NGOs at Durban Target Globalization

DURBAN, SOUTH AFRICA -- Many of the delegates attending the nongovernmental (NGO) forum of the World Conference Against Racism here in South Africa have been met with a big surprise. Most had been informed of the big controversy over including the treatment of the Palestinians by the state of Israel or the demand for black reparations on the agenda. Most had expected these to be the main arenas of contention and to dominate the dialogue.

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-globalization movement. This grassroots upsurge was first expressed in Seattle two years ago at the meeting of the World Trade Organization (WTO); it was further articulated at the World Bank demonstrations in Washington, DC and reached its culmination at the G-7 meetings in Genoa.

Durban, South Africa must now be added to that list of mass gatherings to challenge the transnational financial and political institutions that have snared the world's peoples into its unipolar, globalization net. But Durban represents at least two major differences.

Young whites and Europeans dominated the Seattle, Washington and Genoa protests. The NGO Forum, on the other hand, has attracted a global cross-generational activist core that is composed predominately of people of color from the Americas, from Africa and from Asia.

And while the U.S. and European protests concentrated on the economic institutions, Durban's unique contribution has been to place the fight against racism, xenophobia and other related intolerances at the center of its anti-globalization critique.

The NGO forum, of course, is not a gathering that was called in reaction to a get-together of the imperial elite and its financial and political institutions. The WCAR is a meeting that has been several years in the making, but its flavor and orientation has been definitively seasoned with the worldwide anti-globalization protests that preceded it.

The theme linking the WCAR to the anti-globalization movement was first signaled by Merisa Andrews, President of SANGOCO, the South African group responsible for organizing the forum. "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 stated that all the questions of the struggle against racism and discrimination will not be resolved unless they are placed in "the context of economic and social justice." Amid thunderous applause she concluded that the youth and the NGOs must insist that we "not except any strategy, or program, 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 legacy of slavery must be recognized: "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, actually 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 globalization" 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 privatization - is 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 centers of economic and political power.