The World Social Forum lands in Africa

Geoffrey Pleyers, September 2006

After the successful World Social Forum (WSF) in Porto Alegre in 2005, alter-globalisation activists decided to “decentralize” the next edition by organizing three parallel events in 2006, in Bamako (Mali, 19-23 January), Caracas (Venezuela, 24-29 January) and Karachi (Pakistan, 24-29 March). The WSF process therefore hit new ground, with the hope of integrating new regions and new people in its process but also to learn from their struggles and to incorporate their debates, knowledges, and dynamism.

Far away from its Latin-American? origins and actors, the WSF landed in Africa, in a place where alter-globalisation was little known. Among the few Malians that had ever heard about it, most had a negative image: “Those who break windows and shops”, “People that criticize everything”, “People who spent their time demonstrating”. To interest the Malian population in the Forum was therefore an uneasy task - and the organizers achieved a lot. In this perspective, the daily 10 minutes coverage of the WSF given by the national broadcast channel represented a major success. The opening demonstration that only gathered some 10,000 activists (in comparison, there were over 200,000 in Porto Alegre in 2005), gave a first illustration of the weak popular participation. The Forum itself gathered around 15,000 activists, a relative success in an African city - but where the organizers were waiting for twice as many.

Almost three hundred organizations took part in the preparation process, and people from 113 countries attended the event. The Togolese delegation travelled three days by bus to reach Bamako and the travel was even harder for hundreds of Malian peasants and miners who often came for the first time to their capital city. Due to the difficulty and the travelling cost, most of foreign African participants were NGO professionals. Besides Malian organisations, French (over 500), Senegalese, Burkina, Moroccan and Kenyan delegations were especially active and visible. Participants from Belgium, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands were also numerous, and often connected with a wide range of local partners. About 500 workshops were held in Bamako, with an audience sometimes over 200 activists but more frequently between 10 and 30 people, allowing everyone to take part in the debates and discussions. Unexpected by the organizers, the most popular event of the Forum turned out to be the very committed Reggae festival, that gathered 15,000 young people on a Friday evening in the national stadium.

The cancellation of third-world debt, food sovereignty, women, and migration were among the most discussed issues inside and outside of the WSF workshops. Hundreds of migrant candidates who had been turned back took part in the Forum. A Malian mother summarized one of their main messages: “Young Malians have to migrate because of the extremely deteriorated terms of international trade. If cotton was paid its real value, they wouldn’t have to go and seek elsewhere for ways to survive.” The Women’s Universe in the Forum was among the most interesting places, mostly dedicated to sharing of experience among African women, notably in self-managed social projects. The Peasant Space gathered participants from over forty African countries and helped to create and to strengthened relations between national, regional and international organisations, especially the “Via Campesina”. Many farmers insisted on the necessity of specific organisations to represent their needs and requests: “Before, it happened too often that NGOs spoke in the name of farmers. We need an organization of our own to speak for ourselves.” The Youth Camp however, was much smaller than in Porto Alegre and remote from the main venues of the Forum.

Overall, the organization of the Forum relied on dozens of Malian and European activists who took many initiatives related to alternative media but also had to cope with some opposition from the main organizers.

In terms of heroes honoured, rebel Africa has no idealized model, although the memory of the former president of Burkina Faso Thomas Sankara was honoured on several occasions, especially in the Youth Camp.

The Bamako “Polycentric WSF” was of special interest for three main reasons. First, it was not under the control of a governmental power nor another political force, contrary to Caracas. The Forum was hence open to a broader diversity of organisations and activists with no major common political reference except their aspiration to a better and fairer world. Indeed, the Bamako WSF gathered from Malian miners speaking in Bambara to Marxist intellectuals and many European NGO professionals

The encounter of African and European activists was the second main achievement of the Forum in Bamako. From the opening march onwards, North and South activists gathered around similar issues: African, French and Belgian and trade unions; fair trade partners; farmers coming from various continents under the banner of the Via Campesina… They continued their dialogues during and after the workshops. Alter-globalisation activists from the North and from the South observed similarities among neoliberal policies in their respective countries and the way they had been imposed. Many NGOs invited their local partners to take part in the WSF events and new cooperation projects have been launched. The Forum was deeply marked by the complex heritage of colonialism and the current European – and especially French – politics in Western Africa.

This was for example the reason of the massive presence of the Belgian catholic trade union in Bamako: “We have a big responsibility in what occurs in Africa, much bigger than in Latin America. (…) This is why we decided to send a large delegation in Bamako rather than in Caracas”. The Bamako WSF was held only a few weeks after the ‘France-Africa’ heads of state summit and in the same venue. The weight and hold of French politics in Africa is in every mind. The WSF was a notable opportunity to denounce electoral frauds and the repression by the Togolese dictatorial regime that has not yet lost the support of Paris.

The third and most important challenge of this WSF event was its arrival in Africa. The continent is widely considered as “the major victim of neoliberal globalisation and of unfair international trade”. Although limited, African participation to the previous WSF has progressively improved since 2002 thanks to the efforts and funding of some Northern NGOs. As Africa took a more important place in global public spaces and medias throughout 2005, this WSF was an occasion to integrate Africa in the globalisation of resistance and to prepare for the World Social Forum in Nairobi (Kenya) in 2007. It was an opportunity to listen to African voices that are usually little heard in the global movement. They proclaimed Africa was not a poor and passive continent waiting for Western help but people who aspire to a massive change and to “live with dignity”.

