Dennis Brutus and Patrick Bond interviewed on Africa's progressive movements

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

http://www.zmag.org/ZSustainers/ZDaily/2000-12/28brutus.htm
ZNet Commentary
December 28, 2000

Africa's Progressive Movements

Commentator Patrick Bond chats with South African poet/ activist Dennis
Brutus about the state of the African Left.

By Dennis Brutus <dvbmay+@xxxxxxxx> and Patrick Bond <pbond@xxxxxxxxxx>

Patrick Bond [PB]: Good to see you back in Johannesburg, comrade Dennis,
even briefly, in the midst of your travels. But the news today (December
27) is mixed, because it seems that some Washington sharpies have persuaded
Nelson Mandela to lead a World Bank/IMF/Unicef conference on child poverty
in London in February. You broke stones on Robben Island with Mandela
during the mid-1960s. What's he up to, do  you think?

Dennis Brutus [DB]: This latest gimmick seems to be Washington's response
to the sharp attack leveled at  the Bank, especially their new managing
director for  human development, Mamphela Ramphele, at the Prague annual
meetings three months ago. The Bank and IMF stand accused of contributing
to 19,000 avoidable deaths of young kids every day. At one NGO-Bank
discussion in Prague, a representative of the British trade union Unison
really went after Mamphela,  who as you know was Steven Biko's partner
before moving to  Cape Town University. There, as president during the
1990s, she smashed the main trade union and cut lowest-tier  workers' wages
by half.

Then add to that, our finance minister Trevor Manuel's role as chair of the
Prague meeting, which we protesters forced him to shut a day early. So it
looks like some South African former anti-apartheid leaders are now playing
the role of useful idiots for global apartheid. Maybe our allies in Britain
can mobilise so that the tarnishing of Mandela's prestige by the IMF and
World Bank doesn't go unanswered.  A similar thing happened just over a
month ago, by the way, when another South African, education minister Kader
Asmal, hauled Mandela out to defend his two big Lesotho dams at the London
launch of the final report of the World Commission on Dams, which Asmal has
been chairing over the past two years.

It was most embarrassing. Across the earth, megadams financed by the World
Bank have been catastrophic, so much so that this Commission report has to
admit the vast extent of the damage. And yet there was Nelson Mandela being
used to put a gloss on Africa's biggest dam -- the sanctions- busting
Lesotho Highlands Water Project -- which community groups in Soweto and
Alexandra townships, as well as displaced  Basotho people and
environmentalists, all agree is a corrupt fiasco. Last month, the
progressive movements from both countries together called for a moratorium
on the Lesotho dam, which of course was ignored by Pretoria and Washington.
So you see the damage Mandela is now doing to social progress.  It's
tragic, really.

[PB]: Well, although the African National Congress won the South African
municipal elections very comfortably early this month, their leaders failed
to inspire even half the population to come out to vote, and the ANC share
went down from two-thirds in the national election last year, to just
three-fifths. And they did quite badly amongst working-class "coloured"
(mixed-race) and Indian people, even losing the city of Cape Town to the
old apartheid party. What do you make of that?

[DB]: This is just one expression of dissatisfaction. There are many
others. The point is, that disgruntled mass-based organisations and allied
intellectuals in this country are more attuned than ever before to the need
for an anti- neoliberal programme. But not just here. Two weeks ago, in
Dakar, Senegal, there was a most encouraging multi-lingual gathering of
radical social, church, women's and labour groups and movements from across
the continent. Samir  Amin, the great Dakar-based marxist economist, opened
 the gathering.

I hear that the delegates joined 5,000 Senegalese for an anti-austerity
march during the conference. It was supposed to culminate at the IMF/Bank
office in downtown Dakar, but the new Senegalese government of Abdoulaye
Wade was too frightened to allow that. Still, this was a great marker  of
the growing energy and tight organisation that exists  in some African cities.

And the conference proceedings suggest a very tough reckoning of where
African social-justice movements are now, and where they need to go. This
was the first time that very strong contingents from Anglofone and
Francofone countries came together, along with several from Lusofone
(portuguese- speaking) countries. The Northern allies who came to observe
reportedly learned a great deal and were most impressed.

[PB]: In terms of programmatic and political thinking, what do you feel
Dakar achieved?

[DB]: From the conference material I've seen, and from what we've learned
from South African participants' report-backs, there was a qualitative
advance on analysis, consolidation of structures, clearer definition of
goals and strategies, and alliance- building with other southern and
northern comrades. The environmental debt that the North owes the South is
now also a very important issue, recognised by  all the participants.

[PB]: Outputs included the Dakar Declaration and Manifesto, and an
excellent statement advancing the African People's Consensus -- the
principles that stand in opposition to the Washington Consensus of the
World Bank -- which I suspect will soon be up on the various websites of
conference sponsors (e.g., http://aidc.org.za). There was also a meeting of
the Jubilee South network, which gathered  all the main southern hemisphere
campaigns.

[DB]: The short-term debt-related demands coming from the Jubilee South
network were extremely progressive, focusing on the notion of illegitimacy.
This has become the basis for critiquing all outstanding debt. The way
Jubilee South puts it is clear: "No conditionalities, no structural
adjustment programmes for new loans; immediate cancellation of illegitimate
 debts; and South governments should have a public investigation  and audit
of the debt, suspend payments until investigations  have been made, and
non-payment of illegitimate debts."

