Open World Conference of Workers

In Defense of Trade Union Independence & Democratic Rights

International Tribunal

to Judge Those Responsible for the Murderous Course Imposed on the Workers and Peoples of Africa

From: International Liaison Committee for a Workers International
Friday, January 28, 2000 12:28 PM

Document Number 1

Africa: a continent destroyed and plundered first by slave raids then by colonial occupation

When we launched the appeal for an international Tribunal on Africa, we said: One cannot understand the disaster in Africa today without taking into account what began with the capture and trading of slaves. The consequences are still felt today: tens of millions of men, women and children were deported, forced to leave their home with chains on their feet, under the whips of slave traders. Tens of millions died during the voyage. Tens of millions others died when resisting capture or in jail before leaving. The continent was emptied of its living forces, those best adapted for production. Economic activity was paralysed. The most evolved forms of social and political organisation were destroyed.

Parts of Africa left "free" by export trends in captives must have been affected by the tremendous dislocation (...) on every other continent from the 15th century onwards, the population showed constant and sometimes spectacular natural increase; while it is striking that the same did not apply to Africa. One European scholar gave the following estimates of world population (in millions) by continents:


Continent	1650	1750	1850	1900
Africa	100	100	100	120
Europe	103	144	274	423
Asia	257	437	656	857

"None of the above figures are really precise, but they do indicate a consensus among researchers on population that the huge African continent has an abnormal record of stagnation in this respect, and there is no causative factor other than the trade in slaves to which attention can be drawn.

"African economic activity was affected both directly and indirectly by a population loss. For instance, when the inhabitants of a given area were reduced below a certain number in an environment where tsetse fly was present, the remaining few had to abandon the area.

" In effect, enslavement was causing these people to lose their battle to tame and harness nature - a battle which is at the basis of development. Violence also meant insecurity. The opportunity presented by European slave traders became the major (though not the only) stimulus for a great deal of social violence between different African communities and within any given community. It took the form more of raiding and kidnapping than of regular warfare, and that fact increased the element of fear and uncertainty. (...)

"The massive loss to the African labour was made more critical because it was composed of able-bodied young en and young women. Slave buyers preferred their victims between the ages of 15 and 35, and preferably in the early twenties; the sex ratio being about two men to one woman. Europeans often accepted younger African children, but rarely any older person. They shipped the most healthy wherever possible, taking the trouble to get those who had already survived an attack of smallpox, and who were therefore immune from further attacks of that disease, which was then one of the world's great killer diseases."

(How Europe underdeveloped Africa, Walter Rodney).

Following slave raids, colonial dismembering and occupation.

"Colonial powers divided up Africa among themselves at the Berlin Congress of 1885, and created arbitrarily realms, states and communities while regrouping arbitrarily zones and populations with no link between them. In the sixties, the new independent States inherited the colonial borders and therefore the problems they created for territorial integrity and national unity. Inherited colonial laws and institutions still make things even worse for their aim had been to exploit local divisions and not do away with them.

"The characteristics of the trade relations set up by colonial powers provoked long term distortions of the political economy of Africa. Transport networks and related infrastructures were conceived for the needs of trade with the colonial country, and not to help balance the development of local economy. Economic activities, which give far greater importance to extraction industries and raw products for export, frequently imposed unfavourable terms of trade, and moreover did not stimulate demand requiring better skills and education for the labour force. The consequences of this system of production and exchange continued to be felt after independence. As the struggle for political power did not depend upon setting up viable national economic systems, it was often deemed more interesting to use the institutions inherited from colonialism era in order to serve the interests of such and such fraction."

(1998 Report of the UN general secretary on Africa).

Colonial occupation was a brutal regime, as shown by the following report:

"Congo is rich in raw materials, especially products greatly coveted at this time: ivory and rubber (latex). Exploitation is founded upon forced labour. Organised behind the perfect art of dissimulation, this traffic will be very profitable. Local populations are being enslaved in the worst conditions: deportation, raids, kidnappings, abduction of women and children kept as hostages to force men to work at the rubber tree plantations, burnt villages, mutilations of those who resist, large scale slaughters. Hochschild reports also many cases of flogging to death with "chicottes", whips made of hippopotamus hide and which had become a symbol of humiliation and suffering. Native chiefs were often confronted with a choice which was either deliver their subjects as slaves forced to work under the threat of guns or themselves become hostages or killed. In order to succeed, the king had set up an administration and military organisation - the famous "Public Force". If a village refused to submit, State troops, a company or their local allies killed sometimes the whole population, in order to send a clear message to their neighbours. Cut hands (baskets of them) allowed to count the victims and evaluate repression. They became the symbol of plunder in Congo. Hochschild quotes this answer of a most hated State civil servant called Léon Fiévez, who was asked what he did when villages did not bring the fishes and manioc he asked for: "I launch war against them. One example is enough: one hundred heads cut, and since supplies are unlimited in the station. I did away with one hundred living beings, but it allowed one hundred others to live."

(Jeune Afrique, December 22nd, 1998)

INTERNATIONAL TRIBUNAL

TO JUDGE THOSE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE DEADLY EVOLUTION
THAT THREATENS THE VERY EXISTENCE
OF THE WORKERS AND PEOPLES OF AFRICA

Document Number 2

The crushing weight of the debt payment which has not been contracted by African peoples

1960 (time of the independence processes) to 1970 (beginning of the deliberate setting up of debt mechanisms in Africa): this was a short respite before big economic powers orchestrated Africa swift plunge into debt. "Investments" with heavy financial consequences for the recently set up States were imposed with the single aim of creating new markets for the multinationals of the former colonial powers, contrary to all common sense. A trade unionist from Chad testifies: "As for Chad, a factory to process peanuts was set up in Abéché, in a breeding area where there are no peanut grown and a meat production complex for exporting frozen carcasses, corned beef and tanned hides in Sarh, in a region where at the time there were no cows but groundnuts. Rice production was maintained at high prices in Bongor where it was never profitable and they even extend to La• (200 km south), then Yagoua 20 km from there to Cameroon, before launching the enormous paddy fields project of Satégui-Déréssia which collapsed in 1985 after costing billions. This was the time when they decided to plant rice North of N'Djamena by pumping the Chari river waters, therefore drying the Lake Chad."

