By Christi van der Westhuizen
CAPE TOWN, Jan 16 2010 (IPS)

“The Prize and The Price – Shaping Sexualities in South Africa” is the first book of its kind in South Africa to unpack the ideology behind the enforcement of “acceptable” versions of sex, gender and sexuality.

Melissa Steyn: 'One version of sexuality marginalises and oppresses people whose sexuality cries out for expression in ways that don't fit the norm.' Credit:

The book’s editors, Melissa Steyn and activist Mikki van Zyl, take aim at the system of “hetero-normativity”: the institutions and norms that enforce exclusive heterosexuality.

Christi van der Westhuizen spoke to Steyn, who is the director of Intercultural and Diversity Studies of South Africa at the University of Cape Town, South Africa.

Q: Why study hetero-normativity? A: Because hetero-normativity is so powerful in the way it structures social behaviour, expectations and our identities. It is invisible, so we tend not to be conscious of the extent to which it shapes our society.

This is true for most dominant ideologies. But hetero-normativity is even less within our conscious understanding day-to-day than, for example, how whiteness operates to shape the racial order.

Q: I can hear religious and political leaders saying “this is the way God ordained and nature intended it”. A: The belief that it is natural or ordained is the ideology that renders it natural, normal and unquestionable. It makes it seem inevitable and in everybody’s best interest while silencing voices and making it seem dangerous or evil to even question it.

Q: And this narrows human experience to one specific expression? A: That is the point. (This version of sexuality) has become so normative and rigid that it marginalises and oppresses people whose sexuality cries out for expression in ways that don’t fit the norm. It de-legitimises and punishes the fuller experience of our humanness.

One needs to understand sexuality not just as intercourse but as the way we express ourselves through our bodies. It is something closely linked to our sense of self and our ability to love and be loved. A lot of sexual expression that is harmless to society is censured.

Q: Any examples? A: It is a mistake to think of homosexuality as the only stigmatised sexuality. Within hetero-normativity there is a pressure towards the most proper way in which people should be sexual. It is ideologically linked to reproductive sex.

In reality, very few sexual encounters are about reproduction, which shows that this is an ideological construction. There is enormous variation in motivation and need for sexuality.

Within heterosexuality is this notion older people should not be sexual and there is something disgusting about it – the “dirty old man” stereotype. We die sexual – it is part of being alive.

Another dominant position is that disabled people should not be sexual, which is where disabled people experience their oppression most profoundly by able-bodied society. They also want to engage with other people in ways that are sensual, sexual and loving.

Q: There is also a stark difference in what is allowed for male as opposed to female sexuality. A: Hetero-normativity enables patriarchal control and gendered oppression, and vice versa. The policing of women’s bodies in patriarchal systems is always more severe than that of men’s bodies because women’s bodies are understood to be there for the pleasure and purposes of men.

Whose interests does it serve to have a whole class of women who have no recourse to the law, who are permanently available as sexual objects but without any way of protecting the conditions under which that happens?

Prostitution is part of all women’s oppression but we don’t see it that way. When the topic of prostitution comes up, people say without exception it is the “oldest profession”. And there’s always the suggestion that women do it for gain.

It makes it seem like a class of women who are available for the sexual convenience of men is something that is part of humanity. As in, “we’ll always have this type of woman who wants to make money out of men by exploiting their vulnerabilities”.

Q: So men are presented as victimised by women? A: Men have more power and can define both their own sexuality and that of women. The understandings we have of men’s sexuality – that they have “less control”, that they need to “sow their wild oats” – those are all a function of that privilege, that they can have more licence, more freedom, more advantages, more pleasure and be less accountable to women.

It’s about saying “we have to have our way” because “we were made this way”. And then the less powerful people get blamed for the licence that the more dominant people take. The girl who gets pregnant carries the stigma and the blame. Her life opportunities are diminished and not those of the boy. She ends up carrying the burden for his licence.

Dominant groups often construct themselves as victims. The position of the victim is very powerful because it in effect signals that you can’t question it. If a man is a victim of his sexuality, well, what can we do about it? It is a way of deflecting responsibility.

At the centre of the analysis is power. The counter-discourse says if you talk about marginal sexualities, you are “opening the floodgates”. That is a lazy way of thinking. We are not saying paedophilia is legitimate, for example, because that involves completely unequal power relations that make it unethical. We’re not saying that violent sex is okay.

Q: There seems to be a high tolerance for rape in South African society, given women’s difficulty in getting justice and with marital rape being legal until recently. A: This work is about examining the power relations at work in either tolerating or encouraging some kinds of sexual expressions and censuring, disciplining, stigmatising and closing down others.

Some of the kinds of sexual expressions that are severely stereotyped are quite harmless when you look at them. Others that are allowed to be at play in our society in highly virulent ways need to be looked at in terms of what is actually going on there in relation to hetero-normativity and how it interacts with patriarchal construction and, for that matter, race and class.

Q: Class and sexuality also come together in the idea that people of lower classes are more “licentious”… A: Which is of course about who should really be allowed to reproduce. In the Victorian era, the medical fraternity theorised that poor people had a gland at the back of their heads that made them “love” to procreate.

That is similar to white discourses about how black people procreate; or Northern discourses about how Africans procreate when in fact it is a relatively under-populated continent compared to others. It’s got to do with whose reproduction is seen as problematic to whom. Ironically, for poor or black people reproductive sex itself is made the problem.

