Impressions on the movement for global justice in Africa
Jean
Nanga
In January 2004, the World Social Forum (WSF) was for the first
time held outside Brazil: in Mumbai, India. This year the WSF has been
organised in polycentric fashion, in Bamako (Mali), Caracas (Venezuela)
and - a little late because of the recent earthquake in Kashmir - in
Karachi (Pakistan). The objective of this mobility is to root the dynamic
of the movement for global justice among other peoples also confronted
with the aggression of neoliberalism.
But, unlike the two other regional sites, the
Polycentric World Social Forum (PWSF) in Bamako was a first on the African
continent. Until now there have only been editions of the regional
version, the African Social Forum (ASF). Moreover, this PWSF in Bamako is
also the prelude to the 2007 World Social Forum, which will take place in
Nairobi (Kenya). In other words, it was a trial run for the movement for
global justice on the continent, responsible for the organisation and
mobilisation for an effective popular participation. So, what impressions
has it left?
Participation
The organising committee had hoped to attract
30,000 people, from Mali and neighbouring countries, other regions of
Africa and the rest of the world to this West African country, where a
regional version of the Social Forum had been organised and which has also
been since 2002 the site of an alternative summit to the G8, the so-called
Forum of African Peoples. Participation was smaller than expected: the
figures vary between 10,000 and 20,000 people. The opening demonstration
was a march of around 5,000 people, over 2 km, with a route largely
distanced from the popular neighbourhoods and without any real
manifestation of popular support.
This low participation can partly be explained
by the social situation of the Malian population, 70% of who live below
the poverty line. Time is thus more devoted to individual tactics of
survival, while low incomes tend to be spent on the satisfaction if basic
needs rather than the payment of registration fees (equivalent to at least
two meals) for a Forum of discussion and exchange. This also in the light
of recent local history, that of the “falsification of the victory of
March 26” (the popular movement which overthrew the military dictatorship
in 1990, at the price of human lives, has given way to a “democratic”
regime of billionaires which is incapable of ending pauperisation).
Nonetheless, the people of Bamako intermingled
massively with those attending the Forum at a concert (tickets cost nearly
as much as the costs of registration) at the Modibo Keita stadium, by the
Ivory Coast reggae singer Tiken Jah Fakoly. At the concert refrains
against the burden of the foreign debt and other misdeeds of neoliberalism
were taken up. A proof of the sympathy of those who were absent for the
work of the PWSF in the critique of neoliberalism.
Would a participation without registration
fees have attracted more people in general, and in particular young
schoolchildren, students and unemployed? Did the high rate of illiteracy
(nearly 60%) dissuade the non-Francophones who feared being lost among the
“intellectuals” and foreigners despite radio and television advertising in
local languages?
In addition to the frustration caused by this
low participation, there were problems connected to the fragmented
localisation of the Forum, over a dozen sites, stretching from one
extremity to another in a city deprived of an adequate system of public
transport. As if the organising committee had no memory of the
inconvenience resulting from the fragmented nature of the European Social
Forum in Paris-Saint-Denis and the advantage of the concentrated
localisation of the World Social Forum in Mumbai. This dispersal reduced
the possibility of going immediately from one meeting or workshop to
another and the possibilities of meeting and exchanges between
participants belonging to different thematic networks. For example, few
people were able to go from the House of Culture, the so-called “Universe
of women” to the “Thomas Sankara” international youth camp, since they
were situated at two extremes of the city.
On the global character of the PWSF
The PWSF was not simply a repeat of the last
African Social Forum, held in December 2005 in Conakry (Guinea). Many of
the most media-prominent figures in the movement for global justice were
present, like Christophe Aguiton, Samir Amin, José Bové, Bernard Cassen,
Susan George, François Houtart, P.K. Murthy, Paul Nicholson, Jacques
Nikonoff, Riccardo Petrella, Ignacio Ramonet and Aminata Traoré. There was
participation from delegations and individuals from outside Africa:
Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Catalonia, Finland, Greece, India, Philippines,
Uruguay and so on. The most visible non-African participation was from
Europe and France in particular (No Vox, Sud trade unions, CGT and so
on).
