Globalisation: a concern of working people
Over 1,200 delegates attended the All Workers Conference on
Globalisation, held on the Mauritian main island on 29-30 April.
Delegates from all the country's trade unions were joined by representatives of women' s groups, and associations working for housing rights, blind peoples' rights, the environmental and consumer rights. There were participants from South Africa, and two other Indian ocean countries: Comoros Islands, and the French colony of Reunion. The French CGT trade union confederation, and the Brussels based Campaign to Abolish Third World Debt COCAD/CADTM) also sent representatives.
The conference combined discussion of various aspects of globalisation as it affects different sectors with practical resolutions to oppose the Mauritian government's surrender before globalisation and its wide reaching privatisation plans [see "Privatising privatisation," IV#288, May 1997].
On 29 April, the Health Ministry said free medicines would now be distributed through private chemists, not hospitals. Delegates saw this as a step towards means testing, and the future introduction of charges for these medicines.
The government also threatened to privatise, within five years, Mauritius Telecom, Air Mauritius, State Bank 14 International Viewpoint
SICOM (insurance) and the State Investment Company (SIC), which has shares in revenue-generating sites including the country's casinos, and the airport management company. Most of the shares will be bought by the Port Louis Fund, a no-risk investment fund managed by Banque National de Paris.
Faced with massive, dynamic opposition to privatisation, the Mauritian government is trying to make the privatisation process seem irreversible. As part of this anti-democratic strategy, the government has now agreed to "compensate" the new Port Louis Fund if privatisation is not completed within five years.
This was the fifth event organised by the "All Workers Conference," an all-union (and workers' associations) grouping which, in only 12 months of activity, has become the main forum for anti-austerity and anti-privatisation networking and debate in the island.
One impressive feature of the All Workers Conference is that its deliberations have always led to action. Whether it was resolved to hold demonstrations or produce workers' White Papers, delegates ensure that all resolutions are put into practice. * [RL/AN]
seeking for new lands, and who are able to mobilise considerable financial resources" 16 They will operate their new farms as part of their business undertakings in South Africa, dispatching White Afrikaner managers and supervisors to Mozambique. "Family farms with a good track record but without funding capabilities are also eligible. They will rely on SACADA for funding". No provision is made, however, to help Afrikaner farmers driven into bankruptcy as a result of Pretoria's economic liberalisation programme. These farmers may, nonetheless, be hired to work as managers in Mozambique.
In turn, the Boers will bring their Black right-hand men, their tractor operators, their technicians. "Each and every Afrikaner farmer will bring his tame Kaffirs, " who will be used to supervise the local workers. The number of White settlers in the concessionary areas in Niassa is likely to be small.
The World Bank together with bilateral donors will organise a system of land registration including the extensive mapping through aerial photography, in view of generating digitised maps."
SACADA has carefully mapped out the designated areas by helicopter, South Africa's agricultural research institutes have surveyed the area, providing an assessment of prevailing environmental, climatic and social conditions. Agricultural scientists have not limited their focus to the analysis of soil samples, human settlements in the area have been studied; South African demographers have been called in as consultants to evaluate the implications of displacing the rural people. Creating "rural townships"
Under the SACADA scheme, the rural communities in Niassa which occupy the Afrikaner concessionary areas are to be regrouped into "rural townships" similar to those of the Apartheid regime: "What you do is to develop villages along the roadside close to the [White] farms. These villages have been planned very carefully [by SACADA] in proximity to the fields so that farmworkers can go back and forth; you give the villages some infrastructure and a plot of land for each household so that the farmlabourers can set up their food gardens"!
Unless customary land rights are entrenched within or bordering the concessions, the Niassa peasants will become landless farm labourers. On Boer farms in South Africa, "labour tenants" performed labour services (corvée) in exchange for the right to farm a small parcel of land. Formally outlawed in South Africa in 1960, "labour tenancy" remains in existence in many parts of South Africa including East Transvaal and KwaZulu Natal. It has evolved towards the payment of a (very low) nominal wage largely to disguise the (outlawed) feudal relationship. Since 1995, it has been the target of the Land Reform (Labour Tenants) Bill of Land Affairs Minister Derek Hanekom.
The rural townships established in the Mozambique concessions will constitute "reserves" of cheap labour for the White commercial farms. Wages, of course, are substantially lower than in South Africa. For seasonal workers, the wage has been set at the statutory minimum wage, US$18 a month. Although in 1995 IMF Representative Sergio Leite told donors that this was probably "excessive" and "inflationary." 20
These concessions don't just enables the Boers not only to pay their Mozambican workers excessively low wages. They also help the farmers oppose, or escape, the demands of Black agricultural workers in South Africa. It also allows corporate agribusiness investing in neighbouring countries to more effectively lobby the ANC government against Land Reform and "affirmative action" programmes within South Africa.
