[NYTr] Senegalese leftists chastise French President Sarkozy

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

Workers World - Aug 16, 2007 issue
http://www.workers.org/2007/world/senegal-0816/

Senegalese leftists chastise French President Sarkozy

[French President Nicolas Sarkozy, the rightist former interior
minister, is known for his rhetoric and actions insulting the suburban
poor and workers of North African and sub-Saharan African origin and
for his willingness to ally French foreign policy with that of U.S.
President George Bush. The following are excerpts from a statement by
the Political Secretariat of the Union of African Workers—Senegal
(RTA-S), which met on July 28 to examine, among other questions, the
national political situation marked by the visit of Sarkozy to Senegal,
including his patronizing speech directed toward all Africans given at
the University of Dakar.]

Translation from French by John Catalinotto, Workers World

On the visit of Sarkozy

At the time of his official visit to Senegal, the president of the
French Republic, Nicolas Sarkozy, lectured the people of Africa to give
them a political and moral lesson encompassed by his vision of the
history of slavery and colonization.

What Sarkozy is unaware of or acts as if he is unaware of is that the
misery endured by Africans, whose countries abound in enormous riches,
is caused mainly by the economic plundering that those rich African
countries undergo by Western countries like France.

[The water, cement, lottery and railroad companies, which had been
nationalized, have all been sold to French monopolies in the past eight
years.]

The foreign commercial banks are for the most part subsidiaries of the
major French Banks: SGBS, BICIS, Crédit Lyonnais, etc. These banks
monopolize the savings of the Senegaleses: 2,500 billion Francs CFA per
year, ($4.8 billion) according to certain estimates.

Our foreign trade is restricted by the agreements set in place since
colonization and which also created the CFA Franc, a currency of the
local countries guaranteed by the Bank of France, where the currencies
of the African countries are deposited directly. In this type of
agreement, France controls 65 percent of the assets of the African
countries.

For example, in 2004, on a total 2,336 billion Francs CFA, that is,
$4.7 billion, in Senegal’s current external account, France holds 1,538
billion CFA ($3.1 billion), leaving our country with only 798 billion
CFA ($1.7 billion).

The civil wars and other instances of genocide (Rwanda) are often
caused by the force of money that feeds and arms the rebellions that
then take on their own life. The case of Chad is still very fresh. The
case of Darfur.

That is how in an appalling way our economy is systematically
plundered. That is how France grows rich on the backs of the African
countries and plays a role in the manufacture of poverty on our soil in
complicity with our governments, which also take part in the plunder by
diverting public monies and transferring them to foreign bank accounts
in France, Switzerland, the USA, etc.

To help the African countries to rise above underdevelopment would mean
breaking with this system of revenue, with this plundering. It means
ending the protection of the African governments guilty of corrupt
practices and the diversion of the riches transferred to the Western
banks.

Sarkozy is really far away from being in a position to give lessons on
ethics and good governance; he is known for his years of waging a war
on all fronts against what he called “the rabble” and “the Blacks” and
those “undocumented” abused and “shipped home.”

Sarkozy is equally far from being able to give lessons of good
knowledge about our history when France, under the various governments
which followed one after the other, remained indifferent to the most
legitimate and just claim, that of African veterans who are victims of
discrimination beyond belief compared to French veterans, with the
freezing of the pensions of the former.

Let us recall for memory’s sake that the infrastructures built by the
colonizer had for their objective the systematically organized
plundering of the resources of Africa for eternity, not for Africa’s
development.

RTA-S denounces this speech of Sarkozy, which constitutes a true
provocation of the people of Africa and their youth. RTA-S rejects its
lessons of another era, the colonialist era, made with condescension
and full of hypocrisy.


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