Non-aligned summit goes
INTERNATIONAL
It is important, however, to stress the fact that for movements involved in struggle - such as the African National Congress (ANC), which is fighting the South African regime, or the Kanak Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS) of New Caledonia, a guest in Harare - such assemoff like a damp squib blies, despite their contradictions, represent quite useful diplomatic forums.
Nonetheless, this eighth Non-Aligned Summit was very far from the spirit that prevailed at the foun-
THE EIGHTH SUMMIT of the Non-Aligned Movement took place in the first week of September in Harare, Zimbabwe. Some 100 heads of state and governments or their representatives were present. The evolution of the situation in South Africa was one of the subjects discussed.
A final document received a consensus of the participants around a denunciation of apartheid and of the policies of Pieter Botha's government. In addition, a special statement was adopted on southern
Africa.
however, simply held up some sanctions
The latter document, already being applied against the South African regime as examples.
It did not involve any commitments by the participants in the summit.
"Awaiting the adoption of general and compulsory sanctions,"
this document put forward a catalog of thirteen measures "that have been taken by some organizations"
international community as a whole adopt them." (1)
The summit also took up the problem of the indebtedness of the dominated countries. Moreover it adopted a firm condemnation of
Washington's policy in Nicaragua and in Central America, a move that unquestionably represents a diplomatic success for the Sandinista regime. The US raids on Libya were also denounced as acts of state terrorism and a violation of international laws."
CLAUDE DEVILLIERS
As usual, the press went looking for the sensational at this conference.
For example, Colonel Qadhafi's contribution drew more comment than the substance of the questions taken up.
But once again at this summit, there was a great deal of noise with very little to show for it.
This great assembly of representatives of third world states has become a ritual where formal statements, adopted by consensus, have no political importance for the masses of the countries concerned and little for the daily practical implications problems facing these countries.
It is nonetheless true that for liberation movements or states threatened by imperialism, the forum provided by the non-aligned conferences can serve as a diplomatic weapon in their general arsenal of propaganda and protective devices.
An example of this is the diplomatic battle waged by the Sandinista leadership demanding that Nicaragua be selected as the host country for the
International Viewpoint 27 October 1986
, and recommended that "the next non-aligned summit. In this regard the clear differences between the policy pursued by the Sandinistas against US aggression and the policies of the so-called front-line states (Angola, Botswana, Mozambique, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Tanzania) toward South Africa should be highlighted.
While the front-line states rely essentially on diplomatic measures, expecting the imperialists to put pressure on Pretoria, the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) is consciously combining the diplomatic battle with mass mobilization.
At every turn, the fundamental contradiction of meetings like this summit comes up again. It is the antagonism between states with different or opposing social bases. So this non-aligned summit confirmed once again that these contradictions cannot be transcended, even by seeking agreements on resolutions that represent the lowest common denominator for all the participants.
ding of the movement in Bandung in 1955, at which some newly independent states and a great many nationalist leaderships were represented.
At that time, the crisis of the colonial empires and the rise of anti-imperialist struggles created the conditions for bourgeois governments -such as the Indian, Indonesian or Egyptian - to commit themselves, more or less jointly, to a deliberate policy of putting pressure on the imperialists.
Creating the political and economic space for building their states involved the governments concerned having considerable capacities for initiatives, even against the imperialists.
Thirty years later, the difference from the early years comes not only from the situation engendered by the world economic crisis but also from the evolution of the regimes involved, which has been marked by the degeneration or even the disappearance of bourgeois nationalism.
What at the time of Bandung seemed to be a new challenge helping to aggravate the contradictions of imperialism, is today no more than a damp squib. As a means for putting pressure on the imperialists and negotiating with them, the non-aligned movement has lost a considerable part of its effectiveness and its weapons.
The past 30 years have seen • the growth of social conflicts within these states. The need for confronting demands from the workers and peasants has pushed these regimes into greater moderation toward imperialism, when they have not purely and simply been overthrown and replaced by openly reactionary governmental teams.
The economic crisis has obviously deflated the pretensions of these states. The evolution of the forms of imperialist domination and the indebtedness of the dominated countries have deprived their vehement appeals for reform of the world market of any credibility or effectiveness.
1. 'Le Monde,' September 9, 1986. 5
International Viewpoint 27 October 1986
The demand for a transfer of technologies to the south has come to nothing. In fact, the technological dependence of these countries on the great industrial powers increased to an extent not seen be. fore.
