[mgj-discuss] Oxfam changes course on agricultural trade?

[Patrick Bond]

I think the issue remains that Oxfam hasn't transcended its focus on poor countries earning cash crop export income to pay off illegitimate debt (Oxfam still promotes HIPC and PRSPs as far as I know). They think that ag subsidies are crucial (even if the material David sent is coy on this point). I hope I'm wrong and that they have learned a wee bit about economics and advocacy since I last felt compelled to write about them for http://www.zmag.org three years ago...

ZNet commentary

April 17, 2002

Moderates Wilt But Radical South Africans Struggle On

By Patrick Bond

"Breaking with some of its anti-globalization allies, the aid agency Oxfam 
International issued a report yesterday that praised international trade as 
a potentially enormous boon to the world's poor... `The extreme element of 
the anti-globalization movement is wrong,' said Kevin Watkins, a senior 
policy adviser for Oxfam who wrote most of the report. `Trade can deliver 
much more [for poor countries] than aid or debt relief.'"

Those lines appeared in an article by Paul Blustein in last Thursday's 
Washington Post, on the front page of the business section. No mistake 
there, and no subsequent apology. It was a self-conscious division 
engineered by Oxfam's British hq, and not for the first time.

Tellingly, the ploy comes on the eve of what will be excellent 
anti-neoliberal/anti-imperialist protests in Washington, DC this weekend, 
and is one of a series of interesting alignment-dynamics. Some go right, but 
others swing leftward.

We're watching such maneuvers quite closely here in Johannesburg, because 
the UN World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) will be convened four 
months from now in our unsustainably hedonistic suburb of Sandton, and is 
already being vigorously contested.

Thus local politicians and enviro-bureaucrats led by president Thabo Mbeki 
aim to craft a "New Deal" based in part on the "New Partnership for Africa's 
Development." But especially after the UN's "Financing for Development" 
meeting in Monterrey last month, no one seriously expects anything important 
to materialize.

On Friday, for example, even financier George Soros told Johannesburg 
interviewer Ben Cashdan that Mbeki's Africa plan was "very much designed to 
meet the standards of the Washington Consensus. And therefore it's a very 
skewed document which I think could be improved on."

Meanwhile, South Africa's progressive movements are recovering from 
disarray, in the wake of the ruling African National Congress party' success 
in persuading leaders of the Congress of South African Trade Unions to 
U-turn on anti-neoliberal campaigning, and to simultaneously attack 
independent social activists. I'll grapple with an analysis of this problem 
in next month's column.

But back to Oxfam, and then to more serious matters, such as recent 
statements about the WSSD by more genuine allies of poor people, and the 
ongoing case of the highest-profile political prisoners of South African 
neoliberalism: Trevor Ngwane and the Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee.

Criticizing Oxfam's "Rigged Rules and Double Standards," Food First 
co-director Anuradha Mittal put it best: "Oxfam's report contradicts its own 
stated mission that ending poverty requires a global citizen's movement for 
economic and social justice. We are disappointed that Oxfam, one of the NGO 
leaders on food security, has chosen to undermine the demands of social 
movements and think tanks in the South such as Via Campesina, MST, Third 
World Network, Focus on the Global South, and Africa Trade Network which 
have demanded that governments must uphold the rights of all people to food 
sovereignty and the right to food rather than industry-led export-oriented 
production."

Mittal continued by noting the "discredited World Bank and International 
Monetary Fund data." In contrast, "Research at Food First shows that global 
trade in agriculture has not provided new market access for poor farmers, 
but rather has destroyed the ability of farmers to grow food for their 
families and communities. It has resulted in dumping of cheap agricultural 
products in the Third World nations while undermining their domestic 
production."

Meanwhile, Bangkok-based Focus on the Global South avoided Oxfam's 
delusional acceptance of neoliberal pro-trade premises, when last week it 
rejected an invitation for a World Bank "Strategic Policy Workshop: Making 
Doha work for the Poor" to be held near London next month.

Oxfam's former international economist John Clark, who joined the Bank to 
become its main flack-catcher against social movements and NGOs, is a prime 
facilitator of the self-contradictory meeting.

The Bank invited a small "group of leading thinkers and policymakers from 
civil society in an intensive dialogue with a senior team from the World 
Bank" with the proviso that the pow-wow occur "under Chatham House Rules, 
meaning no attributed quotations should be made after the meeting." It's no 
surprise that two from Oxfam made the 20-person guest list. Focus was 
invited too, but their deputy director Nicola Bullard replied in an open 
letter, "We are totally opposed to this kind of private and closed meeting. 
We believe that meetings such as this perpetuate the problems of 
non-transparency, lack of public responsibility and accountability which are 
endemic to the WTO and characteristic of the Doha negotiations."

