30 April 1999
SACP leaders will be joining Alliance partners in addressing 39 different May Day rallies, countrywide tomorrow. Apart from using the occasion to campaign for an overwhelming ANC electoral majority on June 2, the SACP will use the rallies to call for a halt in the plans for the IMF to sell-off millions of ounces of gold reserves.
The proposed sale of at least 5 million ounces of gold (and possibly of much more) will be used, we are told, to help impoverished Third World countries to reduce their debt.
So what is wrong with that?
There are many things that are wrong with it:
The sudden sale of millions of ounces of gold reserves will hit the gold price dramatically. Marginal mines in South Africa (and in other parts of the world) might be closed. There will be mass retrenchments in an industry that has already been devastated by job losses. Last year, 90 000 miners were retrenched in South Africa. Every mine-worker supports many other family members - not just in South Africa - but in Lesotho, Swaziland, Mozambique, Botswana and other neighbouring countries. In the name of debt relief, the IMF will, in fact, be hitting some of the poorest countries and communities in the world.
But what is this Third World debt, that is being relieved? In the 1970s, Western private banks were awash with petro-dollars. They indulged in massive lending sprees to Third World countries. We are told that capitalists deserve to make big profits because they have to take risks. But when the Western private banks found that their loans were completely unrecoverable, they were not prepared to pay the price for their miscalculated risks. They ran to the IMF, and the IMF rescued the private banks, by taking over responsibility for the Third World debt. Through the 1980s and 1990s the IMF has imposed barbaric conditions on Third World countries, forcing them to privatise, liberalise, deregulate and slash social spending. All of this has been done to squeeze the last cent out of poor countries. Now the squeezing has gone so far that many of these countries are poorer than they were 20 years ago. There is no way that they can pay off their debt. The debt burden has got bigger. This is why the IMF is now looking for an alternative route to just squeezing. This is why it is proposing to sell gold.
But once more, it is a convenient short-cut for the big western capitalists. Instead of the wealthy countries of the First World writing off the debt, paying for their bad risks, they are once more forcing Third World countries (in this case gold producing countries, like South Africa and its neighbours) to act as shock absorbers. It was the First World's hit and run that put the Third World into hospital. Now the IMF is saying we will help to relieve the hospital fees by robbing gold producing countries.
The SACP calls on the South African government to take an even firmer stand against the proposed IMF gold sales. Our opposition to this move is not opposition to debt cancellation and debt relief for the Third World. We want the unwise lenders to pay the cost for their unwise loans, not us.
The SACP calls on all countries of our region, and on working class and progressive forces around the world, to join us in opposing this cynical short- cut by the IMF. If IMF gold sales proceed, as South Africans we will hold those governments, that are pushing this measure, responsible for its consequences on the economy of our region.
We say to Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, do not piously tell us you that you are generously "relieving the debt burden of the Third World" while you put tens of thousands of Southern African mine-workers out of their jobs, deepening the poverty in our whole region.
Issued by the SACP Department of Information & Publicity
E-Mail: sacp1@wn.apc.org
South African Communist Party Head Office
COSATU House
No. 1 Leyds Street - 7th Floor
Braamfontein 2001
Republic of South Africa
(Tel: 27 11 339-3621/2)
(Fax: 27 11 339-4244)