Debt Cancellation
'a tale of mixed blessings'
Bloomsbury Deacon, Tim Jones writes...

At the end of 2006, Sierra Leone became the 21st country to receive 100 per cent debt cancellation – worth £800 million over the next 40 years. For many years, Bloomsbury campaigners have been calling for the cancellation of the unjust debts of the world’s poorest countries, and as such, it is news many of us will want to celebrate.

In 2005, the international call for debt cancellation was finally heeded, and two international institutions – the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank – announced that 100 per cent cancellation would be granted to some of the poorest countries in the world.

Where debt cancellation has been granted it is having real impacts on the ground. Zambia received debt cancellation in 2005. Last year I received an email from Jack Jones Zulu, a debt cancellation campaigner from Zambia. He told me:

“one can safely argue that Zambia’s 2006 national budget demonstrates that with debt relief in place and clear planning, it is possible to increase allocations to the social sectors. This year’s budgetary allocations to the social sectors stand at 30 per cent of the total budget – the highest in recent years. These increased allocations will go to areas such as recruiting personnel in the education and health sectors, infrastructure development, purchase of drugs, and provision of food supplements especially for people living with HIV and AIDS. The Government has pledged to recruit 800 medical personnel and slightly over 4000 teachers.”

However, campaigners such as Jack Jones Zulu have argued that the downside of debt cancellation is the policies which the IMF and World Bank force countries to implement. In Cameroon, the World Bank made the privatisation of three tea plantations a condition of their work in the country. Unfortunately when the privatisation happened, the Cameroonian government failed to ensure that fixed guidelines or management regulations accompanied the sale.

The tea plantations used to provide more than just a job. They were the centre of social services such as healthcare. Workers claim that since the privatisation, such services have declined. Aaron Berum, a worker from the plantation, says:

"The sanitary conditions are horrible. People are living here by the grace of God. An epidemic may break out any time. The situation is very bad."

The privatisation has also led to wage cuts of up-to 50 per cent and job losses. Hannah Lynonge, a tea plucker for 26 years, says:

“Health services have been stopped workers are arbitrarily laid off and remuneration is not commensurate with the amount of work done.”

Back in Zambia, whilst debt cancellation has been granted, the IMF and World Bank still help to determine the policies the country follows. The IMF has recently pressed Zambia to tax basic necessities by introducing VAT on “books, magazines and newspapers”, “food and agricultural products”, “water and sewerage” and “mosquito nets”. Doing so would essentially make the basic necessities of life – education, food, water and health – more expensive. Nachilala Nkombo from Jubilee Zambia told me:

“These proposals have generated uproar not just from civil society organisations but also by the private sector that they are inappropriate for Zambia, hurt the poor and take the country backwards. This is one of the most absurd things we think we are yet to hear from these IFIs [the IMF and World Bank].”

Where debts have been cancelled, a real difference has been made to millions of people’s lives. But the international system which decides where debt cancellation is given still allows the rich to tell the poor what to do. Zambia and Cameroon have both been granted debt cancellation. But they have also both suffered by being forced to follow economic policies dictated by the IMF and World Bank.

Fighters for Freedom
Effie Jordan from the World Development Movement examines the legacy of the transatlantic slave trade – and lessons we can learn from the campaigns against it.

Toussaint L’Ouverture or William Wilberforce – which name is more familiar to you? Each played a crucial, though very different, role in the events which led to Britain passing an Act to end the transatlantic slave trade in 1807.
The Abolition Act was the beginning of the end of four centuries of slave trading which saw millions of Africans forcibly shipped in appalling conditions to Caribbean plantations.

Those who survived the journey continued to be subjected to extreme brutality and were often literally worked to death. Plantations were big business offering huge profits for their British investors. Untold millions of African lives were lost and destroyed, and slavery leaves many deep scars in the continent and across the world today.

The real heroes
Firstly we must look at the legacy of silence around the role of freedom fighters such as Toussaint L’Ouverture.

Although many factors were integral to the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade, the focus often falls on a small group of British ‘abolitionists’, including Hull MP William Wilberforce. The crucial part that slaves played in winning their own freedom often goes untold. And our tendency to construct heroes means that a few individual figures – both black and white – are singled out, whilst the mass numbers of people at the grassroots who were actively resisting an unjust system are overlooked.

There are parallels with the situation today. At the World Development Movement we try to ensure Southern perspectives are put forward in the arena of global trade and finance. We regularly report the strong resistance on the ground to unjust policies imposed by rich country dominated institutions like the IMF and World Bank. And we prize the tireless efforts of thousands of individual activists making a collective difference. We’d hate to think that if poverty were eradicated now, the history books in 200 years time would be reporting it was Bono and Bob Geldof alone who sorted it all out.
Secondly, alongside groups such as Anti-Slavery International and Rendezvous for Victory, we try to explore the links between the slave trade era and global injustices today. There is often a failure to properly acknowledge how today’s economic system has been built upon the injustices of the past.

Injustice continues
Again we can draw parallels between the economic system which treated people as property and today’s system which puts profits before the welfare of millions of people worldwide, keeps countries shackled by debt and unfair economic conditions, and allows modern forms of slavery, such as bonded labour and trafficking, to go unchecked.

It remains to be seen how today’s media and political leaders will report, reflect on and commemorate the bicentenary. We will continue to work with diaspora and Southern groups giving Africans a voice where often their voice is denied. This will allow the other side of the story to be told, not just because justice dictates it should be, but also so lessons can be learnt from one of the greatest global campaigns in history. People need to know it took black and white, the oppressed and the free, rich and poor, the South and the North to take a stand against the injustices they saw and to end the slave trade.
This is one of the greatest legacies of the slave trade – that, against all odds, this brutal system was abolished. It is this legacy we need to carry forward to 2007 and beyond.

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