The same message was delivered in the workshop "African visions", in the women universe and in the youth camp: “We have to change ourselves to change Africa”; “We have to take our responsibility, in solidarity with peoples from the North but without always waiting white peoples before moving ourselves and making things change”. This posture entails a different way to relate to Northern activists and NGOs within a movement where the dependency towards the North remains strong. From international trade to democracy and music, people expressed a strong will to become actor in their lives and in their continent: “With globalisation, they wanted us to think that people couldn’t do anything on their own territory. This is not true! We have to fight against this widespread idea!” (a Malian activist). The same determination animated thousands of alternative projects. Among them, a woman in a housing project in Dakar said: “Generally, estate agents come, build some houses, and we buy our house without any possibility to give our opinion. We want now to think for ourselves about our houses and our neighbourhood, with green areas for kids to play, a health centre and a school”.

The leadership of the Forum in Bamako The success of the 2005 WSF in Porto Alegre widely relied on its ‘decentralised’ organisation, giving more initiative power to thousands of participants and less to the international organising committee and elite activists. Consequently, rather then massive crowds listening to famous intellectuals, hundreds of tents were set up to host smaller and more participatory meetings. After introductory speeches, many assemblies split into smaller groups, giving everyone the chance to express his own opinion. This dynamics opened the forum to other actors and to bottom-up processes, giving the WSF a refreshing momentum.

The WSF 2006 challenge was how to land on new ground. The easiest way to resolve it was to rely either on professional elite activists or on the country’s political power. Considerations about a more participatory event and active roles for grassroots people hence remained a step removed. The organization of the Bamako Polycentric WSF widely relied on a small group of professional activists whose central figure was Aminata Traore, well connected to international activists networks and a former Minister of Culture of Mali. Most of the organising team members were well inserted in international alter-globalisation or NGO networks. They seemed much closer to their European fellow travellers than to their country’s grassroots activists. During the press conference and the main events, they reproduced discourses that were very similar to what international leading activists said in Porto Alegre one year earlier. On the other hand, most local activists formulated their struggles and debates in very different ways, much closer to local preoccupations.

The preparation process was mostly top-down, with little place for grassroots initiatives. 300 people came to the WSF from the remote Malian region called Morila to denounce the amazing damage caused by mining exploitation on surrounding population’s health and living conditions. A few months before the WSF, some of their fellows had been jailed after a demonstration. Although their situation was a crude illustration of extreme exploitation and environmental deterioration caused by international corporations and neoliberal globalisation, the Forum leaders - who may have feared annoying a government that helped to organise the WSF - did not put their claims forward.

The weak popular participation in the Forum and the image shared by many people of Bamako seeing the Forum as “an event for Western people” and “an encounter of NGO leaders” (comments received in personal interviews) are some further indicators of a gap that separated local people and the activist elites who were in charge of the Forum’s organisation. A Malian student involved in the youth camp summarized the situation by emphasizing similar problems within the WSF organisation and Malian national politics: “What is missing here is the confidence between the leaders and the population. The leaders have ideas and come to present them to the people, but they never listen to what people would like!”.

A great opportunity The fact that the WSF widely relied on some local activist elites in Bamako was perhaps only normal as this was its first experimentation in Africa. Actually, the top-down logic was even stronger in the first World Social Forums in Porto Alegre. Beyond the discourses of political leaders and texts that try to fix the claims of an alternative movement in perpetual evolution, the 2006 WSF in Bamako was also – and foremost – an open space dedicated to “free and relatively undirected exchanges between people of many different persuasions, backgrounds, contexts” . Thousands of activists shared their claims, hopes, and alternative experience. It was the opportunity for countless exchanges between North and South activists and for strengthening international relations with local partners. After the Forum, many European activists travelled in Malian towns and the countryside to share grassroots activist experience and ideas. For thousands of alter-globalisation activists, the 2006 Polycentric WSF events were exceptional opportunities to discover new regions. The WSF brought dynamism and more unity to the local civil society, but it learned also a lot from local activists and received fresh insights and impetus. As a result, many African and Asian delegates insisted on the need to organize similar meetings in other regions of the globe, to allow more people to access the Forum’s debates and spirit.

Over this past period, activists of the whole of the Southern Africa region have also shown a genuine enthusiasm to host the 2007 WSF in Nairobi. Several preparatory and discussion meetings have been held with grassroots activists. In July 2006, the Durban Centre for Civil Society brought local activists together with committed national and international scholars at an exciting meeting. The debates and dialogues that took place there contributed to a better mutual understanding and to narrow the gap between committed international intellectuals and local grassroots activists. And since the Bamako Polycentric WSF, the Kenyan Organizing Committee has also strongly committed itself to pay major attention to grassroots dynamics and people. This is one of the reasons why Nairobi may be a major step towards building a more genuinely international alter-globalisation movement, which is definitely one of its most important challenges.

On the other hand, the issue of the war was almost totally absent in Bamako.

Anheier H., Glasius M., Kaldor M. eds. (2006) Global civil society 2005-2006, London: Sage.

Sen J. (2005) Breaking boundaries, In: Sen J., Saini M. eds. Talking new politics, New Delhi: Zubaan, p.30.