For some years, Oxfam's insiderist strategy has had the effect, as Mittal 
charges, of "undermining the demands of social movements and think tanks in 
the South." I recall the international reps of Oxfam in Washington 
explicitly breaking ranks with the 50 Years is Enough coalition in 1995, 
when the former appeared at a high-profile press conference to endorse more 
money for James Wolfensohn's World Bank.

Bad politics are accompanied by weak intellect. Most annoyingly, perhaps, 
Watkins remark repudiates anyone to the left of, and including, far-sighted 
bourgeois economists like John Maynard Keynes and Herman Daly.

Keynes' famous 1933 article in the Yale Review called for "goods to be 
homespun whenever it is reasonably and conveniently possible" because of the 
damage done by the "Treasury View" (i.e., neoliberal) free-traders of his 
era: "I sympathize with those who would minimize, rather than with those who 
would maximize, economic entanglement among nations."

Daly's 1996 departure speech from the World Bank, where as environmental 
economist he was repeatedly frustrated, concluded optimistically, "Take it 
as a prediction--ten years from now the buzz words and hot concepts will be 
`renationalization of capital' and the `community rooting of capital for the 
development of national and local economies,' not the current shibboleths of 
export-led growth stimulated by whatever adjustments are necessary to 
increase global competitiveness."

These are, even to my socialist ears, more sensible sentiments than Oxfam's 
utopian attempts to reform globalization through, in part, expanding the 
reach of multinational trading capital.

Oxfam fails to recognise not only the merits of self-reliance, but also that 
enormous amount of socio-environmental damage is done by virtue of the 
transport, energy, packaging, marketing, waste and currency fluctuations 
associated with unnecessary cross-border trade of goods and services in the 
name of an alleged "comparative advantage," which in any case is mainly 
invented or artificial.

Economically, I've seen Southern Africa become even more distorted than 
under colonialism and apartheid, these past two decades, by the 
single-minded orientation to exporting. I've seen class structures skew over 
to parasitical commercial circuitry, and the universal rise to state power 
of "comprador" (i.e., local sell-out) supporters of neoliberalism, as a 
direct result of the 1980s-90s demand of the Washington Consensus that trade 
be liberalized.

In short, exporting more and more commodities into a world economy faced by 
massive, unprecedented gluts, and by dramatic declines in the "terms of 
trade" (import costs in relation to export prices) for Southern exporting 
states, is senseless.

Moreover, from an international-solidarity perspective, core Oxfam trade 
reform strategies are dubious--especially their (and many Northern trade 
unions') so-called "Social Clause" advocacy.

The idea of modifying free-trade agreements or institutions like the WTO 
with riders against child labor, union-busting or environment-trashing is 
virtually never thrashed out in conjunction with the people affected--e.g., 
campaigners for worker rights in Indian trade unions.

In short, Oxfam and the others typically lack the respect required when 
someone from the North advocates sanctions against South countries inhabited 
by oppressed people. Do such sanctions conform to the local liberation 
strategies? Maybe yes, as in Burma and apartheid-era South Africa, but maybe 
not in other cases--but the globo-reformers haven't done that homework.

These concerns apparently make me, in Watkins' formulation, an "extremist." 
I raised them, and the Keynes/Daly riffs, in a note to Watkins last Friday, 
by the way, and was politely brushed off.

Ironically, the local Oxfam folk invited me to give a talk at last week's 
launch of the "Rigged Rules" report here in Jo'burg and, without knowing 
what Oxfam really had in mind in terms of its opportunistic positionality, I 
said sure. Now I regret giving this confused crew of movement-splitters any 
help.

Instead, if one must turn to international NGOs, there are lots more 
effective opponents of global poverty and eco-degradation, like 
membership-based Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace and the Council of 
Canadians.

With the Canadian resort town of Kananaskis hosting the G-8 meeting in June, 
the latter organisation's director, Maude Barlow, has a special 
responsibility to unveil Northern malfeasance. She didn't disappoint, when 
last week the Council leaked the G-8's secret WSSD enviro-strategy document, 
which "clearly outlines how the environment ministers are going to be 
supporting the corporate trade agenda of the WTO and forcing this onto 
countries around the world at the WSSD."

Commented Barlow, "It is pathetic to see that the G-8 environment ministers 
are planning to subordinate the world's environment to corporate 
globalization. The world's environmental crisis is mounting and all they can 
commit to is more of the same globalization that is causing the 
environmental crisis."

Two days earlier, Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth International blasted 
the lack of WSSD progress on minimum standards and mandatory guidelines for 
corporate conduct. FoE's Daniel Mittler threatened,

"Governments are not listening to us when we're being polite and pleasant. 
If we get no response, we will have to return to carrying placards." Added 
Greenpeace's Remi Parmentier, "If we see only cosmetic words at 
Johannesburg, real people will be very upset. There is an increase in public 
anger when international conferences have not delivered on expectations. I 
would be concerned if I were a government representative."

