Through the rape of my imagination and of the little space
that I could call my own,
they come to tell me that the Negro is lazy.
He cannot develop independently.
But this Negro that you are crushing to death
with your economic and financial machinery
laid the foundations of your economy.
And this Negro has ensured your development.
Today, in Mali or other countries,
if you fall ill and you have no money,
you're dead.
Everything here concerning democracy or elections
is nothing but a show, a big show.
We occasionally go to vote
but it's as if we were never there.
This external legitimacy of power remains in place today,
many intellectuals have accepted it,
but I won't judge anyone.
But each one of us had a moment of clarity
and then made a deliberate choice.
Either I fully support the true ideals of my people
or I sell them off,
as many of our governments do.
That's their share of responsibility in this.
I think I should have stayed there.
Perhaps it was better for me
than coming to work for a corrupt Mali administration
that has no responsibilities.
We end up asking ourselves,
"Why do we receive a salary?
"For a job we don't do."
All of a sudden, we regress
in relation to goals that we had
or that we were attaining before.
They've taken everything from us.
I didn't realize that poverty, albeit imposed poverty,
could change human nature to this extent.
But today,
I may be allowed to assert that when I step out into the street,
believe me, I don't meet other Malians.
I see everything in Mali but Malians.
A man who is hungry, a man without health care,
a man who is never educated and left in total obscurantism,
is a man who will negate himself and be in denial.
He's a man who will become alienated, lost and depraved.
You can't come in.
The witness Samba Diakite.
Your full name, please.
Samba Diakite,
born in Dakar, 1953.
Hamdallaye district.
Your profession?
Former schoolteacher.
You have nothing to say?
Your date and place of birth.
I was born in Bamako. I'm 52.
Do you know who summoned you as a witness?
Yes, the plaintiff.
Yes, the plaintiff. African society.
Opposite, we have international financial institutions.
Are you related or subordinate in any way
to either of the two parties?
In no way at all.
Raise your right hand.
Swear to tell nothing but the truth.
Raise your hand and swear.
I swear.
Samba Diakite...
If you please...
But trees are vital for life.
That's true, but to run a company, you don't need trees.
Fine...
All right.
When the gun vanished, were you here?
I was here.
You didn't move?
I didn't move.
But I was told you went out for a while.
I went to get a spare part from Japan Casse.
Did you find the part?
No, I didn't.
Come to my office tomorrow.
When you add it all up...
this money squandered...
these public holdings sold off...
these families ruined...
what is your feeling about that today?
A feeling of shame,
of anger...
Of anger and compassion. Compassion for the country.
You see villages
that lived through the railway
and that are now obliged,
after 100 years of existence,
that are now obliged to move somewhere else
because the train no longer stops.
Life came to those villages because of the railway.
When those villages are obliged to move,
when their inhabitants,
in order to buy food, have to travel by donkey,
by cart or on foot
and when the young people who grew vegetables can't sell them
because they used to sell to the train's passengers,
you witness the start of an exodus.
And when they are turned back,
the situation is distressing.
And when you wrote on November 4, 2002,
to the Ministry of Transport,
you made a serious accusation.
In reference to the railway, you wrote,
"It's the victim of a conspiracy."
This accusation of conspiracy,
I presume you have proof of it?
What elements do you have to back up this serious accusation
of conspiracy against the...
Be quiet!
Maitre Rappaport, I have to...
Don't oblige me to...
The witness never spoke of a conspiracy!
The witness spoke of a conspiracy.
Let's refer to the statement...
I did indeed speak of a conspiracy.
In fact,
a letter was received,
addressed to the authorities,
saying that if we refused to privatize the transport system,
the World Bank would withdraw subsidies
for health and education in Mali.
It was a confidential letter.
You can't just come before a court and say, "There's a conspiracy."
"How do you know?"
"I saw a letter."
Where's the proof of this conspiracy?
For example, is the World Bank to blame
when a manager buys ballpoint pens
and pays 1,500 CFA francs when he can get them for 500?
Do we truly believe the World Bank steps in at that level
or does the World Bank make the manager plant trees...
I've finished.
Are you asking questions or putting your case?
Your Honour, the other side...
You can plead your case later.
The other side pretends to ask questions,
develops lines of argument...
We're being discreet, we hardly make any interventions...
We nonetheless have the right to say
that the serious accusations brought before you
must be backed up by evidence.
One should be attacking those responsible.
Your Honour, you asked questions earlier
that show you have a few ideas and some information
about the reasons for the railway's collapse.