The Mozambican government will be fully responsible for land disputes and ensuring the expropriation of peasant lands "without prejudice or loss that may occur... to Mosagrius participants." 21 Foreign aid supports the plan
South Africa's major commercial banks, the World Bank and the European Union have firmly backed the "Food Corridor" project, which has become an integral part of the IMF-World Bank sponsored structural adjustment programme for South Africa. In the words of SACADA Secretary Willie Jordaan: "SACADA is set to become an international development agency" with a mandate to contract with donor institutions and carry out "foreign aid programmes" on their behalf.
Western countries which, at least vocally endorsed the ANCs struggle against the Apartheid regime are now providing financial support to a racist Afrikaner development organisation. Under the disguise of "foreign aid", Western donors are in fact contributing to the extension of the Apartheid system into neighbouring countries. The European Union has provided money to SACADA out of a development package explicitly earmarked by Brussels for South Africa's Reconstruction and Development Programme. According to an EU spokesman, the project "was the best noise out of Africa
South Africa/Mozambique * in 30 years". The EU Ambassador to South Africa Mr. Erwan Fouere met General Viljoen to discuss the project, and confirmed that if all goes well, further EU money could be made available to cover the costs of "settling Afrikaner farmers in South Africa's neighbouring countries". "
The donor community consider this to be as a genuine development project which will benefit the peasantry in the host country as well as contribute to South Africa's Reconstruction. The fact that the scheme derogates the land rights of small-holders and replicates the system of "labour tenancy" prevalent in South Africa under Apartheid is not a matter for discussion.
National investment priorities set by the donors in the host countries (under the World Bank sponsored Public Investment Programme), are increasingly tuned to meeting the needs of South African business interests. In Mozambique, for instance, "targeted investments" to rehabilitate port facilities, roads, water resources, river and lake transportation are tailored to the needs of foreign investors like SACADA.
Moreover, under the Mosagrius Agreement, Afrikaner investors "shall be allowed a right of first refusal" in privatisation tenders in concessionary areas under their jurisdiction." In turn the country's investment legislation (drafted with the technical assistance of the World Bank) will provide for the free remittance of corporate profits and the repatriation of capital back to South Africa.
The SACADA scheme will also suck up a portion of Mozambique's meagre health and education budget. Under the terms of the Agreement the authorities must support the provision of Western-style health services as well as create a "sanitary environment" for white Afrikaners settling in the territory.24 Part of the money provided by donors and international organisations for social programmes will also be channelled towards the concessionary areas, to provide these luxury services.
June 1997#289 15
* South Africa/Mozambique Carving up the national territory
A "state within a state" is being developed in Niassa province; Mosagrius is the sole authority concerning the utilisation rights of land in its concessionary areas, overriding the national and provincial governments." The territory is defined as a free trade zone allowing for the unimpeded movement of goods, capital and people (meaning white South Africans). All investments in the concessionary areas "will be free from customs duties, or other fiscal impositions." 26
As concessions are being granted to foreign investors in various parts of the country, the national territory is being carved up into a number of separate "corridors," reminiscent of the colonial period. This system of territorial concessions —with each of the corridors integrated separately into the of the corridors integrated separately into the world market— tends to favours the demise of the national economy.
In turn, the donors have required (in the name of "governance"), the down-sizing of the central State and the "decentralisation" of decision-making to the provincial and district levels. Rather than providing added powers and resources to regional and local communities, State revenues will be channelled towards servicing Mozambique's external debt. The "decentralisation" scheme is predicated on fiscal austerity under the structural adjustment programme leading to a weakening of both the central and regional governments.
Concessionary areas or "corridors" will increasingly come under the political custody of donors, non-governmental organisations and foreign investors. In Niassa, they already constitute a de facto "parallel government."
To make matters worse, in several areas in Northern Mozambique, the former rebel group Renamo is formally in command of local government. The pro-Apartheid group has established its own links to the "donor community." Since the end of the Apartheidsponsored civil war, several Renamo leaders have become "business partners" of South African companies, including in the SACADA sponsored investments: "It would appear that there is a secret understanding as part of the [1992] Peace Agreement that Renamo and its backers will get land" 27 Land reform in South Africa
The ANC has championed the granting of "land to the Boers" in neighbouring countries without serious debate or discussion, supposedly as a means of relieving land pressures within South Africa. The policy is said to facilitate the ANC's land redistribution programme in favour of Black farmers.? Despite its merits, this Land Reform Programme is unlikely to succeed. Its implementation has been undermined from the outset by the ANC government's neo-liberal policy agenda.
