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. 09.07.2003 Comment by PAUL VALLELY 07/11/03: (New Zealand Herald) I am not one of nature's cynics. Indeed some have said I am a bit too gullible to be a journalist. When I was a young reporter on the Times, one of the paper's most legendary figures, Louis Heren - who rose from cockney copy boy to deputy editor - took me out to lunch. He wanted to pass on a tip he'd had from an even more legendary American journalist when he was Washington correspondent. "When you are interviewing someone," he said, "you need always to keep in the back of your mind the question 'Why is this lying bastard lying to me?"' Perhaps the years have changed me. But somehow it requires no effort to bring Heren's maxim to mind when it comes to wondering what the US President George Bush is up to on his five-day tour of Africa, which begins in Senegal today. I seem to be out on a limb here. Everyone else is giving loud hurrahs for Bush's pledge of US$15 billion ($25.1 billion) in increased assistance to combat Aids and his promise to treble development aid to the continent. Unlikely converts to the George Bush fan club, including ace bullshit detector Sir Bob Geldof, are saying they detect "the beginnings of a historic change towards Africa". So why am I suspicious? In part because even with the increases, America is still the world's stingiest donor, giving only 0.12 per cent of its national income to aid - less than a third of the EU's percentage. The whole of Africa still gets less American aid than Israel and Egypt. Much of the money has to be spent on American goods and services, and aid is contingent on "eligibility criteria" which promote democracy, human rights, anti-corruption action and the private sector - and require recipients to "do nothing to undermine US interests". Beware of geeks bearing gifts, as the old saying almost put it. But there is more. To curry favour with the Republican Party's growing African-American constituency, Bush begins his tour today on the island of Goree off the coast of Senegal, which was once a centre of the slave trade. Millions of Africans bound for American plantations passed through its crowded cells. Goree is, in effect, Africa's holocaust museum. It is the symbol of a system built on injustice. The bitter irony is that in many ways nothing has changed. The relationship between the United States and Africa is still characterised by unrestrained power, deep injustice and unequal exchange. But now, the slavery is economic, not physical, and passes under the euphemism of "trade". Bush will this week no doubt be much on his soapbox to lecture Africans on the virtues of open markets and fair trade. He will brag about America's Africa Growth and Opportunity Act. Under it, African garment and textile exporters are given duty-free access to US markets. The trouble is that most of the products in which Africa has an advantage are excluded. Take peanuts. Senegalese farmers face tariffs of more than 150 per cent to export to the US. And African textile-makers have to use US yarns and fabric. The International Monetary Fund says these protectionist loopholes cost African exporters about US$500 million a year. There are other strings. The "concession" is given only if African Governments open their markets to US investors, enforce US intellectual property claims and lower their trade barriers to US goods. This is unequal trade at its most insidious. All of these so-called concessions and all the increases in aid - are wiped out by Bush's double standards in subsidising US producers by US$200 billion a year. Last year, America's 25,000 corporate cotton farms reaped a harvest of US$4 billion in Government subsidies, three times the total amount of US aid to Africa. In West Africa, you see the consequences. There, US subsidies cheated 11 million small cotton farmers of US$200 billion in lost income in 2001. In effect, some of the globe's poorest people are competing against the world's richest treasury. So why is Bush even daring to show his face in Africa? And why is he trying to hide his nakedness with the fig leaf of increased aid? After all, this was the man who, in his presidential campaign in 2000, said that Africa "doesn't fit into the [US] national strategic interests". The answer, as ever these days, is September 11, 2001. On the one hand, the "failed states" of Africa are seen as a potential breeding ground for Islamic terrorism. On the other, there is oil. US petroleum production is decreasing and its consumption is rising. African oil is of the "sweet" low-sulphur variety which is good for cars. By 2005, it is estimated that between 15 and 25 per cent of US oil will come from Africa - close to the proportion now coming from the Middle East. And, apart from Nigeria, the Africans are not members of the nasty Opec cartel. So pay no attention to that recent Christian Aid report which showed how oil concentrates power in the hands of elites, encourages irresponsible spending, chokes other economic activity, fuels poverty, impedes democracy and makes conflict more likely. With the friendship of America, Bush insists, "Africa will rise and Africa will prosper". All I can say is: "Thank God for Louis Heren." - INDEPENDENT
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