At least since the aggravation of the financial, economic, food and
climate crisis it should have become clear that it is no longer
sufficient to only stick with the repair work. A fundamental realignment
of the current economic system, a retrieval of the political
self-assertion and accountability on all levels as well as the
enforcement on the primacy of ecology are inevitable.
Current
negotiations on the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) and the Doha
Round have to be judged considering the new context characterised by
crisis. The economic and moral system underlying this framework has long
been outdated. It is this framework that has caused those crises and
led to a continuing suffering of poor people all over the world. To
still stick to a technocratic improvement of the WTO structure and its
Economic Partnership Agreements means to miss the signs of times. To the
extent that these frameworks require a further market opening and
liberalization at the expense of the poor and the environment, they aim
to preserve the failed market fundamentalism and with that, the existing
asymmetry of relative strength within economic relations.
Struggling
for an improvement of some single EPA clauses seems to be an occupation
of luxury and a relief from the agenda of liberating oneself from old
dependences, which ACP countries in general and countries from Southern
Africa in particular no longer can afford. The now inevitable challenge
is the transformation of the logic of the relations between the EU and
its former colonies. The technocratic attempt alleviates the claim for
new relations on an equal footing.
It is necessary to develop a
political agenda, which addresses the imperialistic character of the
whole WTO and EPA agenda and at the same time mobilises those powers
from Europe and the ACP countries working on the enforcement of
alternatives. Within this context, the mobilisation of a counter-force
against the current economic model seems to be of the highest priority.
Only by that, an autonomous and human economic policy coming from the
basis can emerge in Southern Africa and other places.
