Jubilee 2000 South Africa is outraged at the G7’s announcement on debt at their Summit here in Okinawa.

The G7 have attempted to rehash old pledges that have failed, effectively imposing further conditions on the promises of limited debt cancellation that have yet to be delivered a year after they were made in Cologne. None of the countries promised debt cancellation under the G7’s “Enhanced HIPC Initiative” have received it.

Yet the G7 misleadingly notes that “progress (has been) made”.

Neville Gabriel, National Secretary of Jubilee 2000 South Africa, said, “We have every reason to believe that these are yet more empty promises. We are astonished that the G7 have ignored global public opinion by reversing debt cancellation processes. They are effectively sentencing 19,000 African children a day to death by debt”.

19,000 die each day from preventable diseases in Sub-Saharan Africa, the region that carries the heaviest burden of illegitimate and unpayable debt. The region spends four times more on servicing debt than on health and education combined.

The onerous conditions attached to debt cancellation will continue to override the potential benefits. In addition, the denial of debt cancellation to countries “currently affected by military conflicts” is hypocritical because arms exported predominantly from G7 countries are used in the conflicts they refer to.

No attention has been given to cancellation of odious debts, debts of post-conflict countries, and countries affected by severe natural disasters – all of which are relevant to Southern Africa.

The Summit will cost R5.25 billion. That is the amount required to cancel debt payments for one year for all of Rwanda, Zambia, Cambodia, Nicaragua, Benin, Haiti, Guyana, and Laos.

As the G7 assess their own economies as moving “towards more balanced and sustainable patterns of growth”, they have yet again failed to act to reverse the growing impoverishment in developing countries and global inequality.

Effectively the G7 debt decision will unleash a global reaction of protest that will be felt strongly at the UN Millennium Summit in New York and the Annual IMF / World Bank Meeting in Prague in September this year.

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Jubilee 2000 South Africa Press Statement On the G7 Announcement on Debt

Johannesburg 24 July 2000 For Immediate Release

Jubilee 2000 South Africa, on the occasion of the G8 meeting in Okinawa, fully endorses the call by Njongonkulu Ndungane, the Anglican Archbishop, for the poor countries of the world to close ranks and refuse to service their debts to the G-8 countries.

It is now clear beyond doubt that the rich, having learnt nothing from history, continue to act on the morality of might is right. President Thabo Mbeki has had his face slapped by the leaders of the rich countries to whom he made impassioned and carefully reasoned pleas for ‘debt relief’. Other than for publicity purposes, these leaders plainly have little interest in addressing the problems of the majority of the people of the world. They, who have spent more than $750 million (R5.25 bn) on themselves during their few days in Japan, then lecture the rest of world about the need not to squander money. $750-million dollars is equivalent to the total annual debt-servicing of Guyana, Rwanda, Laos, Zambia, Nicaragua, Benin, Cambodia, and Haiti. The $750 million dollars spent on the G7 Conference is more than 500% larger than what our South African government has spent on its poverty reduction programmes in the six years since democracy came to our country.

We, in South Africa spend some R48-billion each year just servicing what the government recognises as the public debt. We also inherited a direct foreign debt from the apartheid state of well over R100 billion. In addition we are sitting on the huge assets accumulated since 1989 by the Government Employees Pension Fund of more than R161-billion.

These apartheid debts are not the responsibility of the new South Africa.

International law recognises them to be “odious” and therefore not the liability of the post-apartheid government.

Jubilee 2000, therefore, again calls upon our government to negotiate for the cancellation of the apartheid debt in terms of the Doctrine of Odious Debt, failing which to declare a moratorium on all debt repayments.

Issued by Neville Gabriel

Jubilee 2000 South Africa
c/o SACBC
PO Box 941
PRETORIA
0001
South Africa
Tel. +27 (0)12 323 6458
Cell. +27 (0)83 449 3934
Fax. +27 (0)12 326 6218
E-mail: j2000sec@sn.apc.org
http://www.aidc.org.za/j2000
http://jubileesouth.net

Jubilee 2000 South Africa, July 24, 2000