The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which set clear targets for reducing poverty, hunger, disease, illiteracy, environmental degradation, and discrimination against women by 2015 can be seen as operationalising the objectives of sustainable development. Sustained growth is a fundamental determinant of reducing poverty because it enables households to increase their income expenditure and it also provides the government with resources to provide infrastructure and social services, states Professor Ibrahim Lipumba from the University of Dar es Salaam in the paper for a November 2004 conference of the G24. But, says Lipumba, even with 100 percent debt cancellation, improved governance and effective public expenditure prioritization, domestic resources will not be adequate to break the poverty trap, and additional external assistance will be required.

This book is a groundbreaking exploration of public opinion in sub-Saharan Africa. Based on the Afrobarometer, a comprehensive cross-national survey research project, it reveals what ordinary Africans think about democracy and market reform, subjects on which almost nothing is otherwise known. The authors find that support for democracy in Africa is wide but shallow and that Africans feel trapped between state and market. Beyond multiparty elections, people want clean and accountable government.

The United Nations urged governments on January 11, 2005 to harness the unprecedented outpouring of support for the tsunami disaster and help more than 20 million other people caught in "forgotten" crises around the world. According to the Consolidated appeal for 2005, the top 14 areas in need of help are: Occupied Palestinian Territories, Democratic Republic of Congo, Chad, Somalia, Uganda, Eritrea, West Africa, Burundi, Great Lakes Region of Africa, Chechnya, Guinea, Central African Republic, Ivory Coast, Congo.

Efforts by Guinea's new prime minister to relaunch a dialogue with opposition parties have been blighted by the unexplained arrest of Antoine Soromou, a leading figure in the Rally of the Guinean People (RPG) party of veteran opposition leader Alpha Conde. Mamadou Ba, the chairman of the Republican Front for Democratic Change (FRAD), a coalition of Guinea's six main opposition parties, said Soromou was arrested last Thursday. He was detained just 24 hours after opposition leaders met with recently appointed Prime Minister Cellou Dalien Diallo to relaunch a dialogue with the government.

The chairman of Nigeria's ruling party has resigned following a bitter row with President Olusegun Obasanjo. People's Democratic Party chairman Audu Ogbeh has handed in his letter of resignation, his spokesman said. Mr Ogbeh had disagreed with Mr Obasanjo over how to handle a crisis between rival party factions in the south-eastern Anambra state.

Since the African Peer Review Mechanism was launched about two years ago, less than half of the African Union's 53-member states have acceded to the process – designed to improve governance on the continent. The African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) commits countries to opening themselves for inspection by a team of governance experts – this to determine whether they have conformed to principles laid out in the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD). These include observing the rule of law, and respecting human and property rights.

Thank you so much for the editorial: 'Have the Slaves left the master's house' by Amanda Alexander And Mandisa Mbali.

It is inspiring to see an editorial of such insightful critique. The "masters tools will never destroy the master's house". It is so clear! It is almost oxymoron to think otherwise. We have lived long enough to see all the games that are played. The disguising of enslavement, colonialism, exploitation and disempowerment into other forms and terminology. But we've still not changed our game! We respond to issues and agendas.

We respect only the institutions of others. We steadfastly refuse to innovate in thinking, in strategy, implementation and public service. We do not define our issues and put our heads down and work towards their resolution and take the pain ( no gain without pain) and persist to that greater freedom; of being truly the masters of our wealth creation, masters of providing for our citizens and masters of doing it our way! Reform, tinkering with existing ideas, concepts and structures and obedience to Western modes of operations and framework, institutions and paradigms will not work. They make the rules, in their favour! So clear! Children in the play ground understand that! 'Always be the rule maker'!

African leaders need to have independence of thought and do a lot of thinking or rethinking. Yes it is hard work, compared to taking off the shelf ideas and ways of doing things! Progress is elbow grease! There is no other way .....Those chains must be levered open and now, for heavens sake! I want to see it in my life time!

The Senegalese economist Demba Dembele's my hero - he gets to the point "... that the West will never develop Africa and that most African leaders do not care about the welfare of their citizens". When will our leaders get it and stop playing ball with the west and focus on carrying out their job description for the masses. As painful as the journey will be, As painful as the journey will be, As painful as the journey will be ( so true I have to say it thrice! We need to refuse engagement with the west (naive some will say? Show me where engagement has worked? We are still in a subservient position despite aid galore , commissions galore, developmental NGO's galore , what difference have they all made?) Tell them we will not pay any debt and concentrate on pan African trading, pan African creation of the goods and services. Rethink Pan Africanism, so that it informs our economic policies, our cultural outlook, our vision , our politics our philosophies and concepts!

We are skewered by European capitalism...! Why do we respect such philosophies and economic thinking... you cannot use a framework for which you did not participate in its creation or propagation? We do not affect, we react! The observation that by "...African leaders .. attending G8 meetings and producing a policy document endorsed by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF), are revealing that they 'fear freedom, as former slaves who walk back to their masters, not yet ready to leave the master's house'". Get the hell out ! Build your own house and make your own rules (forget globalism - it is not working for Africa!) Use a pan African framework.

