Briefings

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Land & politics in Namibia

Henning Melber

Southern African societies still bear the lasting effects of their colonial history; in particular, the inherited structural legacies of an apartheid system. While this special brand of white minority rule was later called ‘separate development’, the euphemistic term actually describes in a rather appropriate way colonisation – the violent removal of people from their land. Today, gross inequalities in access to, and possession of land are a reflection of this earlier colonial expansion. 2004 marked a century since the genocide started in then ‘German South West Africa’ and is a reminder of the origins of Namibia's skewed land distribution (cf. Melber, 2000 ). Whatever rationale for seeking solutions to this impasse are utilised, this memory cannot be tilted among the generations of victims.

In 2002, twelve years after Independence, the Party Congress of SWAPO of Namibia passed a resolution which urged government to expropriate 192 farms owned by absentee landlords. While this was within the legal and constitutional discretion governing the country, and reiterated the recommendations adopted soon after Independence by the National Land Conference of 1991, it was not implemented by those SWAPO cadres in government. It wasn't until a newly-emerging political space in 2004 did the land issue also re-emerge as an ingredient to the open contestation over the succession to Namibia's President Sam Nujoma. SWAPO's President since its foundation and in office since Independence, he ultimately had to abandon the campaign for a fourth term beyond March 2005. His declared crown prince Hifikepunje Pohamba, like himself a first generation activist, is the current Minister of Land, Resettlement and Rehabilitation. When he was declared Nujoma's choice, Pohamba developed a hitherto unseen commitment to address the land issue. The following chronology of events between February and June 2004 is based on the local newspaper coverage.

In a special announcement televised at the end of February 2004, Namibia's Prime Minister Theo Ben Gurirab confirmed the new policy approach as indicated shortly before by Minister Pohamba in Parliament: from now on Government would expropriate land. Zimbabwe's Minister of Information, Jonathan Moyo, on an official visit in the country at the time, expressed his satisfaction about the historical moment he could witness. During early April, a team of six experts seconded from Zimbabwe visited Namibia to assist in the evaluation of seized land. In his May Day speech President Nujoma confirmed that expropriation of farms would not only target underutilised land but also serve as a punitive measure. He warned ‘minority racist farmers’,

that steps will be taken and we can drive them out of this land ... as an answer to the insult to my Government.

A letter of 10 May by Minister Pohamba – at a time when the internal competition for the nomination as the party candidate for the next term as President was in full swing – was sent to some 15 farmers expressing ‘interest in acquiring their property’. The recipients were ‘cordially invited to make an offer to sell the property to the State and to enter into further negotiations in that regard’. Among the farms were those which were on record for recent labour related conflicts; but there was also a game ranch owned by a foreign national who had invested considerably in a luxurious farmhouse. Among his guests was Na-mibia's Head of State who enjoys the occasional hunting safari; one wonders why this farm has been selected as a priority.

Since the expropriation letters were distributed, a minority group of racist hardliners among the white farmers embarked on a course of public confrontation. At a meeting in June they articulated openly arrogant and self-righteous defiance to government policy and blamed the commercial farmers' union for its sell-out strategy. This added fuel to the flames and made the land issue the most controversial topic in public debate by mid-2004. The Parliamentary and Presidential elections held in November 2004 confirmed Nujoma's confidante as his successor and next Head of State. He was nominated by SWAPO as candidate from three contesters by an extraordinary party congress held at the end of May 2004 after an intense period of internal struggles turning ugly and showing the full force of autocracy by the president. A new cabinet is appointed by Pohamba to take office on Namibia's Independence Day, 21 March 2005. It remains to be seen what turn the land policy then might take. The first 15 years of Namibian Independence were characterised more by an absence of any coherent and consistent strategy; instead, there was a dominance of politics with and about the land issue.

This briefing looks behind and beyond the current rhetoric providing food for speculation about the government's emerging land policy and revisits land as ‘contested territory’ (see Melber, 2002). The issue is viewed within the context of the post-colonial ideology under a former liberation movement, which now embraces a strategy of populist rhetoric to cover own policy failures. This affects the socio-economic policy within an increasingly narrow-minded nation-building discourse (see Melber, 2003a and 2003b). The land issue hence emerges as a tempting political tool for manipulation and social engineering, instead of addressing in the first place a long overdue material redistribution as an integral part of a coherent process to reduce the gross inequalities within a fundamentally non-egalitarian society.

Land appeals to a majority of Namibians for the simple reason that many of them are directly or indirectly affected.

Agriculture … provides a livelihood to more than two-thirds of all Namibians, either as communal farmers, or as labour ers on commercial farms. Three-quarters of the poor in Namibia depend on agriculture for at least some of their household consumption needs. In spite of this, the sector's contribution to GDP remains very limited, less than 8% (UNDP, 1998:44).

Some 44% of Namibia's territory (exclusively within the area of the former ‘Police Zone’) is classified as freehold land composed of fenced ranches. It is private property of less than 5,000 (predominantly but no longer exclusively white) farmers; 43% (mainly in the Northern and Eastern parts) is communal land (the former ‘native reserves’). A considerable portion of the latter has in the meantime been fenced off, a practice largely tolerated by the authorities (sometimes with office bearers being an active part thereof) despite demands to the contrary articulated by the National Land Conference (cf. Werner, 2001:272). A reform process would also have to bear in mind, and carefully address, the permanent challenges posed by Namibia's extreme ecological constraints to any sustainable effort to enhance land productivity. Namibia's history of land use, exacerbated by the additional pressure on land since colonisation by European settlers, is ample illustration of the painful consequences of deliberate over-exploitation of natural resources.

Only about 8% of the territory is suitable for dry land cropping, with an average annual rainfall of 500 mm or more. Two-thirds of the country is classified as semiarid and around a quarter as arid. Sixty per cent of the commercial farmland (freehold agricultural land) receives on average less than 300 mm rain annually.

In such an arid environment land owner ship becomes much less of a crucial factor than in most countries (UNDP, 1998:46).

Giving back land to a previous tiller (or actually herder) does therefore not necessarily pay off when measured in terms of economic performance, and in some cases not even in terms of self-employment.

The main issue therefore is not land, but poverty – a view, shared from a different perspective for South Africa (Hendricks, 2000), where the degree of proletarisation is most advanced. Interesting enough, neither Namibia's official Poverty Reduction Strategy, approved by Cabinet in 1998, nor the National Poverty Reduction Action Programme for 2001–2005 links land reform to poverty reduction:

In other words, the Namibian Government does not view land redistribution as one of the major instruments in reducing poverty. In fact, there is an inexplicably pessimistic view expressed in the Poverty Reduction Strategy, namely that the agricultural base was too weak to offer a sustainable basis for prosperity (Sachikonye, 2004:74)

When liberation movements took over political power towards the end of the twentieth century, a framework was created to address the inherited inequalities. The process of de-colonisation and transfer of political power, however, had been one of controlled change as a result of internally and externally negotiated settlements. The legitimate governments were required to honour a rule of the law based on the recognition of existing property relations. Landowners at Independence, therefore, were legally entitled to their farms and protected by common law – as painful as such endorsement of previous injustice in some cases might be. Namibia's President Sam Nujoma (2001:419) paints a misleading picture when he suggests that as a result of an imperialist conspiracy Namibians were denied the opportunity to address the land issue differently. As a matter of fact, Namibians – as represented by the liberation movement SWAPO – were part of a deal: ‘land and property rights were never the subject of public debate’ and the ‘aspect of the Bill of Fundamental Human Rights that gave guarantees to existing property owners received surprisingly little attention’ during the deliberations of the Constituent Assembly prior to Independence (Cliffe et al. 1994:205, 214).

Such a limiting point of departure, although a constraint for social transformation, does nevertheless not prevent options to adopt reformist land policies aimed at creating more equality. Despite the obvious relevance of, and need to address the land issue as a priority on the agenda for change, those assuming political power paid little visible attention to exploring possible solutions. Instead, high ranking political office bearers and bureaucrats used their energy during the initial period of consolidating post-colonial power structures to secure their own farms, often through access to land provided by the state. Members of the new political elite were among the beneficiaries of drought relief through state financed drilling of boreholes on their private farms, therebyadding revenue and aid funded value to their property (cf. Kössler/Melber, 2001).

In contrast to this eagerness of accessing and utilising land for own benefits, the majority of the population saw little to no progress in terms of creating access to land. Interestingly enough, Namibian lawmakers have been reluctant to introduce a land tax despite the fact that it is an obvious tool for at least reformist social transformation based on generated revenue. While the Agricultural (Commercial) Land Reform Act of 1995 provided the legal framework, it took almost another decade until taxes are likely to be finally introduced during the fiscal year 2004/2005 with the adoption of a Land Tax Bill.

Also painfully slow was the action with regard to the purchase of farmland for resettlement purposes. By the mid-1990s, the Namibian authorities had acquired only some 100,000 hectares of freehold land for redistribution – less than a handful of so-called commercial farms (Werner, 2001: 272). After a decade of Independence, the farmland bought by the Ministry of Lands, Resettlement and Rehabilitation amounted to 54 farms totalling 341,000 hectares (Werner, 2000:45–48). For many years, the Ministry did not even spend the annual budget allocated for the purchase of farms. The problem was not mainly the reluctance of commercial farmers to abandon their property within the ‘willing seller – willing buyer’ policy advocated. In contrast:

By 2001 the government has been offered 759 commercial farms. A total of 505 of these farms were turned down, leaving them for sale in the private sector. The government has shown interest in 254 farms since 1991, or about one farm in three put on sale, but only actually purchased 97 for land reform purposes, only about 13% of the farms sold in Namibia over this ten year period (Harring/Odendaal, 2002:52).

This study therefore concludes that the strategy formulated in the ‘White Paper of Resettlement Policy’ of 2001 has so far failed not really because of a lack of farms on the market. If the quality of the land on offer would not promote a meaningful re-distributive effect by resettling people, it would actually support the argument that Namibia's climatic and environmental constraints do simply not allow to generate circumstances under which people would be enabled on a meaningful scale to make a decent living from the land.

To complicate matters further, reversing the historical injustices requires the decision when and under which circumstances change of land ownership became unacceptable. Conflicting claims by different regional-ethnic groups, which at some period of time had occupied the same territorial entity, creates a collision of interests too difficult to be amicably solved. On the other hand, land restitution is strictly speaking for the majority of the population a non-issue. Land was physically occupied and expropriated by the European settlers and the colonial state in the southern and central areas of Namibia declared as ‘Police Zone’. The majority of the population settled north of this Police Zone and was never moved. Colonial-capitalist patterns of exploitation were established there in different ways: the colonial administration relied on forms of an indirect rule. It rather sought to exploit the people by means of introducing a strictly regulated and systematic system of organised contract labour in collaboration with local headmen (cf. Melber, 2000). The Land Reform Conference sought to avoid the issue by stating:

given the complexities in redressing ancestral land claims, restitution of such claims in full is impossible (quoted from Werner 2001:266; my emphasis).

This vagueness allows widely differing interpretations and arbitrariness, thereby creating manoeuvring space for those who are in control over and execution of the power of definition. Not surprisingly, since Namibian Independence a certain ambiguity by the post-colonial authorities especially towards the most marginalised indigenous minority groups prevailed (Daniels, 2003:57–63; Suzman, 2002, Suzman, 2004). Werner (2002:56) suggests:

that the difficulties involved in disentangling competing claims of lost lands provided an ideal political opportunity to broaden the category of beneficiaries of land reform to include those who were never dispossessed in the historical sense.

Before joining the Namibian Economic Policy Research Unit (NEPRU) in the mid-1990s, Werner had been a Director in the Ministry of Lands, Resettlement and Rehabilitation and hence benefiting from first hand insights. As he points out, the formula chosen by the Land Conference allowed to bring in the main base of SWAPO in the Northern areas of former Ovamboland as primary beneficiaries of re-distributive measures. Hence the Land Conference ‘provided the political legitimacy to rule out any ethnically specific claims to land, no matter how justified they might have been’ (Ibid.) This explains why the government can currently refer to some 240,000 people waitlisted for resettlement, mainly from the densely populated Northern areas, in which direct evasion from land never took place under German and South African rule.

Unfortunately, the possession of land is associated with wealth – even if this might be the wrong conclusion (at least in its general form): aggregated data for Namibia suggest that the land utilised by the (hardly existing) ‘average commercial farmer’ (and his labourers) is not yielding the high monetary income one might expect:

If total value added by commercial agriculture (N$565 million in 1997) were evenly divided between the 6,337 farms, the average value added per farm would amount to about N$90,000, including wage bill to an average of six farm workers, return to capital employed, land rents and own labour (UNDP, 1998:45).

This does of course neither imply that there are no wealthy ranchers, nor question that commercial farmers are much better off than most of those in the communal areas, whose average annual income is estimated according to the same source at about N$3,000. The point is, however, that among commercial (white) farmers land ownership – even under ‘ordinary’ circumstances – is not taking for granted a guaranteed and secure existence. There is even speculation that with the introduction of the land tax commercial farming units will have to close down due to lack of economic sustainability. Farming in Namibia, as Sherbourne (2003) has shown, is increasingly ‘a rich man's hobby’. As he suggests, it turns into a lifestyle choice for the urban rich prepared to subsidise their farms from other principal sources of income. A government policy trying to encourage black Namibians into commercial farming therefore has to rely on heavy subsidisation – just as it had been the case under the deliberate policy of settling farmers from South Africa's poor white Afrikaans speaking underclass in the then ‘fifth province’ from the 1920s onward. In a striking analogy to this earlier period, land policy is therefore in the first place about pigmentation of the skin. Sherbourne (2004:1) hence answers his hypothetical question ‘Any Room for Economics?’ as follows:

While some have tried to argue that land reform is important to boost the country's economy and reduce poverty, in their hearts most people know that the land question is about race: black Namibians should own more of Namibia's commercial farmland. In reality everything else – agricultural output, the treatment of farm workers, poverty reduction, environmental sustainability – is very much secondary.

Since an estimated 800,000 of some 1.8 million Namibians live on the communal lands, a meaningful land reform would have to address the issue as much there to achieve effective ways and means of reducing poverty among the rural population.

Given that some of the land north of the Red Line (i.e. outside of the previous ‘Police Zone’) is among the potentially most productive in Namibia, one could argue that the challenges to bring security of tenure, security of investment, equitable infrastructure and market participation to Namibia's communal areas is just as important to the land issue in Namibia as acquiring and redistributing commercial farmland that was expropriated during the colonial period (Fuller, 2004:86).

The complexity of existing forms of land use and ownership goes far beyond the simple dichotomy of commercial and/or communal forms of land, and touches upon different aspects of fencing off communal lands as a land acquisition strategy in a process of further class diversification (see Twyman et al., 2001).

A pragmatic approach, confining the land issue to macro-economic and fiscal policies, would however ignore the sociocultural aspects. Conquered people reclaim their history by regaining ownership over their ancestors’ lands. Such a desire has little in common with the economic rationality presented above. It is a legitimate matter of dignity, self-respect and spirituality, not measurable in bare economic terms. This was articulated in the Namibian context by the previous Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly, since September 2001 elected Bishop to the Evangelical Lutheran Rhenish Church in Namibia, as a powerful spiritual leader and representative of public morale in the following way:

Our grand parents died without seeing justice done to the land issue, our parents are dying in poverty with suffering engraved on their faces. They told us how they were living happily on their land, cultivating their crops and looking after their cattle. Together with their parents, they experienced the horror of their land being fenced around. (…) To remove the people from the land on which they have been living for generations, is to destroy and kill them, not only outside but also inside … The violation of the land rights are the violation of the soul of the people, but its restoration is the resurrection of the soul of the people and life in abundance (Kameeta, 2002:29, 30).

This theological mystification might provoke doubts among those sceptical about the glorification of a ‘noble savage’ type of Namibian historiography. Such an emotional dimension, rooted in issues of identity, however, simply illustrates the point that ‘people's relationship to their environment is not only material, but also social and cultural’ (Salih, 1999:163).

This emotional dimension suits the aspirations and agendas of ideologically minded social engineers of the postcolonial elite. One of those is Uazuva Kaumbi. He heads the state-subsidised Pan African Centre of Namibia (PACON) and is the chairperson of the board of the state broadcasting enterprise (and hence a powerful player in shaping public discourse). He recently drew the categorical conclusion:

Speaking as an indigenous Namibian, I invite my white compatriots and their sympathisers to understand that the insurance policy for peace and stability is expensive. There are various options to choose from. Sacrifices must be made. The choice is theirs. The land is ours! (Kaumbi, 2004:94).

The most worrying part of this constellation – not really as complex as it might look when applying a class analysis approach – is that such calculated populism seems to work. It is evident that the land issue might be – as long as it remains unresolved for a large part of the population – a social factor to be easily activated by those competing for political power, material gains and seeking popular support. The task remains to seek an acceptable compromise under the given circumstances. There is no quick fix solution on how a reduction (not to mention elimination) of unacceptably skewed income inequalities could be achieved while maintaining social stability at the same time. On the other hand, relative social stability is only secured when there is a visible reduction of the extreme socio-economic disparities.

Popular pseudo-recipes might ease the pressure on government for a short time, but could just as well create more frustrations when new realities again do not meet expectations. At the same time, any successful efforts to ease poverty and create more social equality within postcolonial societies would reduce both the symbolic relevance of and the social frustration that is linked to the land issue. The challenge lies in dealing with an agrarian economy based on highly skewed distribution of land as well as weak and insecure property rights of the majority of rural people. It remains

a festering wound on the body politic of post-liberation Southern Africa that will be healed neither through neglect nor the palliative of de-racialising commercial agriculture. Radical surgery is required, but, as Zimbabwe demonstrates so clearly, this must not itself threaten the life of the patient (Cousins, 2003:308)

Henning Melber , The Nordic Africa Institute, Uppsala, Sweden; e-mail: [e-mail]

The Ndungu report: Land & graft in Kenya

Roger Southall

The following summary of the Report of the Ndungu Commission on Illegal and Irregular allocation of public land provides an insight into a critical, recent episode in the struggles over ‘land’ and ‘graft’ in Kenya. To put it in the latest context, it is first worth noting that on the ‘graft’ front, the Commission can chalk up one partial victory in that its exposures have lead to the return of tracts of land to public action by politicians, including former President Moi. However, the limits of the larger fight against corruption was underlined when John Githong'o resigned his government position as Commissioner against Corruption. But the story the Ndungu Commission unfolded is also a chapter in another very broad issue in Kenya's political economy – land.

One of the few African countries to enact individual tenure of indigenous land, along with redistribution of chunks of the former ‘white highlands', Kenya is faced with landlessness on a large scale and with recurrent land disputes among individuals and between communities. Government has just set in train a National Land Policy Formulation Process to try and sort out these underlying problems, including those thrown up by the Commission.

According to Transparency International (TI), things in contemporary Kenya have recently got better: corruption has improved from ‘highly acute’ to merely ‘rampant’! Yet in commenting upon this, The Economist (18 December 2004) notes that Kenya remains one of the most corrupt countries in the world, and opines that following the example of former President Moi's cronies,

too many of the new ruling elite are out to get rich, rather than govern. Members of Parliament, in a country where the average annual income per head is a modest US $400 a year, have awarded themselves an annual salary and allowances of $169,625 and ‘new patronage networks are replacing the old ones, as the well-connected appoint their chums and relatives to plum public posts.

To be sure, The Economist continues, Kenya is probably somewhat better off than it was under Moi, but President Kibaki's economic and political reforms have stuttered, with progress towards a new constitution which would reduce the powers of the presidency and enhance democratic accountability presently on hold. Meanwhile, although the new government has promised an end to the culture of impunity for the powerful that developed under Moi, several ministers involved in corruption scandals both new and old are going unpunished. Whilst Moi's Kenya African National Union (KANU) was roundly trounced in the general election of December 2002, the new government of the National Rainbow Coalition (NARC) includes powerful figures who – like Kibaki himself – formerly served under Moi and who jumped ship when it was clear that the latter's craft was sinking, and landed squarely on their feet in the new cabinet. For all that the government has established various investigations into abuses committed by former KANU politicians who are still in office (having established, notably, hearings into the Goldenberg scandal of the early 1990s in which former Vice-President and current Minister of Education, George Saitoti, is heavily implicated), it is the decision to give Moi himself immunity from corruption charges, on the grounds that ultimately he opted to leave office peacefully, which seems more likely to set the key precedent (Brown, 2004:335).

Even if, as many observers suggest, the NARC government's commitment to a cleansing of the Augean stables is likely to be more rhetorical than real, its eagerness to convince both the international investment and creditor community, as well as its own (increasingly skeptical) supporters, that it is doing something is likely to prove more than a little interesting. This is demonstrated by the recent release (December, 2004) of the Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Illegal/ Irregular Allocation of Public Land(Government Printer, Nairobi), chaired by Paul Ndungu, presented to Kibaki six months previously, in which, inter alia, details are given concerning illegal land awards made to both the Kenyatta and Moi families, as well as to a raft of former ministers, MPs, judges, civil servants and military officers, with recommendations that the large majority of such awards should be revoked. However, whilst it is such juicy findings which have gained the headlines, it is the chapter and verse which the Report gives concerning the systematic way in which established procedures, designed to protect the public interest, were perverted to serve private and political ends which may well prove to be its most long lasting value.

The present brief piece seeks merely to highlight some of the Ndungu Report's findings. Such a review can only be preliminary, for at 244 pages with two annexures running to 976 (Appendix I) and 797 (Appendix II) pages, the prospect of analysing the mass of detailed evidence is as daunting as it could be illuminating. Nonetheless, even a cursory analysis serves to confirm earlier analyses that corruption and patronage have become thoroughly embedded in Kenya's politics.

Land & demography in Kenya

The Ndungu Commission, which was composed of 20 prominent citizens, lawyers and civil servants (drawn from ministries particularly concerned with the land issue) was appointed by President Kibaki in June 2003, and was charged with inquiring into the unlawful allocation of public lands, ascertaining the beneficiaries, identifying public officials involved in illegal allocations, and making recommendations for appropriate measures for the restoration of illegally allocated lands to their proper purpose, for prevention of future illegal allocations, and for appropriate criminal prosecutions. It was but one of a series of measures designed to tackle the issue of corruption and to realise the fruits of a newly democratic era. Yet it was perhaps one of the most emotive of the reform initiatives taken by the NARC government, for as noted by the Commission (p.xvii):

land retains a focal point in Kenya's history. It was the basis upon which the struggle for independence was waged. It has traditionally dictated the pulse of our nationhood. It continues to command a pivotal position in the country's social, economic, political and legal relations.

Fundamental to the present importance of the land issue is the rapid growth in population. At the turn of the previous century, the colonial administration could justify its allocation of lands to European settlers by arguing that, with an African population of just some 4 million, there was plenty of space for all. By independence, the total population had grown to 8.2 million, and with one of the highest population growth rates in the world (around 2.9% per annum), reached some 30.7 million by 2001, of whom only around 1% were non-African (‘Europeans’, ‘Indians’ and ‘Arabs’). Given the concentrations of population in the high rainfall areas of the Central Highlands and western Kenya (20% of Kenya's population lives in the drier 80% of the land in the north and east), the pressure upon land (not to mention the remaining wildlife) is increasingly evident, not least because of the scarcity of formal employment and the dependence of the overwhelming majority of the population upon peasant agriculture (which contributes some 50% of total agricultural production). In this context, access to land becomes critical to popular well-being, and the illegal appropriation of public land a peculiarly visible crime that has come to excite huge passion, not least because, as the Commission Report asserts, the practice of illegal allocations of land increased dramatically during the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s:

Land was no longer allocated for development purposes but as political reward and for speculation purposes … ‘land grabbing’ became part and parcel of official grand corruption through which land meant for public purposes … has been acquired by individuals and corporations (p.8).

