Africas bishops tell West to offer help,
halt exploitation
By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
NCR Staff Rome
Rejecting appeals from Vatican officials for less fiery language,
Africas Roman Catholic bishops have issued to developed nations a sharply
worded call for help. In a statement issued Oct. 9, the African bishops urged
economic and political changes aimed at reducing poverty and civil unrest on
their continent.
According to United Nations statistics, some 300 million Africans
live on less than $1 a day. In Nigeria, the continents most populous
nation with 118 million inhabitants, only 33 percent of newborns are expected
to survive to age 40, and 59 percent of Nigerians live without access to safe
water. Twenty-one of 44 African nations are currently involved in some kind of
war or internal conflict.
Noting these realities, the bishops offered a dire assessment:
The fact of the matter is that post-independence Africa is more miserable
than colonial Africa.
While acknowledging that local political corruption and
mismanagement have compounded Africas problems, the bishops insisted in
their statement: Much of the blame must be laid at the door of the former
colonial masters, the rich industrial nations.
The statement came at the conclusion of the 12th plenary session
of the symposium of African bishops conferences. The meeting was held in
Rome to coincide with the Oct. 6-9 Jubilee of Bishops.
Specifically, the African bishops called for:
- Immediate cancellation of the huge crippling debts
currently facing their nations, and demanded that creditor nations pay
reparations for the harm the debts have caused;
- Cessation of arms trade between rich nations and African
countries;
- Non-interference by developed nations in African conflicts,
interference that has led nations to support particular armed factions in order
to gain access to material resources;
- Overhaul of the system of exchange between the First World and
Africa, which tends to keep prices artificially low for African raw materials
while prices for First World exports continually increase;
- Return by First World nations of funds gained through looting
by corrupt African leaders;
- A halt to desecration of the African environment by
corporations based in rich nations;
- Creation of a program under the auspices of the United Nations
for eradication of poverty in Africa, to be funded by developed nations.
The statement also asked countries that were involved in the slave
trade to request forgiveness from Africa and to pay reparations. The
slave trade, that unrecognized holocaust, which has forever left an indelible
scar on the African psyche, unfortunately continues today in various subtle
forms, the bishops said.
According to one recent study, some 40 percent of government
revenues in Africa are being allocated to service a debt totaling $350 billion,
to the detriment of health, education and other social services. Preparatory
documents for the meeting asserted that First World nations allot just $47.6
billion each year in foreign aid to Africa, while extracting $178 billion in
debt payments.
The bishops called this situation uncharitable, unrealistic,
unjust and atrociously immoral.
This kind of language drew concern from some curial officials who
joined the bishops at their Sept. 30-Oct. 9 meeting. Sources told NCR
that Cardinal Francis Arinze, himself Nigerian and currently head of the
Pontifical Council for Inter-religious Dialogue, urged the bishops to be more
careful, worrying that statements that seemed overly broad or incendiary might
hurt the documents credibility.
The bishops made some changes suggested by Arinze, the sources
said, but did not alter the overall tone.
How can we, when our people are dying? Archbishop John
Onaiyekan, archbishop of Abuja in Nigeria, told NCR. Its
time to tell things the way they are.
Responding to a curial official who said there was too much
pepper in the document, Onaiyekan said, We want pepper in it.
We like our food spicy in Africa.
Onaiyekan said he hopes First World Catholics will respond to the
plight described in the document, beginning with the bishops.
If I were the archbishop of New York, I would want to
identify the Catholics who are working in the World Bank and the International
Monetary Fund, Onaiyekan said, and I would tell them whats
happening in Africa. These may be very fine people, very generous as
individuals, but they are operating a system that is iniquitous.
The bishops used equally strong terms to denounce political
corruption in Africa, deploring power drunkenness and foolhardiness
in such places as the Sudan, Angola, Sierra Leone, and Liberia.
The bishops also acknowledged that church structures need reform.
Traces of ethnocentricity sometimes are found at all levels of the
churchs administration, including episcopal conferences, they
said.
We shall do our best to bear witness to justice and peace
by, among other things, giving adequate remuneration to those men and
women who are in the service of the church.
The e-mail address for John L. Allen Jr. is
jallen@natcath.org
National Catholic Reporter, October 20,
2000
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