Excerpt:

By Christi van der Westhuizen
CAPE TOWN, Nov 13 2009 (IPS)

Human rights and democracy are causes that are never completely won, which is why civil society needs the support of philanthropists.

Gara La Marche: 'While I exhort international donors to maintain their involvement, ultimately, most of the support for civil society will have to come from within (each) country.' Credit: Inyathelo

This is the view of Gara LaMarche, chief executive and president of The Atlantic Philanthropies (TAP), one of the largest philanthropic foundations in the world. It spends some 400 million dollars annually in seven countries: South Africa, Vietnam, Ireland, Northern Ireland, the U.S., Bermuda and Australia.

LaMarche was in South Africa, where TAP is the largest funder of human rights work, to deliver the keynote address at the Annual Inyathelo Philanthropy Awards ceremony recently. TAP funds Inyathelo – The South African Institute for Advancement, a non-governmental organisation that “grows local philanthropy for the long-term sustainability of civil society”.

LaMarche and Atlantic Philanthropies’ programme executive for reconciliation and human rights Gerald Kraak spoke to Christi van der Westhuizen.

IPS: Your foundation is unusual in that it is “spending down” its money by 2016. Why? Gara LaMarche (GM): The donor, Chuck Feeney, has a strong feeling about making as much of an impact (as possible) in his own lifetime. The idea is that new wealth is created all the time. You can make a more concentrated effort with substantial wealth to (address) problems if you’re not hoarding your resources.

IPS: Why human rights? GM: Human rights are a fundamental prerequisite for democracy. We work in a range of countries of which some are relatively open, like this one (South Africa), but all of them face human rights challenges.

One that crosses all the borders is migration. The U.S. has 12 million undocumented people, so you have to deal with how you normalise the situation of a group of stateless, rights-less people.  Here you have the Zimbabwean refugees.

IPS: You are also the most prominent funder of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) sector in South Africa. Gerald Kraak (GK): While spending down you have to focus closely to have maximum impact over a shorter period of time. We commissioned experts in each of the jurisdictions to advise us on what the key human rights issues were.

What came out of the South African scoping exercise was that the LGBTI community was particularly vulnerable, as were refugees and migrants and the rural poor.

When Atlantic (Philanthropies) came into the field there was an organised LGBTI community but it was disparate and weak, crisis-driven; not programmatic or strategic. The profile of the movement was white, male, middle-class.

We set out to change that, to strengthen and professionalise organisations, to (spur) organisations on in townships and rural areas to grow their base among poor, black gays and lesbians and to change the demographics of the leadership to have more black people and women.

That decision to take a particularly vulnerable group and invest heavily in it – we also do capacity building and organisational development support – has over the past six years yielded the results (we were seeking).

The sector has also been savvy in terms of its advocacy and litigation strategy, with some significant advances, the key one being the recognition of gay marriage.

Gerald Kraak: 'Statistically, individuals and domestic foundations actually give more than either government or international donors but the problem is that it tends to be conservative in focus.'

We are one of the biggest funders in this area by far. We have to stay the course.

Right now the ability to tap into sources of money is harder. People have less money. One of the things we hope to do is to create a lesbian and gay community foundation into which we’ll put significant money and get some other donors to also put money into so that there is a continuing source of money.

LGBTI issues are hard to fund. If you work the way we have by focussing on communities within the LGBTI grouping, such as people of colour and lesbians, then you have some obligation not just to pull out the rug.

GK: In our rural programme we are taking organisations through a three-year programme around issues of sustainability to get them to position themselves so that they can raise resources from other sources. We want to roll this out to other programmes.

IPS: How do you understand South Africans’ apparent lack of enthusiasm for funding causes? GK: Statistically, individuals and domestic foundations actually give more than either government or international donors but the problem is that it tends to be conservative in focus. Corporations will fund a school or clinic that their workforce uses, but they won’t fund something as intangible as human rights.

It is easy to raise funds for children, which is an appealing issue, but it’s more difficult getting funding for legal advice offices because they are abstract. Corporate funding is always interested in seeing a return. But they can’t see what the return would be in funding legal advice offices.

IPS: What is your impression of how South Africa is faring in consolidating its democracy? GM: The U.S. democracy is 237 years old and it is in danger, so democracy is never really secure. You still have in this country an immense degree of participation. The turnout at the last election was high. There is a cautious optimism, at least on our part, about the beginning months of the Zuma administration.

The Zuma administration’s steps on AIDS (after the previous Mbeki administration’s AIDS denialism) underscore the importance of CSOs (as) their pressure moved the Zuma government on the issue.

No country should trust the political sector to take care of everything. As Frederick Douglass said, “power yields nothing without a struggle”, which is why it is important to influence government through the strength of civil society organisations.

The question for CSOs is always where the resources will come from. In all countries that have undergone a transition with the involvement of external funders, the transformation of the country loses its romance for certain donors.

While I exhort international donors to maintain their involvement, ultimately, most of the support for civil society will have to come from within this country. It’s a country with a lot of poor people but also a lot of wealth.

Excerpt:

By Christi van der Westhuizen
CAPE TOWN, Oct 15 2009 (IPS)

Global initiatives have in recent years stressed the contribution that arts and culture can make to development. This has led African and European artists, bureaucrats and policy makers to increasingly confront the unequal relations in North-South cultural and artistic exchanges.

