Monday, December 24, 2007

Mbeki & D. Thompson call for diaspora-Africa Connection

There is an urgent need for greater co-operation
between Africa and its compatriots in foreign
countries, President Thabo Mbeki said on Friday.

“This is particularly so with all of us on the
continent so that we respond successfully to such
challenges as the attainment of peace and stability,”
he told the opening of the African Diaspora
Ministerial Conference in Midrand.

He said while Africans of the diaspora—in the
Americas, the Caribbean, the United Kingdom and France
-- had made “huge contributions” to freedom struggles,
countries on the African continent had not
reciprocated.

Mbeki said the rich countries of the world currently
used global dialogue as an opportunity to dictate
terms to the rest of humanity.

Turning to communication, Mbeki said previous
discussions had strongly emphasised the need for
satellite and fibre-optic cable networks in Africa.

Struggling to make himself heard above the rain, Mbeki
said the 9 900km-long submarine table between Durban
and Port Sudan would cut telecommunication costs in
Africa and be operational by the end of 2008.

He said the African Development Bank had made
$1,6-billion available to improve infrastructure in
Africa, particularly in the rail, road and energy
sectors.

This was in addition to the 33 different projects
under Nepad that the bank has already financed to the
tune of $800-million.

“If we are able to work together with the Africans in
the diaspora, utilising the skills and expertise that
many of them have, many of these programmes and
projects will be implemented faster and more
efficiently.”

In an impassioned speech, Ambassador Dudley Thompson
-– introduced as a Caribbean Pan-Africanist—spoke
out against African’s disempowerment, the excesses of
spending in the Western world and six centuries of
“white male capitalistic hegemony”.

He railed against $23 000 toilets and a recent bequest
of $12-million the “Queen of Mean” Leona Helmsley left
to one of her pampered pooches—symptoms of the
“cruel, stark imbalance of the world order”.

Helmsley, who died in 2007, was a billionaire New York
City hotel operator and real estate investor.

Thompson said two million black babies died each year
from preventable causes.

“We find ourselves at the bottom of the totem pole
economically, militarily, culturally ...”

Thompson said black people had been made to believe
they descended from an inferior slave race. Slavery,
he said, had in fact been an interruption of black
people’s history.

“Let us begin to write our own history at this
conference.”

He called for the philosophy of Pan-Africanism—a
global movement dedicated to black empowerment—to
be the “glue that binds us together”.

During his speech, AU commission chairperson Professor
Oumar Konare turned from the podium to face Mbeki and,
speaking in French, said there was an “urgent need to
help our brothers in Zimbabwe to solve their
problems”.

He called for strategic partnerships between African
countries which would help advance the development of
infrastructure.

Konare also called for the creation of the United
States of Africa and an AU passport. - Sapa

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