Nonetheless, some participants were not
appreciated. For example, Federico Mayor, ex-director general of UNESCO,
was judged unwelcome by the participants at a meeting of the organising
committee, since he was partly responsible for the neoliberalisation of
education and culture. The same was true for a representative of the
French state, who intervened in a workshop organised in the youth camp on
the theme “What youth to free Africa from imperialism? The case of Mali,
from yesterday to today” to invoke the African passion of Jacques Chirac.
Also there was the presence of the banner of USAID at the entry to a
workshop of the said camp.
Even the presence of some big international
NGOs through their African sections displeased some. Thus, some activists
from the southern African social movements expressed hostility at the end
of the opening march to the entry into the Modibo Keita stadium of camels
carrying a banner favourable to fair trade. The issue here was hostility
to Oxfam, supposedly responsible for the camels, whose opposition to
neoliberal globalisation seemed to them ambiguous. It showed that some
so-called NGOs from the North would merit rather the denomination of PGO
(para-governmental organisations), because of their relations with the
states of the North, from which they await some positive, morally
motivated changes concerning its relations with the South. As if it was
possible to put an end to the unjust relations which are fundamental
characteristics of the present world order without challenging the class
nature of its economic organisation.
As if the history of liberalism, a euphemism
for capitalism, in the 19th and 20th centuries had known a moment of truce
in its predation, savagery and barbarism towards the peoples of the South:
colonial imperialism, the so-called world wars, apartheid, the banana
republics, neo-colonialism, low intensity wars, in the name of defence of
“free trade”.
If Rémy Herrera, from the World Forum of
Alternatives, said he was in Bamako to defend two positions - “the
necessity of passing from consciousness to anti-imperialist action...
[and] beyond the anti-neoliberal critique, the more fundamental critique
of capitalism” [1] - this tone is not dominant in the movement for global
justice in general, in Africa in particular. Which partly explains the
dependency of some local NGOs - under the pressure of everyday life and
the dominant ideology, including the illusion of a capitalism of social
justice, following the bankruptcy of “actually existing socialism” - on
NGOs from the North, which are supposed to guide the peoples of the South
towards development, capitalist of course.
On programme: the universal and the particular
On the eve of the opening of the PWSF the
Third World Forum, the World Forum of Alternatives and other groups
organized a celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the Bandung
Conference, which gave birth to the non-aligned movement, and is supposed
to have contributed to decolonisation, particularly in Africa. Despite a
very low attendance, this meeting, organised in thematic workshops, ended
with a declaration called the “Bamako appeal”, aimed at organisations who
recognise “the necessity of passing from collective consciousness to the
construction of collective actors”, in other words to the construction of
the “internationalism of the peoples of the South and the North faced with
the ravages engendered by the dictatorship of the financial markets and by
the uncontrolled globalised deployment of the multinationals... to the
solidarity of the peoples of Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas faced
with the challenges of the development of the 21st century... [of the]
alternative political, economic and cultural consensus to neoliberal and
militarised globalisation as well as to the hegemonism of the US and its
allies”
As for the PWSF, it took place according to
tradition, with a multiplicity of themes attempting to cover all aspects
of the existence and relations of societies and individuals affected by
neoliberal globalisation. Thus, the following themes were discussed in the
form of meetings and workshops: wars and peace; the WTO; the Third World
debt; agrarian and peasant questions; “the Universe of women”;
international cooperation; the destruction of the ecosystems; migration
and the criminalisation of migrants; raw materials; social struggles;
communication and information, culture, the future of the WSF; good
governance; alternatives; education; the critique of the UN as tool of the
imperialist powers in general, the US in particular ; the impunity of
African leaders, former and current, who torture their peoples and so on.
Despite the intention of avoiding hierarchies, some themes drew more
attention than others, principally because of their impact on the everyday
life of societies, African in particular. That was the case, for example,
with the theme of debt and its consequences on health, education, jobs and
so on, which were principally organised by networks like Jubilé Sud or the
CADTM.