Kudos to the excellent work you are doing. It has consistently and undoubtedly satisfied the requirements of information, education, communication and research.  Please keep the flag flying. Wishing you a properous New Year.

The Development Gateway Foundation is seeking nominations for the second Development Gateway Award. The $100,000 award will recognize outstanding achievement in using information and communication technologies (ICT) to improve people's lives in developing countries. In launching the 2005 competition, the Development Gateway aims to help advance the use of ICT for development by recognizing leaders and innovative initiatives in the field.

I didn’t have a happy New Year and I am galled because the slaves are in fact elbowing one another to stay in the master's house. My brother Tajudeen in his postcard aptly states that the saturation coverage on the tsunami has more to do with the number of Westerners killed in the disaster! Yet one cannot but cringe at the fact that the catastrophe not only wreaked havoc on its victims but also brought out the baser instincts. Poor orphans watch greedy kin cashing in, bereaved families contend with self appointed "corpse finders" demanding cash upfront!

As an African woman I am not comfortable with the fact that the reporting has been uneven and there is the tendency to obscure certain unpalatable issues. Some of those countries are favourite destinations for the hordes of shameless sex tourists exerting their power on what the Cuban poet laureate Nicolas Guillén termed “dark smiling natives”. Isn’t there the the risk of stepped up trafficking of women and girls with the paedophilia brigade relocating to our look the other way countries? Secondly I am concerned at the lower rung reserved for all things African when it comes to the scale of priorities. Even in disaster relief must we cool our heels awaiting the crumbs from the Annan-Eagland-CNN table of compassion and coverage by affirmative action?

The slaves have not left and in fact are on overtime! I weep for the African casualties who may never be known, for the lone Kenyan boy who died on the beach at Malindi, the coastal resort town famed as a playground of the affluent ranging from rowdy royals like the Prince of Hanover to retired colonial spies, mercenaries, livestock officers and new rich expatriates. The kind who can smuggle in a ton of cocaine labelled personal, purchase a speed boat to transfer the loot onto a waiting liner in the high seas then beat it as a well placed “contact” tips them off on the impending police “raid”! Hollywood? No.Malindi. Where the North shuts out the South using the compliant South, sanitizing itself of its ill gotten gains and unleashing the attack dogs of privilege on the natives they have disempowered with their SAPs and knee pads…

Enter the tsunami. Over one hundred Somalis, ten Tanzanians, one South African and one Kenyan meet their Maker. One statistic at Malindi. All his poor parents could get was a Government vehicle but no fuel. The same day the Chinese Embassy finally located them in the slums of Nairobi and donated 100,000 Kenya shillings towards the funeral expenses, the State donated 100,00 Kenya shillings to the S.E Asia victims, boxes of tea (Boxing day? ) and thirty doctors.. .A case of therefore those that have shall be given!

I beg to differ slightly with Tajudeen and the Gandhi quote. The issue is not just greed for wealth and power in both hemispheres! Those who have held the world in the bondage of debt and abject poverty are ably aided and abetted by our non tsunami compliant ruling elites whose very survival is at stake. Why, their alienation quotient is on autopilot!

The slaves cannot leave the master’s house until we say: Kumepambazuka!

Just to say keep on the good work and struggle for the self actualization of the African Child. Your articles have been timely and a good collection of reference material on issues affecting our dear continent. Wishing you and your team a very prosperous new year! And praying that the message of social justice and equity would be read and acted upon by the global community.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) is to send accounting specialists to Nigeria and Kenya, to help them trace and recover money stolen by previous corrupt governments. The Vienna-based agency said it will 'conduct in-depth assessments of the institutional and legal frameworks' in these countries, making detailed proposals to 'overcome obstacles to asset recovery'. At the initiative's launch, the UNODC claimed that in the 1990s, corrupt officials in Nigeria stole and exported at least $2.2bn.

* Editorial: A struggle for the heart and soul of the African Social Forum is taking place. Amanda Alexander and Mandisa Mbali ask if the social forums will be ‘talk shops’, ‘think tanks’, ‘arenas for planning action’, ‘campaign launch pads’ or ‘strategy and tactics seminars’.
* Comment and Analysis: Norman Reynolds on why the Khulumani case for apartheid reparations is important to human rights
* Pan-African Postcard: Debt relief in the wake of the Asian Tsunami disaster must also apply to Africa, writes Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem
* Elections and Governance: The Mozambique election results are getting murkier
* Health: Rating the G7/G8’s commitment to health
* HIV/AIDS: Rolling out ART
* Environment: GM trees are not part of another world, says a new book
* Media and Freedom of Expression: Press freedom in Tunisia a casualty of the “war on terror”
* Books and Art: A review of Conversing with Africa: The Politics of Change

>>>>>

STOP PRESS…STOP PRESS: Nigeria has become the first country in 2005 to ratify the Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa, report our campaign partners. The African Union has now received a copy of Nigeria’s instrument of ratification, making Nigeria the sixth country to ratify the protocol after Lesotho, Comoros, Libya, Namibia and Rwanda.

