JCTR Bulletin 52: Who Owes Whom

As the Jubilee-Zambia campaign moves forward to seek “total debt cancellation for poverty eradication,” one of our campaign issues is “reparations.” Are there economic and moral arguments for maintaining that Zambia does not owe Northern creditors but that the reverse is true. Policy Analyst for Jubilee-Zambia, Jack Jones Zulu, offers the economic reasoning and Pastor Choolwe Mwetwa summarises the moral reasoning. Both papers were presented at a Theological Conference sponsored by Jubilee-Zambia in February 2002. (The full Conference report is available from the JCTR office.

To offer an economic argument for the thesis that “Reparations are due to Zambia” requires a good historical sense of how this whole topic of reparations has come about in recent years. It also requires some analytical effort to unpack the various structural elements involved when debt is discussed. This paper offers some tentative arguments along these lines.

To begin with, it is important to get a bit of historical background on the development of the call for reparations. It seems to have three geographical focuses: the United States of America, European countries, and South Africa.

In the United States, there has been a off-again, on-again, call for dealing with the economic and social consequences of that terrible institution, enslavement of the African. How does one compensate for the damage done by two hundred years of growth and development for the whites, borne on the backs of blacks snatched from their homelands in Africa, brought across the sea in horrible conditions, and bound to an animal-like existence working on plantations?

Economists will acknowledge that the industrial prosperity of the northern States in the USA was made possible by the agricultural prosperity of the southern States. But that prosperity was only possible because of the institution of slavery.

Slavery ended in 1854, after a bloody civil war between the North and South in the USA. But legalised and institutionalised racial segregation – apartheid – officially ended only in the 1950’s and 1960’s. The legacy of racism and racial discrimination continues to this day. And the majority of descendants of the slaves live in abject poverty amidst the affluence of the States.

Can USA non-African citizens of today – who have never held slaves and many of whose ancestors came as poor and desperate, albeit free, immigrants to the States -- be made to pay restitution for slavery? Can they be required to sacrifice some of their current prosperity to restore to descendants of the Africans brought to the States as slaves?

This is an extremely heated question that we certainly cannot resolve easily in a brief essay. A recent book by an African-American intellectual and social leader, Randall Robinson, bears the title, Debt: What Do White Americans Owe Black Americans? and argues that a case can and should be made for restitution to be paid by the American community at large for the terrible evil of slavery. As you can imagine, his book has stirred immense controversy on all sides!

Cross the ocean to Europe, and the reparations debate there has recently focused on what is called “holocaust claims.” This is the demand that money should be paid to Jewish families who suffered from Nazi persecutions in the 1930s and 1950s. For example, courts have ordered major German firms to pay Jewish people for enslaving their relatives for work in factories.

This has encouraged claims to be made from South Africa, for Swiss banks to be made to pay reparations for their support of the apartheid regime. Loans were made to the Pretoria government, despite the worldwide sanctions policy to isolate a government committing a serious crime against humanity, the perpetuation of apartheid that was causing such great suffering for the majority of the people. For instance, recent revelations have been made that show Swiss military backing for apartheid’s chemical and biological weapons programme.

Much of the history of racism was focused on during the 2001 United Nations World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance, held in Durban, South Africa. Reparations were called for – one of the highly disputed issues that caused the walkout of the USA and other countries. But despite setbacks, the topic of reparations has come to the fore in very important ways.

Analytical Reasons

With this historical background, I can now ask the question: Can Jubilee-Zambia, in conjunction with other Jubilee movements in the South, demand not only cancellation of the debt, but also reparations for past injustices? This raises the very interesting issue posed this way: “Who owes whom?” Do Northern countries in fact owe a debt to African countries, including Zambia? Why would that be so, how much would it be, and how would it be paid?

Let me just concentrate on the first question – what grounds could be offered for saying that the North owes the South? – because the two other questions would require a much longer paper. Moreover, answers to the questions about how much is owed and how it can be paid back really rest on the foundation of answering the first question. Let me suggest three reasons -- political, economic, ecological – for answering why the North owes the South.

The most precious resource of Africa – human persons -- was robbed by the slave traders, Moslems, European and American. The institution of slavery was established politically in various nations in the North. Indeed, the Constitution of the United States of America, adopted in 1789, protected the slave trade and counted slaves as three-fifths of a person. This crime against humanity was officially sanctioned and, as mentioned earlier, its operation generated considerable benefits to the non-slave population and their descendants.

Because of the political establishment of slavery, a case can be made that not only the descendants of slaves in the USA, for example, should be compensated, but also the continent from which these human persons were robbed. Reparations in the forms of special benefits would restore some of the wealth stolen from Africa.

Once the slave trade had ended, a new form of exploitation of African wealth became institutionalised: colonialism. The European powers who sat around a table in Berlin in 1885 and carved up the continent among themselves did not have the interests of the African people as their prime motivation. Rather it was economic greed, chasing after the mineral and agricultural riches of Africa. Imposition of colonial rule by military might was more harsh in some places than others, but in every place it was grossly unjust and it enabled the theft of great resources.

Because of the economic benefits that flowed out of Africa to the colonial masters in Europe, a case can be made that the African countries which today suffer from such great poverty (true, not all of it externally caused, but at least a very substantial portion of it) should be recompensed. “Debt Tribunals” such as the recent one in Porto Alegre, Brazil, which I attended (part of the World Social Forum), make this point very clearly.

A recently identified reason for demanding reparations is the so-called “ecological debt.” This is the deeply disturbing fact that global warming – precipitated by carbon dioxide emissions primarily emanating from Northern industrialised countries – is wreaking havoc in poor Southern countries. Harmful climatic changes ranging from droughts to floods are causing immense suffering. In just the past few years, in Africa we have had disastrous floods (Mozambique) and devastating droughts in the Horn of Africa.

Because the industrialised Northern countries have continued pumping poisons into the atmosphere, a case can be made that the non-industrialised African countries which suffer great environmental hardships should receive reparations. Put simply and bluntly, some recompense is due for the fact that Northerners driving fancy motor vehicles are responsible for Southerners suffering hunger because of crop failure.

These three reasons – political, economic and ecological – for calling for reparations to be paid to Zambia and other African countries have been developed here in only a very sketchy fashion. Certainly much more work needs to be done by Jubilee-Zambia to establish this side of our case. But I hope that it is sufficient to give you an introductory picture, and a framework for receiving the perspective of a biblical basis for calling for reparations, the perspective to be offered by Pastor Mwetwa.