Mike van Graan: Without markets, the creative industries can't boost development. Credit:

One such initiative is the Arterial Network founded on Gorée Island, Senegal, in 2007. This informal grouping represents artists, institutions and funders and has the aim of growing African arts and culture in civil society and to enhance the sustainability of the creative industries. The latter are sectors that create unique property, content and design, including aesthetic experiences and objects.

Award-winning South African playwright and activist Mike van Graan was involved in the founding of the network and also served as programme director for the recent Fourth World Summit on Arts and Culture held in Johannesburg, South Africa (Sep. 22-25), where the issue of unequal North-South exchanges was on the agenda.

The triennial summit, which took place in Africa for the first time, is organised by the International Federation of Arts Councils and Culture Agencies which represents quasi-governmental bodies that fund the arts in poor and wealthy countries across the globe.

IPS: There has been a strong move in recent years to link what are called the cultural or creative industries with development. Where is the impetus for this coming from and why? MIKE VAN GRAAN: In the post-colonial era, much emphasis was placed on development models created in the West and imposed on newly independent societies, only for these development models to fail spectacularly as they did not take cognisance of the cultures (values, beliefs, worldviews, traditions and lifestyles) of the supposed beneficiaries of development.

This led to the emergence of a more progressive practice that emphasised the “cultural dimension of development”. In recent years, research has shown that the creative industries in the North have been major streams of income and, given this experience, the creative industries are now being seen as a kind of panacea to give a new boost to the “cultural dimension of development”.

I’m ambivalent about this, not least since creative industries require markets with disposable income for sustainability. With poverty and underdevelopment in Africa, it is a case of the chicken and the egg – what comes first: creative industries to boost development or something else to create the markets for creative goods and services?

IPS: Moves have also been afoot to harness the arts in an increasingly complex world where cultural diversity is sometimes negatively regarded as the cause of conflict. MG: Trade in cultural goods and services at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) led some countries in the North – notably Canada and France – to declare that these needed to be removed from the free trade impetus of the WTO as cultural goods from a strong economy like the U.S. would simply flood their markets and kill off their creative industries.

Since values, worldviews and ideas are embedded in cultural goods such as movies, television programmes and music — unlike other products such as cars, clothes and toothpaste — it was argued that this unregulated trade in cultural goods would lead to the homogenisation of world thought.

Hence the need for “cultural diversity” by allowing countries to invest in and protect their cultural industries against unbridled market forces. Yet, of course, in developing countries, there is a suspicion of “cultural diversity” as it was the premise of divide-and-rule colonial and apartheid strategies.

Also, the emphasis on cultural diversity to deal with trade in cultural goods and services, which is essentially a Northern “problem”, is actually creating a potential problem in that cultural differences are exactly the site of struggle that is symptomatic of global, regional and national structural inequities and power relations.

The arts can benefit from the emphasis being placed on the need to grow creative industries to encourage global cultural diversity; on the other hand, they are compromised when their value is recognised only in terms of their economic benefits or their strategic utilitarian use for political goals like social cohesion and intercultural dialogue.

IPS: Don’t African artists run exactly this risk of being conscripted into creating “safe art”? MG: In many ways, the “agenda” and international cultural discourses are set in the North, with Africans having to play catch up. Or our governments are conscripted to sign agreements in support of one or other bloc but these agreements are rarely implemented, for example the 2005 UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions.

It is in this context that the Arterial Network has emerged to define the interests and priorities of African artists with regard to these initiatives and to establish how we may best take advantage of these discourses at national, regional and international levels.

By artists organising and asserting their interests, we hope to advance a democratic and participatory agenda.

IPS: How has dependence on donor money affected the arts in Africa?

MG: In some countries, the arts have only functioned and survived because of donor money. So, while there is dependence, artists have been able to practise freedom of expression precisely because they are not dependent on their own governments’ funding.

However, there are pros and cons to such dependency. This is something that the Arterial Network plans to address by looking at the sustainability of African creative practice.

IPS: Which initiatives have been undertaken to this end? MG: One of them is to debate these matters with donors so that we start from a basis of mutual respect as opposed to avoiding talking about the elephant in the room.

Hence the recent debates (at the World Summit and at a seminar of the European Union National Institutes for Culture in Johannesburg) about North-South cultural exchange and the unequal power relations inherent in the North’s provision of the primary resources for such exchange and collaboration.

Another is to establish an independent African Fund for Arts and Culture, governed by Africans, which will support artistic production and distribution across national boundaries and constraints.

Excerpt:

By Christi van der Westhuizen
CAPE TOWN, Jul 8 2009 (IPS)

Despite the global economic crisis, the world’s elites will only “tinker” with the world’s markets and financial systems and not bring about the fundamental shifts that are required, says Gyekye Tanoh of the Africa Trade Network.

Gyekye Tanoh: As long as there is resistance, there is hope. Credit: Christi van der Westhuizen/IPS

Tanoh believes the global economic crisis demands democratic action. And African states should be looking at rebuilding domestic markets as a solution.

A Ghanaian policy analyst, Tanoh believes that civil society movements have to demand the bold steps required to turn the crisis around.

Leaders of some of the world’s most powerful economies meet in L’Aquila, Italy this week, and there are calls from all quarters for them to take seriously their obligations towards the developing world – both in terms of meeting pledges on development assistance and in reforming the terms of trade and investment that continue to disadvantage the majority of the world’s citizens.

