Global Policy Forum

By Jon Jeter

At the U.N. summit on development and environment here this week, several international trade unionists were explaining why they are pushing the United States and Europe to reduce farm subsidies, which they argue inhibit agricultural exports by poor countries. Then a man stood up and directed a question that was closer to home to one of the panelists, Zwelinzima Vavi, head of the Congress of South African Trade Unions.

What were the unions doing about the abuse of South African workers in foreign-owned sweatshops?

Vavi reassured the man that unions are pressuring conference delegates and the South African government to protect workers. "It will be a very sad day if the summit doesn't move very far from these kinds of policies that we see here on the ground in South Africa," Vavi said. Occupying center stage at the gathering, known officially as the World Summit on Sustainable Development, is the host country. Many delegates and conferees say it is a microcosm of the challenges confronting the nearly 200 nations present as they try over the next week to negotiate pacts on subjects as diverse as clean water and free trade.

For the United States and other industrialized countries of the Northern Hemisphere, South Africa is a showcase for the brand of good governance and free-market policies that they contend will ultimately deliver prosperity, development and clean air and water to the countries of the undeveloped South. But to many poor countries and anti-globalization activists here, South Africa is the best example of a country that has followed the rules of globalization's playbook, but still has little to show for it.

"So much of the anti-globalization movement is informed and inspired by what we've seen happen here over the past eight years in terms of the growing inequality and poverty," said Tewolde Egziabher, director of Ethiopia's Institute for Sustainable Development. "And so much of what the U.S. and Europe want to promote to the rest of the world can be found here as well. This is really the beachhead for the two movements."

Since 1994, when it held its first election open to all races, South Africa has slashed tariffs on many imports, cut taxes, kept a lid on social spending and inflation, reduced the public workforce and began selling off state-owned utilities like water, electricity and telephone services to investors.

"We believe," said a senior U.S. official here, "that South Africa has definitely taken very positive steps toward alleviating poverty." But the measures so far have produced only a trickle of new investment, and the economy has shed at least 500,000 jobs since 1994. The poorest South Africans are poorer now than they were before the end of white-minority rule eight years ago.

A massive demonstration by anti-poverty activists, South Africa's Landless People's Movement and the Anti-Privatization Forum, is planned for this weekend in the Johannesburg suburb where conference delegates are gathering in a state-of-the-art convention center. "I was shocked to discover that poor people in South Africa are now having their water and electricity cut off," said Tony Clarke, director of the Polaris Institute in Canada, referring to disconnections resulting from the government's privatization efforts, "and that not even the [white-minority] apartheid government did that."

Alec Erwin, minister of South Africa's Department of Trade and Industry, said that the fiscal measures adopted by the country put it on the path to economic growth. "The structural changes within the South African economy have made it a highly competitive trading environment," Erwin said. "But we do not argue that what was right for us is right for every country. It's not some magic blueprint."

Mark Malloch Brown, head of the U.N. Development Program, said that the debate over South Africa is emblematic of a growing divide between the North and the South more than a decade after the end of the Cold War. "You're going to see more and more poor countries saying to the rich countries: 'Okay, we've played by your rules. When do we start to see the payoff?' "

Organizers say the 10-day summit, which began here Monday, is the largest U.N. gathering ever, with as many as 50,000 people expected to attend. Delegates are haggling over issues of trade, health, energy, agriculture, water and biodiversity and will give policy proposals to heads of state next week. The results will not be legally binding.

The conference's first breakthrough occurred Tuesday when delegates agreed to protect the oceans and restore depleted fish stocks, "where possible," by 2015.

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