THE LAROUCHE SHOW
LaRouche Youth Movement in Africa:
Reconstruct the World Economy!
Marcia Merry Baker was the host of The LaRouche Show, an Internet radio program, on Aug. 25. Her guests were LaRouche Youth Movement (LYM) members Samuel Lepele from the Republic of South Africa; Portia Tarumbwe of Zimbabwe, speaking from Sweden; Simon Jensen from Denmark, who recently visited South Africa; and Lewis Whilden, from the LYM War Room in Leesburg, Virginia, who plays a liaison role with the LYM in Africa. The LaRouche Show is broadcast every Saturday from 3-4:00 p.m. Eastern Time, at www.larouchepub.com/radio. This is an abridged transcript.
Merry Baker: Samuel, speaking to us from near Johannesburg, what do you want people to know about the formation of the LaRouche Youth Movement in Africa?
Lepele: I was introduced to Mr. LaRouche's ideas in 2003, through an old man who has passed away—we called him Philemon Sekoatle. Four of us were studying under him. After the old man passed away, there was a breach in contact, and we couldn't do anything about it for some time.
That's when the younger ones in the group started to get educated, independently, started to organize around universities. We went to various universities, distributing whatever material we had, so that people could know that there's a man called LaRouche, and he's advocating for the development of Africa. And afterwards we decided we should call the War Room, and that's where our collaboration started.
Merry Baker: And most recently you had a larger meeting.
Lepele: Yes. We were very happy to have Simon there. It was quite a breakthrough; it gave us the larger scope of what's going on in the States. And we benefitted greatly from it.
Merry Baker: And you're organizing a delegation to be represented at the Schiller Institute conference on world construction on Sept. 15 and 16 in Germany.
Jensen: Yes, we are. It's very exciting, the possibility to address the problems we have now with the disintegrating financial system, with the conference in September, with the solutions that will not only bring the Bretton Woods solution from LaRouche, but will also bring hope to the continent of Africa. And therefore, we have been able to organize a special African delegation from the emerging LaRouche movements, now working on LaRouche's ideas in Africa, to come and participate in the conference, and be a part of this weekend seminar discussion with LaRouche around these ideas.
Globalization's Effect on Africa
Merry Baker: Portia, you might want to address the situation in all of Africa, or Zimbabwe.
Tarumbwe: I would just start by looking at it from what's going on, especially in recent weeks, with the financial system. And it's no coincidence that, as the system is coming down, you have an effort to control nations and their resources. One big way that's been used is war, but of course, the other big irony is that the institutions of the Bretton Woods system, that Roosevelt had implemented initially, for having sovereign nation-states, building them up, has been hijacked. The IMF and the World Bank have been used to basically enslave governments, and, if you've read the book by John Perkins about economic hit men,[1] it's inherent in the system that you use the political conflicts in, especially, African nations, to take raw materials from the back door.
This is something that has been an issue in Zimbabwe, starting from when we wanted to have independence from Rhodesia. We were formerly known as Southern Rhodesia, and then in 1965, we were, let's say, taken away from the mother ship, but with the ideas of colonialism intact, so what is really necessary, if anyone who's listening wants to do something for Africa—for countries like Zimbabwe, which is struggling, where most people don't find bread in the stores, they don't find cooking oil, they don't find basic commodities to feed their families—if you want to do anything about that situation, one thing is to understand that you have to reject, first and foremost, the way the whole financial system is being run.
At the G-8, or people like Bono, are talking about piecemeal solutions, microcredits, or whatever—that's not going to get anywhere as long as the IMF system works the way it does right now. And so, what's really necessary is to go the way LaRouche has been talking about for a very long time, which is that you need a holistic approach. And one thing that Africa, as well as Zimbabwe, is in dire need of, is a reliable transport system. Because if you can't move from A to B, then whether you have food or not, it's not going to get anywhere. This is something that needs to be integrated throughout Africa, but also going into Asia and Europe, so that we can actually have technology transfer.
It's not a question of money. There's a whole lot of money being pumped into the system right now, that's going into endless black holes. It's a question of political will, and that's something that we are hoping to mobilize, getting the forces together at the conference in Germany, in September, and hopefully people will help us get that going, and to participate in building this movement.
Merry Baker: You mentioned reliable transport, that presumes power, electricity, and so forth. And you have this wonderful irony, that South Africa is doing ground-breaking work on the fourth generation kind of nuclear power plant, called the Pebble Bed reactor.