The ATN is a content-wide umbrella body for civil society organisations, movements and campaigns working for trade justice at multilateral, regional and national policy levels.

IPS: What has been the African response to the global economic crisis? Gyekye Tanoh: There is a complete lack of recognition of the nature of the crisis. Because, first, it is believed that African financial sectors are weakly integrated into the global economy. It is believed that the different financial institutions have barely taken part in the activities that generated these toxic assets, so they will be unaffected.

This is wrong because the key thing – here or in the U.S. – is that there is a disconnection between the real economy and the financial sector.

(In the U.S.) the financial sector decided not to lend to agriculture and industry and turned to households to devise all number of ways to continue lending to people who cannot afford it. In Africa, even before the crisis, lending to the real sector was constantly dropping.

On average in Africa lending to agriculture fell by about 45 percent in the run-up to the crisis. In the period of the commodity boom lending to industry fell by about 55 percent.

IPS: This is on average across the continent? GT: Yes. Meanwhile, lending for export boomed. On a continent that is import-dependent, this meant that you were lending to facilitate multinationals and middle-class and elite consumption. Personal lending also increased dramatically.

You take most of African agriculture – family farms, subsistence farming. There is hardly any bank credit. Most of it is self-financed.

There is a multi-tier credit system which makes the poor pay much higher for entry (to the credit system) than anybody else. So, if you take Africa as a microcosm of dislocation between finance and the real economy our dysfunction is long-standing.

To say this is simply an external or exogenous shock that has nothing to do with African economies or their trajectory, is superficial and dangerous. That is how it has been approached. Add to that the potential effects of the drop in foreign direct investment.

Because of the dislocation you see capital flight. And governments’ response to imported inflation is to deflate the economy by increasing interest rates. People approach this from the supply-side economics perspective but we should approach it from demand-side economics.

How do you rebuild domestic markets? You have to ensure the revival of demand which can be the basis for domestic production, savings, domestic mobilisation of investment, tax revenue and so on. This has to be the basis of different intervention in sectors and across sectors.

We need to roll back the deregulation and liberalisation of the financial sector and have a rethink around policy-based intervention. For example, banks need to be told you will spend X percentage on agricultural investment.

IPS: Some people will criticise you by saying domestic markets are just far too weak in Africa. GT: Domestic markets are not static things. Markets are basically created. If it is weak, your job is to rebuild domestic markets. I disagree with the imbalance in benefits that the Obama stimulus plan gives to corporate interests.

But one thing that is implicit in every plan – whether it’s from Sarkozy or Gordon Brown or Obama – is that the demand exercised by a consumer has a role in the economy. Here (in Africa), none of that figures in the argument. The demand from abroad is the key thing. Export markets, foreign investment. There should be some element of redistribution.

(We should be doing) things like employment-led growth, rural industrialisation, reactivating consumption, public investment in health or education, trying to build domestic industries around those – for example, paper production for text books or pharmaceuticals or syringes or hospital supplies.

(We should be building) the interconnection between different existing economic activities, growth points that combine agriculture and industry in a more focused way and use finance to support this.

(There should be) targeted policy prescriptions of which the precondition should be public participation (where) the needs of different communities and sectors are debated and harmonised so that trade-offs can be seen to benefit all working people.

This is an unprecedented crisis in our life time. This scale of emergency requires fundamental shifts and boldness and audacity. This will not come from the elites who have benefited and profited from the state of things. They will tinker; they will make sure they pass on the burden to someone else. It’s our job to ensure that does not happen.

IPS: From an ecological point of view it will be a disaster to turn every African into a consumer at the level of, say, the American consumer. The planet can’t sustain that. Creating domestic markets mean turning people into consumers. What is your response to this? GT: The fact is for the people to consume sustainabl(y), they have to produce as well. It is the mechanism of production and the linkage between consumption and production which is the terrain for addressing the ecological question.

In Africa, because of the deindustrialisation that has taken place, we don’t have fixed investment in the sectors that invest in new technologies. (We need) appropriate technologies for production that is cheap. (For) rural industrialisation (we) can incorporate climate-sensitive technologies from the beginning.

We have far more of an opportunity to do this than many other countries that have huge investments in coal power generation, plants and oil. I don’t believe consumption by individuals and households in the West is the major problem. I think it is the industrial-scale, profit-based production that is the problem. You have to rein in that corporate power.

IPS: But U.S. consumers produce a high volume of waste. GT: Yes, when you enter a supermarket you have 6,000 brands of toothpaste. Why, given all the packaging and chemicals used? That is not the fault of the individual, who is supposed to be revelling in this paradise of choice – which is no choice at all because one brand of toothpaste does not fundamentally differ from another.

If you have to go home and unwrap the packaging and because of the privatisation of waste collection you have to dump it through prescribed methods that you have no say in, I can’t see how you can lay the blame on the ordinary consumer.

IPS: So the problem is the overproduction and the marketing? GT: Yes, overproduction based on inequality. It is not called overproduction because everybody has enough to eat. It is overproduction in the sense that people are paid so little. Because that production is for profit, what is produced cannot be bought. It is not overproduction in that we are just wallowing in an orgy of excess consumption.

Even if there are instances of waste in consumption it is because it is forced on the consumer. You have no choice. There is a linkage with the exploitation that is taking place in the workplace. If you take the U.S., the financial crisis stems also from the fact that there has been long-standing wage repression in the U.S.

