Prometheus 6   

Reopen Dialogue On Consensus
The Post (Lusaka)
August 20, 2003
Lusaka

There's no alternative to regional integration. Chaos rules in our world, both within countries' borders and beyond.

Blind laws are offered up as divine norms that will bring peace, order, well-being and security our planet so badly needs. That is what they would have us believe while three dozen developed and wealthy nations monopolise economic, political and technological power, offering us the same recipes that have only served to make us poorer, more exploited and more dependent.

The poverty and underdevelopment prevailing in most of our nations as well as inequality in the distribution of wealth and knowledge in the world are basically at the source of the present conflicts.

It cannot be forgotten that our current underdevelopment and poverty have resulted from conquest, colonisation, slavery and plunder by the colonial powers and from the emergence of imperialism and the brutal wars motivated by new divisions of the world.

We must be aware of what we have been so far and what we cannot continue to be. There's nothing in the existing economic and political order that can serve our interests. Currently, we have accumulated enough knowledge and ethical values to move toward a new historical era of true justice and humanism.

People frequently talk about the horrors of the holocaust and the genocides that have taken place throughout the last century, but they forget that every year as a result of the current economic order, millions of people starve to death or die of preventable diseases.

They can wield statistics of apparently positive growth, but in the end things in our part of the world remain the same or even worsen. Growth often rests on the accumulation of consumer goods that contribute nothing to true development or to a better distribution of wealth.

The truth is that after several decades of neoliberalism, the rich are becoming increasingly rich while the poor are both more numerous and increasingly poor.

We have meditated a lot on these problems and have come to the conclusion that a high level of unity is required among countries if have to face what appears to be a sombre future with hope.