However, numerous workshops were also devoted
- quasi-exclusively in the “Universe of Women” - to questions of
patriarchy in neoliberalism and the emancipation of women. While many
still justify the oppression of women in terms of relativism or
essentialist culturalism, in our day it is the product of an articulation
between pre-capitalist forms (so called traditional, of control of bodies
and exploitation of the labour force) and capitalist forms, neoliberal,
among them: the strengthening of economic heteronomy (also through the
unemployment of women, including educated women) and the massive falloff
in the attendance of girls at school (a consequence of social measures of
structural adjustment) which favour the development of prostitution among
young girls, as individual strategy of survival. This tendency is not
getting any better in a time of neoliberal barbarism. However, it would
not be controversial to say that mobilisation for fundamental sexual
equality is not yet considered cardinal for the majority of the African
movement for global justice, which is predominantly male. .
It should be said moreover that a workshop was
devoted to the question of sexual preferences because this is virtually a
taboo question in most African societies and one on which the movement for
global justice is also not free of prejudice. Above all in relation to
male homosexuality, with homophobia illustrated in recent times in Africa
by the legal repression of gays in Egypt, the discourse of Zimbabwean
president Robert Mugabe, the press campaign against gays underway in
Cameroon and so on. So its place on the agenda was entirely justified.
However, nothing guarantees that it will be on the agenda of the next
African Social Forum because the specific weight of prejudice in the
societies and the repression underway does not favour the organisation of
gays, confining them most often to a suffocating quasi-clandestinity.
Burning reality: immigration, land, rail...
Among the themes on the agenda particularly in
synch with African reality were those concerning migration policies. The
host country of the PWSF is a big centre of migration towards other
African countries and out of the continent. Thus the drama of Ceuta and
Mellila (covered by the media in a very ambiguous fashion) was taken up in
a number of workshops as a symbol of criminalisation, particularly by the
western states, of certain categories of migrants, fleeing poverty, war
and the repressive regimes which emerge from neoliberalism. Which favours,
moreover, the production of those “without papers” whose “illegality”
allows their exploitation. What could be better for employers seeking
superprofits and verging on nostalgia for the slave workforce of the first
days of globalisation? Today, there are 80,000 Malian immigrants in
France, nearly half of them “illegal”, and thus forced to work at the whim
of their employers, and exposed to the threat of expulsion.
To denounce this policy of violation of the
right to migration as well as racism, a peaceful march was organised from
the International Conference Centre at Bamako to the French embassy The
mobilisation, was affected by the force with which Aminata Traoré, a
leading figure in the African and Malian global justice movement
intervened to denounce it, thus reducing Malian participation, without
succeeding in having it cancelled.
Which illustrates the ambiguity of certain
elites in the global justice movement. Some recalled that the African
Social Forum, of which she is the main leader, was not associated with the
organisation of the counter summit to the Summit of Heads of State of
France and Africa held in Bamako in December 2005.
Among the most disappointed demonstrators were
the hundreds of Malian participants at the workers and peasants’
conference whu had suspended their work in order to participate in the
march. This conference, largely organised through the Kayira network of
community radios, seemed at the margin of the PWSF through its location, a
big straw hut in the courtyard of the conference centre. However, it was a
space of information and exchange on the social situation of the rural
areas. At the end of this conference, a step forward in the area of
coordination seems to have been accomplished. The Malian small peasants
benefited from the support of peasant delegates from other countries,
African in particular, who denounced the imposition of genetically
modified seeds, food insecurity and expulsion from land. For their part,
Malian workers were able to exchange with trades unionists from elsewhere,
in struggle also against measures of flexibilisation, privatisation and
its consequences. These struggles are particularly symbolised, in Mali, by
the struggle against privatisation of the railways.
Some of those attending from South Africa drew
attention to the setting up of an international network for the right to
work, which does not exist on the continent, based around their national
campaign “Make unemployment history. Demand the right to work” [2] But unemployment without benefits, in the Third World in
general, in Africa in particular, seems to compromise the effectiveness of
such a network. Such a network, demanding the fundamental right of
everyone to a decent job, seems not to interest the big development NGOs,
who often relay (despite themselves?) the neoliberal principle of the
economic incompetence of the state and of salvation by capitalist private
initiative which flows from it.
The necessity of a radical current
Others from southern Africa in general, and
from South Africa in particular, placed the critique of the NEPAD on the
agenda. They insisted on the specific role of South Africa, whose chief of
state, Thabo Mbeki, is a promoter of the NEPAD, as main relay of
imperialism in Africa. [3] Since the presidency of Mandela, but above all under Thabo
Mbeki, the South African state perpetuates its nature as assistant to
South African capital.
