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Volume 13, No. 3, 23 January 2014 |
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Red Alert This is the battle between the forces of life and death: Defend human development, advance our draft IP policy |
By Alex Mashilo
Last week South Africans were once more reminded of the genocidal character of transnational capitalism. The reminder came in the form of a leaked e-mail which outlined a campaign plan to undermine South Africa's planned intellectual property policies. The e-mail has been sourced to a Washington-base, big-business lobby group, Public Affairs Engagement (PAE). PAE's Chairperson is a former United States (US) Ambassador, James Glassman. Glassman is also the Founding Executive Director of former US President George W. Bush Institute and a Visiting Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
South Africa's Department of Trade and Industry published a draft policy on intellectual property (IP) for public engagement on 4 September. The draft policy is an attempt to roll-back the privatisation of knowledge and technologies in critical areas for social development. It seeks to address weaknesses in our current intellectual property policies and remove barriers against human development resulting from IP rights. The draft covers not only health care but a range of other development areas and sectors.
This includes technology transfer (including climate technologies), food, indigenous knowledge, information technology - which are all critical for a developmental growth path, especially in supporting industrialisation and diversification of manufacturing. The policy direction in the draft is crucial for human development. It is to undermine these progressive moves that PAE is planning a counter-offensive. In addition, this could have the effect of ultimately reversing the gains of our 1997 medicines control legislation.
Imperialist aggression
Our focus in this piece is the pharmaceuticals, because of the serious implications posed by the campaign strategy of the forces of death. These forces seek to disrupt South Africa's move to make medicines available and affordable and thus work towards meeting the fundamental strategic health policy objective of a universal quality health care. South Africa has been targeted by the global pharmaceutical corporations and the likes of PAE as the site of a battle to dissuade others not to take the policy direction that we are taking. This is part of the strategies for imperialist exploitation.
Imperialist-led aggression in the Third World sometimes assumes a military form. At other times, as in this case, it is a "peaceful" aggression - but the results are often no less genocidal. The campaign plan by PAE seeks to avoid debate on prices for medicines. Its plan asserts: "...be conscious that we do NOT want a debate over individual drug prices to become the focal point of the campaign", by which it is meant blocking South Africa from adopting its draft intellectual property policy. Ultimately, the goal of this imperialist campaign is to undermine our democracy. The intention is not only to block, but to determine policy direction for South Africa from outside, thus expropriating our sovereignty in policy making.
We have been here before
When our government sought to enact the medicines and related substances control bill, the US government accused us of failing to adequately protect American drug patents. The US objection was directed at provisions in the law which would allow for compulsory licences and parallel importing. There was a court challenge by 39 pharmaceutical companies. Their intention was to have the legislation declared illegal.
Despite the considerable pressure exerted on our government and parliament, the bill was passed in 1997. The pharmaceutical industry in South Africa, backed by pharmaceutical Multinational Corporations (MNCs) and the US pharmaceutical lobby, filed a legal challenge to the new law. The US government, taking its cue from its pharmaceutical lobby, began a process of negotiations and threatened our government to change its stance. They finally backed down: thanks partly to international pressure exerted in the US and Western Europe.
It is very interesting to note that the latest push by PAE and the pharmaceutical MNCs to delay the IP Policy is couched in similar ways as was the case with the medicines and related substance control bill. International networks, including George W. Bush associated institutions and personnel, are being mobilised to block the passage of our draft IP policy.
Why are the big pharmaceutical corporations targeting us now?
In 1995, the World Trade Organisation (WTO) adopted Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement. This imposed on member countries a system of intellectual property rules. There are a number of provisions in the TRIPS agreement that are heavily in favour of private rights and commercial interests against public interests. These provisions, many argued then, will effectively make it difficult to introduce generic medicines which are far affordable than patented medicines. Expensive patented medicines make life-saving medicines out of reach for millions of people in Africa and many other parts of the world.
The TRIPS agreement imposes a minimum term of a 20-year patent protection, which effectively allows companies a monopoly over patented products. This is used by pharmaceutical companies to charge prices as high as they wish during the period. Such pricing is unrelated to the cost of production. By virtue of the TRIPS agreement, no generic equivalent can be manufactured or sold until the 20 years have expired. This denies patients affordable alternatives and ultimately access to medicines. There is a genocidal dimension to this.
Millions of lives in Africa and many other parts of the world, particularly the workers who cannot afford and the poor, were and are being lost to death as the imperialist Western governments and pharmaceutical companies who control the bulk of patented medicines block access.
Since 1994 our movement as led by the African National Congress (ANC) has pursued progressive policies to promote the availability of affordable medicines. Why? There can be no doubt that the price of medicines can be and is actually one of the determining factors for life or death for patients.
Not only have we taken active steps to ensure that the price of medicines is not monopolised for profit maximisation. We have participated in international forums, particularly the WTO. We have adopted a firm stance against the imposition of intellectual property rules that curtail our capacity and that of the global South to produce or import affordable medicines. The 1995 WTO's TRIPS agreement was largely driven by advanced capitalist countries for profit maximisation through patent rights for large manufactures. Majority of these MNCs are headquartered in the US, Britain, France, Germany and Japan.
Internationally, we have made important advances against the agenda. Working with other progressive forces we have been pushing for greater flexibilities in the TRIPS agreement to allow countries of the global South to protect public health. These flexibilities relate to building an enabling environment to governments to introduce measures like parallel importation and compulsory licencing which give us powers to abridge patent rights.