The law relating to the allocation of land

The Commission's review of the land system as it developed under colonialism (based upon the Crown Lands Ordinance of 1915), stresses how the authority to allocate Crown lands (as distinct from lands reserved for African Customary Tenure) was vested in the Governor, and under him, the Commissioner of Lands. Under their prerogative, grants of agricultural leases (initially for 99, later for 999 years) were made to settlers, whilst commercial plots in townships and urban centres were initially allocated through a system of public auction while residential plots within municipalities were allocated through public tender. However, by the 1940s, the system of public auction – which had become dominated by wealthy cartels – had fallen out of favour, resulting in a change whereby commercial plots would be allocated by means of direct grant by the Commissioner with the assistance of a local committee, a system which had already informally replaced the public tender system with regard to residential land.

The principles which decided such allocations included notions of the public interest, as well as the ability of selected allottees to pay for land (sold at 20% of its estimated value to encourage development) within 30 days and to carry out intended developments within a prescribed time limit. As the Committee notes, for all that such procedures may have worked to restrict African opportunities to purchase land in ‘white’ areas, they served to control the ‘mischief of land speculation’. However, in what is one of the

greatest ironies in the history of land allocation in Kenya, what appears to have succeeded in the colonial period (i.e. allocation by direct grant) is what later facilitated the massive illegal and irregular abandonment of public land by the Government after independence,

for it was to be the very officials and institutions charged with being the custodians of public land who were to become the facilitators of illegal allocations (pp.6–7). The colonial Doctrine of Public Trust, whereby Kenya's rulers administer land in trust for the people of Kenya, dissolved under independence, and land was to become granted for political reasons, or simply subject to ‘outright plunder’ by ‘a few people at the great expense … of the public’ (pp.9–10).

What land has been involved? According to the Commission, all types. In Kenya, it explains, land is divided into the three categories of government land, trust land and private land. Government land comprises two sub-categories, unalienated (land which has not been leased or allocated) and alienated (land which has been leased to a private individual or body corporate, or which has been reserved for the use of a government department or corporation or institution, or which has been set aside for another public purpose). Trust land is held by County Councils on behalf of local communities, groups, families and individuals in accordance with applicable African Customary Law until it is registered under any land registration statutes, following which it is transformed into private land and becomes the sole property of the individual or group in favour of whom it is registered. Finally, private land is land which is registered in accordance with laws that provide for registration of title, and is registered in the name of an individual or a company, and may be created from either government land or trust land through registration after all legal procedures have been strictly followed (pp.44–45). According to these definitions, it is only government land which is public land, for trust land belongs to local communities. However, because trust land has long become victim to land grabbing, the Commission opted to regard all trust lands which had been illegally allocated as public land for its own investigative purposes (p. 46).

Under the law, it is only the President who has the right to allocate unalienated government lands, although he can delegate limited powers to the Commissioner of Lands. Yet even the President cannot exercise his powers without paying regard to the public interest. In practice, however, key responsibility falls upon the Commissioner of Lands and his officials, who under the Government Lands Act may cause township plots on unalienated land to be sold by auction (unless the President prescribes otherwise) for business or residential purposes (but only if it is not required for public purposes), whilst not even the President has the authority to allocate alienated government lands which have been set aside for a public purpose such as nature conservation, forests, play areas or by-passes.

In any process of allocation, a formal offer of sale is made to an approved purchaser by the Commissioner for Lands. Such a letter of allotmentis only made to the person to whom it is addressed, lapses after 30 days, and has various conditions attached, and as such cannot be legally transferred to another person. Meanwhile, trust land can only be removed from the communal ownership of local people through legally prescribed adjudication processes, whereby local communities are given ample notice and opportunity to claim their ownership in accordance with their customary law. However, despite all these legally strict safeguards, ‘it is in the allocation process that most of the corruption and fraudulent practices relating to land have occurred’ (p.54).

The Commission's findings

Upon the basis of detailed review of all laws relating to land, official reports concerning the land issue by government and non-government bodies, documents and records submitted by ministries and public bodies, and reports and memoranda by professional associations and members of the public, the Commission categorised its findings according to three broad types of public land: Urban, State Corporations' and Ministries' Lands; Settlement Schemes and Trust Land; and Forestlands, National Parks, Game Reserves, Wetlands, Riparian Reserves, Protected Areas, Museums and Historical Monuments.

I. Urban, State & Ministries' Land : The Commission indicated that numerous methods were used to grab land falling under this category.

There was found to have been widespread abuse of presidential discretion with regard to unalienated urban land, with ‘in many instances’ (both) Presidents Kenyatta and Moi making grants to land to individuals without any consideration to the public interest, for political reasons, and without proper pursuit of legal procedures, whilst there was also extensive illegal allocation by the presidents of alienated land (viz, land which they did not have legal power to allocate). Various Commissioners of Lands had made direct grants of government land without any authority from the President. Forged letters and documents were used to allocate land in numerous instances, with many records at the Ministry of Lands and Settlements having been deliberately destroyed. Often, land was sold by grantees without any adherence to the conditions laid down by letters of allotment, and many illegal titles to public land were transferred to third parties, often State Corporations, for massive sums of money. Land compulsorily acquired, like that for the proposed Nairobi by-pass, was illegally allocated to individuals and companies, and then often sold on to third parties, whilst land reserved for public purposes such as schools, playgrounds, and hospitals etc had been sold off in blatant disregard of the law by both the Commissioner of Lands and numerous local authorities. In broad summary, the Commission found that the powers vested in the President had been grossly abused by both the President and successive Commissioners of Lands and their deputies over the years, under both previous regimes; there had been ‘unbridled plunder’ (Commission: p.81) of public land by local councillors and officials; illegal transactions were hugely facilitated by the extensive complicity of professionals (lawyers, surveyors, valuers, physical planners, engineers, architects, land registrars, estate agents and bankers) in the land and property market; and most high profile allocations of public land were made to companies incorporated specifically for that purpose, largely to shield the directors and shareholders of such entities from easy public view. Finally, and interestingly, the Commission found that ‘most illegal allocations of public land took place before or soon after the multiparty general elections of 1992, 1997 and 2002’, reinforcing its view that public land was allocated ‘as political reward or patronage’ (p.83).

With regard to the over 140 state corporations (inclusive of such institutions as universities and the Central Bank) and the 113 odd companies in which the government holds shares, the Commission noted that although the purchase and disposition of land is incidental to their business, many such entities have acted as if they were set up to deal in land and have participated in land grabbing schemes through which the public has lost ‘colossal amounts of money’ (p.87). Land allocated to state corporations is ‘alienated land’, but has been illegally allocated to individuals or companies in total disregard of the law. Such land was customarily sold at less than market value to allottees, who often proceeded to sell it other state corporations at amounts far in excess of market value (p. 89). A usual procedure would be for the senior management of the corporations to address a letter of surrender of land to the Commissioner of Lands, who would in short order receive an application for purchase of the same land from an individual or company. At other times, corporation land might be allocated by the Commissioner of Land to individuals without any reference to corporate management whatsoever. Through such methods, ‘a civil servant, a politician, a political operative etc would transform from an ordinary Kenyan … into a multimillionaire’ (p. 90).

Corporations which have lost large areas of land under such dubious circumstances include Kenya Railways, Kenya Agricultural Research Institute, the Power & Lighting Company, Kenya Airports Authority, and Kenya Industrial Estates, whilst other bodies such as the Kenya Food and Chemical Corporation which ended up in liquidation following mismanagement nonetheless proceeded to sell off their remaining assets, including land, at throw away prices (p.90). One such transaction can be cited by way of example. In January 1994, the Numerical Machining Complex Limited (owned wholly by Kenya Railways and the University of Nairobi (sic)) was allocated 840 hectares of land belonging to the Kenya Meat Commission for ‘industrial purposes’. Within a few weeks, the then Head of the Public Service, Professor Philip Mbithi, who was a Director of the Company, wrote to the head of the National Social Security Fund (NSSF) informing him that the president had suggested that the NSSF purchase the land at market value. In February 1995, the NSSF proceeded to purchase 136 hectares of land at a cost of 268 million shillings, which was fully 8.5 times more than the professionally assessed value! Today, the land purchased by the NSSF remains largely undeveloped, as does that remaining with Numerical Machining Complex (pp. 91–92).

This is illustrative of the further scam whereby state corporations were pressurised into making illegal purchases of public land, becoming ‘captive buyers of land from politically connected allottees’ (p. 92), the most abused corporation inthis regard being the NSSF, which between 1990 and 1995 spent some 30 billion (n.b., not million!) shillings in buying both developed and undeveloped plots throughout the country. The Commission gives a full list of the transactions involved, many of the vendors being companies whose individual owners are not immediately evident.

The Commission made similar findings with regard to various government ministries which own large tracts of land, despite the fact that most of them claimed not to have lost land through illegal allocations. Again, loss of land might be triggered by a letter from an official of a ministry addressed to the Commissionerof Lands indicating that the ministry no longer required a certain tract of land, and the latter would in turn allot it to an applicant purchaser in excess of his authority. Prime offenders included the Ministry of Livestock and Fisheries Development which claimed only to have lost small fisheries land, while information provided by the public indicated that it has lost large tracts of its livestock holding grounds. Similarly, the National Youth Service is said to have lost thousands of acres of land in allocations to prominent politicians. Then, of course, there is the Kenyatta International Conference Centre (KICC). This was funded by the Ministry of Roads and Public Works between 1967 and 1974 for 79.7 million Kenya Shillings and subsequently managed by the Ministry of Tourism. In 1985, this was sold to KANU via a 99 year lease for just 1,680 shillings and a pepper corn rent, with the title being made out in favour of President Moi and Peter Oloo Aringo. Subsequently KANU took over the Centre, and assumed the role of landlord by collecting rent from tenants until February, 2003, when the new NARC administration took over the KICC on behalf of government. KICC now constitutes the subject of a court case concerning ownership between KANU and the government (pp.112–3).

Meanwhile, at a less exalted although far more pervasive level, the Commission found that many thousands of government houses and properties were illegally allocated to individuals and companies.

II. Settlement Schemes & Trust Lands : Trust land, including settlement scheme land purchased by government with international loans from European settlers for settlement by African smallholders or carved out of Trust land, has been similarly abused. The Commission found that, overall, whilst the establishment of settlement schemes and their subsequent allocation in the early years of independence generally conformed to the original objectives, in latter years there was extensive deviation, with much land having been allocated for purposes other than settlement and agricultural production.

Allocation of plots, formally conducted under Settlement Fund Trustees, devolves in practice upon District Plot Allocation Committees composed of the District Commissioner, District Settlement Officer, District Agricultural Officer, the area MP, the Chairman of the relevant County Council and the Clerk to Council. Settlement Fund Trustees appear to lack any supervisory powers over these committees, with the result that the local committees have been almost wholly unaccountable. The result has been predictable, with the interests of the landless having been ignored in favour of those of ‘District officials, their relatives, members of parliament, councillors and prominent politicians from the area, Ministry of Lands and Settlement officials, other civil servants and … so called ‘politically correct’ individuals’ (p.127). And whilst the majority of deserving allottees received smaller plots, the undeserving often received large ones. Meanwhile farms belonging to the Agricultural Development Corporation, designed to provide an the needs of the agricultural industry by developing high quality seeds or livestock or undertaking research etc, have been illegally established as settlement schemes and subsequently illegally allocated to individuals and companies, often as political reward or patronage (Commission: pp. 134–5).

In addition to the above, extensive tracts of Trust Land have been illegally allocated, with county councillors having been the main beneficiaries. Whilst the Commission was able to provide some glaring examples of such abuse, it was hampered in its work by the failure or refusal of councils to submit relevant information (p.140). It concludes:

Instead of playing their role as custodians of public resources including land, county and municipal councils have posed the greatest danger to these resources … the most pronounced land grabbers in these areas were the councillors them-selves…The corruption within central government has been replicated at the local level through the activities and omissions of county and municipal councillors(Commission: p.147).

III. Forestlands, National Parks, GameReserves, Wetlands, Riparian Reserves & Protected Areas: After examination of the official reports and the ‘scanty records’ of responsible government departments and agencies (p.148), the Commission found that only 1.7% of the 3% of the country which was covered by gazetted forests at independence remains, most of the reduction having come about as a result of illegal and irregular excisions, usually made without any reference to scientific considerations or under the guise of settlement schemes. The beneficiaries of such excisions include (often private) schools, government institutions, and religious bodies as well as private individuals and companies. Similarly, many illegal allocations of land around riparian sites have been illegally allocated by the Kenya Wildlife Service, with many such allocations – such as those made since 1995 to some 14 beneficiaries around Lake Naivasha – being known to have severely affected the ecosystem. Fortunately, the Commission finds that the National Parks and Reserves have been more effectively protected, yet nonetheless it provides some ten cases of illegal allocations within KWS protected areas, and 15 cases in KWS alienated plots beside them. Furthermore, the Commission also records 26 instances of illegal allocations of land from Nature Reserves falling under the domain of local authorities, whilst there are some 8 known cases of land set aside for national museums and monuments having been illegally allocated to private individuals. The latter include the allocation of Kongo Mosque site at Kwale to former President Moi in 1986 (p. 169). It comes as no surprise that land belonging to the military, and even land portions belonging to State Houses and lodges, have also been sold off.

Against this catalogue of corruption, it is not surprising that the Commission concludes that their has been systematic and widespread abuse of public trust by public officials, to the extent that many officials now fail to see anything morally wrong with their allocating land illegally. There were many centres of power which were responsible for the illegal allocation of land, yet the Commission makes it clear that the lead in public plunder has consistently been given from the top. Kenya, it concludes, has fallen into a state of ‘moral decadence’, this epitomised no more clearly than by the extensive participation in land grabbing by churches, mosques, temples and other faith institutions, these including such venerable institutions as the Catholic Archdiocese of Nairobi, the Church Commission of Kenya, and the Anglican Church (pp.182–3).

The Commission's recommendations

Whilst making a series of sensible recommendations concerning, inter alia, the need for an inventory of public land and the computerisation of land records, as well as for a comprehensive land policy, the Commission also urges the establishment of a Land Titles Tribunal charged with reviewing each and every case of suspected illegal or irregular allocation of land, and hence embarking upon the process of revocation and rectification of such titles.

Reference to the weighty Annexes indicate that revocation would be a formidable task. Its specific recommendations, by way of example, include the following: revocation of 105 plots allocated from land reserved for the Nairobi bypass (Annex 3); of 551 allocations made by the Nairobi City Council (Annex 5); 86 allocations by Meru, 449 by Nakuru, 270 by Eldoret, 100 by Nyeri, 186 by Kisumu, 407 by Mombasa, 56 by Nyahururu, 67 by Kiambu, 30 by Kisii, 17 by Kapsabet, 187 by Kerugoya/Kutus and 118 by Kitale Councils, with further dubious allocations by all these councils also to be investigated (Annexes 7–23). Numerous improperly documented allocations of land by Kenya Railways should also be examined, whilst 229 allocations made by the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute, 31 by Kenya Pipelines, 572 made by Kenya Industrial Estates, and 178 by the prison authorities should be revoked, as well as smaller numbers of plots illegally allocated by other state corporations. There should also be revocation of titles of some 7 illegal allocations made by the judiciary (!), 57 by the Ministry of Cooperative Development and Marketing, 47 by the Ministry of Agriculture, 289 by the Ministry of Education, 73 by the Ministry of Labour and 22 by the Ministry of Energy (Annexes 41–49). The Commission also provides lists of thousads of houses which have been illegally allocated throughout the country, implying that title to these, too, should be revoked, as should those to hundreds of allocations of land made to individuals and companies from forests, game parks and reserves etc which are listed in Volume II of the Annexes.

Commentary

Some time ago, following Ajulu (1997) and Himbara (1994), I characterised Kenya as a kleptocracy characterised by a drive for primitive accumulation by those who controlled the post-colonial state, alongside the failure of an African business class to promote industrialisation and development. However, my primary emphasis was upon financial and commercial corruption, and whilst I recognised land-grabbing (especially by local councillors) as a phenomenon, I failed to appreciate how enormously extensive the illegal appropriation of public land was to the formation and consolidation of Kenya's political elite. In this regard, although less blinkered observers such as Jacqueline Klopp (2000) have written upon the issue, enormous credit is due to the Ndungu Commission for the compilation of a truly formidable body of documentation concerning land-grabbing. Yet what is lacking from its analysis, even if – strictly speaking – it may have gone beyond its terms of reference, is some assessment of what land grabbing may have had upon the economy, and whether, in particular, land which was illegally appropriated has been put to productive use. In this regard, no overall summary or analysis has been provided, even though, with regard to the majority of allocations, the Commission offers two columns which list, first, the officially intended use of the land, and in the second, its current use. Even so, even an unsystematic thumbing through the pages of the annexures suggests that the overwhelming majority of allocations have been utilised for residential, commercial, industrial or building purposes, even if the majority of the sites grabbed from the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute, whose present use is listed as ‘private’, may well have been transformed into private farms.

In this regard, the report has little to tell us about ‘the land issue’ in the sense of our acquiring greater knowledge about the overall distribution of land between government, ethnic groups, classes, and corporations, let alone the extent to which it has contributed to the eating away of Kenya's already diminishing supply of arable farming land. Furthermore, only more detailed analysis will be able to tell us how much land-grabbing has contributed to the unregulated and under-serviced peri-urban sprawl which is today such a visible feature of Kenya's unfortunate development path.

I have two further concerns. One is that, perhaps through lack of time (the report was compiled in just eighteen months), the Commission has left the slog of identifying the vast bulk of individual political beneficiaries to other analysts. Yes, it makes mention at times of particular allocations to key figures such as Moi and the Kenyattas, and it provides the names of individual and corporate beneficiaries in its detailed charts of allocations, whether by councils, corporations or other bodies. Of course, this offers a host of raw material for researchers to pursue, enabling them to identify, through detailed cross-referencing to known occupancies of political office, how particular MPs, councillors and civil servants have benefited. Yet an uneasy suspicion remains that the Commission may well have pulled its punches in this regard, and that it could have caused considerably greater embarrassment to present political incumbents than it has done.

The second worry, of course, is that little will come of the Commission's hard work. Even though the Commission has made recommendations that many hundreds of land allocations should be revoked and investigated, there are not so many that a Land Commission with the right political backing could not sit in judgement over process and appeals. However, given that NARC has absorbed so many members of the former KANU regime, it seems unlikely in the extreme that Kenya's avaricious politicians, however much formally committed to democracy, will be prepared to unscramble the egg. More probably – save perhaps for a few show case revocations – they will want to draw a line under the past, and simply ordain that no further transgressions should be permitted, although even that aspiration seems unlikely to be realised given the continuing nature of Kenyan politics as ethnically manipulated and patronage based, especially if the Commission is correct in identifying illegal land allocations as regularly increasing around the time of competitive elections.

Professor Wangari Maathai was recently awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her contribution to sustainable development and democracy, notably out of respect for her work in mobilising local communities to defend Kenya's rapidly diminishing forests and to planting trees. The Ndungu Commission's demonstration of the extent to which illegal land allocation is entangled with political office indicates that, without a doubt, the prime responsibility for defending remaining public land will continue to fall, willy nilly, upon the shoulders of civil society.

Roger Southall , Democracy and Governance, Human Sciences Research Council, South Africa; e-mail: [e-mail]

The political economy of Danish aid to Kenya, 1998–2003

John Kirkby & Phil O'Keefe

In the summer 2003, an evaluation of Danida's rural development programme in Eastern and Coastal Provinces of Kenya took place. ¹ This external evaluation, commissioned by Danida's independent evaluation service, was unusual not least because each of the five evaluation teams included Kenya professionals as evaluators, a rare occurrence despite the current level of evaluation requirements. ² The evaluation covered the period from 1998 to 2003.

In 2002 Danida spent DKK92 million on Kenyan rural development. This is set to rise to DKK150 million in 2005. What was unusual was the political economy of the aid programme itself.

Transparency International ranked Kenya towards the top of its global corruption index in 2002. Later that year, the Kenyan population overwhelmingly rejected the regime associated with Moi that was seen to be the seat of the corruption. As of January 2005, there were still strong claims, not least from the British High Commissioner, that corruption was still rife in Kenya. And, in early February, 2005, the man leading the anti-corruption effort in Kenya, John Githongo resigned while visiting London, claiming, among other things, that his life was under threat.³

How do development agencies operate under such a regime? At various times the World Bank and the IMF suspended aid operations in Kenya. The Netherlands Foreign Ministry closed down their Kenyan aid operation. The British and the Americans soldiered on, albeit on a smaller scale and with much breast beating about good governance. The Danes did it differently.

Danida, the Danish aid administration, responded to the growing corruption not by leaving Kenya but by bypassing central government structures to work in project mode at district level. As such, Danida did not really follow its own programme goals of poverty alleviation through support to central government programmes, but operated in effect as series of model Non-Governmental Organisations. It is difficult to judge the overall impact on the total population of Eastern and Coastal Provinces where the projects were undertaken. Projects were undertaken in six sectors namely agriculture, nutrition, health micro-enterprise development, micro-finance and road building.

In agriculture the focus was on sustainable management of soils, water, vegetation and animal resources. Because Eastern and Coastal Provinces fall largely into the semi-arid areas, the participatory planning processes used by Danida led to a local demand for water projects rather than the more traditional agricultural extension projects. There was a reduction in poverty, helped by the strengthened extension services particularly where they incorporated local expertise, but, like most extension services, this was achieved by not addressing the poorest of the poor. The major successes were closer to the larger towns where the extension professionals lived.

The nutrition based programme aimed at reducing poverty and improving the nutritional status of children. It achieved much through its community based activities, because it directly targeted the very poorest. In various forms, the nutrition programme, a direct outcome of the droughts of the 1970s, was a success story in terms of local pre-disaster planning and community response but the project was at the end of its life. Concern was expressed that this loss of local capacity, partly because of the centralisation (command and control) of disaster response following the bombings of the US Embassy and local hotels, would inevitably produce a weaker local response in future disasters. The 2004 Kenya Flash Appeal, released by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), sought some US$96 million while noting that there was little local capacity for implementation.

The health sector projects were focused on fundamental reforms in health care delivery. Planning and management have improved at all levels, and professionals within the hospital system think as a unified service. Beyond the hospital system, environmental health professionals were largely excluded from the reforms although they are in the frontline in controlling endemic and epidemic disease. But beyond the professionals, there was little evidence that user groups, where such issues as prescription charges were raised, had much contact with the professionals. More broadly, attention will have to be paid to the HIV/Aids issues and to deal with communicable disease and malnutrition in a more holistic manner. Hospital and dispensary care is not sufficient to deliver rural health.

Micro-enterprise development and micro-finance were seen as essential efforts to bolster the informal sector that, along with rural road maintenance, is viewed as the only sector capable of generating large-scale employment opportunities in Kenya. As financial projects, they were very much 'top-Down’ and principles of mutuality involving money proved difficult to ground. Most importantly, training and lending were not directly linked to the agricultural sector, a missed opportunity for informal employment generation in a largely rural area. Many of the small loans were in fact used for social reproduction rather than supporting the development of micro-enterprises.

The roads project, set up to maintain existing dirt roads in Coast Province, was a considerable success. Over 100 road gangs, using labour based methods, were trained, with over a third of the road gangs led by women. Considerable progress has been made towards a kind of privatisation that sees these gangs as businesses contracted to the state. All involved commented on the positive social and economic impacts and highlighted the importance of using labour-intensive methods and local labour to generate sustainable road building solutions. The activities clearly showed that necessary skills exist in rural communities for the communities themselves to organise and maintain roads that are viewed as necessary arteries for local development. Why Danida decided to run down such a project is open to question although the approach has since been championed by the World Bank.

Danida chose to remain as a development actor in Kenya when other bilateral and multilateral agencies withdrew. This commitment to continuity should be widely applauded, especially the difficult political negotiation to link to provincial and district level structures. The emphasis on participatory planning, an emphasis that included both rights and responsibilities, give the better projects real beneficiary ownership not least because they demanded ownership in return for cost sharing. Poverty was not directly addressed except in the nutrition project and the poorest were not really given access to professionally delivered services. Gender was strongly addressed and women were found to be the best organisers and managers of local funds and their manual labour was valuable. There was a highly visible Kenyan management to all projects clearly showing capacity to address rural development.

