More than 600 civil society activists from around the world will meet in Botswana’s capital, Gaborone, next month to exchange information and ideas about development in Africa and elsewhere.
The gathering, under the theme Acting Together for a Just World, is the biennial World Assembly of the World Alliance for Citizen Participation (Civicus), a Johannesburg-based NGO founded in 1993. Civicus encourages people to take part in the political and economic life of their countries.
Delegates will hold talks in Botswana from March 21 to 25. Previous gatherings have been held in Mexico City, Budapest, Manila and Vancouver.
”Civicus meets every two years. It is now Africa’s turn to hold the meeting,” said Kumi Naidoo, Civicus secretary general.
”The assembly will take advantage of its African location to highlight some of the key issues relevant to development in the region. It will seek to highlight innovative strategies to break the silence around HIV/Aids, and the search for practical solutions to the pandemic,” Naidoo added.
Nearly 30-million of the 42-million people infected with HIV worldwide are in Africa, according to the World Health Organisation. The United Nations agency also says that in Botswana, Aids has cut the life expectancy from 72 to 39 years.
”Botswana has the highest per capita HIV/Aids prevalence rate in the world,” Naidoo said. The UN Joint Programme on HIV/Aids (UNAids) puts this prevalence at more than 35%, ”one of the highest in the world”. The agency estimates that 300 000 people out of Botswana’s 1,6-million-strong population are living with Aids at present.
The plight of the indigenous Basarwa or San people will also be discussed at the conference, as well as at a two-day meeting between NGOs and Botswana authorities that is scheduled to take place a week before the Civicus gathering.
The San — formerly referred to as Bushmen — have been evicted from their ancestral land inside the mineral-rich Central Kalahari Game Reserve in Botswana.
Survival International, a British-based group that protects the interests of indigenous people worldwide, has accused Botswana’s government of ”forced relocation” of the San people. These allegations have been denied by authorities.
According to the Kalahari People’s Fund (KPF), nearly half of the 95 000 people that belong to the San in Southern Africa live in Botswana. KPF is an NGO that works to protect the rights of the San, a group of hunters and gatherers that has been living in the region for thousands of years.
”We can’t hold a big conference in Botswana while ignoring the plight of the Basarwa,” Naidoo said.
Civicus executive director Vic Sutton said the organisation planned — in partnership with the Botswana Council of NGOs (Bocongo) — ”to use the opportunity that the World Assembly can offer in bringing together a wide range of actors, to discuss the question of the rights of the Basarwa”.
”In recent consultations among major stakeholders — which included the government of Botswana, Basarwa representatives, major NGOs such as Ditshwanelo and Bocongo and Survival International — there seems to be a consensus that a dialogue is necessary,” Sutton said.
The controversy about the San is one of the rare blots on Botswana’s record — as the country is typically viewed as an African success story. Thanks to its huge diamond deposits, Botswana has a booming economy with a per capita income of $3 065 dollars — one of the highest in Africa.
Another thorny issue that is likely to surface at the gathering is the political situation in Zimbabwe. The Harare government has been cracking down on civil society groups and opposition supporters since the Movement for Democratic Change, Zimbabwe’s main opposition party, began posing a challenge to President Robert Mugabe in 2000.
Since then, authorities have introduced a number of stringent laws including the Public Order and Security Act and the Miscellaneous Offences Act, which are consistently used to impede freedom of expression, movement and association in the country.
Donald Anderson, a British MP for the Labour Party, told journalists in Johannesburg this week (February 10) that he was puzzled by South African president Thabo Mbeki’s policy of ”quiet diplomacy” on Zimbabwe.
Mbeki’s critics frequently claim that this policy is not working.
”We also do a lot of work through quiet diplomacy. But when it comes to a breaking point, sometimes the policy of quiet diplomacy becomes unattainable,” Naidoo said.
The conflict between Palestinians and Israelis will also be discussed at the conference. And, for the first time since Civicus began holding its meetings in 1995, China will send delegates to the meeting (five are expected this year).
The gathering will be attended by Botswana President Festus Mogae and Mary Robinson, former UN high commissioner for human rights. Prega Ramsamy, executive secretary of the 14-nation Southern African Development Community and Graca Machel, a children’s rights champion, will also take part in the conference. — IPS
On the net:
Civicus: http://www.civicus.org
UNAids: http://www.unaids.org
Survival International: http://www.survival-international.org
Kalahari People’s Fund: http://www.kalaharipeoples.org
Ditshwanelo: http://www.ditshwanelo.org.bw