LETTERS

Readers’ letters should be short, sharp and sent to "Letters Page", NEW INTERNATIONALIST, 74A, HIGH STREET, WALLINGFORD, BERKS., U.K. Contributions will normally be shortened unless it is stated that a letter must be used in its entirety or not at all.

from: Shirley Williams, MP.
Dear Sir,
The immensity of the problems of the Third World is such that only resolute action by governments can solve them. However, though governments have a duty to lead opinion, no government can direct resources on the scale necessary without broad-based public support for such a plan. I hope that the New Internationalist, by maintaining its high standards of balanced and accurate coverage of world poverty and injustice, will fulfil a much-needed educational role.
Shirley Williams.

from: Philip Potter, General Secretary of The World Council of Churches.
Dear Sir,
I was glad to hear that The Internationalist is to become a monthly magazine. The need for good up-to-date material on development issues is urgent. The Internationalist has always been able to find the questions that matter and treat them in a serious and yet readable way. I hope very much that the tradition continues in the new magazine. My particular hope is that you will glve substantial coverage to what people are doing in the struggle for development and liberation whether it be groups of peasants or workers in the Third World or political activists in Europe and North America. We need a network of information on where the action is: the signs of hope in a sometimes very black world scene. After all we need to change the world, not just understand it better.
With very best wishes for your work.
Philip Potter.

from: Dr. Manuel Perez-Guerrero, Secretary-General of UNCTAD.
Dear Sir,
I think that The Internationalist has already gone a long way towards fulfilling the need for a publication on development that is both lively and interesting. Its usefulness in generating a wider knowledge and understanding of the issues and problems involved will be enhanced now that it is to be published monthly and I wish it all success.
Manuel Perez-Guerrero.

from: The Rt. Hon. Richard Wood, M.P., Minister for Overseas Development Administration.
Dear Sir,
It is a splendid thing that two of our most prominent fund-raising agencies, Christian Aid and Oxfam,
sponsor a journal that will bring the issues of overseas development to a wide audience of thinking people. I hope it will provide a channel for the exchange of practical information and of ideas on the whole range of ‘development’ topics. I also hope that many people who may think that overseas development is just another call on their charity, will be led by your journal to recognise it as one of the crucial issues of international economic and social planning. It is certainly one that affects us all, whether we live in the richer countries or the poorer ones.
Richard Wood.

from: The Bishop of Stepney, The Rt. Rev. Trevor Huddleston, C.R.
Dear Sir,
I am delighted to know that The Internationalist has now become a monthly magazine. Nothing is more essential than a really well-informed journal of this kind and I would like to add my voice of congratulation and to wish it every success. I very much hope that the magazine will continue to provide articles about the new Africa and the way in which such countries as Tanzania are meeting the challenge of development.
Trevor Huddleston.

from: Peter Ham.
Dear Sir,
The Internationalist has already established itself as a unique agent of discussion and information on the issues confronting the Third World. It is vital that the radical message of the New Internationalist continues to be heard as frequently and as widely as possible, and I am therefore pleased to hear that it is now a monthly magazine.
I hope that it will be enthusiastically supported by all those seeking an end to international exploitation.
Peter Ham.

from: Sir Bernard Braine, MP.,
(Member of the All Party Select Committee on Overseas Aid1970/71).
Dear Sir,
I was very glad to hear that the Internationalist is now a monthly magazine. A journal of this kind is certainly needed and I wish it success. I hope in particular that it will not only glve fresh encouragement to all who are trying to increase the British commitment to the cause of world development but that it will convince the sceptical in a positive way that aid, properly administered, really does bring benefits to people in the developing countries.
Sir Bernard Braine, M.P.

from: Des Wilson.
Dear Sir,
The Internationalist has never been more necessary and it is good news that it will now be a monthly. I hope it will continue to hammer home the difference between day by day lives of the affluent and the poor, and question aid policies that perpetuate rather thaneradicate the colossal economic and social injustice that exists in the world:
Des Wilson.

from: Ian Haig, Executive Secretary of the World Development Movement.
Dear Sir,
I warmly support the establishment of the new monthly journal on the problems of the Third World. For some time the groups involved in action for development in Britain have lacked an effective mouthpiece. I am sure that the New Internationalist will fill this role.
Ian Haig.

from: David Moore, Action for Development — Freedom from Hunger Campaign, FAO Rome.
Dear Sir,
Now that The Internationalist is to be published monthly and will receive a wider readership, I hope that it will continue to reflect Third World opinion, and to play a key role in promoting a critical dialogue about development issues.
I hope that the New Internationalist will in particular provide an opportunity for writers from the Third World and from minority and discriminated groups in industrialised countries to express their ideas and experience to a readership which will be an essentially middle class and privileged one.
I hope you succeed.
David Moore.

from: Henk van Andel, Secretary of the Service and Communications Centre, Development Actiongroups.
Dear Sir,
We congratulate you with the start of The Internationalist as a monthly.
We fully support the importance of this magazine, as to help its readers create a better understanding of the development problems and to contribute to the necessity of a continued solidarity with countries, organizations, movements, groups and people, who work on liberation in all sectors of society.
Henk van Andel.

from: Alvin Arnold, Education Officer, CORSO, New Zealand.
Dear Sir,
Great news! New Zealand awaits new monthly Internationalist. The only complaints from present subscribers are that there were only three issues a year. I hope that the new magazine glves coverage to the newly independent Pacific Islands — the forgotten part of the Third World.
Alvin Arnold.

from: Dick Steckel, New World Coalition, U.S.A. Dear Sir,
New World Coalition is delighted to learn that The Internationalist will become a monthly publication starting February, 1973.
New World Coalition currently offers its self-tax members The Internationalist as part of its education mailings — and always felt most proud to be able to offer its growing constituency this well-written and graphically creative publication! We have great and increasing respect for the timeliness of the articles, their attractive and highly readable format and critical nature.
Dick Stecke.

NEW

INTERNATIONALIST

The New Internationalist is published monthly by P.A.C. from 74A High Street, Wallingford, Berkshire, England. It has the joint backing of Oxfam, Christian Aid, and Third World First and its aim is to inform and involve as many people as possible in the campaign for world development. The magazine is distributed by R.P.S. Ltd., Victoria Hall, Fingal Street, London, SElO ORF. A year’s subscription costs £3.00 post-paid from R.P.S. Ltd. at the above address.

International Distributors and prices:

Australia: Trade Action P.T.Y. Ltd., 1100 High Street, Armadale, Melbourne, Victoria 3143.

New Zealand: Education Office, CORSO, 303 Willis Street, P.O. Box 2500, Wellington.

The Annual subscription rate is £l0 including air mail postage.

Canada: Oxfam Trading Ltd., 183 Avenue Road, Toronto 5, Ontario. United States: New World Coalition, Room 209, 419 Boylston Street, Boston, Mass. 02116.

The annual subscription for the United States and Canada is $9 including air mail postage.

Europe: R.P.S. Ltd., Victoria Hall, Fingal Street, London SElO ORF. Annual subscription rate £4.00 or equivalent.

All other countries: Annual subscription rate £4.00 (sea mail) £7.50 (air mail) from R.P.S. Ltd. at the above address.

The New Internationalist is produced and sold by:
Peter Adamson (editor), Lesley Adamson, Alex Brodie, Ken Carroll (art director), Anne Carr, Alex Duncan, Patrick Goymour, Lindsay Knight, Alice Lindsay, Mary Jo Putney, Dexter Tiranti (sales), Troth Wells-Cole.

 

CONTENTS

Third World News

David Martin interviews Kenneth Kaunda

The New Europe and the Third

World by Roy Jenkins

The World Food Crisis by Keith Abercrombie

Crying in the Wilderness by Asfaw Yemiru

Profile: R.K. Laxnian by Inder Malhotra

Printed by the European Printing Company, London and Bletchley.

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE SECOND FRONT

There are fifteen hundred million people on the planet without enough of the right kind of food to eat, or safe water to drink, or basic medical care. And this situation is getting worse. There are now more malnourished, sick, uneducated and unemployed people in the world than there were ten years ago.

The front line in the war on this poverty is being manned by the people of the poor countries themselves, and already they are financing over 80% of their own development efforts from their own work and their own trade earnings.

But if the war is to be won, a second front must be opened — in the rich world.

It is the rich world which lays down the rules of world trade within which the poor world must earn its living. It is the rich world which regulates the international monetary system within which the poor world must manage its finances. It is the rich world which commands 95% of the world’s technological know-how and 90% of the world’s income.

It is the rich world which can provide the kind of aid and investment which will help the poor world to develop its own resources for its own benefit; and it is the rich world which can and often does provide the kind of aid and investment which degrades and exploits the poor world for the benefit of the already rich.

Changes in the policies of the rich nations are therefore essential if the war on world poverty is ever to be won. But these changes can only be brought about through inter-governmental action at the highest level and on the largest scale. And this in turn demands a new political will and a new climate of public opinion in the developed world. For the ideal of world development will never be realised, as U Thant said, "unless it is rooted in the hearts and minds of millions of citizens everywhere . . . . unless it can win their sustained support".

The campaign to win sustained support for a great new effort to bring justice and help to the world’s poor is already gathering momentum in the developed countries. In Britain the World Development Movement, the Voluntary Committee on Overseas Aid and Development, Third World First, the Haslemere Group, the Standing Conference on the Second Development Decade, the educational wings of the major charities and churches, and many other local and national groups, are campaigning to create a growing body of people who know more and care more and do more about world development.

Similar groups now exist in almost every developed country and the strength of these groups and of the ties between them is increasing almost by the hour.

The New Internationalist arises from and in response to this growing movement. For the last two years it has been going out every term to the 33,000 students in British universities who are giving a percentage of their grants each year to overseas development projects through the Third World First bankers order scheme.

With this issue, the New Internationalist becomes a monthly magazine, backed jointly by Oxfam and Christian Aid, and aimed at a wider audience. It will report on the people, the ideas, and the action in the fight for world development; it will give a platform to the new social and political ideas from Africa, Asia, and Latin America; it will debate and campaign for the great changes which are necessary to bring jus~. tice and help to the world’s poor.

The New Internationalist is only one part of this campaign. But in asking you to subscribe to it, read it, write to it, talk about it, publicise it, we are asking you to join this growing movement for action on the greatest issue of our times..

 

 

 

Third World News is bad news in the first quarter of 1973. Harvests have failed or fallen short in many of the poorest and most populous areas of the world, including India and Bangladesh.

In China and Russia, where harvests are down on target, contracts have already been signed for the purchase of wheat from the United States, Canada and Australia. This sudden demand on the world’s diminishing stockpiles of grain, has forced up the price of wheat on the world market.

The greatest danger is the possibility of another monsoon failure on the Indian sub-continent. Present purchases and negotiations on the world wheat market total 28 million tons from the world’s stockpile of an estimated 47 million tons. If Russia and China make further purchases to make up their total shortfalls, there might be insufficient stocks to meet the possible Indian need — either commercially or on aid terms.

The crisis is a particularly bitter one for India. Early last year Mrs. Gandhi’s government proudly announced the country’s independence in grain and the stopping of imports. But on January 5th this year, Indians were told that the food situation was grave, that two-thirds of the country was hit by drought, and that the government was viewing the situation as a national calamity.

Development in India will suffer.

Harvest shortfalls and the high price of imported grain mean that the Indian government will now have to spend $300 million of precious foreign exchange on importing food for short-term relief at the expense of long-term development projects - a vicious circle which can only be broken by a determined programme of long-term agricultural development by India and its friends in the developed world.

 

BANGLADESH NEAR TO COLLAPSE

United Nations Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim has predicted that conditions in Bangladesh will be even worse in 1973 than they were in 1972. His grim prophecy comes after a year of the most intensive relief feeding programme ever mounted by the UN.

Reports coming back from different areas of Bangladesh tell the same story of a nation not far from collapse. Inflation has run riot in the last six months, trebling the price of most items and putting the cost of essential purchases like soap, medicines, rice, and clothes beyond the means of the poorest people. Saris which cost 28 rupees a year ago are now selling at 80 rupees or more.

No rain has fallen for the past year in the chief rice-growing areas of the North-West and along the long border with India. This means that a three million ton grain shortage will have to be made up by imports at a time when world prices are sky-high.

Lack of food and medicine is sapping the new nation’s health and resilience. Two million Bangladeshi children are already chronically malnourished and a nation of 80 million people is being served by only 7,200 doctors — one doctor for every 11,000 needy people as compared with one for every 640 in Europe.

Violence is flaring in the worst hit areas: over 160 officials of the governing Awami League Party have been murdered in the last year. In this tense climate, the still vulnerable position of the Biharis is again giving cause for concern.

To add to Prime Minister Mujibur Rehnian’s long list of woes, the European Community is due to meet soon to discuss a possible revision of quotas of jute allowed into the EEC. Bangladesh earns 95% of its foreign exchange from exporting jute and any downward revision of quotas decided upon in the elegant salons of Brussels could make life unlivable for thousands in the fields and factories of Bangladesh.

Underlying all these symptoms of collapse is the breakdown of organization and infrastructure over much of the new nation. Literacy programmes, family planning campaigns, medical services. and many of the long-standing agricultural co-operatives are grinding to a halt.

Fragmented left-wing groups are gaining some support in the face of the threatened breakdown, but at the moment there is no sign of an organized opposition capable of picking up the pieces of Bangladesh.

Harris Amit, a Ceylonese who has worked in agricultural development for nineteen years and who is now running the £6 million ecumenical programme in Bangladesh, is known to believe that the present relief feeding programme is reducing Bangladesh to a nation

of beggars and producing a negative long-term effect. Arnit and many other relief workers on the spot are now advocatine that feeding programmes should be stopped, even at the cost of lives, in order to concentrate on helping to build

irrigation schemes and agricultural programmes which, they say, will bring far more benefit ‘to far more people in the longer-term.

Meanwhile some Bangladeshis are crossing into India in search of food, and although it is reported that the Indian government has ‘D’-Noticed all mention of this potentially inflammable situation, a large community of Bangladeshis is already living in appalling conditions ten miles inside India.

 

DROUGHT HITS MAHARASHTRA

India has problems ot its own Two thirds of the sub-continent is hit by drought and in the State of Maharashtra, with 40 million people, the monsoon has failed for the third year running. No rain can be expected, or hoped for, until June and in some areas people are queuing for eight hours to draw water from a single pump. 25 million people are reported destitute in Maharashtra alone and the crisis is already more acute in certain areas than the Bihar famine of 1966/67. Bombay and Poona, already surrounded by some of the worst slums and shanty towns in the world, are expectine an influx of between one and two million each, and all roads into the two cities are now lined with desperate people straggling in with the hope of finding food and water.