Real wages have remained stagnant or have fallen in many sectors since 1973, apart from a few of years in the 1990s. That is another reason why people have to borrow so heavily from the banks.

The thing is the interconnectedness between people in the North and the South. We have common interests, even if we have different standards of living. Within that notion of understanding what the problems are, exists the seeds of the solution. And the seeds of the solution are cooperation, cooperatives, democratic planning, participation – genuine choice.

It means making major inroads into the political power bases and economic structures that exist right now. Inequality is at the root of the problem and fighting inequality is the root of the solution.

IPS: But what do Africans do with their governments that buckle time and again under pressure from the North rather than following the example of the Argentineans and the Venezuelans ? GT: It is not luck that the governments of Argentina and Venezuela came into being. It is struggle that produced them. Bolivia is a classical case in point. Its struggles around water and natural resources produced the movements that created Evo Morales and his government.

As long as there is resistance and struggle, based on solidarity, self-activation and ever-widening networks of participation, there is hope. I disagree with the notion that people get the government they deserve. In that case, the analysis of inequalities in power does not make any sense. The possibility exists that movements can arise and that there will be seismic shifts.

It will take real work and real people to begin to activate that process and to incrementally realise our potential. The only thing we can do is to cultivate that resistance. Without that, our capacity to respond becomes weaker. When things get worse, it is not an abstract proposition. People die when things get worse.

When water is polluted by a mining company, people die. When land is poisoned, people die if they can’t produce. The real struggle we have to wage is on the concrete issues.

The principles that emanate from those struggles; the alliances and networks and self-organisation that emerge… In those acts of being and becoming, I believe, lie the agenda for responding to the crisis today — and the agenda that can pull us back from the brink.

Excerpt:

By Christi van der Westhuizen
CAPE TOWN, Jun 25 2009 (IPS)

Africa should ‘‘deny consensus” at multilateral level to ensure that the region’s interests are taken seriously, says Professor Patrick Bond speaking on how Africa should approach this week’s high-level United Nations’ meeting on the global economic crisis.

'No change in IMF policies towards the South can be discerned,' says Bond. Credit: Downside World News

Bond, who directs the Centre for Civil Society at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, South Africa, urges the adoption of a new logic for the world economy: ecologically-sustainable, labour-intensive, moving economies to a post-carbon future.

He warns that instead, the same institutions that previously damaged Africa’s economy and social supports are being called on to rescue the world economy, and African elites are not ready to ‘‘break with Washington” and chart an alternative course.

IPS: The financial and economic crisis has had a disproportionate impact on African countries, given that it was not of our making and we don’t have much of a say over how the global economy is run. What should African countries be demanding at the high-level U.N. summit on the crisis this week? Patrick Bond: First and foremost would be to demand – and just take – a great deal more policy space than they now have.

The awful irony is that the main financial force that impoverished Africa and destroyed manufacturing and social policy during the past three decades, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), has just received a vast G20 bailout sum of at least 500 billion dollars.

That institution was near dead at the last annual meetings in October 2008. Thanks partly to South Africa’s former finance minister Trevor Manuel, who led a high-powered commission just prior to the G20 London meeting in April, the IMF is now re-legitimised and recapitalised.

This was done for the trivial cost of acknowledging that the next managing director doesn’t necessarily have to come from Europe, a petty reform given the availability of men like Manuel from the South who reliably do the North’s bidding.

Meantime, no change in IMF policies towards the South can be discerned. Here in South Africa, the last Article Four consultation statement called on Manuel to halt deficit spending, raise interest rates, continue financial and trade liberalisation and remove workers’ wage-indexing protections. Absolutely vicious.

In Tanzania, the IMF told the government to cut the budget deficit by 0.6 percent (to -3.1 percent) in March while its managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn was visiting, pretending to be Africa’s friend.

IPS: Given the lacklustre policy response from African governments to the crisis, are they ready to push Africa’s interests aggressively? PB: No, with one exception – Robert Mugabe – the African national leaders are obviously not willing to break with Washington, notwithstanding the excellent recent examples in Latin America. The progressive social forces in Africa have not yet grown sufficiently strong to raise post-neoliberal politicians to state power, as they did in Latin America.

The exception that proves the rule is Mugabe, who spouts anti-imperialist slogans but who in 2005 was so desperate to bring the IMF back that he emptied the entire country’s coffer of foreign exchange to repay the IMF 200 million dollars – but got nothing in return. Mugabe’s policies are no model for progressives.

Instead, the genuine African leadership required to survive and exit the crisis comes from civil society, who have launched brave initiatives to de-globalise financial relations and decommodify goods and services – especially AIDS medicines and water.

History shows that when African nationalist parties turn neoliberal, only coalitions of social movements, labour, churches, women’s and youth groups serve as an effective counterweight.

IPS: Many of those very participants at the U.N. summit are responsible for the crisis. PB: Yes, and they are blocking any genuine discussion, according to Miguel D’Escoto Brockmann, the Nicaraguan diplomat who is the most progressive U.N. president in history.

Last Friday at the NGO parallel conference on the financial crisis, he openly complained that the Northern countries ‘‘increasingly resist reforms of the IMF and the World Bank, hoping that things will return to business as usual. And they have also made it very clear that they do not want a serious global conversation to take place at the United Nations”.

