In this issue:

Lyndon LaRouche Says Cancel International Debt for Africa

Brazil Brings Cheap Anti-AIDS Drugs Production to Africa

Kenya Commentator: 'War Eclipses Crucial IMF Report'

South Africa Protests: Expel U.S./U.K. Ambassadors

Zimbabwe: British-Owned MDC Opposition Party Wins Parliamentary Seats

From Volume 2, Issue Number 14 of Electronic Intelligence Weekly, Published April 7, 2003
Africa News Digest

Lyndon LaRouche Says Cancel International Debt for Africa

U.S. economist Lyndon LaRouche, candidate for the 2004 Presidential nomination of the Democratic Party, was on a popular Washington, D.C. radio talk show on April 4, for one hour. He commented extensively on Africa:

"On the question of Africa, we are dealing with genocide now, and it is orchestrated largely by forces in the United States, Britain, and some Israelis.... Rwanda, Burundi, Congo, and so forth—I could go through the details. It is genocide, and it is intentional. The issue of AIDS, and the lack of generic drugs for places like Botswana, is a genocide issue. So, therefore, the question is who has world power? If we are trying to rebuild this planet, we are going to move in on this question.

"Now on the question of the IMF, WTO, and so forth—they in their present form are bankrupt. That is, the IMF system is bankrupt. The WTO system is inoperable at present. Therefore, the financial crash, which is going to come one way or the other, is going to end the power of the IMF.

"What's going to happen, for example: This crash is reaching the point that governments are going to have to meet and agree to reorganize the central banking systems of those various nations. That means the Federal Reserve System goes into receivership to the national Treasury, and we have, in effect, national banking.

"It means similarly in many countries around the world, governments will take over the central banking systems, which are, in fact, bankrupt, and put them through bankruptcy reorganization.

"The principle under which we would operate, under our Constitution, would be the General Welfare Clause of the Federal Constitution....

"Now when it comes to countries like Africa, or parts of South America, we have debts there that are not legitimate debts, massive debts, imposed on these areas. We are going to, as a group of nations, have to cancel the unpayable, illegitimate part of those debts. We are going to have to set up terms of trade, which provide Africa the ability to have—especially sub-Saharan Africa—the basic economic infrastructure projects, which are necessary for Africa to recover from the present situation. And, this is going to be a world concern."

Brazil Brings Cheap Anti-AIDS Drugs Production to Africa

Amara Essy, interim chairman of the commission of the African Union (AU), announced March 28 that Brazil will build three plants to manufacture cheap anti-AIDS drugs in Africa. The agreement with the AU is worked out, except for technical details, he said. No date was given for when the projects would get under way, but AU and Brazilian officials are to meet in April, to discuss the plans.

Brazil has an aggressive domestic program to fight AIDS, centered upon its program to provide anti-retroviral drugs free to all who need them. To be able to sustain that program, Brazilian government laboratories developed an indigenous capability to produce generic versions of those drugs. This would be the first time, however, that Brazil would move to reproduce that capability in other countries.

"We would like them (Brazil) to build three companies to manufacture, one in North Africa, another in the center of the continent and one in southern Africa," Essy told a news conference in Lusaka. "Millions of people are dying, and unless we tackle this problem, development will be hindered. We need billions of dollars at the moment for AIDS drugs and many countries cannot afford the kind of money needed for the drugs." Essy said the AU would work out a mechanism within its six regional trade blocs to pool resources and source for cheaper AIDS drugs. "The answer to our current (AIDS) problem is to work together as Africans find a lasting solution on how to tackle this pandemic," Essy said. "We are encouraging individual countries to work together in fighting AIDS."

Kenya Commentator: 'War Eclipses Crucial IMF Report'

An op-ed in the Nairobi daily The Nation March 24 by commentator John Kamau, on the new IMF paper circumscribing the benefits of globalization, said, "The damage, for us, is already done."

Kamau blasted the IMF hypocrisy: For example, where the IMF says "quality" domestic institutions are a precondition for benefit from globalization. The op-ed said, "Now how do we create such strong institutions when they have all collapsed as a result of opening our markets? ... [D]o we return to IMF and World Bank and borrow more money to resuscitate these institutions?"

Attacking the IMF more generally, Kamau wrote, "The privatization schemes that were advocated by IMF stifled economic democracy and people had little voice in determining how national assets were valued and handled..... [T]he most vulnerable people were left with no access to basics like water, food, and health care.