In India too, the situation has exposed national weaknesses which will almost certainly mean a shakeup of government priorities as soon as the immediate crisis is over. Indian newspapers are reporting

that in the stricken state of Maharashtra. more money has been spent on emergency relief in the last two years than has been spent on irrigation in the last twenty years.

UN Agencies, government bodies and charities are now involved in the agonising debate on whether to scale down relief programmes in favour of longer-term agricultural development projects. The only note of optimism is that the present crisis on the subcontinent will force governments and aid-giving countries to give more priority to irrigation schemes, land reform, rural credit systems, farming co-operatives, and agricultural training, without which the rural areas, where 80% of the people of the developing world still live, will always be vulnerable to the acute mass-misery of drought and famine.

 

VIETNAM FACING UNIQUE DEVELOPMENT PROBLEMS

No nation faces development problems quite like those of Vietnam. The agricultural basis of the country’s way of life has been massi velv disrupted. and the scars will remain long after the last American soldier has withdrawn from what is left of Vietnamese soil.

The indiscriminate use of toxic defohants has rendered large areas uninhabitable. In wide tracts of hitherto teeming mangrove swamp no wild life can exist. Stilled lifeless wastes bear testimony to man’s misuse of his technology.

1.200,000 acres of land are totally devastated and 741 .000 acres of crops have been sprayed — including vast acreages of the food-scarce Central Highlands where 100,000 Montagnards, the long-established farmers of that area, have already died. 30 years supply of timber has been destroyed. In one twenty-day period the 984th Land-Clearing Company scraped 6,037 acres of woodland clean of life.

One indicator of the overall effect is that South Vietnam now has to import 90% of its rice requirement. Ten years ago it grew enough rice to meet all its own needs and export half a million tons a year.

This ‘war on the countryside’ has taken place in a predominantly agricultural nation and resulted in fundamental disruption for millions of people who have had to leave the land or starve.

Thousands of rural families who lived a self-reliant and dignified way of life in the agricultural areas have been forced into overcrowded cities. They live in makeshift homes, under scavenged scraps of tarpaulin, or squat in squalor in the streets of Saigon, dependent on charity or on the spill-over from the wealth of the American army. Saigon is now the most overcrowded city in the world, comparable to Calcutta in its legions of homeless and degraded people.

Peace will not automatically reverse this migration from rural to urban areas in South Vietnam. Many of the 7,822,000 ‘displaced persons will not be able to return to their villages. Movement is highly restricted. Millions who might wish to return are deterred by the insecurity, the unexploded bombs, and by the denuded and hardened soil which ~n many places is incapable of being successfully cultivated for many years to come.

‘WAR ECONOMY’
IN CHILE— ALLENDE FACING BIG TEST

President Allende of Chile, the only Marxist to come to power through the ballot-box, has announced ‘war economy’ measures because of the widespread food shortages. Official rationing has not yet been introduced but distribution of food is now being controlled by the army.

Allende’s opponents are claiming that the President’s controversial agrarian reforms have caused the food shortage. But the harvest shortfall in Chile itself has in fact been slight and the food shortage is more a result of a rising standard of living, increased demand for food, and the general rise of food prices on the world market.

Chile is unable to import large quantities of food at present world prices because of a serious shortage of foreign exchange. Chile is 75% dependent for its foreign earnings on its exports of copper, and the world price of copper has fallen from around £72 per ton in 1971 to approximately £52 per ton in 1973.

Difficulties in exporting Zambian copper, following the closing of the border with Rhodesia, may boost world prices temporarily, but Chile’s own copper exports are suffering from the ‘blockade’ of Chilean copper-carrying ships in European and American ports. The ‘blockade’ is a result of legal proceedings brought against Chile by the Kennecott company which is protesting at the nationalisation of its copper mines without compensation by the Allende government. The United States is backing up the US owned Kennecott company by ensuring that the financial help available to Chile from an international organization like the World Bank is seriously reduced.

 

ELEVEN YEAR OLD HEADMASTER
STARTS NEW SCHOOL IN DACCA

Shining through the bad news come two success stories from Bangladesh.

The first is the story of Marntaz Uddin, a twenty-five year old exMukti Bahini fighter in the Bangladesh war of independence. Hit in the leg by rifle-fire, Marntaz was unable to get treatment in time and the leg had to be amputated. Soon afterwards, Marntaz started to make himself an artificial leg from bamboo canes.

Some months later, Marntaz heard that a new orthopaedic hospital had been opened in Dacca, run by an English specialist, Dr. Bill Downes. Comfortable on his bamboo leg, Marntaz decided to visit the hospital to see if his experience might be of some use in treating the hundreds of people who had lost limbs in the War.

Dr. Downes commented:
"Marntaz ‘s leg is as sophisticated as any artificial limb ever made in the West." Marntaz himself says that the bamboo leg, with its articulated knee and ankle joints, is more useful and comfortable than the normal artificial limbs made of metal.

Marntaz was recruited on the spot and is now teaching his fellow-countrymen how to make limbs for themselves.

Also from Dacca comes the story of Mohammad Munir, surely the youngest headmaster in the world. Mohammad, or ‘Muni’ as he is better known, is eleven years old and runs a school for poor children in the Bangladesh capital.

Coming from a middle class home, Muni is one of the 18% of the Bangladesh population who can read and write. About three months ago he decided, without any prompting, that the kids in the slums of Dacca were getting a raw deal — they were poor therefore they could not go to school. Therefore they remained illiterate, so they could not get good jobs. So they remained poor.

Muni decided to do something about this situation. He talked to some of the poor children, and, realizing how much they wanted education, he opened a school in a large and empty house in Dacca.

After Muni’s own schoolday is finished, and after his pupils have finished their own day’s work, shoe-shining and begging, Muni and some of his friends go to the house and teach children how to read, write, and do simple arithmetic. He immediately had 70 pupils, all eager to learn.

Allan Cheyne, a New Zealander in Dacca who had planned a similar venture, decided to visit Muni’s school first. "I was suspicious at first" he admits, "but these children from the slums are really learning. They take their lessons very seriously and the educational standard is very good. Muni certainly beat me to it."

Muni has addressed a meeting of government officials and United Nations personnel on his plans for the school, and has been given some money to buy basic equipment. The Bangladesh government has officially recognised the school, and already there is a waitsng list

 

THIRD WORLD AWAITS
CRUCIAL E.E.C. DECISIONS

The enlarged nine-nation European Community is in the process of making several decisions of major importance to world development.

In May, a "high-level working party", composed of top civil-servants from all nine nations, will report to the European Council of Ministers and make its recommendations on future EEC policy towards the developing world. As the world’s largest aiding and trading bloc, the development policy of the European Community is vital to the progress of world development and many Third World nations are anxiously awaiting the conclusions of the working party.

By July 1st, the Council of Ministers must also decide on a common European negotiating position at the next round of G.A.T.T. talks which begin in Paris later this year. The General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (G.A.T.T.) is the most important decision taking body in the regulation of world trade and tariff barriers. To the developing world, desperately trying to increase its exports in order to create more jobs and more revenue to finance development projects, the G.A.T.T. talks are vital, and the joint policy of nine major European nations is bound to be an important influence on the outcome of the proceedings.

The Council of Ministers must also decide soon on the Community’s position in relation to the G.AJ.T. Long Term Agreement on Cotton Textiles, which is due to be re-negotiated this summer. Textile production employs more people in the developing world than any other single manufacturing industry and the rules restricting the import of low-cost textiles (i.e. textiles from poor countries) into the vast European market can make very significant differences to the unemployment and revenue prospects of the developing world.

Later this year. preparations will also begin in Brussels for the re-negotiation of the European Community’s sugar imports and the cane-sugar producing developing countries are actively lobbying for their interests to be taken into account. On current trends, European sugar-beet farmers, mainly in Britain and France, will be producing 7.5 million tons of sugar a year by 1974 — out of a total European sugar requirement of 9 million tons a year. The big question is whether the 1.5 million ton shortfall will be made up by expanded sugar-beet production in Europe, or whether it will be met by allowing Commonwealth cane-sugar producers to continue exporting sugar to Europe when the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement expires in 1974.

At the time of negotiating entry into the EEC,. the British government failed to get "bankable assurances" that the fourteen developing countries who are now members of the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement will be allowed to continue their sugar exports to Europe after 1974. At the time, the original six members of the Community said that they would re-negotiate Europe’s sugar position in 1974, at the same time as the re-negotiation of the Yaounde Convention. But they did promise that they would have the interests of the Commonwealth cane-sugar producing countries "at heart". The issue now is — how seriously does Europe take this commitment? The French and British sugar-beet farmers, who want to expand their own production to meet Europe’s needs, constitute a powerful political lobby. If the European Community yields to this pressure, it will be little short of disastrous for many of the poor nations who are heavily dependent on exporting cane-sugar for employment and for the revenue they need to help them develop and diversify. Many of the cane-sugar countries are already suffering chronic poverty and unemployment: only one school-leaver in five in Mauritius, an island 90% dependent on sugar, has any chance of finding a job.

The supporters of the enlarged EEC have all along argued that a united Europe would be in a better position to do more for world development in terms of aid and trade. The anti-marketeers have countered that the EEC is an inward-looking rich man’s club concerned only with its own increasing prosperity and careless of its responsibilities towards the world’s poor. The next few months will indicate who is right.

 

EUROPEAN GROUPS OPEN NEW DEVELOPMENT CAMPAIGNS

The Brttish World Development Movement has opened its "EUROPE ‘73" campaign to mobilise public opinion around the big issues in the relationship between the Common Market and the Third World. WDM’s aim in this year-long campaign is to help prevent

the EEC from becoming totally inward looking and to press for a greater European commitment to the problems of the Third World.

The campaign will be organised through the WDM’s 1 30 action groups in Britain, and plans include direct parliamentary lobbying, write-ins to M.P.s and local and national press, consumer action on the Commonwealth sugar issue (see previous story), plus a schools essay competition, and a wide range of local events to publicise the issues at stake. The whole campaign will culminate towards the end of this year in a nation-wide sign-in calling on the EEC to give more official aid and more trading opportunities to the Third World. It is hoped that the sign-in will collect over a million signatures.

On the sugar issue, the WDM wants the European Community to join the International Sugar Agreement as an importing member, a move which would increase the chances of continuing imports of cane-sugar from developing countries. The campaign also calls for stabilising and possibly reducing Europe’s own production of beet-sugar, pointing out that Europe can afford to re-adjust this aspect of its own economy, create new jobs and re-train those employed in beet-sugar production. The poor countries, on the other hand, cannot afford to provide alternative employment, compensation, and re-training for the thousands now employed on their sugar plantations. The WDM applies a similar argument to the question of textiles, and calls for a phasing out of Europe’s tariffs and quotas which restrict imports of low-cost textiles from developing countries. (see advertisement on page 24).

ANGOLAN COFFEE CAMPAIGN

A second campaign opening this month is the North London Haslemere Group’s drive to stop all imports into Britain of coffee from the Portuguese colony of Angola. Haslemere’s objection to Angolan coffee is two-fold. First, coffee exports provide over 30% of Portugal’s export earnings from its Angolan colony and this trade is therefore an important prop to the repressive Portuguese regime and is directly helping to finance the war which Portugal has been fighting for the last 12 years to maintain its grip in Angola. Secondly, the Angolan coffee plantations, owned by rich Portuguese and Europeans, are worked by African labour, often forced labour, under appalling conditions. Workers are kept in compounds, surrounded by barbed wire, overlooked by machine-gun turrets, and patrolled by guard-dogs.

The Haslemere campaign is inspired by the success of the Dutch Angola Committee who succeeded in stopping all Angolan coffee imports into Holland by publicising the conditions in Portuguese Africa. Sheer weight of public opinion in Holland forced the Dutch coffee roasters to stop importing from Angola, after the Committee had run a nation-wide campaign,

spearheaded by posters showing a beheaded Angolan coffee-worker and captioned "Coffee for Holland means blood for Angola".

Nestles, the makers of Nescafe, are now importing about 8% of their coffee from Angola and the Haslemere Group has begun its campaign by writing to Nestles’ managing director, ML Manahan, spelling out the situation and asking him to stop using Angolan coffee. The signatories of the letter include Barbara Castle, Barbara Ward, Bishop Trevor Huddleston, and Bishop Fansbury, General Secretary of the British Council of Churches.

If Nestles reject or ignore the letter, a similar approach will be· made to the major retailers, Sainsbury’s, Tesco, and Woolworths, asking them not to sell Nescafe.

Jonathan Power, who is leading the campaign, is now preparing Haslemere tactics in the event of both letters proving fruitless. The next step will be to buy shares in the major companies which sell Nescafe (Nestles itself being based in Switzerland and its shares being too expensive), so that Haslemere members can attend the Annual General Meetings of the companies concerned and make out their case before the shareholders.

Share-buying is a familiar technique to the Haslemere Group. Last year they used similar tactics with Barclays Bank and Rio Tinto Zinc in order to ask questions at shareholders’ meetings about the involvement of these two companies in South Africa and Namibia. This campaign is still continuing, even though Haslemere members were thrown out of a Barclays Bank Annual General Meeting for persistently, asking questions to the chair about apartheid. They have recently been offered practical support by a member of the World Development Movement, Francis Prideaux, who has inherited shares in both Barclays and Rio Tinto Zinc and who has offered free shares to any Haslemere, WDM or Third World First member who wants to join the campaign and is prepared to attend and protest at company Annual General Meetings.

 

GULF BOYCOTT THREATENED

Conditions in Portuguese Angola are also the subject of a third campaign being launched this month. But this time it is Gulf oil which is coming under fire from the newly-formed Gulf Committee.

In a background paper to the campaign, the Committee point out that Gulf Oil paid $25 million to Portugal in 1972 for Angolan oil — half the yearly cost of Portugal’s colonial war. The point is reinforced with photographs of Africans napalmed by the Portuguese and descriptions of the repressive conditions in Angola.

The Gulf Committee are also writing to the Chairman of Gulf Oil, demanding that the company end its moral and financial support for the Portuguese regime and threatening to organise a boycott of Gulf Oil stations in Britain..

 

As the tension mounts in southern Africa, Zambian Prime Minister KENNETH KAUNDA talks to the NEW INTERNATIONALIST about the Rhodesian blockade; the racial crisis on the continent; and the key issues facing Zambia itself. Interview by DAVID MARTIN

DAVID MARTIN:- Rhodesia’s Mr. Smith has imposed an economic blockade on Zambia. What effects will this have on your country’s economy?