Maitre Bourdon, please.
I'm not seeking your approval,
I'm trying to draw your attention to some simple points.
Why would the World Bank want Mali
to be deprived of a means of communication
and why would it want her inhabitants to be unable to travel?
A country
without a means of communication,
without energy, without transport,
cannot really be called a sovereign nation.
And those are precisely the areas
that the multinational companies wish to take from us.
That's the case
and we must not let it happen.
It's hard...
but I'm more optimistic than hell.
I know we can do it. We just need to get organized.
Fode!
Turn it off.
Your Honour, in relation...
to this witness, may I petition...
Petition in relation to...
Jean-Paul...
I have a dream every night that bothers me.
What's your dream?
Jean-Paul, I dream...
I'm in the darkness... the light...
In any case, I'm not at home.
In this dream,
I'm sitting down and in front of me
there's a big bag.
It's full of the heads
of heads of state.
Each time I dip my hand into it,
I pull the same head out.
And when I put it back,
my dream ends and I wake up.
Is it a black head or not?
I don't know if it's black or white.
In any case, it's the same head.
Don't tell anyone else about this dream.
Don't talk about it again.
That's not how it works legally.
Maitre Bourdon is giving you lessons in procedure!
It's a debate, not a lesson.
The witness,
after taking the oath to tell the truth,
says that she happened to come across
a letter clearly not addressed to her,
that she should never have seen,
and so read the said letter.
It's incredibly cynical,
yet typical of the Bank's general cynicism,
to say, "Madame, you must be joking.
"That letter can't have existed.
"And if you had it, you should have copied it
"and sent it to the press."
But she would have risked
years and years of imprisonment, as you well know.
- It's a risk... - A huge risk!
She cannot play Antigone for eternity.
For the moment, nothing challenges the credibility
of this embarrassing testimony.
Maitre Bourdon, the law says each party
must provide evidence of its claims.
So why are you looking here and not over there?
Because it's too dark over there.
You can't see anything.
The other day,
you were saying that the worst after-effect
of structural adjustment
was the destruction of the social fabric.
This whole part has been erased.
Can you start again?
How did that happen?
I must have recorded the trial over it.
Too many cassettes. I get confused.
No one will listen.
Don't waste your time.
I don't know if we must share that honour
but, in any case,
it's a great responsibility for us.
We know that the audience,
as is only natural,
all the lay-offs and the outcasts who are here,
who have described their suffering,
wholly support the plaintiff.
And we have clearly perceived that the court's feelings
are not that far removed from those of the plaintiff.
And so it's a great responsibility.
You claim the international institutions,
the World Bank, the IMF and others you have named,
are deaf and blind.
Deaf and blind
and, if we follow the reasoning and arguments
that I have heard here,
murderers too.
Murderers even with premeditation...
since we are reproached
with incidents that are real and that we deplore.
Infant mortality is on the rise
in Africa.
This is an attack on those who will come after us.
Do you believe,
that for international institutions,
those are the results that we seek?
Do we really want
life expectancy in regions of Africa
to drop and fall below the age of 50 years?
People die of diarrhoea in Africa, people die of malaria
and we're not responsible. But they die of those things.
Someone has said medicine is in the North and the sick in the South.
Even if we were guided by pure self-interest,
we could not possibly seek such goals.
But that is how things are. We know it and we know why
because we have worked
in partnership with governments
to assess the situation and to decide
what needs to be...
All the same, we need to raise an issue
that not only concerns Africa
but that is particularly detrimental to Africa.
I am talking about corruption.
"Corruption isn't a natural disaster,
"it is cold and calculated pillaging."
Far be it from me to claim
that corruption is rife solely in Africa.
We know full well that in the West, large companies,
Total and oil,
Thales and arms policy,
are caught up in the cycle of corruption.
But allow me to say that there is a difference.
What is it?
Corruption in Africa,
given the state of economic development...
In the West we must fight corruption and defeat it
but its impact on economic development
is less serious than in Africa.
This trial's becoming annoying.
When is it going to end?
No one can say.
And now the polar icecap is melting.
And the water will flood out.
What will remain of the icecap in a few decades?
People have trouble breathing in some of our big cities.
Aren't those common interests
to be managed together?
We cannot avoid dealing with these issues.
At the same time,
we are witnessing the proliferation of weapons.
What will become of us if, one day,
a potentate somewhere
gains access to the atom bomb? Is that truly impossible?
And there's another danger.
We've all referred to it.
It crosses all continents and has struck them all.
