Guest Comment: Germany’s chance to overcome global economic apartheid
When I was in Berlin last week something was playing on my mind. Wasn’t it here in 1884 that my continent Africa was carved up so randomly by European powers? At the Berlin Conference borders were drawn and communities split leaving irreversible fault lines throughout Africa. Was it to redress the errors of the past that I had been invited to join thirteen other civil society campaigners for a meeting with Chancellor Angela Merkel?
The German leader’s invitation expressed a wish to hear our concerns on poverty relief and climate change in advance of next month’s G8 summit on the Baltic coast. As a representative of the world’s biggest anti-poverty campaign, The Global Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP), I was there to put to her our demands for concrete outcomes and past promises to be honoured.
Two years ago, the G8 leaders met in Gleneagles in Scotland and renewed an old promise. They dusted down a commitment made back in the 70’s, to provide 0.7% of their GDP in development aid. The circle of eight made a commitment that, if met, would lead to millions of lives saved but to our disbelief they pushed the delivery date back. With a few exceptions, there has actually been a net decrease in aid from these countries since 2005. Citizens have shown time and time again through petitions, rallies, symbolic actions of solidarity, that they want this money given to the poor, yet their leaders respond tardily.
I put to the Chancellor that aid is not a panacea. Since the Marshall Plan to reconstruct war-torn Europe sixty years ago, we know that it works when properly managed and directed to the provision of essential services. It is their duty to ensure this. When we see how rapidly money is mobilised by these same governments when called up on to go to war then we, the people living in the poorest places on earth, cannot understand why a fraction of that money cannot be found now? The Chancellor appeared to nod her head in agreement.
My colleagues and I, called too for a better future for the poorest countries, a future in which neither aid nor debt relief would be necessary. I explained to Ms. Merkel that every day more and more African citizens are becoming aware of the unbalanced and unjust way world trade rules are set. They cannot believe European cows are subsidised to the tune of 2 Euros a day when half the people on the planet survive on less. They ask if this is some sort of global economic apartheid? If 6,000 white people were dying every day of HIV/Aids as is happening to the people of Africa, would they stand idly by? Given that what we are seeing in Africa and elsewhere in the developing world is a passive genocide or, if you like, a silent tsunami, I really do not know what to tell them.
Germany has an opportunity to change the course of history. It could be remembered not as the place where Africa’s woes began but where impoverished nations got the chance they needed to recover, once and for all. Just as Germany benefited from the Marshall plan, surely a global Marshall plan now makes sense. It would ensure future generations live in a world characterised by political, social, economic, gender and environmental justice. I left Ms. Merkel, I hope, still nodding her head in agreement.
Kumi Naidoo, South Africa, is a GCAP (Global Call to Action Against Poverty) representative and Secretary-General of CIVICUS (The World Alliance for Citizen Participation).