KAUNDA:- Well, let me begin the other way around and tell you that in my opinion if Mr. Smith had known ~vhat it was going to mean to the economy he would not have done it. For us our policy has been very clear indeed; it has been to diversify our sources of conveying imports and exports from the rebels and racialist south to independent Africa up north. Now this blockade we are treating as a golden opportunity. We have been placed in a position where we are showing that we are stronger than we had ever imagined. So while there will be some growing pains not much damage will be done to our economy, provided of course we are all able to work hard.

DAVID MARTIN:- Mr. Smith decided to exempt copper from the blockade. You responded by refusing to accept this concession. Was this an inevitable political decision or were you aware of the fact that alternatives did exist?

KAUNDA:- To begin with we knew that Mr. Smith was playing politics as well as an economic game. Politics in the sense that he wanted to show the British Goveritment that he was not going to tamper with their economy because it would have brought more wrath from the British Government. And secondly he was playing an economic game insofar as his own followers in Rhodesia are concerned: because

they know as well as we do that they cannot run Rhodesia railways without our copper; and to ask us to subsidise his railway and at the same time refuse to carry our imports is asking too much of any human being. We thought this over and decided we were not going to play hia game and inevitably we played it our own way. I think it is an economic disaster for Rhodesia.

DAVID MARTIN:- It is fairly clear that Rhodesia is going to suffer more in the long term than Zambia. But it does cut your southern trade routes. Of about 1,000,000 tons of imports about 700,000 tons came across your southern border from Rhodesia. Do you think that viable alternative trade routes exist at this time and if so what are they?

KAUNDA:- I have no doubt at all that we will find suitable alternatives and already we have been in contact with a number of sister African countries — Malawi, Tanzania, Kenya and Zaire. They have all responded favourably and now it is a question of working out the details. Ministers will be visiting all of these countries to work out the details. So all in all I am very satisfied that, while we may have birth pangs, we are in a very strong position. Alternative routes will be found and I would like to concentrate on those routes which will have some permanence rather than those which will have to be on an emergency basis.

DAVID MARTIN:- The Tanzania Zambia

railway should reach Kapiri Mposhi by March 1974. Given this fact and your decision to boycott Rhodesia as far as the copper exports are concerned am I correct in assuming at this point that you have decided once and for all to break Zambia’s communications with the south.

KAUNDA:- They would have to work very hard to get us back in that direction. I don’t know at the moment what they can do to take us back there. As you know trade with South Africa increased after UDI. We had to find alternative sources and as loyal members of the United Nations we had to oblige in spite of the difficulties. But this meant of course that we had to increase trade with South Africa as we shifted from Rhodesia. This means a problem now for us because we will have to work very hard to find alternative sources to South Africa, but given hard work and the co-operation of our friends we should be able to find these alternative sources. Let me add that I prefer to find out what our friends can produce, even within their own countries, before we start getting alternative sources.

DAVID MARTIN:- I really meant rather than breaking trade, which may take longer, breaking totally and finally with the routes through Southern Africa. If necessary South African goods could be brought through Dar es Salaam, Lobito and Nacala.

KAUNDA:- I think in terms of South African trade that will come by air, or possibly through Lobito Bay in Angola or Nacala in Mozambique if the Portuguese

continue to oblige. But in terms of Rhodesia railways I hope this is the last time we are using them.

DAVID MARTIN:- The Tanzanians would let you bring South African goods through Dar es Salaam if you needed to but would you not ask them to do this?

KAUNDA:- I would rather not. I would not like to embarrass them. I like to believe that the present trade we have with South Africa is of a temporary nature. I would like to find other alternative sources. The Southern African situation is becoming more explosive every day and it would be stupid of us to rely on trade sources from these countries.

DAVID MARTIN:- Mr. Smith said he wanted an assurance from you that you would no longer support the Zimbabwe liberation movements. What is your reply to this?

KAUNDA:- We in Zambia have always said that if Mr. Smith wants our cooperation let him go to the people of Rhodesia as a whole on the basis of one man one vote and if he is elected on that basis we are quite happy to welcome him here in Zambia because to us his colour is immaterial. It is the system which he is using there which is wrong and we can never find ourselves co-operating with that type of system. We can’t. It is a matter of deep-rooted principle.

I have put it in another way. I have said look, if we found a small black minority oppressing a white majority anywhere in the world we would support the white majority against the black minority. Therefore for Mr. Smith to ask me to get rid of the representatives of freedom fighters who have offices in Lusaka . . . . where else are they going to find an opportunity to speak and inform the rest of the world about the oppression which takes place in Rhodesia? This is all we are doing and if he thinks he can intimidate us to stop supporting what is justifiable spiritually, morally, politically, economically, he is barking up the wrong tree. We cannot stop.

DAVID MARTIN:- Some people believe that all Mr. Smith has achieved is to push you to a decision you could have made some time ago or would have made in the very near future. Do you think this is true?

KAUNDA:- I would say that he has given us a golden opportunity, a real golden opportunity, because it is embarrassing to us to have to deal with Mr. Smith. There is no doubt about that. We had to use his coke. We have unfortunately the Kariba power, a joint project which we inherited from the Federal days. It is there, a fact, and there is nothing we can do about it. But in all areas where we can possibly afford to do so we don’t want to have anything to do with the Smith regime at all. They are in rebellion against the British Crown. They are in rebellion against humanity and all that is sensible and principled. We don’t like dealing with them at all and it is our geographical position which has made us deal with

uictu in inc past. But they have taken a decision for us so we are fortunate. It has come rather earlier than we would have done it, but it is most welcome.

DAVID MARTIN:- Looking around the shops here in Lusaka I have noticed an amazing amount of luxury goods — the type of things you would not find in Tanzania. Do you think one effect of this blockade will be that Zambia will be much tougher in future about imports?

KAUNDA:- I have always believed we have had here what I like to call a false start. We have based our needs as a nation on the needs of a small expatriate population. Admittedly they were in control here. The whole thing had been geared in such a way that when we took over we acquired these foreign tastes and values. We have been constantly hammering on this point but it has not been easy to change the tastes of our people. There is a danger here that this may become a permanent feature of our lives. That would not be very in keeping with humanism and humanism deals with man and it is man without distinction. And therefore we are cheating ourselves if we think by literally aping expatriate habits and tastes that we are being civilised. It is a very stupid way of looking at things and I am afraid that what you have found in our shops here is the weight that a small well-organized group can have on a people. To me it begins to smell of disaster.

DAVID MARTIN:- Arising out of the Rhodesian blockade, do you believe that there is anything that the British Government could or should do?

KAUNDA:- I have always said that the right thing for the British Government to do when UDI was declared was to move in troops and this would have avoided bloodshed. I am afraid I have been misunderstood people thought I was bloodthirsty and I wanted to see bloodshed in Rhodesia. In fact I have said that it’s better if a legitimate government takes over control and uses a small clique of rebels and establishes its authority and develops Rhodesia towards a non racial society, rather than allowing a situation to develop in which the Rhodesian Africans will become so annoyed that they will begin to behave in such a way that Mau Mau will look like a picnic. I am afraid we may be witnessing now the beginning of a racial confrontation in Southern Africa, not only in Rhodesia.

If the British Government had taken steps to contain this rebellion we might have contained this small group of people — diehards. But what I think we are now witnessing here is the beginning of a racial holocaust. I don’t know what the British Government can do now but I hope what I have said so many times: if they don’t respond to the call of their responsibilities they will take a big share of the blame because in my opinion we are really heading for disaster in Southern Africa.

If you ask me that question in terms of what they can do as far as Zambia is concerned I will tell you that whatever economic difficulties we suffer here can

be placed squarely on the shoulders of the British Government and they have a duty to respond. When we are ready I hope we will be submitting details of our costs and the British Government should bear this cost to the Zambian economy.

DAVID MARTIN:- Sweden’s Prime Minister, Mr. Palme, looked across the Zambezi last year and observed that it was a barrier of human decency. At the same time it has been felt that because Zambia needed southern routes this inhibited liberation movements, e.g. FRELIMO and the possibility of blowing up the Biera railway line. At the same time there is a fear that the Zambezi is the frontline of a possible racial war. Do you think that this blockade and your disengagement has brought this potential confrontation even nearer?

KAUNDA:- There is no doubt at all that the situation is explosive. It has been building up over a period and whether or not it will explode depends entirely upon the whims of the settlers of Angola, Mozambique, Rhodesia, Namibia and South Africa. We are not aggressive. We don’t want to destroy anything. We have not wanted to build up armies here which would invade these countries. Our small security forces are to defend Zambia. We do not intend to change our policy. But if anybody should be mad enough to come and attack us here then I can assure you that very many people are ready to sacrifice their lives in the defence of what is every man’s desire — freedom, peace and justice. Whether or not the situation explodes therefore depends on what the settlers are going to do. We will not take aggressive action. It is they who are taking aggressive action against us.

DAVID MARTIN:- One of the things I would like you to outline is the basis of Zambia’s foreign policy — the guidelines by which you operate.

KAUNDA:- It is based on the same principles on which we base our domestic policies. Our foreign policy is based on the appreciation that God’s man is important without distinction as to sex, status, creed, religion, colour or race. Man is important. Kaunda must accept as a person that things which he desires for himself are also desired by other people for themselves.

They want love for the human person — I want to be loved and therefore I am sure that other people want to be loved — they want peace, freedom and justice.

I am sure other people want the same things and therefore we like to say that as far as is humanly possible we should do to other nations and people what we would like them to do unto us. You can see where all of this is coming from. It is not original teaching. It is something from the Bible, from Jesus Christ’s teaching. This is just simple but difficult. But you see why when anything happens our first question is not who has done it, but is this right, is it fair, is it just. If the answer is no. no matter who has done it we will condemn him and the action he has taken. Ever since we became independent, and even before, we condemned

WE DON’T WANT TO HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH THE SMITH REGIME AT ALL. THEY ARE IN REBELLION AGAINST THE BRITISH CROWN. THEY ARE IN REBELLION AGAINST HUMANITY AND ALL THAT IS SENSIBLE AND PRINCIPLED.

American presence in South East Asia. We have condemned all these steps taken by the Americans against innocent people. I think at one time the Americans believed we were almost pathologically against them until the Russians invaded Czechoslovakia. We were one of the few small nations which said, and has insisted until now, that that was the invasion of an independent country. The Russians had no right to be there and we have said this without fear or favour. This is the basis of our foreign policy: if we cannot have permanent friends — well and good. But we don’t want to have permanent enemies. What we want is to help to build bridges between nations, continents and people. We believe this is the task of any nation, big or small.

DAVID MARTIN:- I think that it is fair to say that there is a tendency in Africa to project the more outspoken aspects of foreign policy towards countries outside the continent. For instance during the recent racial decision to expel Asians from Uganda only you and President Nyerere spoke out against it. Many many people are being murdered in Uganda today. In Burundi at least 50,000 people were slaughtered last year and again nobody spoke out. Don’t you feel that for its own credibility Africa must begin to speak out and act more firmly on things happening within its own area?

KAUNDA:- We have a few problems over issues like this. The first is the lack of authoratative sources of information. In the main, people who give us information on matters of this kind are people whose motives we suspect and therefore when we don’t have our own representatives in say Burundi or Uganda we have little information of our own. In the case of Burundi we had no information at all. All we knew was that there was an uprising. In Uganda we condemned the racial approach because we could see clearly what was happening. But when we hear that the Chief Justice in Uganda has been dragged from his offices we are told that some rebel soldiers took him away. Of course nobody can believe that, but there is confusion as to what is going on. It makes it very difficult to find a solid base on which to make judgements. But where we have something clear cut we will not hesitate to speak our minds.

 

DAVID MARTIN:- Your document "Humanism in Zambia" is accepted as the political guideline in Zambia in much the same way as the "Arusha Declaration" in Tanzania. Could you explain the reasons why you wrote the document, including its timing and the main points?

KAUNDA:- First of all the timing. We had to introduce it in 1 967 for various reasons. I think the most important one is that if we had produced that sort of humanism before Independence, Zambian Independence might not have seen daylight. Even today people still confuse humanism with communism. What would have happened if we had introduced this before Independence? So the timing of this in 1967, as with many other things, was an important factor. We introduced it after we had had

time to operate and people knew who we were. Don’t forget also that when we became independent such important institutions as the army, police, air force, the church, business and industry, farming, were all controlled by expatriates.

The central point of the philosophy is man in all we do. We do not want to put anything above man. We believe that when you think in terms of ideology without man there is no ideology. There is no wealth without man. So man is the key factor in all that we do. In all of God’s creation we believe man is central. From there all sorts of policies are worked out.

If it is economic policies, then we don’t want exploitation of man by man. We are moving towards a situation where all forms of exploitation of man by man are removed. It is a long long journey but we have begun. Foreign policies, social policies and others are dictated from that point. We are beginning with free education, free health services. It does not mean yet that everyone has the chance to go to school but if we had delayed any more in making that decision we would have landed ourselves in more trouble. This question of class would have emerged and would have stuck with us. All of our policies come from man’s importance in society.

DAVID MARTlN:- Why humanism as opposed to say socialism?

KAUNDA:- Well this is partly to do with some of the things which have taken place in history. We believe that humanism is more embracing than socialism. Socialism in my opinion is mainly a way of organizing your economy and society as a whole. You are mainly wanting to put the means of distribution and production in the hands of the people. But it does not convey the same meaning as humanism. Sometimes we see socialist countries which put ideology above man. This we believe is wrong and the concept must be brought out — this concept of the importance of man. The only way we could do it was by naming our philosophy as humanism. Socialism seems to be more limited in understanding and appreciating the importance of man.

DAVID MARTIN:- The most recent of the continuing measures from 1967 is a leadership ethic debarring leaders from doing certain things. Why has it become necessary at this time. Is it because the leaders are indulging themselves?

KAUNDA:- We should have done this in 1970. We set up a committee on the question of leadership code. But because of divisions in the party, Government and National Assembly as well as the nation as a whole, I had to postpone this. Now I believe the time is right because the leadership in the party is more united after certain elements in the party left. Now it is a much happier, stronger, more united party. All the qualities one would like to see in leadership are now coming out again as they were at Independence. There is no doubt at all that one has felt leaders indulging themselves increasingly. It’s not simply their fault. These people had given up everything they had in life before Independence.