One of the elements feeding it is poverty.
Terrorism is a danger not only for Africa but for all of us.
We want to fight it.
And the fight against terrorism cannot succeed
without the defeat of poverty
and without giving hope in life
to those who have lost it today.
Thank you, Maitre Rappaport.
But, before going on,
I would like to ask you...
Do you consider this court biased?
Your words seemed to indicate...
Your Honour,
prior to being magistrates, you are men and women
and you are clearly sensitive
in particular to the suffering of your people
whose causes and reasons you are aware of.
And when you see them, expressing themselves before you,
your heart suffers and your thoughts are with them
rather than with us. I do not consider that
to be an abnormal bias.
Are you Chaka's wife?
Why?
I just have a few questions to ask you.
If it's about the gun, I don't know anything.
It is clearly a great honour to defend African society.
It is a great honour to defend
millions of women and men of honour
who have been represented superbly over the last few days
and who have come to say that the world, since its creation,
has always made sure
that the part of the world that suffers and endures
is kept quiet and remains quiet.
For Africa to remain silent in her suffering,
that requires watchdogs.
It requires prison guards at times.
Watchdogs, in other words the American empire
and its accomplices in Europe and elsewhere.
It requires Dr Diafoiruses, Dr Strangeloves
who draw up prescriptions that Africans "cannot read"
and "never follow".
Prescriptions of so-called magic potions
that soon turn out to be poisons with a remarkable effect,
Chinese poisons... And maybe the Chinese will start too,
making evil absolute.
As a result,
I believe your court can easily declare the World Bank guilty,
with its accomplices.
After all, the situation is terrifying.
The figures are murderous and the statistics homicidal!
We simply need to look back at the last 20 years
of structural adjustment.
These plans have caused destruction and impoverishment.
The figures provide eloquent information
on the tragedy taking place.
Life expectancy has dropped to the age of 46.
The Aids crisis is manipulated
to conceal that mortality rates
are on the rise because of their link
to the important and significant fall
in average income in Africa.
So the party's over.
The party's over and the structural adjustment plans
have failed wholesale.
50 million African children
are scheduled to die over the next five years.
Three million are scheduled to die of malaria next year.
In the face of such tragic figures, one will say
that the World Bank and the others have won.
We cannot say it and we won't say it.
We shall avoid saying it because structural adjustment
has clearly placed Africa in a vicious circle,
an absurd circle
that begins, as we have clearly seen, with the debt!
The debt is a stone around Africa's neck,
the slave's sign of allegiance to his master.
The figures speak for themselves.
$220 billion in 2003.
The latest statistics have shown,
Your Honour,
even though $4 has been paid back per African,
$4 remains to be paid.
It is clear that this debt
has brought Africa to her knees
by depriving her of her financial sovereignty,
by dismantling her civil service.
It has forced her to sell off her public services
to serve financial predators.
It has razed some of her hospitals to the ground.
It has privatized her school system
through the low wages paid to civil servants.
It has brought Africa to her knees, making her the gloomy mirror
of what the world is becoming: A privatized world.
And in this privatized world,
the World Bank, in theory humane, has become inhumane!
The World Bank has become an inhumane bank
because it is the Trojan horse of financial capitalism.
Of course, one will say
that the corruption
is shared by the Africans and the Europeans.
But does the defence dare to assert
that Africans invented corruption?
Is there a chromosome of corruption in Africa?
Remember the corruptors
come from rich countries, never from poor ones.
The G8 and the World Bank, after bringing Africa to her knees,
are now threatening to suspend all public aid to Africa
because corruption is rife here.
The circle is complete, confusing causes and consequences.
Murder thus reveals
its sinister side, the World Bank's cynicism.
Far be it from us, Your Honour,
to claim that the World Bank feeds on African children
or that it hates drinking water and public railways!
The World Bank isn't governed
by murderous instincts.
But the World Bank is simply the cornerstone,
the centre of gravity of this unchained form of capitalism,
financial capitalism, predatory capitalism,
capitalism ignoring general interests to attain its key goals:
The production of profits for all eternity!
The World Bank occasionally tries to appear more humane
and I shall give you an example of its attempts to be more humane.
A few days ago in Paris, crying crocodile tears, who said?
"Every week, 200,000 sick children aged under five
"die in developing countries."
Paul Wolfowitz said that.
Paul Wolfowitz, the man behind the war in Iraq
that costs more than providing water to all Africa
and saving Aids victims with generic drugs.