This deliberately "heedless" attitude has a reason: loans are not made by private banks but first of all by governments.

"Nearly 80% of the debt in Africa is in the hands of public lenders, especially multilateral financial institutions... Since 1988, 2/3 of its increase represents arrears..." (Jeune Afrique, October 22nd, 1998)

What is the reality of debt today in 1997?

"The external debt of African countries rose from US$ 349 billion in 1997, an increase of nearly 3 per cent. The debt service amounted to US$ 33 billion up from US$ 31 billion in 1996, absorbing 21.3 per cent of earnings from goods and services exports.

"Table 1.7: External Debt and Debt related statistics (billions of US$ and percentage)

1997

Total debt (US$ billions) 349

As a percentage of GDP 67,5

As a percentage of XGS 283,9

Debt service (US$ billions) 33

As a percentage of XGS 21,3"

(Source: World Bank, national sources - African Economic report 1998 ONU-ECA)

The drain on Africa is still worsening. According to the economic report of the UN economic commission for Africa (1999), "debt service reached $35 billion, that is to say 31% of goods and service exports. The present initiatives to reduce the debt did not significantly modify the debt weight."

This debt condemns any hope for reviving the economy:

"Total external debt as a percentage of gross national product (GNP)

"Sub Sahara Africa:

Guinea Bissau 366

Somalia 307

Congo 278

Mozambique 249

Mauritania 235

Angola 232

Congo, Dem Rep 232

Liberia 189

Zambia 185

C™te d'Ivoire 165

Ethiopia 159

Sierra Leone 141

Madagascar 119

Mali 119

Burundi 113

Cameroon 109

Gambia 108

(Source: The Progress of Nations 1999 - Debt has a Child's face)

The result:

The majority of States have to pay more for refunding the debt than for Education and Health budgets combined (for instance, Tanzania devotes 35% of its budget to the debt refunding and only 11% to Health care: Malawi figures are 29% and 8%, Ivory Coast 25% and 5% and Cameroon 22% and 4% according to the UNDP-UNICEF 20/20 Public Expenditures.

States become unable to invest:

"According to the UNDP, gross internal investment fell in many countries between 1970 and 1985: from 26 to 15% of the GNP in Malawi, from 16 to 6% in Sierra Leone. In the 1990-1995 period, yearly growth went on being negative in many countries: - 10% in Zambia, - 11% in Malawi, and - 16% for Togo."

(European Bureau, UNDP, communiqué, 1999)

This major part of the "debt" is made up of accumulated interests: "The 41 most indebted countries (a majority of which are African) paid in 1997 the sum of 5,453 billion dollars for the principal and 3,261 billion dollars in interests."

(Global Development Finance, World Bank, 1999).

This accumulation of interest and deliberately organised capital flight towards the international financial circuits of the sums originally lent:

The "principal" (which is supposed to have arrived on the continent" fled from our countries long ago with the complicity of the World Bank and the IMF, helped by the measures they had taken to liberalise financial flows. According to the latest report of the "UN Economic Commission for Africa" (ECA-1999), "the average rate of capital flight in relation to the debt is considered to be over 40%... For 4 countries, this rate could reach over 60% (Nigeria, 9.5%, Rwanda 94.3%, Kenya 74.4% and Sudan 60,5%)."

What was the debt money used for? A recent study of the World Bank shows:

"Sadly, experience has long since undermined the rosy optimism of aid-financed, government-led, accumulation strategies for development. Suppose that development aid only financed investment and investment really played the crucial role projected by early models. In that case, aid to Zambia should have financed rapid growth that would have pushed per capita income above $20,000, while in reality per capita income stagnated at around $600).

"Figure 3 - The Gap between Model and Reality in Zambia, 1961-94

Thousands of 1995 US dollars

1961	1970	1980	1990
20	15	10	5

(World Bank Report -Rethinking ideas and aid)

The debt weight on African countries was deliberately worsened through the devaluation imposed by the IMF and the World Bank, as it was imposed on the 14 countries gathered around the common CFA Franc currency. It was devaluated by 100% at the beginning of 1994 with as a consequence the doubling of the amount of the foreign debt and a brutal fall by 40 % of the population's purchasing power when they had already nothing to live on.

The savage cuts imposed by the debt were in no way balanced by foreign investment:

"Investment in Africa fell from $4.5 billion in 1997 to $3 billion. This situation resulted from the reduction of private flows and bilateral credit. In sub-Saharan countries, net investment fell by nearly 40%." (Economic commission for Africa, UN Report 1999)

"Since the eighties, the net investment transfer directly from foreign countries has been negative. The direct investment flow towards developing countries has increased a lot, passing from 23.7 billion dollars in 1990 to 120,.4 billion in 1996. But this flow largely ignored Africa. In 1996, total direct investments reached $3.3 billion in sub-Saharan Africa, 1.4 billion going to Nigeria and 300 million to Angola...

"Investors ask for a rate of return higher than elsewhere because of the risks in the region. It reached 24-30% a year in 1990-1994 in Sub-Saharan Africa, against 16-18% for the whole of developing countries.