Working in project mode, Danida created strong project boundaries, which put limits on interventions and made cross-sectoral approaches difficult. But strong boundaries made targeting easier and thus generated much success within projects. On the bottom line, however, this created Danida, not Kenyan, institutional capacity. In responding to the evaluation, Danida noted that:

The conclusion stating that it was a correct assessment to keep Kenya as a Danida programme country despite cooperation difficulties with the former government is a welcome recognition of a difficult political decision taken under complicated circumstances. ⁴

It notes Danida's future commitments to arid and semi-arid land programmes with an emphasis on health and agriculture, a new push on water provision and cross-sectoral attention to HIV/Aids.

The Danish reaction to bad governance and corruption in Kenya in the 1990s contrasts markedly with that of Norway which was openly critical about the deteriorating human rights situation. Kenya severed diplomatic ties with Norway in 1991. While praise is due for the Danish response it stands in stark contrast to the reaction from Denmark to similar situations in Malawi, Eritrea and Zimbabwe.⁵

John Kirkby & Phil O'Keefe , Division of Environmental Management, School of Applied Sciences, Northumbria University, NE1 8ST, UK; e-mail: john@ etcuk.org; [e-mail].

Occupied Western Sahara: Campaign to end Kerr-McGee's involvement

Richard Knight

Western Sahara Resource Watch, representing organisations in 20 countries, announced today (28 February 2005) in Oslo a campaign against the US energy company Kerr-McGee (KMG). This Oklahoma City-based corporation is involved in the illegal, unethical and politically controversial plundering of hydrocarbons in the Moroccan occupied areas of Western Sahara. Morocco has illegally occupied Western Sahara since 1975 and the people of the territory, led by Polisario, are struggling for self-determination and independence. Kerr-McGee has been exploring for oil and gas in the territorial waters of Western Sahara since 2001 under licence from the Moroccan state oil company, ONAREP. Today, the international solidarity movement for Western Sahara started contacting the company's 600 biggest shareholders, demanding that action be taken to prevent the company from renewing the contract that is set to expire 1 May.

Western Sahara is Africa's last colony. Formerly a colony of Spain, in May 1975 a UN mission determined that the people of Western Sahara overwhelmingly supported the liberation movement Polisario and were categorically for independence and against integration of the territory into Morocco. In mid-October of that year the International Court of Justice ruled that the people of Western Sahara have the right to self-determination including independence. Morocco rejected the Court's ruling and invaded the territory in the first days November, forcing a majority of the population into refugee camps in Algeria. Morocco has refused to implement a 1991 UN peace plan in which a referendum would allow the people of Western Sahara to choose between independence and integration into Morocco. The UN Legal Council says that Western Sahara is a non-self-governing territory and that exploitation of the territory's hydrocarbons would be illegal. According to Richard Knight, a member of the Association of Concerned Africa Scholars and spokesperson of Western Sahara Resource Watch:

It is remarkable that Kerr-McGee does still not understand the political, legal and humanitarian dimensions of the catastrophe they are inflicting to the Sahrawi people. For three years, the company has refused to listen to our arguments. Now we hope to get some assistance from their shareholders.

The campaign requests the shareholders to play a role as active investors, influencing KMG not to renew its contract on 1 May 2005. If the constructive shareholder pressure does not succeed in changing the KMG policy, the campaign demands the investors to divest. So far, a Norwegian and a Dutch seismic survey company have decided to not continue the activities in Western Sahara due to the political implications of the contracts. This happened as a consequence of active shareholder ownership and dozens of sell-outs over the last years. Also a Danish and a French company have left the area, making Kerr-McGee the only foreign company remaining in the Western Sahara.

One major investor has already divested from Kerr-McGee – the Norwegian fund administrator Skagenfondene has sold its 100.000 shares, taking a US$2 million loss. Due to the massive negative attention on Kerr-McGee's activities in the occupied territories, they regarded the shares as too risky. Now the government-owned Norwegian Petroleum Fund is considering if it should sell its shares, estimated to be worth over $7 million.

The campaign against Kerr–McGee has lead to an impressive mobilisation worldwide. Today, 19 organisations on four continents have all started contacting their respective Kerr–McGee shareholders simultaneously. Last month, we contacted all screening agencies in the world, explaining them the nature of the contract, urging them to recommend their clients to sell. Now contacting the shareholders is a natural second step in our strategy(Liesbeth den Haan of the Netherlands Foundation for the Right to Self-Determination for the Sahrawi People).

No country recognises Morocco's sovereignty over Western Sahara. The Polisario-formed government in exile, a founding member of the African Union which is recognised by 70 countries including South Africa, has heavily condemned the Kerr-McGee contract. According Jacob Mundy founder of Friends of Western Sahara:

Morocco's planned theft of Western Saha-ra's hydrocarbons is immoral and illegal. Since Kerr-McGee signed the reconnaissance contract with ONAREP in 2001, Morocco has stalled the UN-supported peace process. Morocco has even rejected a generous plan put forward by former US Secretary of State James Baker. Kerr-McGee's activities have already blocked the peace efforts and contributed to rising tension in the region. If Kerr-McGee continues, there are definitely possibilities of taking legal actions against the company, and we strongly urge Kerr-McGee to not renew their contract. We are very sure that our measures will make Kerr-McGee withdraw, as the last company in the industry still operating in Western Sahara. The question is how and when.

For further information, or to receive a full version of the shareholder letter, please contact Richard Knight (New York, USA) tel [phone] [e-mail]; Jacob Mundy (Seattle, USA) tel [phone] [e-mail]. edu; Tom March-banks, Western Sahara Campaign (UK) tel [phone] [e-mail] or Liesbeth den Haan(Holland), tel [phone], e-mail st.zelfbeschikkingwest-sahara@123456planet. nl. The campaign is coordinated by the newly founded Western Sahara Resource Watch. WSRW is a network of organisations that work to preserve the natural resources in Western Sahara for the usage of its people, inasmuch as their sovereignty over those resources is a right with erga omnes character enshrined in several UN resolutions and human rights documents. (www.friendsofwesternsahara.org).

ZANU-PF & the ghosts of foreign funding

David Moore

The Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front's NGO Act, promising to severely curtail the activities of civil society groups with a whiff of human rights or governance activities and ban foreign support for them, raises historical questions about ZANU-PF's own path to power. A long history of ‘international nationalism’ is obliterated by the latest manifestation of ‘we are our own liberators.’ The archives reveal a complex layer of links between Zimbabwe's nationalists and imperialists of both innocent and interested hues.

At the end of 2004 the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front passed the ‘Non-Governmental Organisation's Bill’ through Zimbabwe's parliament. It bans the foreign funding, and thus severely curtails the activities of, civil society groups involved in anything remotely approaching human rights or governance activities (funds from the direct arms of states, such as USAID and DFID – not to mention the IMF and the World Bank, which ZANU-PF hopes will come back, coins in hand – will not be stopped).¹ The bill imposes a state-appointed board of trustees over NGOs ranging from soccer clubs to HIV-AIDS advisory bodies. Zimbabweans abroad – estimated in some documents to reach 25% of the population – will be included among those foreigners and imperial-ists.² The bill was passed in spite of the fact that the parliamentary legal review committee reported that it violated the constitution on twelve counts. The report condemned it as

a cynical and comprehensive attack on the rights of the people to organise themselves in the promotion, protection, defence and advancement of their freedoms and liberties. It is a calculated attempt to all but extinguish just about all the rights and liberties contained in the constitution. ³

Such legislation raises historical and hypothetical questions. Those familiar with the history of the Zimbabwean liberation war remember the extensive international support given to the nationalist movement in its various party political manifestations. They know that both ‘imperialists’ and ‘critical cosmo-politans’⁴ assisted and influenced most of these actors to some degree or another. Yet precise relationships and conditioning patterns have not been documented or delineated.⁵

At the conjectural level, one is driven to wonder: why is Zimbabwe's contemporary ruling party so concerned – paranoid might be the appropriate label, considering how ‘patriotism’ has transmogrified so quickly from nationalism into fear and loathing⁶ – with ‘imperialist machinations’ now? The easy answer is because ZANU-PF believes the opposition – in which it collapses the Movement for Democratic Change and a ‘hit-list’ of politically involved civil society groups including the Zimbabwe Civil Education Trust, Zimbabwe Election Support Network, Combined Harare Residents Association, Crisis in Zimbabwe, Humanistic Institute of Development Co-operation with Developing Countries, National Constitutional Assembly, Media Institute of Southern Africa, Zimbabwe Liberators Platform (a group of ex-combatants who believe the so-called ‘war vets’ who invaded land are neither genuine nor true to the legacy of the liberation war), Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights, Amani Trust, Zimbabwe NGO Human Rights Forum, Bulawayo Agenda and Women of Zimbabwe Arise,⁷ which it will target first – will be strangled without external support. Suffocation is necessary before the March 2005 parliamentary elections. Resorting to an Africa-centrism born on the shores of receding sovereignty ZANUPF ideologues claim all these organisations are totting up their accounts of murder and torture and educating people on the arcane mysteries of multiparty democracy in the interests of the Blair-Bush imperialist conspiracy. It all works to the benefit of the party of tea-drinkers⁸and lackeys, which must be destroyed if Zimbabwe is to retake its destiny into its own hands. ZANU-PF liberated Zimbabwe on its own, it says: so should its challengers.

A more complex answer entails burrowing deeper into history, however, and melding the conjectural and the historical. ZANU-PF itself may be haunted by the ghosts of foreign funding. The party that championed the call ‘we are our own liberators’ when it ostensibly pulled itself away from the globe-trotting Joshua Nkomo with his multi-racialism and begging-bowl tactics may be having nightmares about its own historical relationships with liberals and imperialists. This briefing demonstrates evidence that could be the cause of sleepless nights for those in power under auspices other than their own. Such data helps explain the vitriol accompanying a history of hypocrisy.

International nationalism, imperialist states

The roots of anti-imperialism's humourless hypocrisy lay in its untruth. The myth of self-liberation ignores scores of churches' support (they are in this legis-lation's sites too, if straying too close to Caeser's domain). It downplays states ranging from their neighbours such as Zambia, Tanzania and Mozambique (where freedom fighters were domiciled, trained and, if they got too precocious, imprisoned) to the Swedes, Chinese, Soviets and even some of the many guises of Britain and the United States. It sidelines big NGOs such as Amnesty International. It ignores the impromptu Zimbabwe Detainees' Defence Committee, which lobbied in the mid-1970s for the ZANU leaders jailed in Lusaka for allegedly assassinating their chairman, Herbert Chitepo.⁹

The illusion of autonomous liberation for Zimbabweans is both less than a myth and more than a lie: such autarky was (and still is, of course) impossible. Timothy Scarnecchia's work¹⁰ shows none other than Robert Mugabe as the master dialectician of the myth-lie. He was keenly aware of the dexterous manoeuvrings necessitated by the politics of ‘international nationalism’¹¹ at its advent in the early sixties. Scarnecchia's archival digging reveals the Salisbury based American consul-general's report on an interview with Mugabe about the vexed relationship between the trade unions and the nationalists and foreign funding. Mugabe acknowledges in the interview that:

African political or labor movements in this country cannot stand on their own without financial backing from some external source … however … [one must be] capable of ‘riding the tiger’ without ‘ending inside.’

Aside from the psycho-historical resonances of the parallel with Godfrey Huggins' image of the partnership between horse and rider, for which liberal Rhodesians are remembered, such an admission is an adroit recognition of the dependence of all ‘third world’ societies on the crumbs from western tables. To-day's discourse does not replicate such frankness. It would be better for it, because its importance lies not in the confession of the emptiness of a slogan about ‘self-reliance’ but in the question of the balance between state-to-state ‘intervention’ and sovereignty (or sovereignty in the making) and the relations between members of global civil society and their subalterns on the periphery of global capitalism. There was no discourse of ‘global civil society’ in the sixties and seventies, but this nascent social formation helped ZANU – particularly some of its leaders – reach the pinnacle of power. Many state agencies were even more important. Into the equation must go the fact that there are no such things as ‘puppets’: al Qaeda's blowback is lesson enough about how imperialist hubris quickly sours. As one long-time participant in Zimbabwe's various struggles said about Mugabe ‘it is ironic that the man the USA created is now considered to be a ‘rogue’.’¹² It is not foreign funding per se at issue, but its effects, including the psychological ones of relying on assistance for ‘liberation’ from such paternalistic relations. Labelling its recipients as on the strings of their masters is not enough, because if one goes back far enough, the strings will always be there. Perhaps only their elasticity is at issue.

The length of these cords (remember Lenin's optimistic line that the bourgeoisie – and it could be a global entity! – might hang itself with its own rope) is revealed in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office files in London's National Archives.¹³ There is a telegram in these files from the FCO to Accra, sent on 9 November 1967. It reads, (in upper case): ‘Mrs. Sarah F. Mugabe, Ghanaian born wife of Robert Mugabe, Secretary General of Z.A.N.U., has been invited to visit Britain by the Ariel Foundation. She is to do a year's secretarial course, and Ariel undertake to be responsible for her financially.’ It continues to say that Mrs. Mugabe could not get an entry permit until she got a letter from Ariel confirming its support. ‘In view of short notice Ariel who are well known to us has asked for our help. Please take this telegram as the confirmation required.’ Scribbles above the body of the telegram read ‘Eric, were you consulted abt. this?’ Underneath there is a flurry: ‘Would you wish to have this on one of your files? If not, it can be destroyed,’ and, in another hand, ‘can we now destroy?’ A large scrawl taking up about a fifth of the whole page notes: ‘Mr. Reiss of IRD despatched this tel. It was not cleared with us. Ariel decided on their own initiative to help Mrs. Mugabe.’¹⁴

What was the Ariel Foundation? Stephen Dorril's account of British intelligence activities informs us that it was a CIA-front, rooted in the halcyon days of Labour Party student activity on the international battle-ground between social democracy and its challenges from the Soviet Union. Dennis Grennan is one name that sticks out in respect to the Mugabe family: Grennan was an early conduit of American benevolence to the older but poorer imperialists across the Atlantic.¹⁵ In his adult years he was an advisor to the British Foreign Secretary. He hosted Robert Mugabe in the UK while the latter was climbing up the pole to ZANU-PF's leadership in 1976. Their relationship has been described as ‘long-standing.’¹⁶ Who were liberating ourselves?

A few files further on in the archives, there is a letter from the British Embassy in Washington reporting on an earlier visit of the party chairman, Herbert Chitepo.¹⁷ It reads, in understated lower case type, that although the African bureau at the State Department was 'somewhat reticent’ about the not-yet-Maoist chairman's trip, ‘we have it on good authority that he came on a United State's Government grant.’ Apparently he ‘pressed strongly for more active American support of ZANU [emphasis mine].’ The Americans told the British that if the west did not support the new party on the block ‘the Russians will establish control over them.’ Thus ‘we suspect … the State Department (no doubt in conjunction with CIA) are considering’ Mr. Chitepo's request. The letter went on to say:

the State Department regard Chitepo as one of the more competent and articulate Rhodesian Africans in exile [but] admitted to … having been slightly disappointed with him – he made a good superficial impression, but there did not seem to be much substance underneath. … [He] presented his case in relatively restrained terms [to liberal Congressmen] … in contrast to his performance at the rather strange meeting in a Chinese restaurant.

The lesson for those dancing for foreign assistance might be to avoid Chinese restaurants. For those paying prospective puppets, it might be that such experiences turn potential clients to Maoism.

Nearly a decade after Mr. Chitepo went to Washington, the spouse of one of the men accused of assassinating him received a letter from the Commonwealth Secretariat in Marlborough House. It was in response to information handed on by a Mrs. Beryl McGovern of the United Nations Development Programme that Mutukudzi Mudzi, after having spent more than a year in prison (he was released after the case was closed¹⁸), wanted to re-enter the University of Zambia. The letter advised her that the Secretariat ‘would be very pleased to continue his award under the Commonwealth Rhodesian Scholarship Trust Fund’ and asked her to make sure that the University sent a statement of his fees directly to London. It was copied to an Ignatius Chigwendere of the Commission for Racial Justice in London.¹⁹

The British state's thirty year rule has slowed down the process of tracing recent history, and thus more cats have not come out of the hat on the relationship between states, their multilateral international representations, and the aspirants to the club.²⁰ How would they compare with the links alleged by ZANUPF between the MDC and its ‘masters?’

Innocent NGOs

Of course, foreign funding is not just state-to-state-class-in-the-making, and ZANU-PF is well aware of that fact. Thus its well-trod discourse of the complicity between human rights oriented NGOs and imperialism's pernicious desires. Its theory on this collusion could rest on an empirical history of how this cog in the imperialist machine assisted today's ruling party in the past. A 1971 letter to the FCO from Amnesty International, an NGO ZANU-PF pretends to hate, illustrated the multi-layered dynamic that Zimbabwe's leaders know so well and would like to stop now. This note, written during the Pearce Commission's 1971 efforts to sound out African opinions about a new constitutional twist (and led to the ‘blowback’ of Bishop Muzorewa and the United African National Council), ‘repeats’ a previous promise of ‘airfare and all other possible assistance to Messrs. Malowa, Manyonga and Zvobgo’ [the recently deceased Eddison, long time and iconoclastic Minister of Justice and Parliamentary Affairs] who, along with Lazaurus Nkala,²¹ Joshua Nkomo, and Daniel Madzim-bamuto, promised to leave the country so ‘could hardly pose a threat to the security of the Rhodesian state.’ Indeed, wrote AI correspondent John Humphries, the Rhodesians seemed to be accepting the good sense of such a policy, as they had allowed a Herbert Musikavanhu to take up the good graces of a British Technical Assistance Grant to study at Gray's Inn.²²

A few years later, a man kept under restriction by the Mozambicans for jumping ZANU's leadership queue was also busy typing letters. They rest in the Catholic Institute of International Relations' archives. The CIIR may be poised on the edge of NGO status, given that its patron has embassies around the world, but these theoretical niceties simply indicated the fuzziness of the notion of ‘global civil society,’ especially when the church enters the picture. In any case, the CIIR has a long history of committed support to Zimbabweans' causes.²³ In the mid-1970s, it played host to the impromptu committee struck to defend those previously referred to in Lusaka's busy jails. It appears also to have offered succour to the Commission for Racial Justice, headed by the same Ignatius Chigwendere (albeit with different spellings of his last name) who was copied letters from the Commonwealth Secretariat.²⁴

Chigwendere was the recipient of a letter addressed from Quelimane on 11 June 1976. While the author was under Mozambican house arrest and deciding how to convince the radical young guerrillas that he was better than the other members of the old guard he was usurp-ing,²⁵ Robert Mugabe wrote to the director of the Commission on Racial Justice. Mugabe apologised for having ‘concluded that you were the Chigwedere referred to in the mention of the Coordinating Committee composition,’ and then asked him to ‘get persons of good will interested in extending assistance to our cause … assistance of a non-military type such as clothing, medical supplies and office equipment (type-writers, duplicators, etc.) … [and] blankets’ for the huge influx of recruits arriving in Mozambique. ‘This is just as important as being in the front-line firing a gun. We have to sustain the man who is doing the fighting in front of us!’

Across the Atlantic

Meanwhile in San Francisco, a free Eddison Jonas Mudadirwa Zvobgo was reviving ZANU's post-Chitepo reputation by publishing a new Zimbabwe News series.²⁶ Archived by the Hoover Institute's revolution-watchers, it contains ‘Comrades Robert & Sally Mugabe, Edgar & Anne Ruvimbo Tekere's’ request for foreign currency so Mozam-bique's – the ‘host government's’ – textile factories could make uniforms for Zim-babwe's freedom fighters, and assistance in compiling a list of drugs from a ‘doctor with tropical medicine experience.’ Donations for ‘educational purposes’ were solicited, too, best left in ‘money form’ until the ‘Camps Educational Advisory Committee’ was estab-lished.²⁷

The Pacific Coast propaganda also celebrated the arrival of a new military force, uniting ZANU's and ZAPU's armies. Zvobgo was not sure if ‘ZILA’ was the Zimbabwean African Liberation Army or the Zimbabwean United Liberation Army (it was actually ZIPA, the Zimbabwean People's Army), but he celebrated it for removing Ndabaningi Sithole from ZANU's presidency and reviving the struggle to its ‘full swing.’²⁸He printed its long list of needs for the 180 schools it hoped to build in Zimbabwe's liberated areas. It included, among much else, 180 microscopes and typewriters, 5,000 boxes of cycolstyling stencils (‘we expect to produce most of our own textbooks’), 2,400 blackboards, and 'the Heinemann's African Writers Series in multiple copies.’ Secretary for Finance Zimbabwe United Liberation Army Saul Sadza's list was much more inclusive than Mugabe-Tekere's. Perhaps that is one reason why the young militants were removed from the scene by the reinvented old guard – with the assistance of their Mozambican hosts – just a year after the ostensible publication of California's Zimbabwe News.

It seems that the men who wrote and published such letters know the role of well-meaning foreigners (to quote Lenin once again, ‘useful idiots?’) in the battle to unseat authoritarian power-mongers: thus the current legislation to eliminate this source of support for those continuing that struggle. There are differences, though. This time, the opposition is inside Zimbabwe, not poised on its borders, and it consists of a much wider band of working people and intellectuals. To date, these bearers of liberation's reignited torch have not had to rely too much on the men – and children – ‘doing the fighting in front of us.’

To be sure, they and their allies all over the world will be able to break the sanctions imposed by a new NGO Bill. But their struggles will be much more constrained, and the legislation will enable the ruling party to single out its most persistent enemies. Hopefully this will not mean that the new opposition will have to move to the strategies of those trying to contain the democratic space they are expanding so assiduously. Assuredly, no one will believe the justification for such repressive legislation. They should, however, worry about the dependence syndrome of which the aid and the authoritarianism are component parts.²⁹ Perhaps, too, they should note that the Council meant to govern the NGO Act is eligible for foreign funding.³⁰

David Moore, [e-mail]

*This briefing was read at the African Studies Association of Australasia and the Pacific Annual Meeting, University of Western Australia in Perth, November 26–28, 2004. A short version is ‘Unmasking Zanu PF hypocrisy about NGOs,’ Zimbabwe Independent, October 29, 2004. Thanks to Steve Kibble at the CIIR for archival access, to David Blake, Librarian at the Commonwealth Secretariat and to the British taxpayers for the National Archives and its helpful workers at Kew Gardens. I am grateful also to Stanford's Hoover Institute librarians and archivists, who belie their employer's conservative reputation. The hospitality of the Politics Discipline at the University of Adelaide in Australia assisted the completion of this paper.

Who? The World Trade Organization

Global Exchange

The WTO is fundamentally undemocratic

The policies of the WTO impact all aspects of society and the planet, but it is not a democratic, transparent institution. The WTO rules are written by and for corporations with inside access to the negotiations. For example, the US Trade Representative gets heavy input for negotiations from 17 ‘Industry Sector Advisory Committees.’ Citizen input by consumer, environmental, human rights and labor organizations is consistently ignored. Even simple requests for information are denied, and the proceedings are held in secret. Who elected this secret global government?

The WTO will not make us safer

The WTO would like you to believe that creating a world of ‘free trade’ will promote global understanding and peace. On the contrary, the domination of international trade by rich countries for the benefit of their individual interests fuels anger and resentment that make us less safe. To build real global security, we need international agreements that respect peo-ple's rights to democracy and trade systems that promote global justice.

The WTO tramples labor & human rights

WTO rules put the ‘rights’ of corporations to profit over human and labor rights. The WTO encourages a ‘race to the bottom’ in wages by pitting workers against each other rather than promoting internationally recognized labor standards. The WTO has ruled that it is illegal for a government to ban a product based on the way it is produced, such as with child labor. It has also ruled that governments cannot take into account ‘non commercial values’ such as human rights, or the behavior of companies that do business with vicious dictatorships such as Burma when making purchasing decisions.

