Stop! We want to get off

Zarina Geloo

Economists from southern countries yesterday made a rather belated appeal for trade treaties and agreements signed by poor countries to be revisited, slowed down or stopped, because they pushed their economies into a deeper abyss.

Yash Tandon from Zimbabwe told a meeting on the 'Implications for EU´s regional and bi lateral Trade and Investment Agreements in the South', that the developing nations were being fast tracked though trade agreements and negotiations without being given time to prepare, consult, or consider the implications of signing agreements.

'History will show us time and time again that this is a deliberate move by these organizations to tie us to their demands, to keep us in servitude and poverty while they ride on our backs and get richer.'

Tandon appealed to the meeting to help Africa pressure for re negotiations on agreements already signed (through ignorance) and where possible stall, the negotiations altogether.

He said southern governments must force a change in the balance of power on the global arena and also demand for consensus on decisions that affect them.

He gave the Cotonou agreement - between the European Union and the former colonies of Africa, the Pacific and the Caribbean - as a typical example: it has political conditionalities allowing for sanctions on African countries. The African countries however, do not have the same rights over the northern governments. 'So where is the partnership, in whose interest is the Cotonou agreement serving.?'

He also took a swipe at the EU, which he said was supposed to be the bridge between America and the developing nations, but instead kowtowed to whatever line the United States took.

Giving a background on the evolution of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), the largest regional grouping in Africa, Mohau Mpheko, from African Trade Network said things had definitely become confused in as far as regional integration was concerned and countries needed to take a step back and review the mess they were in.

SADC was founded as a political organization for the 'front line' states to counter the effects of the Apartheid regime in South Africa. After 1992, it officially transformed into a regional economic body.

But Mpheko said SADC had become a convoluted mishmash of countries signing treaties they did not understand and did not benefit them, with the full participation of the northern trade bodies who preyed on the confusion to push their forward their own agenda. It had become obsessed with harmonizing it`s trade protocol with the World Trade Organization whether it is viable or not.

'The EU, WTO etc are not interested in SADC objectives and have sought to undermine it all the way. They have polarized the countries inequalities in the region by making countries sign treaties and agreements that undermine their sovereignty and that of their neighbours. `

She said they used divide and rule tactics where they seduced some countries with promises of foreign investment and them set them against their neighbours or other countries that they already have agreements with.

She blamed technocrats in SADC who had fashioned trade protocols after the WTO standards whether they suited the particular country or not. SADC has become the playground of the EU, which continued to dictate to it the terms of conditions of its trade protocols, she said.

'For SADC to establish regional integration that is political, cultural, economic and historical is no small task- yet is an essential element against economic domination by the north.'