A bitter battle over words
Efforts to broker a joint declaration were hardly congenial, say Mail &Guardian reporters.
In private, the South African government must be bitterly disappointed with events in Durban this week.
It had hoped that the Third World, and particularly Africa, would speak with one clear voice at the United Nations conference on racism. It wanted to use the conference to heighten world consciousness of the disastrous impact of racism on the continent, and to reach an understanding with the developed nations on a new economic relationship.
At the time of going to press, a member of the committee drafting the conference’s final declaration said the conference could be extended to Saturday to resolve the outstanding issues.
As host country, South Africa’s diplomatic machinery was engaged in frenetic behind-the-scenes activity in an attempt to salvage the conference from deadlock and failure.
As the Friday deadline loomed, South Africa tried to broker a new version of the Middle East text.
Much that is useful happened out of the conference limelight. But centre stage was hogged by hardliners whose rhetorical posturing and unrealistic demands made it almost impossible to arrive at broad conference positions on Israel and slavery/colonialism for the final conference declaration and action plan.
The two issues embroiled each other. The United States effectively withdrew from the conference over the insistence of Muslim states led by Iran that the meeting view Zionism as a philosophy of racial supremacy.
It was a convenient escape-hatch for the Bush administration, which has decided to oppose the growing groundswell for slavery reparations. This in turn prompted members of the US black congressional caucus, infuriated by the symbolic hand-washing of their government and keen to strengthen the domestic reparations campaign, to urge a harder line on African delegates.
The result was the release of new and much tougher African document, backed by such states as Nigeria, Zimbabwe and Namibia, demanding individual apologies for slavery and colonialism, a declaration of the slave trade as a crime against humanity, and reparations including debt relief, support for the New Africa Initiative, partnerships in such areas as educational development, and the return of all African art works plundered under colonialism.
This reversed a pre-conference African position acceptable to the Europeans, partly brokered by South Africa, and all hell broke loose. Earlier divisions in the European Union bloc where Britain, Holland, Portugal and Spain were isolated as the hardliners fell away as European countries presented a common front.
The concern was that the phrase “crime against humanity” is a potentially actionable one in terms of international instruments. EU states fear that such a concession would expose them to compensation claims.
The possibility of an accommodation on this issue turned on Africa’s willingess to drop the crime against humanity proposal, and the EU’s readiness to issue an apology for slavery and colonialism. At the time of writing, the EU seemed prepared to concede economic redress for Africa, as long as this was not linked to slavery.
A source close to the South African government said there were “certain weak states” in the African bloc which were easily pressed into making demands that were “untenable”. It was believed the South African government favoured a more “moderate” view of reparations in the form of support for the New African Initiative (NAI) and various other conditions in terms of which developing countries could pave the way for, among other things, a fairer trade regime and more direct investment in the continent. A source said the government regarded support for the NAI as “an anchor of reparations”.
On Israel, there were moves to remove the whole question of Zionism from the agenda and avoid direct criticism of the Israeli government, while restoring the focus to the plight of Palestinians in the occupied territories.
The sense was that the Arab bloc would not win the two-thirds majority support needed for a formal condemnation of Israel as a racist state, and there was considerable private criticism of the Arab hard line.
The Middle East issue has been characterised by a myriad caucus meetings and the hurling of racial epithets from both Jewish and Arab/Muslim sides. From the NGO Forum to the concluding proceedings of the conference itself, the issue of whether Israel should be declared an apartheid, racist state fuelled suspicion that the conference was being used to settle political scores.