Frances M. Beal
7 January 2002
analysis
It is hard to believe that just three months ago, the United Nations World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Other Forms of Intolerance (WCAR) took place in Durban, South Africa.
Since that important gathering, the world has shifted on its axis as the repercussions of the horrific terrorist assault on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon have exploded on the world's political and military landscape and initially swept all other considerations to the sidelines.
For those who participated in the Durban dialogue, however, a critical part of trying to understand and act upon the new political terrain that confronts us has been to extract what lessons we learnt and to apply them to our current struggle against war, racism and repression.
For the first time, many activists from the United States grasped the depth of the international isolation of the US government in international politics.
The NGO Declaration represented a landmark achievement in the global anti-racist struggle. The position that the Transatlantic Slave Trade and Slavery represented a crime against humanity was a breakthrough for those who have consistently been campaigning for racial justice and against colonialism around the world. A comprehensive document laying out the problem and a 10-year plan of action was adopted.
Yet, more than that occurred. Many of the delegates from North America attending the NGO forum in Durban were in for a big surprise. Most had been informed of the big controversy over Palestinians or the demand for black reparations on the agenda. What they did not expect was an NGO forum that would unfold as a continuation of an ever more articulate and ever more vocal anti-globalisation movement.
Durban, South Africa, must now be added to Seattle, Prague and Genoa when masses gathered to challenge the transnational financial and political institutions that have snared the world's peoples into its unipolar globalisation net of exploitation and oppression.
While the US and European protests concentrated on the economic institutions, Durban's unique contribution was to place the fight against racism, xenophobia and other related intolerances at the centre of its anti-globalisation critique.
Merisha Andrews, President of SANGOCO, the South African group responsible for organising the forum, first signaled the theme linking the WCAR to the anti-globalisation movement. "We will talk about the Palestinians," she proclaimed in her opening address to the conference delegates. "We will talk about the blockade of Cuba!"
To a widely cheering crowd, she concluded that the youth and the NGOs must insist that we "not accept any strategy, or programme, or policy that does not touch on the profound causes of all the inequalities: economic and social injustices."
That theme was reinforced in the opening remarks of South African President Thabo Mbeki, who insisted that the legacy of slavery must be recognised: "I would like to believe," he proclaimed, "that a common outcome we all seek is a measurable commitment within countries and among all nations that practical steps will be taken and resources allocated to eradicate the legacy of slavery, colonialism and racism that condemns billions across the globe to poverty and despair."
He also made specific reference to the "process of globalisation" which "rewards some handsomely," but made reference to "unbearable suffering in the midst of plenty" that can threaten social peace.
Many South African NGOs, however, felt that Mbeki's remarks were merely for show since his economic policies -particularly the policy of privatisation - are capitulation to IMF and World Bank directives, which have deepened the racial divide in post-apartheid South Africa between the White rich and the Black poor, although it has elevated a new Black elite at the fringe of the ruling centres of economic and political power.
The US and other former colonial powers chose not to pick up the racial justice gauntlet and engage in the debate. But it is one that cannot be put off forever.
Many of the NGOs saw this gathering as only the opening salvo in a face off between those who promote exploitative globalisation schemes, which perpetuate racial and xenophobic discrimination and those with a vision of a democratic world of economic and social justice with racial equity at its core.
Ms Beal is the National Secretary of the Black Radical Congress and a political columnist.
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