At the national level, we have incorporated these measures in our national legislation, opening the way for promotion of generic medicines and domestic manufacturing capacity. But there are weakness in the advances we have made and these have to be rectified, which is what in part our draft IP policy seeks to achieve.
Confront the forces of death, defend our draft IP policy
Our draft IP policy introduces changes that would drastically cut the prohibitive cost of, and make medicines available and affordable towards meeting the goal of universal quality health care. This strategic health and well-being goal is particularly important for workers and the poor, whose lives are on the line because of a lack of access to medicines as a result of sky-rocketing prices of multi-national, profit-motive patenting regime.
The likes of PAE are fully aware of the prohibitive prices of medicine as a result of patent structures. This is the source of the super-profits of multinational pharmaceutical corporations whose interests they serve at the expense of human life, which they do NOT care about. Their sole interest is profit maximisation, which is realised not only through the exploitation of labour in production, but also through the exploitation of society through pricing. That is why they "do NOT want" individual prices of medicines "to become the focal point" of the debate and policy on intellectual property.
The move to redefine the administration of trade in intellectual property in the health sector in line with the philosophy of Batho Pele (People First), in terms of which life is number one and the rest follow, will also eliminate the waste incurred due to the prohibitively high prices of medicines. There can be no doubt that patent structures that are weak towards human life but strong towards profit, which is actually what the likes of PAE campaign for when they talk about "strong IP" policy, are major contributors to the exorbitant prices of medicines. Consequently, this is one of the reasons for the deaths that would otherwise not occur if the affected patients were not denied access, by means of high prices, to the medicines that they need.
The draft intellectual property policy as published by the DTI will also contribute in reducing the deaths which could otherwise not take place if medicines are available and affordable, and thus in increasing life expectancy. In addition, the plan stands to generate savings which can be reallocated to other priorities in health care or elsewhere, thus helping in optimising resources for human development.
Other spinoffs of the draft policy include the expansion and diversification of manufacturing and therefore a contribution in addressing the challenge of unemployment, linked with addressing the high levels of inequality and poverty. In the health sector particularly, this positive economic contribution will come from the manufacture of generic medicines, enabled among others by watering-down privatised intellectual property rights as well as compulsory licencing for local manufacturing. This is a platform for progress in the context of our revolutionary alliance's policy direction for a successful state owned pharmaceutical manufacturer.
We must take advantage of the flexibilities achieved by progressive forces internationally in the struggle to confront the rigidities of WTO's TRIPS agreement. This is the context in which some states such as India and Brazil have also, albeit unevenly, moved in the direction of some of the proposals contained in our draft IP policy. This is one of the reasons why for example in health care there are huge price differences for medicines between South Africa and India. India generally enjoys relatively low prices as compared to South Africa, we are lagging behind and are still subject to exorbitant MNCs' patent prices.
These are complex trade policy and IP matters that require a highly calculated treading. But one thing is certain. We need to press ahead at the right pace. We are in the right direction. All revolutionaries and progressives who stand on the side of life and the right to life must confront in South Africa and elsewhere the likes of PAE and other imperialist agents, groupings and "surrogates" (i.e. the term is used in the PAE's campaign document), identified and unidentified in such other campaigns as the PAE's campaign against South Africa's draft intellectual property policy. The PAE's campaign contains other serious threats to South Africa, and cannot be left unattended.
The PAE's campaign plan, which fits the character of a 'Campaign against Humanity for Profit', among others identifies business organisations such as the "Innovative Pharmaceutical Association South Africa" ("IPASA") as partners. IPASA has denied being part of the genocidal campaign once it was exposed in public last week. However, given the contents of the leaked PAE's campaign plan, IPASA's denial is less convincing.
The criteria for partnership in the 'Campaign against Humanity for Profit' rests on free market fundamentalism. Other groupings that are identified by PAE as already or potential partners are the South African Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR), the Free Market Foundation (FMF), the so-called Initiative for Global Development and like-minded academics. Creating a "new alliance", called "Forward South Africa" ("FSA"), is one of the aims of this genocidal campaign. It is also hoped that the Innovation Hub will be co-opted in the process.
The PAE's campaign for the so-called FSA is not only anti-humanity but contains elements of corruption as well, either real or potential. An investment of $450 000 (approx. R4 882 500) is mentioned to have been raised for the 5 months from January 2014 for the first leg of the campaign with a total of $600 000 (approx. R6 510 000) for 2014. To be directed from the US, which is fundamental, but led in 'a puppet-style-regime' by a "visible South African, most likely a respected former government official, business leader or academic" the so-called FSA will "seek allies within the ANC and the Government".
Failure in defeating the forces of death and their campaign against our country has serious implications and far reaching consequences for our democracy. There is no option but to emerge victorious. It is vital to convene and coordinate the forces of life, develop a plan against that of the forces of death. This must be a battle of what others elsewhere refer to as a plan against plan.
Our revolutionary alliance, national liberation and mass democratic movement is already a formidable and reliable organisational platform. In this process, however, others who share our perspective to defend life and the right to life and are prepared to work orderly should be welcome in our revolutionary campaign platform. Meanwhile, until then we must move as independent formations, as the alliance, national liberation and mass democratic movement in defence of both life and the right to life. We must confront the forces of death.
Alex Mashilo is SACP Spokesperson, writing in his personal capacity
