As we begin what many are calling "the real millennium" I hope and pray that we do so with a sense of new beginnings and new purpose. Globalisation is a reality and the knowledge-driven economy is upon us.

Meanwhile Africa - which is being strangled by international financial systems and a burden of unjust debt - is growing increasingly impatient not for economic justice and I believe it is imperative that the problem is addressed from a global perspective and within the parameters of a fast changing world economy.

It is a crucial matter that requires our urgent attention, especially in light of our interdependence. An event in one part of the globe has a domino effect on the rest of the world. The way we respond to ethical and moral imperatives posed by globalisation will determine to a very large extent the kind of future we fashion for ourselves, our children and our children's children.

The United Nations reports that the average African household today consumes 20% less than it did 25 years ago.

It may surprise many to learn that even in wealthy South Africa, per capita Gross Domestic Product has fallen over that same period, plunging the country to the same level it was at in 1962, yet with far worse inequality than even at the very zenith of apartheid.

One of the greatest challenges facing humanity in the new millennium is the creation of a world with a human face.

Today we live with incredible technological advances and we have in ourselves the ability to overcome the injustices and inequalities of our world, but we face greater injustices, gross inequalities and millions of people living in abject poverty.

Recent figures released by the British government reveal that some 1.3 billion people continue to live in extreme poverty, on less than the equivalent of one dollar a day. Most of these people live in developing countries, about 70 percent whom are women.

The same study reveals that more than 800 million people in the world are hungry, and the number may well exceed one billion by the year 2020. Many more are malnourished.

The world's population of underweight children below five years of age is expected to reach 200 million in the same year, with most of the deterioration in Africa. Every year eight million children die of diseases linked to poverty, 50 million children are mentally or physically damaged because of poor nutrition, and 130 million children - 80 percent of them girls - are denied the opportunity to go to school.

Several years ago I was privileged to be one of the Commissioners of the National Poverty Hearings - an initiative of the South African NGOs, the Human Rights Commission and the Commission on Gender Equality. We heard up to 16 oral submissions each day of the hearings over several weeks. During these hearings I came into contact with the many faces of poverty that are found so often on women, children, the elderly and the disabled.

For poverty is a not just about low income. It is about loss of dignity. It is about being treated as nothing. It is about lack of access to basic needs.

Listening to people's stories of survival amidst squalor and deprivation gave me a sense of the resilience of the human spirit. Like the boy of 12 who looked after his seven-year-old brother. They had no home and nothing to eat and they used dogs to sniff out food in a rubbish dump.

That young boy, and others we heard spoke with the same voice: " We do not want charity. We have brains. We have hands - give us the skills. Give us the resources - give us the capacity to work out our own existence in order that we may have a fully human life."

In Africa, malaria and TB kill as many as 4.5 million people a year, but the world's pharmaceutical giants do not spend much on research and development for these diseases because there is no profit in it.

The fact is poor people cannot pay for drugs. The implications of this approach are even more horrific when we consider the AIDS pandemic.

All this in a world in which the three richest people in the world have assets that exceed the gross domestic product of the 48 least developed countries and their 600 million people.

It is a fact that 26 countries in the world have a Gross Domestic Product greater than the total revenue of General Motors.

We are all familiar with the UNDP's Human Development Index and the "Champagne Glass Graph", which shows that the top 20 percent of humanity now captures 80 percent of all wealth, while the bottom 20 percent has seen its already meagre portion of this wealth reduced to just 1.3 percent.

It is a world in which Americans spend more than eight billion dollars a year on cosmetics - two billion dollars more than the estimated annual total needed to provide basic education for everyone in the world.

In 1996, Ethiopia had a total foreign debt of 10 billion dollars, whilst in the same year Europe spent 11 billion dollars on ice cream alone.

Clem Sunter, the economist, author and futurist, tells us that, despite all the poverty statistics, we live in a world permanently in surplus. Our lives are ruled by the economics of surplus, not by the economics of scarcity.

This is a total contradiction of predictions that there wouldn't be sufficient food to feed an over populated world. Today we have a surplus of just about any commodity including cotton, oil, gold, steel, copper, nickel, aluminium and coal. Even if the entire production capacity of North American cars were wiped out overnight, there would still be a surplus capacity. Thirty-four thousand children die daily from malnutrition in a world that could feed more than its current population.

It may come as a surprise to you that poor people are not poor because of the scarcity of resources and products. They are poor because they are denied the opportunity to make money for themselves.

It is this that brings us to the crux of the matter - the crippling effect of debt on developing countries. But it is important to understand that this is not primarily a financial problem. Although counted in dollars, the burden of foreign debt is a crisis for humanity.

Vast sums of money are pouring out of impoverished African countries into the coffers of those in the so-called "First World". The direct result is that the impoverished country governments have wholly inadequate funds to address basic human needs for food, clean water, health and education.

The debt crisis is a matter of life and death. African children, women and men are dying while old debts to wealthy lenders are being repaid.

This is a human rights emergency!

These debts have accumulated over four decades, and they have become a monster. Poor indebted countries are transferring their inadequate resources to rich countries. Interest payments mount to terrifying proportions, so that over time countries have repaid the principle amount many times over without retiring the loans.

For every $1 that rich countries lend to developing countries $8 comes straight back in the form of repayment on debts owed to the rich countries. So wealth is not trickling down from the rich to the poor, as people like to think. Wealth is actually pouring from the South to the North.