IF ANYBODY SHOULD BE MAD ENOUGH TO COME AND ATTACK US HERE THEN I CAN ASSURE YOU THAT VERY MANY PEOPLE ARE READY TO SACRIFICE THEIR LIVES IN THE DEFENCE OF WHAT IS EVERY MAN’S DESIRE- FREEDOM PEACE AND JUSTICE.

While others were working for the colonial Government etc. these people were busy fighting for Independence. They got in trouble because not only were they required to look after their families and their extended families but after their friends. This meant their own security was a worry to them.

DAVID MARTIN:- I believe the ethic will prevent leaders owning businesses, farms above 25 acres and houses to rent. When will it come into effect?

KAUNDA:- Within five years nobody will be allowed to rent houses at all in the country. I am working on a paper which is going to embrace the whole question and the code will come into effect long before five years are up.

DAVID MARTIN:- Will a qualification for the Parliamentary election later this year be that you have complied with the code already?

KAUNDA:- Yes, it will be a very important factor in determining who will become an MP.

DAVID MARTIN:- Are you in Zambia suffering a problem felt elsewhere on the continent of an elite group from the urban centres and Universities who put themselves above the common man?

KAUNDA:- This is one of the things which makes me very sad. The idea that a man who yesterday was himself oppressed cannot have the moral and spiritual courage to stand up to temptation. This puzzles and saddens me, sometimes, I must admit, sours me. This elitist approach to life is a cancer which must be fought. I am afraid it is here in Zambia; some people will not even accommodate their own parents in their own homes because they do not regard them as suitable human material to live with. Others would like to have separate schools, hospitals, etc., for themselves and their children. They think they are a separate class. This is a sin — for these people who were oppressed to turn against their fellow man, to want to establish another oppressive regime where others do not matter. This we will fight and the leadership code is one way.

 

DAVID MARTIN:- In most African countries the so-called elite have sought to maintain their high salaries and differential, increasing rather than decreasing the gap with the peasant farmers. Between 50% and 75% of the monetarised income finishes up in their pockets. Here in Zambia mine workers wages rose 50% from 1964 to 1968 while at the same time the earning capacity of the rural peasant rose only 4%. What steps are you taking to arrest this trend?

KAUNDA:- This is a very difficult question, (and by the way, mine workers are negotiating for more this year). There is no doubt at all that much has been done in the rural areas. But the ‘two nations in one’ is a real problem. We must attack it from various angles. The first one is political education. What does humanism mean to a worker? A true humanist will not be happy to see that in his society there are upper and lower classes. A true humanist must not allow this development to con-

tinue indefinitely. He must individually as well as collectively do something to beat this gap between rural and urban areas. This is one way. The second way of course is through being harsh — not harsh really, but by taking the necessary measures. One step was in 1969 when I imposed a wage freeze on workers. But I also imposed a freeze on prices. So that it was not a one-way traffic. This existed for a year before we lifted it. I am afraid what exists between the rich nations and the poor also exists between the rich areas and poor in Zambia. That is why I said we are two nations in one. We must wait until the policy is agreed for the next couple of years on this subject. We are very much concerned about this problem and we have economists working on it so that when the time comes to take a decision, the right decision will be taken.

DAVID MARTIN:- The Tanzanian policy of ‘ujamaa’ seems to be the most logical to emerge in the decade since Independence, emphasizing re-grouping of people so services can be channelled to them and their efforts into the economy. Does Zambia have any similar policy?

KAUNDA:- We have. We call it village re-grouping. It is more or less the same approach to life. But we want to also retain the basis of the villages and not destroy their values and tradition through transplanting. We have been doing this since 1965. Some experiments have sue-ceded and others have not. We now have a fairly clear policy as to where we are going.

DAVID MARTIN:- All African countries at Independence inherited an educational system which took little account of the fact that over 90% of children entering primary schools were destined to return to the land. The object of the system was a University degree. What changes have you made to the education structure you inherited and what changes do you feel are still necessary?

KAUNDA:- We inherited a system geared to white collar jobs and the result has been terrifying. Working with one’s hands is something which was looked down upon. Now we are emphasizing the importance of manual work. This is based on first agricultural production and secondly on industrial production. We are emphasizing the need for almost every primary school to have some sort of agricultural activity. They are producing vegetables, maize, cotton, or they are looking after pigs or cattle. All this has been done to give the right type of orientation to little ones in our schools. We have problems with this in urban areas — but we are insisting that they look after poultry. And we are emphasizing technical educational training.

DAVID MARTIN:- One of the big problems other countries trying to do this have found is the attitude of the parents. Are they too being politically educated?

KAUNDA:- We have a department of National Guidance, This comes under the Vice-President and he has under him through the urban areas, officials who do nothing else but political education. The attitudes are changing but it will take a long time.

IN ALL OF GOD’S CREATION WE BELIEVE MAN IS CENTRAL. FROM THERE ALL SORTS OF POLICIES ARE WORKED OUT. IF IT IS ECONOMIC POLICIES THEN WE DON’T WANT EXPLOITATION OF MAN BY MAN.

DAVID MARTIN:- Copper provides about 90% of your export earnings. Prices are falling. Is some sort of organization like OPEC to the oil producers possible?

KAUNDA:- We have CIPEC but I am afraid we have not achieved very much. But we are under considerable foreign influence, for those who came to develop the copper industries initially were not us. But our position is becoming stronger.

DAVID MARTIN:- Copper has obviously been very important to you in being able to develop the country and have much more money than most other African leaders at Independence. But equally has it been something of a curse creating a maldistribution of wealth in the society with too much accumulation of wealth around the mines and possible neglect of rural activity?

KAUNDA:- There is no doubt at all:copper has given us a lopsided start — a false start. It is a false start that the majority of people do not benefit through ~mployment. It gives too a false sense of ‘security; you have only to look at the towns to see that little thought is being given to the rural areas. But the leadership has not forgotten them and copper has allowed us to build good roads to them. These roads are important to marketing. We are now constructing district roads to open up these areas. So while in a sense copper could be said to have been a curse through giving us a false sense of security and affluence, it has also given us a good base for building the infrastructure we need in the country — plus schools, hospitals, clinics, etc. Most rural area districts now have a secondary school and hospital. So while on the one hand copper has been a curse on the other it has been a blessing.

DAVID MARTIN:- I believe that in the Sixties you were quoted on a number of occasions as saying you would not make Zambia a One Party State unless it was the will of the people through the ballot box. Now during the latter part of 1972 you decided to do so at a time when the tribal and political divisions publicly appeared more marked than before. Why did you move at this point and why did you ban other political parties?

KAUNDA:- I think I followed my earlier statements to the letter because this was the will of the people. They did it through the ballot box. You may say there were a few pockets where other parties had some influence. But if you look at the whole voting structure from 1964 to 1972, when we had by-elections, you will see how much support UNIP enjoyed as a party. You can look at the Parliamentary, Presidential, Local Council elections; all these support the point of view I am making. I was meeting the demand of the people which they had expressed through the ballot box. We had to legislate sooner or later interpreting what the people had said through the ballot box and putting that into law. These figures are there and you cannot argue against them. And it cannot be said we manufactured the figures as the electoral commission comes under the Chief Justice and as you know we have independence of the judiciary.

As for banning political parties and detaining some leaders — one has to go back to 1964. All along we had grown up as two parties (UNIP and the ANC). Before Independence there was a lot of friction; a lot of violence between the two patties. This was very serious. We got through the struggle for Independence but the friction remained. You can look at the High Court records and see these cases of political murder. I did nothing until about three or four years ago when there was a flare up of violence when there was a third party led by Mr. Mundea. He had been expelled from the Government after irregularities in the Ministry of Commerce and Industry where he was Minister. He and another Minister were expelled and he formed his party. It became very violent and ended up killing some of the UNIP supporters on the Copper Belt. Human life was being endangered so I banned that party. I detained the leaders and for some time there was peace. I released them after about six months. Then came the time when the African National Congress began a violent campaign in Living-stone, our tourist capital. Six UNIP members were killed . . . they were using pangas, cutting peoples necks. I banned the ANC in Livingstone alone and there was peace. Then in a district west of Lusaka I was on an official tour and members of the ANC cut trees down across the roads to act as barricades. They burned foodstores belonging to UNIP supporters and other things. I warned them that if this continued I would ban the party in that area and it did not so I banned them. As a result peace was restored in that area. All these were lessons I was learning.

I lifted the ban and trouble began again. So it went on election after election and there was growing support for UNIP. The former Vice-President, Mr. Kapwepwe left us in August 1971 and I gave him and his colleagues six months within which to tell us what they were going to do for the country. I thought perhaps we had gone wrong so I let them tell us where we had gone wrong. At the time when I took steps against them, they had done nothing of the sort. There is no record they can show or party pamphlet to show what they were going to do for the country that was different from what we were saying. Then violence flared up again on the Copper Belt. Our party chaps summoned me there. On a Saturday they said if you do not ban these people some of us will be killed. On Sunday one of our party people was beaten unconscious. Various houses of party leaders and our offices were petrol bombed. So I detained the UPP leaders and again there was peace in the country. Recently 1 released them again and only last week there was petrol bombing again on the Copper Belt. Now what am I supposed to learn from this?

Even the most democratic leader would find himself in an impossible situation when people deliberately use violent methods to achieve their objectives.

I AM AFRAID WHAT EXISTS BETWEEN THE RICH NATIONS AND THE POOR ALSO EXISTS BETWEEN THE RICH AREAS AND POOR IN ZAMBIA. THAT IS WHY I SAID WE ARE TWO NATIONS IN ONE.

Now not only that. At this moment our security forces, following mine explosions on our border last week-end which killed three of our people, have arrested five men who have admitted being organised by the ANC to help Smith’s men in Zambia. It’s treason, it’s treason. Is the type of politics we are going to entertain in Africa — helping Smith’s men? First of all they fire at an island frightening our people there. Then they cross and together with these people they lay mines in Zambia which kill people. It just happens that the first victim of these mines was a nephew of one of the people who helped to lay them. This is how it came out and fortunately we have been able to follow them up. Chipangu, a former UNIP mayor of Livingstone, was sacked, for disciplinary reasons. He joined ANC. And then there is a Magistrate and a bank official. They have all been dealing with South Africans and Rhodesians. I cannot say more.

We have now caught them. Eleven of them had recruited men in Zambia to go and be trained in Namibia by South Africans in military operations. All this is coming to light. I hope there will be court cases. And I should hint here that I hope we find a way of dispensing justice in such a way that these people will be seen for what they are; treasonable fellows who are able to sell their own country to our enemies. Eleven of them are in custody. I have also detained eight more people, organizing from Mungu. So when things like this are happening — and it is not guesswork — these people were recruiting Zambians to be trained by our enemies to come and undermine our authority, to destroy Zambians. We cannot allow this. We have a responsibility.

These people failed to produce alternative policies for this country. The alternative for them is go and be trained by the Portuguese, the Rhodesians and the South Africans, to kill their fellow man. Mr. Kapwepwe is found with two rifles he cannot account for, one semiautomatic. These other three people I have mentioned are found with revolvers. Today (January 16th) we searched certain areas here in Lusaka and an African Rhodesian was found with a . 1 76 rifle, a revolver, and several hundred rounds of ammunition.

These things are a pointer. Why are these people running with guns? What opposition are they providing? In my opinion they have no right at all to claim to be leaders in this country. Here I will not give them the opportunity to destroy innocent Zambian lives. So there you are — Rhodesian mines on Zambian soil, revolvers, rifles, all these things. Evidence is there. They will have to explain in courts of law. But how does a man who was a Vice-President of Zambia, or Mr. Nkumbula who was a Minister, sink so low as this? Before they have denied this but now they have been caught red-handed with weapons. What have they to say about it? This is not the type of opposition we can tolerate in Zambia. There is freedom of speech, of assembly and of association. The judiciary and the church are independent. They must be a mirror to tell us when we go wrong. We accept criticism but not opposition - opposition in Africa is destruction.

 

THE NEW EUROPE ANDTHE THIRD WORLD
-ROYJENKINS

Taking up the main themes of his Edinburgh speech on"The Challenge of World Poverty" ROY JENKINS writes on the new European context of that challenge and calls on the enlarged nine-nation community to take the lead in introducing new policies whichwill work in the best interests of both the Third World and the European Community itself.

If there is one continuous thread which unites those who stand on the Left in politics it is our belief that most problems are community problems, that we all share a responsibility for what happens around us, that there can be no worthwhile life based on an indifference to everyone else. And if no man can be an island, no country can be either. To try to shut oneself off is not only a selfish but an ineffective approach. The world will not go away. On the contrary, every modern development, whether beneficial or harmful, brings it crowding in more closely upon us.

The future prospects of human security and satisfaction depend upon benefits being more widely spread. In the Labour Party we believe this without question in relation to this country. We reject utterly a future in which one man’s prosperity, one area’s prosperity, is based upon the degradation of another. It is equally true in the wider world. We cannot believe in socialism which stops either at Land’s End or John O’Groats. Even if — and it is a very big if — we could solve all our domestic problems on our own, there would be little inspiration or even security in a cellophane-wrapped Britain, hoping like a Western tourist in an Inter-Continental hotel that he was safe both from infection and the upheaval of the land around him.

As the remaining decades of this century unfold, as the world gets smaller and as the balance of population shifts more and more towards the developing countries, we will all of us in the West, however well we order our own affairs, be in increasing danger of living like those in the grand apartment houses of Upper Manhattan, looking across with a mixture of fear and incomprehension at the festering ghettos of Harlem. Our belief in the universality of human rights should unite with an enlightened self-interest to make us reject such a future. Only if there is rapid progress towards a fairer world can we ensure that the receding tensions of East-West relations are not replaced by a still more dangerous and deep-seated cleavage between the rich and the poor world. 700 million people - a third of the two billion people living in the. developing world - live in the Indian sub-continent. In India itself 40% of the population — 200 million people live on less than 5 pence a day. Calcutta is the most frightening human agglomeration in the world. Nine million people live there, most of them in conditicips of unimaginable poverty, conditions as degrading as they

are insanitary. And Calcutta as a city was entirely a British creation. To-day, its problems make even those of Bangladesh seem containable.