The WTO would privatize essential services

The WTO is seeking to privatize essential public services such as education, health care, energy and water. Privatization means the selling off of public assets - such as radio airwaves or schools – toprivate (usually foreign) corporations, to run for profit rather than the public good. The WTO's General Agreement on Trade in Services, or GATS, includes a list of about 160 threatened services including elder and child care, sewage, garbage, park maintenance, telecommunications, construction, banking, insurance, transportation, shipping, postal services, and tourism. In some countries, privatization is already occurring. Those least able to pay for vital services – working class communities and communities of color – are the ones who suffer the most.

The WTO is destroying the environment

The WTO is being used by corporations to dismantle hard-won local and national environmental protections, which are attacked as ‘barriers to trade’. The very first WTO panel ruled that a provision of the US Clean Air Act, requiring both domestic and foreign producers alike to produce cleaner gasoline, was illegal. The WTO declared illegal a provision of the Endangered Species Act that requires shrimp sold in the US to be caught with an inexpensive device allowing endangered sea turtles to escape. The WTO is attempting to deregulate industries including logging, fishing, water utilities, and energy distribution, which will lead to further exploitation of these natural resources.

The WTO is killing people

The WTO's fierce defense of 'trade Related Intellectual Property’ rights (TRIPs) – patents, copyrights and trademarks – comes at the expense of health and human lives. The WTO has protected for pharmaceutical companies' ‘right to profit’ against governments seeking to protect their people's health by providing lifesaving medicines in countries in areas like sub-saharan Africa, where thousands die every day from HIV/ AIDS. Developing countries won an important victory in 2001 when they affirmed the right to produce generic drugs (or import them if they lacked production capacity), so that they could provide essential lifesaving medicines to their populations less expensively. Unfortunately, in September 2003, many new conditions were agreed to that will make it more difficult for countries to produce those drugs. Once again, the WTO demonstrates that it favors corporate profit over saving human lives.

The WTO is increasing inequality

Free trade is not working for the majority of the world. During the most recent period of rapid growth in global trade and investment (1960 to 1998) inequality worsened both internationally and within countries. The UN Development Program reports that the richest 20% of the world's population consume 86% of the world's resources while the poorest 80% consume just 14%. WTO rules have hastened these trends by opening up countries to foreign investment and thereby making it easier for production to go where the labor is cheapest and most easily exploited and environmental costs are low.

The WTO is increasing hunger

Farmers produce enough food in the world to feed everyone – yet because of corporate control of food distribution, as many as 800 million people worldwide suffer from chronic malnutrition. According to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, food is a human right. In developing countries, as many as four out of every five people make their living from the land. But the leading principle in the WTO's Agreement on Agriculture is that market forces should control agricultural policies rather than a national commitment to guarantee food security and maintain decent family farmer incomes. WTO policies have allowed dumping of heavily subsidized industrially produced food into poor countries, undermining local production and increasing hunger.

The WTO hurts poor, small countries in favor of rich powerful nations

The WTO supposedly operates on a consensus basis, with equal decision-making power for all. In reality, many important decisions get made in a process whereby poor countries' negotiators are not even invited to closed door meetings – and then ‘agreements’ are announced that poor countries didn't even know were being discussed. Many countries do not even have enough trade personnel to participate in all the negotiations or to even have a permanent representative at the WTO. This severely disadvantages poor countries from representing their interests. Likewise, many countries are too poor to defend themselves from WTO challenges from the rich countries, and change their laws rather than pay for their own defense.

The WTO undermines local level decision-making and national sovereignty

The WTO's ‘most favored nation’ provision requires all WTO member countries to treat each other equally and to treat all corporations from these countries equally regardless of their track record. Local policies aimed at rewarding companies who hire local residents, use domestic materials, or adopt environmentally sound practices are essentially illegal under the WTO. Developing countries are prohibited from creating local laws that developed countries once pursued, such as protecting new, domestic industries until they can be internationally competitive. California Governor Gray Davis vetoed a ‘Buy California’ bill that would have granted a small preference to local businesses because it was WTO-illegal. Conforming with the WTO required entire sections of US laws to be rewritten. Many countries are even changing their laws and constitutions in anticipation of potential future WTO rulings and negotiations.

There are alternatives to the WTO

Citizen organizations have developed alternatives to the corporate-dominated system of international economic governance. Together we can build the political space that nurtures a democratic global economy that promotes jobs, ensures that every person is guaranteed their human rights to food, water, education, and health care, promotes freedom and security, and preserves our shared environment for future generations.

The tide is turning against free trade and the WTO!

International opposition to the WTO is growing. Massive protests in Seattle of 1999 brought over 50,000 people together to oppose the WTO – and succeeded in shutting the meeting down. When the WTO met in 2001, the Trade negotiators were unable meet their goals of expanding the WTO's reach. The WTO met in Cancu´n, Mexico from 10–14 September 2004, and met thousands of activists in protest and scoring a major victory for democracy. Developing countries refused to give in to the rich countries' agenda of WTO expansion – and caused the talks to collapse!

Preventing opportunities for development

Proponents of establishing investor protections under the WTO are pushing for binding rules that would allow foreign investors to enter countries without conditions or regulations, and to be granted ‘national treatment’. If granted national treatment, foreign investors must be treated no differently than domestic investors. If such agreements become a reality, developing countries will be prevented from taking the very same actions that developed countries took in their early stages of industrialization. Specifically, they will be prohibited from providing tax incentives, targeted subsidies, and purchasing contracts to developing industries so that they can compete against foreign firms. Because of the natural advantages the MNCs have as large experienced firms, the predictable result of such disastrous policies will be unfair preferences for foreign investors.

Outlawing performance requirements

Performance requirements, crucial for meeting development goals, will also be prohibited if such agreements are established. Developing countries will lose the ability to demand use of local materials, local labor, and demand technology transfer, which stimulate growth in the local economy. Additionally, the improvement of environmental and labor standards will be nearly impossible as countries will be pressured to compete in a ‘race to the bottom’. This will particularly prove true if, as under NAFTA, governments are prohibited from screening investors on the basis of such criteria as worker compensation or environmental standards.

Investor rights over citizen rights

Perhaps most alarming are the provisions that would model those in NAFTA's Chapter 11. Under NAFTA's Chapter 11, governments are prohibited from passing laws which adversely affect the business of foreign investors, regardless of the role that such legislation would have in meeting national social and development goals. In the event that such legislation negatively affects the profits of a multinational corporation, individual companies have the right to sue the foreign government in a secret NAFTA tribunal – bypassing the national courts. If the corporation wins, the accused government must then compensate the corporation in the amount of profits they claim to have lost – including hypothetical profits that they claim they would have made twenty years into the future! This confers new rights on MNCs that neither domestic companies nor citizens – who have to obey national laws – enjoy. It creates a class of 'supercitizenship’ for foreign corporations at the expense of citizen sovereignty.

Wheels in motion: Moving towards multilateral investment agreements

In spite of promises made by developed countries to focus the agenda at the WTO Cancun ministerial on development issues, rich countries instead lobbied heavily to expand the WTO by adding a new agreement on investment. The effects of developing such an investment agreement would be disastrous for the welfare of people and the environment in both developed and developing countries, as legislators will lose the sovereign right to pursue policies that puts the public interest above corporate interests.

Resisting corporate domination

Many developing countries expressed their opposition to bringing new investment issues to the Cancun ministerial of the WTO in September 2003. It was clear during the negotiations that rich countries employed strong-arm tactics to attempt to force the introduction of the investment issue despite clear opposition. However, on the last day of the ministerial, large groups of developing countries came together and voiced their total opposition to the launching of new negotiations on investment and other New Issues. This strong coalition of diverse developing countries maintained solidarity to oppose the rich countries' agenda, and scored a clear victory for democracy and the poor in Cancun. It is imperative that developing countries continue to oppose the launching of investment negotiations in the WTO, and that citizens continue to hold their representatives accountable.

Alternative proposals

Developing countries must retain the autonomy to pursue strategies that ensure that foreign investment contributes in a positive manner to the realization of national goals. Additionally, developed countries should pursue trade positions that will benefit the public welfare rather than the bottom line of a few large multinational corporations. To this end, binding obligations on investors should be instituted to ensure that they behave in a manner that is consistent with international human rights and development objectives. A fair and equitable trade agreement would include measures to counter corporate predatory business practices, anti-labor policies, and environmental degradation. Finally, in order to make corporations more accountable, enforceable international standards should be established for the reporting and disclosure of information.

Eight years of experience with the WTO has shown that it is still dominated by the interests of rich countries and elite businesses around the world. It's time for a fundamental review of the WTO's impact, and to scale down or abolish and replace the WTO with a completely different institution. Furthermore, an alternative to the FTAA draft currently being negotiated must be developed so that issues of social justice are not subordinated to corporate interests. Strengthening the rights of investors will do little to benefit working people in either developing or rich countries. On the contrary, an agreement of this nature will benefit corporate interests at the expense of ordinary citizens.

© Global Exchange 2004, 2017 Mission Street, #303, San Francisco, CA 94110; tel: [phone] fax: [phone].

Editor's Note: Within the global justice movement, see Focus on the Global South (www.focusweb.org) and the Third World Network in Penang (www.twnside.org); Green Alternatives to Globalisation: A Manifesto by Michael Woodin & Caroline Lucas. Published by Pluto Press, 2005.

The European union: New start or old spin?

Paul Goodison

Since stepping into the post of EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson has been very active on issues of importance to the African Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) group of countries, which enjoy special non-reciprocal preferential access to the EU market under the Cotonou Agreement. One of Commissioner Mandelson's first policy speeches was to ACP ministers on 1 December 2004. One of his first overseas trips was to the Caribbean to consult Caribbean ministers and see for himself the challenges posed to the region's sugar and banana producers by changes in EU policies. January 20, 2005 saw the launch of the Commissioner's ideas on how to put development concerns at the centre of the EU's economic partnership agreement (EPA) trade negotiations, while 24 January saw him attending the ACP-EU agriculture ministers consultation on EU sugar-sector reform. However throughout this time, while nominally focusing on the side dish of bilateral ACP-EU trade relations, Commissioner Mandelson has been quietly warming up ACP governments for the main course: securing ministerial-level agreement to a WTO text in Hong Kong.

Undoubtedly the Commissioner has been very busy in his first few months in office dealing with issues affecting Europe's trade with Africa, but what does it all mean? Is this a fresh broom sweeping in with new ideas on what the main plank of EU trade policy towards Africa should be, abandoning neo-liberal ideas that free trade will solve everything, or is it the ‘King of Spin’ striking again? This briefing seeks to review the ideas that Commissioner Mandelson is putting forward and how the European Commission (EC) is seeking to interpret them operationally in the light of their underlying policy agenda. This agenda involves getting WTO acceptance of its CAP-reform strategy and a shift in its agricultural exports to higher-value-added products.

Putting development at the heart of EPAs

The over-riding ‘new’ idea which Commissioner Mandelson has put forward is that development concerns should be at the heart of the process of EPA negotiations. This was emphasised in the Com-missioner's statement to the Civil Society Dialogue Group on 20 January 2005.¹ In the face of a growing body of criticism from African social actors and European development NGOs, Commissioner Mandelson rejected the idea that EPAs should be scrapped, but acknowledged that the approach needed to change so as to strengthen its development focus. He claimed EPAs ‘are not classical hard-nosed, free-trade agreements of the sort that developing blocks negotiate between them’. If this is the case what is it that makes the EPA process different from ‘classical’ free-trade area agreements, for example, the kind that the EU signed with South Africa in 1999?

EPAs involve more than tariff removal

First there appears to be the EC's aspirations to ensure that EPAs cover more than simply trade in goods. While this opens up possibilities for the establishment of targeted programmes of assistance to address supply-side constraints and enhance African production and trading capacity, from the EC perspective it is seen to apply primarily to the need to get the right economic policy environment in place. For the EC this requires the negotiation of a range of agreements in trade-related areas, often on issues where African governments have declined to make any commitments in the WTO. This ‘WTO +’ approach is seen as central to securing the claimed economic benefits of EPAs, since it is seen as consolidating the ability of African countries to compete and take advantage of market opening. This ‘WTO+’ approach also characterises the EC's approach to trade in services

Creating the right conditions

Second, Commissioner Mandelson and EC documents have placed considerable emphasis on measures to address constraints on competitive production. Addressing ACP ministers on 1 December 2004² he argued that for trade openness to generate growth and contribute to poverty eradication ‘the right conditions’ have to be in place. If they are not the benefits of trade openness cannot be reaped. For Commissioner Mandelson these ‘right conditions’ appeared to relate primarily to improving the business climate, establishing appropriate domestic economic policies and following principles of good governance, although in his speech to ACP ministers reference was also made to the need to tackle supply-side constraints on competitive production. In this latter regard, however, Commissioner Mandelson did not go as far as his former ministerial colleague Gordon Brown, who while on tour in Mozambique spoke of the need for an ‘infrastructure fund’ for Africa to finance ‘roads, railways, water, electricity, so that major infrastructural concerns can be alleviated in order to develop the supply-side of the economy’.

The sentiments expressed by Chancellor Gordon Brown are much closer to the aspirations of ACP governments in creating the ‘right conditions’ for trade opening to generate growth than the prescriptive policy preoccupations of Commissioner Mandelson.

The weight given to these different factors is of some significance for the reality is that there is currently little evidence that addressing supply-side constraints is being accorded priority within the EU aid-deployment process. This was certainly the case in regard to the use of the initial 9^th European Development Fund National Indicative Programme allocations (the NIP is the main EU financial instrument for extending development assistance to African countries). It is also a feature of the current mid-term review of the 9^th EDF NIPs. This is a serious matter, for given the delays in approving new financial allocations and then subsequently committing EDF funds, if programmes to address supply-side constraints are not being designed now they are unlikely to be effectively rolled out until 2012-14 at the earliest.³

The centrality of regional integration

The third factor which is seen as making EPAs different from traditional free-trade area agreements and placing development at the heart of the EU's trade policy towards Africa, is the centrality accorded support to regional integration within the EPA process. In his 20 January speech Commissioner Mandelson maintained that ‘trade opening … is not at the forefront’ within the EPA process, rather ‘it comes towards the end, after regional integration has kick-started growth, after long transition periods, after Europe has invested aid and support in these least developed countries’ capacity to trade’. However the question arises: what does Commissioner Mandelson mean when he talks about the priority accorded to supporting regional integration?

An indication can be found in his 1 December 2004 speech to ACP ministers, when he spoke of the need to ‘develop regional markets, with a common set of border measures, tariff and non-tariff, as an incentive for that pivotal requirement for successful development: investment’. He continued ‘setting rules for regional development are at the heart of the EPA process, at the heart of the Cotonou mandate and are central to the roadmaps that we have jointly agreed for the negotiations’.

The emphasis here is clearly on trade policy rule-making at the regional level. This sits quite easily with the EC's long-standing approach to the regional dimension of EPAs which has focussed on the formal conclusion of regional-integration agreements – that is essentially promoting free-trade areas as stepping stones to customs unions, with which the EU can then conclude regional EPAs. It does not appear to refer to the broader process of regional integration, whereby trade integration is a tool for the transformation of regional production structures.

The Sectoral Deployment of 9

Sector	% of total funds allocated
Structural adjustment	30.7%
Transport	7.9%
Governance	7.0%
Rural development	6.7%
Water	6.3%
Education	5.0%
Health	4.3%
Civil society	2.9%
Social provision	1.3%
Agriculture	1.1%
Food Aid	1.0%
Business	0.6%
Environment	0.5%
Trade	0.1%
Undifferentiated	3.1%

Differing concepts of what regional integration is about

A broader conceptualisation of what a development-oriented regional integration process should look like was recently given expression in the UN Economic Commission for Africa's report on the economic and welfare impacts of EPAs in Africa.⁴ This report placed considerable importance on first building intra-African markets and developing African supply capacities to promote intra-African trade to serve African markets from African production. It noted that a key constraint on the exploitation of traditional preferences has been the absence of supply capacities. It argued that regional supply capacities had to be built before liberalisation. The report therefore advocated an approach to EPAs whereby ‘sSA countries liberalise trade among themselves without immediate reciprocation on the preferences granted by the EU on the understanding that the EU is in a position to agree to EPAs that provide enough time to the African countries to build their capacities so that they can eventually be able to compete with the EU producers and exporters’. This it is held will ‘enable the producers and exporters in the region to build capacities as they compete among themselves before facing the EU producers and exporters when the reciprocity principle kicks in.’ At first glance there does not appear to be that much difference between what Commissioner Mandelson put forward to the Civil Society Dialogue Group on 20 January and what the UN ECA is advocating. However as the ECA report noted given the challenges faced in integrating African markets and building competitive supply capacities to serve these newly enlarged markets, ‘EPAs should look beyond the 12 years as the possible dates for introducing reciprocity’.

Herein lies the key shortcoming in Commissioner Mandelson's approach, for while paying lip-service to the need to address the wider development agenda, Commissioner Mandelson remains wedded to existing EC time-frames for the conclusion of EPAs. These time frames simply do not allow sufficient time for building real regional markets and developing competitive supply capacities to serve these enlarged regional markets, prior to the introduction of reciprocity in trade relations with the EU.

The problem of time frames

The EC remains committed to concluding EPAs by the end of 2007; indeed in the eastern and southern Africa region the ‘road map’ for negotiations has set a target for concluding ‘substantive negotiations’ by the end of 2005. This would involve firm and binding commitments to tariff-reduction schedules and the eventual elimination of tariffs on a specified volume of current trade in specified years.

But how can African regional groupings determine such timetables for tariff reductions and elimination, in ways consistent with the development of competitive regional production structures designed to serve enlarged regional markets, when the process of creating those regional markets is still in its infancy within the regional configuration with whom the EU is currently negotiating? Rational choices on which products to ‘front load’ for tariff elimination, which products to ‘back load’, which products to exclude from tariff-elimination commitments, which products to subject to special trade arrangements, and which products to subject to special safeguard provisions, simply cannot be made at the regional level until regional markets have been created and regional production structures have evolved.

To do so would be to abandon prematurely the very policy tools that must form an important part of regional efforts to nurture the development of competitive forms of regional production to serve enlarged regional markets. This is a dimension of the sequencing of the broader regional-integration processes and the negotiation and implementation of EPAs which the EC largely ignores. This is in large part based on the ideological belief in what is termed ‘open regionalism’, that is the promotion of regional integration at the same time as an opening of regional markets to increased competition, from in this case the EU. This sequencing is in distinct contradiction to the sequencing advocated in the UN ECA report and strongly favoured by a number of prominent African trade negotiators. When confronted with this problem of the current timetable EC officials invariably fall back on the mantra of ‘WTO compatibility’ and the question of ‘the waiver’. It is pointed out that the current WTO waiver will lapse on 1 January 2008 and that therefore new WTO-compatible free-trade area agreements need to be in place by this date. At times the issue of 'the waiver’ and ‘WTO compatibility’ almost seems to take on a religious significance, with there being only one true path to the attainment of compliance.

However this sanctified approach to WTO compatibility is now being questioned by prominent African trade negotiators who have advanced the concept of ‘light EPAs’.

‘Light EPAs’: Overcoming the time constraint

The concept of a ‘light EPA’ would require ACP countries to grant reciprocity in the tariff treatment accorded EU goods only to the level necessary to secure a WTO waiver . Thus if it was deemed that a free-trade area between, on the one hand, a developed trading bloc like the EU and on the other hand, groupings of least developed and developing countries, need only cover 80% of all currently traded goods and can be asymmetrical in its product coverage and time-frames for implementation, then if the EU were to grant complete duty-free access for all imports, the African regional groupings concerned would only need to phase-in zero duties on 60% of imports from the EU. Work undertaken by Dr Chris Stevens of the Institute for Development Studies in Sussex on the bound tariff schedules prevailing in Southern Africa, suggests that such a ‘light EPA’ would not involve the removal of substantive tariff protection, since high tariff items could all be excluded from such a ‘light EPA’. This attainment of WTO compatibility would represent the first stage of the EPA process and would deal exclusively with trade in goods. This would be accompanied by a second crucial component of the EPA process, namely the establishment of targeted programmes of support for the building of regional markets and development of competitive regional supply capacities. This could, as appropriate, embrace support for the development of regional policies in a range of trade-related areas and in the provision of a range of services. Once these programmes have been successfully implemented and have begun to deliver results, both in terms of deepened regional trade and a broader regional production base, then consideration could be given to a more extensive process of tariff elimination on imports from the EU, geared towards further stimulating the development of regional competitiveness.

The concept of a ‘light EPA’ constitutes a radical departure from the approach which the EC has adopted to date, yet would be wholly consistent with the broad pro-development sentiments which Commissioner Mandelson has been advocating since his inauguration as Trade Commissioner. It remains to be seen whether the Trade Commissioner will be open to this alternative concept and whether he can then carry the member states and Commission services with him in operationalising it.

The contribution of EPAs to building regional integration

The implicit response of the EC to the argument that more time is needed to build regional markets and deepen regional integration is to argue that the EPA process itself is directly stimulating regional integration in Africa to an unprecedented degree. According to the EC the EPA negotiating process has heightened the political profile given to regional policies and created a situation where ‘many ACP leaders perceive EPA negotiations as an opportunity and a challenge’.⁵

This is undoubtedly the case but not necessarily in the positive way the EC depicts it. In some regions the EPA process has heightened the political intensity of regional discussions because it has led to the fragmentation of existing regional integration schemes .

The membership of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), whose roots go back as far as 1980, have been split by the process of EPA negotiations. Six members of the SADC have chosen to negotiate as part of the Eastern and Southern African (ESA) EPA negotiating configuration (which embraces in total 16 countries). Seven members of the SADC are seeking to negotiate as the SADC configuration. This split largely arose because of the fears which a number of SADC member states had over the dangers of simply being drawn into the EU-South Africa Trade Development and Co-operation Agreement TDCA), a free-trade area agreement which pre-dated (and pre-empted) the opening of the EPA negotiations.

The Fragmentation of the SADC Configuration

SADC Configuration	ESA Configuration
Botswana	Democratic Republic of Congo
Lesotho	Malawi
Namibia	Mauritius
Swaziland	Seychelles
Mozambique	Zambia
Angola	Zimbabwe
Tanzania

The TDCA itself has also created tensions and frictions within an existing regional integration initiative, as a result of the EU choosing to negotiate a free-trade area agreement with only one of the members of the Southern African Customs Union (SACU), the largest, South Africa. The smaller members of the SACU - Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, andSwaziland were excluded from the negotiations with South Africa and now find themselves de facto part of a free-trade area with the EU, over which they have had no influence. Despite the decision of the governments of these countries to negotiate as part of the SADC configuration, this is likely to prove very difficult since the EC has made it quite clear that a country can only be a member of one free-trade area agreement with the EU. The real issue for the BLNS is thus how to retro-fit the EU-South Africa TDCA to meet their needs in the context of the existence of SACU.

The SADC configuration also faces a further problem, namely the absence of the largest regional economy South Africa from the negotiations, since South Africa already has a free-trade area agreement with the EU, the TDCA. In this context how can it be argued that the EPA process is promoting deeper regional integration in Southern Africa?

Looking beyond the SADC to the East African Community (EAC), here again the EPA process is generating problems. For some years now Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania have been moving towards relaunching the East African Community as a Customs Union. Steady progress was being made. Then along came the EPA negotiations and the EAC is split with Tanzania choosing to negotiate as part of the SADC configuration since it is not a member of the Common Market of Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) and Kenya and Uganda choosing to negotiate as part of the Eastern and Southern African region, which has at its heart the COMESA. Even COMESA itself has been split with the organisation's largest economy, Egypt, not being a party to the ESA configuration negotiations with the EU.

The EC claims that this is the fault of African countries and the problems generated by their overlapping membership of a multiplicity of regional initiatives. However, rather than ignoring this reality would it not have been better for the EU to support a rationalisation/harmonisation and consolidation of regional initiatives prior to the launching of EPA negotiations?

Undoubtedly the EPA process has heightened the ‘political profile’ of regional integration processes and made many ACP leaders perceive EPA negotiations as a ‘challenge’, however this is not for the positive reasons which the EC suggests, but rather as a result of the EPA throwing into disarray long-standing regional integration plans and initiatives. Commissioner Mandelson in his ‘new’ approach has simply ignored these inconvenient consequences of the launching of the EPA negotiations. It remains to be seen what solutions he will offer to these problems in the future.

