West Needs to Pay Africa Reparations
The Herald (Harare) - Owned by the Govt. of Zimbabwe
OPINION
July 6, 2002
Posted to the web July 7, 2002
Africa is reportedly to have the worst victims of Aids. If the swift
rate at which it is spreading remains unchecked, the 60 million
estimated to have been lost in the slave trade can be exceeded in the
lifetime of most of us livingtoday.
A lot of questions have yet to be answered on Aids, for example:
- Why has the West chosen to make it the most closely guarded secret?
Is its campaign against weapons of mass destruction a complete sham?
- If the West cares for human life surely it should have seen it fit
to make combating Aids the least costly if not a free service like
world-wide inoculations against epidemics. Why singling it out as a
disease requiring the most expensive medicines to combat when it is
the most deadly epidemic?
Again the above answer is inevitable. Out of avarice and racism the
West is still the most dangerous lot for human existence, particularly
to us in Africa.
Because of this pandemic once again we have become an endangered
species of human society. Disunity and internecine wars are a
dangerous luxury in face of this scourge loosed on us by avaricious,
racist West.
Closing our ranks to operate like one body of people is the form of
unity we must establish to win the war against Aids. What message is
conveyed by these two experiences regarding Nepad? They serve as a
stark warning that a Marshall Plan for whites in Europe and a Nepad
for blacks in Africa will be recorded by history as having been poles
apart unless Nepad is revamped by us and taken with the seriousness it
deserves by the West.
Let us have a look at a few more specifics about Nepad. A commentator
has listed the following out of scores of conditionalities:
- there must be private investment in the economy. But that is what
Esap has been about and this has got us nowhere. Surely Africa is
entitled to and must be allowed, the freedom to try something else
instead of being treated as a completely re-colonised continent. The
same West is investing in Asia and elsewhere without insisting on this
conditionality.
Africa must be adamant that if a country wants to try socialism after
the failure of Esap (capitalism/private enterprising) it must freely
exercise its right to do so and be assisted by way of investment , be
it private or socialist, in that context.
After all it is socialism, not capitalism, which keeps the
morally/ethically correct principle of sharing on the agenda thereby
ensuring that every member of the society has a decent access to his
share of the national cake.
A body of science is in place for making the economy grow in that
direction is required. So why should we allow the West to prevent an
African society from making the economy grow in what should be
described as a sacred way?
- the rest of the conditionalities are:
(a) encouraging inter-African/inter-continental trade, overcoming
hunger, sound management of economic enterprises, good public health
systems, new technologies and good governance.
(b) Combating corruption and conflicts.
The point about these two sets of conditionalities is that no
government does nothing about them until someone dangles a promise of
assistance before it. May be that is why they are not insisted upon
anywhere but in Africa where Zimbabwe's experience is a proof that
they can be an instrument of neo-colonisation, if not direct
colonisation.
Africa should refuse to be treated like a continent run by delinquent
governments who do nothing to promote what is good and combat what is
bad for the society until someone promises assistance. The racism
cited above are examples of the West's own corruption and heinous
crimes, but the outside world, Africa included, has never confronted
it with conditionalities for business links.
What is normal practice and promotive of friendly relations is to
share experiences in promoting the good and combating the bad in
society. In no uncertain terms the West must be told that its
conditionalities are a non-starter because us, like all other human
societies, never tire of promoting the good and combating the bad. I
have the following to suggest as an improvement on Nepad. Assistance
from the West must take the form of reparations. We can even call it
Nepad as long as the content remains reparations.
That the West has enriched itself through the inequities of slave
trade, colonialism and neo-colonialism are not figments of the
imagination, but harsh facts. The trillions of US dollars we have
presented are what should constitute quantification of Nepad, given
this background.
Finally calculations of reparations have excluded Aids. The culprits
have a case to answer with about every society on this planet, having
experienced the devastating scourge. Along with other societies Africa
should determine a way of penalising the culprits for unleashing the
scourge on mankind.
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