SACP supports South African government stance on AGOA
The President of the United States of the America Mr Barack Obama announced on Thursday his administration’s intent and provided 60 days advanced notification to suspend the eligibility of South African agricultural sector products under the “African Growth and Opportunity Act” (Agoa). Agoa was signed into law by the US on 18 May 2000 as Title 1 of that country’s Trade and Development Act of 2000. Agoa is presented as non-reciprocal trade and investment policy aimed at boosting economic growth and development in Sub-Saharan Africa through favourable preferential treatment for imports from eligible countries without reciprocal measures to advantage US exports. However, in reality, Agoa is imperialist both in terms of its content and strategic goal disguised under the fetishist illusion of “free market”. Its extraterritorial imperialist content is now being aggressively pushed by the US against South Africa.
The intent by the Obama administration to suspend South Africa’s agricultural sector products from Agoa’s market access “benefits” in the US is that “South Africa is not making continual progress toward the elimination of barriers to United States trade and investment as required by section 104 of AGOA”. Under section 104 of the US’ Trade and Development Act, the governments of eligible countries must minimise state intervention or involvement – which is coded in the Act as “interference” – in their own economies. This “interference” includes, among other measures, state intervention in the form of subsidies and state ownership of productive assets – referred to as “government ownership of economic assets”.
Yet the US has been paying millions of dollars annually in subsidies to its agricultural sector, including insurance subsidies and payments linked to crop and productivity.
Most importantly, to allow the US to prohibit ownership of economic assets by the state in our country is to allow it to usurp our constitutional right to democratic national sovereignty. This will be tantamount to handing over to US imperialism our right to determine our own development trajectory and decide policies to achieve it.
The SACP is strongly opposed to, and rejects, imperialist domination in its entirety and all its manifestations. South Africa’s independence must be safeguarded in the interest of the completion of our struggle for national liberation and social emancipation. Our democratic national independence and public property rights – the right to collective ownership of productive assets including through the state – are crucial to the success of our second, more radical phase of transformation!
Contrary to presentation of Agoa as a trade and investment policy offering non-reciprocal market access benefits in the US to eligible countries in view of historical and persisting international economic imbalances, now the US wants disproportionate access to South Africa’s poultry, beef and pork markets. In addition, the US has displayed an aggressive attitude towards South Africa’s insistence on best practices relating to animal health and the health of South Africans in terms of such products.
Current negotiations
The SACP wishes to commend our departments of Trade and Industry; Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries; and our health experts for the meticulous handling of the trade negotiations with the US despite being held under the Agoa duress by the administration of that country.
South Africa has been able to resist unfair demands by the US – which seeks to destroy our country’s legitimate anti-dumping duties. Our country has put in place the anti-dumping duties to protect our economy against unfair exports, including chicken legs from the US. The price of US chicken legs are artificially low, as US consumers prefer chicken breasts instead of chicken legs, thus pushing down the prices of chicken legs. The US wants these dumped in South Africa.
In June, South Africa and the US reached a compromise in Paris on the matter. This was able to reduce US exports from 140 000 tons a year of chicken legs from the US to South Africa, to 65 000 tons – thus saving the country from the loss of several thousand jobs.
The current negotiations are in particular about putting in place the necessary animal health regulations against Avian Influenza that broke out in the US across 20 US States this year. South Africa’s veterinary experts in the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries have been hard at work in putting in place appropriate regulations to ensure that this contagious disease, which could potentially wipe out South Africa’s entire bird flock and harm human health, is not transported to South Africa with the 65 000 tons of US chicken legs.
This is a negotiation to defend South Africa’s interests, animal and public health – our government has been doing just that. The US, on the other hand, armed with its new Agoa Extension Act of 2015 that allows it to “withdraw, suspend or terminate the Agoa concessions” at any time, has been negotiating to advance the interests of its commercial farming lobby groups.
In South Africa, however, there are localised US lobby groups which are not interested in our country and Africa as a whole. These individuals and organisations, such as the “Democratic Alliance” (DA), seem to be trapped in the mentality of colonial superiority and the interests of the imperialist north, to which they clearly appear as a domestic manifestation. This is a special type colonial mentality. All democratic South Africans must not allow is to bounce back to domination our country.
For Geordin Hill-Lewis of the DA to argue that Minister Rob Davies has “mishandled” the Agoa negotiations reflects a gross misunderstanding of the asymmetry of power relations between the North and the South. Or worse still, a failure to get rid of the baggage of the Smutsian belief in the superiority of the European and North American civilisation and the consequent need to appease their interests over our own national interests and public health.
Issued by SACP National Spokesperson Alex Mohubetswane Mashilo, 9 November 2015
