'The Fight Is On,' Say Afro-Brazilians

Zarina Geloo

The Afro-Brazilian group at last year's WSF urged Africans to prepare for the 'fight of their lives,' an appeal that reverberated through the Special Conference/Africa-Brazil yesterday.

Dread-locked and colourfully dressed Afro-Brazilians made an impassioned plea to their African brethren to stop fighting 'their little wars in their little corners' and pull together with Brazilians and all black people in the Diaspora to force change.

Benedita da Silva, vice-governor of the Afro-Brazilian group, said this time 'we are not joking, people are going to listen to us whether they want to or not.'

She said it was amazing that in Brazil, which has over 90 million black people (the second largest black population outside of Nigeria), they continue to suffer exclusion, racial discrimination, lack of access to basic services and are totally overlooked in the decision making process. Brazilian women suffer a double jeopardy because in addition to being paid less for their labour as women, they were also discriminated against because they are black.

Problems unique to Afro-Brazilians like sickle cell anaemia and hypertension are also ignored.

Da Silva said there is much in common between Afro-Brazilians and Africans and it is therefore important to form a strategic alliance to become stronger, especially in promoting the issue of reparations for past injustices, a matter important to all black people, wherever they are.

'We are excluded even historically. The world does not want to recognise our heroes. They want to destroy our history and culture, they do not want us to have a past so that they can deny us a future.'

Allain Benoit, from Benin, said African leaders must stop engaging the G-8, the world's most powerful countries, in useless dialogue and compromise and instead set their own agenda and priorities for black emancipation.

Amanita Traore, from the Centre Hamadou Hampate Ba in Mali, said the WSF must be a place where the two groups build ties that surpass the notion of 'suffering in common' and establish strong commercial links for profit and social relations. 'They (the West) have taken advantage of our poverty and lack of access to information technology to stop us from getting to know each other. All this is going to change because we are going to set the pace for change.'