> From: Jim Devine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> ... if this is the same
> Robinson who was interviewed on US National Public Radio the other day,
> he's not calling for reparations in the form of checks to those who were
> superexploited or their descendants. He was talking about aid in the form
> of education grants, below-market business loans, and the like. He was
> clearly against reparation checks.
The South African debate on this issue is heating up, with
progressive activists taking this latter route, advocating
reparations receipts be put into a radical reconstruction/development
fund (distinct from ordinary neolib social policy programmes). The SA
Truth and Reconciliation Commission announced late last year that it
will dole out very token amounts (avg. of US$500) to families of
victims of torture and murder during the 1960-94 period. (This
doesn't include anyone murdered by Pretoria or its agents in
Mozambique and other frontline states, so is already conceptually
suspect.)
My impression is that the cutting edge of the argument is coming from
a great combination of pan-Africanists (who've put up a claim against
slavery, colonialism, neo-colonialism and neo-liberalism), South
African radical Jubilee 2000 types (led by Dennis Brutus, a U.Pitt
emeritus poet who served time on Robben Island with Mandela and is
doing terrific work on the World Bank Bond Boycott and similar
projects), and other local anti-apartheid activists (especially
ex-prisoners) who are justifiably dissatisfied with the
"reconciliation" deal struck here in SA.
In the second camp, J2000 South comrades who met from across the
world in November here in Jo'burg, are trying to distinguish
themselves from terribly self-limiting Northern debt-"relief"
advocates by a) pushing towards a post-debt-cancellation development
perspective (in Africa, it's being called the "Africa People's
Consensus" to distinguish from Wash-Con and Post-Wash-Con); and b)
trying to reconceptualise debt by saying, i) the South has paid its
debt many times over (when interest capitalisation and declining
terms of trade are considered), and ii) the ecological debt the
industrial North owes the South is massive.
Our public policy school will be doing a seminar on the broad topic
of reparations at the end of April in Jo'burg; anyone from Pen-L who
wants to play any kind of role would be welcome, I'm assured by the
organisers (who include our friends at the radical thinktank AIDC,
http://aidc.org.za where you can find the Jubilee South statement
around reparations).
I'll try to post some of the innovative arguments and estimations.
But Louis is dead right: this is about power, including conceptual
power to help explain the ongoing degradation of life on this
continent.
After all, we're still repaying apartheid-era debt here in South
Africa. Diabolical, eh? I was just hearing that one of the many
vibrant post-Seattle campaigns may target Citibank... With some great
Swiss and German activists now going after their banks for the debt
they owe black South Africa in view of their generous apartheid-era
loans, it's time for solidarity activists in the US to look at how
Citi's balance sheet has reflected and continues to reflect the
spoils of debt peonage. And to ensure Citi makes amends.
Patrick Bond
email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] * phone: 2711-614-8088
home: 51 Somerset Road, Kensington 2094 South Africa
work: University of the Witwatersrand
Graduate School of Public and Development Management
PO Box 601, Wits 2050, South Africa
email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
phone: 2711-488-5917 * fax: 2711-484-2729
