Cosatu resolution on NEPAD as adopted at its Executive Committee, 29-30 May 2002
We the delegates, meeting in this Cosatu Executive Committee on 29-30 May 2002 are painfully aware of Africa's economic and social woes. Africa remains a marginalized and underdeveloped society facing a multitude of economic, political, social and military problems. We believe that there is hope for a fresh new beginning pioneered by Africans themselves.
We believe there is a need for a comprehensive programme that lifts Africa out of its state of underdevelopment, poverty and disease. Therefore, we welcome the initiative by African leaders to develop a programme for Africa 's development.
However, we are concerned that NEPAD has been developed without active participation of the masses of Africans and organisations that represent these masses. It is a programme largely driven by heads of state and experts. Even popularly elected, African parliaments have not played an active role in shaping the strategy.
On the other hand, business and governments in the North have been consulted on various occasions. This contradicts Nepad's commitment to popular participation. It is our view that for Nepad to succeed it needs buy-in, not only from business and government of industrialised societies, but also from the African trade unions and broader African civil society, and elected parliaments.
Nepad's programme for democratisation and good governance offers a platform to build truly democratic states in Africa . Cosatu supports the programme to democratise African society, eradicate corruption and improve transparency. We believe democracy should go beyond establishing representative institutions and needs to encompasss mechanisms for popular participation in decision-making. The document is vague, however, on how it intends to achieve this aim.
In our view, Africa requires strong state-led development to launch these societies on a new growth path. We have serious concerns however with the economic package contained in Nepad and whether it will be able to achieve these objectives. We have therefore begun to identify areas which will need to be a central part of the process of engagement including:
appropriate fiscal and monetary policies trade liberalisation labour market policy the role of the state and private sector in the economy and social delivery privatisation and public-private partnerships.
Nepad does not seem, in the areas listed above, to present a holistic package of measures to foster social and economic development. Of further concern is the absence of job creation strategies and total silence on labour market issues. We believe Nepad must open the door to a universal application of core labour standards in Africa .
We welcome and support the debt redemption strategy proposed by Nepad.
Our concerns do not stem from an ideological and oppositional stance but from a concern that the Nepad document will not achieve the objectives it sets itself, unless amended in certain important respects. It also arises from our own experience of economic liberalisation strategies.
We are concerned that the AU may impose a 'one size fits all' set of economic measures to be adopted by African states, as happened with the Maastricht Treaty which imposed a 3% budget deficit for all EU members. As such it is important that the Nepad strategy takes on board concerns of ordinary people, as well as the damaging effects which structural adjustment programmes have had on the continent.
Against this background, we mandate our leadership to interact with the Nepad secretariat to explore possibilities of genuine engagement, as well as to pursue discussions within the alliance. We call for a Conference of African trade unions in the run up to the AU conference to ensure that African workers are able to input meaningfully into this process.
The Trade Union Conference is intended to mobilise support for an appropriate development strategy for Africa and must have an impact on the AU conference, and on Nepad itself. For this reason, we believe that there should be an official engagement between heads of state and the African trade union movement.
Cosatu will rollout a programme to deepen the involvement of members and affiliates in arriving at a final position on Nepad, which will culminate in Cosatu's executive committee in July as well as the Conference of African Trade Unions.
Source
Numsa News