"Subsidy programs for impoverished people were eliminated, and basics became unaffordable.... The same IMF now turns again to tell us that it has learned that that policy could have been wrong in the first place....

"Africa must come up with its own initiatives for addressing development, rather than relying on policies cooked up in Washington board rooms and experimented on the struggling continent.... Today we are singing about [the pro-globalization scheme] NEPAD [New Partnership for Africa's Development], another non-starter that masquerades as a homegrown solution."

What the IMF Report Says

The IMF published a paper March 17 titled, "Effects of Financial Globalization on Developing Countries: Some Empirical Evidence"; in effect, the paper gives the evidence of the destruction that IMF policies have caused.

The report, posted on the website www.imf.org, concludes, "the vast research effort to date suggests there is no strong ... support for the theoretical argument that financial globalization per se delivers a higher rate of economic growth. Perhaps this is not surprising."

Second, it says, "There is little evidence that financial integration has helped developing countries to better stabilize fluctuations in consumption growth...."

Third, it says, "neither theory nor empirical evidence has provided clear-cut general answers to related issues such as the desirability and efficacy of selective capital controls."

None of this is exactly a revolution at the IMF. The authors don't throw out globalization, but say that a threshold in "the quality of domestic institutions" is a precondition for successful globalization, along with "robust legal and supervisory frameworks, low levels of corruption, high degree of transparency and good corporate governance."

The IMF, as Kenyan author John Kama commented, has historically degraded "domestic institutions," and forced massive currency devaluations instead of "capital controls." The paper does not constitute a change in policy, but its importance is underscored by its having been co-authored by IMF Chief Economist Kenneth Rogoff (an International Grandmaster of Chess who recently referred to the Carter-era destroyer of the American economy as "the great Paul Volcker").

South Africa Protests: Expel U.S./U.K. Ambassadors

An estimated 10,000 demonstrators marched on the U.S. consulate in Cape Town March 29 and called for the expulsion of the U.S. and British ambassadors from South Africa. The demonstrators—including representatives of the ruling African National Congress, trade unionists, Christians, and Muslims—were addressed by the chairman of the National Assembly's foreign affairs committee, Pallo Jordan, who leads the left opposition against President Thabo Mbeki.

Among the placards were ones that read, "Soon Bush will join Hitler in hell" and "Satan's puppet—Bush."

Jordan said the attack on Iraq had never been about WMD. "They have not uncovered any weapons of mass destruction." (However, unfortunately Jordan promoted the widely accepted, but false, proposition that the point of the war is to get control over Iraq's oil.)

The Anti-War Coalition that organized the march has threatened "more drastic action" if the consulate fails to respond in writing by April 3 to two memos. The consulate has been surrounded by razor wire since the war was launched. The Coalition has a 24-hour-a-day picket at the consulate and plans marches on Parliament and U.S. and U.K. consulates April 5.

Zimbabwe: British-Owned MDC Opposition Party Wins Parliamentary Seats

As the Bush Adminstration threatened the government of Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe (see this week's INDEPTH), an important shift occurred in the Zimbabwe Parliament. Bush's only Iraq war ally, Britain, has been trying to oust Mugabe and effect "regime change," but has met stiff opposition within the Commonwealth.

In the March 29-30 by-elections in the Zimbabwe capital of Harare, the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) won two Parliamentary seats by a wide margin, against the ruling Zanu-PF party of President Mugabe. Zimbabwe state radio reported that MDC won 12,548 against Zanu-PF's 5,002 in the Kuwadzana constituency. In the Highfield constituency, the MDC won 8,759 votes against 4,844 for Zanu-PF. The by-elections of March 29-30 were important for two reasons: The government—five seats short of a two-thirds majority needed to change the Constitution, to allow Mugabe to name a successor before going to new elections—hoped to narrow that gap; and Zanu-PF has none of the 19 Harare seats in Parliament.

MDC vice president Gibson Sibanda was arrested March 31 for "attempting to subvert a constitutional government." His lawyer says that means he broke the law against organizing political demonstrations without government approval. The MDC organized a two-day general strike two weeks ago. The police claim they have linked Sibanda to violence during the strike, such as the torching of three buses. Home Affairs Minister Kembo Mohadi has threatened to arrest the MDC's leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, and others, if they call any further anti-government protests.

Additional by-elections are coming up.

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