Immediately following you will find an article from the Herald, in which you will note a quote from the Speaker of the Zimbabwean Parliament, Emmerson Mnangagwa:
"We should be mindful of the fact that debt has become one of the most powerful tools that multilateral, bilateral and private creditors are using to continue haemorrhaging the continent and keeping it in bondage with dire political and social consequences"
This is an eloquent and direct comment on one of the preferred "non-violent" forms of neo-colonialism. It is this kind of reasoning on the part of Zimbabwe's patriots that has the west and sell - outs working overtime to overthrow the current government, in the name to returning of democracy to Zimbabwe...Africans I will repeat again, we must prepare for war, because our enemies are determined to foister it on us, whether we wish it or not.
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âCreditors using debt as tool of bondageâ
Herald Reporter
THE African debt crisis is being exploited by neo-colonial forces to keep the continent in servitude, thereby compromising its sovereignty and independence, Speaker of Parliament Cde Emmerson Mnangagwa said yesterday.
"We should be mindful of the fact that debt has become one of the most powerful tools that multilateral, bilateral and private creditors are using to continue haemorrhaging the continent and keeping it in bondage with dire political and social consequences," he said.
Cde Mnangagwa said this at the official opening of a two-day joint Southern African Development Community (Sadc) Parliamentary Forum and African Civil Society Organisations dialogue.
The dialogue is aimed at influencing Sadc parliamentarians to take a more proactive role in the loan contraction process.
Sub-Saharan Africaâs external debt has over the years ballooned to US$330 billion.
Cde Mnangagwa said the principal factors contributing to the debt crisis in Africa included deteriorating terms of trade, shrinking market shares for major crops, poor lending practices coupled by the nature of economic management by governments.
"It is, therefore, critical to appropriately locate the loan contraction process in Africaâs development in order to evolve a more sustainable and lasting solution to the problem," he said.
It was also critical that the process by which debtor countries agree to accept the terms and conditions were open to scrutiny by parliamentarians, civil society and other formal democratic structures.
This would, in turn, assist in avoiding lending and borrowing mistakes which often led to the build-up and increase of unsustainable debts.
Parliaments, Cde Mnangagwa said, had an obligation to scrutinise and monitor the terms and conditions that were imposed by major financial institutions, such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, when advancing loans.
However, he said, most African countries had not lived within their constitutional and stated policy framework in terms of debt management.
"The mere creation of such instruments without proper monitoring and evaluation is, therefore, inadequate as they have an important role to ensure that debt borrowing limits, as prescribed in each countryâs constitution, are not exceeded," Cde Mnangagwa said.
Borrowing for recurrent expenditure as opposed to capital outlay, he said, had made it difficult for most countries to repay their external debts.
Responding to questions from the participants, Cde Mnangagwa said there was need for the Sadc region to collectively fight corruption as this had a bearing on the debt crisis.
He said sometimes governments were penalised by multilateral or private creditors over the failure by parastatals or line ministries to follow procedures as articulated in the contractual agreement.
Contributing to the dialogue, Malawi Deputy Speaker of Parliament Mr Jones Chingola said the loan contraction process should be more open to public scrutiny as it affected their livelihood.
MPs, he said, should be empowered so that they play an active role in the debt management process and not just to ratify loan agreements.
He said the tendency by MPs to vote along political party lines on crucial national issues was tantamount to advancing political agendas at the expense of public interest.
The dialogue is being attended by at least 30 parliamentarians and representatives of civil society from Angola, Lesotho, Malawi, Ghana, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania and Zimbabwe.
It was organised by the Sadc Parliamentary Forum in conjunction with the African Forum and Network on Debt and Development (Afrodad).
