Sir, - David Begg, Director of Concern (Opinion, July 20th), "Major obstacles beset the new African Union", lists many of the now familiar statistics showing how sub-Saharan Africa is being left behind and neglected by the rest of the world.
He concludes with "Most important of all, Africa needs honest government, respect for human rights and an end to conflict". And pigs might fly.
How can Africa possibly solve any of its huge problems if it is constantly under siege by the system we all know by now but refuse to identify clearly as international capitalism, that system so loved and extolled for its virtues of "free trade" and "liberalism"? Capitalism, under the guise of the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and now the World Trade Organisation, has forced Africa and the less developed countries into the role of primary production only. Even relatively developed South Africa is forced into this trap of mining, fruit picking, reaping and harvesting with the profitable processing being carried out in the developed countries.
The worst part of this trap is that under the iron laws of supply and demand, the more that is produced the more the prices received by producers falls. Debt grows and accumulates, which Western banks and governments refuse to cancel.
Historically, when African leaders have looked as if they might threaten this arrangement they have been undermined, demonised, railed against and even murdered as in the case of Patrice Lumumba, who threatened the mining interests of an unholy alliance of Belgian and British.
American-educated Kwane Nkrumah of Ghana was removed when he moved to nationalise American mining assets in his country. Nyerere of Tanzania was undermined and forced out of office when his Ujamaya attempt at socialism was attacked from without. Even the great Christian statesman Kenneth Kaunda took heavy flak from the West for his principled stand against white minority rule and apartheid.
In Zimbabwe, a war of liberation ended white minority rule but did not end ownership of the main assets of the country, the land. Britain, at the Lancaster House agreement in 1980, agreed to compensate this small white minority for the loss of their land. Twenty years down the road the Labour government in Britain not only refuses to come up with the money but place restriction on the Mugabe government for daring to redistribute the land to poor farmers.
Unfortunately, David Begg characterises this as Mugabe's "thuggish attempts to retain power". Mugabe and his Zanu-PF have won every election since 1980 and the opposition now clamouring to replace him believe naively that the West will be so relieved to get rid of Mugabe that largesse will pour in. It will not. Look at Zambia who got rid of Kenneth Kaunda.
The capitalist juggernaut speeding down the global high way fuelled by "economic growth" and cheap primary resources must be stopped if our world is to survive. Who will stop it?
The world trade union movement has the potential to rein in the system and I hope that when David Begg takes up his position in the I.C.T.U. he will be one of those people who will give a lead in demanding not free trade but fair trade and justice for all. - Yours, etc.,
Jim Blake, Douglas West, Cork.