Southern Africa
New call to cancel apartheid debt

At the 3-5 November civil society meeting, uniting organisations from the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the EU in Copenhagen, forces were united to call off "apartheid-caused debt and reparations."

According to the final resolution from the meeting, Southern African debt repayments "are having a crippling effect on the ability of governments of the region to implement development programmes, invest in health and education and cope with the devastating impact of the HIV/AIDS crisis."

According to a recent report released by Action for Southern Africa (ACTSA), which participated in the Copenhagen conference, the case of impoverished Zambia illustrated the situation. Zambia, which participated in the fight against apartheid and white regimes like Rhodesia and colonial Mozambique and Angola, had accumulated a US$ 5.3 billion apartheid-related debt. 

This debt had been produced by economic sabotage and the destruction of key infrastructure in repeated military incursions, particularly by the South Africa National Defence Force; billions of dollars of trade losses resulting from sanctions against apartheid South Africa; hosting thousands of refugees; and extra defence expenditure. The picture is equal in many of the ex-front line states.

South Africa is in another situation. According to the Alternative Information and Development Centre in Cape Town, the South African government has a debt of approximately Rand 300 billion. Some 90 billion of this was inherited from the apartheid regime, money that was used to fight the black majority and neighbour states. Western banks were willing borrowers till the end.

Nothing has been done to repair these damages, the groups complain. Current international policies, supported by the EU, such as the HIPC initiative and Poverty Reduction Strategies, were labelled "woefully inadequate" and a continuation of the "failed policies of the structural adjustment programmes," the Copenhagen resolution says.

These policies also did not provide a framework to tackle the special nature of Southern Africa's debt. "The apartheid regime not only oppressed its own people – it waged a full-scale war against neighbouring states," the organisations recalled. Faced with a sudden loss of income and the need to protect their people, the governments of the region had borrowed heavily from international financial institutions. 

- Despite the United Nations declaring apartheid a crime against humanity, private European banks continued to bankroll the regime, keeping apartheid alive longer than it would otherwise have survived, the resolution says. "Given that these loans served a criminal system," the groups called on the EU governments to "accept that all apartheid caused debt is illegitimate."

Further, the groups demand the EU to recognise that "debts incurred by Southern African countries supporting the legitimate struggle against apartheid should be written off by the international public and private creditors." This act should further be seen as the first step in "addressing the social damages resulting from the regional destabilisation effected by apartheid" as a pre-condition for starting a programme of regional reconstruction and development.

The EU should finally recognise that their corporations and banks had "aided and abetted apartheid and have reaped profits from it," the communiqué says. Therefore, the peoples of Southern Africa were "entitled to full debt cancellation and compensation." 

Sources: Based on Copenhagen conference & afrol archives

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