| |
|
|
 A
recent editorial chastised African Americans for being “stuck” and “isolated”, “not
part of the global village.” The writer was reviewing the recent
events in Liberia, and the lukewarm attention of the African
American community. Liberia is not the only thing about which
we are lukewarm. We are lukewarm about political parties, though
perhaps for good cause. We are lukewarm about the neoliberal
debate. We are lukewarm about other people of color. We are
lukewarm in our embrace of the critique of economic globalization.
We are lukewarm about all of Africa.
In our defense, we
continue to confront some of the worst conditions forced upon
citizens of this country. I need not go into detail. Our level
of mobilization around our immediate concerns underwhelms at
times, especially at the national level. We have seen too much
death, and we are tired of crying, tired of dying.
As
chronic as the treatment of African Americans has been in
this nation, the
cry for internationalism has been as consistent. It is that
cry that got Malcolm and Martin killed, Robeson blacklisted,
Garvey destroyed, DuBois’ right to travel revoked. In a Zen
way, it may be that we are inspired to our greatest clarity,
unity and level of organization by looking outward, de-focusing
on our own concerns, and remembering our true place, globally
and historically.
African Americans
have historic connection and partnership with the nations of
Africa. From DuBois who helped initiate the first five Pan-African
Congresses beginning at the turn of the century, through leaders
like Garvey and Malcolm X, we have recognized that we are one
people, separated only by a few hundred years of kidnapping
and slavery. Our historic connection to the cause of African
liberation and the linkages of our leaders to leaders on that
continent helped forge us as a political force in the U.S. We
understood liberation, we understood land as a political goal,
and we understood the sharp analogies between slavery and colonialism,
between sharecropping and neocolonialism.
Understanding
the political arena as a global one is the best solution
to the
ongoing plight of African Americans today. We will not solve
our employment problem until we understand labor as a global
phenomenon, employers as global actors, and much of the wealth
in our country (and the world) as the plunder of corporate
thieves, rinsed in the blood of Africans and other indigenous
peoples. The ability of the corporate agenda to dominate the
American landscape is directly dependent on their strength
as global competitors. Depressed wages, the increased gap between
rich and poor, the sale of the public domain (schools, water
and utilities, roads, prisons) to privateers, the lack of political
challenge to the two headed beast we call a democracy—all these
are features of the tableau before us. As corporate wealth
and power grow unfettered, Africans throughout the world share
a special place of exploitation, regardless of their nationality.
African Americans need a much greater presence in the growing
movement against corporate globalization; that movement could
use some color. We need better and deeper connections to popular
movements and organizations in other countries. And there are
many such opportunities.
 In
the fall of 2002, Jubilee South Africa and the Khulumani
Support Group filed
suit in US circuit court for damages suffered by plaintiffs
during the apartheid period in South Africa. Jubilee South
Africa is a part of the growing global movement for economic
justice, particularly focused on issues of debt relief. The
Khulumani Group is a support group, made up of victims and
the family members of victims of murder, torture, disfigurement,
and disability—the signatures of apartheid rule.
The lawsuit is part
of a broad campaign that combines trade union federations,
land reform activists, anti-privatization forces, churches,
and civic and other non-governmental organizations. Their basic
principle is that all who benefited from apartheid should pay.
This includes business, foreign and local, and foreign governments
who supported apartheid and business activity in contravention
of sanctions.
The resolution of
apartheid, like the resolution of colonialism in the rest of
Africa, was not completed when the government changed hands.
Indeed, US and European complicity and interference in the
post-colonial affairs of African states grew worse. Independence
has been costly for Africans, presaged when a newly free Haiti
was saddled with compensation debts to their former slaveholders
two centuries ago. In largely all cases, the ownership of the
land, the operations of corporations, and the location of wealth
changed little. The abandonment of colonialism in the face
of popular resistance did not prevent the imperialists from
using political and military means to ensure an economic status
quo favorable to business. Indeed, as Egyptian economist Samir
Amin has researched, much of the so-called developing world
has been kept at the margins of the global market to allow
manipulation of the local governments and economies in the
interests of the stronger global trading entities.
During
the transitional negotiations for control of the state, the
African National
Congress (ANC) made a tactical decision to avoid naked confrontation
with the forces of national and international capital. The
current chaos in Zimbabwe and the international vilification
of Mugabe gives the neoliberals/pro-corporate sector in the
ANC comfort; they can point to Mugabe’s current plight, and
argue that South Africa could have been Zimbabwe. This is quite
possibly the best example of a Pyrrhic victory.
Apart
from the reins of government, little of the wealth
of South Africa changed
hands; articles in the national South African press
suggest that the gap between rich and poor
has increased. Social forces
in South Africa are beginning to see the severe downside
of the “peaceful accommodation” with capital: minimal land reform,
growing poverty and joblessness, the privatization of national
resources such as water and electricity, and constricting social
services. It is a tale told many times over around the world. Imperial
manipulation has changed its modus operandi, but not
its ultimate end: the theft of resources, the exploitation
and cheapening
of labor.
Corporations
with large economic stake continued to do business in South
Africa
after the imposition of sanctions, and continued to do business
with the apartheid government. Oil, automotive, banking – multi-national
industries had too much at stake, and as the president of a
large Swiss bank said in 1960, apartheid was very good for
business. As well, the apartheid government needed capital:
they needed armored vehicles, they needed arms, they needed
oil and petroleum products, and they needed financing to stay
afloat.
For the people of
South Africa, the struggle against apartheid is not yet over.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission completed its monumental
task this spring,  and recommended the payment of reparations
to the acknowledged victims of apartheid. The government, in
a transparent nod to international finance capital, ignored
the findings of the Commission, and announced vastly reduced
payments of R30,000 to only 19,000 victims (in a population
of more than 35 million non-whites). Consider losing your son
or father or sister, or your ancestral land, or years of your
primary and secondary education, and being offered the equivalent
of US$4000 in compensation.
The lawsuit argues
that the most egregious supporters of apartheid, foreign multinationals
who closed their eyes to the crimes of apartheid, have a debt
to pay to the people whose lives they damaged. The profits
made during that time were illegal. The financial support they
provided to an illegal and immoral regime was illegal and immoral.
And while the people of South Africa continue to struggle to
own land, to find work, to find solace at the loss of loved
ones, the cold-blooded capitalists get richer off the theft
of labor and resources.
While
the domestic battle for distribution of the nation’s wealth belongs to the
people of South Africa, the complicity of corporations with
which you and I do business, in which you and I invest our
savings, and which you and I patronize for goods and services – that
complicity is our business.
Our efforts here during
the colonial era of the recent century did not go unnoticed;
a recent visitor to South Africa was asked what became of the
support of African Americans for liberation in Africa. It
is not only the South Africans who need us; it is we who need
them. By standing up to their enemies, to their plunderers
and murderers, we may have a clearer understanding of our own
struggle.
Peter
Hardie is Vice-President for Campaigns and Labor Affairs
for TransAfrica
Forum. He is father of three, husband, errant poet and
sailor, with a history of activism in labor, public education,
community advocacy, and the issues of youth.
|
| |
|
|
|
is published every Thursday. 