Jensen: Yes, the South African electricity company ESKOM is currently at a very advanced stage in developing the high-temperature gas-cooled reactor; they have been intelligent in South Africa, taking this technology, a fourth-generation nuclear reactor, from Germany, which, in the midst of a greenie paradigm, has rejected this new technology. South Africa has partly simply copied technology by taking experts, who are now ready to produce and put online the first reactor, and have planned a series of 25 of the high-temperature nuclear reactors, as a way to address the energy crisis.
LaRouche has pointed this out: that there are a lot of dreams and hopes for Africa to develop, but if we don't provide very cheap and reliable energy sources for these countries, there is not going to be any recovery. And therefore, going nuclear on the continent will be very necessary.
I would just add, on the question of the situation of big companies, the John Perkins book, the question of modern colonialization going on, on the African continent, through globalization, that more money is going out of the continent than is going in. We are systematically looting the continent with the system right now. We could also be joyful to say the system is going down, the system is gone, it's collapsing! We now have an historical chance to create new conditions for the actual reconstruction of the continent.
And a New Bretton Woods financial system would not only provide us with a financial system that would stop the speculative mode that the big companies are utilizing, but it would be the platform, the precondition, to launch megaprojects to create a transcontinental railway system, in Africa; to have large-scale water desalination; to reconstruct and finally create the river system, canal systems, that will provide the necessary water logistics. These kinds of megaprojects are actually the only real answers we can provide to the crisis.
Enormous Potential for Development
Merry Baker: Do you want to add more about the physical geography, both the vast mineral wealth that's been used just for extraction, or the vast water wealth, the famous Zaire basin (if you just diverted only a little bit of that northward, the lower Sahara would be a garden).
Whilden: I could say something about that, which is incredible: not just what exists, in terms of mineral wealth, and agricultural wealth, but what we can create. Simon was talking about these great projects. You have one project that was developed by the Fusion Energy Foundation back in the 1970s, called the Second Nile Project, which is a grand title, and that's a perfect title for this project. Because literally the idea is to take the Congo River, which flows so fast into the ocean that the colonizers had trouble sailing into it; and you divert it through the Sahel, into Lake Chad, which has been drying up over generations.
After just two more generations, once you divert it, that is, 50 years, Lake Chad will become a very, very substantial lake again. And at that point, and maybe even before, what you want to do is you want to build a canal that comes out of Lake Chad, and curves around in two different directions, all the way up into the Sahara, as if you're wrapping the Sahara in a big curve, and empties out into the Mediterranean Sea. And you build that through the Sahara, because the idea is to irrigate all sides of this desert, and to create a vast area of agricultural wealth. Because Africa as a continent has the capability of feeding the world.
IMF Looting of Zimbabwe
Merry Baker: Perhaps some of you want to speak of the terrible conditions which people have been forced to live under, and the question of AIDS, malaria, etc., counterposed to the great wealth potential.
Tarumbwe: Well, in Zim, we've had the great fortune, or misfortune, depending on how you look at it, of finding new diamonds recently. I mean, I think Africa is one of the places where you could be surprised by finding things like that in your back yard. This potential of wealth has always attracted, of course, a lot of attention. In Zim (we call it Zim, for short) we have, for example, large gas reserves near Lupane, a lot of platinum, etc. But in Africa itself, you do not have the industrial potential to exploit these types of resources for the people. You just don't have the factories, the transportation system, etc.
It's interesting how these things work, because you had most of the railways lines developed in Africa in the colonial period, going from the interior to the coasts—basically extracting mineral wealth, and then taking it overseas for development. And Africans have had to import finished products made from their own raw materials.
Africa as a whole, was the first continent to become globalized. I mean, people think of globalization as something recent, or a trend going into the future. But, we in Zimbabwe had the first multinationals coming in for mining, we had the population being used as slave labor, etc., which is something that you're getting now, factories going out to cheap labor countries, and using the cheap labor there to manufacture cheaper products.
And one main instrument that has been used is something called SAP. Any African living in the northern part of Africa will know this. In Zimbabwe, it was known as ESAP—Economics Structural Adjustment Programs. It's basically the deals you get into with the IMF, or the World Bank, under the code words "good governance," "rule of law," "human rights," or whatever. They'll give you all this jargon. But what it basically means is, for example, the breakdown of the health-care system.
I remember, when growing up in Zimbabwe, we used to have free health care. And when we, in the beginning of the '90s, got the conditionalities for getting money from the IMF, through the Structural Adjustment Programs, one of the first things we had to do was put a stop to free education and free health care, in order to cut down on government spending. This seems new for countries in Europe, talking about liberalization, or whatever, but the key thing they talk about is reduction of government spending, and removal of government subsidies on basic commodities.
