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Still Fighting Apartheid - South African Activist Dennis Brutus

Another one, much more serious in my view, although they’re all serious, is that the World Bank and the other external banks become what are called “priority creditors” and this means that you have to repay them or at least pay a service on the debt. But because they’re a priority creditor social services at home – whether schools, hospitals, water, housing, roads, infrastructure – all have to wait until you have paid your debt or your service on the debt. This means a tremendous burden on the people because they are not getting the services they should and the money that comes in as taxation goes out as service on the debt. Social services are therefore desperately neglected all over what we call the global south – countries in Africa and Asia and South America, who are all victims of this burden of debt. By the latest count it is about 180 countries and the total debt is in the region of – if you use English figures – 2,000 billion¹. So the second one is this loss of social services because your money is going on the repayment of debt.

The third conditionality varies from country to country but is probably the worst: in order to qualify for debt forgiveness or even partial debt forgiveness or some kind of phoney debt forgiveness where they lend you the money to pay them what you owe, incurring a new debt in place of the old one, i.e. to become what is called a HIPC, or Highly Indebted Poor Country, you have to make a firm and binding commitment that you will take orders from the World Bank and the IMF. If you don’t, you are guilty of what is called “bad governance” as opposed to “good governance” so you virtually sign a death warrant. This is a new form of enslavement and has been correctly so described by the African Council of Churches and others. By making that binding commitment to obey the orders, prescriptions and conditionalities of the World Bank and the IMF, you are virtually being recolonised, being re-enslaved by the chains of debt.

How are you maintaining the pressure?

Increased education is what keeps us going – and growing; this is how, eventually we won the South Africa fight. Now we have better resources, but more powerful forces against us, such as consumerism, which distracts the young we might recruit. But we keep growing – in South Africa, but also in South America.

We’re really going after not only all the banks, but the World Bank and the IMF. So it’s a very broad picture. In that picture, what we specifically do with Barclays is really up to my campaign and the strategies developed. Let me give you the three current strategies. One strategy is to demand an apology from Barclays for its guilt in financing the apartheid system. We want a public apology for that. Point two: we want reparations to be paid to the victims of apartheid. There are many still who have never received any assistance from the government in spite of the fact that there was the Truth and Reconciliation Commission as you remember. There were recommendations that certain sums of money should be given to the victims of apartheid and they’ve never got those monies. Point three is a rather complicated one. We have filed a law suit in the New York Supreme Court naming 23 corporations and demanding reparations from them. Barclays is one of the 23, so we’re saying Barclays should not enter South Africa – although the government has okayed it – until the lawsuit in the New York Supreme Court is resolved.

Right now I’m quite excited about three projects for which we're not getting any support, though that doesn’t deter me. We’ll probably get them done eventually. One is we’re trying to have a conference in the US in which we will combine Africans and African Americans on the issue of reparations. They’re both campaigning on the issue of reparations but they campaign separately. We're trying to pool them together so for me that’s quite a demanding project because it would involve hundreds of people if we can pull it off. And two: we're planning an action in South Africa where the victims of apartheid will confront the minister in the parliament building itself. There’ll be a march on parliament and a demand that the government take action to deliver on reparations and that too will take some time. Also, I’ve a new book coming out, early next year. I’ve just had one come out, a collection of poetry called Leaf Drift. It’s a kind of mixture – just leaves, drifting together. So I’m kept busy. I turned 80 last year and I might turn 81 this year if I last long enough. There’s enough to keep me busy.

Notes
¹ A figure of $2.5 trillion is given by George Monbiot in his The Age of Consent (2003) after Romilly Greenhill and Ann Pettifor, The United States as an HIPC (Highly Indebted Poor Country) - how the Poor are Financing the Rich

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