SATUCC unions present alternative development policy for SADC 

The Southern Africa Trade Union Coordination Council (SATUCC), regional umbrella of the national union of federations in the SADC, will launch an alternative to present policies that have been developed or imposed on the region in the past years. The launch will take place on 13 January 2007 at the Parktonian Hotel, Johannesburg, at 09:00.

Over a two-year period of workshops and consultations with union representatives and progressive academics, building stones were formulated for an alternative which, according to the SATUCC, is both visionary and practical. The resulting document, The search for Sustainable, human development in Southern Africa, covers some 500 pages.

SATUCC, maintains that "structural adjustment programmes, poverty reduction strategies and other development programmes have been imposed on the SADC region and countries since the '80s. Various trade agreements such as EPA's, AGOA and WTO arrangements have also been enforced, invariably without the involvement of the population and to their detriment. What all these policies and arrangements have in common is that they are based on neo-liberal globalisation principles and even the so-called locally grown policies like GEAR, NEPAD and RISDP all take neo-liberal globalisation as a given."

Resistance against these policies has grown in the past years in all corners of society. "The SATUCC decided to take the struggle a step further and formulated an alternative development policy, based not on preserving and increasing the profits of international capital, but taking as a starting point, the needs of the people and the resources of the region."

The book is published under the ANSA (Alternatives for Neo-liberalism in Southern Africa) initiative. ANSA is not an organisation, it merely provides a stimulus, a direction for the countless localised centres of resistance and initiatives for alternatives to join forces and pressurise for change from a common perspective. The movement is NOT intended to be limited to unions and union-related organisations only; the explicit aim is to forge alliances of progressive organisations and movements from all walks of life which subscribe to the principles of the alternatives, both regionally, on the continent and globally and includes cooperation with progressive forces in the North.

The launch of the book will be the start of an extensive multi-year programme of a) further research, b) training and advocacy and c) engagement, in order to stimulate a mass movement which will bring development by, and for the people themselves.

The ANSA alternative is based on 10 principles:

1.       People-led

2.       Autocentric development, based on domestic, human needs and the use of local resources

3.       Regional integration, led from the grassroots

4.       Selective de-linking and negotiated re-linking

5.       Alternative science and technology

6.       National, regional and global, progressive alliances

7.       Redistribution of wealth to empower the non-formal sectors

8.       Gender rights as the basis for development

9.       Education for sustainable human development

10.   A dynamic, participatory and radical democracy.

Furthermore, the ANSA initiative envisages the realisation of a strategic developmental state, as opposed to the minimalist state of neo-liberalism. Such a strategic developmental state is influenced by, and implements programmes that are pro-people – human-centred - and gender-sensitive, transformative and integrative in the interests of the society at large.