Zimbabwe, Botswana, and places like this, have the highest HIV infection rates—you're talking about people dying faster. And this might sound shocking to some people, but this was a willful practice of genocide, that was taken up by the Anglo-American establishment, with people like Henry Kissinger talking about how you don't want Africans, but you want the minerals.[2] And the minerals belong to the United States or Europe. And you want to have fewer Africans, so you can get to the minerals, and so the Africans don't use them for themselves.
As I said, we were called Rhodesia before, this was the idea of Cecil Rhodes, who came and colonized Zimbabwe, and named it after himself, through a company, a private company that basically owned the nation.
So, when you talk today in terms of globlization, cartelization, and these companies having more power than governments, you're really talking about imperialism, and nothing modern, but something very, very old. And something outdated, I think, because I think the future lies in what Franklin Roosevelt was talking about, in terms of sovereign nation-states, and that is what Zimbabwe has attempted to do, in addressing one of the key issues the oligarchy has used to keep Africa in its sway, or under its power, which is the land issue. Who does the land belong to?
In Zimbabwe we had 2% of the population owning 85% of all arable land, and that was something the Zimbabwe government tried to address, has addressed. We were "misbehaving," so we were told to cut it out, or we would have sanctions against us. They didn't say it explicitly, but they did do it. And since 2001, we haven't been allowed to borrow from any international institutions, or to trade with any companies from countries belonging to the IMF institutions, which basically means that they isolated the whole country.
You hear more about Zimbabwe of late in the newspapers, than you hear about the killings in Congo, for example—mass killings. Because they're more interested in : Is what is happening in Zimbabwe going to spread, and thus threaten their interests right now, as the financial system is collapsing? And they really need to make sure that they get Zimbabwe in check. They keep people afraid. And South African President Thabo Mbeki said in Tanzania recently, that the fight against Zimbabwe is a fight against us all.
Today Zim, tomorrow it will be South Africa, it will be Mozambique, or it will be Angola, or any other African country, and I think that's why it's such a big deal. A lot of people have read probably in the newspapers about Mugabe being some kind of demon, or tyrant, who babbles on about the British being evil. But in April 2007, a State Department report came out saying that the U.S. government has, for example, been encouraging great public debate by supporting organizations, be they religious organizations, or be they political organizations, like the opposition—they've been supporting them financially, because these groups have been criticizing the government. So, there has been a policy of regime change.
This is the question: Are you going to allow this to happen to Africa, or are you going to say, "Look, we're going to stop this right now!"? The buck stops here. Because at any rate, the system itself is coming down, and what's the alternative?
So, this, I think, is the issue of what's going on in Zimbabwe right now, and that's the bigger picture.
Al Gore: The Modern Cecil Rhodes
Jensen: Portia, may I add to that? The modern legacy of Cecil John Rhodes has been taken up lately by this man named Al Gore, who is also one of the big company owners, and hedge fund managers of our time. In fact, in '98, he not only arranged the bombing of the only pharamceutical plant in Sudan, as Vice President under Clinton, but he also, in the very same year, commanded Mbeki not to supply the South African population with cheap AIDS medicine. He said, you have to respect intellectual property rights for medicine, and he prevented what has been done in Brazil: mass production of cheap AIDS medicine, retroviral medicine.
In South Africa alone, in 2003, over 5 million people were infected by AIDS. It's probably much higher by now. This is a country with 50 million people. Now, compare this with Brazil, which has around 190 million people, and where only around 60-70,000 people are infected by AIDS. The big difference is probably the question of the cheap AIDS medicine.
So, here we see how the great Zeus of our time, Al Gore, or the financial gods of London, are really saying, "No, you cannot have technological development. No, you will not have access to the most modern medicine. No, you will not have access to technology." As Zeus prevented Prometheus from providing access of knowledge to the people in the old Aeschylus drama.
I just wanted to put that in, because there is a big scandal right now, the British BAE Defense Systems scandal, which is casting a light into how these giant companies have been used to purchase and smuggle weapons, to control governments, including on the African continent, organized in secret, by the British government. And the scandal involves the oil-for-weapons deals by Saudi Prince Bandar. It goes back to Margaret Thatcher's government in Britain. It involved Tony Blair. It's a huge scandal, where we see that billions of dollars are being channeled to weapons, and secret armies, to control the continent, and to supply weapons, and extract minerals.
