Pressure groups gathered in Durban for the NGO Forum that precedes the main conference
Khadija Magardie
One can always, legend has it, tell a NGO worker just look at the hair. Though the face of activism in all its forms has changed, and the typical activist is now as at home in a pair of stilettos as in sensible Hush Puppies, struggle coiffure is still wild and proud.
The place to see it was the NGO Forum in Durban this week, a meeting of activists and community workers from organisations across the world to caucus in the run-up to the United Nations World Conference against Racism. Pigtails from Peru mingled with natty dreads from Alabama for five days to deliberate issues on the conference agenda.
But as is often the case with such gatherings, what was not on the agenda generated more enthusiasm.
With a serious agenda to agitate for recognition of their particular issues by the governments attending the conference, the NGO Forum is viewed by many attendees as more important than the conference itself.
Coupled with a fairly nebulous mission statement, to tackle “racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance”, the many attending organisations turned the forum headquarters in Kingsmead stadium in Durban into a giant graffiti wall.
Depending on how loud the delegation could be, how many media people could be identified and whisked off to press conferences, or how many supporters could be mustered at short notice, the name of the particular issue was guaranteed publicity.
“Dalit rights are human rights” read a headband worn by the delegations representing the so-called “untouchables” of India. The group is at the conference to lobby against the caste system in Indian society. The heckling by members of the Dalit lobby group even prompted President Thabo Mbeki to single them out for mention in his speech opening the forum on Monday.
Also present in their dwindling numbers were the world’s “bleeding hearts” generations of white, lefty activists who have acted as quasi-handlers for the minority and indigenous people whose battles they have dedicated their lives towards.
Again, stereotypes characterise them as hairy-legged, wearing glasses slung around their necks with beaded chains, always in a T-shirt publicising their cause and, most significantly, always speaking on behalf of the oppressed on how bad the racial suffering and oppression really are. But nowadays, the bleeding hearts are moving out of the foreground, letting people speak for themselves.
The official forum programme is peppered with meetings on issues ranging from indigenous people’s rights in Canada, to the plight of Tibetan monks. Nuns came to discuss the role of the church in ending racism. British Muslims came to draw attention to Islamophobia in Europe. Griquas from the Northern Cape came to draw attention to their land restitution plight. In the exhibition hall, a group of women in bold colours, velvet skirts and hoop-earrings handed out Spanish-language leaflets on the plight of the Romany Gypsies in Europe. On Thursday, chador-clad Iranian women sat side by side with United States gender activists to debate gender-based discrimination, at the World Court of Women.
But the issues that have dominated the headlines the conflict in the Middle East, and the debate over reparations dominated the forum as well.
The Middle East tensions saw several engineered confrontations between demonstrators on both sides throughout the week. The newsworthiness was helped by swelling numbers of supporters from within South African and abroad who were specially bused and flown in for the protests.
The Palestinian delegation of NGOs working in the region, included refugee rights workers and lawyers representing people living through the conflict. The group dished out Palestinian flags, thin replicas of the “Arafat-style” scarf called a kaffiyeh. The Israeli side, bolstered by a group calling themselves the “Jewish Caucus”, retaliated by playing hardball. Visitors to their information desk were given maps of the world with little purple figures, and little green figures. The former were kitted out in little Star of David emblems, and the latter, a crudely shaped moon.
Another of the more colourful delegations were the sizeable numbers of African-Americans who made the trip to discuss reparations for slavery. Throughout the forum, the air was thick with what one observer described as “Mississippi voices”.
Entrepreneurs have been doing a roaring trade in ethno-chic in the exhibitions hall.
On any given day, several dashiki-clad African-Americans could be found outside the Africa tent at the forum headquarters.
But the final word came from one of the ethnically dressed African-American delegates engaged in animated discussion with a local man in an Adidas tracksuit and cowboy boots.
Commenting on the colourful gathering of people around, she said: “You know, right now, I just feel so African; right down to my bone marrow!”