The appeal for a new world economic order launched from the platform of the United Nations in the early 1970s by Algerian president Houari Boumedienne has not led to anything. To the contrary, the scheme for increasing South-South within world trade as a whole has come to nothing.
Under the pressure of some participants interested in increasing their exports to other third world coun tries, the last non-aligned summit decided to form yet another commission to build South-South collaboration.
the 1970s, the raw-materials market was a battlefield for an intense struggle between the producing and consuming countries. Today, raw materials prices are in a disastrous decline. Deep political crisis for OPEC
Since 1981, the oil price has been collapsing, throwing the economies of countries such as Mexico Nigeria into disarray and deflating the economic and political pretensions of a country like Libya.
As a result, against the background of the tangled political situation in the Middle East, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) has been going through a very deep political crisis. OPEC has been unable to hold back the fall of oil prices, or even present a common front of its members against the oil companies.
In all these areas, the imperialists have left hardly any room for maneuver to the economies of the so-called third world countries. world conference, no North-South meetings have been able to blunt the appetites of the multinationals, the big financial groups and trading companies. This is why are seeing a paradoxical state of affairs.
While most governments of the dominated countries lack neither arguments nor reasons for opposing the imperialist economic offensive, are left with scarcely any means for taking real action. They do not even have the means to put up any kind of common front, as is shown by the OPEC crisis and the failure of all groupings set up to defend the rawmaterials producers.
On the other hand, most of these governments are taking a tougher 6 attitude toward demands by the mass-
For example, when the national collapsing, the vian government turned on the workmovement and staged a conthe Bolivian federation of Labor (COB).
the Alan Garcia government's nationalist notions quickly to a search for compromise with the country's foreign creditors and to repression of and peasants. In Argentina and Brazil, under different names, austerity plans with the directives of the International
In this context, from the point of the bourgeois governments ideology of non-alignment that the state and the nation have to unite to put up a solid front against the crisis and foreign appetites. This ideology becomes a real farce when these governments at the same time economic measures designed to force the toiling masses to pay the cost of the economic crisis.
This obfuscating ideology tries to give credence to the false idea that the world economy comes down to a confrontation among nations. So they attempt to conceal the insurmountable contradiction within the dominated countries between the interests of the toiling masses and the interests upheld by the ruling
There is, therefore, no real "nonfor action has come out of it, and what most of the delegations have in in their meetings excessive taste for phrase-mongering.
the leader of Burkino Faso described this situation clearly when
*If the racists went on the rampage against the South African Blacks and sent their bombers to crush the Zimbabwean people.. would not be able to respond in any way except by sending messages of support." (2)
In fact, the way the Non-Aligned Movement functions makes it possible to indulge in all sorts of dubious associations without being compro-
Governments fall, regimes change, and the states remain members of the Non-Aligned Movement. No well-defined internal code of conduct, no structures and no obliexist that could give the Non-Aligned Movement the aspect of a "third bloc."
The non-aligned summit is a mere for discussion where delegation comes to defend a position that most often reflects special interests. Non-alignment is therefore a snare. In fact it was Qadhati who, out of a penchant for provocation, took pleasure in pointing this out from the platform of the Harare summit, saying: "Non-alignment does not exist .... We have to be totally aligned against the United States, Israel and the members of NATO." (3) alignment does not exist speaking because the world is divided into two camps. On one side supposedly are the countries in the imperialist camp, and on the other the behind the Soviet Union.
This refutation of non-alignment is wrong because Qadhafi counterposes a camp grouped around the Soviet Union to one led by the United States, correspond to this campist dichotomy
The real camp opposing exploitation and all forms of oppression is that of the masses of workers and peasants.
If you want to puncture the pretensions of non-alignment as preached by the likes of Mobutu in Zaire or De la Madrid in Mexico, it is the demands of the toiling masses, their democratic aspirations and the struggles for power that you should support, and not the demagogic proclamations of some of these bourgeois regimes.
Still, non-alignment can certainly be a tactical argument that a revolutionary government can use to wage a diplomatic campaign directed at the masses in the imperialist countries. The Nicaraguan government has legitimately followed such an approach in order to expose American propaganda and explain the right of the Nicaraguan people to determine their own destiny.
Contrary to expectations, the question of apartheid and the situation in South Africa was not the main point dealt with at this summit.
The semi-failure of the Commonwealth Eminent Persons Group that went to South Africa this year in a vain attempt to induce the Botha government to negotiate with rep resentatives of the movement the Black masses, as well as the paraly. sis of the Southern Africa Develop-
Coordination (SADCC), have shown the concrete limitations of a policy aimed essentially at getting the imperialists to solve the South African crisis.
