April 8, 2000
Ruth Nabakwe
PANA Correspondent
PARIS, France (PANA) - South African Bishop Kevin Dowling has called for making the concerns of the poor paramount in on- going efforts to forge a new solidarity for the global community.
He argues that changing their status holds the key to transforming the world for a better place for all.
Dowling was among key speakers at a conference-debate session at UNESCO headquarters Friday evening on the central theme: The Poor Transform the World.
The conference was organised by the International Catholic Centre for UNESCO, the Catholic Committee Against Hunger as well as the Catholic NGO, Friends of Life.
Dowling, who is also a member of the committee spearheading the Jubilee 2000 coalition, highlighted the compelling necessity for debt-cancellation for third world countries.
As a way of drawing the world's attention to the effects of the strangling debt burden, Dowling gave an insight of the South African perspective showing what it meant to be poor under the erstwhile apartheid regime.
He said, with the arrival of Europeans in South Africa in 1652, it was assumed that they had a right to land. Therefore, a Natives Land Act that was passed in 1913 pushed the black majority to 13 percent of less fertile land termed reserves.
"Between 1960 and 1980, some four-and-a-half million black people were moved into the so called reserves, yet in the black African consciousness, land was the basis of the peoples identity, with the people sharing a strong kinship with all that the land provided.
Dowling underscored the critical issue of land in South Africa saying, "when you interfere with land in African consciousness it is a major issue as it touches on the dignity of the people."
"How are we to visit the graves of our ancestors, we have lost our land, blacks cried out during the struggles where justice and land struggles are inextricably linked in South Africa," Dowling noted.
He said with the new democratic government under Thabo Mbeki, a Property Rights Law was incorporated in the constitution where the people's land is now protected under the constitution.
He said the church is assisting government in the major challenge of sustainable use of the land in efforts to eradicate poverty.
Dowling said the minister for Lands in South Africa currently faces an enormous workload of processing a total of 63,000 land claims under the land re-distribution process.
The bishop stated that by February 2000, barely 789 claims had been processed, and with a staggering 300 million US dollars needed to process the claims, the process would take at least 59 years to to be completed.
Dowling said that despite the past setback of the apartheid era, the South African people emerged under a truth and reconciliation commission to reconstruct a new democratic country.
However, according to Dowling, what still remains a major challenge for the country is the urgency to meet the aspirations of the people through economic transformation for the blacks, majority still hounded by poverty.
A sense of anger at what the people see as injustice due to their continued poverty continues to stalk families who wonder whether in their search for truth, they sacrificed justice, the bishop added.
"It's a matter of social justice, it show the pressing need for debt cancellation, a measure that would enable millions of poor people see a marked improvement in their quality of life," Dowling noted.
He stated that the South African government also faces the double task of paying out reparation to thousands of apartheid victims through substantial financial compensation as called for under the country's reparations committee.
Dowling suggested that a kind of "solidarity pact" could be forged to compel corporate businesses to contribute toward a solidarity tax to help finance the reparations due to victims of injustice during the apartheid era.
"These corporate magnates continue to benefit at the expense of the poor who have yet to see their conditions change," he noted.
Meanwhile, participants at the meeting would join hundreds of others in a peaceful march 12 April in Paris to press for debt cancellation for poor countries.
Incidentally, the Paris Club of creditor nations would hold a meeting the same day at the French Finance ministry headquarters where the supporters of the debt cancellation demonstrators intend to make their final stop.