Open World Conference of Workers

In Defense of Trade Union Independence & Democratic Rights

1) Keynote presentation by Lybon Mabasa, president of the Socialist Party of Azania/SOPA (South Africa/Azania), to the February 13 plenary session of the Open World Conference (reporting on the International Tribunal on Africa, held the weekend of February 5-6 in Los Angeles)

2) Presentation by Dr. Deopard Ram Seegobin, member of the Central Committee of LALIT (Republic of Mauritius), to the February 12 plenary session of the OWC. (Brother Seegobin's presented an indictment of the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act currently under discussion in the U.S. Congress.)

[ NOTE: According to a message we received today (May 4, 2000) from Lori Wallach of Public Citizen, the Congressional vote on the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) will take place tomorrow. The Act has been conveniently incorporated into a larger piece of legislation titled "Africa-CBI NAFTA Expansion." We urge all unionists and activists in the United States to contact your representatives today to demand a NO vote on this heinous bill. For more info on what you can do, please contact: Lori M. Wallach, Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch, Tel. 1-202-546-4996; www.tradewatch.org.]

3) Presentation by Kwesi Pratt Jr., Vice President, Peoples Convention (Ghana) to the February 12 plenary session of the Open World Conference

1) Keynote presentation by Lybon Mabasa, president of the Socialist Party of Azania/SOPA (South Africa/Azania), to the February 13 plenary session of the Open World Conference (reporting on the International Tribunal on Africa, held the weekend of February 5-6 in Los Angeles)

Brothers and sisters: I am going to try to summarise the work carried out over a period of three years in relation to the International Tribunal on Africa, which was set up to judge those responsible for the murderous course imposed on the continent and its people. [See the Verdict of the International Tribunal on Africa in OWC Report Back No. 5.]

I stand before you today on the mandate given by the delegates and participants in the first session of the International Tribunal on Africa, which was held at Compton College in Los Angeles on the weekend of February 5-6.

This Tribunal received evidence and witnesses from 17 countries in Africa. We also received evidence from Brazil and the Caribbean islands. We received evidence, as well, from Europe and from the United States of America.

The Tribunal was a result of a Conference which was called by the International Liaison Committee (ILC) in Bingerville [Cote d'Ivoire/Ivory Coast] in February 1998. After taking a forensic audit and a balance sheet of what was happening in Africa - and how the continent of Africa and its people were slowly being moved into a situation where the nation states were going to be destroyed, where young people could not look forward to a future - there was a decision taken at that conference that we needed to set up a tribunal that would establish who is responsible for these conditions that were becoming prevalent in Africa.

It was decided that the Preparatory hearing of this Tribunal would be held in Johannesburg, in South Africa, in February 1999. The reasons for the choice of South Africa were quite obvious. A lot of people take South Africa as being the most wonderful country. It is the country of Nelson Mandela, the great man who forgives. The man who has forgiven the settlers and the colonisers, but who forgot to forgive the colonised and the landless.

He gave the colonisers and the settlers the right to own the 87% of the land that the apartheid regime had given them. He even gave them the right to use money to buy the 13% of the lands that were reserved for Black people. Nelson Mandela forgave Black business and allowed them to take the wealth of the country out of South Africa.

Today as we talk, corporations with a worldwide reputation - Anglo-American, DeBuyres, South Africa Breweries, Old Mutual, Liberty Life - have desisted from the Johannesburg stock exchange and have set up their new offices on the London Stock exchange. We wanted people to come to South Africa to face this reality.

The Tribunal in Los Angeles held its sessions in full conformity with the mandate conferred upon it by the Conference held in 1998 in Bingerville, called at the initiative of the International Liaison Committee. It was also held in conformity with the mandate of the Tribunal Preparatory Conference held in February 1999 in Johannesburg in Azania, also known as South Africa.

After hearing an update on the situation of Mumia Abu-Jamal - imprisoned for more than 17 years and presently on Death Row in the United States - as well as information about the campaign to save the life of Mumia, the Tribunal continued with its business of the day.

The Tribunal had issued invitations to the IMF, the World Bank, the European Union, the United Nations, the World Trade Organisation, and the governments of the United States, France, Great Britain to come and present the other side of the story if they did not agree with what we are saying. Of course, they did not attend.

