[stop-imf] Zambia Post editorial: Sacrificing Education on the HIPC Altar

[robert weissman]

*Sacrificing Education On the HIPC Altar*

*The Post* (Lusaka)
EDITORIAL
October 19, 2004
Posted to the web October 19, 2004
Lusaka

While we appreciate the government's desire and efforts to ease our
country's debt burden through the relief offered through Highly Indebted
Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative, we feel too much is being sacrificed
for too little.

Failing to employ and deploy over 9,000 trained teachers just to meet
the conditionalities required to reach the HIPC completion point, when
most of our schools have a serious shortage of teachers doesn't make
sense at all.

It's clear that we need to proceed with caution in our efforts and
endeavours to reach the HIPC completion point.

Why should we sacrifice the future of so many children just to achieve
the HIPC completion point? Why should we condemn so many children to
illiteracy and ignorance for the fleeting illusion of HIPC debt relief?

Why should we sacrifice the education of our children for HIPC, an
initiative that is, in truth, not even a panacea to debt problems?

Why should we sacrifice so much for an initiative that clearly fails to
provide the promised robust exit from our perpetual indebtedness?

Why should our children's future and dignity be sacrificed on the HIPC
altar, a sacrifice that fails to provide debt relief consistent with the
human development needs of our people?

Why sacrifice so much for such highly HIPC unrealistic benchmarks that
are clearly not in tandem with reality?

While it is true that our country finds itself in a rather awkward
situation, being a poor country and relying on external creditors to
finance 40 per cent of our national budget, we should not slip into a
position of hopelessness with the imposed neo-liberal conditions
attached to the HIPC debt relief.

We have always stated that while there may be some initiatives
introduced masked with pledges of debt relief, this so-called-relief
does not go far enough to address our debt stock and we should not bank
on it too much.

We have further stated that Zambia's debt and the associated annual debt
service payments are unsustainable and the only real answer to this is a
total debt cancellation.

Failure to resolve this by way of full cancellation so as to unlock
resources for sustainable development, Zambia will certainly not attain
the Millennium Development Goals as well as the goals of the New
Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) which both require
substantial financial resources.

Clearly, Zambia's Human Development Index, a measure of well-being with
respect to the longevity of life, knowledge and decent standard of
living, will continue to decline if we don't proceed with caution in our
dealings with the IMF and the World Bank and their neoliberal policies
and programmes.

And let's not deceive ourselves about the extent of HIPC benefits
because they are not that much. In theory, the HIPC framework could help
to set our country on a course for debt sustainability by providing
comprehensive and integrated debt reduction. In practice, it fails to do
so for a number of reasons: our country will be firmly wedded to the IMF
and World Bank's failed economic programmes and other recipes; HIPC is
tied to the murderous IMF policies and programmes.

The debt sustainability criteria used in HIPC are unduly restrictive
from our country's perspective. Debt represents a massive drain on our
very limited revenue base at a time when investment in human capital is
desperately needed to underpin growth.

Therefore, the optimism being expressed that with HIPC status we would
effectively fight poverty and the problems of HIV/AIDS are illusory
because HIPC will deliver too little debt relief.

HIPC is certainly not an acceptable substitute to complete debt write
off. And the reasons why it is offered as a substitute to total debt
write-off are not difficult to discern. With total debt write-offs, some
poor countries may feel liberated enough not to accept the IMF and World
Bank's recipes, thereby threatening their neo-colonial hold on and plunder.

And this is why we feel HIPC doesn't address our debt and development
problems, it just gives us false hopes. It just makes us pay little
attention to our real problems as we struggle for HIPC qualifications.

HIPC is nothing but another neo-colonial scheme. It doesn't free us from
anything, in fact it helps keep us under servitude and in check. We will
continue to be told what to do by the World Bank and IMF and officials
of donor nations.

Zambians, let the IMF play around with share prices on LuSE and not the
future of our children.

The education of our children should be treated in accordance with our
aspirations as a nation. This means that decisions made by government on
education policies should be based on sound principles rather than on
the expediencies of reaching HIPC completion point.

We should never forget that our young people are our most important
natural resource. And we must prepare them for the future; give them
ever more attention. They are the malleable clay from which a new Zambia
will be built and we should place our hope in them and prepare them,
through good education, to take the banner from our hands.

After all, underdevelopment is, among other things, lack of learning and
lack of the possibility to learn. It is not only how many cannot read or
write. It is also how many cannot learn to read or write, or pass on to
higher levels of education, due to the lack of teachers, schools and the
minimum conditions beyond those most elementary for subsistence. That is
why the educational requirements of our children cannot be left to the
whims of our creditors.

It is time for us to start addressing the problem of education if we are
to achieve development.

If no drastic measures are taken to urgently correct things, we will be
doomed to ignorance. But what will this mean for our future in today's
highly globalised world where the struggle for our survival can only be
won on the battle of ideas?

Education is one of the component parts of the struggle we are now
waging for our survival. With good education, we can counter neo-liberal
hypocrisy and lies with the complete and honest truth.

Zambia will not develop unless the education of the great majority of
our children is improved.

Our young people have a title to the future, and their future will be
the one we ourselves are capable of creating for them.

We must prepare these new generations for the world, which won't be an
easy world to live in without very good education and technical skills.

Education will always need more and more of our resources and deserves
serious attention in all that we do if we have to harbour any hope of
survival in what appears to be a sombre future.