Banking on liberation, bankrupting democracy

[Sherbang]

I found this to be a really insightful blog post by Khadija Sharife, about corporate responsibility and lack of accountability... About the greed of the developed world and the price paid by developing countries...
I'm including a few extracts here but it is well worth reading the whole blog post...
http://www.thoughtleader.co.za/khad.../banking-on-liberation-bankrupting-democracy/

There is a reason Cope’s president will not reveal the details of the arms deal, a deal that will lock South Africa into servicing billions in debt over the next 20 years — the same deal that Lekota was in all probability privy to as former minister of defence and chief of intelligence of the ANC

If Zuma is guilty, will this inspire lawmakers to make distinct the blurred context of tithes in a world where political parties and politicians are often sustained on the side by corporate patrons?

Transparency International states that 100% of arms deals are corrupt, accounting for 50% of global corruption. The Grimmet Report, prepared for US Congress, disclosed that more than 70% of all arms manufactured by governments and multinationals — or subsidised warrant agents of developed countries — were delivered to exploited countries such as Nigeria.

During an interview with Terry Crawford-Browne — anti-apartheid activist, economist, author and head of the Economists Allied for Arms Reduction (ECAAR) I learned: “the arms deal goes right to the top in South Africa, and beyond to Tony Blair, Jacques Chirac and Helmut Kohl in England, France and Germany. Tony Yengeni and Jacob Zuma may have had [allegedly] ‘dirty fingers’ but they are only ’small fish’ in the saga”.

“In short, Blair, John Major and Margaret Thatcher were all in BAE’s pocket and they dress up British arms exports as the ‘national interest’ to create jobs and earn foreign exchange and rah-rah for England and the Queen! I would describe BAE as organised crime on a scale that makes the Mafia look like amateurs,” said Crawford-Browne.

In 1994, the ANC was forced to sell state-owned assets in order to pay off odious apartheid debts, — one of the historic compromises that Mbeki alluded too. This debt — demanded in full by commercial banks — was valued at R189,9-billion in 1994.

It should be noted that the IMF, et al, made odious loans as recent as 1982 in flagrant violation of the UN’s repeated calls to divest from South Africa. Professor Dennis Brutus, Mandela’s former cellmate on Robben Island and leading light in the Jubilee Movement, was told to keep quiet when he contested the legitimacy of apartheid debt.

And though South Africa was emancipated politically, this magic button — the right to vote — was diluted, constrained and undermined by the inherited economic structure of apartheid, as evidenced in the blanket amnesty granted to corporations that financed and facilitated the longevity of the apartheid regime. The latter has often been portrayed as one-dimensional in nature, a militarised state of pigmentocracy that has since been dismantled.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The purpose of apartheid is best understood when examined in light of the close ties to developed countries — beneficiaries of exploited natural capital, and multinationals that financially propped up the regime. Former prime minister John Voster once stated, “each bank loan, each new investment is another brick in the wall of our continued existence”.

These loans were extended by banks ranging from Chase Manhattan (JP Morgan) who led a consortium of 10 banks to invest a minimum of $40-million after the Sharpeville Massacres, Commerz Bank, estimated by the UN to have injected $870-million via 30 capitals loans over a six-year period, and Dresdner Bank AG, who invested more than $1,767-billion via 54 loans over a 30-year period. Barclays, also known as the colonial piggy bank, was highlighted by the United Nations as being responsible for “one of nine major loans to the SA government and its corporations, totaling $478-million”.

Pigmentocratic apartheid may have ended, but as George Soros stated in Davos, “South Africa is in the hands of international capital”. Mandela would describe retirement as, “like being out of jail a second time”. The global financial architecture regulated by the World Bank, and IMF via loans, debts and structural adjustment, allows for the governments of developed countries to control and direct the extent and degree of development (maldevelopment and underdevelopment) of former colonies, while corporations dominate the free market by way of large portfolios, subsidies and export credits, and the overall power of oligopsonies.

This is the continuation of economic resource colonialism by other means. Yet it requires and has attained the full support of most comprador — or native regimes — from Equatorial Guinea to Angola. The latter have endorsed the inherited structures of colonialism — in the case of South Africa — apartheid. Each year the African continent experiences a loss of $20-billion to $28-billion in capital flight that remains largely unrecorded — a situation manufactured by developed countries on the receiving end of corrupt and criminal cross-border outflow. It must also be said that this form of economic iron-fisting centered on the plunder of the ecology did not begin with those we assume to be the first and last victims of colonialism …

 

[Albereth]

Mbeki would have described his fellow leaders as "a bunch of shifty, fat, shiny, scumbags that line their own nests at the expense of their people and that NEPAD was an attempt to prevent the wholesale plunder of Africa by the revolutionaries".

But while it may be true that western countries sold capital projects that have dubious economic benefit, there had to have been a dumbass signing the deal. Stupid people shouldn't be allowed to run countries - add that to your letter Helen.

 

[Sherbang]

Where is your quote from Albereth? If you put something in quotes you need to reference where you are quoting from... It's not from the article I posted...

 

[Albereth]

Where is your quote from Albereth? If you put something in quotes you need to reference where you are quoting from... It's not from the article I posted...

Umm - actually it just a parody of someone 'quoting' what Mandela would have said. Which, exactly, proves my point.

 

[Sherbang]

Umm - actually it just a parody of someone 'quoting' what Mandela would have said. Which, exactly, proves my point.

WTF are you on about? I post an interesting in-depth read and you respond with some obscure nonsense... Why bother? Did you even read the article? How about commenting on some of the points she raised, or was it maybe a little too difficult for your limited comprehension? Really, you take one sentence (which is incidental to main thrust of the article) and dismiss the entire thing based on that!

 

[DigitalSoldier]

This is Africa... the arms deal never happened

 

[Albereth]

WTF are you on about? I post an interesting in-depth read and you respond with some obscure nonsense... Why bother? Did you even read the article? How about commenting on some of the points she raised, or was it maybe a little too difficult for your limited comprehension? Really, you take one sentence (which is incidental to main thrust of the article) and dismiss the entire thing based on that!

Dude - I tend to find 'interesting' articles that try and drive some form of guilt-based economic argument fair game for dissection. It isn't that they are not without merit - and here I'd suggest that you try finding a copy of Dambusters about the Ilisu Dam (the audio version) if you want something that is both interesting and entertaining. But back to the stuff you posted - and your hardly veiled insult - clearly I must have read your postings and clearly I comprehended the fallacy in the statement trying to associate Mandela with the ramblings. The question that, thus, remains is why should it receive any more attention if it is so base in its attempts to eke mileage out of any old politcal icons?

 

[RandomDesign]

Since 1994 the ANC have taken the people of this country, collectively put them over a barrel, pulled off their underwear and invited the international community to fvck until their d.cks are bleeding - no holes barred!
Every now and then a member of this wonderful organization slinks away, albeit very slowly because the weight of the money they drag away is a bit much for them. Sometimes it's a little awkward when the direction they're going is actually in front of the barrel, and they have to drag the money around in front of the people with foreign d.cks so far up them their brains are getting mashed at the top of their skulls.
Which, it might be theorized, is why they will continue to vote for this thoughtful organization.