The Jury sat to consider its verdict, while having as its reference not only the facts presented, but also firmly rooted in the conviction of:

1. The recognition of the rights of peoples to self-determination;

2. The recognition of the right to life, to peace, against all attempts to massacre people through violence and famine;

3. Also, the recognition of the rights of oppressed people to organise themselves independently against any and all attacks made upon them.

Of course, given the nature of the charges, testimonies and documents presented, the Jury deemed itself competent to issue its own verdict, to establish and review the facts, and respond to questions.

It was clearly and unequivocally established:

* That 220 million Africans today live below the poverty level and that there will be 300 million by the end of this year according to a report of the UNDP.

* That 42% of the entire population of the African continent live on less than $1 per day.

* That more than 60% of the population has no access to drinkable water.

* That tuberculosis, a treatable and curable disease, kills 600,000 Africans every year. Malaria is responsible for 1 million deaths every year and 400,000 of those are children.

* That there are 6 million official refugees in Africa, while there are also more than 13 million people who wander from one end of the Continent to the other seeking out a living, and the majority of these people are women with children on their backs.

We also established that this situation which exists presently in Africa has its genesis firmly in the slave trade, which took millions of people out of Africa and also that resulted in more than 100 million people dying in the passage.

Today in the United States people believe the concept this country was built on was rock-and-roll. We want to say that this country was built by the glorious efforts of the working class of the United States, but above all by the blood and sweat of slave women, men and children, and that, today, 400 years later, their children are still catching hell in the United States of America. And they are being pushed into the periphery where it's now common to hear African Americans talking about freedom in Africa.

We want to say that African Americans demand and deserve social justice in the United States today, and they are part of that glorious working class of the United States.

We clearly established that the people who indicted for these conditions prevalent in Africa today are guilty of all of the things which we are mentioning.

Based on these elements and the totality of the documents admitted to the testimony, the Jury issued the following verdict:

The IMF, the World Bank, the World Trade Organisation, the European Union, the major powers - in particular the U.S., France, Great Britain - the multinationals are guilty of perpetuating pillage and oppression, which existed under the slave regime and colonialism and which still exists today through structural adjustments.

They are guilty of systematic plundering of funds diverted to this debt, thereby dismantling systems of public health, instruction, inter-state infrastructure of African countries. They are guilty of orchestrating all-out deregulation, starting with labour, and liquidating labour codes and public sectors.

We established that these organisations were guilty of creating conditions that are based on racism, which was prevalent in the slave era, which today threatens people in Brazil, threatens people in the United States, threatens people in the Caribbean islands, and still threatens people in Africa.

We acknowledge that while these people refuse to pay historic reparations to children and daughters of the slave masters, they continue to subject the African continent and these people to conditions that make life almost impossible, almost unlivable.

We agreed to send a permanent delegation of the International Tribunal on Africa to present their conclusions to working people all over the world so they will know that their fight to save Africa is actually a fight to save humanity.

All of the workers of the world should understand that this is not an African thing. What is happening in Africa today is actually what is prescribed for working people the world over.

The International Tribunal is convinced that its work will not be complete until such time that the tentacles of imperialism are broken in each and every country, and therefore forced to retreat - thereby allowing the birth of a new countries where the values of men and women - of humanity itself - will be restored. Thank you.

2) Presentation by Dr. Deopard Ram Seegobin, member of the Central Committee of LALIT (Republic of Mauritius), to the February 12 plenary session of the OWC.

[Note: Brother Seegobin's presentation to the OWC was an abridged version of a deposition he had presented one week earlier at the International Tribunal on Africa on the question of the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act. All the documents of the International Tribunal on Africa will be available shortly. For the purpose of this presentation, we have chosen to include the unabridged version of Brother Seegobin's indictment presented at the International Tribunal on Africa. It has been adapted slightly for this purpose.]

Dear Sisters and Brothers:

I will be speaking on the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act. The Clinton Administration, the American Congress, and American Multinationals are attempting a recolonization of 48 countries in the southern part of the African continent, through the instrument of this Bill.

What is the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), previously known as the Africa Bill, or the Lugar-Crane Bill, or perhaps more appropriately as the Africa Recolonization Bill?

The introductory line to the Bill, which has already been voted in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, albeit in different versions, reads thus: " To authorize a new trade and investment policy for sub-Saharan Africa." The gist of the Bill is to offer free entry into the American market (i.e no quota or tariff barrier) to a certain number of manufactured goods from the 48 African countries listed in the Bill: free entry as long as these 48 "targeted" countries comply with the conditionalities enumerated in the Bill. In other words: free trade, but at a price". Later we shall come back to these conditionalities.

