[Imc-africa] Patrick Bond on the WSF

[Peter van Heusden]

Here's a summary of writing on the World Social Forum by South African
left-academic Patrick Bond.

I'm gathering a list of audio and photos to go along with the writing
that has already been done - I think there's enough for a feature now.
Trevor Ngwane's summary of the protests against the WSF is good, but
does anyone have any writing or audio by Kenyans involved in these?
Also, I think Patrick's information about arrests is incorrect - can
anyone confirm / deny this?

Peter

http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2007-02/01bond.cfm

February 01, 2007

 From WSF 'NGO trade fair' to left politics?

By Patrick Bond

A mixed message - combining celebration and autocritique - is in order, 
in the wake of the Nairobi World Social Forum. From January 20-25, the 
60,000 registered participants heard triumphalist radical rhetoric and 
yet, too, witnessed persistent defeats for social justice causes - 
especially within the WSF's own processes.

* Kenya Social Forum coordinator Onyango Oloo listed grievances that 
local activists put high atop the agenda: 'colonial era land edicts and 
policies which dispossessed their communities; the impact of mining and 
extraction activities on the environment and human livelihoods; 
discriminatory policies by successive governments that have guaranteed 
the stubborn survival of pre-colonial conditions of poverty and 
underdevelopment among many pastoralist and minority communities; the 
arrogant disregard for the concerns raised by Samburu women raped over 
the years by British soldiers dispatched on military exercises in those 
Kenyan communities; … and tensions persisting with neocolonial-era 
settler farmers and indigenous Kenyan comprador businessmen in hiving 
off thousands of hectares of land while the pastoralists and minority 
communities are targets of state terror, evictions and denunciations.'

* WSF organiser Wahu Kaara: 'We are watching [global elites] and this 
time around they will not get away with it because we are saying they 
should cancel debts or we repudiate them. We refuse unjust trade. We are 
not going to take aid with conditionality. We in Africa refuse to be the 
continent identified as poor. We have hope and determination and 
everything to offer to the prosperity of the human race.'

* Firoze Manji, the Kenyan director of the Pambazuka (www.pambazuka.org) 
Africa news/analysis portal: 'This event had all the features of a trade 
fair - those with greater wealth had more events in the calendar, larger 
(and more comfortable) spaces, more propaganda - and therefore a larger 
voice. Thus the usual gaggle of quasi-donor and international NGOs 
claimed a greater presence than national organisations - not because 
what they had to say was more important or more relevant to the theme of 
the WSF, but because, essentially, they had greater budgets at their 
command.'

* Nairobi-based commentator Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem (also writing in 
Pambazuka): 'The WSFs show up Africa's weaknesses whether they are held 
outside or inside Africa. One of the critical areas is our level of 
participation and preparedness. A majority of the African participants - 
even many from Kenya itself - were brought by foreign paymasters or 
organisations funded by outsiders. Often they become prisoners of their 
sponsors. They must attend events organized or supported by their 
sponsors who need to put their "partners" on display, and the "partners" 
in turn need to show their loyalty to their masters.'

* New Internationalist editor Adam Ma'anit: 'The sight of Oxfam-branded 
4x4s cruising around flauntingly, the many well-resourced charity and 
church groups decking out their stalls (and even their own office 
spaces) with glossies and branded goodies, all reinforce the suspicion 
that perhaps the WSF has become too institutionalized. Perhaps more 
worryingly has been the corporate sponsorship of the WSF. The Forum 
organizers proudly announced their partnership with Kenya Airways. The 
same company that has for years allegedly denied the right to assembly 
of its workers organized under the Aviation and Allied Workers Union.'