We cannot shrug off responsibility for such a degree of human suffering. Nor can we shrug off the reality that henceforth we will be attempting to shoulder and share this responsibility within a different political and economic framework — the European Community. This Community has so far proved outstandingly successful in the material reconstruction of the economies of its own members — our task is now to channel that energy and enthusiasm into the far harder and longer struggle to help three-quarters of the people of the world lighten their crushing loads of poverty, malnutrition and disease. This task in no way conflicts with the redistribution of power and wealth within the new Europe. Concern is indivisible and so is selfishness. A society which says "to hell with famine and disease in Bangladesh, it’s all their own fault isn’t it" — or which takes the same indifferent attitude to the plight of the Ugandan Asians — is extremely unlikely to balance this with compassion and justice for its own pensioners and its own low-paid. Superficially there may seem to be a contradiction between help for those in need abroad and help for those in need at home. It is not a real contradiction. Those who want help must not seek to deny it to others. It is the same current of opinion which will endeavour to help those in need both at home and abroad. And it is the contrary current which will seek to ignore those all over the world who cannot stand on their own feet.

How in practice can the new European Community help to change both the nature and the pace of economic development in the Third World? In the developed world, economic growth has been associated with advance in capital-intensive technology. The more we can install machines to do the work of men the faster labour productivity will grow and the more prosperous we shall become. Even in the developed world such attitudes sometimes now have a somewhat hollow ring. In developing countries they can be a fatal blind alley, however attractive they may be to governments understandably anxious to move their countries into the modern world. In most developing countries primary products make up a high proportion of exports, most people earn their living from the land, and labour is abun

dant while jobs are scarce. In such economies, the emphasis must be not on saving labour but on using it, not on increasing output per man but on creating jobs for men to do. New agricultural techniques are certainly needed, but they should be labour-intensive techniques. Increasingly, agricultural and other products should be processed before they are exported — but again, by labour-intensive methods. And new labour-intensive industries must be developed, for it is only by increasing employment outside the agricultural sector that the benefits of industrial growth can be distributed beyond a small enclave of the privileged.

Capital is scarce and capital goods have to be imported; labour is local, and it is people who are unemployed in their millions. Yet the present inherited structure of investment incentives in almost all poor countries directly encourages these capital-intensive processes. A subsidy in the familiar Western form of investment grants or depreciation allowances is given, which cheapens the cost of capital relative to that of labour. The conventional attitudes of the donor countries in granting aid and soft loans only for the foreign exchange and capital costs of a project have the same effect. No individual recipient country is prepared to risk changing its investment incentives in isolation; fear that foreign investors will be frightened off or just not understand a new subsidy structure is too great. Few recipient countries are prepared to refuse tied aid; the danger of the aid donor switching the project to another poor country is always there.

A powerful and determined lead is the only way of breaking this deadlock. If we believe in free-flowing multilateral trade, we should not believe in tied aid. In principle this could happen now — the United States for example could take the lead — but is this a real political possibility, with not only the amount of American aid but also the political will, public interest and professional commitment dropping sharply?

In principle, the United Nations could, through its agencies, initiate such a change as the ILO and several UN regional economic commissions have suggested —but with their power drained away by the present basic conflict of interest between important member countries, this seems a forlorn hope. In principle, individual rich countries could come together in twos and threes to push such a scheme; but we are likely to see very similar difficulties to those involved in most multilateral aid schemes and in particular attempts at agreeing simultaneously to untie aid programmes. In practice the only way in which such a change is likely to come about is through the common resolve of the major European countries, which between them provide a substantial share of world aid and have the potential for controlling much of the world trade and investment with which aid is enmeshed. If such a lead were given the Community countries could change the content of their aid programme directly as the costs of untying aid grew less; and investors

and designers in developed countries would find it worthwhile to develop and use in poor countries new processes designed to employ Third World resources and meet Third World needs.

Next let us look at trade patterns between the Community and the Third World. The overall rate of growth of trade between the Community and the associated countries has not so far been particularly striking — but the changes within the overall figure have been significant in themselves and very possibly indicative of the effect of British entry on less developed Commonwealth countries. The Community’s imports from their associated countries rose from $896 million in 1958 to $1,718 million in 1969 — equivalent to an annual growth rate of 6%. But in this same period exports from associated countries to the old mother countries, France and Belgium, were expanding by only 2.8% and 6.9% a year respectively, while their exports to the Netherlands grew by 9.4%, to Germany by 11.3% and to Italy by 1 3.4% a year. Associate status for the former French colonies in particular has in practice increased their exports to the other five members of the Community. Exports from these former French colonies to France accounted for 8 1% of their total exports to the EEC in 1959,

"A society which says "to hell with famine and disease in Bangladesh, it’s all their own fault isn’t it" — or which takes the same indifferent attitude to the plight of the Ugandan Asians — is extremely unlikely to balance this with compassion and justice for its own pensioners and its own low-paid. Superficially there may seem to be a contradiction between help for those in need abroad and help for those in need at home. It is not a real contradiction."

but ten years later that proportion had shrunk to 56%. No doubt there would have been some lessening of their dependence on France whatever the institutional arrangements, but it is hard to believe that such substantial increases in the associated countries’ exports to the rest of the Community could have taken place without the association agreements or something very like them.

In a sense Britain’s entry into the Community may thus be seen as likely to weaken British ties with developing nations of the Commonwealth; I believe that there will be a more rapid increase of trade between those who adopt associate status and the other eight of the enlarged EEC than would have been the case had Britain’s application not been successful. But I would welcome a development of Commonwealth exports to the new EEC for two reasons: first, for the simple reason that these Commonwealth countries should gain materially as they get easier access to a market which is larger than Britain’s and has been growing faster over a long period; and I am also convinced that this market as a whole will grow faster than would Britain outside the Community. The second reason for welcoming such a change arises basically from our colonial past: however enlightened we may believe British aid policies and relationships with the developing Coinmonwelath to be, it is surely not possible for many of the newer countries, in Africa especially, to feel truly independent politically while they are so closely tied to Britain by trade as well as the British heritage in language, culture and administration. If we criticise, as I believe we should, the hold of France over several of her "former" colonies, and if we welcome the gradual extension of the other European countries’ interests and influence in parts of Africa, then we must be prepared to accept the logic of this position for ourselves. In this situation our Coinmonwealth ties would be weakened

in a material sense; but in place of this sometimes stifling ex-colonial embrace there would be the opportunity to build new relationships which may be easier to accept and therefore more stable for countries which have emerged too recently to independence to be unselfconscious about it.

The Community’s relations with the Third World have so far been centered pn association — by the concentration on helping associate states by both trade and aid and in appropriate cases by extending associate status to new countries. There is a dilemma which the enlarged European Community will soon have to face — are we to continue with what has so far been the main European task — concentrating European help in practice on the associated countries both by making special trading arrangements and by devoting to them the great bulk of bilateral and European Development Fund aid? I believe Britain’s accession to the Community, and the association of many Commonwealth countries with the Community, will help to resolve this dilemma by ending the present sharp division between associated and un-associated developing countries which has been blurred only at the edges by the arrangements made with Nigeria and the three East African countries.

For the former colonies of existing Community members, the bonds of official associate status and historical and cultural association have been the same. With Britain a member of the Community this is no longer possible. Associate status would be quite inappropriate for example for India, a country with a population considerably greater than that of the whole of the new Community, and a history and a culture which is in no way outside the bounds of comparison with our European heritage. Yet the future of India is as important as the whole of the rest of the non-communist world put together.

But as this distinction between the Community’s treatment of associated and unassociated poor countries is gradually broken down, there are several pitfalls to avoid. On the one hand, we should not refuse to give more help to associated countries unless we are convinced that the aid would be diverted directly and productively to other developing countries, especially the poorest of the poor. On the other hand there is a longer-term danger that we repeat the old colonial policy of building protected, relatively prosperous enclaves in poor countries; the only difference is that in this case the protected enclaves would be individual countries in a poor Third World.

If we were creating a European Community de not’o we might very well feel that the case for separating the Third World into associated and unassociated countries was weak. But viable, living communities of nations are not created by abstract schemes as the history of the formal Federations set up by Britain in newly independent countries shows. Our starting points in the new Community’s development policy are the present policy of association, and Britain’s own close economic ties with many Commonwealth countries. Whatever the long-term development pattern of these de facto associates of ours should be, it is essential in the shorter term that we secure the most favourable arrangements possible for them, which in many cases necessarily means formal association with the Community. At the same time Britain must continue to work within and through the Community towards the widest possible generalised preference scheme to make all poor countries’ exports duty free, and towards expansion of world monetary reserves and world aid capacity, for example by linking the creation of new Special Drawing Rights with the allocation of new soft loan funds to the World Bank and other multilateral aid agencies. By such a combined strategy we would be fulfilling both our commitments — the commitment to help turn the Community into a determined ally of the whole Third World. and the immediate commitment to protect the many Commonwealth countries who depend directly on trade with and aid from this country. How in practice do we throw Britain’s influence into the pursuit of this strategy?

Among the developed countries, Britain’s record on trade questions is relatively good. Many of the more outward-looking EEC political leaders have hoped that Britain will give a new direction to EEC trade policies. In August 1973 negotiations will begin again between the EEC and the developing countries which want association. These talks are part of the process of providing a replacement for the Yaounde Convention, which expires in January 1975. We must ensure that other African countries receive equality of treatment with the Yaounde countries and that Asian countries also receive much freer access for their exports.

Encouragement to process goods before exporting them is what developing countries need, but here the present structure of the EEC preference system is far from satisfactory. The really important manufactured exports from poor countries — textiles and processed food — face very stiff EEC tariff barriers. There is substantial support from within the existing Community for the proposal of Sicco Mansholt, that as the restructuring of EEC agriculture progresses, the EEC should increase its imports of such goods as sugar, cereals, fats and oils. Developing countries produce these more cheaply than Europe. Britain’s preference scheme for these goods from poor countries is more liberal than the EEC scheme; we must make sure that we do not move in the direction of the EEC scheme, but make the EEC move towards us. A more liberal trade policy would bring lower prices to Europe as well as help to the Third World.We must not only endeavour to see that the EEC adopts liberal trade policies towards the developing world; we must also try to improve EEC aid policy. Bilateral aid of course remains the concern of the individual countries; it is the EEC aid institutions which can be greatly strengthened by enlargement. In principle these are excellent multilateral aid-giving institutions although less than 10% of EEC aid is channelled through them. But very nearly all the aid which they disburse goes to the Yaounde countries, piling Pelium upon the

Osso of French bilateral aid. French aid is not our direct concern, but EEC aid will concern us, and it represents a considerable misallocation of resources. Each year from 1968/70, the European Development Fund gave on average $10 million to Asia, and ten times as much to the relatively tiny population of the franc area in Africa. This bias must be redressed.

If we are to harmonise our aid policies it is important for us to harmonise and then unify our aid administration in the field. At present in many medium-sized developing countries the scale of the aid programme undertaken by the Nine countries of the new Community is too small for each to be able to maintain a local aid mission which has adequate professional staff and is at the same time administratively and economically viable. Whether or not these aid missions are now

formally part of their country’s Embassy or High Commission the impression remains in many developing countries that they are so linked in practice — that they are merely an extension of the donor country’s commercial or foreign policy interests in general; and this is an impression which the British Government’s amalgamation of the Ministry of Overseas Development with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office has not exactly dispelled. We could, however, make a substantial contribution towards improving the aid relationship and the efficiency with which aid is dispersed and used, by working towards a situation where in most developing countries there would be only one European aid office, handling ongoing aid administration and acting as the local finder and filter of new projects as well as doing the currently often repeated job of monitoring economic and social development within the recipient country and assessing the effect of aid on that development pattern. The very low proportion of aid from the Six which is channelled through the multilateral European Development Fund presents us with yet another example of the chicken-and-egg problem; but an institutional change of this kind taking place on the spot all over the Third World could provide a clear and constructive example of what we mean by talking of the nations of the Community growing together in order to look outwards.

We are not yet tackling these problems seriously enough. Yet if the developing world is neglected, it is only its problems which will grow. An economy with confidence in its own powers of adjustment to meet changing situations can act courageously to increase official aid, to increase the proportion of it which is multilateral and to liberalize trade. A frightened country turns in on itself, and

tries to shut out the dangers of the outside world. The next few years are ‘iital for the developing &ountries because of the appalling problems which they still face, even though growth has now become a real possibility. They are vital for our relationship with developing countries particularly because of the forthcoming negotiations within the EEC. This is our best opportunity to ensure that the EEC does not see the Third World only through the limited windows of the French excolonial territories. It is our best opportunity to ensure that Europe, emerging as the most powerful trading bloc in the world, can assume a new leadership role by becoming an accepted force not only for European but for world progress.

This is the more important as the US continues, as I fear it will, to offer less to the Third World. The great deficiency in the world aid scene at the present time is the poor performance of the world’s richest country. In the early 1960’s she allocated 0.5% of her vast GNP to official aid. In 1971 that figure was down to 0.3 1% and by 1975 it is projected to fall to 0.24%. That gap can only be filled by Western Europe and by Western Europe as a whole.

The question for all of us in the rich West is whether as the remaining decades of this century wear on, we shall find ourselves living anxiously on an insecure pinnacle of wealth, surrounded by a menacing and increasingly embittered majority of the world, or whether by imagination, generosity and understanding we can develop and spread out wealth so as to make the world both a more secure and a fairer place. There is a mixture here of moral imperative and enlightened self-interest. They do not contradict each other.

 

WORLD

FOOD CRISIS

Harvests have fallen short of targets in almost all the most populous parts of the world. As food shortages reach crisis point for millions of people in the poor world, KEITH ABERCROMBIE spells out the present situation and analyses the underlying issues which threaten to set back the whole process of world development in the Second Development Decade.

 

Keith Abercroinbie is Director of the Policy Analysis Division of the Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome. He has more than twenty years experience of working with the world agricultural problem at the FAO and is a former editor of their annual report on "The State of Food and Agriculture". Mr. Abercrombie is expressing his personal opinions, not necessarily those of the FAQ.

As a result of two successive years of disappointing harvests in the developing countries, world food supplies are making one of their rare appearances in the headlines. The last time was in the very same circumstances of two bad seasons in succession in 1965 and 1966. In the intervening years the magic words ‘miracle seeds’ and ‘green revolution’ have helped to nourish a premature belief that all was well with agriculture in the developing countries.

Similar swings between optimism and pessimism about food supplies have occurred throughout history. But to a great extent the latest particularly rapid shifts reflect a failure to see beyond the immediate situation to the underlying, longer-term issues. This shortsightedness not only afflicts public opinion but also — with more serious consequences — many of the governments on whose action so much depends in the difficult process of agricultural development in the poor countries.

Paradoxically, it could eventually prove to be beneficial that two bad years for agriculture have come right at the outset of the second United Nations development decade (DD2). Because of this timing, there may be a better chance than usual that fears about the immediate situation will lead to longer-term action. Such a poor start to the decade is already prompting serious consideration of whether governments are doing all that ‘is necessary to achieve the agricultural targets of DD2. For, although the DD2 targets are sadly modest in terms of the improvements in living conditions they can bring to underprivileged people, they are quite ambitious in terms of the performance they require from the agriculture of the developing countries.