For more information and to sign a petition for women's rights: http://www.pambazuka.org/petition

>>>>>

The “Twelve Days of Christmas” is a Christian tradition. It links Christmas day (December 25) with Epiphany (January 6). “Epiphany” comes from a Greek word meaning “manifestation”. In a Christian sense we think of God manifesting (or revealing) himself to humankind in his coming into the world in physical form in the person of Jesus. Hence the link with Christmas, marking the birth of the Christ child, and hence too the tradition that remembers, on the twelfth day, the coming of the “wise men” from the East to witness that miracle for themselves. The twelve days between are days of joyous celebration. On the twelfth day of course all the Christmas decorations come down and life returns to “normal”.

Christmas and Epiphany are essentially Christian festivals, but the event they celebrate is of universal significance – namely that the Creator of this vast, complex and beautiful universe loves each and every one of his children. In fact he has revealed that he has a special concern for the poor, the lowly and the suffering. (Jesus was himself a victim of power politics; he suffered an appalling injustice, and was tortured to death) There is therefore in “The Twelve Days of Christmas” a message of hope for all, and a challenge to all, to show a God-like concern for the victims of injustice and oppression. Which is why Sokwanele selected this time to run a series of features that relate particularly to some of those “at the bottom of the pile” in suffering, crisis-torn Zimbabwe.

Christmas 2004 marked the 20th anniversary of Band Aid, an international charity initiative that set out to raise money for famine relief in Ethiopia in 1984. While Band Aid celebrates their achievements in Ethiopia twenty years ago, many Zimbabweans starve today as a result of disastrous government policies. Sokwanele’s articles over the last 12 days have explored a range of ways in which food is manipulated, controlled and exploited in our country. Furthermore, we have shown that using ‘food’ as a tool for short-term gain is an established part of the ZANU PF political tradition. While this campaign recognises the suffering of people in Zimbabwe today, it also remembers the suffering imposed on Zimbabweans at the hands of ZANU PF twenty years ago. We remind those in power that Zimbabweans will never forget what has been done in the past, nor will we forget what is being done today.

The issue of food security in our nation is one that touches all of us. Our most recent articles, focussing on the impact of HIV/AIDS on farming in the rural areas, coupled with first-hand testimony from Binga, clearly show that the promise of a “bumper harvest” is a cruel deception. ZANU PF’s current policies, which set out to monopolise all aspects of food supply and use it to intimidate the general populace into voting for it, renders any such promise a total fiction.

Ida, the 73-year-old pensioner whose story we shared on Day 6 of our campaign, should be living comfortably in her old age. Her husband had worked hard to ensure that when he died, his wife would be taken care of. But Mugabe’s economy, boasting the worst inflation rate in the world, has eroded the value of pensions with the result that hundreds of pensioners like Ida cannot afford to eat today. Yet as difficult as her life is, Ida is ‘lucky’ in comparison to Belinda’s grandmother (Day 3) who is destitute and homeless. Like many other grandmothers in our country, Belinda’s grandmother found herself with the heartbreaking responsibility of looking after her tiny HIV positive granddaughter, orphaned when both parents died while she was still a baby. Without the help of a local organisation, both Belinda and her grandmother would almost certainly have died long ago.

Will organisations like this be able to continue helping once ZANU PF’s controls all NGO activities? We caught a glimpse of how many different lives were affected by one small feeding scheme in one of Zimbabwe’s cities (Day 7). In contrast, our article on Day 4 testifies to how the one institution that is totally dependent on the government for food, namely our prisons, exposes hundreds of human beings to malnutrition and a range of other diseases as a result of paltry amounts of unhealthy food being prepared and served in the most unsanitary conditions. Is this the way of our future once local and foreign feeding schemes are closed down? If this regime cannot feed a few thousand prisoners, how is it ever going to feed the hundreds of thousands – indeed millions -- of starving people who need help today?

Or perhaps it has no intention of doing so? Our articles on Days 5 and 8 speak of extensive corruption in the food supply system, and of the deliberate manipulation of food in our country for short term political gain. These policies and practices amount to state imposed starvation.

We started our campaign by saying that starvation, regardless of political or religious persuasion, is at its core a moral issue that concerns us all. We ask again today, that you put aside your own particular political allegiances, and consider what many Zimbabweans are experiencing today in that light.
And here are some of the practical things that you can do in response to that suffering:

1. Keep yourself well informed about what is really happening so you will not be taken in by the regime's propaganda. The following websites provide Zimbabwean news from a range of sources, both international and local: www.zwnews.com; www.zimonline.co.za; www.newzimbabwe.com; www.zimbabwesituation.com
2. Help others to be informed. Share this knowledge with as many as you can in whatever ways are open to you.
3. Give whatever financial or material help you can to the various local organisations that are working to feed the starving and alleviate poverty and suffering in our country. Visit www.kubatana.net for the contact details of local organisations in your area.

