23 - 29 August 2001
Issue No.548
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 23 - 29 August 2001 Issue No.548 |
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Document:
Justice demands mercy
In the run-up to the World Conference Against Racism (WCAR) scheduled to start later this week in the South African port-city of Durban, Al-Ahram Weekly publishes the full text of the Joint Memorandum by the South African Communist Party, the Congress of South African Trade Unions and the South African National Civics' Organisation sent on 16 August to the United States Embassy in South Africa
The South African Communist Party (SACP), Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), and South African National Civics Organisation (SANCO) are angry and disgusted at the United States threats to boycott the World Conference on Racism, Xenophobia and Related Intolerances unless certain issues are removed from the agenda. The SACP, COSATU and SANCO are firmly behind the demand that debates must take place on reparations for the victims of slavery and racism and on Palestine and the Middle East.
The US government is objecting to the conference conducting a discussion of Zionist racism against Palestine and reparations for victims of slavery and colonialism. This is not acceptable. Zionist racism and reparations for victims of slavery and colonialism must be on the agenda of the World Conference. When the issue of reparations for the victims of Nazism was being debated, the US was enthusiastically in support. Yet now that reparations for the victims of slavery are being discussed, they want it removed from the agenda. There is a clear case of double- standards being applied. The struggle against Zionist racism and effectively addressing the issue of reparations is part of the struggle of the poor and working people across the world against capitalist globalisation and for social progress, freedom, justice, democracy and peace. The difficult situation in Palestine represents 52 years of apartheid, occupation, Israeli state terrorism, violent subjugation and an unfair economic blockade of Palestine by Israel. This situation has continued unabated and worsened in the last eight months, with the complicity of the US. Even more tragic has been the insufficient international outcry at this situation; a silence which basically amounts to a pat on the back for the apartheid Israeli state.
This conference presents an opportunity for the world community to engage in democratic debate and take united action to end all forms of discrimination, including the legitimate struggle for Palestinian freedom and addressing the issue of reparations for colonialism and slavery. Governments have been invited by the United Nations on the assumption that they are all opposed to racism and xenophobia.
If this is not true of the Bush Administration, then their participation will not be missed. We cannot however tolerate threats to blackmail the rest of the world to accept its own agenda for the conference. In South Africa, institutionalised racism has left a deep-seated legacy. While the apartheid system has been defeated politically, its economic and social ravages are still visible. In the rural areas the majority African population still live in poverty and fear, while their white employers prosper as before and on some farms even use violence to impose their power. There is still huge racial inequality in the distribution of wealth and power.
While Africans make up 76 per cent of the population, their share of income amounts to only 29 per cent. Whites, though less than 13 per cent of the population, take away 58.5 per cent of total income. The economy is still mainly owned and controlled by a few large white-owned corporations. South Africa is a society of two nations one powerful, wealthy and white, the other powerless, poor and black, while at the same time a new gap is opening up between the small new black capitalists and middle class and the rest of the African population.
Internationally too, the legacy of slavery and colonialism continues to impact on relations between, as well as within, nations. Today's wealthy imperialist powers built their wealth on the enslavement and exploitation of the colonialised world. Capitalist globalisation threatens to entrench and widen this unequal distribution of resources. But the World Conference Against Racism provides a unique opportunity to address these historical inequities.
We support the growing demand for reparations from the former colonial and slave-owning countries to compensate the millions of people who have suffered, and continue to suffer, as a result of colonialism, racism and slavery. The developed countries must be committed to an international trade regime that benefits countries of the South, unlike the present situation that makes the Southern economies vulnerable to collapse at every stock market jitter in the developed countries.
Essential too is the cancellation of developing countries accumulated debts, especially those owed to the IMF and World Bank, which are a serious barrier to development. However the most effective remedies to reverse the devastating consequences of racism, slavery and colonialism are far-reaching structural changes to the world economy, which must extend beyond the narrow understanding of reparations as financial compensation to individual victims or countries. For the first time in history nations of the world can act in genuine partnership, to build non- racialism in action, working together to ensure a better life for all. This will only be successful, however, if all nations and peoples, including the US, are prepared to collectively acknowledge the crimes of the past, change the present and build a future free from racism, discrimination and xenophobia.
The SACP, COSATU and SANCO demand that the US Government join this movement, stop trying to blackmail the world and participate fully in the debates at the conference. We demand that your government must take the following steps: Withdraw its opposition to the inclusion of the issues of Zionism and reparations for victims of slavery and colonialism in the agenda of the World Conference Against Racism. Support long-standing UN resolutions on ending Israeli occupation, the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, and securing the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes in Israel.
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