In rural South Africa, the removal of agricultural subsidies, the deregulation of credit and trade liberalisation have contributed to the further impoverishment of Black small-holders and tenant farmers. These measures have also pushed numerous White Afrikaner family farms into bankruptcy. 16 International Viewpoint
Violent Afrikaner groups stand to recruit people in this situation.
The Boers "Second Great Trek" to neighbouring countries does not contribute to facilitating land reform within South Africa. In fact the policy accomplishes exactly the opposite results: it maintains Black farmers in marginal lands under the old system of segregation; it reinforces corporate control over the best farmland while also providing a political avenue to Afrikaner agri-business for "exporting Apartheid" to the entire Southern African region.
Moreover, the transfer of nominal political power by the Apartheid regime in 1994 rather than restraining the White dominated economic system, has in fact created the pre-conditions for its advancement both within South Africa and the region. In the New South Africa, the "export of Apartheid" is now tagged as "foreign aid"
The ANC's political motivations in this regard are unclear. The dominant ANC viewpoint, reflected by Nelson Mandela's statements, is that by diverting the Boers from the domestic arena, the post-Apartheid government will gain time and space for carrying out major social transformations within South Africa.
In our opinion, this position is largely mistaken. The application of "strong economic medicine" (devaluation, job lay offs, market deregulation, and other austerity measures) under the neo-liberal agenda, has gone hand in hand with de the facto reinforcement of Apartheid as an economic system. In other words, the plight of the Black majority has worsened largely as a result of the post-Apartheid economic reforms.
South Africa's dominant economic and financial interests allied with international corporate capital are firmly behind these economic reforms. Moreover, the latter could not have been carried out during the Apartheid era with the same coherence, political legitimacy and international support. While Apartheid is officially defunct, its economic structures live on, now fused and blended into the structural adjustment programme. The international community has supported this process; the IMF and the World Bank which supported the government of Frederick de Klerck is now directly involved in advising the ANC government on macroeconomic reform:
"Democratisation" and "economic liberalisation" seem to go hand in hand.
Despite the ANC's commitment to social transformation, the government's reforms under the neo-liberal policy agenda, are serving the economic interests of those who most actively supported the Apartheid regime as well as members of the Afrikaner political establishment who were directly involved in
Apartheid's "dirty war". *
Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics, University of Ottawa, and author of The Globalization of
Poverty: Impacts of IMF and World Bank Reforms,
Third World Network, Penang and Zed Press, London,
1997. This article © Michel Chossudovsky, Ottawa,
1996. Email:[email protected].
1. Stefaans Brummer, "The Web of Stratcoms", Weekly
Mail and Guardian, 24 February 1995
2. "Trade block planned for Eastern Regions," Weekly
Mail and Guardian, 12 May 1995.
3. "EU Backs Boers Trek to Mozambique", Weekly Mail and Guardian, 1 December 1995.
4. "Uma nova visao para os Afrikaners," Mediafax,
Maputo, 20 February 1995.
5. Ibid
6. "The Boers are back," South Africa: Programme
Support Online.
7. Joseph Hanlon, Supporting Peasants in their Fight for Land, Christian Aid, London, November 1995
8. "Pastures New: Afrikaners resume the trek north."
9. interviewed in Maputo, July 1996
10. See the documents of the Land Conference,
Conferencia Nacional de terras, documento de trabalho, Maputo, July 1996.
11. Joseph Hanlon, op cit.
12. Interview with officials of the South African High
Commission in Maputo, July 1996
13. "EU backs Boers trek to Mozambique," op cit.
14. Agreement on Basic Principles and Understanding, concerning the Mosagrius Development Project, Maputo,
May 1996.
15. Interview with Mosagrius project liaison officer,
South African High Commission, Maputo.
16. Interview with South African agricultral experts in
Maputo, July 1996.
17. Hanlon, op cit.
18. Interview with officials of the South African High
Commission in Maputo, July 1996.
19. Weekly Mail and Guardian, 2 June 1996.
20. "FMI nao concorda," Mediafax, Maputo, 26
September 1995, p.l.
21. Clause 42 of the Mosagrius Agreement.
22. "EU Backs Boers Trek to Mozambique," op cit.
23. Clause 15F section c of the Mosagrius Agreement.
24. Clauses 38 and 39 of the Mosagrius Agreement.
25. Clause 34 of the Mosagrius Agreement.
26. Clause 35.2 of the Mosagrius Agreement.
27. Hanlon, op cit, p.9
28. Eddie Koch, Power to the people (Land Reformer document).
29. Outlined in Growth, Employment and
Redistribution: A Macro-Economic Framework..
Ministry of Finance, June 1996