Re: Africa/WTO

[Chris Burford <cburford@xxxxxxxxxx>]

At 17/08/01 12:47 -0700, you wrote:
> Friday August 17 12:29 PM ET
>
> Africa Has Own Aims on World Trade Talks
> By Mariam Isa
>
> JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - African countries may take a slightly
> different position to other developing nations ahead of a new round
> of
> world trade talks in November, South Africa's Trade Minister Alec
> Erwin said on Friday.
>
> Erwin told reporters that African countries preparing for the next
> meeting of the 142-member World Trade Organization in Doha, Qatar,
> believed that negotiations should cover a wider range of issues,
> such
> as tariffs on industrial goods.


 Very able guy.

ANC biography from their website:-

Alexander (`Alec') ERWIN

Minister of Trade and Industry Member ANC NEC First appointed Deputy
Minister of Finance under Derek Keyes and then under Chris Liebenberg in
the GNU. Alec Erwin, now the Minister of Trade and Industry, is a central
figure in the economic policy formulation of the government of national
unity.

Erwin was born in January 1948 in Cape Town but attended various schools
throughout Southern Africa before matriculating at Durban High School. He
completed his B Econ (Hons) at the University of Natal, Durban. During
his time at university Erwin assisted in the Wages Commission project.
Among the few cabinet recruitments from the labour movement Erwin has a
long track record of working in the labour unions, he battled state
adversity through the 1970s and 1980s to shape the unions into a
political force to be reckoned with.

He was involved together with Eddie Webster, Rick Turner and Halton
Cheadle in the Institute for Industrial Education in the early
seventies.

He was general secretary in the Federation of South African Trade Unions,
a forerunner of the Congress of South African Trade Unions, from 1979 to
1981.

 From February 1986 Erwin was the education officer at Cosatu. He was
responsible for the development of training programmes within Cosatu and
its affiliates. At the end of 1987 Erwin became national education
secretary for Numsa.

An economic strategist, Erwin has helped shape the economic analysis of
the union movement, as Cosatu's co-ordinator of the Economic Trends
Group. He helped develop the labour movements economic solution to South
Africa's problems, the Industrial Strategy Project. He also played a role
in the ANC-constructed Macro-Economic Research Group, now called the
National Institute of Economic Policy.

Erwin provided input for the ANC's Reconstruction and Development
Programme and helped in editing the final document.

Erwin has repeatedly emphasised the need for government to maintain
financial discipline in the face of pressure for increased state
spending.

________________

The Daily Mail and Guardian (South Africa) notes:

V"Viewed  as an apostate by many comrades in the SACP [South
African Communist Party], he has nonetheless found it useful to remain a
member."

But if politics is the art of the possible, and if in the global economy
the capital rich countries hold all the cards, perhaps reconciling and
unifying a specifically African negotiating position, although inevitably
extremely weak and unrevolutionary, is better than having no negotiating
position at all.... 

Certainly it would appear to be a based on a materialist estimate of the
balance of forces. Or does anyone think that Africa has any chance
of getting better from a surge of feeling from bleeding heart liberals in
the west; an African Marshall Aid plan as charity, to buy off militant
anti-capitalist protesters. Would you put your trust in Tony Blair?



Chris Burford

London