We thank you for your support.

* This is the last in a series of twelve features distributed by Sokwanele. To subscribe to their mailing list email [email protected] Sokwanele, which means “enough” aims to make people aware of what is happening in Zimbabwe. Visit www.sokwanele.com/ for more information. Sokwanele.com retains full copyright on its own articles, which may be reproduced or distributed but may not be materially altered in any way.

The story of the poor goes round and round. But what about the story of the rich? The story not being told is that of the beneficiaries of slavery and colonialism. The story of exploitation that put us into this dispensation, commodified our own life for profit. They divided and ruled. Can we unite and live? Can we unite for the world that will be our world? Let us rise up and begin to tell this story… of why they continue to be rich, continue to plunder.

- Wahu Kaara, Kenyan feminist activist speaking at the ASF opening plenary

Introduction

At the opening plenary of the Africa Social Forum in Lusaka, Zambia (10-14 December, 2004), delegates from across the continent gave varied testimonies that coalesced around a single truth: recolonisation is worse than slavery.

Activists noted Africa’s history of injustices and oppression through colonialism, slavery and apartheid, but swiftly moved on to the injustices of present-day, post-colonial Africa: privatisation and cost-recovery, wars fought over Africa’s natural resources, heavy debt burdens and conditionalities, unfair trade and disease. Contrary to dominant accounts of the continent as an almost biblically ‘cursed’ ‘basket case’ and Africans as helpless victims, delegate after delegate emphasised that Africa’s poverty, wars and disease pandemics are causally related to a global economic system that is predicated on the poverty of the many.

“The world, it would seem, friends, is at the end of its imagination”, Corinne Kumar of Tunisia and Indonesia told the assembled plenary. How much further can the tired mechanisms of domination and exploitation be stretched? Though they are continuously re-disguised, masquerading as World Bank Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) or Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs), as the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) or Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs), the instruments of oppression remain just as blatant for those attempting to access basic services like water, land, education and healthcare – with increasing difficulty.

Colonialism is a very old game, and is thus forced to maintain itself through substitutions – substitutions that activists are perpetually contesting. Substitutions of NEPAD for economic liberation, of incessant white tutelage for black independent praxis, of “efficiency” that benefits the few rather than the many, of a blameless past for a counter-hegemonic history, of the language of the powerful for localised terminology and stories, of dignity for the flat notion of “equality”. Kumar’s assertions were echoed by many activists throughout the Forum: it is up to the South – and Africa in particular – to champion notions of democracy that are not intrinsically tied to the market economy; to find new notions of power that facilitate, transform, and enhance; to redefine Africa through a discourse of dissent – one that decentres, disrupts and interrupts all that is dominant.

At the ASF we observed that while African civil society is not uniformly strong across all regions, trade unionists, students, women and young people are increasingly resisting neoliberalism on the continent – against the current of their politicians. At a session on NEPAD, a Zimbabwean delegate argued that African leaders, by attending G8 meetings and producing a policy document endorsed by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF), are revealing that they “fear freedom, as former slaves who walk back to their masters, not yet ready to leave the master’s house”.

Along with their critiques of neo-colonialism and the lack of democracy in international policy-making, African activists were increasingly outraged at the lack of democracy within the Forum structure. The ASF often replicated prevailing socio-economic, cultural and political inequalities. In particular, despite the feminist tribunal at the beginning of the Forum, women were often not given sufficient space to participate and raise feminist issues throughout the conference. Plenary sessions and panel discussions were largely devoid of meaningful dialogue and debate. The sole exception, which will be discussed later as a promising alternative, was the Feminist Dialogue, where women arranged their chairs in a large circle to form the only space in the entire forum set up for the horizontal movement of knowledge in many directions.

Why the master’s tools will never destroy the master’s house

In The Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon predicted the exhaustion of third world nationalism as espoused by many African leaders (1965). Indeed, without civil society resistance Africa’s bourgeoisie and its nationalist leaders may end up becoming the ‘cheap jack’ to Western capitalism and imperialism. As one delegate argued, “the master’s tools [neo-liberal policies] will never destroy the master’s house [rich countries’ economic domination of Africa]”. Patrick Bond poses the question even more directly: will Africa aim to ‘fix’ the International Financial Institutions (IFIs) such as the World Bank, World Trade Organisation (WTO) and IMF or ‘nix’ them (Bond, 2000)? Or, in terms of the central problematic posed in our report, will Africa merely substitute structural adjustments for ‘homegrown’ structural adjustments such as GEAR and NEPAD? Are the foreign overseers such as the Bank and the IMF increasingly confident that they can count on local overseers to carry out their work? Has the logic of ‘fiscal discipline’ become so normalised that Africa’s ruling class has yoked itself with fiscal self-discipline?

