Book Review:
Race Against Time Stephen Lewis. Published October 2005 by Anansi Press.

by Pam Lutz

In his new book entitled Race Against Time, 2003’s Canadian of the Year (as named by Maclean’s magazine) Stephen Lewis speaks out jadedly but vehemently against international development disgraces perpetuated by United States administrations past and present, the International Financial Institutions (including the World Bank and IMF along with the African Development Bank and other regional financial bodies), all G8 leaders, ‘Live 8’ organizer Bob Geldof and his entourage of rock stars, the United Nations (his employer of over twenty years), and the wider ‘international community.’ Lewis’ basic premise throughout the course of five separate but overlapping chapters (each chapter of the book is actually one of a series of Massey Lectures that were delivered in cities across Canada and broadcast on CBC radio in October-November 2005) is that the overwhelming deficit between global humanitarian rhetoric and meaningful action on vital issues including education, health, status of women, and poverty - particularly in HIV/AIDS-stricken Sub-Saharan Africa – is inexcusable; “heartless indifference… criminal neglect” that indeed “shames and diminishes us all.” Perhaps it is relevant to note that this year’s World AIDS Day (December 1st) campaign centers around the theme of ‘Keeping the Promise’ - reviving by breathing tangible meaning into the mere words comprising the UN’s Declaration on its Commitment to fighting HIV/AIDS, a document written five years ago but yet to be fully enacted.

Lewis’ general rage and more specific accusations of countless and morally repugnant inactions have stirred up hearsay that he could even be asked to vacate his position as the UN Secretary-General’s special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, as reported recently by journalist Michael Valpy:

He himself alludes to that possibility in his book, speculating that some of the things he has said may lead high-level UN officials and politicians to ‘exact retribution.’ He has strongly criticized… a number of Western and African governments by name – the equivalent in UN bureaucratic etiquette to being flatulent at a garden party (‘Mr. Lewis is on the Ropes’ from The Globe and Mail, October 22, 2005).

An entire lecture/chapter of the Race Against Time series is devoted to the unrelenting and dire need for universal primary education (and for universal secondary education as well, although this is still a long way from being realized in most developing countries). Lewis contends while “there’s probably no other international norm so fully, repeatedly and universally embraced” and laments how, despite of this, “free primary education, thus far at least, is all talk and endless negotiation. The commitments made are commitments dashed.” He notes how, even in countries like Tanzania and Kenya where primary school fees were officially abolished in 2001 and 2003 respectively, ‘hidden costs’ for things such as uniforms, books, registration, examination fees, parent-teacher association memberships, and so forth can still thrust primary education out of reach for the children of many financially disadvantaged families. Then alluding to the particular mandate of HYTES, Lewis touches upon the ‘dilemma’ of secondary schools – where fees (and preposterously inflated fees, at that) are typically still the order of the day in developing countries. Lewis makes no bones about the scandalous irony that prior to the ‘cost-sharing’ or ‘cost-recovery’ policies imposed by World Bank and IMF in the 1980s and ‘90s, most African nations had free primary and even secondary education strategies in place! In many instances, introducing ‘user fees’ for education (along with health care and other social services) was a condition of the infamous ‘Structural Adjustment Programs’ – in other words, poor African governments were driven to institute fees for public education as a prerequisite to receiving loans from the International Financial Institutions, or as a compulsory means of servicing existing debt to these same IFI’s. Thus Lewis boldly suggests that the World Bank and IMF “have a debt of their own to pay back to Africa” and therefore should be the bodies responsible for funding the Millennium Development Goal aimed at universal primary education, akin to the payment of ‘reparations’ or ‘restitution.’ Otherwise, in Lewis’ impassioned words,

Lost to the world will be hundreds of thousands of creative, gifted, often brilliant spirits… we’re not talking about a privilege to be granted the deserving; we’re taking about a fundamental human right that cannot be denied – not to children orphaned by AIDS and not to other vulnerable children, whose need for school is urgent, and whose wherewithal is negligible…

Many may know Lewis as a tremendously articulate and charismatic speaker who can bring a room full of listeners to laughter and to tears (Lewis delivered a particularly memorable and well-attended presentation as keynote speaker for the “G6B People’s Summit” counter-conference to the Kananaskis G8 meeting in Calgary back in the summer of 2002), and he is the first to admit that his trademark fervor and expressive elocution “may not translate comfortably to the page.” Yet readers of Race Against Time should not be disappointed by any lack of fervent emotion or eloquence in Lewis’ written ‘voice’ either. The 198-page soft-cover book sells for $18.95 Cdn. and is available at your local bookstore or through www.anansi.ca. CBC Radio One broadcasts of Lewis’ lecture series concluded on November 11, 2005.

Originally published in The Habari Times, Volume 1, Number 1

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