Ramasimong Phillip Tsokolibane

LaRouche and the Development of Africa

This is the edited transcription of Mr. Tsokolibane’s greetings to the Schiller Institute conference on September 5. He is the leader of LaRouche South Africa. Subheads have been added.

My name is Ramasimong Phillip Tsokolibane. I am proud to be the leader of the LaRouche movement in South Africa. On behalf of my nation and all of Africa, I send greetings to each and every participant in this urgently important conference and pray for the success of our deliberations.

When I spoke to you last May, I urged that the greatest powers devise plans to send immediate and massive aid to my country and all of Africa to help us overcome the ongoing global coronavirus pandemic. I asked that President Trump make good on his promise to stand by Africa and do all that he could to secure a better life for Africans through economic development aimed at lifting our people out of poverty.

This sentiment was communicated by First Lady Melania Trump in an October 2018 tour of several African nations focusing on the plight of our children.

Poverty Kills, Just as
Surely as a Policeman

There have been reports in the international press that the COVID-19 pandemic may have spared many Africans, pointing to lower-than-expected official infection and death rates, including in my own country. I believe that the official numbers are vastly understated because of the severe lack of viable healthcare systems and the absence of testing.

As that great lady, Schiller Institute Chairwoman Helga Zepp-LaRouche, has said, we must build up an extensive modern worldwide health security system, as no such system currently exists. This applies to much of the so-called advanced sector, including in the United States, and it is certainly true in Africa. We need more doctors. We need more healthcare workers. We need more hospital beds and treatment facilities. We need access to medicines and personal protective equipment (PPE).

And, when developed, we will need access to vaccines and antiviral therapies. We cannot pay for this. We should not be asked to do so. We need a special global health Civilian Conservation Corps type of program to help us accomplish this as Helga proposes, and we needed this yesterday.

The reason we now know the numbers of COVID cases are understated is because the main vector in the spread of disease is poverty. Africa, in a state of enforced underdevelopment imposed by the global British financial empire, suffers from widespread poverty. So, this virus is killing Africans in large numbers, even as we speak today. We cannot allow this condition to stand. This must be among the urgent matters to be discussed at the summit of the Permanent Five United Nations Security Council member nations proposed for next month by Russian President Vladimir Putin. That summit must take place.

I call again on President Trump: Make good on your promise to help Africans.

The ‘Better Angels of Our Nature’

As I look at the anger and frustration in the streets and cities of America today, I see many rallying around the slogan, “Black Lives Matter,” but does not a black life threatened with death coming from poverty and disease in Africa, or anywhere else, oppressed by a global financial oligarchy that seeks death for those they consider useless eaters, matter just as much as a life threatened by the armed brutality of police? I hear nothing about that from my black brothers and sisters in the United States.

All citizens, everywhere in the world: We must join together and express with equal clarity and certainty our moral courage and outrage at the murderous intent of Wall Street and City of London bankers, whose policies kill Africans, and the outrageous, unacceptable actions taken by police in America.

I appeal to what your greatest president, Abraham Lincoln, in his first inaugural address, called “the better angels of our nature,” to find the pathway for justice of all men, for all women, for all humanity. I believe that pathway for justice is embodied in the policies of Lyndon LaRouche to create a just, new world economic order to give all of us the opportunities to rise to our creative potential as human beings. In our pursuit of that happy future, I foresee success. Thank you very much.