BY NJONGONKULU NDUNGANE
Things have changed dramatically in South Africa since our first democratic elections in 1994. Sadly, we are still deeply affected by apartheid's legacies. Of overarching importance to all the people of South Africa is that we continue to carry the burden of a US$25 billion foreign debt incurred to underpin a political system that the United Nations had declared a sin against humanity.
What is really frightening is that many other sub-Saharan countries, long free of colonialist oppression, are also suffering under the burden of debt incurred by their oppressors.
And please do not assume that oppression is always about politics. In Africa it has been as much about economic exploitation as about power. It may surprise you that more money flows outward from my continent to the developed world than flows inward.
On the matter of debt I know and understand the reaction that says: "If you borrow money, the honourable thing is to pay it back".
My reply is, "Yes, of course, as long as it was you who incurred the debt in the first place and [as long as] the contract is an ethical one".
Even when these two benchmarks do apply, there is also a need to recognise that some debts are unpayable. But it goes way beyond that. The same countries that are caught in a never-ending interest-cycle of debt and have already repaid their debt several times over are the same countries that are registering the world's highest incidence of HIV/AIDS.
The fact is that AIDS and poverty walk hand in hand. No wonder 75% of people with AIDS in the world are in sub-Saharan Africa.
A former Portuguese colony, Mozambique is an excellent example of developed world aid projects that do not work. During the 1970s, first Rhodesia then the South African regime sponsored an army called Renamo that killed an estimated one million Mozambicans.
When peace finally came in 1991, Mozambique borrowed to pay for the damage incurred by apartheid's proxy army. The debt rose to more than US$5 billion and the country was so weak that it qualified as a pilot for the HIPC [debt relief] programme.
Unserviceable debt
The unserviceable debt is slowly, gradually being written off but at a huge cost to Mozambique's people. In 1998, conditions included an order signed by World Bank President James Wolfensohn to raise the user fees for public health services by five times the existing rate. Municipal water had to be privatised, with consequent sharp increases in cost to the consumer.
In June 1999, under pressure from protests at the Cologne G8 meeting, a little more debt was relieved. But Mozambique still spends far more in debt servicing than on health and education and Washington's expanded debt relief entails 71 brand new conditions.
Let me give you a typical example. Mozambique, once famous for its cashew nuts, is not allowed to resurrect this industry using traditional industrial policy tools. The IMF also insists that parliament adjusts the overall tax structure to make it more regressive. The rich now pay a smaller share of their income.
Even after those massive floods that tugged at the world's heartstrings, the World Bank and IMF refused to cancel any further debt. They have instead offered new loans. This is in a country where the average income is less than US$78 a year.
Earlier this month, President Chissano complained publicly that the World Bank held him hostage so that for a few crumbs of debt relief he was forced to destroy more than 10,000 jobs in cashew-nut processing.
Human face of AIDS
I must ask a question: "How can the developed world express such concern about the AIDS pandemic yet remain so indifferent to the debt that is fuelling a pandemic that has already killed more people than both world wars? Is it because the world is unable to put a human face to the horrific AIDS statistics that seem to dazzle everyone?"
When the United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS and the World Health Organisation jointly agree that by December last year 34.7 million adults and 1.4 million children worldwide were living with the disease, it is so easy to be dazzled by the numbers.
In human terms, mothers and fathers are dying like flies. Seven- and eight-year-olds are having to place a higher priority on scavenging for food for their younger siblings than on going to school. Faithful women infected by unfaithful partners live, and die, with the heartache of knowing they have transmitted the disease to their babies.
At the same time we are told that 1.3 billion people continue to live in extreme poverty, on less than US$1 a day. This is about hunger, ill health, squalor, deprivation, lack of education and a far cry from the basic human dignity that is our God-given right. On average, 34,000 children die each day as a direct result of malnutrition.
In Africa malaria and [tuberculosis] kill about five million people every year but the world's pharmaceutical giants do not spend money on research and development for these diseases because there is no profit in it. The fact is poor people and poor governments cannot pay for drugs and the implications for the AIDS pandemic is horrific.
All this is happening in a world in which the three richest people have assets that exceed the gross domestic product of the 48 least developed countries and their 600 million people.
Against a backdrop of human suffering, Americans spend more than US$8 billion annually on cosmetics. In a year when Ethiopia's foreign debt stood at US$10 billion, Europe spent more on ice cream.
How you can help
What can you in Australia do to help us?
Jubilee's greatest success has been to place debt on the G8 agenda and to develop a broad base of support. It gathered the world's largest petition ever, with over 24 million signatures. Of these, nearly half a million were Australian.
Under the pressure of this kind of people power, Italy, Canada, the US, [Britain], France, Germany and Japan have all promised 100% bilateral debt cancellation to countries qualifying for multilateral debt relief under HIPC. While only a fraction of all these promises have translated into money staying in debtor countries, where there have been substantial cuts in debt servicing, social indicators have risen. In Uganda primary school enrolments have doubled. In Mozambique half a million children have been immunised against killer diseases, with similar reports from Guyana.
The most notable victory for Jubilee in your country is that Nicaragua now no longer makes payments on its debt of US$7 million to Australia.
Because of this progress, in the popular imagination there is a common belief that enough has been done. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Some crumbs have fallen from the rich countries' table, largely in the form of promises. But thousands of children continue to die each day from easily preventable diseases. They need more than promises. Promises do not provide food security, or clean water supplies, or anti-retroviral drugs, or antibiotics. Promises do not open schools and hospitals.
We need to maintain the pressure because thousands of children continue to die needlessly each day.
The Australian government's promise to cancel debts owed by Ethiopia means nothing in human terms until your country stops collecting the A$2 million a year that it collects from this desperate place.
Other nations too are sending money to Australia which could be used to save lives — Nepal, Vietnam, Bangladesh and the Philippines collectively owe A$506 million — less than Australians spend on alcohol in a month.
To continue to collect on these debts is a form of violence because it means there will be mothers who will watch their children die from drinking unsafe water, children who work in the fields rather than go to school because their parents cannot afford the fees, doctors dying of AIDS while whole villages go without even the most basic of health care.
This year the Australian government will be hosting the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, or CHOGM.
As host of CHOGM you the people of Australia are ideally placed to pressure your government to take an international lead on the issue of debt.
The global movement is calling for a whole "new deal on debt". Currently, the key demand is the cancellation of 100% of the debts owed to the IMF and World Bank. Bilateral debt relief will more readily follow.
The only condition must be that there are mechanisms to ensure the money reaches the poor. Structural adjustment programs must be scrapped, and the current system of dealing with international debts replaced by a fair and transparent international debt arbitration process.
At the end of the day, it is about power: the power of international and local financiers and allied bureaucrats, versus the power of people. I have been through such a power struggle once before, and will be with the global movement to the end.
We who are struggling to cancel debt, roll back AIDS and achieve lasting international social justice, need your help more than ever before and I urge you to join us!
[This speech was given by Njongonkulu Ndungane, the Anglican Archbishop for South Africa, in Sydney on August 30. His trip to Australia was sponsored by Jubilee Australia. It appears here abridged.]