There is quite good momentum now on fighting the legacy of the "odious" apartheid debt ($50 bn domestic, $18 bn int'l), and it's led to extremely important if partial Left victories in the debates between COSATU and the ANC Right. Some of these struggles are over mundane issues such as should the state pension funds be pay-as-you-go (then we could forgive the apartheid debt the state owes itself) versus fully-funded (the neolib/Feldstein line). But others have international components, and in addition to one day soon asking US comrades to join in another round of pickets at Citicorp and Chase, the movement is working closely with radical German churchfolk to bring the debt forgiveness campaign to the Frankfurt banks. Meetings are happening more and more frequently, and a terrific "Jubilee 2000" launch was held last weekend in Cape Town with extremely good social movement and church buy-in. Read all about it at http:\\www.aidc.org, the page of the lead NGO debt strategists, the Alternative Information and Development Centre.
> From: sawicky at epinet.org (Max Sawicky)
> > pressure on specific German/French banks? If the survivors of the
> > Holocaust could lobby and win $1 billion from the Zurich gnomes, mightn't
> > a media-savvy strategy of turning the spotlight on the creditors -- with a
> > little insider assistance from the EU Left Governments, of course -- be
> > one way of fighting back? What capital has done to Africa surely qualifies
> > as a holocaust in its own right.
> Switzerland is a major obstacle to rational financial
> and tax governance, what with its bank secrecy laws.
> It should be invaded and taken over by the EU, run
> by arrogant French colonial governors, and have all
> its cheese confiscated.