> The Sowetan
> July 12, 2000
>
> The IMF can only bring misery to South Africa
> By Trevor Ngwane and George Dor
>
> Last Friday, Horst Koehler, newly-appointed head of the International
> Monetary Fund, received a hostile response from the anti-privatisation
> forum, Jubilee 2000, the campaign against neoliberalism and the South
> African Communist Party. We are trained to be
> hospitable in the African tradition, but this was a fair exception.
>
please note that the writer is involved in the SACP- which is very strongly
against the ANC on these issues but is being coerced to obey
> The Anti-Privatisation Forum includes two campaigns. The first is the
> anti-Igoli Forum which opposes Johannesburg's "iGoli 2002" plan to
privatise
> our city. The second is the Wits University Crisis Committee, which
opposes
> a similar strategy, "Wits 2001," which has led to massive job losses and
the
> decline of arts education at South Africa's main
> university.
>
The priciple cause of the loss of Jobs has been the cold turkey approach
that has been happening toward globalisation and the reduction of tariffs.
.. not the IMF (I lost my job when my company was taken over by the
americans and the main functions moved to the states. The destruction of the
universities is caused by
-Emigration due principally to fear of crime and loss of confidence.
-removal of funding for anything eurocentric
-Genuine restructuring of universities
> The campaigns oppose the privatisation of social goods, like water and
> education, that in a just society should be under the control of
> communities, workers and students. The unity of our struggles is all the
> more urgent in view of this week's Urban Futures Conference, at which the
> powers behind iGoli 2002 and Wits 2001 are hoping to showcase the sale of
> our city and our university.
The ANC is cenralising power in small cabals that it is certain it can
control(igoli20020 and selling off assets to its cronies in business( and
called black empowerment)
>
> If Horst Koehler thought his visit to South Africa would be widely
> applauded, he should know that workers, community activists and students
in
> Johannesburg have been protesting his institution for many years.
>
> The last such visit by an IMF leader was in October 1996, when Michel
> Camdessus came to meet workers, community activists and students, as
> requested by finance minister Trevor Manuel. But our leadership in Cosatu,
> Sanco and Sasco boycotted the meeting on grounds that the IMF would do
harm
> to South Africa.
The IMF has made few loans to SA. the lefties did not allow it.
The subsequent events in East Asia, which shamed
> Camdessus, proved that a firm stand against the IMF was correct. We know
> that firsthand in our country and our continent, where for more than two
> decades people have suffered immensely, due to IMF interference. The IMF
> made billions of dollars of loans to apartheid South Africa during the
late
> 1970s and early 1980s. Our allies in the Jubilee 2000 South Africa
movement
> have demanded that these loans, which were repaid by South African society
> during one of the most repressive, bloody periods in our history, now in
> turn be the basis for reparations by the IMF to a democratic South Africa.
>
Most of the loans were commercial loans. many were taken to induce reform.
They were in again taken out in the early 90's attemt to buy everyone off
during the transition to black rule.
Ironically many leftists still would like a race war (to put the whites in
their place)
> During the late 1980s, when the apartheid regime began to sell state
assets
> to white-owned conglomerates and raised interest rates to the highest
levels
> in our history, the IMF was prodding it to do so. The IMF consistently
> argued that South African workers were overpaid, and that South Africa
> should implement a Value Added Tax to shift the burden of tax payment
> further to lower-income people. The apartheid regime generally followed
this
> advice and was applauded by the IMF for doing so.
VAT replaced an already high sales tax and made the collection more
efficient and less corrupt.
>
> In December 1993, the IMF granted a US $750 million loan (about R5,1
> billion) which was purportedly for drought relief. Actually, the drought
had
> ended eighteen months earlier. The loan carried conditions such as a
lowered
> budget deficit to prevent a new government spending more on social
> programmes, and lower wages for civil servants. These conditions have
> subsequently become government policy in the form of Gear. The loan was a
> secret agreement, only leaked to the business press in March 1994.
>
most of the actions of the world bank have been 2 fold- to improve economic
efficiency and redistribute money and services from the whites to blacks.
The constraint make the ANC realise that it could not raise social services
to white levels but to reduce everyone to the black levels and redistibute
government services at a same rate to everyone.
> Again and again in Southern Africa and across the Third World the IMF's
> free-market economic advice and conditions on loans have been disastrous.
> These disasters have led to a profound crisis of legitimacy for the
> Washington institution. Former World Bank chief economist Joseph Stiglitz
> wrote in the April 2000 New Republic magazine that the IMF is populated by
> "third-rate economists."
>
> One reason for the IMF's crisis of legitimacy is the control exercised by
> the US government. This power is based on ownership of 18% of the IMF's
> shares, enough to veto anything the US disagrees with.
>
> The IMF remains a profoundly undemocratic institution, whose economic
(un democratic these days is a code word to mean that not run my the
majority of countries ie 3rd world but to be paid for by the 1st world)
> policies have been roundly condemned for the misery caused throughout the
> Third World and especially in East Asia, Russia and Latin America when
> "emerging market crises" occurred during 1997-99. The IMF's fraternal
> institution, the World Bank, has had an especially obnoxious role in
> Johannesburg. Bank staff were responsible for a 1995 infrastructure policy
> which recommended low standards and high prices for household water and
> electricity, even though the Reconstruction and Development Programme
> mandated the opposite. Bank staff recommended that low-income households
be
> not given flush toilets but instead use pit-latrines, without considering
> the public health risks of excrement leaking into Johannesburg's water
table
> through its dolomitic rock.
>
> When a similar scheme was established in Winterveld in 1991, hundreds of
> people got cholera as a result. The Bank also promoted privatisation of
> municipal services across the country. In Johannesburg, it took the lead
on
> research to promote a one-sided, pro-corporate perspective on iGoli 2002.
It
> is no wonder that the Johannesburg privatisation plan has been renamed
> "E.Coli 2002".
>
again one sided. efficiency and redistribution has been the attemted policy
> For all these reasons, the visit of Horst Koehler and the ongoing role
> played by the World Bank in Johannesburg represent very serious dangers to
> poor and working-class people and the environment.
>
> When 30 000 people joined in protest against these institutions, in their
> hometown Washington DC in April, it was clear they were not listening to
us
> but we all are surprised by how quickly they have followed us back to
> Johannesburg to do their damage. They must
> not be allowed to arrange the junk-sale of our university, our city, our
> country and our continent.
>
> (Trevor Ngwane is a Johannesburg councillor and Wits master's degree
> student, while George Dor is chairman of the campaign against
neoliberalism
> in South Africa. Both are affiliated to the Alternative Information and
> Development Centre in Johannesburg - 339 4121).
>
>
>
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