The social consequences of structural adjustment programmes have been evident in Africa for over two decades. The very real, human costs were evident as we walked through downtown Lusaka, where crumbling infrastructure includes the broken storm drains, clogged with garbage, that periodically become breeding grounds for cholera. The Lusaka-based Namibian human rights lawyer who showed us around mentioned that as a result of cutbacks espoused in structural adjustments and a high proportion of the country’s budget going toward debt servicing, patients attending the country’s public hospitals must provide their own drips, medicine, bedding and food.

Indeed, IFI-advocated cost recovery is alive and well in Zambia: advertisements on Zambian television announced that cut-offs of electricity were immanent for defaulters over the festive season and that electricity company employees who assisted them to reconnect would be liable for prosecution. Jubilee Zambia informed us that this year just shy of a third of Zambia’s budget will go toward servicing odious debt. Therefore, it comes as little surprise that Zambia’s life expectancy has been reduced by AIDS and other preventable and treatable infectious diseases to a mere 35 years of age. The choices facing Africa’s leaders are as stark as the slogans on t-shirts worn by activists from the African Friends Service Committee: “LIFE” or “DEBT”.

The very real impacts of neo-liberal policies on ordinary African people’s lives brought debates on how African politicians and civil society organisations should relate to IFIs into sharp relief. African politicians are already engaging with IFIs and G8 countries and it was clear to many delegates that NEPAD can be viewed as the product of such engagements. In this context, an important item on the agenda was African civil society’s engagement with IFIs such as the World Bank and Bank-supported programmes like NEPAD.

On the second day, a session was held on views of “Civil Society Engagement with the World Bank” chaired by Kumi Naidoo of CIVICUS (an international umbrella body of NGOs). Naidoo outlined how CIVICUS’s board had for an eighteen-month period “…embarked on a process of canvassing and documenting civil society views on engagement with the Bank”. Naidoo described this as a “painful process” for which CIVICUS had received a great deal of criticism. Nevertheless, according to Naidoo, CIVICUS was powering ahead to hosting a “Global Policy Forum” in April 2005 bringing together the Bank and civil society, which would mark “the end” of its engagement with the Bank.

When the floor was opened, Console Tleane from the Freedom of Expression Institute of South Africa argued that CIVICUS was unfairly seeking legitimation for its engagement with the Bank at the Africa Social Forum. Tleane pointed out that the conversation seemed awkwardly placed in the agenda of the Forum – rather than scanning civil society views on working with the Bank, delegates were ready to strategize how to bring about the end of the bank by April 2005. Kenyan activist Njoke Njehu of 50 Years is Enough, a Washington DC-based NGO, argued that there have been three major civil society attempts to engage with the Bank, including the World Commission on Dams and the Extractive Industry Review – and they had all failed. The Bank’s primary objective in trying to engage with civil society is to boost its public relations (PR) and lend a veneer of legitimacy and transparency to its opaque and undemocratic operations. Indeed, Njehu stated that the Bank has a PR budget in excess of US$20 million per annum and seventy staff devoted to improving its image. She went on to question who actually funded CIVICUS’s engagement with the Bank and in fact whether the organisation was truly independent of the Bank and those who support its agendas.

A Senegalese trade unionist in the Higher Education sector argued that the World Bank’s policies had destroyed African Universities through dramatic budgetary cutbacks and cost recovery. Similarly, a Nigerian activist explained that she had attended a meeting with the Bank on PRSPs as recently as a month before and gained the impression the Bank had already decided on what policies should be adopted in the country and was merely “going through the motions” of holding a meeting with civil society activists. Year in, year out this NGO representative had been to meetings with the Bank and had seen virtually no implementation of progressive civil society organisation’s suggestions, expect at the most cosmetic level.

Veteran South African anti-apartheid and social justice activist Dennis Brutus argued that CIVICUS was still actively engaged with the Bank and so it was disingenuous to argue that it was ‘disengaging’ with the Bank, but only after a big meeting in April 2005. Njehu went on to argue that the IMF and World Bank divided NGOs into pliant ‘good’ NGOs like CIVICUS that it could ‘deal with’ and critical ‘bad’ NGOs like 50 Years that it refused to have anything to do with. If the Bank was serious about hearing civil society perspectives it would be prepared to hear very critical perspectives – even those arguing for it to be boycotted by ethical investors on the Bonds market and ultimately closed down.

Tleane argued for activists who did not agree with such engagement to protest at such meetings in a way similar to the “Not in My Name” campaign launched by left-wing South African Jews opposed to Israeli President Ariel Sharon’s policies in relation to Palestinians. One of the authors of this paper argued for 50 Years to demonstrate outside the meeting to show that not all civil society actors are in agreement with engagement with the Bank. South African Anti-Privatisation Forum activist Virginia Setshedi then led participating delegates in a protest song against collaborating with neo-colonial forces. Indeed, in an article entitled “No to World Bank-Civil Society Relations”, the African Flame, the daily ASF newspaper, reported on the session as follows:

Without a single dissenting voice, participants rejected any dealings with the Bank. The Bank’s bad record on the continent and the tonnes of evidence that indict it for the continued poverty of the African people were cited as the main reasons why any engagement will not be meaningful. The message was clear: there…[was] no way that the ASF would entertain any dealings with the Bank.