Responding to EU sugar-sector reform

Turning to the crucial question of the EU sugar-sector reform (which will see eastern and southern African sugar exporters losing an annual income of around €156 million) and the issue of EU assistance to the required restructuring,⁶ Commissioner Mandelson's role is a tricky one. He is responsible for the trade consequences of the reform, but not the basic process of EU sugar-sector reform, which falls under the portfolio of Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel. Equally Commissioner Mandelson is not responsible for the development assistance dimension of the EU's proposed policy response, management of which will fall under the portfolio of Commissioner Louis Michel. Commissioner Mandelson thus finds himself centrally located in the debates, but with little direct responsibility over the scope of EU sugar-sector reform or the speed and effectiveness of the EU's development assistance response.⁷

Nevertheless he has taken positions which mark something of a departure from the past, most notably on 1 December 2004 when he made it clear to ACP ministers that the EU's proposed 33% reduction in the EU institutional price for sugar was a ‘first step’ in the reform process, not the final objective. While this had been implicit in earlier Commission statements about bringing the sugar regime into line with the general trajectory for CAP reform, it had never been so explicitly stated.

This acknowledgement has important implications for sugar-sector adjustments in Africa, for it means that over the medium- to long-term it is likely that EU sugar prices will continue to fall towards world market price levels. It is these even lower prices on which long-term sugar-sector restructuring plans in ACP countries will need to be drawn up.

Commissioner Mandelson's frankness was however matched by his implacability on the question of the timing and scope of reform. Speaking in the Caribbean at the beginning of January 2005 he made it clear that the EU.

will not back down on plans to overhaul its preferential sugar regime. ⁸

He cited internal pressures for reform arising from the high internal EU sugar price as the main factor driving reform pointing out that for the EU the status quo was not an option. He did, however, indicate that ACP sugar producers would get a ‘breather’ to allow them more time to prepare for the end of high EU sugar prices since ‘in all probability’ reform would be deferred a year and be phased ‘in two stages over a two year period at a minimum’. He maintained that ACP suppliers would not simply be abandoned. They would in fact continue to enjoy preferential access to the EU market. He even went so far as to suggest that increased volumes and additional market access could form part of the EC policy response, so that EU sugar-sector reform would have a neutral impact on ACP sugar industries. This is an important issue for competitive non-least developed southern African sugar exporters (notably Swaziland and Zimbabwe⁹). If these countries were to be granted unlimited access to the EU market for their sugar exports then they could indeed be better off under a reformed EU sugar regime, given their growing exposure to world market prices for their sugar exports. However, in order to ensure a revenue-neutral impact their existing quotas under both the sugar protocol and the special preferential sugar arrangement would need to be doubled. It came as something of a surprise therefore when no reference was made to the possibility of increased duty-free access to ACP suppliers to the EU sugar market in the EC's working document on the EU support strategy for affected ACP sugar-protocol beneficiaries released on 24 January 2005. The trade dimension of this action plan was largely restricted to highlighting the claimed benefits that ACP countries would gain from the conclusion of the Doha Development Round and the signing of EPAs with the EU.

This raises the questions: was Commissioner Mandelson simply flying kites in the Caribbean to demonstrate his openness to dialogue or is he genuinely committed to increased market access for competitive ACP sugar producers as part of the EU's response strategy but facing difficulties in selling this to fellow Commissioner Fischer Boel and EU agriculture ministers? This will be a critical issue in the coming months, as will be the EC's proposals for developing regional markets for ACP sugar.

The Commission working document identified the development of regional trade in sugar as an important aspect of the market diversification which ACP producers will need to pursue in the face of EU sugar-sector reform. Yet it ignores many of the fundamental problems faced in developing this trade, not least of which is the annual export by the EU of 600,000 tonnes of refined sugar to Africa, at world market prices (or less than half the average EU production cost of sugar). It will be very difficult for African sugar suppliers to compete under these conditions. The EC working document has acknowledged that the development of the regional sugar trade may require the extension of regional trade preferences. However, will the EC follow through on this recognition and support the classification of sugar and sugar-based products as a 'special product’ in the WTO to which special trade treatment can then be accorded? Will the EC accept similar special treatment for sugar and sugar-based products under EPAs, with such products being excluded from tariff reductions or subjected to special safeguards or special arrangements?

Finally there is the problem of investment. African countries export raw sugar to the EU while importing refined sugar. For the intra-African sugar trade to develop investments will be required in refining capacity. Equally investments will be required in freight forwarding, storage and transhipment facilities to transport sugar cost effectively between sugar-surplus countries of Africa and sugar-deficit countries. Yet with EU price reductions pending, commercial financing for sugar-sector related investments are drying up or becoming much more expensive.

This is an issue which could easily be addressed by making available low costs EIB-administered risk-capital loans to all ACP sugar-exporting countries requiring restructuring. This would, however, require a change in EIB lending policy. While this is an area outside the scope of Commissioner Mandelson's formal portfolio, it is an issue which could be taken up with his colleague Louis Michel, since it is central to the development of intra-regional trade in sugar in Africa.

If all these issue scan be addressed then the development of the intra-African sugar trade as an alternative basis for the future development of low-cost sugar production in southern and eastern African countries would appear a reasonable prospect. It remains to be seen, however, whether under Commissioner Mandelson's leadership there is any effective follow through on the detailed requirements to deliver on nominal policy commitments.

EPAs & sugar

Finally with regard to the question of EPAs and the sugar sector, the EC is now proposing that future market access for ACP sugar-protocol beneficiaries be incorporated into future EPAs. This appears a simple solution to ensuring WTO compatibility for any future ACP sugar arrangement. However this is far from being a straightforward issue. As the CTA's Agritrade news update for February 2005 has questioned:

• •

  Would the sugar quotas to be incorporated into the EPA agreements be allocated to the regional grouping as a whole, or would they be country-specific within the regional allocation?

• •

  Would non-LDC sugar-producing countries which had not traditionally benefited from a sugar quota (e.g. in the Caribbean EPA contextthe Dominican Republic) be allowed access to the regional sugar quota if traditional suppliers could no longer competitively supply the EU market at the lower price?

• •

  If the quota is to be allocated to the regional grouping as a whole, how would quota-restricted access for a regional grouping be reconciled with continued unrestricted duty-free access for the LDC sugar-exporting countries which form part of that regional grouping?

• •

  Equally, would quota reallocations, where countries can no longer competitively supply the EU sugar market at the lower price, only occur within the regional groupings? Or would there be provision for the transfers of quotas across regional groupings?

This is important for southern Africa where the lowest-cost production in the ACP is located.

• •

  Would the sugar arrangements incorporated into EPAs allow for an expansion of sugar exports to defray the costs of price reductions as has been implicit in statements by Commissioner Mandelson?

• •

  How would SPS access be dealt with? Would these quotas form part of any regional quota (an important issue in both eastern and southern Africa), or would the sugar arrangements incorporated into EPAs simply reflect existing national quotas under the sugar protocol?

This illustrates some of the difficulties faced in trying to incorporate sugar-market preferences into EPAs.

The Main dish

A common theme running through Commissioner Mandelson's pronouncements to ACP ministers, be it on EPAs or sugar is the importance of concluding the Doha Development Round at the Hong Kong Ministerial in December 2005. Speaking to Caribbean ministers in Guyana at the beginning of January 2005 Commissioner Mandelson emphasised how together the ACP group and the EU

must craft, in the DDA, a global strategy for the smaller and more vulnerable WTO members, but their interests will be better served by embracing the Round rather then seeking to slow it down and remaining over-dependent on preferences.

During this visit he then called for agreement to be reached on sugar-sector support measures before the Hong Kong WTO Ministerial in December 2005. While short on specifics, the Commission memorandum on the action plan for ACP sugar-protocol beneficiaries asserted that the conclusion of the Doha Development Round was a key component of the trade dimension of EU's proposed response strategy. The EU's new ‘charm offensive’ in the run up to the Hong Kong WTO Ministerial is now well underway.

This is a central consideration which needs to be borne in mind in looking at Commissioner Mandelson's statement and commitments, be they on the centrality of the development dimension to EPAs, or the importance of an early start to EU assistance with sugar-sector restructuring. The questions arise:

• •

  Are these commitments sincere or just part of the ‘charm offensive’ designed to secure ACP endorsement of a Doha Round which successfully promotes and defends EU commercial interests?

• •

  Will ACP ministers be able to use the run up to Hong Kong to extract substantive concessions from the EU on turning EPAs into genuine development tools or ensuring early assistance to ACP sugar-sector restructuring, in exchange for their support in Hong Kong?

• •

  Will Commissioner Mandelson prove an ally to the ACP in helping them secure the necessary substantive changes in the EC's current approach?

• •

  Or will the King of Spin Strike Again? It remains to be seen.

Paul Goodison , e-mail: [e-mail].

Editor's Note: see The Guardian letters page, 24 March 2005 from: Dr. Daleep Mukarji, Director, Christian Aid, Peter Mandelson, EU Trade Commissioner and Caroline Lucas, MEP Green, UK.

Activists press for full debt cancellation

Singy Hanyona (Porto Alegre, Brazil)

A Global Call to Action Against Poverty has been launched to press rich countries to completely cancel debt that has in most cases compromised economic and social development of poor countries.

According to Action Aid International, a member of the Global Call to Action

In Malawi, more money is spent on servicing the country's debt than on health, despite nearly one in five Malawians being HIV positive, according to the Action Aid report. Launching the G-CAP, Brazilian President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva called for the rich and powerful countries to take responsibility for their promises and increase aid directed towards the achievement of the priorities of developing countries. GCAP is a coalition of national and international civil society groups uniting to take action in 2005 against what they call ‘the scandal of global poverty’. This coalition is braced to bring tangible results this year. The G-CAP has identified:

The G8 meeting of world leaders from rich countries in Britain in July 2005;

The United Nations review of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) Summit in September 2005;

The World Trade Organization (WTO) Ministerial meeting at the end of 2005;

and the Blair Commission for Africaas unique opportunities for real action to tackle poverty and injustice.

Recent United Nations reports show that the internationally agreed targets for Against Poverty (G-CAP) Coalition, Zambia and Malawi for instance face increasing demands in debt repayments each year. A report by Action Aid International, presented at the 5th World Social Forum, reveals that in Zambia, debt repayments to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) alone cost US$25 million per annum. This is significantly higher than the budget for education in a country where 40% of rural women and children are unable to read and write. Zambia owes the international community about US $6.7 billion, although the IMF has pledged reduction of the amount after the country meets targets for the Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative later this year.

Poverty reduction, such as the MDGs will not be achieved without full debt cancellation for the poorest countries, especially those in southern Africa. According to Henry Malumo, Coordinator of the Zambian Civil Society Committee on the MDGs:

The year 2005 must be remembered as the year that changed the world.

The Porto Alegre meeting noted that for over 20 years, the IMF, World Bank, and the WTO have forcedpoor countries to implement a wide range of economic and social reforms in return for low interest loans which do not serve the interests of developing countries. The New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) is seen as a pre-cursor to solving massive debt owed by developing countries. Similarly, inter-governmental linkages between civil society organisations and governments are vital, said Asha-Rose Migiro, Minister of Community Development in Tanzania. Speaking during the launch of another global initiative, the Citizens Global Platform, Magiro said there is need for regional partnership initiatives, such as NEPAD, to bring in the silent and marginalised groups that are sidelined in political decision-making. Social activists at this year's forum also discussed the issue of debt in the face of the tsunami disaster that hit several Asian and African countries on 26 December 2004. Delegates expressed their deepest sympathy to the tsunami victims. They expressed concern that in the face of this massive destruction, northern and international creditors should not continue to hold the South in bondage for the debts that have contributed to their impoverishment. Some social activists noted that it is now one month after the tsunami, but there has not been adequate response from the world richest nations and the international financial institutions that they control.

Africa's debt is estimated at US$540 billion with debt expenditure accounting for 70% of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The Forum called on the debtors to convert at least US$15 billion that Africa owes to fight against the HIV and AIDS pandemic. Instead of prioritising debt servicing, African countries need to be given an opportunity to concentrate on rehabilitation, provision of clean water and other human development programmes.

According to Jubilee South Debt Campaign, to date, an estimated total of only US$6 billion in financial aid has been promised by the G8 countries. This is a drop in the ocean compared to the US $400 billion set aside as the annual US military budget and the nearly US$200 billion that the US and the UK have spent so far on the Iraq war. Jubilee campaigners also allege that the relief package is insignificant compared to the profits that the IMF, the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and Northern governments have made from loans to the South.

SARDC/Southern African News Features, SANF is produced by the Southern African Research and Documentation Centre (SARDC), which has monitored regional developments since 1985. Email [e-mail] // www.sardc.net

Running on empty

New Scientist

Growing crops takes water, and there's far less of it than we thought. It is a sobering thought. The water in an Olympic swimming pool would irrigate enough crops to feed only one person for a year. No wonder the world is running dry. Worse, we are confronted by a startling new revelation: hydrologists have completely miscalculated how much water will be available in future to irrigate crops. It is a mistake that threatens to wreck hundreds of irrigation systems across the globe, cause new famines and waste billions of dollars of precious investment capital. Natural water systems are already in crisis. Some of the world's largest rivers, such as the Nile in Egypt and the Indus in Pakistan, often run almost dry. Underground water reserves are being overpumped by a massive 200 cubic kilometres a year. That's a lot of swimming pools.

But such numbers only tell part of the story. Hydrologists have till now comforted themselves with the belief that we are so inefficient in the way we use water, particularly for irrigation, that modest investment could transform the situation. ‘More crop for every drop’ has been the buzz phrase. On the face of it, this seems like common sense. More than two-thirds of the water we grab from nature is intended for irrigating the crops that feed the world, but nearly two-thirds of that never reaches the plants. Instead water leaks from distribution canals and percolates underground or it evaporates from flooded fields. Capture that wasted water and everything will be OK.

But that word ‘wasted’ is a tricky one. The leaked water is wasted for one farmer, maybe, but often it is not lost to farming. Research presented to the Stockholm Water Symposium in August 2004 by the Comprehensive Assessment of Water Management in Agriculture (CAWMA), an international collaboration by scientists from some 90 institutes, reveals that most is reused by agriculture at some point, either being taken from recharged groundwater or from rivers downstream. This is a hugely important revelation. It does not mean, of course, that saving water at the farm level is entirely useless. Anything that cuts evaporation really does save water. And not all water that seeps down from flooded fields and canals gets recycled. But it does mean there is far less scope for saving irrigation water than we thought. In many places, the introduction of more ‘efficient’ irrigation technologies upstream in river basins will leave parched fields downstream. In Sri Lanka, for example, the lining of canals with cement has already reduced the amount of recharged groundwater. As a consequence, the CAWMA reports tells us, several shallow drinking holes, which provide better quality drinking water than fluoride-laden deep wells in the area, have dried out.

We need other solutions to the water shortage crisis

Right now in India, where virtually every drop of river water is consumed during the long dry season, farmers are being encouraged to switch from growing rice to less thirsty crops like maize, with the promise they can double their yields without increasing irrigation. That is plain wrong. According to the CAWMA report, paddies consume no more water than maize, once the seepage has been discounted.In northern Mexico, the government is lining irrigation canals in the belief that the resulting water savings will allow it to pay back a water debt owed to the US under an old agreement to share the waters of the Rio Grande catchment. Texas farmers will get their promised water, alright, but the price will be paid by Mexican farmers who use underground water fed by those leaking canals. They will see their pumps run dry.

Why has nobody thought of this before?

Well some have, of course, but not many of the hydrologists, irrigation engineers and officials who decide how money is spent on water infrastructure. Europeans in particular rarely think seriously about water. Taps stay running, and by and large rainfall waters much of Europe's crops. But in large parts of the world, water shortages are the number one cause of poverty. Permanent hydrological drought is close to becoming a global fact of life. The new revelations underline just how close we have come to running out of water, and how much harder it will be than we thought to engineer solutions.

©New Scientist vol. 183, issue 2461.

Getting to Boiling Point: Turning up the Heat on Water & Sanitation

Water Aid

When the water starts boiling it is foolish to turn off the heat (Nelson Mandela)

The world's poorest people are still waiting for the water itself, let alone for it to boil. Since the 1980s. Water Decade failed to secure water and sanitation for all the world's population, a procession of international reports and conferences has called for universal access to these services. But constant repetition of the fact that ‘water is life’ has proved not to be enough. The performance of the water sector remains brutally inadequate: more than a billion people are still without safe water and 2.6 billion lack any way to dispose of their excrement in safety and with dignity.

These failures are undermining development: keeping children out of school, stopping adults pursuing their livelihoods, and denying many people good health and in some cases even life. This is the silent emergency affecting the world today. Unless the delivery of water and sanitation improves significantly the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) to halve world poverty by 2015 will be undermined.

To assist in moving from the ‘what’ of policy to the ‘how’ of action, WaterAid has sought the views of practitioners in the 14 countries where it works. Their perspectives on the day-to-day blockages actually preventing them from delivering new water and sanitation services have confirmed that much better use could and should be made of the money in the sector. At the same time calculations of the numbers of people to be reached, the costs of the most basic approaches for doing so and current available resources have confirmed that most countries – 12 out of the 14 examined – need to invest more money if they are to have any chance of reaching their MDG targets for water and sanitation (to halve by 2015 the proportions of people without access to water and sanitation). Better spending of all the money and bringing in new money are political common sense: for communities without safe water, getting access to such water is – almost without exception – their firstpriority. It is also development common sense: children and women in particular need to be free of the burdens of hauling water and of water-related diseases if they are to pursue their education and livelihoods. Where political and development agendas have come together, the power of politics to deliver new water and sanitation services has been clearly seen. How to improve the performance and resourcing of the water sector therefore comes down in the end to the question of whether there is the political will to do so.

Prioritisation: Putting water & sanitation at the heart of poverty reduction

Water Ministry officials are the poor relations of Government, lacking any attention to what they are achieving and last in the queue for resources. But there are two compelling arguments why water supply and sanitation should be a priority of government. Where poor people have a voice, they themselves assert the human right to safe water which governments have a duty to deliver. This was seen at its most effective in Uganda. Communities highlighted water as a top priority when they were consulted about their needs during the national poverty reduction planning process. Energetic civil society advocacy ensured that water was prioritized in the final plan. An additional 2.2 million people gained access to safe water in just three years.

The second key reason to prioritise water supply and sanitation is that without them people simply cannot escape poverty. Not having safe water and basic sanitation results in disease and increased infant mortality, while also holding back economic growth. The time spent collecting water keeps women from paid work and children from school. In Tanzania, 12% more children were found to attend school when safe water was available within 15 minutes rather than one hour from their home. In Nigeria, the government started to eradicate guinea worm when it realised that spending $2 m could recoup 30 million working days every year. Water and sanitation underpin development and without them the MDGs will not be met. Becoming a priority of government is currently a challenge. However, the bigger challenge to financing basic water supply and sanitation provision is how to make the money perform better. Our research identifies a number of key concerns.

Transparency: Be open about what's going on

Many citizens, even those working in the water sector, cannot gauge the full extent and effectiveness of their government's efforts to finance and provide water and sanitation services. Information on spending and its impact is often hard to get hold of, long out of date or inconsistent. In Madagascar even the ministry responsible for water supply finds it difficult to get hold of budget data from the Ministry of Finance. In Ethiopia the latest official expenditure data is for 1996/7. And coverage data in countries is disparate; for example in India and Tanzania coverage rates vary considerably between government reports. The weaknesses in data consistency and accuracy can lead to under-estimation of the scale of need and level of investments required. A lack of transparency can also lead to unequal distribution of services, because it is not clear which areas have the greatest need. Some areas see repeated investment while others are ignored. Attention to monitoring performance and levels of investment in the sector and making this information more readily available enables civil society and parliaments to analyse such inequities and exert pressure to correct them.

Equity: Some for all not all for some

Not enough money is going to the places that need it most. This is happening at each level of decision making. Internationally, less than 40% of aid for water goes to those countries which are home to nearly 90% of the 1.1 billion people who don't have access to clean water. At national level, in Bangladesh for example, Dhaka's water utility has proposed spending $1.5 bn on its sewage system. That could be enough to meet water supply and sanitation targets for the whole country. Such inequitable distribution is evident in other countries too, and not just because data is lacking: political agendas also come into play. In Malawi, areas which are already well-served receive more resources while areas which are still unserved remain that way. Even the choice of technology can make a difference. In Tanzania investments in low cost technologies such as shallow-wells and springs are more equitable than investments in piped water supplies which disproportionately benefit the better off. Yet, donor assistance favours spending on pipes.

Coordination: Don't duplicate

District water officers and other local government officials get trapped in a maze of overlapping water and sanitation projects. Multiple funding and reporting streams – some channelled through central government, others going through provincial administrations or directly to communities – leave people tied to their desks writing applications and reports. This uncoordinated and unwieldy network of funding results in inequities and drains the capacity of public servants. Without unified reporting systems, breakdowns can go unnoticed for years in official data and so fail to have resources allocated for repairs.

Capacity: Give local government the money as well as the responsibility

Local administrative bodies are increasingly expected to shoulder newly decentralised responsibilities for water and sanitation without having the staff they need. The problem is made worse when the responsibilities are decentralised without simultaneous decentralisation of finances. In Tanzania, for example, less than 10% of the total approved water expenditure in 2004/5 was spent through local authorities who have the responsibility for water supplies.

Sustainability: The difference between success & failure

Installing the infrastructure is only the first step. Once built the water and sanitation systems have to keep working. Money has to be raised from users to finance repairs and routine maintenance. The bigger the system the greater the management challenge.

Many big urban systems have suffered years of neglect, starved of investments. Bringing them back from the brink of collapse is now a huge challenge. Many past rural investments have completely collapsed. Spending on infrastructure must go hand in hand with building capacity for managing systems and sustaining them financially. It must involve women as they have strong interests in keeping systems working. Maintaining systems is a balancing act between keeping water affordable and meeting the running costs. Installing overly-sophis-ticated infrastructure which costs users a disproportionate amount of their cash income is a non-starter. It is equally a recipe for disaster to suppress charges below the costs of production. Getting this balance right is greatly influenced by the choice of technology.

Privatisation: A pointless condition

Water sector officials at both national and local levels are wrestling with demands to draw in private sector participation. This has been put forward in the past decade by World Bank-led donors as a solution for developing countries' water needs. Results, however, have been mixed and international private companies themselves are now seeking alternative approaches. But some donors perversely still champion privatisation, making it a condition of aid. A more sensitive, context-determined approach is required. For example in Uganda the short-term contracting-out of the management of Kampala's ailing water utility dramatically improved coverage, collection and productivity. Public sector managers were then able to take these lessons to other urban areas as well as to make further improvements to Kampala's water supply.

Spending, aid & debt: Willing the means as well as the ends

Even where there is the political will to do so, governments can find their ability to act is constrained. Critical to Uganda's success was the fact that it had debt relief funds available to invest. But generally the water sector's share of available funds from national governments and donors is in decline: dropping from 2.6% to 1.9% of direct UK aid between 1998/9 and 2002/3, for example and overall accounting for only 1% or so of developing country spending. In many countries debt relief has been slow to kick in and trivial in relation to overall debt with repayments still far outstripping the additional finance required for water and sanitation.

The money for water and sanitation is not going to come from the international capital markets either.

Financial markets are now uninterested in water for the poorest countries many of which do not even have credit ratings. It is public finance that has to lead investment in these basic building blocks of development. The recent global falls in public finance going to water and sanitation have to be reversed.

The world's richest countries therefore need to do much more to deliver on their commitment to Millennium Development Goal 8 for a global partnership for development, addressing the special trade, debt and aid needs of the least developed countries.

Conclusion: Turning up the heat

The water sector needs to deliver much more and more quickly if the poverty reduction benefits of access to safe water and sanitation are to be secured by the target deadline of 2015. The sector needs to feel the heat of public scrutiny. That heat, allied with a better appreciation of water's role in reducing poverty, must generate the political will both to demand that the sector deliver and also to resource it to do so.

