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ADDRESSING
THE UNITED NATIONS Excerpt
from a speech by H. E. Yoweri K. Museveni My
Christian name is Joel, a Jewish name. Many of my
Countrymen have got Arab names like Aziz, Musa. We
were globalized long ago. Unfortunately, though,
that "globalization" movement was parasitic; it was
not symbiotic. Therefore, the only new question we
can legitimately and usefully ask is: Will the new
phase of globalization be less parasitic and more
symbiotic or not? The parasitism in the World is
not the sole responsibility of those who benefit
from the inequality. Even the victims have always
contributed to their marginalization by their own
wrong aims and methods before Colonization, during
colonization and, even, after colonization. African
myopic chiefs were the main facilitators of the
slave trade. Until very recently, the Europeans did
not possess the technological means to subdue the
African Continent as far as transport means
(railway), weapons or medicine (Quinine) were
concerned. Without the fratricidal wars fomented by
the African chiefs, neither slave trade nor
colonialism would have been possible. We would have
defeated the Colonialists and forced them, right
from the beginning, to co-operate with us for
everybody's mutual benefit. Weakness on the side of
the potential v"Atim always tempts the
aggressor. Even today,
however, the authorship of the inequality among
peoples is still a joint responsibility of the
victims (Africans, Arabs and other marginalized
peoples) of the parasitic globalization movement
that is now 500 years old on the one hand, and the
beneficiaries of this, hitherto, unequal and, in
the past, evil movement on the other. The
beneficiaries of the hitherto parasitic
globalization Movement have been the North
Americans, the Europeans and the Japanese. On
account of a variety of reasons, some of the
formally colonized peoples (the Indians, the
Indonesians, the Pakistanis, the South East Asians
and Latin Americans) and the formerly
semi-colonized peoples (such as the Chinese) have
made significant upward movements that are helping
to slowly, but surely, even-out the balance of
power in the World. Some of the other peoples,
however, on account of a number of endogenous and
exogenous factors are still living as the wretched
of the Earth. Many of the Africans and some of the
Arabs fall into this category of the still
unredeemed of the Earth. As I have said, the
unredeemed are still so categorized partly on
account of their own intemal mistakes
(sectarianism, xenophobia, unprincipled conilicts,
strangulation of free enterprise , political
balkanization of their regions, strangulation of
political freedom, etc) and, partly; on account of
the still very unfavourable exogenous
factors. The most
unfavourable exogenous factor is lack of access to
markets in North America, EU, Japan, China, India
and Russia. TRADE The song about Aid is meaningless
without access to markets. All protectionism,
especially in the OECD countries, must end.
Subsidies to farmers of Europe must end if we are
talking of a "global village" of symbiosis and not
parasitism. I commend the American Government and
the President, George Bush, for the AGOA (African
Growth and Opportunity Act) initiative. Although
Uganda has not yet benefitted from AGOA on account
of our endogenous weaknesses accentuated by the
blurred views of our multi-lateral institutions
partners; other African countries have started
benefitting. Kenya, Madagascar, Lesotho and
Nigeria. This is good. The Americans are, at last,
beginning to address their image as non-parasitic
global villagers. The Europeans must catch up with
the Americans in rubbing off this uncomplimentary
label. Although they have talked about "everything
but guns" going finto Europe from Africa, they are
still giving subsidies to artificial farmers in
Europe. This
distorts the trade in agricultural products. As a
consequence, out of US$ 1.2 trillion that is the
value of the global trade in agricultural products,
Africa gets only about US$ 20 billion (if you
include the results of AGOA recently) which is
about 2% of the total! ! At the same time, the OECD
countries are spending US$ 361 billion subsidizing
artificial farmers of these countries. Yet these
are the countries that evangelize in the name of
free trade! ! What a paradox that is quite
unfortunate. These double standards must end.
Africa has now removed some of the old impediments
(endogenous factors) to private investment. The
sanctity of private property is now almost a
universal concept in Africa (nationalization is no
more); some of the African countries have got a
consistently stable macro-economic framework
(inflation in Uganda is now - 0.3%); the African
currencies are now convertible; a large part of
¿Ðrica is very peaceful; infrastructure is
reasonable; and democracy is widely practiced in
Africa today. We are even addressing the issue of
excessive balkanization of the continent (with 53
states compared to 3 in North America) in a variety
of ways, including economic blocs like SADC, COMESA
and ECOWAS. The World, therefore, needs to
encourage these positive trends in Africa by
opening up their markets on a quota free,
tariff-free basis. This will, ipso facto, force the
multi-national investors to rush to Africa to
invest there. They are already doing so on account
of AGOA. With more civilized aims and methods,
balanced world development is possible and
desirable for everybody, including the OECD
citizens who are forced to eat inferior foods and
are taxed to protect those poor quality foods
against better foods from Africa. Whenever I
travel abroad, I pack my own Ugandan foods ( milk,
millet-flour, fruits, legumes, chicken, honey and
plantain bananas (matooke),. The other day my
pineapple stocks ran out and my staff bought
pineapples from a super market in UK. I just took
one slice and terminated the whole exercise at
once. First of all, the pineapple is hard; it is
less sweet; and has got an ammonia like pungent
taste. I had had the same experience in Washington.