We think it is very appropriate that our Party LALIT from Mauritius should speak out against the murderous policies that this particular Bill represents. Appropriate because the Mauritian State and Bourgeoisie, as a joint venture, have been in the forefront of the lobbying in favor of this Bill. Right now, as a joint Senate-House of Representatives Conference Committee is attempting to reconcile the two different versions of the Bill voted, the Prime Minister of Mauritius, aided and abetted by textile industrialists, is in Washington trying to convince the Senate Foreign Committee presided by the notorious Senator Jesse Helms, that the Africa Growth and Opportunity Bill is a good thing for the United States; the Prime Minister of Mauritius will continue his lobbying at the National Prayers Breakfast.

There has been strong opposition to this Bill from within the U.S.: the American Textile Manufacturers Institute has expressed concern that the Bill will offer opportunities for cheap Asian textiles to flood the American market, after trans-shipment through African countries. The reassurance offered to the American Manufacturers by the Mauritian Ambassador in Washington is quite candid: he writes in a letter published in The Washington Times of September 2, 1998: " There are tremendous opportunities for the U.S. domestic textile industry to set up profitable enterprises in Africa, just as it has done in Mexico and the CaribbeanÉ.". We can easily understand why the AFL-CIO has also expressed strong opposition to the Bill. But if in the U.S. the Bill may represent a threat to employment, for the 48 African countries concerned, the threat is of a different nature, of a totally different magnitude.

What is the basis of our accusations?

In exchange for free entry into the American market, the Bill imposes an economic model that will bring social , political, and economic disaster to the African countries concerned. The Bill represents a direct threat to these countries' sovereignty, the well-being of their peoples, and their future development.

- The Bill starts off by a colonial style carving up of the Continent: it establishes a list of 48 countries that it describes as "sub-Saharan Africa"

- The conditionalities contained in the Bill impose IMF type rules that aim at decreasing corporate tax while increasing indirect taxation like VAT that affect the poor more, cutting back expenditure on social services and infrastructure development, broad privatization through disvestiture, causing dramatic increases in the price of domestic water and electricity supply, and other services.

- Although the WTO has suffered a serious set-back in the Battle of Seattle, the Bill imposes the agenda of the WTO in terms of tariff cuts, removal of import restrictions and subsidies on food and agriculture, liberalizing of service sectors to allow unlimited foreign acquisitions and deregulation, monopoly patent and other intellectual property rights.

- The conditionalities go as far as replicating the provisions of the defunct Multilateral Agreement on Investment, in terms of currency and investment deregulations, same treatment for foreign investors as for national capital , thus establishing new rights for foreign investors to grab ownership over Africa's natural resources and land.

Apart from the above conditionalities, the President of the USA, when deciding on the eligibility of any of the 48 African countries listed in the Bill, takes into account " Whether or not such country engages in activities that undermine United States national security or foreign policy interests." Mauritius, for example, will need to think twice before pressing its sovereignty claim on the Chagos Archipelago with a U.S. military base on Diego Garcia, as this might be interpreted as an action which undermines the "foreign policy interests" of the U.S., and this would immediately make Mauritius ineligible, and precipitate widespread closing down of textile factories that would have in the meantime become totally dependent on the American market. Even a particular vote in the U.N. General Assembly may be interpreted by the U.S. President as undermining the "foreign policy interests" of the U.S.

The version of the Bill voted by the Senate contains a further conditionality which is not in the House of Representatives version, and which caps all the others: to qualify for free entry of their manufactured goods into the American market, African countries covered by the Bill will, in addition, have to import the raw materials from the U.S. ! A condition that the Senate inserted into the Bill to allow for the usual "wheeling and dealing" and "horse trading" that must be happening right now in the Conference Committee which is trying to reconcile the different versions of the Bill voted in the House of Representatives and Senate, respectively.

There are now several studies that have been carried out by organizations like OXFAM, and even the OECD and World Bank, that have established beyond any doubt that countries that have been compelled to adopt the uniform prescription of IMF Structural Adjustment Programmes have suffered enormously: agricultural production has stagnated, with the loss of food security and widespread famine; health care systems have collapsed, with even basic care becoming a commodity well outside the means of the vast majority; school attendance rates are declining, while thousands of teachers have been sacked or are receiving no wages; subsidized housing projects have been abandoned, with millions living in shanty towns; essential infrastructure development has ground to a halt, for lack of funds.

