Is 'social justice' attainable in Africa?

Summit brings together globalists to talk sustainable development

On Aug. 26, the transnational elite of the world will gather here for World Summit 2002 in hopes of bringing Africa into regional and global economic blocks driven by so-called "sustainable development" policies.

Among the globalists participating will be 20,000 United Nations delegates from 189 member states.

What is sustainable development? For Africans, it means raising living standards of the continent's poorest without harming the environment or jeopardizing the hopes of future generations. As articulated by the New Economic Program for African Development, or NEPAD, sustainable development means "a fresh set of human, spiritual and economic values" aimed at addressing "poverty and inequality."

The agenda of the conference, say some observers, is almost laughably ambitious. The poorest nations in the Southern Hemisphere want the rich Northern Hemispheric nations to increase debt relief, market access, foreign direct investment and development assistance, while demanding the West cut back on production and consumption.

"Basically, the summit revolves around the idea of the Christian, capitalist Western world self destructing and working to turn the world into a quasi-Marxist socialist utopia. Hence the use of the term 'social injustice' by World Summit leaders," Gerard Schneider, a German NGO, or non-governmental organization, delegate to the conference, told WorldNetDaily. "Their ideals are: 'Everyone has this or that right to housing, water, food, education.' Well, that means that someone else has the responsibility to meet that need. Actually, people have a responsibility to themselves, and that should be the central theme of this summit – self reliance, not North-South handouts and warmed-over utopian schemes."

Added Schneider, "The African people deserve better than this. We have doctors who ruin health, governments who destroy freedom, schools that destroy real knowledge and logic, Christian ministers who exterminate spirituality and journalists who prostitute themselves as public-relations managers for the international elites. No wonder the world is such a disaster. Everything is backwards."

What will be some of the top issues to be addressed at the World Summit? AIDS is certain to be one of them, as it is perhaps the No. 1 challenge facing Africa. Over 25 million children in sub-Saharan Africa are HIV positive. There are 13 million African AIDS orphans, and more than 2 million African adults die of AIDS each year. The world's population of homeless children equals that of the entire population of the United States at the start of World War I, about 92 million. Water and sanitation also are critical issues. More than a billion people worldwide don't have safe drinking water, and 2.5 billion lack Western standards of sanitation.

In general economic terms, since 1975 the average African has seen his or her consumption capacity decline by 20 percent. Worldwide, 1.3 billion live on less than $1 per day, and the top three billionaires in the world are worth more than the combined GNP of the 600 million people in the world's least developed countries, including Laos, Cambodia, Haiti, Afghanistan and others.

African leaders themselves are divided on the chances NEPAD has to deliver long-term sustainable development goals to Africa as a whole.

Joseph Kabila, the new leader of the Marxist Congo, a former Belgian colony, told the South African media that Western governments are lacking in the eyes of Africans.

"Irrespective of their technology, their intelligence services, you get the impression they are not as well-informed as they should be," he said. "That is why their foreign policies are always in a tangle. …"

Eager to make nice with Kabila, the World Bank responded to his criticism with a $400 million dollar loan. Kabila's regime is propped up by mercenaries from Zimbabwe, and Congo's vast and rich fields of gems and uranium have attracted mining interests from as far away as Arkansas and the North Korean nuclear program.

For now, the West will most likely continue to talk of "sustainable development" while offering technology, access to credit, oil, shipping lanes and markets to Africa's third-world regimes.

One example is how New York's leading diamond seller, Maurice Tempelsman recently offered the Marxist leadership of Namibia (formerly the white-run and pro-West Southwest Africa) an $80 million secret payoff if Namibia's leaders would forget about its plans to investigate the prices DeBeers pays Namibia for the diamonds it mines there against the prices diamond buyers and sellers find on the free market. The $80 million, according to a letter sent by Tempelsman to Namibia's ruling elites, would come from "one or more banks of high international standing." The U.S. based Export-Import financial institution was cited by Tempelsman as one possible source of the funds.

"These super capitalists and African dictators, they are snakes slithering out of the same hole – they are snakes I tell you," E-Pumla Dwane, a black South African Communist Party activist, World Summit volunteer and member of the Marxist Committee for Social Justice and Reform told WND.

"During my tea breaks at the summit, I plan to walk up to each and every one of these snakes and say, 'What are you hiding in the boot (trunk) of your vehicle? What is your secret agenda for Africans – black, white, brown, yellow and red?' You know how the Devil tempted Jesus in the desert saying, 'Worship me and all the kingdoms of the world will be yours'? Well, these capitalists and dictators have taken up that offer. For now, the rest of us can only suffer the consequences. But one day, and I swear by all that is holy, their reign will end."

By Anthony C. LoBaido © 2002 WorldNetDaily.com