He's the man who pretended to weep
at a symposium in Paris a few weeks ago.
Let's end this hypocritical dance.
Let's end this cursed predatory dance.
Let's consider the World Bank's arguments.
There seems to be a curse on Africa.
Europe holds up a terrifying mirror to Africa
that pollutes people's minds and stifles crucial awareness.
Is Africa doomed?
Is poverty as natural as tropical genocide,
slavery and neo-colonialism?
You also find this fatality in the idea
of an ignorant Africa.
What did we hear the other day?
When Madame Souko had the nerve
to say she could read a balance sheet, they called her an upstart!
The Africans know nothing about the complexities of this world!
Since they know nothing,
all criticism is considered unfounded.
Yet we have heard it bravely expressed here.
So, yes!
You will declare the World Bank guilty of abusing the African people.
You'll declare the World Bank guilty
of failure to render assistance.
You'll declare the World Bank guilty
of not respecting its mandate to serve mankind.
In doing that,
you'll open the path to the utopia
that each one of us has in mind
and allows us to imagine a new world beyond the hills.
This utopia is, in a way, the African ram
that comes to rub against and rip the pants
of reasons of state and the market!
Utopia, tomorrow, to avoid what is under way in the suburbs
of Accra, Abidjan and Cairo
where children drunk on deprivation
could turn into balls of fire tomorrow.
You'll declare the World Bank guilty
and force it to become more humane.
You'll declare it guilty
of the crimes of inhumanity and cynicism
committed over 20 years.
The only sentence possible
is the most modest sentence,
the most clement one.
We can't throw Wolfowitz in the Niger.
The caimans wouldn't want him.
The sentence that we request of you...
Community service for mankind for all eternity.
I am honoured to appear before this court
and to lend my robes to defend a noble and fair cause,
but above all to lend my voice to Africa's silent majority
that has been subject for 25 years to the iron law of adjustment,
the law of the strongest that has never been the best.
Yes, Your Honour, adjustment is an evil,
an organized and structured evil
administered and inoculated to our people.
This evil, Your Honour, is the cynicism of the debt,
the vicious circle of the debt.
This debt that has ruined our economies
and that has sapped our energy before we have finished paying it.
What must we do, faced with the debt's violence?
I hear the Latin Americans.
They told us, Your Honour...
"The debt can't be paid."
Yes, it cannot be paid because it is illegitimate.
Because it is violent.
It cannot be paid simply because it is untenable.
On top of the debt's violence, we witness
the selling off of our public services,
our basic social services... Privatization!
The health service has been privatized
but between June and September 2005,
42,000 people died of cholera, a mediaeval disease
that was thought to have been eradicated here.
We don't need to look far.
Here, in this room, a patient lies suffering.
Do you hear his moans?
I've heard them. And we're privatizing health!
And that's not all! We're privatizing education,
a universal right.
The acquisition of knowledge should be the same for all
but two thirds of our children are illiterate
and now we’re being asked to pay to acquire knowledge!
That's not all! Our public services have been sold off.
Water has been privatized.
The Joliba, Senegal, Zambezi, Limpopo!
Our rivers privatized!
With our stories, legends and traditions
buried in the current, rivers and lakes!
That's inadmissible.
This people is a widow mourning the death of a husband
buried under the ruins of adjustment.
This people is an orphan crying for a mother
who died in childbirth.
All it asks for is its due: Basic health care.
This people is a father, made redundant by the railway,
these men you have heard,
these women who have pleaded on your stand.
The father who has seen his authority,
who has seen his influence and his dignity
weakened and swept away by an unfair redundancy.
This people, Your Honour, is Zegue Bamba.
Have you heard, Your Honour, Zegue Bamba's lament?
This peasant who asks, "Why don't I sow anymore?
"When I sow, why don't I reap?
"Why don't I eat when I reap?"
This Africa, Your Honour,
is asking you with dignity, humility and modesty,
but with legitimacy, for justice.
You must do justice to Africa.
You must not do this by condemning the World Bank.
You will achieve it, Your Honour,
by forcing the World Bank, the IMF, the WTO and the G8,
along with their accomplices,
to respect their mandate
that they should never have forgotten, with man
as the goal of all humane action.
It's your responsibility, sir,
since your pen will be signing the ruling.
It's mine too, through the robes I wear.
And we're all responsible because it's our duty as a generation
to bring about the advent of that day
for the balance of the world and of man's future is at stake.
"My ear to the ground,
"I heard tomorrow pass by"
Subtitles: Lan Burley Subtitling: CMC