The Africa Bill will impose these same harsh economic and social measures, with the same disastrous effects. The internal economy of African countries will collapse, the masses will suffer from famine and deadly epidemics, and local conflicts will erupt in an increasing number of areas (as happened in Rwanda/Burundi), bringing about the tragedy of millions of refugees walking away from one armed conflict into another.

We now pose the question: who stands to benefit in the medium and long term, from the provisions of the Africa Bill? The working masses in the African countries will suffer the same poverty, or even worse, that they have known under the IMF programmes, the American working class will fear factory closures and lay-offs.

Evidently, with the WTO type measures included in the Africa Bill, U.S. industrial capital will see increased markets in the African countries concerned: recently U.S. exports to Africa have stagnated, and is losing ground to Japanese, South-East Asian, and European export drives. Even in the tiny market that the Republic of Mauritius represents, the U.S. Ambassador has, over the past year, made several public statements to deplore the fact that U.S. products were not managing to penetrate the market. But certainly the biggest beneficiaries of the Africa Bill will be the U.S.-based multinationals. Here I will quote from an article by Leonard Robinson Jr., President and CEO of the National Summit on Africa, that appeared in The San Francisco Chronicle on June 3, 1999: " According to the U.S. Commerce Department, the average return on investment in Africa is more than 20%- higher than in any other region. As Coca Cola, American Express, McDonald's, Microsoft and other corporations have discovered, doing business in Africa is good business."

We must now pose another question: why do so many African governments and bourgeoisies actively support the Africa Bill? With the setting up of regional economic and trade blocks, something which incidentally the Africa Bill encourages actively, the capitalists in African countries have started to move their production units around from country to country to maximize their profits through cheap labour.

Already the largest knitwear producing company in Mauritius has delocated half of its production units to Madagascar: the sugar companies in Mauritius now manage production units in Mozambique, Benin, and Ivory Coast. South African capital has moved into the sugar industry in Mauritius. Soon there will be a regional African capitalist class which can already see that the Africa Bill will allow it to move about in the region to maximize profit, while having a guaranteed market for its export products.

In Mauritius, in particular, the capitalist class has developed under the protectionist umbrella of the Europe-ACP LomŽ Convention, so for them, the Africa Bill represents a bridge to allow them to negotiate the threatened WTO dismantling of Conventions like the LomŽ one. They are not particularly concerned with the havoc that the Africa Bill will cause for the working masses in any particular country in the region.

So for that reason we accuse equally the bourgeoisie and political rŽgimes of the 48 African countries concerned by the Africa Bill , for their cynical collusion with the U.S. Multinationals who are the driving force behind the imposition of IMF, WTO, and MAI- type conditionalities in exchange for so-called free trade between African countries and the U.S.

To sustain the accusations against the Africa Growth and Opportunity Bill, I will quote from documents and Appeal Letters from organizations, both here in the U.S. and in Africa, who have also studied the murderous implications of this Bill.

Letter addressed to U.S. Senators by 28 public figures in the U.S., including Senators and Congressmen:

"Under the cover of an appealing name and non-binding preamble, the Lugar-Crane bill contains numerous provisions mainly aimed at benefiting large foreign private investors and multinational corporations at the expense of true and equitable African development"

" It would be cynical indeed if the terms of this legislation promoted the replacement of the governmental colonialism Africa fought to escape with economic colonialism of equally strangling dimensions. Indeed, some African economists, writing in the journal Third World Economics, specifically have labelled the Crane Bill as an instrument of recolonization"

Open Letter addressed to the OAU General Secretary by the All Workers Conference of Mauritius:

" It is in the context of independence and human rights that we write a desperate appeal in the name of the Mauritian working class and the African working class that the Organization for African Unity call on all member countries to weigh up the dangers of the new carving up of Africa and recolonization of so-called "Sub-saharan Africa" that will occur as direct result of the Africa Growth and Opportunity Bill, which is in the U.S. Congress again."

Southern African Peoples Organizations: Resolution taken at the Harare Workshop, 6-8 October 1999:

" We therefore call on you, as U.S. Senator, to:

1. vote against AGOB that is being presented in the Senate

2. oppose all conditionalities that we mentioned above in any U.S. legislation that concern trade and aid with Africa.

