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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the June 5, 1997
issue of Workers World newspaper
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The U.S. grand plan for Africa

Profit-hungry vultures swarm in

By Monica Moorehead

Why has the U.S. government taken such a keen interest in events in the Democratic Republic of Congo, formerly Zaire, that have led to the fall of Mobutu Sese Seko? Is it merely to consolidate a relationship with Laurent Kabila, the self-proclaimed president of Congo? Or is there a more ulterior motive?

It is true that the U.S. wants to change the political landscape of Congo following the ouster of Mobutu, the hated dictator who originally was put in by the CIA. The U.S. has told Kabila it wants him to hold "democratic" elections very soon. If he does not agree to their terms, Washington will immediately cut off $10 million in aid.

The U.S. has also told Kabila he should appoint as his prime minister Etienne Tshisekedi, a businessman and leader of the parliamentary opposition to Mobutu. Up until now, Kabila has stated he will not have a prime minister in his cabinet. Protests are taking place in different parts of Congo for and against the new regime.

The big business press has also begun giving more prominence to reports that the U.S. played a major role in financing the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo, made up mostly of military forces from Rwanda, Uganda and other countries, that helped bring Kabila to power.

U.S. imperialist interests in Congo go much deeper than concern for changing political structures. They have, in fact, outlined a diabolical scheme for the entire African continent.

The U.S. has been trying to outmaneuver its European imperialist rivals, especially France, to gain greater hegemony in Africa. But in the last few years, U.S. aggressive moves have left the former colonial powers lingering in the dust.

What exactly are its objectives? To thrust upon the mineral-rich African continent what they call "tough economic reforms" that they promise will transform Africa into an economic "miracle" similar to Singapore, Indonesia, Taiwan and other parts of Asia. They envision economic trade zones where super-profits can be reaped from intensive sweatshop labor.

The U.S. has been organizing trips and forums to encourage private investment and trade in Africa.

Deputy Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers is going to Africa at the end of May to attend a meeting of the African Development Bank and to visit war-torn Mozambique and South Africa. According to a Reuters report, Summers explained the purpose of the trip this way: "We are interested in trying to help economic development proceed in Africa. It's clearly the last great development challenge. ... We are trying in essence to create a club of reformers that get special attention."

The Clinton administration is put ting pressure on the African Development Bank (ADB) to participate in an initiative headed up by the World Bank to "encourage" countries to carry out economic reforms that will facilitate foreign investment. If African countries are willing to go along with such a program, the banks promise to write off some of their loans.

Accounting trick

What this really amounts to is an accounting trick. The banks will then make new loans which will have to be used for purposes approved by the lenders-like opening up new areas for exploitation.

It has been estimated that, after billions in wealth have been extracted from Africa by the imperialists, African countries are now in debt to international financial institutions to the tune of $900 million, and that Congo owes over half that amount. This is the lever the U.S. hopes to use to get austerity measures and the privatization of state-owned industries, especially the mines.

The labor power and resources of the workers and peasants would be enslaved to the imperialist banks. To pay back the loans, more goods and services produced in Africa would have to be exported while the indigenous masses continue to suffer.

The Clinton administration has also initiated the

"Partnership for Promoting Economic Growth and Opportunity in Africa." Its purpose is to expand the "free market," that is, capitalist penetration. This plan is being supported by Democrats and Republicans. The word "opportunity" here means eliminating tariffs and other trade barriers erected to protect local producers. Goods and agricultural products from the U.S. could flood African countries and destroy their local economies-similar to the effect of NAFTA in Mexico.

U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky told the House Ways and Means Committee on April 29: "In an increasingly competitive global economy, the United States cannot afford to neglect a largely untapped market of some 600 million-plus people, and the world cannot afford to see a vast region marginalized. The lowering of tariffs and other trade barriers will help African nations to grow. This will also help Americans by opening these markets to our goods and services."

This past March, a forum was called by the Ninetieth American Assembly called "Africa and U.S. National Interests." Representatives from business, government, international financial institutions, the military, academia and others gathered in New York to discuss strategies to deepen capitalist development in Africa.

This meeting was a who's who of the capitalist establishment. There was James W. Adams, Country Director for Tanzania and Uganda for the World Bank; General James L. Jamerson, Deputy Commander-in-Chief, Headquarters U.S. Euro pean Command, Stutt gart, Germany; Timothy J. Bork, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; Christopher Darlington, Officer for Africa, Central Intelligence Agency; Jennifer Davis, The Africa Fund; Roger Ervin, African Development Bank, and others.

The three-day meeting was co-chaired by former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Donald F. McHenry, former Congressman Howard Wolpe, special envoy to the Burundi "peace" negotiations, and David C. Miller, Jr., president of the Corporate Council on Africa.

Part of the final report of this conference reads: "We are now in a position to seize the opportunities provided by the emergence of new, democratically-elected leadership committed to market economies [and] the privatization of inefficient state industries. ... With the United States increasingly dependent for its own economic well-being on the expansion of world trade, the potential for significant growth in African export markets merits aggressive American economic engagement with the continent."

With no Soviet Union to act as a buffer, U.S. banks are like vultures flocking to the African continent as if it were the "spoils" for the taking. Nothing stands in the way of their plan to turn this rich continent into their private neocolonial playground, similar to how they are treating eastern Europe and Asia.

These same greedy monopolies and banks are downsizing workers in the U.S. out of their jobs and benefits and throwing people off welfare into slave labor jobs. They view the masses in Africa and the masses here as the same-mere appendages to their system of wage slavery.

There is only one answer to capitalist greed and that is socialist construction. There have been many heroic efforts to build socialism out of the conditions of colonialism, from Angola to Mozambique to Ethiopia. These have been thwarted by devastating wars and economic sabotage led by the U.S.

It is incumbent upon the working class movements in the U.S. and the West to fight capitalism and imperialism for a system that will put human needs first. This is the kind of anti-imperialist solidarity our sisters and brothers in Africa, as well as Latin America, Asia and the Caribbean, will appreciate and that will the lay the basis for international proletarian solidarity.

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