The attempt to achieve economic solidarity among the countries bordering South Africa so as to reduce their trade dependence on Pretoria was based on the expectation that special economic aid would be forthcoming for this purpose from the European Economic Community. Not only was
'Le Monde, ' September 4, 1986. 'Le Monde, ' September 6, 1986
no significant advance made toward this goal, but the economic crisis is making these countries even more dependent on South African facilities. (4)
Since this non-aligned summit was held in southern Africa, it was clear that that was going to give a special role to the so-called front-line states. Thus Mozambique, Botswana, Angola, Zambia, Tanzania and Zimbabwe, the host country for the summit, had a platform for denouncing South Africa's military aggression and the continual blackmail to which they are subjected by the Pretoria regime. Not the least of the paradoxes of this summit was to hear the radical-sounding speeches coming from governments that have in bowed to Pretoria's fact already demands.
For example, Zimbabwe wand Mozambique have already reduced the facilities offered to the ANC to operate from their respective territories. And the Zambian regime headed by Kenneth Kaunda has made a speciality of diplomatic intrigues
But above the radicalization, governments more concerned
African organizations have long illusions from exact nature of solidarity with Black masses. governments. them to maintain verbal Pre-
Three of these regimes - Angola, Mozambique and Zimbabwe - claim to adhere to "scientific socialism" and are the products of armed national liberation struggles. The theme fighting apartheid thus has a very important function at home.
However, the result of all this, International Viewpoint 27 October 1986
Fuld the rges clearly ions ting lelefairs to "the ably the United Federal the und resisting colonialism conthe the countries of commercial nosi of the SULUSIO governments fear like the plague that the revolutionary struggle of the South African masses might give youth in their countries ideas. Contagious examples
How, in fact, could anyone fail that the forms tion adopted by the movement of the and exploited in South Africa could also serve as contagious for the struggle agains the African dictatorships and against neo-colonial domination on the continent? That is undoubtedly the reason why in 1985 Abdou Diouf, president of Senegal and also chair of th Organization of African Unity (OAU) at the time, banned an anti-apartheid demonstration that was being organized in Dakar by a coalition of Senegalese opposition parties.
Another topic discussed in Harare was the debt. It was regretted that
South dialo gue was at dead-end" and that the indebtedness dominated countries wa able." But on the deb question the summit finally came around to supporting the proposal of the Peruvian delegate. It called for each country deciding separately what percentage of the service on the debt that it was going to pay in relation to its export income.
This decision simply expressed in concentrated form the inability of the bourgeoisies of the third world, and the Latin-American who are among the most indebted, imperialist pressure for repayment of and above the nationalist verbiage they are so fond of, in Harare the governments of these countries to stand up The proposal made by
Fidel Castro to organize collective refusal to pay the debt was rejected.
In the framework of the summit, the Cuban leader quite appropriately pointed to the extent of this indebtedness, noting precisely that the debt of the dominated countries went from 373,000 million US dollars in 1977 to 950,000 million dollars in 1985: "One day, we decided to estimate how much time a person would need to count up the LatinAmerican debt at the rate of a dollar per second - it came out to 12,000
" Castro said. He concluded: "All years, this shows that the debt cannot be paid."
While unbearable for countries concerned, the it finally man for himself." summit, in the the hopes of means the imperialist to collect
Many points taken up in and "an agreement
But of its • 4. The figures illustrating Zimbabwe's dependence on South Africa speak volumes: Some 85% of the country's foreign trade passes through South African ports. Half of its exports of manufactured goods are to South Africa. A quarter of foreign tourists are from South Africa. Some 60% of industry and 90% of mining are under.Se thadfrican cone so shadow of the South African regime fell over the eighth non-aligned summit. According to 'Le Monde of August 28, 1986, some consumer products offered to the delegates were of South African origin, For its part, the South African Weekly Mail, which has an anti-apartheid orientation, wrote in its September 5, 1986, issue: *Just next to the press bar, at which journalists meet delegates for interviews, and exchange ideas through the night, is mounted a stand of Truworth's clothing safari suits for women. The beer of choice here is Castle lager, which although brewed sight for those who have arrived from South by Zimbabwe's Natbrew, familiar
Africa. And the computer technicians, essential to Zimbabwe's coverage of the fonference, are South African and proud of
6."Le Monde, September 9, 1986. 7