Appeal of African Women and Women's Organizations (endorsed by 212 women and delegates of Women's organizations after the WILDAF General Assembly, Accra, Ghana, July 99)

"We, African women's organizations and African women call on you, as an African Head of State to oppose conditionalities in the African Growth and Opportunity Act being debated in the U.S. Senate."

"These conditionalities will have a drastic impact on African women's lives. Human rights for African women depends on African States ensuring universal access to basic economic and social services, to public infrastructure, access to land, to protection of our collective agricultural heritage and control of seeds on the one hand and animal genetic material on the other, to the right to secure employment and to the right to a living wage."

To conclude: The Africa Growth and Opportunity Act will undermine the sovereignty of African countries, attack the economic and social rights of the working masses, and cause a major set-back in the development of democratic institutions that can respond to peoples' aspirations and needs in Africa.

3) Presentation by Kwesi Pratt Jr., Vice President, Peoples Convention (Ghana) to the February 12 plenary session of the Open World Conference

Comrades and friends,

We have come from the jungles of Africa and we have come from the valleys of Africa, not because of the attractions of the way of life of this beautiful city of San Francisco; we have come to join workers in the belly of the beast, we have come to join workers from Asia, Latin America, and all parts of the world in the struggle against imperialism.

We have come to affirm our dignity and to rally the workers of the world in the struggle to smash the capitalist establishment to pieces. Our struggle is about the exposure of the lies of imperialism, our struggle is an affirmation of the truth. It has often been said that Africa is a dark continent of poor people. That is a lie.

It is a lie because every year $25 billion dollars are siphoned out of Africa to support the lavish style of capitalist groups, not the people of America. It is a lie because it is the sweat and blood of the African peoples, the sweat and blood of the working people of this world, that create the wealth for General Motors, for the 1% of the population in America.

On our way to San Francisco, we made a stop in Los Angeles to participate in the International Tribunal on Africa, where we reviewed the African situation. In all our deliberations, it became manifest and very clear that the wars of the African continent, the genocide, the crushing poverty are the result of imperialist exploitation and oppression. And we need to smash the system in order to free the African people from poverty.

It is clear to us that what the African people need is not charity. It is clear to us that the African people don't need sympathy. What the African people need is to retain and win control over the resources of Africa - for the development of Africa, for the development of all people of the world and for the preservation of the world civilisation.

We said this because we know for a fact that for every dollar that goes into Africa, for every dollar that is invested by the multinational corporations and the thirsty capitalists of the West, they gain three dollars in return. And though this is the case, they still have the nerve to say that Africa owes them more $300 billion dollars.

Through the repayment of the debt alone, the African people have already contributed more than $900 billion dollars to the development of the West. Why should our people subside the economies of powerful America, Britain, France, Germany, with $25 billion dollars every year?

We are not a poor people; we are an exploited people, we are an oppressed people, and we will not allow these conditions in our countries to go on. We shall fight this battle, and we shall fight this battle in unison with the workers of North America, with the workers of Latin America, with the workers of Asia and the workers of every part of the planet. And we shall win this battle.

I do not intend to make a very long speech. I shall speak briefly. If this conference is about solidarity actions in defense of workers' rights, if this conference is about waging a war against the capitalist establishment and imperialism, if this conference is to have any meaning, then we cannot ignore the suffering of the Cuban people, we cannot ignore the suffering of the Iraqi people, and we cannot ignore the suffering of the peoples of Yugoslavia who today face a harsh blockade and sanctions on them just because they refuse to lie prostrate before the forces of capitalism and imperialism.

We are the voice of sanity all over the world, which is why we must call for the immediate lifting of sanctions against all countries that refuse to lie prostrate before the forces of U.S. imperialism. We call for the immediate lifting of the blockade on the Cuban people so that the Cuban people can take their destiny into their own hands and build the society that they are building, where people and human needs come first.

Let me finally say that the African struggle is not about debt relief. It is not about debt forgiveness. It is about smashing the very system which produces the debt through the oppression and exploitation of the African people. It's about smashing the capitalist system into pieces and building a nicer place - a just society of all the peoples of all colors and kinds, a society in which production will not be about the accumulation of profit, but will be about the resolution of the social, political and economic problems of all people. That's the society we advocate. And that's the society we want to see. This world is one, our struggle is one, and together we shall win against the decadent forces of imperialism and capitalism.

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