Yet this African expansion of South African
capital, through the NEPAD, has found defenders among the participants.
The president of the organisations of civil society from Guinea, Elhadj
Farouck Tafsir Souhmah, defended the pan-Africanism of the NEPAD, arguing
nonetheless for the necessity of a supplement of social soul, through the
implication of African “civil society” in its realisation. Again an
expression of the influence of neoliberal ideology.
In contrast to this pan-Africanism,
(deliberately?) blind to the class nature of the African states and to the
heterogeneity of often conflictual social interests in African civil
society, youth attending the PWSF named their camp after Thomas
Sankara [4] This latter, in spite of his faults (like the dismissal of
1,500 striking teachers on March 22, 1984) and limits, remains to some
African youth the last African anti-imperialist figure.
Thus, a symposium (conferences, film, book
exposition and so on), discussed Sankara’s lone appeal for the repudiation
of the foreign debt (made at an Organisation of African Unity (OAU) summit
in July 1987), his critique of neo-colonial cooperation during the 1987
reception of French president François Mitterrand, in Ouagadougou (Burkina
Faso), and his concrete struggle for the emancipation of women in Burkina
Faso For these youth, he was a precursor of the African movement for
social justice. Next time it is planned to pay tribute to the leader of
the liberation struggle in Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde, Amilcar Cabral,
another great radical figure of the recent African past whose spirit had
contributed to the unfolding of the April 1974 Revolution in Portugal. The
radicalism expressed by these youth - which is not shared by others, who
identify despite everything with the African Union - is in synch with the
desire expressed by others in the African movement for social justice to
develop radical perspectives. An option which is necessary if we wish to
attack the evil at its root, rather than simply its current appearance
which is neoliberalism.
The dominant current in the movement, which
often behaves as if the social situation of the peoples of the South was
similar to that of the petty bourgeoisies of the North, indeed of the
South unhappily scored some points in Bamako, with the very weak
participation - around 50 people - at the Assembly of Social Movements and
the non-adoption of the declaration of social movements. The Assembly was
scheduled for the eve of the closure of the PWSF, at the same time as
workshops and lectures which were also of interest to the social
movements. [5]
In order for the articulation of the
reflection and the passage to action to be more audible at the next WSFs,
much remains to be done. The next meeting in Nairobi could be a stage in
the clarification of the process. The movement in Africa will continue its
processes of clarification through social Forums at the national and
sub-regional (southern Africa, West Africa, Maghreb and so on) levels, the
Forum of Peoples and the African Social Forum but also through struggle
and mobilisations on a daily basis against exploitation, oppression,
repression and injustice. Thus the concrete road to a world of human
equality and fundamental social justice depends on the degree of
participation and organisation of consciousness of the wretched of the
earth, everywhere, according to local and global rhythms.
Jean
Nanga is a Congolese revolutionary Marxist.
NOTES
[1] “This day is a day against imperialism”, in “Terraviva”,
independent daily of the Polycentric World Social Forum of Bamako number
1, January 20, 2006. However in the same interview, R. Herrera spoke of
the “bourgeoisies of the South who serve the interests, not of their
peoples, but of the establishment of the North”. This recalls the
illusion, criticised by Fanon, on the possible existence of emancipatory
or progressive bourgeoisies in the countries of the south in general, in
Africa in particular. Do the bourgeoisies of the North really serve the
interests of their peoples?
[2] For more information, see AIDC, Alternatives, Vol. 3-no
17, November 2005, or on the Internet: http://www.aidc.org.za/.
[3] Ishmael Lesufi, “NEPAD and South African Imperialism”,
Jubilee South Africa, 2006, p. 37. Pamphlet edited with the support of the
Rosa Luxemburg Foundation.
[4] Thomas Sankara (1949-1987) was head of state in Burkina
Faso (formerly Upper Volta) from 1984 to 1987. He was assassinated on
October 17, 1987, during a putsch led by his number 2, Blaise Compaoré,
who remains head of state today.
[5] The traditional declaration was replaced by the
Contribution of the General Assembly of Social Movements in the World
Social Forum in Bamako
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http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/article.php3?id_article=1032