IPS: Given the weakening of the U.N. system since the 1960s, can the U.N. still be a useful forum for developing regions such as Africa, given the power wielded by the G8, WTO and IFIs? PB: The last useful globally-responsive initiative I can think of from the U.N. was the 1996 Montreal Protocol banning CFCs to protect the ozone layer and, before that, treaties against toxics. In contrast to some who think the U.N. stands against the institutions you mention, recent evidence suggests that it generally goes with the flow of power.

Witness how the U.N. Development Programme joined the water privatisation bandwagon in spite of all the warnings, or how the Kyoto Protocol (1997) endorsed ineffective and unfair carbon trading gimmicks. The World Summit on Sustainable Development (2002) laid a red carpet for corporate green-washing.

The U.N. invariably sucks in well-meaning people – for example, activists who wear white headbands to advance Millennium Development Goals – but at the same time fundamentally corrupts their intentions by routing economic matters through the WTO, IMF and World Bank, as we saw with the Monterrey Financing for Development process.

Only once we can add more progressive countries to the small group from Latin America, then it might be time to return to multilateral advocacy. Until then, better to just let the neolibs and neocons do the kind of battle that gets them into Doha Agenda paralysis.

That sort of grid-lock is better for the world’s majority than revived international institutions, given the present adverse balance of forces.

IPS: As you’ve mentioned and judged by the economic partnership agreement (EPA) talks and the neoliberal rhetoric still emanating from the WTO and others, the dominant global forces are pushing for business as usual in developing regions. What can African states do differently at multilateral level to claim the domestic policy space that the U.S. and EU enjoy? PB: It’s very simple: deny consensus. They did this at Seattle in 1999 and Cancun in 2003. Because of Tony Blair’s financial blackmail and manoeuvres by South African trade minister Alec Erwin at Doha, African elites were forced to sign onto the Doha Agenda in 2001 and have regretted it ever since, given the devastation caused by free trade.

But we’re seeing a much different South African strategy emerging from the new trade minister, Rob Davies, a South African Communist Party member, and that’s one of the most encouraging signs that labour’s power here is translating into a shift away from the purely sub-imperialist strategies that characterised Thabo Mbeki’s rule.

Right now, the EU’s EPAs are devastating Africa’s regional economic blocs through divide-and-conquer, reversing the resistance we saw from African countries a year ago. It shows how desperate these elites are for continuing aid flows that so obviously corrupt African public policy and undo decades of hard work building regionalism.

IPS: Clearly the world should be undertaking more far-reaching interventions to address the crisis than seen so far. PB: The main policy step needed is the replacement of market logic with socio-environmental logic and that can be done in every single public policy available for reform, at any scale, if the balance of forces is favourable.

The highest priorities, in my view, are those where eco-social activists have already begun mobilising. The WSF and its affiliates have generally put forth profound critiques and radical alternatives. Still to be accomplished, of course, is ‘‘connecting the dots”, which we thought the WSF would facilitate.

Most civil society groups remain too locked within our silos of specialisations, doing great transnational work but generally segregated within issue areas. The ability to link economic justice to all the other activist campaigns seems just beyond our grasp.

IPS: Linked to the last two questions, what can African states do policy-wise to buffer their populations against the crisis? PB: Several immediate lessons from Latin America and Asian could be learned, such as defaulting on foreign debt, imposing exchange controls and nationalising or reregulating banks; and dramatically increasing state funding for social programmes, especially those benefiting women, but as much as possible aiming at spurring production so as not to generate inflation.

Also, turning to an ecologically-sustainable, labour-intensive system of production which creates genuine Green Jobs and moves economies to a post-carbon future. Most important, community and labour organisers should be making demands on the elites, otherwise there’s no buffer, just a crisis transmission belt.

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South Africa’s fourth democratic election will not bring an end the political turmoil that has beset the country since 2007 when former president Thabo Mbeki suspended the country’s head of public prosecutions and was replaced by Jacob Zuma as leader of the ruling ANC.

The primary reason is that the grouping under Zuma consists of divergent factions, ideologies and interests that enable it to appeal to a broad mass of South Africans, cutting across class, race and gender divisions.

Shared ideology is not what keeps the group together. Rather, opposition to Mbeki is one of the main ingredients of the glue holding the group which will ascend to political high office after the Apr. 22 election.

The second unifying ingredient has been the political drive against the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) and the courts to get criminal charges of corruption against Zuma dropped before he became the next president of South Africa. He faced 783 charges in connection with the country’s fraught multibillion dollar arms deal.

The charges were dropped two weeks ago after considerable political pressure by the Zuma camp. The third ingredient has been the group’s campaign to win the election decisively.

The Zuma camp has been dubbed “the coalition of the wounded” as it includes all those ANC leaders who have felt slighted by Mbeki. The latter had succeeded Nelson Mandela as South African president in 1999.

But far from being homogenous, the Zuma camp exhibits a motley mixture of ideologies.

Paradoxically, these differences have aided the Zuma-ites to garner wide ranging popular support within the ANC, establishing an alliance of interests that mobilised the majority of ANC delegates at the ANC national conference in 2007 to oust Mbeki.

This same mix of interests has ensured that the party could appeal to a much broader mass of voters than any other party in this year’s election.

Rather than merely attracting votes on the basis of race, as some pundits in South Africa suggest, the Zuma camp’s mishmash of political identities is what has made the party able to attract the vast majority of votes – starting with Zuma, who has played up his ethnic identity considerably since his trial on charges of rape in 2006 where he chose to address the court in his mother tongue (Zulu) and peppered his testimony with “cultural” references.