Immediate Situation

There is no doubt that the world food situation at the beginning of 1973 is more precarious than it has been for several years. Following the last difficult situation at the time when the outcome of the 1967 harvests was awaited, for four years the increase in agricultural production in the developing countries kept comfortably ahead of the growth of population. Since then, mainly because of the weather, production in these countries rose by only 1% in 1971 (compared with population growth of 2.7%), and the limited information so far available indicates that the increase in 1972 is unlikely to have been much larger.

The overall situation may be illustrated by what has happened in the Far East region, which contains almost 60% of the population of the Third World outside China and is the area worst affected by hunger and malnutrition. After falling in 1965 and barely recovering in 1966, agricultural production in the Far East rose by 4% or more in each of the next four years. This greatly improved performance resulted not only from more favourable weather but also from the intro-duction of the high-yielding varieties of wheat and rice in several countries. Another important change was that, in the light of the near-disasters of 1965 and 1966 and the expectation that food imports on concessional terms would be less readily obtainable than in the past, a number of governments belatedly realized that it was necessary to pay more attention to agriculture in their development policies.

In India, where an exceptional run of five good monsoons lasted until 1971, it was possible — despite considerable problems of finance, transport and storage — to build government reserve stocks of foodgrains up to the unprecedented level of about 9.5 million tons by the middle of 1972. Harvests were also good in Indonesia in 1971, but the war in Bangladesh and floods in the Philippines kept the total increase in agricultural production in the Far East down to about 1%.

In 1972 the monsoon failed in most of south Asia. As a result the production of foodgrains, and especially rice, was greatly reduced in many countries, including Bangladesh, Burma, India, Indonesia and Thailand. Crops in the Philippines suffered from typhoons and floods, and total agricultural production in the Far East may have declined in 1972. Serious shortages are reported in a number of areas, particularly Bangladesh and parts of India and Indonesia, but the situationis still far from clear.

Developed Countries

Production in the other developing regions has continued to increase more steadily than in the Far East, with the exception of Latin America in 1971 and probably Africa in 1972. But a big difference between these two years lies in what happened in the developed countries, Whereas in 1971 production in these countries rose by 6%, so that — notwithstanding the poor results in developing countries — world production still grew by 3%, in 1972 production in the developed parts of the world may even have fallen. The principal cause is the exceptionally unfavourable weather that reduced grain production by 11% in the Soviet Union in 1972.

The Russian crop failure has enormously affected the world grain market. The Soviet Union is likely to import 27 million metric tons of grain during the 1972/73 marketing season, mostly from the United States. Although on a much smaller scale, China’s import, needs are expected to increase as a result of moderate harvests; India and some other countries have had to resume imports, and Brazil’s import requirements have been sharply increased by a poor wheat crop. Only a small fraction of the grain produced in the world enters international trade, but wheat exports will probably increase from 52 million tons in 197 1/72 to as much as 68 to 70 million in 1972/73. This large jump in trade is causing heavy pressure on shipping space, and has led to a rise in wheat export prices by about 75% during the course of 1972.

The world’s reserves of the grains which are man’s main staple food are mostly held in a few rich countries, particularly the United States and Canada, where they have piled up — more or less unintentionally — as a result of surplus, unsold production in earlier years. Although not deliberately constituted for this purpose, these stocks have for the past 20 years or so cushioned the world against famine and provided, both on ordinary commercial terms and as food aid, for abnormal import needs resulting from poor crops elsewhere in the world.

In many ways, therefore, the world food situation at the beginning of 1973 is similar to tIlat in early 1967. In both years the two preceding harvests were poor in the developing countries as a whole, with world stocks at the lowest level for some time. A new feature is the big rise in grain export prices, reflecting the fact that the Russian imports have been on a commercial basis, whereas the main shipments in 1965 and 1966 were as concessional food aid to developing countries. Domestic food prices in developing countries have risen on both occasions, however, bringing additional hardship to the many poor consumers who have to spend most of their income on food. Another new feature this time is that there is an incipient shortage of fertilizers, which are perhaps the most important single ingredient for obtaining higher yields. Fertilizer prices on world markets have climbed steeply in recent months, although they are still lower than in the mid1960s.

As in 1967, the immediate world food situation is, because of the depletion of stocks, much more than usually dependent on the outcome of the next harvest. And in the meantime, until the new North American harvests begin to become available around the middle of the year, there will be some difficulty in meeting any further large-scale emergency needs that might arise, in particular because of the shortage of shipping space.

At this point it is difficult to say anything about the 1973 crop prospects, except that a third successive year of widespread bad harvests in the developing countries would have no precedent in the period since the Second World War for which reasonably adequate statistics are available. India, however, remains a major question mark, and the possibility of a second poor monsoon cannot be ruled out.

Production should increase substantially in the developed countries in 1973. In the United States, where acreage and other restrictions, both obligatory and voluntary, have been in force for many years because of the lack of demand in relation to the potential production, the voluntary restrictions are unlikely to be followed to any great extent in 1973, while farmers will also most probably cultivate the permitted acreage more intensively as a result of the higher grain prices.

Longer-term Prospects

Any account of the immediate food situation is bound, like the above, to be based chiefly on percentage changes up or down, and to make frequent reference to the weather. While such things are of little interest to the student of development, they rule the lives of countless people in the developing countries, especially those who still depend mainly on their own subsistence production.

Although the effect of the weather on agricultural production can be mitigated by the extension of irrigation, in most parts of the world it will always remain a major influence on the level of production from conventional agriculture. The best safeguards are to learn to predict bad harvests more reliably, and to hold adequate reserve stocks. There is a crying need for more effective financial and other assistance to enable developing countries to hold such stocks. The stocks built up in India in the last few years testify eloquently to their value — without them the food situation in 1972 might well have been dangerous. At the world level, many proposals on international food reserves have been made since the Second World War, but none has got off the ground. We still depend almost entirely on the surplus stocks of grain that have arisen in North America, and on the generosity of the individual governments concerned.

Even if we are only interested in long-term trends, the short-term fluctuations caused by the weather are significant. For every bad year like 1971 and 1972 an extra good year is needed to maintain the trend. The agricultural targets of DD2 already call for an increase in production faster than has ever been sustained for more than a year or so in the developing countries, and as a result of the two disappointing harvests that have begun the decade, an even more rapid growth is now required if the targets are to be met.

In accelerating the trend of production, the high-yielding varieties — and indeed improved seeds in general — will clearly have a central role. High-yielding varieties of rice and especially of wheat have been responsible for a large part of the spectacular increases achieved between 1967 and 1970 in several countries in the Far East and a few in other regions. The small proportion of the crop area on which they are used so far is an indication at the same time of the potential for future expansion and of the difficulties involved. A number of internationally-sponsored research stations have recently been established with the main aim of widening their scope to crops other than grains and to rainfed as well as irrigated areas but results will obviously take some time. In countries like India and Pakistan, where high-yielding varieties are in fairly widespread use, it is probable that the easy phase of their introduction, involving the more progressive farmers with good access to credit and extension, may already be over, so that future progress will be more difficult.

The success of the high-yielding varieties depends on many other things as well, but above all on adequate fertilizer application. The present shortage and high price of fertilizers may therefore cause difficulties in the short run. There will inevitably be some further delay before the excess manufacturing capacity closed down in recent years can be put back into production, and prices resume the long-term downward trend that has resulted from technological progress in the industry.

The importance of the small farmer

Much of the effort required from governments in agricultural development concerns the improvement of the institutional framework in which farmers live and work — land tenure systems, co-operatives and other farmers’ organizations, credit, extension and training services, marketing systems for both agricultural products and essential inputs, and price policies. Progress in many of these fields involves a long period of time for the execution of the necessary measures and even longer for their results to be apparent.

They are of crucial importance not only in providing farmers with the incentive and the means to increase their production, but also in determining how and by whom the increase is obtained and thus whose income is thereby raised. Agriculture is not just an industry producing food and raw materials; it also furnishes the livelihood of most of the people in the Third World and must continue to do so for many years to come. Changing the present nutritional situation, in which even the mental development of millions of children is irreversibly damaged by lack of protein, is much less a question of further technological breakthroughs than of raising’ the incomes of poor people, of whom the poorest are the farmers of the developing countries.

In many of these countries the greater part of marketed agricultural production still comes from a small number of comparatively large-scale farmers who obtain most of the cash income in agriculture. High-yielding varieties are sometimes accused of mainly benefiting these farmers but are themselves inherently neutral regarding scale of production. Where their benefits have gone chiefly to such farmers it is because of traditional biases in the land tenure system and in credit, extension and other services, which governments could remedy.

Greater participation by small farmers in the expansion of production is the surest way to maximize employment opportunities in agriculture. This is crucial not only because of the predominant role of the rural sector in employment in the developing countries today, but also because in countries with inefficient tax systems the promotion of employment has an especially important role in the redistribution of income. The current employment crisis in the Third World could cause such social unrest and administrative disruption as to jeopardize the achievement of the technological possibilities for agricultural production that have recently so greatly improved.

These are only a few of the challenges facing the governments of the developing countries if the DD2 agricultural targets are to be met, and met in such a way as to maximize the effect on human welfare. But perhaps the greatest failure in DD2 so far is by the rich countries in respect of development aid and trade liberalization. Both these questions vitally affect the agricultural development possibilities of the Third World, because of the employment and incomes generated by production for export and the foreign exchange needed to import fertilizers and capital goods.

Agriculture’s poor start to the second development decade might yet prove a blessing in disguise if it stimulates the necessary action by the governments of both developed and developing countries to avert further short-term food crises.

 

CRYING IN THE WILDERNESS

The author of this article, Asfaw Yemiru, is one of Africa’s most extraordinary men. At the age of 10, he was an illiterate beggar-boy on the streets of Addis Ababa. Today, -aged 28, he is headmaster of a free school for over 3,000 poor children. Not content with this achievement, Asfaw is now moving his school towards a new concept of education which could have significance not just for Ethiopia but for many other parts of both the developing and the developed world.

Asfaw Yemiru was born in a poverty stricken Ethiopiaii village. Attracted by the excitement of the city, he left home at the age of 10 with 50 cents in his pocket, to walk the 120 kilometres to Addis Ababa, Imperial capital of Ethiopia. For a year he lived in St. Georges’ churchyard with the other street urchins, begging food in order to stay alive. Chance took him to work as a house-boy for a wealthy Turkish woman. He received no pay but was able to attend a local primary school. Completing the 8 year course in half the time, his outstanding 90% examination mark qualified him for one of the few free scholarships at the prestige General Wingate Secondary School. But at the last moment, Asfaw was told that his place had been taken by someone else:- "It was a common enough story — some rich man’s son who had only scored 50% in the examination had been admitted instead of me". In this article, compiled from taped interviews with a former teacher at Asfaw’s school, Kenneth King. Asfaw Yemiru takes up his own story.

Teachers and classes

I was still in the bottom grade of the Wingate School when I began to teach these ragged children on Sundays — just over in the church compound under some of the trees. I then altered this to teaching during the weekdays as soon as my own school day was finished, between 4.30 and 6.00. And to help out we managed to get a number of the Wingate students to come across and teach as volunteers. Quite a lot of them enjoyed doing this work for a few weeks, and then they began to think it was a terrible job, and felt that if they went on with it much longer they might endanger their own chances of doing well in their exams.

In the long and short rains, the students from my little school used to take shelter for several months under the eaves of the church. A lot of the other children used to pass the night in the little structures built over big people’s graves in the nearby cemetry. In fact it was becoming clear that we shouldn’t be able to continue much longer without providing our own shelter. Mind you, I wasn’t really thinking yet of anything like a permanent school, but just some form of shelter for the orphan children who attended my classes.

Frog meets The Lion of Judah

The thing came to a crisis point when the church told us one day that the children would no longer be able to spend the night under the shelter of the church gallery. I was discussing with some of my friends what should be done about this, when I had the idea of writing direct to the Emperor and asking him for some land. They laughed at me and reminded me of the frog which tried to act like a lion. Anyway, I just wrote off, and was very surprised that he should answer me saying that if there was a reasonable amount of government land in the vicinity I should get a piece. I had the letter, but the real difficulty was to get the mayoral office in Addis Ababa to agree eventually to granting me land. So to try and speed things up, I took advantage of a visit of Haile Selassie to the next-door Wingate school. I decided to chance the traditional practice of hurling myself in front of the Emperor’s car, with the hope that he would listen to me before I was hustled away by his bodyguards. It wasn’t a good time to intercede because there had been recently an attempted coup and the bodyguard were taking no chances. However I lined my orphans up by the roadside and dashed out in front of the moving car. Fortunately it stopped and I was hauled up by the guards to speak to the Emperor.

I just spoke in my rough way and explained my needs. And he told me that he had already informed the mayor that I should get some land.

The next task was to intercept the mayor. I used to go down town every day after school for months and I would wait outside the mayor’s office. There was no question of his giving me an appointment. Instead, one had to do without supper, in the hope of catching his eye as he got into his car. The letter was held up with the mayor for almost a year, but I finally succeeded and the mayor passed it down to the district governor. Eventually, after I had pleaded with him too, I was awarded 300 metres of land up against the Wingate School wall.

The school begins

I decided that the land was enough to build about ten lean-to classrooms against the Wingate school wall. So with the money collected from our school plays, and with a gift of 800 dollars from the new headmaster of Wingate, Mr. Roydes, we built ten classrooms. I didn’t divide up the classes thoroughly from each other; in fact the partitions were only waist-high, because at that time I wasn’t sure if I would be able to get teachers, and thought it might be necessary for one teacher to be able to overlook three classes.

So we began as a primary school and filled up the classes with the 280 children who had been learning earlier with me in the church compound. I didn’t take any more during our first year. However, at the beginning of the second year, the classrooms were filled to overflowing, and there were still queues of people waiting for admission. The school was entirely free, and it gained in popularity when the other primary schools in Addis began to demand that their children should have uniforms and put down deposits for all the textbooks they used.

Soon, the pressures from more students had forced me to expand our facilities. I borrowed money from the local church, and with the help of my students managed to build two mud blocks of further classrooms, and a small brick house for myself. The original loan had come to 800 Ethiopian dollars and this meant that I somehow had to pay back the interest of 10 dollars a month. Again, I was very fortunate, because Mr. Roydes intervened to wipe out this debt, and remove the burden from me.