All countries' water sectors need to spend their money more effectively. Governments need to open up planning and monitoring processes to civil society and development partners to ensure that expenditure is proportional to need; both in terms of geography and relative poverty. Responsibilities for water and sanitation should only be devolved to local government where associated budgets are also devolved. Water supply systems must be self sustaining, balancing running and maintenance costs with affordability. Where the private sector offers real advantages in maintaining this balance they may have a role. However, it is public finance that has to lead investment in the sector. For most countries studied, this means doubling spending on water supply and sanitation.

Specifically in 2005 national governments and donors need to produce the plans for managing national water resources and to finance increases in access to safe water and sanitation. They must also agree coordination arrangements which avoid duplication of reporting systems and ensure efficient targeting of funds. From 2006/7 onwards water sector budgets must be fully disbursed and spent with the results then publicly reported. These are not demands for new promises, they are simply what is required for water sector investments to conform with existing commitments – to the Millennium Development Goals or to donors' Rome Declaration on Harmonisation. This report sets a baseline against which progress on these issues can be measured. Unless the sector's performance reaches higher standards in this way, the world's poorest people will remain trapped in poverty for want of their rights to safe water and sanitation.

WaterAid – calls to action

Poverty-reducing improvements in health, education and livelihoods rely on increases in access to safe water and sanitation. To achieve the water and sanitation MDGs:

Governments of developing countries need to:

• •

  By the end of 2005, produce an investmentand delivery plan for managing their water resources and achieving their water and sanitation targets, with a separate budget for sanitation.

  This must be produced in partnership with the donor community and other water supply and sanitation stake-holders and reviewed annually. It should provide the means for greater coordination within the water and sanitation sector as well as delineate a separate sanitation budget.

• •

  From 2006/7, devolve budgets to localgovernments with responsibility for water and sanitation where appropriate.

  This can, for example, be achieved by setting up special purpose water and sanitation grants to local governments. Spending should be allocated proportionately to need to redress disparities in both geographic coverage and relative wealth.

• •

  From 2006/7 publish an annual report on theperformance of the water and sanitation sector.

• •

  From 2005, enable and strengthen theparticipation of the principal stakeholders of the sector – the users and providers – in the planning, monitoring and review of the water and sanitation services.

This must include the establishment of consultative multi-stakeholder mechanisms and greater attention to the collection and use of information on sector performance. It will also require improvements in the transparency and accessibility of this information to the public.

Governments giving aid need to:

• •

  By the end of 2005, agree a mechanism foreradicating wasteful duplication in planning, funding and reporting systems between donors and recipient governments.

  As a result there will be one monitoring system for water supply and sanitation outputs.

• •

  From 2006/7, align their water supply andsanitation support with the government-led sector investment and delivery plans.

  This will include harmonising their procurement and other operating practices with government policies in the sector.

• •

  Ensure that they are meeting their millenniumgoal commitment of a partnership for development including providing 0.7% of GDP in aid by 2010 and closing finance gaps for water and sanitation especially in the least developed countries.

  This will mean spending 70% of their water supply and sanitation aid on the countries with the greatest water and sanitation needs. These are most countries in sub-Saharan Africa, plus some in South and South-East Asia.

• •

  From 2005, provide strategic assistance to thestrengthening of civil society, media and parliamentary scrutiny of water and sanitation sector performance and financing.

Summary of key statistics

• •

  All World Governments signed up to theMillennium Development Goals of halving world poverty by 2015.

  Included in these are targets to halve the proportions of people without safe water and adequate sanitation by 2015.

• •

  In many regions these targets are off track,especially in Africa and for sanitation. Over 2.6 billion people – two-fifths of the world's population – do not have access to sanitation

• •

  384,000 people need to gain access tosanitation every single day to reach the Millennium Development targets – a 90% increase on performance since 1990.

• •

  1.1 billion people – one person out of every sixin the world – do not have access to safe water. 280,000 people need to gain access to safe water every single day to reach the Millennium Development target. This requires a 25% increase on performance since 1990.

• •

  2.1 million children die every year fromdiarrhoea. This is one in five of all child deaths under the age of five and means a child dies every 15 seconds from water-related diseases.

• •

  5.6 billion productive days are lost annuallyaround the world due to diarrhoeal diseases.

• •

  443 million school days are lost annuallyworldwide due to diarrhoeal diseases.

• •

  Water and sanitation are prioritised in thepoverty reduction plans and budgets of just two of the 30 countries where nearly 90% of the 1.1 billion people without safe water live.

• •

  Aid for water more than halved from 1995 to2002 by when it was at its lowest in real terms since 1985.

• •

  Information on national water sector spendingand performance may be non-existent or inconsistent, take years to emerge, be published only in foreign languages or in a very limited number of copies.

• •

  Spending is also not well-targeted withincountries: projects may aid just 0.3% of the population, use technologies nearly 10 times more expensive than necessary, or improve services for a few rather thanextending them to all.

• •

  Only one half or even fewer of water systemscontinue to work where the wrong technologies are used or where participation in projects is insufficient to ensure long term community management capacity.

• •

  Lack of coordination in a country's watersector means there may be as many as nine different routes for funds to reach communities.

• •

  Funds made available by central governmentto the local authorities with the responsibility to provide water and sanitation services are usually worth less than $1 per person per year.

• •

  Sub-Saharan Africa got just 0.001% ofinternational private sector water investments between 1990 and 19974. By contrast the local private sector may have constructed nearly 90% of waterpoints.

• •

  Water budgets are hardly ever fully spent.Utilisation rates range from 9–65% often because of delays in disbursements. Local authorities in the last month of the financial year can still be waiting for half of their budget to be released.

• •

  Annual spending on water and sanitationneeds to double, from around $14 billion to $30 billion.

• •

  This means there is a financing gap of $16billion a year. This amount is the equivalent to 15% of Europe's annual alcohol bill or only 0.002% of the world's $1 trillion yearly military expenditures.

• •

  Less than 40% of aid for water goes to the 30countries where nearly 90% of the 1.1 billion people without access to safe water live.

• •

  The total debt of 52 indebted poor countries is$375 billion. Poor countries spend less than 0.25% of their income on water supply and sanitation.

WaterAid, Prince Consort House, 27–29 Albert Embankment, London SE1 7UB. Telephone: [phone]. www.wateraid.org

Oil Boom or Bust Ahead for São Tomé & Príncipe?

Glenn Brigaldino

Size of a country matters little when it comes to extending the influence sphere of armed globalisation. A mere handful of islands of 1,000 km ² just off the West African coast, São Tomé and Principe and its 160,000 citizens are now bathing in the spotlight of international attention. Independent from Portugal since 1975, the country existed in relative isolation from world affairs, making only meagre developmental progress, but generally under peaceful conditions. In the past five years much has changed, as the island nation has been drawn into the orbit of an increasingly unmasked for of predatory globalisation. Today, São Tomé is being drawn into geo-strategic and transnational economic relationships over which the country has no genuine control. ¹

Until now, São Tomé's economy has been heavily dependent on foreign aid. Cocoa has been the only significant cash crop, but recently prices have crumbled. The current account deficit balance has steadily risen, from US$16 m in 1999 to US$23 m in 2003, however inflation seems contained at about 10% a year. GNI per capita (formerly GNP per capita) has risen to US$320 in 2003 yet still an estimated 54% (2004) of the islanders live below the poverty line. In terms of a partnership environment conducive to developmental progress, relatively favourable engagement conditions exist in São Tomé. But with regard to local capacities, both at the institutional and civil society level, critical shortcomings seem to exist. It is not at all certain that there exists sufficient and suitable capacity, in particular at the Government level ‘to develop policy (including legal frameworks) … (or) the capacity to enforce it’. There is a serious risk of local capacities being stretched too far and too thin, in addition to being corrupted and thus diverted from the important tasks of participatory national development. Partnership in cooperation with the many partners knocking on São Tomé's doors can easily be reduced to little more than a label to mask non-transparent rubber-stamping mechanisms.²

With the confirmation of substantial offshore oil reserves, the big economic turn-around and developmental upswing seems within close grasp. Although actual production is not expected to start until sometime after 2008, São Tomé is now being heavily courted by oil companies from near and far. Near, meaning Nigeria, with whom São Tomé has agreed to share the offshore reserves. Far of course refers to US firms, notably a consortium of ChevronTexaco and ExxonMobil who have secured the first oil licence along with a little known Norwegian-based firm (EER), not all surprisingly linked to Nigeria. The signing bonus of $60 m, is equivalent to São Tomé's 2003 GDP.

At the same time, the Government of President de Menezes is being showered with attention of a different, yet related kind: high-level political and military delegations from the USA have recently been visiting São Tomé. In early 2004 US-soldiers conducted 'training exercises’ for the country's military with larger manoeuvres continuing, notably in the waters above the offshore oil fields. Discussions for establishing a US naval base in São Tomé are progressing. Meanwhile, a military aid agreement was signed with Portugal's State Secretary for Foreign Affairs and Cooperation, Manuela Franco. Under this 300,000 euro two-year agreement, the São Tomé armed forces are to be supplied with training and hardware, which the São Tomé government expects will turn the tide of dissatisfaction and unrest among army officers – which had been one of the causes for the July 2003 coup. An internal motivation for the programme may have been to turn the forces’ focus towards international military cooperation exercises. Thus, a peculiar mix of security, oil and political stabilisation issues are emerging as being of central importance to the countries’ insertion into the political economy of the global oil markets. It is an unexpected situation for a country ranked by UNDP at 123 in human development to find itself in.³

In the past three decades, São Tomé has recorded notable success in health achievements and average life expectancy now reaches 69 years. Progress in the education sector has been harder to come by and the overall enrolment ratio stands at 62%, comparable to Honduras or Oman. However social indicators and livelihoods factors of relevance to the general population are of little concern to the emerging elites of the new political economy. A duality of foreign security and energy-supply interests in São Tomé is quickly taking shape and gaining political influence. National sovereignty as well as social and cultural identity of São Tomé and its people are at risk of moving towards oblivion, in the face of lures and promises of a wealth churning oil boom.

The US, increasingly concerned about diversifying its oil supply base stands to benefit most from such a boom. But also the national oil companies of other oil-hungry countries have shown flag in São Tomé. Earlier this year Brazil's Petrobras, which already operates in Nigeria, Equatorial Guinea as in Angola, sent a delegation to negotiate business terms with São Tomé authorities. Details of the negotiations remain undisclosed but Petrobras may be preparing to enter the São Toméan market in cooperation with Chinese partner oil companies that already operate offshore the archipelago.⁴ Malaysia has emerged as a global player in exploration of oil and gas reserves. Petronas, Malaysia's national oil company, is no stranger to Africa. In January 2004, São Tomé's president Menezes was on an official visit to Malaysia. Reportedly, on 10 January he visited the Malaysia Palm Oil Board (MPOB) and met ‘senior Petronas officers in Putrajaya’. Elsewhere on the continent, in Ethiopia's Gambela region Petronas is establishing a presence in preparation for exploration activities. It is already active in Equatorial Guinea and, regardless of the completely dismal human rights reputation of the country, Petronas has major operations in Sudan.⁵

For the time being, São Tomé's oil reserves are to be jointly developed and exploited with Nigeria, the regional powerhouse and close ally of the USA. Indeed, São Tomé is tumbling into a new era of development. The combination of promising oil reserves, a possible strategic role as host to a US naval base alongside rising control over the state by a corruption-prone alliance of members of the political and military elite is shaping up to catapult the micro-state into the grey-zone of capitalist globalisation. Whether the country will succeed in channelling the forecasted capital inflows into a broad-based, sustainable development project depends as much on bridging new social divisions as on warding off foreign political pressures.

The lure of quick and easy money may prove to tempting to resist for many national decisions-makers. To be sure, succumbing to it will raise the spectre of a remote Atlantic island devoid of a self-conscious national identity and with its development approaches defined by external policies and economic interests. São Tomé needs to assert itself now, as a self-determined nation with a commitment to an inclusive sustainable development project. Before too long it may find itself relegated to some back-yard space at the globalisation drive-in movies, idling on while on stand-by to play pleasure islands to the hulky crews from the imperial galleons.

Glenn Brigaldino, Ottawa; e-mail: [e-mail].

For a discussion on how Malaysia's own economic development has been pushed at the cost of environmental degradation, see Glenn Brigaldino, Hard choices ahead for Malaysia, ISBN / eBook ID: 0-9733847-2-7, visit http://www.ebookad.com/eb.php3?ebookid=15578

US military involvement in Africa

Daniel Volman

US Military Commands for Sub-Saharan Africa

Most African countries fall within the area of responsibility of the US European Command (which also covers Europe and the former republics of the Soviet Union). However, a number of countries in northeast Africa (Egypt, Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Sudan, and Kenya) and the Seychelles are within the area of responsibility of the US Central Command; the US Pacific Command covers the Comoros, Madagascar, and the Indian Ocean. These commands (along with the various branches of the armed forces, i.e. the US Air Force, the US Navy, and US Special Forces Command) are responsible for conducting active military operations in Africa, including training exercises, humanitarian relief, peacekeeping, evacuating civilians from unstable countries, and other operations.

However, in an recent interview (March 2005), Marine General James L. Jones*, Supreme Allied Command Europe (Belgium) clarified this structure:

Africa is an important part of our theater, and has been neglected for too long … Africa is everybody's problem and everybody's responsibility.

European Command must help struggling democracies in Africa develop their armed forces to protect their borders. This is important because fundamentalists want to recruit in Africa. These fanatics go to areas where there is not much hope and economic prospects are dismal.

NATO needs to focus more attention on Africa … NATO will have to quit being such an eastward-focused alliance and will have to react to some of the compelling realities of the southern flank ( www.defenselink.mil. news).

Most arms sales are conducted through the US Defense Security Cooperation Agency, which comes under the authority of the Office of African Affairs at the office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs. Certain military hardware (including rifles, shotguns, electronics, police equipment and crowd control chemicals, and explosives) is sold under a licensing program administered by the Office of Defense Trade Controls at the US State Department's Bureau of Political-Mili-tary Affairs.

Angola

Commercial Sales Program

International Military Education and Training Program (IMET)

Benin

Africa Contingency Operations Training Assistance (ACOTA)

International Military Education and Training Program (IMET)

Botswana

Commercial Sales Program

Foreign Military Financing Program

Foreign Military Sales Program

International Military Education and Training Program (IMET)

Burkina Faso

International Military Education and Training Program (IMET)

Burundi

International Military Education and Training Program (IMET)

Cameroon

Commercial Sales Program

International Military Education and Training Program (IMET)

Cape Verde

International Military Education and Training Program (IMET)

Central African Republic

International Military Education and Training Program (IMET)

Chad

International Military Education and Training Program (IMET)

Comoros

International Military Education and Training Program (IMET)

Congo, Republic of the

International Military Education and Training Program (IMET)

Cote d'Ivoire

Africa Contingency Operations Training Assistance (ACOTA)

International Military Education and Training Program (IMET)

Democratic Republic of the Congo

International Military Education and Training Program (IMET)

Djibouti

Commercial Sales Program

International Military Education and Training Program (IMET)

U.S. Use of African Military Bases

Equatorial Guinea

International Military Education and Training Program (IMET)

Eritrea

Foreign Military Financing Program

International Military Education and Training Program (IMET)

Ethiopia

Commercial Sales Program

Foreign Military Financing Program

Foreign Military Sales Program

International Military Education and Training Program (IMET)

Gabon

Commercial Sales Program

International Military Education and Training Program (IMET)

Gambia

International Military Education and Training Program (IMET)

Ghana

Africa Contingency Operations Training Assistance (ACOTA)

Africa Regional Peacekeeping Program (ARP)

Foreign Military Financing Program

Foreign Military Sales Program

International Military Education and Training Program (IMET)

Military Exercises

Guinea

Foreign Military Financing Program

Foreign Military Sales Program

International Military Education and Training Program (IMET)

Guinea-Bissau

International Military Education and Training Program (IMET)

Kenya

Africa Contingency Operations Training Assistance (ACOTA)

Commercial Sales Program

Foreign Military Financing Program

International Military Education and Training Program (IMET)

Military Exercises

US Use of African Military Bases

Lesotho

International Military Education and Training Program (IMET)

Madagascar

International Military Education and Training Program (IMET)

Malawi

Africa Contingency Operations Training Assistance (ACOTA)

International Military Education and Training Program (IMET)

Mali

Africa Contingency Operations Training Assistance (ACOTA)

Foreign Military Sales Program

International Military Education and Training Program (IMET)

Mauritania

International Military Education and Training Program (IMET)

Mauritius

International Military Education and Training Program (IMET)

Mozambique

International Military Education and Training Program (IMET)

Namibia

International Military Education and Training Program (IMET)

Niger

International Military Education and Training Program (IMET)

Nigeria

Africa Regional Peacekeeping Program (ARP)

Commercial Sales Program

Foreign Military Financing Program

Foreign Military Sales Program

International Military Education and Training Program (IMET)

Rwanda

International Military Education and Training Program (IMET)

Senegal

Africa Contingency Operations Training Assistance (ACOTA)

Africa Regional Peacekeeping Program (ARP)

Foreign Military Financing Program

Foreign Military Sales Program

Sao Tome e Principe

International Military Education and Training Program (IMET)

Seychelles

International Military Education and Training Program (IMET)

Sierra Leone

International Military Education and Training Program (IMET)

South Africa

Commercial Sales Program

Foreign Military Financing Program

Foreign Military Sales Program

International Military Education and Training Program (IMET)

Military Exercises

Swaziland

International Military Education and Training Program (IMET)

Tanzania

International Military Education and Training Program (IMET)

Military Exercises

Togo

International Military Education and Training Program (IMET)

Uganda

Africa Contingency Operations Training Assistance (ACOTA)

International Military Education and Training Program (IMET)

Military Exercises

Zambia

Commercial Sales Program

International Military Education and Training Program (IMET)

Zimbabwe

Foreign Military Sales Program

Daniel Volman , Director of the African Security Research Project in Washington, DC for ACAS (Association of Concerned Africa Scholars). Information from the US State Department, Congressional Budget Justification for Foreign Operations, Fiscal Year 2003, and from various US Defense Department web sites and newspaper articles. www.prairienet.org/acas/military/militarysummary.html. Additional data from Jan Burgess.

* General Jones is the Supreme Allied Commander,Europe (SACEUR) and the Commander of the United States European Command (COMUSEUCOM). From the Supreme Headquarters Allied Power Europe, Mons, Belgium, General Jones leads Allied Command Europe (ACE), comprising NATO's military forces in Europe. The mission of ACE is to preserve the peace, security, and territorial integrity of the NATO member nations in Europe. As COMUSEUCOM, General Jones commands five US components: US Army, Europe; US Navy, Europe; US Air Forces in Europe; US Marine Forces, Europe; and Special Operations Command, Europe.

New undeclared arms race: America's agenda for global military domination

Michel Chossudovsky

The Pentagon has released the summary of a top secret Pentagon document which sketches America's agenda for global military domination. This redirection of America's military strategy seems to have passed virtually unnoticed. With the exception of The Wall Street Journal , not a word has been mentioned in the US media. There has been no press coverage concerning this mysterious military blueprint. The latter outlines, according to the Wall Street Journal , America's global military design which consists in ‘enhancing US influence around the world’, through increased troop deployments and a massive buildup of America's advanced weapons systems.

While the document follows in the footsteps of the administration's ‘preemptive’ war doctrine as detailed by the Neo-cons' Project of the New American Century (PNAC), it goes much further in setting the contours of Washington's global military agenda. It calls for a more ‘proactive’ approach to warfare, beyond the weaker notion of ‘pre-emptive’ and defensive actions, where military operations are launched against a ‘declared enemy’ with a view to ‘preserving the peace’ and ‘defending America’. The document explicitly acknowledges America's global military mandate, beyond regional war theaters. This mandate also includes:

military operations directed against countries, which are not hostile to America, but which are considered strategic from the point of view of US interests.

From a broad military and foreign policy perspective, the March 2005 Pentagon document constitutes an imperial design, which supports US corporate interests worldwide.

At its heart, the document is driven by the belief that the US is engaged in a continuous global struggle that extends far beyond specific battlegrounds, such as Iraq and Afghanistan. The vision is for a military that is far more proactive, focused on changing the world instead of just responding to conflicts such as a North Korean attack on South Korea, and assuming greater prominence in countries in which the US isn't at war (WSJ, 11 March 2005)

The document suggests that its objective also consists in ‘offensive’ rather than run of the mill ‘pre-emptive’ operations. There is, in this regard, a subtle nuance in relation to earlier post-9/11 national security statements:

[The document presents] four core problems, none of them involving traditional military confrontations. The services are told to develop forces that can: build partnerships with failing states to defeat internal terrorist threats; defend the homeland, including offensive strikes against terrorist groups planning attacks; influence the choices of countries at a strategic crossroads, such as China and Russia; and prevent the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction by hostile states and terrorist groups (Ibid).

The emphasis is no longer solely on waging major theater wars as outlined in the PNAC's Rebuilding America's Defenses, Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century'; the March 2005 military blueprint points to shifts in weapons systems as well as the need for a global deployment of US forces in acts of worldwide military policing and intervention. The PNAC in its September 2000 Report had described these nontheater military operations as ‘constabulary functions’:

The Pentagon must retain forces to preserve the current peace in ways that fall short of conduction major theater campaigns … These duties are today's most frequent missions, requiring forces configured for combat but capable of long-term, independent constabulary operations (PNAC, http://www.new americancentury.org/Rebuilding AmericasDefenses.pdf , p. 18)

Recruitment of troops to police the empire

The underlying emphasis is on the development and recruitment of specialized military manpower required to control and pacify indigenous forces and factions in different regions of the World:

the classified guidance urges the military to come up with less doctrinaire solutions that include sending in smaller teams of culturally savvy soldiers to train and mentor indigenous forces(Ibid.).

The classified document points to the need for a massive recruitment and training of troops. These troops, including new contingents of special forces, green berets and other specialized military personnel, would be involved, around the world, in acts of military policing:

Mr. Rumsfeld's approach likely will trigger major shifts in the weapons systems that the Pentagon buys, and even more fundamental changes in the training and deployment of US troops throughout the world, said defense officials who have played a role in crafting the document or are involved in the review.

The US would seek to deploy these troops far earlier in a looming conflict than they traditionally have been to help a tottering government's armed forces confront guerrillas before an insurgency is able to take root and build popular support. Officials said the plan envisions many such teams operating around the world.

US military involvement is not limited to the middle east

The sending in of special forces in military policing operations, under the disguise of peace-keeping and training, is contemplated in all major regions of the world.

A large part of these activities, however, will most probably be carried out by

private mercenary companies on contract to the Pentagon, NATO or the United Nations.The military manpower requirements as well as the equipment are specialized. The policing will not be conducted by regular army units as in a theater war:

the new plan envisions more active US involvement, resembling recent military aid missions to places like Niger and Chad, where the US is dispatching teams of ground troops to train local militaries in basic counterinsurgency tactics. Future training missions, however, would likely be conducted on a much broader scale.

Of the military's services, the Marine Corps right now is moving fastest to fill this gap and is looking at shifting some resources away from traditional am-phibious-assault missions to new units designed specifically to work with foreign forces.

To support these troops, military officials are looking at everything from acquiring cheap aerial surveillance systems to flying gunships that can be used in messy urban fights to come to the aid of ground troops. One ‘dream capability might be an unmanned AC-130 gunship that could circle an area at relatively low altitude until it is needed, then swoop in to lay down a withering line of fire, said a defense official’ (Ibid.).

New post cold war enemies

While the ‘war on terrorism’ and the containment of ‘rogue states’ still constitute the official justification and driving force, China and Russia are explicitly identified in the classified March document as potential enemies.

… the US military … is seeking to dissuade rising powers, such as China, from challenging US military dominance. Although weapons systems designed to fight guerrillas tend to be fairly cheap and low-tech, the review makes clear that to dissuade those countries from trying to compete, the US military must retain its dominance in key high-tech areas, such as stealth technology, precision weaponry and manned and unmanned surveillance systems (Ibid.).

