25 May 2001
The South African Communist Party (SACP) notes with interest the visit and statements made by General Colin Powell, the Secretary of State of the United States of America, that the new US Administration is committed to Africa.
In order for this apparent commitment to be taken seriously, we cannot forget the historical role and credentials of the US government in maintaining an unjust world order. This role belies this stated US commitment. We therefore use the opportunity of this visit to raise matters which concern the overwhelming majority of the world and which the US government must address before its stated commitment can be believed.
Firstly, the US through its domination of United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organisation, the World Bank and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation is basically at the helm on an unjust world order. These US dominated bodies essentially represent a lean and mean machinery which has forced down many Third World countries neo-liberal economic programmes which have increased poverty and misery whilst at the same time increasing protection and dominance of the US economy over the whole world.
In essence, this unjust world order undermines African development and the Millennium Africa Programme (MAP) in particular. The real test of concrete and meaningful US support for African development and MAP in particular means that the US contribute to the essential transformation of the international world in favour of poor and working people across the world.
For more than 40 years now, the US has sustained an illegal and immoral economic blockade against socialist Cuba for no other reason other than that Cuba chose socialism and unashamedly advanced its people's interests without asking for US permission. In this regard, the SACP calls on the US government to unconditionally lift its blockade against Cuba.
Even our own country, South Africa, is not immune to US imperialism. For more than two years since 1996, the US government applied massive pressure on the South African government to withdraw legislation for affordable medicines against the wishes of largely US based drug manufacturers. Buoyed by this, many US drug companies were part of the un-successful lawsuit against the South African government. In this regard, a just world order means that the US government must actually support a world trade system which fundamentally advances the interests of developing countries and not those of multi-national corporations.
Most recently, the US has played a biased role in favour of Israeli against the Palestinian struggle for self-determination. In this regard the SACP calls on the US to withdraw from its role as the main mediator in the Israeli-Palestine conflict and to stop blocking UN resolutions on Palestinian sovereignity, the right of Palestinian refugees to return to Israeli and the aggression of Israeli against Palestine.
Within months of being in power, the current US administration has already sent signals that it will do anything to protect narrow US interests by undermining international agreements (Kyoto) on carbon emissions.
In other words, it is difficult to believe that Powell's visit to Africa represents any important regard in which Africa is held by the new US administration. In fact, all indications confirm that we are likely to see continued contempt and marginalisation of Africa and the Third World as a whole by the current US administration.
Unless the US government changes its policies and actions to Africa and the rest of the developing world, to us it will remain an imperialist power acting on behalf of the oil, drug and other major US companies.
CONTACT
Mazibuko K. Jara (surname Jara)
Department of Media, Information and Publicity South African Communist Party
Tel: 011 339 3621
Fax: 011 339 4244
Email: sacp1@wn.apc.org