THE ECONOMIN CHALLENGE—DIALOGUE OR CONFRONTATION

Abstract

I have chosen to speak today about Poverty for three fairly obvious reasons. First: Poverty-or more specifically the relations between the rich and the poor -is a very topical, and in some quarters, contentious subject. Second: this is a Commonwealth Society. At Singapore in 1971, in its Declaration of Principles, the Commonwealth declared 'We believe that the wide disparities in wealth now existing between different sections of mankind are too great to be tolerated'. Both at Ottawa in 1973, and at Kingston earlier this year, Commonwealth leaders have been discussing what should be done about these intolerable disparities between rich and poor. So the Commonwealth is concerned. And third: my country does not belong to the Third World. In the latest parlance it belongs to the Fourth World. Poverty is a very urgent matter to us; along with the Freedom Struggle it is at the core of all our national activity; it would therefore be absurd for me not to talk on this subject with you. I would like to make it clear from the outset that I am not pleading for aid for Tanzania. I have already expressed my appreciation of the assistance we have been receiving from this country, and the new Aid which has been agreed upon. Whenever the occasion has demanded I have expressed Tanzania's appreciation for the Assistance we have received from other friendly countries and from international organizations. But I am going to argue that the whole concept of aid is wrong. I am saying it is not right that the vast majority of the world's people should be forced into the position of beggars, without dignity. In one world, as in one state, when I am rich because you are poor, and I am poor because you are rich, the transfer of wealth from the rich to the poor is a matter of right; it is not an appropriate matter for charity. The fact that in a nation state there is a government which arranges this transfer of wealth, but that in the world there is no equivalent authority to do this work, makes a difference as to how the transfer should be effected. It does not make any difference to the requirement that a transfer be made. The rich countries are on the same planet as the Third and Fourth World nations; human beings inhabit both. If the rich nations go on getting richer and richer at the expense of the poor, the poor of the world must demand a change, in the same way as the proletariat in the rich countries demanded change in the past. And we do demand change. As far as we are concerned the only question at issue is whether the change comes by dialogue or confrontation.