That conclusion seems to have been reached by the WSSD host-city government 
on April 6, after a peaceful protest was held at ANC mayor Amos Masondo's 
house (in the petit-bourgeois suburb of Kensington where I also live), 
organized by the Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee and the regional 
Anti-Privatization Forum. Though Masondo was in Hawaii at a WSSD meeting, 
his bodyguard panicked and fired eight live rounds into the 100-strong 
crowd, wounding two people.

A few activists tossed rocks while others cut off Masondo's water supply. 
Then, in one of the most obvious abuses of the judicial system for political 
ends in recent history, the police arrested 87 people for public disorder, 
including dozens of elderly, pension-dependent Sowetans and a five-year old 
who were only released after spending a night in jail.

As I write on April 15, 50 activists remain imprisoned *without having had a 
bail hearing* because the police have dawdled in finding their addresses, in 
what is widely seen here as unprecedented political interference. (That 
hearing is on April 16, and will be covered at 
http://southafrica.indymedia.org.)

(Ironically, another illustration of court fallibility was provided late 
last week, when a key member of the judiciary's old-guard wing 
controversially acquitted apartheid South Africa's notorious "Dr 
Death"--surgeon, chemist and military strategist Wouter Basson--of dozens of 
counts of murder.)

But the Kensington protest is crucial far beyond the unsatisfying legal 
process, for it unveils classical WSSD contradictions.

South Africa boasts the world's worst global-warming contribution (corrected 
for by population size and income), with amongst the world's dirtiest 
coal-fired electricity plants, generating the world's cheapest energy for 
big business to process minerals in vast S02-emitting smelters like those of 
the company Alusaf, whose profits mainly flow away to the London financial 
headquarters of formerly Jo'burg-domiciled mining houses like Anglo American 
and Gencor/Billiton, thus leaving the currency in tatters, about half as 
valuable as it was two years ago.

At the same time, Pretoria also continues to price simple domestic 
electricity beyond the range of poor people, *as a matter of neoliberal 
policy* (a 1998 White Paper promotes "cost-based pricing" with diminishing 
subsidies). When people fall into arrears on bills, the state responds with 
punitive water/electricity cut-offs, and even evictions.

One charismatic leader of anti-neoliberal revolt is the former Jo'burg City 
Councilor Trevor Ngwane, a man the ANC fired in 1999 because he opposed the 
privatization of our city's water supply to a multinational corporation, 
Suez, notorious for corruption and for denying poor people services.

(In a telling incident six months ago, Suez was itself tossed out of its 
1993 pilot project in the small town of Nkonkobe, for failing to deliver 
even the simplest sanitation improvements. Low-income people were forced to 
use the unhygienic back-garden "bucket system" for their excrement, and when 
they couldn't pay Suez bills, their buckets were confiscated by the 
Paris-based company.)

Ngwane and his comrades battle for dignity, via demands for at least some 
free "lifeline" electricity and water. Such services would erase much 
travail and inequity associated with women's household reproduction burden; 
would improve the sooty township environment; would provide ways of 
surviving in the informal sector via income-generating projects; and would 
curtail outbreaks of diarrhea, cholera, TB and Aids opportunistic 
infections.

But Ngwane's comrades and many other similar groups are losing, mainly 
because South Africa's single-minded export drive has weakened the state's 
capacity to force cross-subsidization on even its own parastatal companies, 
such as electricity supplier Eskom. The increasingly corporatized providers 
of water and electricity view low-income South Africans as pure costs, 
because it's not in their financial interest to calculate and internalize 
any of the benefits.

Dr Chippy Olver, the main Pretoria bureaucrat responsible for WSSD 
logistics, blurted out the neoliberal logic to the media five years ago, "If 
we increase the price of electricity to users like Alusaf [so as to 
cross-subsidize the poor], their products will become uncompetitive and that 
will affect our balance of payments."

And that's the logic of expanded trade under the present (and foreseeable 
future) balance of global political-economic forces, with or without the 
rancid carrots of orthodox aid and conditional debt relief. Failing to 
recognise these connections and to develop a strategy accordingly, as 
exemplified in Oxfam's new gambit, is to fall headfirst into the neoliberal 
trap.

(If conscientious Brit readers of ZNet have any money to spare, won't you 
redirect it away from the wankers at OxfamGB and consider instead, say, War 
on Want or Comic Relief, whose resources are now helping give Ngwane, his 
Sowetan neighbors, and the Anti-Privatization Forum at least a fighting 
chance, against worsening class apartheid.)
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