In fact, when you look at it, you find out that companies that were founded in the tradition of Cecil Rhodes, are today heavily involved in weapons deals that certainly involve South Africa. And here we actually get a picture of the continued function of the policy of the British East India Company, the old colonizing policy, the role of the British Empire as it was founded more than 200 years ago.
I think it's very important to keep in mind the role of the oligarchy, and the Venetian game in this, and certainly the role Lyndon LaRouche is currently playing to effectively attack this part of the financial oligarchy, which is consciously driving genocide around the planet. Because in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. If we don't know what the enemy is really intending to do, we will fight him blind.
Environmentalist Racists Target Africa
Whilden: Samuel, is global warming being pushed very much in South Africa? And do a lot of people kind of subscribe to this religion?
Lepele: No, not much, not like in the West.
Merry Baker: The global warming crowed had their last big world meeting in Nairobi, Kenya, in the last years. It's a really fascist thing to say, "We know that you know that we know it's not right, but we're just going to come here and say, 'This is the way it's going to be.' "
Tarumbwe: I think that's really sick. Because the most well-meaning people fall for this, that "Africa is going to be most affected by global warming, and this is so terrible, they're going to have droughts and all this...."
What is at the core of it, is a real racist ideology. Especially here in Europe—I can speak from having also organized in Europe for a couple of years now—it really is some kind of almost a spiritual thing, to save nature from man. It's something that people spend their whole lives doing, separating their garbage and all of these things.
But the whole environmentalist ideology, the greenie ideology, says, "We're going to give Africa solar panels and windmills to develop, and we're going to kind of plaster the Sahara with windmills." This comes from the fact that they really think that human beings are something bad. And you know, these cute little kids in Africa, running around naked, with banana leaves in the background, or something like this; that this is the way man should be: in touch with nature.
And none of them, if you ask them, would be able to spend a week being in touch with nature, because you can't drink the water, you get malaria, or cholera. It's something that they can't even imagine, sitting next to their laptops. I think it really is a religion that has taken control, and it's something that we have to attack viciously. Because it's a barrier that you come up against most when you say, "We have to have massive industrialization of Africa." ...
Merry Baker: As you talk about minerals and resources, let me ask: Among the famous companies, London Rhodesia, that is, LonRho itself, is proclaiming that they're back on the map in Africa. They're talking about water privatization. Is that right?
Lepele: Yes. Currently in Soweto, what these groups are trying to do is install water meters, which will be opened by cards, and people have been revolting against it, by smashing all the pipelines that go to those water transmitters. People are reacting very badly to this. This can get out of line, because the police are being sent there, and they fire rubber bullets into the crowds, and all that. So we are very afraid that this can get out of hand....
Jensen reports on organizing in Europe for the Schiller Institute's Sept. 15-16 conference, and for a New Bretton Woods system. Whilden describes the LYM's work in the United States, to stop the Iraq War and implement economic recovery measures; to support a Bering Strait Rail Tunnel and the Eurasian Land-Bridge. Jensen then mentions the Danish LYM's success in sparking enthusiasm for a maglev train system, the most modern type of land transport, which has so far been built only in China.
Give the Youth a Future
Tarumbwe: Adding on to that, it's the question of the whole Eurasian Land-Bridge, not just a question of building a train. People who have very little knowledge of economics should not only read LaRouche, but should also think about the question of peace. Because if you're going to build this thing, this involves cooperation, multilateral, long-term agreements. You're going to put youth and children to work who used to do drugs, or used to be soldiers in war, and you're going to give people a future. Because maglev is not only fast, but it's the best technology around. You're going to have to upgrade the whole economy, to match that. You're going to have to give people homes. They're going to live near where they're going to work. This is going to be a project for the next 50 years.
And then, the child dying at two years of age in Sudan, because of war or famine or whatever—that could be your next Einstein. These are the scientists of the future. You could have amazing cooperation for space projects. Congo, being on the Equator, has the resources for making the best rockets and the best observatories in the world. It's incredible, the potential of this project. It's a gateway to a whole new world, a whole new order of peace. And I think people who don't know where this crisis could go, should grab the chance of going with LaRouche on this. Because it's just incredible! ...
Merry Baker: In our final 12 minutes or so, are there any particular lessons you want to bring out?
Tarumbwe: Well, I just want to pick up on something that Simon said earlier, about the question of the oligarchy, because I don't know if people listening have really gone into this concept in depth.
