The Jubilee 2000 project, now worldwide in its scope and supported by many of the church bodies of the world, calls for the outright cancellation of the debt of the world's fifty most indebted countries. This proposal is being put forward because it is moral, because it is achievable, and because it is in keeping with the Holy, Jubilee Spirit with which our Lord announced His ministry, as has already been pointed out. The morality of the matter is clear. This is not debt forgiveness, it is the righting of a wrong. It is not the poor themselves who have incurred these debts, but the rich and powerful, eager to maintain positions of control and privilege.
Interesting parallels occur in the world's history.
In 1898, the United States captured Cuba from Spain. The same exists in many of the debt situations in these fifty highly indebted poor countries today. It is clearly the burden of the lenders to bear the burden of their unwise and often unscrupulous lending. In this current crisis, the Anglican Archbishop of Capetown, South Africa, Njongonkulu Ndungane, argues persuasively that, even though the United Nations declared the former apartheid regime of that country as the agent of crimes against humanity, the rich countries of the world continued to loan that government money. Now, the majority of South Africa's people who were oppressed by that very regime are being asked to pay for its debt, incurred in part to oppress them.