The socialist candidates say:
Cancel the Third World Debt!

The following statement was issued by the Socialist Workers Party candidates in the upcoming municipal elections: Sam Manuel for mayor of D.C., Mary Martin for delegate to the House, Brian Williams for chairman of the City Council, and Olympia Newton for City Council at-large.

President William Clinton's 11-day, six-nation tour of Africa has been lauded as recognition of the importance of trading with African countries. But the so-called U.S.—Africa Growth and Opportunity Bill is aimed at opening African markets up to more direct exploitation by big business in the U.S. It is also part of Washington's effort to push out its European and Japanese imperialist competitors in Africa. Clinton's proposal contained no provisions for increased aid or relief from Africa's crushing $250 billion debt.

The bill would reduce "high import taxes" on US goods, impose austerity measures on African countries, remove curbs on foreign investors and accelerate privatizing state-owned companies. The last condition would allow for increased ownership by U.S. businesses of central components of the economies of African countries. South African President Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress have rightfully rejected these onerous trade conditions. The South African government has also rejected U.S. efforts to organize an "African peace keeping force" supplied and trained by Washington.

The U.S. legacy in Africa has been one of brutal exploitation—from the African slave trade, to the imperialist re-division of the continent following the second world war, and through its support for colonial rule in the former Portuguese colonies of Guinea Bissau, Angola, and Mozambique and of white minority rule in Rhodesia and South Africa. The devastating social conditions facing working people in Africa is the result of that legacy. The combined Gross Domestic Product of the nations south of the Sahara is equivalent to one-fifth that of France. Half the population of 600 million lives on less than $1 a day; more than half the population has no access to potable water; and more than a third can't get health care.

As part of our international obligation to our sisters and brothers throughout Africa, Asia, and Latin America, working people should demand the abolition of the third world debt! Through this unseemly international loan-sharking operation, wealthy bankers in New York, London, Bonn, Paris, and Tokyo transfer billions in wealth from the third world. What capitalism has in store for the workers and peasants of Africa, Asia, and Latin America can be seen in the banking and currency crisis sweeping Asia. The Indonesian government today is attempting to make workers and peasants pay for the crisis through deepening austerity measures and murderous repression against those who protest.

The U.S. capitalists attempt to present their government as a friend of the African people, while here at home they are stepping up attacks on affirmative action, extending the use of the death penalty, and restricting rights to parole and appeal. These measures fall hardest on working people who are Black, Latino or Asian.