Activists in the NEPAD session came to the same conclusions on the potential of neo-liberal institutions and policies. Senegalese economist Demba Dembele’s rejection of NEPAD is based on two fundamental assumptions: that the West will never develop Africa and that most African leaders do not care about the welfare of their citizens. Pointing to the fact that NEPAD is premised on the extraction and export of Africa’s prime resources and the opening of the continent to exploitative foreign direct investment (FDI), a Zimbabwean economist characterised NEPAD as “creating a Bill of Rights for trans-national corporations”. Thus, he concluded: “our engagement will mean nothing”.

Finding our own tools: Feminist Dialogue

In breaking with the structure of other Forum sessions in which two or three panellists (usually male) addressed an audience for roughly two hours and finished by fielding a handful of questions, the feminist dialogue was constructed as an actual conversation – open to dissent and debate and allowing ideas to build off each other. Chairs were arranged in a large circle and, by the end of the session, nearly every woman and man present had spoken their mind. Unfortunately, discussion revolved around gender and feminism in our societies (of women in power having become ‘patriarchs’ and of the need for better, context-specific understandings of gender and feminism in order to avoid negative labelling, for example), but did not touch on feminism and the role of women within our own movements. The participatory form of the conversation embodied a dissent against the structuring of the ASF, and yet the critique must go further.

We know that women fuel our movements (and more isolated moments of resistance) across Africa, but they were in the minority at the Africa Social Forum because the leadership of organizations and movements (i.e. those likely to represent organisations at international forums) are men. We know that we will go back to our meetings and some women may not feel free to speak up. Essentially, we know that patriarchy and other forms of dominance are being re-inscribed within our movements for resistance.

As Shallo Skaba, an Ethiopian coffee worker stated at the Africa Court of Women, “No one is looking for women’s problems. No one considers all that women are doing”. If movements go on as they are, women’s problems will not be looked for, much less effectively organized around. One woman suggested in the dialogue that feminism is a political consciousness around power and power inequalities. Let us, then, apply that critical consciousness to the society we resist against and to the vehicles of resistance that are propelled by our energy, our sacrifices, our limited resources, our courage – but too often not by our decisions and the wisdom of our experiences as women.

Again out of character with much of the Forum, several action items were decided upon. These included gathering and sharing feminist literature from across the continent over an email discussion list and in existing publications such as Feminist Africa, the Centre for Civil Society website and research reports, and WeWrite. Feminist dialogue must be wrestled back from the (mostly Northern) academic spaces which have co-opted and subsequently come to define (and confine) debate.

Those present also strategised ways to hold women who are elected into office accountable. This is gravely needed, as demonstrated in South Africa, where Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang has consistently pushed forward policies that have worsened – and ultimately taken – the lives of poor, black, HIV-positive women. In Tanzania, Fatima Alloo explained, women activists meet with each female politician upon assuming office. From the very beginning of her term – and often beforehand, during her campaigning – women activists attempt to become these politicians’ primary network and base. Since women so often identify with a system that will “protect” them, the moment that they say ‘No’, they are persecuted. Women activists can thus form alternative forms of protection, and women in high office can draw their power not from the prevailing system of patriarchal control, but from those who understand power’s underbelly.

Finally, activists called for further strategising on helping to make women economically independent. As one activist from the Gambia remarked, we must make it possible for women to get a divorce if necessary, to have some measure of financial independence. In a global economy where women produce over 80% of resources, and yet own less than 20% of them, the battle for economic sovereignty for women will be long and difficult. However, we will work to assure that women are not further exploited by our own movements, and that we create means for economic independence as we can.

Are our tools sharp enough?

Across several sessions, a number of participants asked similar questions: what are we doing to take the debates here back to the grassroots in our own countries? People are dying of AIDS in my country, aggressive cost recovery means that water and electricity are being disconnected, trade negotiations are taking place which may ruin livelihoods, how will this Forum take our struggles forward?

When we asked different delegates how the ASF meetings were organised, they could only answer with even more questions. How, for instance, were the meetings financed? How was the organising council constituted?

Activists from South Africa’s Social Movements Indaba (SMI) questioned the structure of the ASF (an un-elected, self-appointed, ‘unrepresentative’ council) and its ‘lack of political direction’. The SMI activists said they viewed the council and the ASF as biased toward NGOs, as membership of the council did not entail representivity and members of the council had to pay their own way to council meetings. A statement issued and circulated by the SMI expanded this critique:

The underrepresentation of social movements in relation to NGOs is reflected in the political content of the forum. It manifests in the persistence of the notion that the Africa Social Forum is nothing other than a space, in contrast to the perspective that it should have a programme to advance our struggle against neoliberalism (1).

The SMI then went on to argue for a plenary to allow for collective decision-making on the structure and functioning of the ASF and develop a declaration and a programme of action.