Countries of the South find themselves giving away, virtually for nothing, earnings from their precious commodities like coffee, copper, tea and sugar. This is a form of economics that denies us our humanity, rich and poor alike.

A typical example of the iniquities that exist is that of Zambia, where 8 out of 10 households live in extreme poverty. Although Zambia was recently granted some debt relief, the cost of servicing the remaining debt has risen so sharply that the country is paying more than it was before!

Thankfully, the moral awareness of people all over the world has become aroused by the injustice of the debt burden that is destroying human dignity in developing countries. In particular, the global Jubilee 2000 movement - a coalition of charities and church groups - has begun to have a serious impact for the good.

Jubilee 2000 is dedicated to immediate and outright cancellation of the poorest countries' unpayable foreign debts. People in lending countries are insisting on this. People in indebted countries are committed to use resources freed up by debt cancellation to reduce poverty through their own efforts.

The spirit of the Jubilee movement calls forth new relations with neighbours, nations and the environment and I urge you to become informed and to participate in our Jubilee activities.

You will find yourselves in good company with people from across the spectrum. Thus, it is not unusual to find the likes of rock star Bono of the U2 pop group and the great American economist, Jeffrey Sachs, sharing a platform on Jubilee 2000 issues.

Sachs, writing in the Economist, made four interesting proposals:

1) Rich and poor need to learn to talk together and develop a common plan of action.

2) Rich and poor countries should direct their urgent attention to the mobilisation of science and technology for poor country problems.

To this end he proposes the creation of a Millennium Vaccine Fund that guaranteed future markets for malaria, tuberculosis and AIDS vaccines.

3) The global regime on intellectual property rights needs to be revised. At present so-called "First World" institutions and international corporations are busy taking out patents on every new intellectual idea and discovery possible. The poor are being excluded once again, and will continue to be so unless some sense of global responsibility is introduced. The ongoing debate over access to AIDS medication in this country is an indication of this. Incentives for innovations that will benefit the whole of humanity - not just the rich - must be provided with no more delay. This is the global responsibility of all those in power.

4) The need for a serious discussion about long term finances for the international public goods necessary for the highly indebted poor countries to break through to prosperity.

I think we all accept that it is time for radical and decisive steps to address the issues I have raised. Issues that threaten the future survival of the world.

We need a new brand of science and technology governed by a new brand of economics and politics, with a sound moral foundation. Ethics should precede politics, economics and the law because political action is concerned with values and choices. Ethics must, therefore, inform and inspire political leadership to fulfill our obligations as human beings for the well being of others.

The time has now come for action.

The rich nations, and the multinational corporations, must recognise that they cannot continue on the present course of economic growth and exploitation that disregards the consequences upon fellow human beings and the natural world.

The rich must recognise that the purpose of life is not just the acquisition of wealth but also the development of the world for the good of its inhabitants and the world itself for future generations. This change of attitude has enormous repercussions. We must grasp the responsibilities given to us to care for the future of our people and of our world.

While we allow the injustices to continue, social unrest will increase, drug trafficking and political turmoil will be the order of the day. The natural world will become a barren wasteland, less and less able to support the demand humans' place on it.

Debt cancellation is far from being an unjustified and wasteful handout. It is really an opportunity to return order, stability and discipline into the international financial system of lending and borrowing. It will make all parties think twice about incurring or making loans.

I have also long called for international legislation similar to national laws that recognise that there are times when a corporation or individual has reached a point of no return like bankruptcy. If we can have laws that allow them to wipe the slate clean why can't we adopt the same approach for countries_

I do, however, despair of the lip service being paid by the wealthy creditor-nations to the mind boggling implications of poverty incurred by unpayable debt and am now convinced that the only way to get them to sit up and take notice is for the indebted countries to simply stop servicing the debt.

The funds should instead be allocated to much needed social development programmes such as fighting the HIV/AIDS pandemic, providing clean water education healthcare, sanitation To do this effectively developing countries must put in place transparent accountable instruments to ensure that the funds are directed at the right causes.

Unjust global economic systems and structures entrap millions of people in a cycle of impoverishment - with all its consequences of disease, human deprivation and despair. And we have an opportunity to address issues faced by our broken world, to declare that our global economy is not working because it is not allowing God's people to achieve full humanity.
 

He has been a very active participant in numerous political, economic and social forums all over the world.

Currently he is championing the fight against Apartheid-Caused Debts to pressurise Western governments and multilateral institutions to cancel all debts incurred to support successive apartheid regimes in South Africa. He is also an active supporter of the Jubilee campaign against Third World debt.

He is chairman and convener of several religious, education and media boards and has published many essays and articles on human rights, ethics, social and economic problems.

His phenomenal rise from deacon and assistant priest in 1975 to archbishop of Cape Town in 1996 is an open testimony of his untiring efforts and influence in the fight for economic and social justice.

The 59-year-old Archbishop of Cape Town holds a Masters of Theology in Christian ethics and an honorary doctorate in divinity from Rhodes University. He is also a fellow of King's College in London.

For further information, you can contact him through:

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Telephone: (027) 21-761-2531
Fax: (027) 21-797-1298/761-4193
Postal Address: 16 Bishopscourt Drive, Claremont, 7700, South Africa