While the European Union is not mentioned, the stated objective is to shunt the development of all potential military rivals.

‘Trying to run with the big dog’

How does Washington intend to reach its goal of global military hegemony? Essentially through the continued development of the US weapons industry, requiring a massive shift out of the production of civilian goods and services. In other words, the ongoing increase in defense spending feeds this new undeclared arms race, with vast amounts of public money channeled to America's major weapons producers. The stated objective is to make the process of developing advanced weapons systems ‘so expensive’, that no other power on earth will able to compete or challenge ‘the Big Dog’, without jeopardizing its civilian economy:

[A]t the core of this strategy is the belief that the US must maintain such a large lead in crucial technologies that growing powers will conclude that it is too expensive for these countries to even think about trying to run with the big dog . They will realize that it is not worth sacrificing their economic growth, said one defense consultant who was hired to draft sections of the document(Ibid., emphasis added).

Undeclared arms race between Europe & America

This new undeclared arms race is with the so-called ‘growing powers’. While China and Russia are mentioned as a potential threat, America's (unofficial) rivals also include France, Germany and Japan. The recognized partners of the US – in the context of the Anglo-Americanaxis – are Britain, Australia and Canada, not to mention Israel (unofficially). In this context, there are at present two dominant Western military axes: the Anglo-American axis and the competing Franco-German alliance. The European military project, largely dominated by France and Germany, will inevitably undermine NATO. Britain (through British Aerospace Systems Corporation) is firmly integrated into the US system of defense procurement in partnership with America's big five weapons producers.

Needless to say, this new arms race is firmly embedded in the European project, which envisages under EU auspices, a massive redirection of state financial resources towards military expenditure. Moreover, the EU monetary system establishing a global currency which challenges the hegemony of the US dollar is intimately related to the development of an integrated EU defense force outside of NATO.

Under the European constitution, there will be a unified European foreign policy position which will include a common defense component. It is understood, although never seriously debated in public, that the proposed European Defense Force is intended to challenge America's supremacy in military affairs:

under such a regime, trans-Atlantic relations will be dealt a fatal blow(according to Martin Callanan, British Conservative member of the European Parliament, Washington Times, 5 March 2005).

Ironically, this European military project, while encouraging an undeclared USEU arms race, is not incompatible with continued US-EU cooperation in military affairs. The underlying objective for Europe is that EU corporate interests are protected and that European contractors are able to effectively cash in and 'share the spoils’ of the US-led wars in the Middle East and elsewhere. In other words, by challenging the Big Dog from a position of strength, the EU seeks to retain its role as ‘a partner’ of America in its various military ventures. There is a presumption, particularly in France, that the only way to build good relations with Washington, is to emulate the American Military Project, i.e. by adopting a similar strategy of beefing up Europe's advanced weapons systems.

In other words, what we are dealing with is a fragile love-hate relationship between Old Europe and America, in defense systems, the oil industry as well as in the upper spheres of banking, finance and currency markets. The important issue is how this fragile geopolitical relationship will evolve in terms of coalitions and alliances in the years to come. France and Germany have military cooperation agreements with both Russia and China. European Defense companies are supplying China with sophisticated weaponry. Ultimately, Europe is viewed as an encroachment by the US, and military conflict between competing Western superpowers cannot be ruled out. (For further details, see Michel Chossudovsky, The Anglo-American Axis, http://globalresearch.ca/arti-cles/CHO303B.html )

From skepticism concerning Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction (WMD) to outright condemnation, in the months leading up to the March 2003 invasion, Old Europe (in the wake of the invasion) has broadly accepted the legitimacy of the US military occupation of Iraq, despite the killings of civilians, not to mention the Bush administration's policy guidelines on torture and political assassinations.

In a cruel irony, the new US–EU arms race has become the chosen avenue of the European Union, to foster ‘friendly relations’ with the American superpower. Rather than opposing the US, Europe has embraced ‘the war on terrorism’. It is actively collaborating with the US in the arrest of presumed terrorists. Several EU countries have established Big Brother anti-terrorist laws, which constitute a European ‘copy and paste’ version of the US Homeland Security legislation.

European public opinion is now galvanized into supporting the ‘war on terrorism’, which broadly benefits the European military industrial complex and the oil companies. In turn, the ‘war on terrorism’ also provides a shaky legitimacy to the EU security agenda under the European Constitution. The latter is increasingly viewed with disbelief, as a pretext to implement police-state measures, while also dismantling labor legislation and the European welfare state.

In turn, the European media has also become a partner in the disinformation campaign. The ‘outside enemy’ presented ad nauseam on network TV, on both sides of the Atlantic, is Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi.

In other words, the propaganda campaign serves to usefully camouflage the ongoing militarisation of civilian institutions, which is occurring simultaneously in Europe and America.

Guns & butter: The demise of the civilian economy

The proposed EU constitution requires a massive expansion of military spending in all member countries to the obvious detriment of the civilian economy. The European Union's 3% limit on annual budget deficits implies that the expansion in military expenditure will be accompanied by a massive curtailment of all categories of civilian expenditure, including social services, public infrastructure, not to mention government support to agriculture and industry. In this regard, ‘the war on terrorism’ serves – in the context of the neoliberal reforms – as a pretext. It builds public acceptancefor the imposition of austerity measures affecting civilian programs, on the grounds that money is needed to enhance national security and homeland defense.

The growth of military spending in Europe is directly related to the US military buildup. The more America spends on defense, the more Europe will want to spend on developing its own European Defense Force. ‘Keeping up with the Jones’, all of which is for a good and worthy, cause, namely fighting ‘Islamic terrorists’ and defending the homeland.

EU enlargement is directly linked to the development and financing of the European weapons industry. The dominant European powers desperately need the contributions of the ten new EU members to finance the EU's military buildup. In this regard, the European Constitution requires ‘the adoption of a security strategy for Europe, accompanied by financial commitments on military spending.’ (European Report, 3 July 2003). In other words, under the European Constitution, EU enlargement tends to weaken the Atlantic military alliance (NATO). The backlash on employment and social programs is the inevitable by-product of both the American and European military projects, which channel vast amounts of State financial resources towards the war economy, at the expense of the civilian sectors. The result are plant closures and bankruptcies in the civilian economy and a rising tide of poverty and unemployment throughout the Western World. Moreover, contrary to the 1930s, the dynamic development of the weapons industry creates very few jobs.

Meanwhile, as the Western war economy flourishes, the relocation of the production of civilian manufactured goods to Third World countries has increased in recent years at a dramatic pace. China, which constitutes by far the largest producer of civilian manufactured goods, increased its textile exports to the US by 80.2% in 2004, leading to a wave of plant closures and job losses (WSJ, 11 March 2005).

The global economy is characterized by a bipolar relationship. The rich Western countries produce weapons of mass destruction, whereas poor countries produce manufactured consumer goods. In a twisted logic, the rich countries use their advanced weapons systems to threaten or wage war on the poor developing countries, which supply Western markets with large amounts of consumer goods produced in cheap labor assembly plants.

America, in particular, has relied on this cheap supply of consumer goods to close down a large share of its manufacturing sector, while at the same time redirecting resources away from the civilian economy into the production of weapons of mass destruction. And the latter, in a bitter irony, are slated to be used against the country which supplies America with a large share of its consumer goods, namely China.

© Michel Chossudodvsky , Global Research 2005.

US thwarts justice for darfur

Human Rights Watch, Brussels

The United States is blocking UN Security Council action on the human rights crisis in Darfur on account of the Bush administration's hostility to the International Criminal Court, Human Rights Watch said today. On Tuesday, the United States proposed splitting a UN Security Council draft resolution on Sudan into three separate resolutions, none of which would authorise a tribunal to prosecute crimes against humanity in Darfur.

The United States is hanging the people of Darfur out to dry by stalling on justice,' said Richard Dicker, director of Human Rights Watch's International Justice Program.

After labeling Darfur a genocide, the United States is now blocking the credible threat of prosecution by the International Criminal Court, which could immediately deter further violence in Darfur.

The US move follows ongoing negotiations among all Security Council members on a single Sudan resolution on justice, targeted sanctions, and a peace-support mission. The UN peace-support mission for Sudan is to implement the Naivasha peace agreement, the accord ending the 21-year civil war between the Sudanese government and southern-based rebels. The mission of 10,000 troops will cover areas in the north and south of Sudan, but not Darfur, where continuing fighting and violence against civilians has created a human rights disaster. According to Dicker:

In the guise of taking action on a peacekeeping force in the North–South conflict, the United States is pushing aside measures needed to deal with atrocities in Darfur … Vague commitments to accountability are not enough. The heinous crimes committed in Darfur need immediate investigation and prosecution by the International Criminal Court.

Twelve out of the Security Council's 15 members support authorising the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate and prosecute crimes in Darfur. US opposition to referring Darfur to the ICC is unrelated to crimes committed in Darfur, Human Rights Watch said. Instead, it is rooted in the Bush administration's ideological opposition to the court, which focuses largely on fears about politically motivated prosecutions against Americans.

On 25 January, the UN Commission of Inquiry for Darfur strongly recommended that the Security Council refer the situation to the International Criminal Court. Washington sponsored the resolution that created the UN Commission, but has ignored the commission's findings that the ICC is the ‘single best mechanism’ and ‘only credible way’ to ensure that justice is done in Darfur. ‘As the Security Council delays, the situation in Darfur is only getting worse,’ said Peter Takirambudde, director of Human Rights Watch's Africa Division.

The people of Darfur need a vastly enhanced protective force. But in the meantime, targeted sanctions and justice could have an immediateimpact. They should be a top priority for passage by every Security Council member.’

The violence in Darfur has continued, despite fewer allegations of air attacks on civilians in the past two months. Almost 2 million people have been forcefully displaced from their homes in the past two years of the conflict. Most of these displaced civilians have become virtual prisoners in camps and towns due to ongoing attacks, rape, looting, and assault by government-backed militias known as the Janjaweed. The Sudanese government has been unable or unwilling to stop ongoing atrocities. Rebel movements have also been responsible for an increasing number of attacks on commercial convoys over the past months.

Editor's Note:See Lawless World: America & the Making & Breaking of Global Rules by Philippe Sands, Allen Lane, 2005.

Ngugi & Njeeri Wa Thiong'o

We are writing to appeal to the Kenyan government to react appropriately and with all deliberate speed to the brutal attack on Ngugi Wa Thiong'o and Njeeri Wa Ngugi and the rape of Njeeri. We write to stress the urgency of an appropriate response that will hold accountable not only the direct attackers, but all those responsible for what we see as a politically motivated attack by enemies of what Professor Ngugi Wa Thiong'o stands for in Kenya, Africa and the world.

The world community continues to watch this case closely, first and foremost because we are shocked by the brutality of this attack and rape, but also because of the grave implications impunity for the perpetrators would have. International organisations, including women's groups, civil liberties organisations, and organisations of writers and intellectuals are but a few of the members of the international community deeply invested in how the present administration will respond to this attack.

It is critical for the Kenyan government to rebuff this grave attack against an internationally celebrated public intellectual whose commitment to his country and the empowerment of ordinary people has been unwavering. If this attack on the occasion of his first return to his home country, after 22 years in forced exile, is not condemned, and all those responsible pursued for their crimes, a chilling blow to intellectual liberty will have been dealt. Such blows have impact the world over. This one, in particular, would send a sad message regarding Kenya's capacity to overcome its political past. This government must respond firmly to demonstrate a commitment to the political future of the country. It is equally critical to demonstrate a willingness on the government's part to respond to the full gravity of the rape of Njeeri Wa Ngugi.

The culture of silence around violence against women in Kenya fosters repeated and widespread abuses against the human rights of women. A full length Amnesty International report on violence against women in Kenya (March 8, 2002) cites several national and international instruments that hold governments responsible for failures to prosecute with ‘due diligence’ any violence against women. We want to express our unconditional solidarity with Njeeri Wa Ngugi in her ongoing struggle to stand publicly against the epidemic of violence against women. We believe that the government of Kenya has both the opportunity and the responsibility to meet the challenge of supporting her. This challenge consists in bringing all those responsible for this attack on Njeeri Wa Ngugi and Ngugi Wa Thiong'o to justice. But steps must also be taken to end the conditions that foster this culture of silence. Systems must be put in place, as in other countries, for women to anonymously identify their attackers. Every form of sexual violence against women must be treated as a crime of the gravest consequence. The victims cannot be left to fight alone. To that end, we hope that this administration will not set the precedent of allowing Njeeri Wa Ngugi to stand alone. At a time like this, when we are seeing political violence erode so many countries in Europe, North America, Africa, and indeed on every continent, it is doubly important for people in positions of power to stand against the impunity of perpetrators. We hope that with your actions, you will set an example for Kenya and the world.

Please write to one or more of the following contacts in Nairobi:

Kiraitu Murungi,Ministry of Justice and Constitutional Affairs; minister-justice@123456skyweb. [e-mail]

Dorothy Angote, Justice & Constitutional Affairs, [e-mail]

Attorney General, State Law Office; Tel: [phone]; please use fax: [phone]

First Lady, Lucy Kibaki, State House; oafla@ statehousekenya.co.ke

John Githongo, Office of President, State House; [e-mail]; pps@123456state housekenya.co.ke

Hon. Ayang Nyong'o,Minister of Planning & National Development; [e-mail]

Phillip Murgor,Director of Public Prosecution, State Law Office; [e-mail]

Please copy of all letters to: [e-mail] and Kenya Human Rights Commission; [e-mail]

A tribute to claude meillassoux

In the spring of 2004 ROAPE took over an old country house hotel on the outskirts of Sheffield. With views across the moors and the rhododendron in bloom it was here we held our get together of extended family of editors and friends. Of notable absence was Claude, a valued friend and mainstay of the journal from its very beginnings in 1974. When speaking with Claude on the phone he and his companion, Corinne Belliard, were so very pleased to be invited but unable to come, this year; perhaps next? He is missed more than we can say. (JB)

Bonnie Campbell, Montreal

There are those who have been so formative in our own intellectual parcoursthat they become as a permanent fixture, a mountain in the paysage of our ideas. Claude Meillassoux was one of these. Such an inspiration, such a model of intellectual and political commitment and of great personal generosity and charm. So intellectually creative and clear.

At one of his seminars in Montreal (October 1989) on ‘Le Spectre de Malthus. Un problème de reproduction démographique du Sahel’ Claude eloquently and convincingly documented that the issue to be addressed was that of reduced access to resources and the reduction of jobs and not, as generally proposed, the excessive reproduction of people. He spoke of the misguided policies of the Bretton Woods Institutions whose strategies aimed very consciously at reducing public expenditure and notably food subsidies in the cities when all knew that there were no alternative sources of employment or livelihood. Une suppression planifiée … C'est très très grave concluded Claude.

Claude Meillassoux: humanist, brilliant intellectual, warm and charming person … What a gap you leave.

Bernard Schlemmer, France*

Claude Meillassoux passed away on 2 January 2005. In anthropology and in the social sciences more broadly, he leaves behind many colleagues who will feel themselves orphans – paradoxically enough, because Claude never considered himself anyone's spiritual father.

A thunder clap in a serene sky

His name will remain forever associated, in our intellectual history, with the paradigm break (in T. S. Kuhn's sense) represented by the appearance of his seminal article ‘Essai d'interprétation du phénoméne économique dans les sociétés traditionnelles d'autosubsistance’ (Cahiers d'études africaines, 1960, 4:38–67). Roland Waast still remembers when, as a young student, and sitting on the terrace of the Café La Sorbonne, the meeting spot of the Sociology students, he saw Raymond Jamous arrive, feverishly brandishing an issue of the Cahiers, and shouting ‘I have just discovered the article that will change the face of Anthropology!’ It was suddenly clear that the indigenous societies studied by Anthropology – those that we could not identify other than by differerence from or in opposition to our Western society were like any human society, forced to produce economic goods and to become part of relations of production before they could function on any other level.

It is this article, quickly followed by Meillassoux's masterly thesis on the Gouro (L'anthropologie économique des Gouro de Côte d'Ivoire; Mouton, 1964) which opened the way in France to the sudden rise of research in economic anthropology, and well beyond. To cite only a few of the pioneers in this field who began their work during the 1960s, young scholars of his generation or barely his juniors, one must mention the names of Pierre Bonnafe, Jean Copans, Jacques Dupre, Pierre-Philippe Rey, and Emmanuel Terray. And we should add their contemporaries in other disciplines, economists such as Samir Amin, or Benjamin Coriat, the philosopher Etienne Balibar, the historian Catherine Coquery-Vidrovich, the demographers Francis Gendreau or Jacques Veron – just to name a few – simply to speak of those who share Meillassoux's perspective or who acknowledge him as an influence and model for their own work.

Rapidly, most French anthropologists became influenced by the work of Claude Meillassoux to a greater or lesser degree, to the point at which economic anthropology came to contest the domination of French Academia with structural anthropology, during at least that decade. It is obviously impossible to mention here all those who followed that trend, or even those who recognise or still recognise Meillassoux's influence. This influence later expanded beyond the small circle of the Francophones. One of his key works (Femmes, greniers et capitaux;Maspero, 1975) was translated into no less than six languages because this young man's perspective fashioned new perspectives both within Anthropology itself, and among the various disciplines of the social sciences, and particularly in the Marxist intellectual community. The debate suddenly ceased to tie itself in knots over the extension of the ‘Asian mode of production’ or the relevance of the concepts of infra- and superstructure applied to pre-capitalist societies. Rather it opened the way to a general reflection on historically constructed economic and social formations, in any place or at any historical period of human society – thus accomplishing the real goal of historical materialism.

What were the intellectual origins of so daring and splendid a feat? No doubt it owes much to the fact that he did not pursue a ‘classical’ education. Instead, coming from a rich bourgeois industrial family of Northern France, and having had an education as a wholly liberal economist in the United States, he began his professional life at the heart of the capitalist system. He thus knew it from the inside and its practices and uses swiftly convinced him that he could never make a career there; to the contrary, he would devote his abilities to fighting it! That is how he trained himself in anthropology, remote from the dominant currents of his time: French structuralism or Anglo-Saxon functionalism. Fortunately enough, he then found in George Balandier a ready listener with whom he shared common concerns and understanding.

The ‘Meillassoux seminar’ of La Rue Tournon

With his reputation now established, he continued in the 1970s to act as an innovator, a catalyst, by directing a seminar, whose exact title most participants could hardly remember, because for everyone, it was ‘The Meillassoux seminar’. This brought together, well beyond anthropologists strictly speaking, all those who wanted to take part, intellectually, in the movements of emancipation and national liberation, and who were interested in the basic challenges that this issue posed: how to analyze the articulation between traditional economies and the capitalist economy, the lineage-based societies and the construction of nation-states, neocolonialism and imperialism, development and underdevelopment, etc? Naturally, the debates were heated and impassioned. One remembers the 'seminar’ as a place where intellectual research and militant passion fed each other, where controversies were built but sometimes also denunciations were pronounced, where engagement in the theoretical debate was judged against political engagement, where a true dialectic of logos and praxis worked.

Claude Meillassoux was then fully recognized for his human qualities in addition to his intellectual qualities. His willingness to listen, his care for others, his personal warmth, his lack of sympathy for hierarchy, status, titles and positions, as well as his radical impermeability to dominant trends in thought, to accepted ideas and sloppy reasoning, made him an organizer recognized, appreciated, respected and even liked, in spite of the lively criticisms which he did not fail to offer when he expressed disagreement. This seminar will not be a place for mere speech, as useful as it could be. Bringing together scholars from various positions and disciplines, the seminar was the place where several important collective works were produced, such as L'évolution du commerce africain depuis le XIXee siécle en Afrique de l'Ouest, OUP 1971, or L'esclavage en Afrique précoloniale (Maspero, 1975) and, especially, Qui se nourrit de la famine en Afrique?(Maspero, 1974).

Committed thought

That last title illustrates particularly well the Claude's approach, which consists in accepting simultaneously the responsibilities of the scientist and those of the militant, combining academic research and political engagement. The result, written in a state of great urgency by the Africanist scholars mobilized by Claude, refused to interpret the impact on the drought-stricken Sahel simply as the outcome of natural forces. Rather it shows that one can there perceive the inevitable outcomes of a policy of economic domination directing the key productive activities of these countries solely in the combined interest of the rich countries, the greedy multinationals and the corrupt national elites. The work was an early example of an ecological analysis which today remains influential but is no longer startling. At the time it was sufficiently disturbing, and had enough impact and echo, not only on Africanist scholars or anthropologists but broadly on researchers in Social Sciences, even influencing part of public opinion, that the scientific institutions kept an obvious watch on contributors to the book and those who made frequent reference to it, going as far as making impossible or difficult for them to conduct field work.

This way of combining academic production and involvement in contemporary events, intellectual responsibility and militancy, illustrated by the collective effort around that book, is usually only manifest in exceptional circumstances, when collaborative thought and effort appear to be the logical choice. There, the militant voice of the scholar is called for in the public debate, because she or he shares a certain responsibility through being the holder of particular knowledge. With Claude Meillassoux, this involvement was permanent. His bibliography** shows well enough the breadth of his range of interests, where it is hard to discern whether theoretical questioning arises from political engagement or the other way round. One recalls here how much his analyses in economic anthropology came to feed his incisive critique of the world's economic evolution and the exacerbation of the hierarchy of domination (There is neither other-worldliness today or Manicheism in his vision of the ‘traditional’ societies: it was he who, to the contrary, was the first to theorize the hierarchy of domination existing within those rural societies!). And from then on, while many of his articles dealt directly with social questions apparently remote from the African terrain, they derived in fact from his broad scientific approach and which he used to fight any injustice in any part of the world. Paradoxically, it was his political engagement that would awaken his scholarly interest in Southern Africa, a source of so much fundamental work. Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch wrote to me on this subject: ‘I remember seeing him on his return from South Africa, and he said to me: “I could only agree to go to that country (then under apartheid) on condition that I should return with a political testimony from there.” He was still one of the very first scholars to bring the concerns of South Africa to French public opinion!’ From that field trip he wrote ‘Les derniers Blancs : le modéle sudafricain (Maspero, 1979). Earlier he had made a more modest contribution to an openly militant collective work, L'Afrique australe, par rapport la colonisation et aux travailleurs africains(in UGTSF, (ed.) Notre Afrique, Maspero 1978, pp. 18–32), which was well in his style.

Across the disciplines

In the last two decades, Claude Meillassoux gave further proof of his militant open-mindedness, in challenging the entire scientific community to engage in a collective and interested effort, by organizing several conferences with a group of colleagues in various disciplines. He made it clear that the conference themes should be at the interface of the various disciplines, so as to allow each researcher who faced problems in the field to express their concerns in an open forum. Very carefully prepared by a small group constituted first as an Organizing Committee, then as a Publishing Committee, each of these three conferences has been an important moment in their intellectual progression for many scholars, who repeatedly remind us of that fact.

The first conference, Terrains et perspectives (Orstom, 1987), dealt with the responsibility borne by scholars in the social sciences confronted by the transformations of rural societies in the Third World and with the policies and the ideologies of development. He wrote the conclusion, showing how 'the peasants, who use the land to their exclusive benefit, are considered from the point of view of a capitalist economy, parasites’ (p. 443). The second conference, Le Spectre de Malthus (Orstom – EDI – Ceped, 1991), decompartmentalized a debate which though concerning every field researcher, had been confined to conferences for demographers: questions of underdevelopment and food dependency of Third World countries in a context too quickly analyzed as ‘overpopulation’. In an introductory theoretical chapter, Claude warned us that 'this population is today in the situation of a relative overpopulation. The problem, for the capitalist economy which created it, is to make it disappear in order not to have it as an overload’ (p. 31). The third and last conference, on child labour ( L'enfant exploité ; Karthala, 1996) was around a strikingly overlooked problem in which nobody (with the notable exception of Alain Morice) seemed interested. Yet our awareness of the issue would inevitably challenge our various disciplinary approaches, and force us to reconsider our perspective, so long as we look at reality from the point of view of children forced into hard labor. There again, it was Claude who wrote the conclusion, underlining the paradox of 'the incongruity of child labor. How such physically weak human beings, without any training, described as turbulent and inattentive, with a so-called narrow understanding, are likely to be preferred as workers over qualified and responsible adults? This extraordinary paradox arises from another: the well being of the individual is not the first concern of a capitalist economic system. Quite to the contrary, it is human beings who have to adapt to the realities of a competing economy and that are affected, if not trapped, between the costs of goods and the prices of a fluctuating economic market’.