Why must the citizens of the world endure these
deprivations on account of policies designed to
serve narrow interests? I will not eat pineapple
again until l go back to Uganda. TERRORISM The
oppressors, the colonialists and these who sought
to control the destiny of others, used barbaric
methods:- genocide, forced labour, ethnocide, etc.
It is amazing, therefore, that some of these who
claim to be fighting for the liberation of the
oppressod peoples also use barbaric means such as
terrorism. In the on-going debate about terrorism I
have not heard anybody bothering to define the
difference between a freedom fighter and a
terrorista Mzee Nelson Mandela has been a freedom
fighter until recently. Was he a terrorist? Not at
all. The
difference lies in the fact that, while a freedom
fighter, sometimes, may be forced to use violence,
he cannot use indiscriminate violence. The one who
uses indiscriminate violence is a terrorist. A
terrorist does not differentiate between combatants
and.non-combatants; between civilians and
servicemen; between armed servicemen and unarmed
servicemen. He fights a war without declaring one.
That is why the terrorisms hijack planes, plant
bombs in populated centres, etc. In Africa, since
1961, we fought wars of liberation in Mozambique,
Angola; Guinea-Bissau, Zimbabwe, South Africa,
Namibia, Uganda against Idi Amin, etc. We, however,
never used terrorism. We were always fighting
combatant to combatant. Quite a number of times our
comrades were using mass action - strikes,
demonstrations, petitions, diplomatic struggle,
etc. Not a single plane was hijacked by African
freedom fighters although there viere anti-colonial
wars in all there countries. The actions
by terrorists are misguided, criminal and must be
opposed by all as a matter of principle. Africa was
beginning to benefit from AGOA. Business has,
however, now somewhat slumped in America.
Therefore, the terrorists, who claim to be fighting
for the Palestinian cause, are objectively hurting
the interests of Africa who have always been the
allies of the Palestinians. This is
counter-productive. The terrorists try to polarize
the World on a wrong basis: Moslems Vs Christians,
etc. This is unacceptable. Exploitation does not
know the boundary of race or refgion. Exploiters
are found in all religions or races. The Arabs had
to oppose Turkish imperialism. Yet both the Arabs
and the Turks viere Moslems. One of the monsters of
the last Century, Idi Amin, was a Moslem. We had to
get rid of him to liberate everybody, including the
Moslems. War has been going on in the Sudan for
decades. Elements that have been claiming to act in
the name of Islam have been the ones taking a wrong
position in this conflict - a position of seeking
hegemony among the people of God. I, therefore,
this time, support the position of USA as we did in
the Gulf-War in fighting and defeating these
reactionaries profaning the name of freedom
fighters. If necessary, all countries of the World,
opposed to terrorism, should contribute troops and
finish his job quickly. The
coalition against terrorism should be regarded in
the same way as the coalition against fascism in
the 1930s and 1940s. Nevertheless, the just
aspirations of the Palestinian peoples and of other
oppressed peoples like the people of Southern Sudan
must be supported so that we get peaceful
resolutions of these conflicts. I salute freedom
and equality of all peoples of the World. Anybody
with ambitions to dominate other human beings or
exploit them has got illegitimate ambitions. We now
have the chance to build a just World. Apart from
ensuring the freewill of all peoples, the most
important instrument of emancipation is free trade,
giving quota-free, tariff free access of African
goods to the markets of the OECD Countries and vice
versa. Africa is beginning to tame its conflicts.
The conflict in Lesotho was resolved by an African
mechanism. Recently, the Arusha Accord ended the
conflict in Burundi: It is possible to resolve our
age-old problems and, finally, become part of the
"New World Order" and not just be spectators of the
process. I thank you. |
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Mr.
President Your Excellencies Secretary General
Ladies and Gentlemen GLOBALIZATION There is a lot
of talk floating around regarding the "New
International Order", "globalization," the "Global
Village" etc. All these ebullient self-gratifying
positions are, apparently, due to the end of the
Cold War between Western Countries and the former
Soviet Union. Of course, the end of the dangerous
and misguided rivalry between Communism and
Capitalism is welcome and has, indeed, opened some
new opportunities if fully utilised by all
concerned. However, it must be pointed out
unequivocally that many of the problems in the
World predate the Cold War; they predate the onset
of Communism in Russia in 1917. Slave trade started
in the 1440s along the West African Coast. A shift
from bleeding Africa through slavery to resident
colonialism was ordained in Berlin in 1884. This
was long before Commumism took over in Russia.
Therefore, the Cold War could not Nave been
responsible for these mistakes and for the
complications they created, many of which we are
still grappling with up to today, especially in
Africa. Therefore, the euphoria is not wholly
justified. The song about Globalization, as I Nave
pointed out repeatedly, is not a new tune at all.
Since the 1440s, the Africans were globalized as
slaves all over all over the World.