How this fits with his leftwing allies in the South African Communist Party (SACP) is unclear. The SACP has historically been the ANC’s non-racial conscience, given that Communist leaders have throughout the decades of the two organisations’ collaboration frequently been white. This has partly lent non-racialism the prominence that it enjoys as one of the main pillars of ANC ideology.

Zuma’s ethnic chauvinism has been accompanied by the projection of a strongly patriarchal gender and sexual identity.

He justified having unprotected sex with the HIV-positive, lesbian daughter of a friend by alleging that Zulu culture demands of men to perform sexual duties when so “required” by women. Zuma celebrated his victory after being acquitted on the rape charge by marrying another woman, thereby flaunting his polygamy and a positioning of women as trophies.

His supporters have promoted the confluence of ethnic chauvinism and “culturally” justified patriarchy with T-shirts featuring his face with the caption “100% Zulu boy”.

Zuma has also made a concerted effort to reach out to other patriarchal traditionalists in South African society, both black and white. He held meetings with the remnants of the former ruling party of apartheid, the National Party, and its civil society surrogates.

His assurances to ethnically minded Afrikaners that they were the only “true” white Africans – as opposed to English-speaking whites – caused an outcry. He regularly interacts with traditional African chiefs in the rural areas and emphasises his own rural connections by regularly publicising “cultural” events at his homestead at Nkandla in traditionalist Zulu territory.

Zuma also spent a fair share of ANC electioneering time addressing conservative churches – for example, one which allows polygamy and where women and men sit separately during services and women are required to dress “modestly”.

A member of the Zuma camp, Dr. Mathole Motshekga, indicated in the past week that the laws that legalised abortion and same-sex marriage may be reconsidered because they were adopted when Zuma “was not president”. Add to this Zuma’s declaration shortly after his rape trial that he would not let a gay man stand ‘‘in front of” him, meaning he would beat him.

Indications are that reactionary elements in the South African Council of Churches are poised to test the extent of Zuma’s sexist and homophobic inclinations, particularly with reference to the laws on same-sex marriage and abortion.

Whether they will be successful is still to be seen as his populism makes him unpredictable. For example, after the homophobic statement he buckled before pressure from the ANC Youth League to publicly withdraw it.

While the women’s rights lobby in the ANC has waxed and waned through the years, non-sexism is one of the three pillars of ANC ideology. It seems that the ANC Women’s League may be pacified with a ministry for ‘‘women’s affairs” after the Apr 22 election but whether this will satisfy all feminists inside and outside the Zuma camp in the medium term is debatable.

The ANC’s liberal democratic supporters seem to find some solace in the presence of businessperson Cyril Ramaphosa in the Zuma camp. He presided over the post-1994 Constitutional Assembly that drafted South Africa’s Constitution, a document lauded internationally for the extent of its protection of human rights, including socio-economic rights.

How does his position as drafter of the country’s founding social contract, which includes liberal principles such as the rule of law, accord with the Zuma group’s attacks on the constitutional independence of institutions?

The campaign to get the charges against Zuma withdrawn has considerably weakened the NPA (its head fired and the unit that investigated Zuma closed down).

The campaign also extended to the courts and, on other matters, to the South African Human Rights Commission. Ramaphosa is rumoured to have presidential ambitions where, some hope, he will reassert constitutional principles and reinstate the independence of institutions such as the battered NPA.

On economic policy, the Zuma camp’s broad popular appeal can be attributed to the ideologically incoherent combination of neoliberal capitalists, communists and social democrats. These contradictions were not resolved when the Congress of the People (Cope), which represents economically conservative and socially progressive interests, split off from the ANC last year.

While the neoliberals are concentrated in the ANC Youth League, which has extended business interests, the Zuma camp has strongly depended on the ANC’s two alliance partners, the SACP and the Congress of South Africa Trade Unions (Cosatu), for its leftwing appeal.

The trade union federation represents the organisational muscle of the party and has been indispensible in the ANC’s campaigning for the Apr 22 election. While the SACP has specific policies aimed at addressing rural poverty, Cosatu represents workerist, urban interests – quite removed from Zuma’s own traditionalist, rural base.

The SACP supports a ‘‘socialist future” for South Africa and Cosatu’s policy proposals have a strong Keynesian capitalist slant. Cosatu supports an interventionist state which is anathema to the neoliberal capitalist position of the ANC Youth League.

How Zuma will be able to contain these contradictory tendencies, accompanied by intense jockeying for positions of power and patronage in the post-election administration, remains to be seen. Whichever way, the rough ride is not over for South Africa’s democracy.

*Van der Westhuizen is an author, journalist and political commentator living in Cape Town, South Africa

By Christi van der Westhuizen
CAPE TOWN, Feb 4 2009 (IPS)

In 2003, Alice Nkom made a decision that has put her on a collision course with the police, prosecutors and judges of Cameroon. Nkom, who has been a barrister at the Cameroonian Bar for 40 years, was chatting with some young men whom she considers her own children.

Alice Nkom: Lack of tolerance for diversity is one of the causes of terrorism. Credit:

She realised they were gay. Not only that, having gone after school to France to study and only ever living there as out gay men, they were oblivious to the extent of the persecution they faced for expressing their sexuality in Cameroon. Extortion and unfair prosecution of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people are common occurrences in the Francophone west African state.