These problems are not unique to the ASF. Other social forums have been critiqued for not culminating in sufficiently concrete political outcomes that would advance the struggles of social movements. For instance, in discussing the Boston Social Forum, Peter Marcuse recently argued that there was insufficient participation of ‘grassroots activists’ (activists who were very poor, on welfare, etc.) (Marcuse, 2005 forthcoming). In general, there was an expressed need to link the BSF and other Social Forums to “action” with “concrete results” (ibid, 3). As Marcuse argues, while such forums might offer the future “nucleus” of a global social movement it is too early to speak of a global social movement focused on limited objectives and dealing with broader issues of power and social justice (ibid).

Similarly, an activist writing for schnews.org.uk on the 2004 European Social Forum held in London argued that: “[Activists] came to see if ‘another world is possible’, yet as expected [the ESF] was hijacked by people whose vision seems seriously at odds with many people involved in grassroots politics”. Many ESF activists questioned the wisdom of replacing one set of unaccountable political cronies for another.

Building our own house: From ‘space’ to action?

In order for the Social Forums to continue to have legitimacy with social movement activists they will have to move beyond merely being ‘spaces’ or ‘forums’ for debate about ‘other possibilities’ for the world and towards being forums for debating strategies and tactics and common campaigns. In essence, there seems to be a struggle for the soul of the Social Forums: will they be ‘talk shops’ or ‘think tanks’ or ‘arenas for planning action’, ‘campaign launch pads’ or ‘strategy and tactics seminars’? As the feminist session of the ASF showed, making sessions more participatory and inclusive could be an important step in allowing legitimate critiques of the Social Forums and their constituent movements to emerge. In turn, this could allow for more focussed political discussions and outcomes at the Forums.

The stakes are high in this debate. As Setshedi argued: “people are being disconnected at home, what am I doing here if it doesn’t advance their struggle?”. Or as an HIV-positive feminist activist from Zimbabwe argued, “people are dying of AIDS at home, we need to think of a common platform to campaign to improve their access to treatment”. Such activists argued that it takes precious time and resources to attend Social Forums and that they must have something to show for attending such forums.

ASF delegates rejected engagement with the Bank and NEPAD, however, it should not be forgotten that indirect approaches urging such engagement were made through civil society intermediaries. This shows that capturing Social Forums and blunting their impact is a tantalising outcome for the Bank and ‘third-way’ politicians, which only adds a further sense of urgency to debates about the political direction and future of the Social Forums in advancing the aims of social movements for socio-economic justice. It is clear that social movement activists around the world increasingly wish to ‘jealously guard’ (SMI, 2) the Social Forums against de-politicisation and an inching towards irrelevant abstraction, merely providing ‘space for debate’. Such activists recognise that if they exhaust themselves debating in ‘space’ they will not seriously threaten the agendas of the Bank or the other IFIs. And the blunter the tools of the Social Forums get, the greater the chance activists will simply dispense with them entirely.

*Amanda Alexander is a Visiting Researcher at the Centre for Civil Society, University of KwaZulu-Natal.
*Mandisa Mbali is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Civil Society, University of KwaZulu-Natal.

* Please send comments to

References

- Bond, Patrick (2003). Against Global Apartheid: South Africa meets the World Bank, IMF and International Finance. London: ZED Books.
- “Endless Shit Flinging” (2004).

Eleven ministers in the Democratic Republic of Congo have lost their jobs in a wide-ranging government reshuffle - including six already suspended on corruption charges. Those ministers were accused in November of serious financial malpractice, along with the heads of a number of state-owned companies.

Trade Unions have suspended the first general strike in Sierra Leone to be held since the civil war ended three years ago. On Tuesday the country was brought to a standstill, but shops and offices have begun reopening says the BBC's Lansana Fofana from the capital, Freetown.

And so, another year in Zimbabwe – and in less than three months time, another election. It is a prospect that few seem to welcome. Compare the political environment in the country now to what it was ahead of the last parliamentary poll in 2000, and the lack of voter enthusiasm is not hard to understand.

The National Elections Commission (CNE) has said that hundreds of editais (polling station results sheets) had been "stolen" and not included in the final results. It also admitted ballot box stuffing in Tete. In making its various secret "corrections", the CNE says it gave an extra parliamentary seat to Renamo in Zambezia. The admissions that two of Renamo's key complaints were valid came at a CNE press conference in which the CNE said it rejected Renamo's protest over the 1-2 December elections. The statement leaves the election results even murkier and more confused than before, reports the latest edition of the Mozambique Political Process Bulletin.

The Khulumani Support Group’s reparations case under the Alien Tort Claims Act of the USA, along with the other ‘apartheid’ cases, was thrown out on September 29, 2004 by a conservative New York judge. He found that there was no violation of the law in commercial links with South Africa – an action that has drawn criticism from the South African Human Rights Commission.

Amongst the cases thrown out was the troublesome case initiated by Ed Fagan, in which he had demanded that the South African Government and companies should pay into a $20 bn "humanitarian fund".

