UN General Assembly
2000

nowhere else that one can appreciate the roots and the systemic evolution of the United Nations itself. Now I want to express some views of my own about the latest buzzword: globalization. In the process, I will also respond to what some say – that the peoples of the third world should not run away in fright from globalization. Frankly speaking, globalization is merely a new name for an old, cruel and unjust system which was imposed willy-nilly upon the peoples of the third world in the past. Globalization is at least 500 years old in the case of Africa. As someone bluntly put it, “globalization is the reformation of what we used to call capitalist imperialism”. That is what he said; I think he has a point. That globalization forcibly introduced the iniquities of the slave trade, colonial oppression, the dispossession of land, racial bigotry and the destruction of our precious lives and cultures is a matter of historical record. We cannot be blamed for harbouring painful memories of the marauding usurpers from