Take someone like Rhodes—he sincerely believed that the British were a superior race; he sincerely believed that they were destined to conquer the world. And this is something that Aeschylus goes through, or if you look at the mentality of the Olympian gods, you see it, or the bankers who thought they had an infallible system, and they were walking on top of the world—this idea that there are some people born to rule, and there are some people who are just there to serve, and they're just there to maintain a certain type of life-style. How did we get to have a world where two-thirds of the world population is living in the most horrible conditions you can imagine? How did we get here?
If it doesn't bother you, there's a problem. But if you know in your heart that this isn't right, and you think about where it comes from, you see that you have these guys who think like Rhodes, but at the same time, you may secretly admire people like this. People think about how they could spend their whole life having a normal job, or they could just throw it all into the stock market, and win more money in a few minutes than they ever made in their entire life of having a decent day's work. And I think that what we're having to deal with, in terms of Africa. If Africa's going to get a future, if we're actually going to go with the Eurasian Land-Bridge and the New Bretton Woods, it's not just an economic question, but also a very deep cultural question, that everybody has to examine for themselves, and work through for themselves.
Because the whole oligarchical question is a question of, do you know how beautiful it is to be human? You brought up the music question, Marcia. I think this is very, very important, that LaRouche goes into Classical art, and Classical drama, giving us the lesson that we can work through, and understand, what is really at stake here; what really brings whole civilizations down. We're at the brink of a Dark Age today. And I think Africa is not even a separate issue from whether or not we can get out of this crisis—it's not some "extra" thing, but it's intimately entwined with the fact that if we don't do this, then as an entire civilization, we're not fit to survive.
But if you look at these Rhodes guys, and Milner—they're part of the Round Table in South Africa. They orchestrated the Boer War. They were the first to put people in concentration camps—women and children, forced labor. This is not just a question of people who are greedy, but their image of man, it's disgusting; it's horrible. And that's where you get people like Dick Cheney. And so, I think that this is the real issue. As LaRouche said in a recent webcast, Africa cannot afford a maglev railway system, so you just have to give it to them, because by doing so, you're creating markets for Europe in the future. Europeans need to make high-technology goods, and they'll be useless for the rest of the world if they don't continue to do that. For the Chinese, etc.
This is an issue for everybody to think about. Are we fit to survive, as a civilization?
Whilden: There's a huge significance of a youth movement starting in Africa. Because to counter this Zeusian principle, as opposed to a Promethean principle, to counter this kind of insanity that you're talking about from the standpoint of the oligarchy, you have to have a youth movement that's dedicated to the study of Bach and Kepler. And showing people in these kinds of dire situations, what it means actually to be a human being. That's absolutely been key to the recruitment all over the country, and all over the world, for the youth movement as a whole. In that light, the starting of a youth movement in South Africa is very, very exciting, for countering this kind of madness.
Tarumbwe: And Zimbabwe too. We have a couple of young people there who are really excited about Kepler and Bach.
Jensen: And Mozambique! I just spoke to Kasam, who's very excited about getting the 15 youth we have in Mozambique involved. And it just brings to my mind the work of Mahatma Gandhi, who was active in Africa, and who said, "Injustice anywhere will threaten justice everywhere." And it's true. We will not be able to make the necessary cognitive breakthroughs, whether in defeating AIDS or cancer or coming epidemics, but also in the question of the frontier in space, to conquer the Solar System, to make breakthroughs in fusion energy that will allow us to finally go to the big planets, Jupiter and Saturn—all of these projects are there, and waiting for us to go there. But we need to bring up the living standards, the cognitive living standards, for the lower 80% of the world's population, to actually have the density of ideas, and the cognitive precondition, to be able to do this.
The system of globalization has failed, and the system of economy as we know it today, has failed utterly. It's a good idea that we change it, because it has these wonderful prospects....
Merry Baker: Samuel, you are in South Africa right now, would you like to have the last word?
Lepele: Yes. We need support right now, from anyone who wants to help us develop a youth movement in South Africa, because we don't have material. Basically, to develop ourselves, and also to have recruitment. We distribute material, but the small amount that we have, it's not enough.
[1] John Perkins, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man: How the U.S. Uses Globalization To Cheat Poor Countries Out of Trillions (New York: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2004; now available in paperback from Penguin).
[2] NSSM-200, "Implications of Worldwide Population Growth for U.S. Security and Overseas Interests," Dec. 10, 1974, was a classified report authored under the personal direction of then-National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger. It was declassified in 1990.