The Khulumani case is being taken on appeal in a process that will demand that the merits of its case are more carefully reviewed and discerned. The case is viewed in the international human rights movement as the strongest case yet in enforcing international norms in respect of the behaviours of foreign multinational companies.

The Khulumani Support Group represents both the victims of apartheid who told their stories to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and the even larger group of survivors of gross human rights violations under apartheid who did not manage to engage with the TRC process.

The Khulumani case has survived several attempts to have it destroyed. One such attempt was the request by a number of multinational corporations, supported by several governments, including the American and British, to the United States Supreme Court not to allow foreigners to file lawsuits in America for human rights violations committed elsewhere in the world. However, on 29 June 2004, the United States Supreme Court, in the case of Sosa v Alverez, held that foreigners could use the Alien Tort Claims Act to institute lawsuits in the United States for human rights abuses wherever they may be committed in the world.

The Court held that "today the door is open to a narrow class of international norms" for litigants to institute lawsuits under the Alien Tort Claims Act. The Court observed, "It would take some explaining to say now that federal courts must avert their gaze entirely from any international norm intended to protect individuals." The court saw that the statute was intended, from the time of the Founding Fathers of the USA, “to have a practical effect the moment it became law." This judgment represents a significant victory for human rights globally and a milestone in the progress of the Khulumani International Lawsuit.

What are the merits of the Khulumani lawsuit? While other ‘apartheid lawsuits’ sought ‘open-ended’ redress for all black South Africans born in the country between 1948 and 1994, the Khulumani lawsuit, rather, seeks limited individual, tailored relief for identified victims from private actors – those foreign multinational corporations which violated international law and were involved in colluding with the apartheid state’s security apparatuses. With the support of these corporations, the apartheid government committed extra-judicial killing, torture, sexual assault, prolonged arbitrary detention, and multiple crimes against humanity.

It is time South Africa – government and business – treated it fairly. It represents a positive opportunity for both. Khulumani has emerged as a world leader in the struggle to advance international human rights jurisprudence – a fact that many individuals of stature and many international human rights organisations have recognised, amongst them are former Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Nobel Laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz.

The Khulumani lawsuit is highly significant in terms of international human rights law, in particular in the advance of international customary law and the creation of a world of greater social fairness. That is why it is lodged in New York, a city that houses both global corporations and the United Nations. It is a vital test case to ensure that any person anywhere in the world who is violated by a government or a multinational business would have access to redress.

Will our media assist all South Africans to understand the importance of the Khulumani lawsuit in this struggle for justice? Could the entire country, led by our President and by business leaders committed to corporate social responsibility, embrace this struggle and in so doing recognise the legitimacy of the Khulumani Support Group’s lawsuit?

International business was pleased by the submission of the former Minister of Justice to the presiding judge as that did not distinguish between the different “apartheid” cases. Their pleasure has been misguided. Government claimed that these cases would impede the foreign investment that is still needed to redress the legacies of apartheid. In truth, it may well be that by upholding the right of Khulumani to seek redress from those companies that broke international sanctions and knowingly aided the apartheid regime, government would build greater certainty in investors and business. As Joseph Stiglitz has pointed out, “addressing corporate misconduct brings confidence to consumers and markets, creating a more positive business climate – genuine foreign investors are attracted to conditions of stability where social justice and good political, economic and corporate governance prevail.”

President Mbeki has stated that the South African government is not and will not be a party to litigation against corporations that benefited from the Apartheid system. Nonetheless, at the tabling of the TRC final report, he noted that, "the Government recognizes the right of citizens to institute legal action."

President Mbeki now has the opportunity take the ‘higher ground’ and clarify or correct the affidavit previously submitted by our government to the New York court. Such a clarification should distinguish the Khulumani case from the others and support the right of redress to American courts for all those who become the future victims of bad governments and criminal businesses. After all, the Khulumani lawsuit strengthens South Africa’s constitutional democracy by acknowledging the supremacy and universality of an international rule of law that obligates adherence to behaviours that respect basic human dignity. The Khulumani lawsuit does not seek any action that is inconsistent with government’s approach to achieving its own long-term goals, including programmes of community reparation and rehabilitation.

It is also time for South African Business to come out into the open and tell South Africans and the world that it is confident of itself and its practices, that it endorses the domestic TRC process that lies behind the Khulumani case, and that it stands tall for human rights and the redress of abuses worldwide.

As Justice Albie Sachs pointed out in his keynote address at the Human Rights and Democracy Awards ceremony in Johannesburg on December 10, 2004, South Africa represents one “shining star” in a global human rights community pervaded by an overwhelming sense of gloom as atrocities continue to be perpetrated in Sudan and Zimbabwe. In South Africa, he said, we have seen “the coming together of the best in all of us”. But he also reminded the gathering that the challenge is the ongoing construction and deepening of our democracy. The Khulumani International Lawsuit presents an important opportunity to do this. What better way to present our morally ambitious country as courageous, organised and united? Good things can only follow both domestically and globally.

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