Summary of the Speech to the AIDS Consortium (26 November 2002) By Blade Nzimande, Chairperson of the Financial Sector Campaign Forum and General Secretary of the South African Communist Party (SACP).
The hosting of the Financial Sector Summit by the National Economic Development and Labour Council (NEDLAC) on 20 August 2002, and the agreements reached therein, marked one of the most historic and significant gains for the workers and the poor of our country. Through the SACP-led campaign for the transformation and the diversification of the financial sector, far-reaching agreements were concluded. This marks a new era towards the transformation of banks and the financial sector in general and the development of a credit regime orientated towards the development needs of the majority of the people of our country.
During our campaign we had demanded and, at the NEDLAC Summit got agreement on legislation and policy framework for co-operative banks and other types of micro-credit, financial co-operatives. During our campaign the building of co-operative banks came to be the major demand from amongst our people. Related to this was an agreement on major banks working towards universal access to banking services for the poor, particularly the rural masses and those who receive old-age pensions. We would indeed continue to struggle that these services are immediately made available, and extended to all those who receive state grants, including child grants and the disabled.
Agreement on urgent steps towards the regulation of micro-lending and the loan sharks is one of the most important achievements of our campaign, as well as an agreement on the regulation of the credit bureaux, as part of forging a developmental and affordable credit regime in our country. A commitment to exploring automatic insurance cover of up to a bond of R150 000 for all, including those of our people who are HIV positive is indeed a path breaking achievement. This will go a long way towards saving houses for AIDS orphans and towards ending unfair discrimination against the HIV positive.
The challenge now is not to demobilise, but to continue with our mobilisation in order to ensure that the commitments made at the NEDLAC Summit are implemented. All the agreements reached are but the first, albeit very important, step in the struggle for transformation of the financial sector.
We have committed ourselves to meet monthly at NEDLAC to implement these agreements. As we all know, we cannot leave the implementation of the NEDLAC agreements to the bosses as that will mean the unabated continuation of racist and other discriminatory practices in the banks and the financial sector as a whole.
Summary of Agreements reached at NEDLAC Financial Sector Summit
In summary, the key agreements at NEDLAC were:
The Private Sector and HIV/AIDS
The private sector in South Africa is manifestly failing to contribute effectively to combating the HIV/AIDS pandemic. We believe that there are significant resources available in the private sector that can be mobilised to fight this pandemic. This is shown by the wanton discrimination of people living with HIV/AIDS in the financial sector and the fact that private appropriation of knowledge in the form of patent and intellectual property rights can be a barrier to making available affordable medicines. Only last year, the Financial Sector Campaign Forum had to engage the Standard Bank and the Banking Council because they were evicting HIV/AIDS orphans from houses bonded to their late parents. In many cases, these evictions are compounded by policies of insurance companies which exclude HIV/AIDS cover. These policies are cruel, inhumane and reflect the poverty of private commercial banks and the insurance industry in our country.
The Financial Sector Campaign Forum therefore calls on the AIDS Consortium and all South Africans to intensifying the struggle against multinational pharmaceutical companies to provide cheaper drugs, not only anti-retrovirals, but also drugs to combat the many curable diseases afflicting our country and continent. We also call for the intensification of the struggle against HIV/AIDS discrimination in all spheres of society, in particular in the workplace and in the financial sector.
CONTACT
Mazibuko K. Jara (surname Jara)
Department of Media, Information & Publicity
South African Communist Party
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Email - mazibuko@sacp.org.za