The African leg of the World Social Forum (WSF) kicks off next week in the Malian capital, Bamako, with a host of issues on the agenda: war and militarism, global trade and debt, to name just a few.
The conference website where these topics are listed makes no direct mention of Aids, however, or the need for good governance in African states — even though these are among the key development issues confronting the continent today.
Despite these omissions, activist Vitalis Meja remains confident that HIV and clean government will be addressed during the WSF. He works for the Harare-based African Forum and Network on Debt and Development, and will be attending the Bamako meeting — scheduled for January 19 to 23.
”The focus of the conference will be to criticise the neoliberal agenda. But that does not mean that the issues of HIV/Aids and governance have been dropped; they will be discussed in a broader prospective,” Meja says. (The term neoliberalism describes a political and economic philosophy that rejects state intervention in the economy, and encourages limited restrictions on business.)
”The issues of HIV/Aids and governance will always come up. For example, if there are abuses against women in Darfur, they will be brought up as part of the governance issue.”
Darfur, a region in western Sudan, has become the site of one of the world’s worst humanitarian situations since conflict erupted there between two rebel movements and the government.
Africa shoulders the burden of 80% of all global HIV/Aids cases, according to the United Nations Joint Programme on HIV/Aids.
”The [neoliberal] agenda is not doing enough to alleviate poverty: all the wealth goes to the rich nations, impoverishing Africa. As a result, sub-Saharan Africa is not performing very well in social indicators, education, food security and health,” Meja notes.
”Africa’s economic growth rate is 4,6%, but on the ground poverty remains rampant … By September 2005, we had about 60% of people in sub-Saharan Africa living under the poverty line,” he adds.
‘Easy scapegoat’
Ayesha Kajee, of the Johannesburg-based South African Institute of International Affairs, takes issue with pointing to neoliberalism as being the cause of most — if not all — of Africa’s woes.
”It’s an easy scapegoat. We have to accept responsibility where our leaders have failed,” she says. ”Blaming all Africa’s problems on neoliberalism, although it has a hand in some of them, is not fair or accurate. We have to look beyond the neoliberalism agenda.”
”We have to look at instances where a Constitution is being manipulated by a government seeking a third term, like in Uganda,” Kajee adds, in reference to President Yoweri Museveni’s decision to change the Constitution in order to stand for a third-term in office.
Indeed, perhaps civil society would do well to put itself under the microscope at Bamako, she suggests.
”We have had vibrant civil societies [in Africa] in the last decade, but they have not passed on enough information to strengthen local people. Information empowerment is lacking in Africa — and that’s where civil societies have failed,” Kajee notes, adding that Asian campaigners might have something to teach Africa in this regard.
”The good example is Asia, where civil society puts the right information into the hands of local people to make changes in service delivery like clean water, transport and communication links … In Africa, people need information to force governments to change policies.”
The WSF takes place every year, bringing together civic groups that oppose the global political and economic order. It was started in 2001 as a counterpoint to the World Economic Forum, an annual gathering in the Swiss town of Davos that attracts heads of state, business leaders and the likes.
To date, the WSF has mainly been held in the Brazilian town of Porto Alegre. This year will mark the first instance in which a forum is taking place in Africa (another two WSFs are also scheduled to he held later in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, and the Pakistani capital, Islamabad).
Hundreds of campaigners are expected to attend the WSF in Bamako, most of them delegates from civil society groups. While the decision to hold a forum in Mali was doubtless motivated in part by the desire to make proceedings more accessible to people on the continent, the hope is that delegates from further afield will also be present.
”Such a conference requires the attendance of friends of Africa from Europe and North America,” Sam Ndlovu, a researcher at the University of South Africa, says. ”Without their support, their lobbying and their campaigning, Africa — on its own — will achieve little.”
Meja agrees. ”We are expecting our friends from overseas, particularly Europe and the United States, to join us in Bamako,” he notes. — IPS