* Blogger Sokari Ekine ('Black Looks') on the final WSF event: 'Kasha, a 
Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender and Intersex activist from Sexual 
Minorities Uganda, went up to the stage and asked to make a statement. 
She was asked for a copy of what she would be speaking about and gave 
them her piece. The organisers threw her piece on the floor and refused 
to allow her to speak. Kasha stood her ground saying she, like everyone 
else, had a right to speak here at the WSF. Despite the harassment by 
the MC and organisers, Kasha took the mic and spoke. She spoke about 
being a lesbian, about being a homosexual. She refuted the myth that 
homosexuality was un-African. She spoke about the punishment and 
criminalisation of homosexuals in Kenya, in Uganda, and in Nigeria. She 
said homosexuals in Africa were here to stay. Homosexuals have the same 
rights as everyone else and should be accepted and finally that even in 
Africa Another World is Possible for Homosexuals. Kasha was booed and 
the crowd shouted obscenities at her waving their hands screaming: "No! 
No! No!" But she persisted and said what needed to be said.'

These sobering observations were reflected in a statement by the Social 
Movements Assembly at a January 24 rally of more than 2000: 'We denounce 
tendencies towards commercialisation, privatisation and militarisation 
of the WSF space. Hundreds of our sisters and brothers who welcomed us 
to Nairobi have been excluded because of high costs of participation. We 
are also deeply concerned about the presence of organisations working 
against the rights of women, marginalised people, and against sexual 
rights and diversity, in contradiction to the WSF Charter of 
Principles.' (http://kenya.indymedia.org/news/2007/01/531.php)

Conflicts included arrests of a dozen low-income people who wanted to 
get into the event; protests to forcibly open the gates; and the 
destruction of the notoriously repressive Kenyan interior minister's 
makeshift restaurant which had monopolized key space within the Kasarani 
stadium's grounds.

Soweto activist Trevor Ngwane was a protest leader, but after the first 
successful break-in by poor Kenyans, reported stiff resistance: 'The 
next day we again planned to storm the gates but found police and army 
reinforcements at the gates. Those officers carried very big guns. 
Comrades decided to block the main road until the people were allowed in 
for free. This action took about half an hour and then the gates were 
opened. The crowd than marched to the Organising Committee's offices to 
demand a change of policy on the question of entrance. Another demand 
was added: free water inside the WSF precinct and cheaper food.'

Although that demand was not met, Oloo gracefully confessed the 'shame' 
of progressive Kenyans during the Social Movements Assembly rally. WSF 
logistical shortcomings reflected the Kenyan Left's lost struggles 
within the host committee, he said. The interior minister ('the 
crusher') snuck in at the last second, and the Kenya Airports Authority 
systematically diverted incoming visitors to hotels, away from home 
stays (2000 of which were arranged - only 18 actually materialized 
thanks to diversions).

Setting these flaws aside, consider a deeper political tension. For 
Oloo, 'These social movements, including dozens in Kenya, want to see 
the WSF being transformed into a space for organizing and mobilizing 
against the nefarious forces of international finance capital, 
neoliberalism and all its local neo-colonial and comprador collaborators.'

Can and should the 'openspace' concept be upgraded into something more 
coherent, either for mobilizing around special events (for instance, the 
June 2-8 summit of the G8 in Rostock, Germany) or establishing a bigger, 
universalist left-internationalist political project?

In South Africa, the Centre for Civil Society (CCS) has hosted several 
debates on this question, with at least four varying points of view 
emerging. Last July, for example, the great political economist Samir 
Amin presented the 'Bamako Appeal', a January 2006 manifesto which 
originated at the prior WSF polycentric event, and which combined, as 
Amin put it, the traditions of socialism, anti-racism/colonialism, and 
(national) development 
(http://www.forumtiersmonde.net/fren/forums/fsm/fsm_bamako/appel_bamako_en.htm).

In support was the leader of the Organisation of African Trade Union 
Unity, Hassan Sunmonu (also a WSF International Council member). 
Complaining that 'billions of ideas have been generated since 2001 up 
till the last Forum', Sunmonu found 'a lot of merit in that Bamako 
Appeal that we can use to transform the lives of ourselves, our 
organizations and our peoples.'

But reacting strongly against the Bamako Appeal, CCS student (and 
Johannesburg anti-privatization activist) Prishani Naidoo and three 
comrades criticized its 'last century' tone and content, which mirrored 
'the mutation of the WSF from an arena of encounter for local social 
movements into an organized network of experts, academics and NGO 
practitioners.'

