In this Edition

KC JOURNAL NO 11 JANUARY 2007

The Road to Nairobi

In January 2007 the first meeting of the World Social Forum on African soil will take place in Nairobi, Kenya. The WSF encounter will take place in the Kenyan capital from the 20th to the 25th January. As the Kenya Social Forum writes in our first article, the meeting “brings the world to Africa as activists, social movements, networks, coalitions and other progressive forces from Asia-Pacific, Latin America, the Caribbean, North America, Europe and all corners of the African continent converge in Nairobi, Kenya for five days of cultural resistance and celebration; panels, workshops, symposia, processions, film nights and much much more”.

Over the last few years the world has seen the re-emergence and growth of a (global) social justice movement. This movement has led to the recognition, by the public and by those in positions of authority, that while the world has unprecedented levels of production of material wealth, the majority of the world’s people are still mired in poverty. Increasingly, and to varying degrees, the poor and marginalised are organising and mobilising to change their lives. These organisations and movements have realised, however, that given the globalised nature of the environment within which they have to operate, they too have to build solidarity among the poor both within their respective countries and at a regional and global level.

One of the most high-profiled movements of this kind has been the World Social Forum (WSF). The WSF had its first international encounter in the Brazilian city of Porto Alegre in 2001. The formation of the Forum followed the high-profiled struggles against the WTO in Seattle, which signalled the resurgence of resistance against the negative effects of globalisation. For most of its life the WSF held its international encounters in Brazil, and went out of Brazil only in 2005, when it hosted its international encounter in Mumbai, India, and in Caracas, Venezuela in 2006.

In 2007 the WSF will be hosted in Africa (Nairobi) for the first time in its history. This event gives African civil society organisations and social movements an opportunity to take stock of the process of solidarity and movement building on the continent and in its various regions. The Nairobi WSF also provides African civil society with the opportunity to exchange ideas on new ways of building solidarity and of strengthening civil society in Africa.

This Special Edition of the Khanya Journal celebrates this coming event, and profiles articles reflecting on the preparation for Nairobi 2007 by the Southern African social movements in general, and South African social movements in particular.

The first two articles set the scene for this edition, and come from the Kenya Social Forum and from Onyango Oloo. Both the articles situate the hosting of this important event in Africa against the background of the challenges facing social movements on the continent. In particular, Oloo argues that social movements in Kenya, and in Africa in general, see the Nairobi encounter as a space to assert their presence and “want to see the WSF being transformed into a space for organising and mobilising against the nefarious forces of international finance capital, neo-liberalism and all its local neo-colonial and comprador collaborators”.

The next set of articles all reflect, from different perspectives and around different issues, on the process of preparations leading up to Nairobi

  1. Mondli Hlatshwayo and Nerisha Baldevu take us back to the last Polycentric World Social Forum in Caracas, Venezuela, and Bamako, Mali, respectively. They reflect on the issues taken up,

and the political texture of the events which laid the basis for the coming WSF in Nairobi. Next, Khanya College and Mondli Hlatswayo look at the process of preparation undertaken by South African social movements on the road to Nairobi. We see how

the Forum is being used as a movement building exercise, and as an opportunity to build solidarity links between South African and Kenyan social movements beyond Nairobi 2007.

Mzimasi Mngeni and Maria van Driel look back at the Southern African Social Forum held in Malawi in October 2006. In their respective views the SASF in Malawi was well organised, saw the participation of many grassroots people in Malawi,

and they reflect on the challenges facing movements beyond Malawi 2006 and Nairobi 2007. In the next two articles Ighsaan Schroeder and Nina Benjamin look at specific sector preparations for the WSF in Nairobi. Schroeder looks at the development of the movement of farm-workers in the region, and at their plans for a farm-worker forum in Nairobi. Benjamin takes up the preparation by HIV/AIDS groups and their focus on social mobilisation around HIV/AIDS in an African context.

The Southern Cape Land Committee reflects on the Summer School for activists in the Southern Cape and the Karoo, and how the coming WSF has acted as an inspiration for sharing experiences of prospects for the movement-building process. In the last article of this section Jubilee South Africa discusses a new wave of land dispossessions sweeping the northern provinces of South Africa as local and multinational companies embark on a “platinum rush” reminiscent of the wave of dispossessions following the discovery of gold in the 1800s.

This edition includes a number of documents. The first is the Charter of Principles of the World Social Forum adopted in the early stages of the evolution of the WSF. The second is a call by Lalit to “People’s        Struggles! People’s Alternatives!

Karibu to WSF Nairobi 2007!

struggle among emerging organisations of rural people.

The next five articles are a series of reflections on the state of social movements in the Southern Africa region on the eve of Nairobi 2007. Dumezani Dlamini, Mondli Hlatswayo and Lindsey Collen reflect on the evolution of social movements in Swaziland, Angola, South Africa and Mauritius. In these articles they reflect on how the movements are responding to the forces of neoliberal globalisation and the local representatives of these forces. While acknowledging the weaknesses of the movements

in these countries, the authors identify positive struggle around military basis and the militarisation of society by capitalism and imperialism. The last document by Khanya College is an invitation to the next Khanya College Winter School, which will focus on “Education for Liberation”. This School will engage in debate and discussion, in solidarity and network building around the challenges facing popular education in the age of neoliberal globalisation.

As we go to Nairobi, lets us all commit ourselves to “People’s Struggles! People’s Alternatives!” Karibu WSF 2007!!

Oupa Lehulere (Convening Editor)

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