Illiterate teachers

By this time the school was up towards the 1,000 mark. It therefore became necessary to look for the official recognition of the Ministry of Education. In fact, I was not very anxious to become a government school headmaster. I have my own priorities in education, and I didn’t want other people to come in and tell me what to do. My concern, from the beginning, has been with orphans and very small children. But if you become an ordinary government primary school, it becomes difficult for you to follow what you feel is best. Your own priorities might be destroyed.

The first two or three teachers I received were only really able to keep order. They dated back to the time when there had been many boarding schools, after the Emperor’s return from exile, and priests had been attached to these to say prayers and lead grace at meals. My ones couldn’t read or write, and I just used them to keep the children orderly when I was short of good~teachers. Still, I am glad that at least I get my own salary from the Ministry; it helps to cover the electricity and water bills. And in more recent years (1968 and 1969) I had several V.S.O. volunteer teachers from England in my school.

 

The years of expansion

Over the years I have expanded the school as I could. Without any regular finance I couldn’t make any long term plans for building. But again and again I have received aid from some unexpected source just when I was thinking things would be impossible. For instance, Haile Selassie paid his second visit to the school just when I was deeply in debt to many people (including the Addis Ababa Municipality) for the running costs of the school. He promised he would give me 5,000 dollars to cover these. I used some of it for my debts, but most of it went into the building of an Assembly Hall. On another occasion, I was lucky enough to be given 6,500 dollars from the National Lottery (from the uncollected prize money), and with this I built four further classrooms out of concrete blocks. Then in 1969, when I was again quite desperate, I received some 2,000 dollars from abroad, a little of it from Sweden and the rest from my old friend, Mr. Roydes and from Winchester College. Finally in 1 970, I was amazed to be summoned to the Palace and be informed that I had been awarded money from the Haile Selassie Prize Trust. This was 10,000 dollars.

One foolish project

Looking back on the expansion that we have achieved with this money, I can see a number of trends. I have built 64 classrooms, and I have built them on the principle that education is more important than the building. The Ministry of Education has laid down its standards for primary school classrooms, which amounts to about 5,000 dollars per class. They have to be of cement or stone. Now, if I had followed those ideas, I would only have been able to build about ten in these last ten years, and maybe only have 400 pupils instead of my present 2,500. Instead, I have been able to put up all these classes, and in addition a library wing, store, kitchen, male and female sleeping quarters for the 380 orphans we now have. I made one mistake over that Assembly Hall, spending all those thousands on what I now regard as a foolish project. But otherwise I do nothing for prestige reasons. We do what is possible for the time being to meet the demands of the children. This may mean that people will say my children are working under mere shelters. But education is more important to me; and I feel that once the country is more developed, there will be plenty of opportunity to put up fine permanent buildings.

A case of need

But who are the students who make me add on these three or four new classrooms every year? Many of them come from far away, from outlying provinces where education is very poor. Not long ago I got a message from a group of children in Bole province asking me to come down and bring them up to the school; their parents had been killed in the Ethiopian-Somalia conflict, and they had heard of my school from some friends.

A great many pupils come also from the Addis Ababa area, and often they walk for 1 5 miles evening and morning in order to reach here. Other children now in the school come from the Mercato area in Addis, where it is possible to find maybe 80 children sleeping huddled up in one room without blankets, and paying the landlord 10 cents per night. So although I’ve got 380 orphan boys and girls who actually board at the school, a lot of the other children are also from broken-up homes, or far removed from their parents. You can’t call this a community school therefore, because it doesn’t serve one area, and doesn’t have strong ties with the parents of the children. It’s difficult to have much tnterest from parents when they hardly get enough income for their daily use — quite apart from finding time to visit the school. But I don’t want children of rich parents in the school. Often they set a bad example and make for unfair competition. But because the school has a good reputation, a number of wealthy parents used to send their children here. As soon as I found out I expelled them. I’m concerned with the poor strata of society, and not with people who could afford to send their children to the Wingate School.

It is still quite easy for a rich child to get into the school for a few days. I don’t have any registration forms to ask them who their fathers are, what religion and tribe they are. I just take whoever applies to come, provided I. can see a case of need. And sometimes a rich child is able to pretend he is poor for a short time.

Useless education

In the first few years of the school, I built the grades right up to Standard VIII, when they take the qualifying exam for secondary school. And initially I was anxious that the school should do well in these results. I don’t care about this at all now, but I used to take pride in the school getting the best St. VIII results in the country. We even had a scheme whereby one of our best boys was selec ted to continue his education in the Win-gate School. This made a lot of our children anxious to enter this kind of school; but I now realize that going to the Win-gate probably spoilt people like these. One boy in particular went through Win-gate and is now in the University. But what’s the result? He has become useless as far as helping out the people he came from.

As I looked at my St. VIII leavers, I felt that most of them were failures. They were going after material city standards, and forgetting completely what they had been through. So in order to keep some influence on them, I built up the school to 12th grade. Some of these high school boys have been with me for years now. But as far as their schooling is concerned, I am quite clear that I’m not really preparing them for 12th grade entry to university. Personally I don’t care whether any of them pass or not. I use them for important things like teaching in my adult extension classes and also teaching some of the lower grades in the school. However I have gradually come to think that in Ethiopia we can probably do without all this budget spent on secondary schools and university — at least for several years. There are enough corrupted students in the secondary and university levels already without me training up a few more. If we didn’t have the influence of the secondary and university exams, we could do some real teaching in the primary schools. And we could start to do something about this gap between the ‘educated’ and the children of poor people.

Narrowing the gap

Looking at my own old students and at the others in the secondary schools has made me change my direction completely in this school. Originally I had thought my pupils would be bound to be useful if I got them through exams and into jobs. And yet all the ones I thought would be best, and who would really try to do something for the country, have turned out to be useless — useless socially. They have become self-important and self-respected. They neglect where they come from, and begin looking down on people who have never been to school. I have decided therefore that I can only change this by making less of a gap between the graduating students and those without education.

So now I am going to reduce the school to one which has only four grades or standards. I will take a large number of pupils through a basic four year course. My aim is to teach children enough in four years to prepare them for life outside, not just to pass examinations. In that period I have to teach them to understand the English and Amharic papers and be able to understand what is said on the radio. I don’t just mean understand. I mean be able to interpret and be conscious of what is going on in this country. Through civics classes we try and make them sensitive to th~~ goings on in the country. We look at subjects like land reform and the role of the police in the countryside. We look at the constitution. Then we compare what is going on in Ethiopia with other countries and continents. You have somehow to wake the children up so that they don’t think that Ethiopian life and culture is perfect. Others of them have got to be introduced to what life is really like in other countries, otherwise they will remain stuck in their belief that they as poor children are destined under God to live in conditions of poverty like they have been doing. They are too ready to accept that this life has got to be as it is now.

Parent education

With the students in the school I have started what I call parent education: children should teach their parents or the other adults they live with. Otherwise they will not be promoted at the end of the year. So promotion is not just academic merit. It’s been working quite well. The children have taught them certain basic things, and then we have sent ortt tests at the end of the year for the children to administer to the adults. Naturally some children may cheat and fill in the forms themselves. But You can’t always be playing the headmaster and doubting the children’s honesty, if you are trying to make them self-reliant. We’re trying to get across the idea that if you have had free education yourself, that means you have to be ready to do something for other people without it. It won’t be easy to make them all socially aware, but we have to make a beginning. So I keep pointing out to them that they are no different from the cleaners and guards in the school compound; it’s just that they have been younger and luckier.

With the orphan boarders, there is another sort of adult education. I have started an adult literacy school outside Addis, about 15km. away. My oldest orphans — about 23 of them — go up there on Saturday morning; they stay overnight and teach again on Sunday. Like our own school, we started teaching under the trees, and now we have rented an old house.

I have a third type of extension programme down in Sidamo area. I have often talked to the students about the advantages of working in the countryside, and this time I took about 16 boys down there to work amongst the Gurage people. They collected all the older people of the area and taught them, and at the same time provided for themselves by growing vegetables. I just took them there as an expertment. We rented the land and they started. They too seem to have found what they wanted. They’re happy there.

Intelligence not the criterion

In fact these experiments in the countryside make me unhappy about the present position of our school, right next door to a prestige secondary school. It’s very difficult to convince people of graduating after Standard IV, when they see people living in luxury over the wall, and preparing to get office jobs in Addis. So to make it a little easier for the children who want a certificate, I am allowing some of the students to sit for the sixth grade qualifying examination. I don’t care at all how they do. But it will be useful to some of the students to have a little paper certificate. Still, I feel that it’s bad for our students to be so close to the town. I am interested in doing something different for our children, and I think it will be easier if I move out of town about 20 kilo-metres. It will then be possible to have instruction in agriculture and work closer to some of the problems of the country. So that is the next move I am planning, if I can raise any funds.

Many of the students won’t like the change, but I have got to get them to see the priorities. Ethiopia is a poor country where far too much money is spent on the higher levels of education. Close this down, and then let the demands of the people open them up again once there has been a fairer spread of education at the lower levels. Really, I sometimes wonder what was the point of educating those old classmates of mine at the Wingate School, so that they could get jobs in offices. It’s a waste of resources while out there in the district I was born there is no school at all. The soil is infertile and they pay out their dollars in tax. Two dollars for each cow. So to avoid paying the tax, they have stopped having cattle. Education monies should put to right .this kind of thing. Instead money is expended on expatriate advisors, who spend one year studying the situation, one year planning and the third year are replaced by new advisors. So nothing is changed and nothing is implemented.

For the moment, in the present school, the majority of Standard IV will have to go. I shall pick out a small number for further education and training. I won’t pick them on academic merit, because I have noticed that very often it is not the intelligent students who really care about aiding other people..

 

 

POST SCRIPT : THE MOYA

Since completing this article, Asfaw Yemiru has finalised plans for putting his new educational ideas into practice. ALEX BRODIE describes the "Moya" which Asfaw and his pupils will soon begin building.

There can be no doubting the success of Asfaw Yemiru’s original school. It has provided an education for over 3,000 children who would otherwise have had none. It has given homes to hundreds of orphans who would otherwise have remained begging in the streets. Seven times it has outstripped all other schools in Ethiopia in examination results.

However Asfaw, his own sternest critic, believes that a radical reappraisal of his ideas has become necessary. He has detected, in his secondary school pupils, a trend which, he feels is a reflection of the general malaise of education policy, in the country as a whole: "I have been becoming increasingly distressed, in recent years, by the growing dislike for manual work, and with the growing numbers who having spent 1 2 years in school, then find themselves in the hopeless and miserable position of being unable to find employment, because the country does not need them at the present time."

Lured by the material wealth of a small, urban elite, students lucky enough to have had a secondary education compete for jobs in the western-style city centre. Agriculture is, and will continue to be, the basis of Ethiopian life for the foreseeable future. Yet manual labour on the land, the cultivation of the soil, has become a symbol of degradation.

"What is the use of 1 2 years of education about things alien to Ethiopia, when, after this, there is nothing for us to do? Education is not the important thing. It is whether you are rich; for then you can bribe someone to give you a job or contact a useful friend or relative to pull strings for you." Such is the situation as described by a student about to join this rat race.

The Asere Hawariat school, necessary and vital though it was, could do little to change the harsh realities of this situanon.

In 1968, 60% of the urban school age population were at school. Only 3.7% of the rural population were enjoying the same privilege.

To combat this state of affairs, which is progressively widening the gap between the city and the countryside, the rich and the poor. the educated and the uneducated, Asfaw is turning his school into a Moya. ‘Moya’ is an Ambaric word meaning a place where people live, spend time and work together, in order to give, take, learn and share every aspect of human problems and happiness.

Through the Moya, Asfaw aims to reorientate thinking back towards the need to work on the land, and towards an egalitarian, co-operative mode of living, which will transcend tribal and religious barriers, and hopefully make it possible to exploit the resources of the country, for the benefit of the country as a whole.

Entrants to the Moya will first undergo a 4 year basic literacy course, which will include some teaching in mathematics, Ethiopian history and geography, and health science. 90% of the students will then go to work on the Moya, learning practical skills which will equip them to work on the land, and cope with basic carpentry and building tasks.

Although he is sceptical of its worth, Asfaw will retain a small secondary school, which will offer an academic course for the other 1 0% who are particularly suited for this sort of education. In an effort to avert a contempt for manual labour on the part of the ~pen pushers’, they will be required to give at least 2 years service to the Moya. It is hoped that this will instil into them a respect for, and commitment to, the ideals of the Moya itself.

When the students leave the Moya they will not be promised jobs. They must be able to create their own employment. Consequently the principle of self-sufficiency, more than any other, will govern the conduct of the experiment. The tools used will be simple, inexpensive, and within the practical means of the peasant, so that the students will be able to obtain or manufacture for themselves the equipment which they will need.

The Moya itself will be built by the members of the community, dependence on outside help being kept to the absolute minimum. Once established it is hoped that the sale of clothing, woodwork, and farm produce, as well as providing goods at the cheapest possible prices for the people outside the Moya, will make the Moya itself almost self-sufficient as a community.

Already the original school is producing an income from clothing made on 20 looms which Asfaw has built by hand, and he will soon be able to dispense with the two instructors he is paying to teach weaving. Such teaching will ultimately be taken over by the older students as part of their training. This is the basis of a larger weaving school which, characteristically, will be built from the ground up by the students themselves. At present, with only 5 sewing machines the school is able to service the poor community around it, as well as the school itself, with necessary clothing and repairs.

Integration with the community outside the Moya is essential if it is to succeed. The role which Asfaw intends for the Moya is not a purely educational one. He sees-it more as an agent for rural development in general.

Perhaps the most ambitious project, and certainly the most expensive, is the community library, the largest section of which will cater for illiterate members of the community outside the Moya. With audio-visual aids to facilitate the teaching of basic agricultural, health science, building, civic and literacy skills, the standards of the community as a whole can keep pace with those of the pupils in the school. Adults can be made more receptive to the new skills which their children are learning. If sufficient money is found, the library can be big enough to accommodate large groups of adults for film shows, lectures and gatherings. As well as the educational possibilities of such a facility, it would provide a focal point br the wider community.

If the Moya experiment manages to close the gap between the school and the needs of the country as a whole, which the present educational system leaves yawning, then it will have achieved a notable success. However the Moya is only one institution, in one place. The real test will come after it has become established — if Moya pupils, when they leave, go to other parts of the country and start new Moyas. Then many beyond the reach of Asfaw’s particular experiment will start to benefit, and Asfaw Yemiru really will have initiated a movement which has the power to change education from a privilege available to a small minority, to a liberating force bringing ‘material and spiritual benefit’ to the whole nation, and providing the people of a dying countryside with the means to remedy their own abysmal poverty.

