ANC MP accuses EU of ‘recolonising’ Africa
Business Day (South Africa) | 07 February 2008
ANC MP accuses EU of ‘recolonising’ Africa
Wyndham Hartley
Parliamentary Editor
CAPE TOWN - The biannual meeting of European and South African parliamentarians to discuss South African-European Union (EU) relations got off to a rocky start yesterday when a top African National Congress (ANC) MP accused the Europeans of recolonising Africa through economic means.
The delegation from the European Parliament was also criticised sharply for accusing SA of encouraging smaller countries to refuse to sign an economic partnership agreement (EPA) with southern African countries.
A member of the South African delegation also suggested that smaller countries from the Southern African Customs Union were coerced into signing the agreement for fear of losing their access to European markets.
The meeting comes as SA and the EU are in disagreement on the terms of the EPA negotiated with the Southern African Development Community (SADC). The disagreement on the terms of the EPA has seen SA excluded in a move that experts believe splits the collective SADC economy, and according to international policy expert John Maré, places the Southern African Customs Union at risk.
ANC MP Job Sithole, who chairs Parliament’s foreign affairs committee, said the very countries that Africans had fought for their liberation were now recolonising Africa economically through their collective organisation, the EU .
He accused the EU of dividing the region and of harming the unity of the customs union. Sithole said after African economies were damaged they were offered “crumbs” from the table of the EU. Sithole said the EU was taking advantage of weaknesses in African economies, and that the EU did not talk to Africans as equals.
EU ambassador to SA Lodewijk Briët denied this, saying he believed the EU made every endeavour to treat Africans as equals. He said the economic partnership agreements were not recolonising Africa or creating further divisions in Africa.
Heading SA’s delegation, ANC MP Obed Bapela said the signing of the EPA by countries such as Namibia and Botswana came about because of their fear of losing quotas for meat exports to the European market.
He was sharply critical of what he called accusations that SA was “intimidating” other SADC countries not to sign the partnership agreement. Bapela said this was a “thorny issue”, and it would be raised in closed session.
The draft agenda for the two-day meeting included a review of the recent Africa-EU summit, EU immigration policy, climate change and the environment, nuclear energy policy for SA, biofuels policy and the contested SADC economic partnership agreement.