Some of the concrete strategies advanced include national people's
tribunals on debt and structural adjustment programmes across the South,
following the extremely successful Brazilian model. By 2002, an
international people's tribunal will be convened. I was particularly
encouraged about two specific issues I've been following: our demands as a
movement are maturing from mere debt cancellation to insisting upon
reparations, and the role  of the World Bank Bonds Boycott as a handle for
local activists, to shrink the power of Washington from the  bottom up. The
boycott strategy gives readers of ZNet  some good activist opportunities at
home, between  coming to all these wonderful protests at meetings.

By the way, big protests are likely to be at the Davos World Economic Forum
in January, Buenos Aires and Quebec City for the Free Trade Agreement of
the Americas both in April, May Day in all kinds of places, a World Day of
Action against Debt just before the Genoa G-8 Summit in June.

And of course there's the annual meeting of the World Bank and IMF in
October. That's back in Washington next year, and unlike last April when
there were fewer than 1,000 official delegates at the A16/17 spring
meetings, the cops are not going to be able to close off 90 city blocks and
get their delegates in next time. Because the meeting is scheduled to be at
the Sheraton Hotel at Rock Creek Parkway, we're going to outnumber their
20,000 delegates and have a real party  in the park.

[PB]: Back to Africa, how about relations between states  and civil
societies? Is there any concrete possibility that governments in Africa
will finally listen to the progressive forces?

[DB]: In Dakar, there was much greater emphasis than there  has been so far
on relating to governments, but that includes challenging corrupt regimes,
of which we have dozens on this continent. So, on the one hand, the African
Jubilee groups and other social movements are going to forcefully agitate
for their governments to ally with civil society on the demand for debt
repudiation and cancellation, and even to form a debtor's cartel and build
a reparations movement. And on the other hand, regarding the corrupt
regimes, we will not only see Africans being more courageous in denouncing
crooked rulers, but also demanding that Western financiers also take
responsibility for their complicity.

Our Nigerian comrades, for example, are having success putting the heat on
London, Swiss and US banks for bankrolling Sani Abacha and hiding his
stolen funds.  My friend Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane, who replaced
Archbishop Desmond Tutu a few years ago, has challenged  the World Bank,
and Swiss and German banks and governments. Backed by Jubilee South Africa,
he's saying they must repay payments made by South African society on loans
to Pretoria during the apartheid era which upheld white power.

[PB]: Do you have any reservations about Dakar? For example,  I saw a
vicious email attack circulated by Ann Pettifor of Jubilee UK who
questioned what otherwise seemed a very unifying process.

[DB]: As usual, minor tensions developed when some renegades from Jubilee
2000 UK wanted to exert undue influence. I gather it stems from them losing
control, and from their rather less ambitious campaigning objectives. Yet
overall, the more radical Jubilee South positions were fully  endorsed
within the South-North meeting.

But I wish there had been more forward planning, in the light of some key
points of global movement building. We're not only showing up at the
enemy's meetings, you see, we're now putting our own gatherings together,
like Dakar, and we must drive towards more inclusivity and programmatic
work. The crucial session will be a vast meeting in Porto Allegre, Brazil,
next month, where the Workers Party, Movement of the Landless and a huge
collection of the best progressive forces in Latin America are bringing in
activists and strategists from all over the world.

There'll be another huge event in Durban, South Africa  next August, by the
way: the UN Conference on Racism. That conference will be an opportunity
for Pretoria and the UN bigwigs to showcase South Africa as a model for
solving racial problems. I believe that this would be a false image. We
will instead be using the occasion to present a more honest picture of the
failures of this government. Many  of the gross inequities of the apartheid
system -- home- lessness, lack of water, inadequate health services, the
Bantu educational system, all originally based on racial distinctions --
have actually gotten worse since 1994. The reason for that is, essentially,
dictation by proponents  of neoliberalism, especially the World Bank.
Pretoria has pretty slavishly adopted the Washington Consensus ideology.
And there's little or nothing to show for it.

[PB]: Ok, the best progressive forces in this country  share that line of
argument. But after Durban on racism next August, there's yet another huge
event coming up, the UN's World Summit on Social Development here in
Jo'burg in 2002. This was announced a couple of weeks ago, just after
Jo'burg successfully hosted the Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) treaty
conference. I hear from people in the Ralph Nader circuits that they were
fairly pleased with the outcome, because they exerted enough pressure to
overcome reactionary positions by not only the United States but by the
host, South Africa, which is, for instance, using DDT to treat malarial zones.

[DB]: Yes, that World Summit is probably the point at which the work done
in Dakar, Porto Allegre and various other sites  on alternatives to
neoliberalism will come to fruition. ZNet readers should put Jo'burg on
their agenda.

Hey, will they have finally changed the name of Johannesburg by then? The
nineteenth-century land surveyor, Johannes Rissik,  doesn't deserve it. I
guess it'll be called Igoli, Zulu for  City of Gold?

[PB]: Renaming Jo'eys was another of the ANC promises in  the municipal
elections earlier this month. Don't hold your breath, though, Dennis. White
big business interests say that it's a global brand name, now, and the
neoliberals running the city will probably persuade the politicians  to let
it die.

[DB]: Yes, like Seattle is a brand name to our comrades! >From Seattle to
Soweto, that sounds right. See you there  in 2002!
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Louis Proyect
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