 

CLASSIFIED

RACE TODAY is growing fast. Read it and see why. It covers race and racism in Britain as no-one else does and sets this in an international context. lop a month. £1 .20 a sear. Write for free sample copy to: Race Today, 36 Jermyn Street. London. S.W.I. Tel. No. 01—734 46020.

PEACE NEWS: news and analysis of oppression. news of actions and projects, retorts on resistance and making alternatives, radical thinkine on ecology. Third World. everyday life. 7p Frida vs from newsaee nts. Seven ~veeks, SOp from 5 Caledonian Road. London. N.I

WORK IN THE THIRD WORLD
Qualified volunteers are now beine recruited for community-based development projects in many countries. MEDICAL STAFF — especially nurses and midwives — AGRICULTURALISTS and qualified TEACHERS are urgently needed. Not everyone is selected, but if you are able to volunteer for two years, and are willing to work hard for pocket money, we’d like to hear from ~ Write to R. Church. CIIR OVERSEAS VOLUNTEERS, 41 Holland Park, London, WIl., or ring 01—727 3195.

TIlE FUTURIST: A Journal of Forecasts, Trends and Ideas A hout the Future publishes forecasts by scientists, government officials, business leaders and others concerning societal, technological, and moral developments during the next 5 to 50 years. Readine about tomorrow can help son make better decisions today. Subscription : £4.00 per year (bi—monthly ). World FutureSociety, Dept. I. 4916 St. LImo Ave., Washington, D.C. 20014. U.S.A.

INFORMATION FOR SURVIVAL
Our surroundings still surround and penetrate us. This Digest reports the reports and our predicament. Quarterly: second issue January. 13 pence. From: Barlow, Great Finborough : Stowmarket.

ACTION AT WORK~~ the theme of VOSA’s annual national eonference at York from March 31st — April 1st 1973. Have you lived and worked in a developing country? Are you now seeking seope for action through your profession in response to the needs of the community and international development? This conference will interest you and needs your contribution. Information and booking forms from:- VOSA, 26 Museum Chambers. Little Russell Street, London. WC1A 2JA.

THE MINORITY RIGHTS GROUP
Report on: The East Indians of Guyana and
Trinidad — 52p post free, from: MRG, 36
Craven Street. London W.C.2.

THE DOMINIQUE PIRE FOUNDATION,
35 rue du Marche, I-Iuy, Belgium, enables people of all races and backgrounds to unite in helping people of all races and backgrounds, and to work together towards world peace.

Support the Islands of Peace (development projects aimed at self-help) in India and Bangladesh; attend a session at the University of Peace in Belgium: exchange views with correspondents worldwide via a scheme of World Friendships: join World Sponsorships and undertake to sponsor a refugee child oi student in Africa, paying the school fees without which education is beyond his reach (mm. £10, max. £60 p.a.). and writing to the child and his family.

Niore details from the British Representative, Miss Janice Booth, 25a Tintagel Crescent. East Duiwich, London, 5E22 811T.

 

 

 

 

 

INDER MALHOTRA, writing from Bombay, profiles R.K.LAXMAN, brilliant cartoonist of the "Times of India’ whose insights into India’s development struggle are looked forward to by millions every day. The central character of Laxman’s cartoons is "The Common Man— the symbol of the average long-suffering Indian who tries to dismiss with a laugh the pomposity of politicians,the petty tyrannies of bureaucrats, and life’s multiplying misfortunes’.’

At 48, R.K. Laxman is the finest and foremost political cartoonist in India, perhaps in the world. It is difficult to think of any living cartoonist elsewhere whose work equals his either in the power and maturity of its drawing or in its subtle but stinging humour.

To several millions of his readers, who see his scintillating work in The Times of India, an English daily published from Bombay, Delhi and Ahmedabad, and the allied group of publications, he has already become something of a legend.

Laxman’s rise to supremacy in his craft has been swift but by no means easy. In the first place he never had any formal training in the art of drawing. He taught himself drawing and cartooning by the simple device of sketching furiously since as long as he can remember.

Laxman failed in his school leaving examination because he had been busy sketching at the market place while he ought to have been studying hard. As he now recalls, he was "fascinated by the noise and colour of the markets. The milling crowds; the vegetables stacked in neat rows; the customers leaning on their bicycles; and women haggling over the price of brinjals." He drew them all.

By this time, he had started making some money from local newspapers and journals which occasionally published his sketches and drawings. He was also illustrating short stories written by an older brother but more often than not "both the stories and sketches came back with rejection slips."

In 1946 Laxman took his degree in Politics, Economics and Philosophy, and made a beeline for Delhi to look for a job as a political cartoonist. He had good reason to go to Delhi rather than to Calcutta or Bombay, the other two centres of newspaper publication. The then doyen of Indian political cartoonists, Shankar, had just walked out on New Delhi’s "Hindustan Times", and Laxman shrewdly suspected that it might agree to employing a second cartoonist, in addition to the more experienced Ahmed, whom it had already taken on.

Laxman’s guess was correct but his hopes were belied. After he had submitted sample cartoons for a fortnight. Ahmed gave him some elder-brotherly advice:

"You’re still too young and raw to work in the capital. Find an opening in a provincial paper, work there for some years and only then come back to Delhi."

Laxman’s experience with another editor was even more shattering. When he was ushered into the room, the great man was feeling sleepy after a long and presumably convivial lunch. He dismissed Laxman with the terse advice that journalism was a mug’s game. "You should find something worthwhile to do."

At this critical juncture Laxman’s genius was all but lost to the soulless Indian bureaucracy. But luckily the situation was saved by the bad manners of a petty bureaucrat.

In its last days, the British Raj had launched a campaign to root out malaria.

The Health Department needed an artist to draw posters against the menace of mosquitoes. Laxman applied in person with a couple of posters he had drawn almost instantly. They were very good. But the official to whom he reported did not look at them. He was talking on the telephone about a party he had attended the previous evening. Laxman left in sheer disgust.

Bombay was supposed to be only a brief halt on the dejected journey back home. But it is there that Laxman has lived ever since.

It was Bombay’s "Free Press Journal" which first gave Laxman an opportunity to display his brilliance as a political cartoonist. But ironically his association with it was short-lived. Of course, he was enjoying his work — and the fame that it brought him. But he could not stomach the proprietor’s sudden directive to lay off criticism of the Communist Party.

Only after he had come out on the crowded pavement, having handed in his resignation, did he realise that he had nowhere to go and nothing to do.

"As usual~" he recalls, "the local bus service was on strike. So as a gesture of defiance I hired a victoria (hackney cab) and told the driver to take me to The Times of India."

At The Times of India he got a job at once but not as a cartoonist. Indeed, the paper, then under British management, considered political cartoons as something pernicious. Laxman was asked therefore to join another 30 artists whose job it was to illustrate advertisements, posters and short stories.

But Laxman insisted on drawing political cartoons, after finishing his allotted work, for personal edification and for eliciting the private opinion of the Editor, Ivor S. Jehu. These were so good, indeed so irresistible, that Jehu broke a 100-year tradition to start publishing Laxman’s cartoons.

These were immediately and widely hailed as the best cartoons to appear tn India. Laxman’s fame grew fast, and he has never looked back since.

Laxman’s power as a cartoonist and popularity with his readers took a big leap when, 12 years ago, he created his inimitable character: the common man. This balding, bespectacled, and somewhat bewildered little man in a check coat and dhoti never says a word. But to millions he has become a symbol of the long-suffering average lndian who tries to dismiss with a laugh the pomposity of the politicians in power, the petty tyrannies of bureaucrats and life’s many ironies and multiplying misfortunes.

Laxman thinks that if he can make his readers laugh he has done his job. "Laughter, he says, "is the only antidote to harsh realities, a protective device bestowed on man by nature, and it is my function to stimulate this protective instinct.

The world of Laxman’s creation is wide and versatile. No subject is too remote or esoteric for him. The agony of Vietnam is grist to his mill as much as the potholes in Bombay’s roads. But he firmly believes that "a leak)’ tap in the bathroom or the price of tomatoes pnatters more to the people than an avalanche of rhetoric at the U.N. or a shortfall in foreign exchange reserves.

But Laxman is not only prolific; he is also a perfectionist. He never begins to put down on paper any idea unless he has first worked it fully in his head. He never hands in a cartoon, caricature and drawing until he is satisfied with its superlative quality. And yet in 26 years he has never missed what he calls the "Dam odes’s sword of deadline".

Another reason why he is able to maintam the very high quality is his firm refusal to take his excellence for granted.

"Every morning," he says, "I feel I’m going to the office for the first time -- that I won’t be able to get any idea or won’t be able to draw." This fear has never turned into reality-

After meeting Low, the British cartoonist, Laxman visited London for six months, sketching men like Churchill, Atlee, Bertrand Russell, T.S. Eliot, Priestley and Graham Greene.

More than the power of his drawing, more than even the freshness of his ideas, what distinguishes Laxman from his peers and makes him unique is his capacity to be biting without even a trace of cruelty or bitterness. He is gentle even to monsters. He never dips his brush in venom or vitriol. Black ink is enough for him. "A health)’ irreverence for everybody and everything but malice towards nobody and nothing" is his motto.

This not only makes his work most enjoyable but often enables him to get away with things others might be afraid of saying. Only the other day, for instance, Laxman drew a full-page caricature of Indira Gandhi, highlighting her imperious, Empress-like characteristics. D.F. Karaka, editor of Bombay’s "Current", wrote:

"This cartoon would have sent me to jail for a three year term if I had drawn it; would give me six months’ detention in jail if I were to reproduce it. ammo would gime me at least a month if I were to praise it as the Cartoon of the Year. But it is."

No wonder some of Lax man’s most ardent admirers are the targets of his barbs. They pay good money to buy the originals of his cartoons. Mrs. Gandhi’s Government itself has honoured Laxman with the award of Pad ma Bhushan.

Even so, there are occasions when powerful people have taken offence at his inoffensive but hard-hitting cartoons. Even Jawaharlal Nehru once got so enraged that he publicly rebuked him for being frivolous about so serious a subject as five-year plans.

This incident did not, however, diminish Nehru’s high esteem for Laxman. Meeting the cartoonist once, the Prime Minister asked him why he insisted on drawing him without his Gandhi cap. (Nehru, rather vain about his looks, wore it to hide his baldness).

"Because," Laxman replied, "the cap hides your essential characteristics."

This seems to be a point of great importance to Laxman. According to him, any sketching which does not bring about the essential characteristics of a subject is not worth doing. And to his keen eye many human faces appear to have much in common with animals and even inanimate objects. As a child he got into trouble by sketching a family elder as a goat with a pair of spectacles.

Official condemnation leaves Laxman cold, just as boundless appreciation and lionising by his readers has not turned his head although he is human enough to like being liked.

Sometimes his admirers express their love for Laxman in a manner little short of bizarre. One man wanted him to design his wife’s tomb. Another offered him generous remuneration to sketch his Guru meditating in the hills. A lowly railway clerk used to send him a small gift of money every month as a token of respect. The money orders stopped after Laxman made the "mistake" of sending the poor man copies of the four volumes of his selected cartoons that have appeared so far.

To have to choose about 150 cartoons for each publication out of thousands baffles and often annoys Laxman. But the publishers deserve the public’s thanks for being persistent.

Has his constant preoccupation with poking fun at the politicians, officials, officious bosses, bragging neighbours, nagging wives and all the rest made Laxman a cynic? By no means.

Often he has a nightmare that his worst fears have come true, that reality has caught up with his caricatures, and there is nothing more therefore that he can draw.

"But," as he says with his infectious smile, "pessitnism, too, has its uses. When things turn out to be not as bad as I had feared, I am very pleased. And if some day my fears are borne out by facts, I will not be taken by surprise."

---

ADVERTISEMENT

 

JOIN THE WORLD DEVELOPMENT MOVEMENT

IN POLITICAL ACTION TO END THE INJUSTICE,
POVERTY, AND EXPLOITATION OF THE THIRD WORLD.

Take part in its campaign to radically change Europe’s policies towards the Third World.
In particular, the W.D.M. calls for:

1. A global approach to the problems of the Third World.
2. All EEC members to transfer 0.7% of their G.N.P. in official aid by 1975, with more going to Asia.
3. Continued imports of sugar from the Commonwealth.
4. Freer imports of manufactured goods from the Third World. particularly textiles.

Write for details to:
THE SECRETARY, WORLD DEVELOPMENT MOVEMENT, PARNELL HOUSE,
25 WILTON ROAD, LONDON, S.W.l.,or telephone 01—834 4795.

 

 

IT’S EVERYTHING TO DO WITH US

CLOTHES:
Many poor nations could successfully export more textiles, clothes and shoes — so creating more employment and earning more revenue. But rich nations usually find it necessary to restrict this opportunity by imposing import duties or strict quotas on such manufactured items.

COFFEE:
Over 20 million people in the developing world are emploved in producing coffee. Most of these workers are paid less than £2 a week. Most of the coffee they produce is consumed in the rich world.

SUGAR:
is the economic base of several developing nations. But their revenue from sugar has actually fallen over the last ten years. One of the reasons for this is that the European Common Market insists on subsidising its own sugar – even though cane sugar from developing countries is cheaper.

THE COMMON MARKET:
The aid and trade policies of the rich world are vitally important to world development. The enlarged European Common Market is the world’s largest aiding and trading bloc — and decisions taken by the The enlarged European Common Market is the world’s largest aiding and trading bloc – and decisions taken by the EEC and its rich member nations have profound effects on world development.

BANANAS:
Britain alone eats 3S0,000 tons of bananas a year - nearly all from Jamaica and the Windward Islands. Two thirds of the turnover from this trade is in the hands of British companies. The price of bananas has hardly changed in ten years of widespread inflation. The losers are the already poor producers - the Jamaican government is now having to subsidise its banana industry by over £1 million a year.

SHARES:
Rich vorld private investment in the poor world is now running at more than six billion dollars a Pear. Decisions taken by shareholders and their directors in the rich world therefore have enormous influence on the lives, jobs, expectations and environments of’ millions of people in the poor world.

New Internationalist (NI) workers' co-operative exists to report on issues of world poverty and inequality; to focus attention on the unjust relationship between the powerful and the powerless worldwide; to debate and campaign for the radical changes necessary to meet the basic needs of all; and to bring to life the people, the ideas and the action in the fight for global justice.

Except where otherwise noted, images on this site are copyright of the photographer/illustrator or representative agency.
Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.