerating the provision of quality housing to the poor, extending basic services like water, sanitation and electricity to those who have not received them, and speeding up the pace of land and agrarian reform.

The ANC remains committed to working with its Alliance partners to ensure the implementation of the programme of action adopted at the Alliance Summit in April 2003. Among other things, the summit declaration said: "As an Alliance, we acknowledge our collective responsibility for addressing the unemployment and job-loss crisis. It is our Alliance that must provide the decisive strategic leadership to our country on these challenges."

The ANC is committed to work with its Alliance partners and other sectors of society to put South Africa onto a sustainable growth and development path that creates and protects jobs and that ensures decent work and livelihoods for all.

The Alliance continues to work also on immediate measures to address job losses in specific sectors, such as the development of a plan to respond to the crisis facing the clothing, textile and footwear industry.

The challenge of creating work and fighting poverty requires the coordinated actions of all sectors of society, working together to progressively realise the goal of a better life for all.

The ANC therefore reiterates its call to all South Africans to join the effort to build a people's contract to mobilise the collective resources and energies of the nation to achieve the goal of halving unemployment and poverty by 2014.

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