2003: The way it could have been...

United States President George W. Bush, other leaders of the G8 group of industrialised countries and political leaders in Africa deserve congratulations for their courage in leading a genuine attempt to deal honestly and respectfully with the problems facing Africa in 2003.

The pace was set when George W. Bush touched down in Dakar, Senegal earlier this year. Following a visit to Goree Island, which acted as a transit camp for Africans during the slave trade, Bush experienced a road to Damascus moment. With tears in his eyes, he said the experience had for the first time helped him to grasp the enormous damage caused by slavery. Clearly his country had benefited in a grossly immoral way and therefore it was logical that reparations should be made for this blotch in the history of his country. He immediately offered reparations – 'apologies are not enough', he said.

What was even more shocking, said the president, was that his country continued to support policies that were difficult to justify  - in fact, they added insult to injury and continued to build on the injustices of the past. He admitted that the US and Western powers systematically undermined the African liberation movements by slaughtering leaders such as Patrice Lumumba, supporting terrorist movements in DRC, Angola, Mozambique and elsewhere. This newfound commitment to Africa would require serious financial bankrolling, announced Bush, and as a result the war on Iraq would end forthwith to prevent resources being diverted from Africa. Even this would not be enough, however, and he had personally ordered the scrapping of his $400-billion defence budget, which would be diverted towards peaceful activities, rather than killing fields. Following a nightmare about the havoc $400-billion dollars worth of guns would cause, he was no longer convinced that the military-industrial complex held the solution to the world's problems. The US militarisation of the African continent through the establishment of forward bases in the war against terror would be scrapped. Africa needed less, not more, militarisation, he said. The USA would immediately ratify the Rome Treaty for the International Criminal Court: 'There can be no excuse for impunity for those guilty of crimes against humanity.'  

The cynical have argued that Bush's announcement was forced upon him by massive and unprecedented popular pressure from across Africa. Whatever the case, Bush's announcement was the culmination of a groundswell of change that nobody could have predicted at the beginning of 2003. South Africa's president Thabo Mbeki announced that he had given up golf. Golf, he said, was an elitist game and an environmentally damaging one at that, which did not befit the image of a president who stood for the people and with the people. Moreover, Mbeki, along with other New Partnership for Africa's Development (Nepad) architects, President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria and President Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal, could now see that Nepad was indeed an imperialistic tool (as some ultra-leftists had previously stated). Nepad, if implemented in its current form, would work to serve the interests of the West and further impoverish the African people. The project would have to be reworked in favour of a genuine consultative programme that placed people before profits.

With global and continental leadership in line, seemingly intractable problems moved towards quick resolution. A host of undemocratic and dictatorial African leaders were either summarily removed by bloodless peoples' coups, or fled office after seeing the writing on the wall. Where there are gaps, the African Union has transformed itself from a toothless organisation and firmly laid down the law when required. As we end 2003, genuine people's democracies are sweeping across Africa.

This revolution could not take place in and of itself and needed to be accompanied by radical structural changes. One of these changes involved the onerous debt burden facing many African countries, long acknowledged as a serious obstruction to the development of Africa and responsible for diverting funds away from health, education and the social services. With a new moral fervour evident globally, The Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative was scrapped as a complete failure in 2003. In its place illegal debt was immediately eliminated without any unfair terms or conditions. Africa's development of rich industrialised countries through the repayment of debt has therefore ended.

A significant victory of 2003 was the establishment of the Commission on International Financial Institutions (CIFI), which announced that the World Trade Organisation, International Monetary Fund and World Bank were undemocratic institutions who had failed to function in the interests of the majority of the world population. The commission recommended – and these recommendations were subsequently adopted – that the IFI's be scrapped and replaced by truly representative, democratic institutions designed to operate in the interests of all the people of the world. Investigations into possible prosecutions regarding the harmful policies of the IFI's over the last 50 years and the damaging effects of their Structural Adjustment Policies and Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers on Africa are ongoing. There was widespread agreement for the need to distinguish between investment and recurrent expenditure: money spent on education, social welfare and health were vital investments, the returns on which could only be measured over decades. A massive programme of investment has been put in place for 2004. Given the failure of privatisation of services over the last decade, governments were encouraged to nationalise social services, including power, water, health services, etc. This has sparked a vibrant public debate across the region about whether the same approach should be taken with production of other socially necessary products.

The ending of double-speak and spin over the issue of HIV/AIDS is another welcome development that took place in 2003. 'Treat all the People Now!', long seen as a distant dream, has become reality. The year began gloomily as countries failed to meet their commitments to the Global Fund to Fight Aids, TB and Malaria, then promised more money and failed again to deliver. But the new political climate and unprecedented action by civil society organisations mean that the fund is now topped up and dispensing money in a way that has seen major victories in the war against the epidemic. Treatment is now approaching 100 percent. Furthermore, the control of the medical industry by a handful of enormously powerful and unaccountable multi-national pharmaceutical companies was beaten back in a serious of battles in which the people stood up and demanded their right to be treated.

Another important area with regards Africa that deserves mentioning here is that of unequal terms of trade, long regarded as a sticking point in the development of the continent. In September, Africa stood up to the industrialised countries at the World Trade Organisation meeting in Cancun, Mexico, over unfair trade and refused to allow further onerous conditions to be imposed on them. The result was a humbled United States and European Union. Both finally agreed that outrageous subsidies which would hypothetically speaking allow their dairy herds to take round the world vacation trips while people in certain parts of the world starved, served nobody's interests and were an utter embarrassment to their moral standing, or lack thereof.  U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellig declared that industrialised countries had long been 'spoilers' and pledged to work towards terms of trade that benefited Africa.

It has been a truly memorable year. There have been major victories leading to decreased militarisation, the spreading of democracy, treatment for those with HIV/AIDS and equitable terms of trade. The benefits in terms of Africa's social and economic indicators are already being felt. Significantly, international legal mechanisms have also been set in place to ensure that never again will Africa, or any other part of the world, be allowed to occupy a position at the bottom of the global development index. No longer will certain power brokers be allowed to glibly take the moral high ground with one hand, while continuing a self-enrichment exercise of plunder and looting with another. Africa can now enter 2004 knowing that, in contrast to a year ago, it will not have to confront the battery of unjust and exploitative policies that kept it in subjection for so long.

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