What characterizes to me, and most significantly, Claude Meillassoux's approach, is the permanent movement back and forth between intellectual and militant engagement. Even his methodology refuses to consider any society, any social phenomenon, as analyzable in an autonomous and isolated way, and out of context. His major contention was that the same systems of domination and exchange are at work in any human activity and in all human societies. His contention still challenges us and keeps us alert: It is hard for us to imagine today, how we will preserve this spirit of vigilance, now that he is not here to vigorously maintain alive that spirit of controversy which is its major prerequisite.

* Text originally composed in French by BernardSchlemmer and circulated worldwide by Toyin Falola. English translation by Edgard Sankara of La Grange College, US.

** If you would like a copy of Meillassoux'sbibliography (8 pages) please get in touch with [e-mail].

Hommage à Claude Meillassoux

de Bernard Schlemmer

Claude MEILLASSOUX nous a quitté. Il laisse, dans le champ de l'anthropologie et, au-delà, dans l'ensemble des sciences sociales, bien des collègues qui se sentent aujourd'hui un peu orphelins – fort paradoxalement, car il ne se reconnaissait comme le père spirituel de personne.

Un coup de tonnerre dans un ciel serein

Son nom restera à jamais lié, dans notre histoire, à la rupture de paradigme, au sens où l'analysait T. KHUN, qu'a représenté la publication de son article fondateur « Essai d'interprétation du phénomène économique dans les sociétés traditionnelles d'autosubsistance » (Cahiers d'études africaines, 1960, 4 :3867). Aujourd'hui encore, Roland WAAST raconte comment, en ce temps-là jeune étudiant, il vit, alors qu'il était à la terrasse du café La Sorbonne, le QG du Groupe des étudiants de sociologie, débouler Raymond JAMOUS qui, agitant ce numéro des Cahiers à bout de bras, s'écria « Je viens de découvrir l'article qui va changer l'anthropologie ! ». Soudain se révélait comme une évidence que les sociétés étudiées par l'anthro-pologie – qu'on ne savait évidemment pas nommer autrement que par défaut, par opposition aux nôtres – étaient, comme toute sociétés humaines, contraintes de produire des biens économiques, et de les produire avant même que de les échanger, de rentrer dans des rapports de production avant que de fonctionner sur tout autre plan.

C'est cet article, rapidement suivi de sa thèse magistrale sur l'anthropologie économique des Gouro de Côte d'Ivoire (Mouton, 1964) qui a permis, en France, le soudain essor de la recherche en anthropologie économique, et bien audelà. Pour ne citer que les pionniers, jeunes chercheurs de sa génération ou à peine cadets, et qui ont débuté leurs travaux au cours de ces années 1960, les noms de Pierre BONNAFE, de Jean COPANS, de Jacques DUPRE, de Pierre-Philippe REY, d'Emmanuel TERRAY s'imposent, auxquels il faut ajouter, dans la même génération mais pour d'autres disciplines, ceux d'économistes comme Samir AMIN, ou Benjamin CORIAT, de philosophes comme Etienne BALIBAR, des historiens comme Catherine COQUERY-VIDROVICH, des démographes comme Francis GENDREAU ou Jacques VERON – et j'en oublie, qu'ils me pardonnent – pour ne parler ici que de ceux qui affirment leur communauté d'approche avec MEILLASSOUX, voire qui reconnaissent son rôle déclencheur pour leurs propres travaux.

Rapidement, c'est la grande majorité des anthropologues français qui se trouvent peu ou prou influencés par les travaux de Claude MEILLASSOUX ; au point que l'anthropologie économique va disputer tout le devant de la scène disciplinaire à la seule concurrence de l'anthropologie structurale, pendant toute la décennie au moins. Il est évidemment impossible ici de citer tous ceux qui se sont inscrit dans cette histoire, pas même ceux qui se sont réclamé ou se réclament encore de son influence. Son influence s'étendra en outre largement hors du petit cercle des francophones : rappelons que l'un de ses ouvrages clés, Femmes, greniers et capitaux(1975, Maspero) sera traduit en pas moins de six langues.

Car le regard porté par ce jeune homme ouvrait singulièrement les fenêtres, à l'intérieur de l'anthropologie elle-même, et entre les diverses disciplines de sciences sociales, en particulier pour la communauté intellectuelle qui se réclamait du marxisme. Le débat cessait tout soudain de s'empêtrer dans l'extension du « mode de production asiatique » ou la pertinence des notion d'infra et de superstructure appliquées aux sociétés précapitalistes, pour ouvrir la voie à une réflexion générale sur les formations économiques et sociales historiquement constituées, en quelque lieu ou en quelque temps historiques qu'on s'y intéresse, en répondant, autant dire, à l'ambition réelle du matérialisme historique.

D'où venait l'audace de ce chercheur qui débarquait ainsi dans le champ universitaire avec un tel coup d'éclat ? Sans doute du fait qu'il n'avait pas suivi la formation classique mais que, fils de bonne et riche famille industrielle du Nord, avec une formation économiste tout à fait libérale reçue aux états-Unis d'Amérique, il avait commencé sa vie professionnelle au coeur du système capitaliste, qu'il connut ainsi de l'intérieur et dont les pratiques et les usages le convainquirent rapidement que jamais il ne pourrait y faire carrière, et bien au contraire qu'il consacrerait son intelligence à le combattre ! C'est ainsi qu'il se forma à l'anthropologie, bien loin des courants dominants de l'époque, le structuralisme ou le fonctionnalisme anglo-saxon, trouvant heureusement avec Georges BALANDIER une parole et une écoute plus en accord avec ses préoccupations.

Le « séminaire Meillassoux » de la rue de Tournon

Cette influence reconnue, il va poursuivre, de la fin des années fin 1960 à la fin des années 1970, son rôle de novateur, d'impulseur, en animant un séminaire dont on peut douter que bien des participants aient retenu l'intitulé exact, car pour tout le monde, c'était « le séminaire Meillassoux ». Là se rencontraient, bien au-delà des anthropologues stricto sensu, tous ceux qui comptaient participer, intellectuellement, au mouvement d'émancipation et de libération nationale, qui s'intéressaient aux questions de fond que posait cet ensemble de problème : comment analyser l'articulation entre les économies traditionnelles et l'économie capitaliste, les sociétés lignagères et la construction des états-Nations, le néocolonialisme et l'impérialisme, le développement et le sous-développement, etc.?

Autant dire que les débats étaient vifs et passionnés. On se souvient du « séminaire » comme du lieu où la recherche intellectuelle et la passion militante s'alimentaient mutuellement, où se construisaient les controverses mais parfois aussi se prononçaient les anathèmes, où l'engagement dans le débat théorique se jugeait à l'aune de l'engagement politique, où fonctionnait réellement une dialectique du logos et de la praxis.

Claude MEILLASSOUX fut alors pleinement reconnu pour ses qualités humaines, et plus seulement intellectuelles. Son sens de l'écoute, son attention aux autres, sa fraternité chaleureuse, son absence totale du sens de la hiérarchie, des positions mandarinales, des titres et des postes, comme son imperméabilité radicale aux pensées dominantes, aux idées pré-pensées, aux facilités du raisonnement, firent de lui un animateur reconnu, apprécié, respecté et même aimé, malgré la vivacité des critiques qu'il ne manquait pas de faire quand il exprimait son désaccord.

Ce séminaire ne sera pas seulement un lieu de paroles, si utile que cela put être. Réunissant des chercheurs d'horizons et de disciplines variés, il donnera pourtant lieu à plusieurs ouvrages collectifs d'importance, comme L'évolution du commerce africain depuis le XIXee siècle en Afrique de l'Ouest, 1971, Oxford University Press, ou comme L'esclavage en Afrique précoloniale (Maspero, 1975) et, surtout, Qui se nourrit de la famine en Afrique? (Maspero, 1974). En effet, cette publication illustre particulièrement bien cette démarche si caractéristique de Claude MEILLASSOUX, qui consiste à assumer dans un même mouvement responsabilité scientifique et responsabilité citoyenne, recherche académique et engagement politique : réalisée dans l'urgence par les chercheurs africanistes mobilisés par MEILLASSOUX qui se refusaient à voir, dans les conséquences de la sécheresse qui frappait alors le Sahel, les seuls effets d'une fatalité naturelle, elle démontre tout au contraire que se lisent là les résultats attendus d'une politique de domination économique orientant l'essentiel des activités productives de ces pays vers les seuls intérêts combinés des pays riches, des multinationales intéressées et des élites nationales corrompues. L'ouvrage, précurseur d'une analyse écologique qui, aujourd'hui, peut garder sa force mais n'étonne plus, était à l'époque suffisamment dérangeant, a eu suffisamment d'impact et d'écho, non seulement dans le milieu des africanistes ou des anthropologues, mais au-delà même des chercheurs de sciences sociales, atteignant une partie de l'opinion publique, au point que les institutions scientifiques vont tenir à l'oeil – et le faire savoir – les co-auteurs de l'ouvrage et ceux qui s'y référent avec trop de complaisance, voire les sanctionner en leur rendant impossible ou difficile l'accès au terrain.

Au marge des disciplines

Cette façon de lier activité professionnelle et actualité historique, responsabilité intellectuelle et responsabilité citoyenne, illustrée collectivement au moment de cet ouvrage, ne se trouve généralement qu'au cours de circonstances particulières, quand la convergence, comme ici, semble s'imposer logiquement, la prise de parole du professionnel étant rendue nécessaire dans le débat civique, du fait même de ses connaissances particulières. La bibliographie ci-dessous montre assez l'étendue de ses champs d'intérêt.

Cette ouverture, il va la mettre à nouveau à l'oeuvre pour que l'ensemble de la communauté scientifique intéressée soit collectivement interpellée, ces vingt dernières années, en organisant, avec un groupe de collègues de diverses disciplines, des colloques dont il voulait, très consciemment, qu'ils portent à l'interface des disciplines, afin de permettre à chaque chercheur de terrain, nécessairement confronté avec cette problématique mais ne pouvant s'exprimer dessus parce que la question ne se pose pas au coeur de sa recherche, de s'exprimer sur ces thèmes importants. Très soigneusement préparé par ce petit groupe qui se constituait en comité d'organisation, puis d'édition, chacun de ces trois colloques aura été pour certains, nous en avons l'écho, un moment important de leurs réflexion.

Le premier, Terrains et perspectives (Orstom, 1987), portait sur la responsabilité des chercheurs en sciences sociales confrontés aux transformations des sociétés rurales du Sud, aux politiques et aux idéologies du développement. Il en rédigera la conclusion, montrant comment « les paysans qui utilisent la terre à leur bénéfice exclusif sont, dans la perspective d'une économie capitaliste, des parasites » (p. 443).

Le second, Les spectres de Malthus, (Orstom – EDI – Ceped, 1991), décloisonnait un débat qui concerne chaque chercheur de terrain, mais restait cantonné dans les seules tribunes des démographes : les questions du sousdéveloppement et de la dépendance alimentaire des pays du Sud dans un contexte trop rapidement analysé comme étant celui de la « surpopulation ». Dans un chapitre théorique introductif, Claude MEILLASSOUX rappelle que « cette population est aujourd'hui dans la situation d'une surpopulation relative. Le problème, pour l'économie capitaliste qui l'a créée, est de la faire disparaître pour ne pas l'avoir à charge » (p. 31).

Le troisième, enfin, L'enfant exploité (Karthala, 1996) portait sur un problème dont on s'aperçut brutalement que personne ou presque (Alain MORICE constituant une notable mais quasi unique exception) ne s'intéressait, alors que sa prise en compte ne pouvait manquer d'interpeller fondamentalement nos approches, nous contraindre à renouveler notre regard, pour peu qu'on accepte de regarder la réalité de leur point de vue : les enfants travailleurs. Là encore, c'est Claude qui rédigea la conclusion, soulignant le paradoxe de « l'incongruité de l'emploi des enfants. Comment des êtres physiquement faibles, sans expérience, réputés turbulents et inattentifs, d'entendements encore limité, sont-ils susceptibles d'être préférés comme travailleurs à des adultes compétents et responsables ? » Cet extraordinaire paradoxe découle d'un autre : le bien-être des individus n'est pas la finalité première de l'économie. Ce sont à l'inverse les êtres humains qui ont à s'adapter à la conjoncture de l'économie concurrentielle et sont façonnés, sinon broyés, entre les coûts et les prix du marché.

Ce qui caractérise – à mes yeux, le plus significativement – l'itinéraire de Claude MEILLASSOUX, c'est ce va-et-vient entre engagement intellectuel et engagement militant qui, chez lui, restera permanent. Sa démarche même refuse de considérer aucune société, aucun phénomène social, comme pouvant être analysé de façon autonome, isolée, hors contexte, sa conviction profonde que les mêmes mécanisme de domination et d'échange sont à l'oeuvre dans toute activité humaine et dans toutes les sociétés historiquement constituées. Elle n'a pas cessé de nous interpeller, de nous empêcher de dormir, parfois : nous avons du mal à concevoir, aujourd'hui, comment nous pourrons conserver cet esprit de vigilance, maintenant qu'il ne sera plus là pour maintenir vigoureusement vivant l'esprit de controverse qui en est la condition majeure.

Bondy, le 7 janvier 2005

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Bibliographic note

1. Economist Intelligence Unit

2. IRINNEWS.ORG

3. New Internationalist

4. STRATFOR

5. UNDP Human Development Report 2004 http://hdr.undp.org/2004

Notes

Footnotes

1. Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Danida; ‘Projectsin Makueni and Taita Taveta Districts, Kenya. Evaluation 2004/4’, Copenhagen. Hard copies which are free, can be obtained by contacting the Danish State Information Centre at http://danida/netboghandel.dk/. The evaluation contains a synthesis report, five sectoral reports and a GIS analysis. The evaluation can be directly downloaded from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ homepage www.um.dk or the Evaluation Department's homepage at www.Evaluation.dk.

2. A copy of a film ‘Postcards from Kenya’,containing interviews with Kenyan professionals and beneficiaries, parallels the formal evaluation; copies are obtainable from ETC UK, 117, Norfolk Street. North Shields, NE30 1NQ, UK.

3. ‘Corruption in Kenya: Feet of Clay’, Economist,. London, 12 February 2005.

4. Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Danida; ‘summaryof Evaluation: Danida's Comments’, Copenhagen., October 2004.

5. ‘Danida Experiment: Denmark Applaudedfor Remaining in Kenya in Times of Trouble’, Development Today, 17 November 2004.

1. Jan Raath, ‘Mugabe Bans Human RightsGroups’, The Times, 18 November 2004.

2. Solidarity Peace Trust, ‘No War in Zimbabwe: An Account of the Exodus of a Nation's People’, November 2004.

3. Report of the Parliamentary Legal Committee on the Non-Governmental Organisations Bill, 2004, [H.B. 13, 2004], Parliament, Harare, Zimbabwe, p. 1.

4. A. Bartholomew & J. Breakspear, ‘HumanRights as Swords of Empire’, C. Leys & L. Panitch, (eds), Socialist Register 2004: The New Imperialism,, London: Merlin Press, p. 132.

5. Patricia Appavoo, “The small state as donor:Canadian and Swedish development assistance policies, 1960–1976,” PhD Thesis, University of Toronto, 1989 charts Canadian and Scandinavian state aid to southern African liberation movements rather than between members of global civil society and the transitory categories of activists (i.e. from non-state to state).

6. Terrence Ranger, ‘Nationalist Historio-graphy,Patriotic History and the History of the Nation: the Struggle over the Past in Zimbabwe’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 30, 2 (June 2004), pp. 215–234.

7. Godfrey Marawanyika, ‘NGOs get 6-monthreprieve’, Zimbabwe Independent, 26 November 2004.

8. The notion of 'tea-drinkers’ in Zimbabweanhistory is ironic, given that the many of the African members of the Capricorn Society – a multi-racial group organized by European liberals to ensure the black élite would not take the communist path – who subsequently joined the nationalist movement and ZANU were condemned as ‘tea-drinkers’ by their more militant precursors.

9. The Catholic Institute for InternationalRelations archives, in London, contain this committee's correspondence. Members included Kees Maxey, Judith Acton (Todd) and Lionel Cliffe among others: ‘Anonymous Chelmsford’ donated £600 to its appeal. See Luise White (2003), The Assassination of Herbert Chitepo: Text and Politics in Zimbabwe, Bloomington, Cape Town/Harare: Indiana University Press, Double Storey/Weaver), for a discursive analysis of the versions on Chitepo's untimely demise.

10. Timothy Scarnecchia, ‘“Imperialist Stooge”versus “Communist Puppet”: Defining a Sellout in Zimbabwean Nationalist Politics, 1961–1963’, African Studies Association Annual Meeting, Boston, 31 October 2003.

11. John Day (1967), International Nationalism: The Extraterritorial Relations of Southern Rhodesian African Nationalists, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul,

12. Interview, Harare, September 2004.

13. National Archives, Public Records Office.Rhodesia: Political Affairs, Internal: Zanu Party. FCO 36/14 RPI/13. Secret.

14. Cypher/Cat A: Immediate CommonwealthOffice to Accra. Telno 1351. 9 November 1967 (IR 5/7/-), Confidential.

15. Stephen Dorril (2000), MI6: Inside the Covert World of Her Majesty's Secret Intelligence Service, New York: The Free Press, pp. 475, 722.

16. David Smith & Colin Simpson (1981), Mugabe, Salisbury: Pioneer Head, p. 94; Africa Confidential, 27 August 1976.

17. Confidential and Guard (1030/11) BritishEmbassy, Washington, DC, 29 March, 1967.

18. Luise White, The Assassination … .

19. Commonwealth Secretariat Library, Marl-borough House. RA (8) 287. 7 December 1976.

20. The Freedom of Information Act, implementedin 2005, should improve matters for contemporary historians and political researchers.

21. His daughter Irene was assisted in her nursingstudies by Amnesty International, as attested by a letter of 27 August 1971, asking the FCO to facilitate the processing of a British passport so she could get to the UK through Pretoria. An FCO telegram to Pretoria a few days later confirmed that ‘entry facilities [were] issued 16 August and posted to applicant next day.’ National Archives, Public Records Office, FCO 36/766, Policy and Activities of Amnesty International in Relation to Rhodesia: demand for release of political pensions and detainees, 1968–1971, files 26 and 28.

22. National Archives, Public Records Office, FCO36/766, Policy and Activities of Amnesty International in Relation to Rhodesia: demand for release of political pensions and detainees, 19681971, file 23.

23. The CIIR is well-known for its series From Rhodesia to Zimbabwe, on which it worked with the Patriotic Front manpower initiative, published in 1978–80. It included Roger Riddell's ‘Alternative to Poverty and The Land Question’, Duncan Clarke's ‘the Unemployment Crisis’, Colin Stoneman's ‘skilled Labour and Future Needs’, Rob Davies' ‘the Informal Sector’, and Michael Bratton's ‘Beyond Community Development in 1978’, John Gilmurray, Roger Riddell, and David Sanders’ ‘the Struggle for Health’ and Vincent Tickner's ‘The Food Problem in 1979’, and Roger Riddell's ‘Education for Employment in 1980’. There have been discussions on developing a series along the same lines for the current moment. For an excellent example of the CIIR's current work and continued commitment, see Lloyd Sachikonye (2003), The Situation of Commercial Farm Workers after Land Reform in Zimbabwe, Harare/ London: Farm Community Trust of Zimbabwe and Catholic Institute for International Relations.

24. It is spelled Chingwendere and Chigwedere invarious letters.

25. David Moore, ‘Democracy, Violence andIdentity in the Zimbabwean War of National Liberation: Reflections from the Realms of Dissent’, Canadian Journal of African Studies, 29,3 (December 1995), 375–402.

26. The post-Chitepo assassination turmoil inZANU is reflected in the revised bibliographic details of Zimbabwe News, The San Francisco edition, dated January/ May 1976, is labelled the first but in fact was preceded by many issues.

27. ‘Comrades Robert & Sally Mugabe, Edgar & Anne Ruvimbo Tekere Send Their Greetings To All ZANU Members and Supporters Around the World,’ Zimbabwe News, 1, 1, (January/May 1976), San Francisco, pp. 39, 41.

28. Eddison Jonas Mudadirwa Zvobgo, ‘SPECIALFEATURE: The Armed Struggle ZILA In Full Bloom And In Full Swing,’ Zimbabwe News, 1, 1, (January/May 1976), San Francisco, pp. 28–30.

29. Alex de Waal (1997), Famine Crimes: Politics and the Disaster Relief Industry in Africa,Oxford: James Currey, for thought-provoking questions on the relationship of aid, sovereignty and democracy, to which my ‘Humanitarian Agendas, State Reconstruction, and Demo-cratisation Processes in Wartorn Societies,’ UNHCR Policy and Evaluation Unit, Working Paper 24, June 2000, is a feeble response.

30. Report of the Parliamentary Legal Committeeon the Non-Governmental Organisations Bill, 2004, [H.B. 13, 2004], Parliament, Harare, Zimbabwe, p. 16.

1. See speech by Trade Commissioner Mandelson(SPEECH/05/23-20/01/2005) http://europa.eu.int/rapid/ pressReleasesAction.do?reference=SPEECH/ 05/23 & format=HTML & aged=0 & language =EN & guiLanguage=en

2. See speech by Trade Commissioner Mandelson(SPEECH/04/505-1/12/2004) http://europa.eu.int/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=SPEECH/04/505&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en

3. This assumes a two-and-a-half year delay inlegally making new funds available – 2010 – and a further two-and-a-half to four-year delay in actually moving from primary commitments to secondary commitments and actual payments.

4. See ECA assessment of the economic andwelfare impacts of the EU-Africa EPAs. http://www.uneca.org/eca_programmes/trade_and_regional_integration/documents/KAringi.pdf

5. See EC memorandum (MEMO/05/18-20/01/2005) http://europa.eu.int/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=MEMO/05/18&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en

6. While the EU market accounts for 40% of the volume of sugar exports of ACP sugar-protocol beneficiaries it accounts for 71% of the revenue earned on exports.

7. This being said since the Commission takes all policy decisions as a corporate body of Commissioners, he does have an input into policy decisions in all departments of the EC.

8. See the Daily Nation, Barbados, 10 January 2005, http://www.nationnews.com/StoryView.cfm?Record=56821 &Section=LO

9. Least developed country suppliers such asMozambique, Malawi, Tanzania, Zambia, Sudan and Ethiopia will already enjoy unrestricted access to the EU sugar market after reform as a result of the EU's ‘Everything but Arms’ (EBA) initiative.

1. The term ‘armed globalization’ is used byNegri and Hardt for describing today's’ primary obstacle to democracy, namely the global state of war. In their important exploration of the dialectics of the ‘multitude, the living alternative that grows within (armed globalizations') Empire', the authors set out to provide a conceptual basis for a new project of democracy. M.Hardt & A.Negri (2004), Multitude, New York: The Penguin Press; Richard Falk has elaborated the dynamic of predatory globalization for a human rights and civil society perspective. Richard Falk (1999), Predatory Globalization, Cambridge: Polity Press.

2. For a state-of-the-art discourse on thechallenges, dynamics and opportunities entailed in partnership modes of cooperation refer to: J. Brinkerhoff (2002), Partnership for International Development: Rhetoric or Results?, Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, Boulder.

3. Afrol news, 5 February 2004, Portugal, SãoTomé sign military accord, quoted from http://www.afrol.com/articles/11219

4. Afrol news, 20 October 2004, Brazil's Petrobrasinterested in São Tomé oilfields, see: http://www.afrol.com/articles/14591

5. Afrol news, 21 January 2004, Malaysian interest in São Toméan oil, see: http://www.afrol.com/articles/10918