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WORLD SOCIAL FORUM: Will the Bamako Meeting Tackle Africa's Sore Spots?
By Moyiga Nduru
JOHANNESBURG, Jan 10 (IPS) - The African leg of the World Social Forum (WSF)
kicks off next week in the Malian capital, Bamako, with a host of issues on
the agenda: war and militarism, global trade and debt, to name just a few.
The conference website where these topics are listed makes no direct
mention of AIDS, however, or the need for good governance in African states
- even though these are amongst the key development issues confronting the
continent today.
Despite these omissions, activist Vitalis Meja remains confident that HIV
and clean government will be addressed during the WSF. He works for the
Harare-based African Forum and Network on Debt and Development, and will be
attending the Bamako meeting - scheduled for Jan. 19 to 23.
"The focus of the conference will be to criticise the neoliberal agenda.
But that does not mean that the issues of HIV/AIDS and governance have been
dropped; they will be discussed in a broader prospective," Meja told IPS.
(The term neoliberalism describes a political and economic philosophy that
rejects state intervention in the economy, and encourages limited
restrictions on business.)
"The issues of HIV/AIDS and governance will always come up. For example,
if there are abuses against women in Darfur, they will be brought up as part
of the governance issue."
Darfur, a region in western Sudan, has become the site of one of the
world's worst humanitarian situations since conflict erupted there between
two rebel movements and the government.
Africa shoulders the burden of 80 percent of all global HIV/AIDS cases,
according to the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS.
"The (neoliberal) agenda is not doing enough to alleviate poverty: all
the wealth goes to the rich nations, impoverishing Africa. As a result,
sub-Saharan Africa is not performing very well in social indicators,
education, food security and health," Meja noted.
"Africa's economic growth rate is 4.6 percent, but on the ground poverty
remains rampant...By September 2005, we had about 60 percent of people in
sub-Saharan Africa living under the poverty line," he added.
But, Ayesha Kajee of the Johannesburg-based South African Institute of
International Affairs takes issue with pointing to neoliberalism as being
the cause of most - if not all - of Africa's woes.
"It's an easy scapegoat. We have to accept responsibility where our
leaders have failed," she told IPS. "Blaming all Africa's problems on
neoliberalism, although it has a hand in some of them, is not fair or
accurate. We have to look beyond the neoliberalism agenda."
"We have to look at instances where a constitution is being manipulated
by a government seeking a third term, like in Uganda," Kajee added, in
reference to President Yoweri Museveni's decision to change the
constitution, so as to stand for a third-term in office.
Indeed, perhaps civil society would do well to put itself under the
microscope at Bamako, she suggested.
"We have had vibrant civil societies (in Africa) in the last decade, but
they have not passed on enough information to strengthen local people.
Information empowerment is lacking in Africa - and that's where civil
societies have failed," Kajee noted, adding that Asian campaigners might
have something to teach Africa in this regard.
"The good example is Asia where civil society puts the right information
into the hands of local people to make changes in service delivery like
clean water, transport and communication links...In Africa, people need
information to force governments to change policies."
The WSF takes place every year, bringing together civic groups which
oppose the global political and economic order. It was started in 2001 as a
counterpoint to the World Economic Forum, an annual gathering in the Swiss
town of Davos that attracts heads of state, business leaders and the like.
To date, the WSF has mainly been held in the Brazilian town of Porto
Alegre. This year will mark the first instance in which a forum is taking
place in Africa (another two WSFs are also scheduled to be held later in the
Venezuelan capital, Caracas - and the Pakistani commercial capital of
Karachi).
Hundreds of campaigners are expected to attend the WSF in Bamako, most of
them delegates from civil society groups. While the decision to hold a forum
in Mali was doubtless motivated in part by the desire to make proceedings
more accessible to people on the continent, the hope is that delegates from
further afield will also be present.
"Such a conference requires the attendance of friends of Africa from
Europe and North America," Sam Ndlovu, a researcher at the University of
South Africa, told IPS. "Without their support, their lobbying and their
campaigning, Africa - on its own - will achieve little."
Meja agreed. "We are expecting our friends from overseas, particularly
Europe and the United States, to join us in Bamako," he noted. (END/2006)
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