[stop-imf] African groups plan demonstrations for full debt cancellation December 8

[robert weissman]

December 8 is International Day of Action on Debt organized by Jubilee
South.

Zambia, Ten Other Countries to Demonstrate for Debt Cancellation

The Post (Lusaka)
NEWS
November 30, 2004
Posted to the web November 30, 2004

By Larry Moonze
Lusaka

ZAMBIA and ten other southern African countries will on December 8 mount a
collective demonstration for total debt cancellation.

Releasing resolutions of last week's workshop on campaigning for
cancellation of all illegitimate debt held in Johannesburg, South Africa
attended by among other countries Malawi, Namibia, Mozambique, Swaziland,
Lesotho, Angola and South Africa, network member of Jubilee Zambia Teza
Nchinga said it was agreed that Africa should use both physical and legal
means to call for debt write-off failure to which the International Monetary
Fund and World Bank offices in the region would be uprooted.

"The greatest challenge our fight against debt faces is failure to see eye
to eye with our government on this matter. When we insist for total debt
cancellation, the government insists for debt servicing, which has now taken
the first page of every year's national budget at the expense of funding
agriculture, education and health," he said. "Network members would board
buses from South Africa to Zambia in a debt revolution to join their
colleagues here on December 8. These demonstrations will also take place in
individual southern African countries choked with debt and non-performing
policies of the IMF and World Bank."

Nchinga said it was empirically clear on economic terms that debt
cancellation was not only desirable but also essential for Zambia to make
meaningful progress in human development.

"It is evident that the burden of debt payment is contributing to profound
economic crises and growing social instability in Zambia and the picture is
not different for other heavily indebted countries that attended the
workshop like Malawi, Namibia, Mozambique, Swaziland, Lesotho, Angola and
South Africa," he said.

Nchinga said political will was cardinal in building a national force to
pressurise the creditors to cancel Zambia's debt.

He said Zambia's ruling political class must be in the forefront of
influencing the general populace to participate actively in the national
struggle against international debt.

Nchinga said lack of significant government concern on debt and its impact
on the people had been the major shortcoming for the debt cancellation
campaign in Zambia. "The fundamental principle of debtor protection means
that respect for the basic human rights (food, health care and education) of
millions of Zambians should take priority over repayment of debts to
comparatively wealthy creditors especially when capital on these debts has
already been paid a number of times over," Nchinga said. "The current
approaches to resolving the debt crisis of developing countries, especially
Zambia, allow creditors including IMF and World Bank, to contravene national
sovereignty of independent states by imposing harsh economic conditions."

And in his address to the workshop, Nchinga said over the years, Zambia had
been subjected to structural adjustment programmes (SAP), enhanced
structural adjustment programme (ESAP), poverty reduction strategy
programmes (PRSP) and the relatively recent highly indebted poor countries
(HIPC) initiative, privatisation and the poverty reduction and growth
facility (PRGF).

He said such structural measures had left Zambian people poorer than the way
they were at independence.

"Ironically our economy has been on its free fall commencing from the time
we joined hands with IMF and World Bank to forestall our debt and
reinvigorate our economy," he said.

Nchinga said demand for the privatisation of Zambia National Commercial Bank
(ZNCB), ZESCO and Zambia Telecommunications Company (ZAMTEL), among others
even when such a move was not in the interest of the poor citizens was a
crime against humanity.

He said privatisation in whatever form it manifested, including partial
privatisation, commercialisation, concessioning, outsourcing or contracting
out of services or public-private partnerships was not desirable, as it was
meant to deny people a service in preference for abnormal profits of
transnational conglomerates.

"We are not against privatisation per se as an economic concept, but we
dismiss the concept contemptuously when it means withdrawing the means of
production from the public domain, placing them in private hands where
private hands means the northern developed countries constituting the
externalisation of our resources or asset stripping," said Nchinga.

"We, therefore, call upon creditor countries and other bilateral and
multilateral lenders to implement measures for cancelling debt which are far
more radical than allowed under, for example the HIPC initiative, including
the cancellation of 100 per cent of the clearly unpayable debt owed by
Zambia and other HIPC countries."