Jubilee 2000 SA Statement on UK Announcement

[Robert Weissman <rob@essential.org>]

Jubilee 2000 South Africa

MEDIA STATEMENT ON UK DEBT CANCELLATION ANNOUNCEMENT

Wednesday, December 22nd 1999, IMMEDIATE

The debt slavery of the "Third World" continues to impoverish masses of
people despite many grand debt cancellation announcements by the leaders
of rich countries since the 1980s. It is therefore with reasonable
reservation that we congratulate United Kingdom Chancellor Gordon Brown on
his announcement of the 100% cancellation of the bilateral debt of 26
countries to the UK.

More significantly, we welcome Gordon Brown's acknowledgement that this
"is only a start to completing this process" of debt cancellation and
poverty eradication. The leaders of other rich countries such as Germany,
Japan, Italy, and France must do the same and scrap the total debt of poor
countries. Now is the time to do it.

The real victory in the UK announcement is that it demonstrates the
effectiveness of global people's solidarity through the Jubilee 2000
movement, in the face of increasing global inequality and exploitation. It
is another victory for ordinary citizens in Britain and throughout the
world who have tirelessly campaigned for debt cancellation over the past
months. The announcement further weakens criticism that Jubilee 2000's
demand for total debt cancellation is economically irresponsible and
impossible.

Jubilee 2000 will continue to insist on 100% multilateral debt
cancellation for Third World countries by the International Monetary Fund
(IMF) and the World Bank, without structural adjustment conditions. Gordon
Brown promised to back up his announcement by pushing his G7 colleagues to
go further. We urge the leaders of the UK, the United States, and Canada
to indeed go further and use their influence to ensure total multilateral
debt cancellation for all Third World countries.  Real Jubilee debt
cancellation depends on this.

While we agree that the promised benefits of debt cancellation must go
towards poverty eradication programmes, Jubilee 2000 has consistently
argued that the imposition of structural adjustment conditions related to
the promised 100% bilateral cancellation is not an effective way to
eradicate poverty. It will prohibit a real end to debt slavery by making
debt cancellation conditional on the adoption of onerous and destructive
economic policies by already impoverished countries, increase joblessness,
reduce delivery of social services, widen inequality and deepen poverty.
Jubilee 2000 opposes the use of debt cancellation as a mechanism to impose
economic policies that are detrimental to the poor, especially through the
IMF and its discredited Highly Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) initiative.

Still too few countries are being promised cancellation of too-narrowly
selected debts. For a debt-free millennium, Jubilee 2000 calls for the
total cancellation of all Third World debt. Gordon Brown's offer to cancel
the bilateral debt of 26 countries after they have met stringent IMF
conditions falls well short of our demand.

Development aid to poor countries has been in sharp decline in recent
years. The promised debt cancellation must be in addition to and not
replace appropriate levels of development aid. If grand millenium debt
cancellation gestures are to be meaningful and not a charade, then real
Jubilee debt cancellation must provide real, additional, and immediate
benefits to the poor. It is not clear that the UK announcement will do
this.

Jubilee 2000 has consolidated and strengthened its global network of
people's solidarity, as expressed in the Jubilee South Summit of 130
leading debt cancellation activists from 33 countries throughout Latin
America, Africa, and Asia, in Johannesburg, November 18th to 21st, 1999.
Jubilee 2000 will intensify pressure towards a real end to debt slavery
and impoverishment in the year 2000, with a clear challenge to leaders of
Third World countries to play a more proactive and collective role in
ensuring a debt-free millennium.

Despite delays, resistance, and denial of accountability by apartheid's
creditors, we will intensify pressure on apartheid's bank-rollers to scrap
the apartheid debt. Now is the time for German, Swiss, UK, and US banks
that profited from apartheid to end their odious profiteering and make
reparations for the suffering they made possible. The people of Southern
Africa will not pay twice for apartheid.

<ends>

Issued by Neville Gabriel, National Secretary, Jubilee 2000 South Africa
Tel. 083 449 3934