I was in court earlier this month in Johannesburg opposing the takeover of the biggest retailing bank in South Africa, ABSA (Amalgamated Bank of South Africa – the bank with the widest services among the popular masses), by Barclays Bank. You must remember that Barclays was one of the banks that financed the apartheid system and lent it enormous sums even when the UN was condemning the system and calling for a boycott. The campaign is still on.

With the collapse of apartheid were you not tempted to retire from public life and leave others to carry on the struggle for justice?

I wish I could say yes, but unfortunately I went back to South Africa, largely at Mandela's invitation, at the time of his triumph in the elections. The ANC was unbanned and they had a celebration. And I realised that the ANC had made a deal with white power so that in fact corporations were still going to run the system. They were still going to own the gold and the banks and they were also going to run the Olympic committee. It was operated by whites even though the whole fight had been about trying to get a more representative structure. But the ANC, perhaps in its anxiety to get power – and many of them of course were compromisers secretly – undertook various negotiations. The ANC had in fact sent young men and women to train with the World Bank as interns, so clearly they were not interested so much in changing the system as changing who ran the system. When I realised that, I understood, really reluctantly, that the fight wasn't over and that I would simply have to keep going. When I got back they said to me at the airport: 'How does it feel to be back in a democracy now?' And I said 'Hold it, hold it. I don't think we've arrived in a democracy yet.' So I was unpopular of course because clearly I was saying things that people would rather I did not.

You were also in Edinburgh for the G8 meeting. What did you achieve there?

It is helpful to focus on current events. Edinburgh and the G8 Summit was a major advance for us and a major setback for our opponents. Blair's attempt to distract attention from the war in Iraq, the anger of the British people at his lies, and his pusillanimous following of the bushcowboy-rampaging – all failures; anger against the war and his conduct was, instead, intensified. And his hijacking of a major section of civil society, by lining up NGOs around white whatevers and claptrap about Making Poverty History also backfired; more people in Britain and the world understand better the essential cruelty and rapacity of a global economic system – global economic apartheid – which exploits and crushes millions around the world.

For us, I think, our greatest gains were in mobilising and organising radical voices on one of Britain's great historic occasions, and in turning around the pleas for pity and charity so that they became strident demands for social justice. Political awareness, in Britain and around the world, benefited greatly. Our thanks to all those who organised so well and so generously.

The larger fight, of course, continues. And so in Africa we are still struggling to beat back the imperialist designs of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), just as the people of the Americas are fighting CAFTA as their contribution to our global struggle. Overall, I believe we are steadily making advances.

The Bonos and the Geldofs confuse the issue for many, who then believe the problems can be solved by charity. For a contrary opinion, see Monbiot. They failed to persuade many at the G8, so we can keep going. We may even have gained momentum, since many more now have a better understanding of the problem.

George Monbiot has spoken to us about the &ldquoconditionalities” attached to debt relief programmes.

The tricky thing is that conditionalities vary from country to country. Countries that are given loans generally have three conditionalities imposed on them. Many others, but principally three. One: they are forced to accept an SAP, or Structural Adjustment Programme, which requires the countries to change the whole structure of their economies. They have to put the focus on export, producing for export and going to export markets. That means several things. One is of course that when you are producing corn for export, you don't have corn for local consumption. You literally are starving the people at home by aiming at getting to the market. Point two is that you're at the mercy of the market and you often have to sell at the market price, which really is a price that does not give you a very good return on your economy, but the fact that you are producing goods for export, not for local consumption, is more serious. Why do they insist on that? There are many reasons but I'll give you just one. When loans are given to developing countries by the western countries, they are given in dollars and must be repaid in dollars. This means that you have to earn dollars and the way you earn dollars is by going to the export market and getting foreign currency. That's one of the conditionalities.