They were handsome and full of life, talking passionately about their plans. She was struck by the injustice of their situation and felt she had a duty to do something, otherwise ‘‘coming back to Cameroon means having to choose to go to jail for who you are, to have one’s dignity trampled upon all the time, to be a victim of the police”.

She founded the Association for the Defence of Homosexuals and has ever since been acting as defence lawyer for LGBT people in Cameroon.

Christi van der Westhuizen spoke to her when she attended a recent workshop of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC) in Cape Town, South Africa.

The meeting, which gathered LGBT activists from across Africa, was held to strategise around litigating against the myriad laws that still discriminate against LGBT people on the continent. IGLHRC is an international non-governmental organisation.

IPS: What is the legal status of LGBT people in Cameroon? Alice Nkom: On Sep. 28, 1972, article 347 was introduced into the Cameroonian penal code which prescribes penalties of up to five years for anyone, whether man or woman, who is caught having sex with someone of the same sex.

(The situation recently became worse) when, on December 25, 2005, the archbishop of Yaoundé made LGBT people the theme of his Christmas sermon. This caused a witch hunt with LGBT people accused of being the root cause of all social ills, the root of unemployment and corruption, in Cameroon.

The archbishop said that high-profile people who were “homosexuals” forced other Cameroonians into same-sex activities in return for jobs. This launched a media frenzy where journalists abandoned their codes of ethics and published lists of names of people who were supposedly gay. Tabloids suddenly started selling. Photocopies were sold even more expensively than the originals.

This went on until Feb. 10, 2006 when the president of Cameroon told people to stop speculating about the vices and virtues of one another while trampling on people’s fundamental rights. He said the publications should cease because freedom of expression stops where people’s right to privacy starts. This ended the frenzy.

It had consequences as children (whose parents’ names were published in the newspapers) were attacked by their friends at school. Some (threatened) suicide if their parents could not ‘‘prove” that they were not gay or lesbian.

IPS: What is the reality of LGBT people’s lives today in Cameroon? AN: Every day I hear about extortion here and there. It is not healthy for young people who are trying to enjoy their lives. There is a close relationship between one’s happiness and enjoyment of one’s sexuality.

They are unhappy because at any given time they can be subjected to arrest or blackmail – even when the law does not provide the police with the power to do so.

There is a criminal procedure code which is continuously violated when it comes to gay and lesbian people. The code does not provide the prosecutor the power to arraign somebody unless the person was caught in flagrante delicto (caught in the act).

A police officer does not have the right to come to your house or to bars to arrest you for homosexuality. But what happens is that people are just thought to be gay… (which) catches the attention of greedy police officers who are looking for someone to blackmail.

IPS: So people are being arrested on suspicion, even if they were not caught in the act? AN: In none of the cases of homosexuality which I have defended was the person ever caught in flagrante delicto. I raise this concern every time but the judges never respond.

IPS: Have you had successes in defending people? AN: Not the kind of successes that I would have wanted. In one case, nine people were charged. The judge wanted them to go for forensic anal tests, which means that not only were they spending seven months in jail (pending the case) but the judge wanted to force them to undergo a humiliating test to show that they were actually gay. Medical doctors refused to carry out the tests.

He released two of the men for unknown reasons. The remaining seven were sentenced to seven months in jail and then released for time served. In all, they spent 12 months and 12 days in jail. How did the judge manage to find them homosexual, given that he did not get the proof he was looking for? They were found guilty on the basis of personal beliefs.

In another case two people (tried to steal from someone at whose house they were staying). He called the police. The two thieves got the idea to say the complainant wanted to sleep with them. It turned into a “gay case”. The prosecutor charged all three with homosexuality and they were sentenced to six months.

IPS: Are lesbians affected? AN: In 2006, the principal of a private high school expelled 12 students on the eve of the final exams. He had been told that one had said to the other ‘‘whatever she did, she would belong to her”. She was arrested. She had to say who her girlfriend was. Each person had to reveal another name and so they got a list of students.

The head of the school went on a media campaign to encourage all principals to eradicate homosexuality in their schools.

The grandmother of one of the girls accused another girl of “misleading” her granddaughter. They laid a charge with the police. The police arrested the granddaughter and her friend and another two girls who were mentioned during the discussions. They were sent to jail, four girls (all under 18).

As in all the other cases, it was not on the basis of in flagrante delicto – it was based on what other people had alleged. The prosecutor coerced them to not accept me as their advocate. A month later they received suspended sentences of three months each.

IPS: You were also locked up once. AN: This was in 2006. I paid a visit to my clients in jail to prepare them psychologically for the court. I was in the meeting room taking pictures of them with my mobile phone. I was arrested. I told the prison boss, you can’t just take my mobile – it’s my mobile and those are their images, which they own.

I spoke to the attorney general and said to him you are here to do your job and I’ll do mine. You can’t arrest me without showing which law I violated. (She was released a few hours later and her phone was returned.)

IPS: How do your peers respond to your work? AN: Many of them are very homophobic. Others are indifferent. I receive little support.

It’s very important to me that kids are taught from early to be tolerant, to respect difference. They can land in a place (abroad) where they are in the minority and where they need other people to respect them. Diversity is a good thing – it enriches our lives. If we don’t embrace it we will have terrorism, racism.

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