For Naidoo, 'It reassures us that documents like the Bamako Appeal will 
eventually prove totally irrelevant and inessential to struggles of 
communities in South Africa as elsewhere. Indeed, the WSF elite's cold 
institutional and technicist soup, occasionally warmed up by some hints 
of tired poeticism, can provide little nourishment for local 
subjectivities whose daily responses to neoliberalism face more urgent 
needs to turn everyday survival into sustained confrontations with an 
increasingly repressive state.'

In contrast, Naidoo and the others praise the 'powerful undercurrent of 
informality in the WSF's proceedings [which] reveals the persistence of 
horizontal communication between movements, which is not based on 
mystical views of the revolutionary subject, or in the official 
discourse of the leaders, but in the life strategies of their participants.'

A third position on WSF politics is the classical socialist, 
party-building approach favoured by Ngwane and other revolutionary 
organizers. Replying to both Amin and the autonomist critique at the 
July workshop, Ngwane fretted, on the one hand, about reformist projects 
that 'make us blind to recognize the struggles of ordinary people.' On 
the other hand, though, 'I think militancy alone at the local level and 
community level will not in itself answer questions of class and 
questions of power.' For that a self-conscious socialist cadre is 
needed, and the WSF is a critical site to transcend localist political 
upsurges.

A fourth position, which I personally support, seeks the 21st century's 
anti-capitalist 'manifesto' in the existing social, labour and 
environmental movements that are already engaged in excellent 
transnational social justice struggle. The WSF's greatest potential - so 
far unrealized - is the possibility of linking dozens of radical 
movements in various sectors.

Instead, at each WSF the activists seem to disappear into their own 
workshops: silos with few or no interconnections. Before a Bamako Appeal 
or any other manifesto is parachuted into the WSF, we owe it to those 
activists to compile their existing grievances, analyses, strategies and 
tactics. Sometimes these are simple demands, but often they are also 
articulated as sectoral manifestos, like the very strong African Water 
Network of anti-privatisation militants from 40 countries formed in 
Nairobi 
(http://www.ipsterraviva.net/tv/nairobi/en/viewstory.asp?idnews=838).

These four positions are reflected in a new book released at the Nairobi 
WSF by the New Delhi-based Institute for Critical Action: Centre in 
Movement (CACIM) and CCS. The book, free to download at 
http://www.nu.ac.za/ccs/files/CACIM%20CCS%20WSF%20Politics.pdf, contains 
some older attempts at left internationalism, such as the Communist 
Manifesto (1848) and the Bandung Communiqué of the Asian-African 
Conference (1955), as well as the 'Call of Social Movements' at the 
second and third Porto Alegre WSF, the 2005 Porto Alegre Manifesto by 
the male-heavy Group of Nineteen, and the Bamako Appeal with sixteen 
critical replies.

There are also selections on global political party formations by Amin, 
analysis of the global labour movement by Peter Waterman, the Women's 
Global Charter for Humanity, and some old and newer Zapatista 
declarations. Jai Sen and Madhuresh Kumar of CACIM have worked hard to 
pull these ideas into 500 pages.

Lest too much energy is paid to these political scuffles at the expense 
of ongoing struggle, we might give the last word to Ngwane, who reported 
on his Nairobi debate with WSF founder Chico Whitaker at a CACIM/CCS 
workshop: 'Ordinary working class and poor people need and create and 
have a movement of resistance and struggle. They also need and create 
and have spaces for that movement to breathe and develop. The real 
question is what place will the WSF have in that reality. What space 
will there be for ordinary working class and poor people? Who will shape 
and drive and control the movement? Will it be a movement of NGO's and 
individual luminaries creating space for themselves to speak of their 
concern for the poor? Will it be undermined by collaboration with 
capitalist forces? I think what some of us saw happening in Nairobi 
posed some of these questions sharply and challenged some of the answers 
coming from many (but not all) of the prominent NGO's and luminaries in 
the WSF.'

(Patrick Bond directs the Centre for Civil Society: 
http://www.ukzn.ac.za/ccs)


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