unitex@rubbs.fidonet.org (unitex) (09/12/89)
system of apartheid, Mr. Von Roon asked, in turn, if there was
evidence of nuclear co-operation. The ICC had not the slightest
information on any such co-operation.
He said the political environment in South Africa was such that
all had to take a stand. The ICC had a long standing record
against apartheid; it was working for black empowerment in all
respects, including employment and housing conditions.
Asked if any transnational corporation in South Africa was
prepared to act against recent anti-union laws enacted by South
Africa, Mr. Von Roon said the ICC was strongly opposed to any
constraint imposed on unions.
He was asked to comment on the setting of political conditions
for the renegotiation of South African loans; he said it would
be difficult to combine political conditions with hard banking
facts.
RUDOLPH GRUBER, Director of the South Africa Foundation of the
Federal Republic of Germany, said apartheid was politically
unacceptable, economically unworkable and socially unjust.
Apartheid was a dying institution. The decisive element in its
demise was likely to be demography.
He said black urban dwellers would increase from 11 million to 27
million by the end of the century. The population of Cape Town
alone had doubled over the past six years.
Even if the whites wished to maintain their powers and privileges
by force, they would be unable to do so, given such population
growth and urban shifts.
A black-led government was an historic unevitability. Given this
fact, the question of disinvestment and related actions acquired
different dimensions. A new black-led Government may not be
able to cope.
He said the shortfall in black housing was already such that some
2 million units would need to be built by the year 2000 in order
both to eliminate the backlog and cater for the natural increase
in demand. This represented a construction rate of 3,000 new
homes for every week until the end of the century. In l986, the
last year for which reliable figures are available, the public
and private sectors together managed to complete 500 new units
each week.
The backlog of classrooms in schools in l987 already totalled
43,131, he continued. With the enrolment of black school
children alone rising by some 300,000 per annum, there was no
way by which this shortfall could be reduced. Merely to cope
with the natural increase would require the completion of 30 new
classrooms - or a school large enough to house 1,200 pupils - on
every working day of the year. Such was the dimension of the
problem, that the entire national budget would not suffice to
put matters right, if it were spent on nothing else until the
end of the century.
As a developing country whose domestic savings were insufficient
to meet its investment needs and whose economic growth was thus
dependent upon its capacity to borrow capital, hire skills and
acquire technology from elsewhere, South Africa needed access to
such sources of supply if it was to progress to the point of
self-sustaining growth, he said. By making it a net exporter of
capital and skills, the international sanctions campaign had
caused South Africa to consume its own seed-corn, and thereby
reduce the capacity of a future black-led Government to contain,
let alone overcome, the problems of housing, education, health
care and job creation that would beset it.
Transnational corporations were not the major players in the
South African economy, but their international connections,
especially their ready access to investment capital, management
skills and hi-tech, made them an important innovative and
locomotive force. If they were obliged to disinvest for
political reasons, they would not readily return later unless
business prospects were particularly good. Since this was
unlikely to be the case in a post-apartheid society for the
reasons he had stated, their departure was almost certain to be
irreversible. This was the case in Zimbabwe after independence,
and could be relied upon to repeat itself in South Africa.
Disinvestment might shorten the life of the old order, but this
would be marginal at best. It would unquestionably weaken the
prospects of the new order, whose coming was not in doubt but
whose survival and success very much were. The real victims of
disengagement and disinvestment, in short, were those very
people for whose liberation from deprivation and discrimination
such steps were purportedly being taken.
* Origin: UNITEX --> Toward a United Species (1:107/501)
---
Patt Haring | UNITEX : United Nations
patth@sci.ccny.cuny.edu | Information
patth@ccnysci.BITNET | Transfer Exchange
-=- Every child smiles in the same language. -=-