Skip to content or view mobile version

Home | Mobile | Editorial | Mission | Privacy | About | Contact | Help | Security | Support

A network of individuals, independent and alternative media activists and organisations, offering grassroots, non-corporate, non-commercial coverage of important social and political issues.

The crisis in Kenya and the hypocrisy of the WSF

Rafael Uzcategui | 04.02.2008 17:13 | Analysis | Globalisation | Social Struggles | World

*A member of the collective editorship of the Venezuelan publication El Libertario (www.nodo50.org/ellibertario, in Spanish & English) exposes the inconsistencies of the bureaucracy that manipulates the World Social Forum through a reading of their evasive silence with regards to the tragedy that Kenya is experiencing today.


We can start by illustrating the point with an example. You live in a disorderly home, in which despite hardship, you try to make things better. A group of people turn up and say that they’d like to sleep in your house because they believe that their support will facilitate and encourage better relationships between the members of your family and that the coexistence of everyone will result in new forms of relationships in which everyone will benefit. You receive them as guests, and for a week they reiterate, incessantly, the pleasure they feel to be with this family, and they speak until they’re blue in the face about the importance of solidarity, ethical values, communication, etc.etc. In your home everyone is happy, and for a week there is a respite and an atmosphere that leaves everyone feeling satisfied. Your guests repeat, for the nth time, that you can count on them for anything, and that the links needed so that your situation might improve have already been forged and are in the process of advancing. However a short time later the situation in your house flares up again and its inhabitants start to set upon each other, like they haven’t done in a long time. You wait for your new friends to help your family out, and that they honour the recently established relationship between you. It turn out, however, that your new ‘friends’ have forgotten about you and that they are busy visiting other families just like they did with your family a few months earlier. Faced with this situation, you feel that the intentions of your ‘friends’ were never sincere, that they tricked you, and that they were really using you for ends that you still don’t understand.

This comparison can be applied to the case of the ‘Day of Global Action’ called by the WSF for the 26th January, given that they were not able, for various reasons, to hold the event as they have done since its inception in Porto Alegre. At the end of January 2007 the 7th WSF was held in Nairobi, the Kenyan capital, where the organisers tirelessly repeated how happy they were to hold it for the first time in the African continent. According to the official discourse of those days, realising the event there would provide support for the struggles of local organisations, connect with the problematics of the continent and help build bridges with its progressive elements. The actual event was, however, quite different, as I related at the time, as an observer on the ground, in a text that can be read (in Spanish) at: www.rafaeluzcategui.wordpress.com

In Nairobi, due to the internal crisis that the event was experiencing, it was decided that a ‘Day of Global Action’ would be held on the 26th January 2008, this call out inspired a variety of support and campaigns that would either start or be realized on this day. But, if you make the effort to review the hundreds of actions that were realized you would very quickly notice one thing: hardly any called attention to the crisis of the African country, a turmoil in which the two months of rioting and conflict has caused the deaths of more than 700 people. What happened to the good intentions that were affirmed scarcely a year ago?

The World Social Forum was created, in its moment, as a proposal for the construction of alternatives born from the coming together of movements that in 1999 was baptized as the antiglobalization movement. A large sector of the international left were taken by surprise by the mobilisations that occurred that year in the US around the WTO convention. Many of the participants of the actions in Seattle were doing so against globalisation, multinationals and capitalism, but also against the political forms of the traditional left which many people pointed to as being partly responsible for the current situation. One of the reasons for their surprise was that here was a protest movement from which they were, quite literally excluded.

The antiglobalization movement was perceived by the ‘widows of the Berlin wall’ as an opportunity to breathe life into their discourse and recover legitimacy. In the following years they dedicated themselves, meticulously, to channelling these rebel waters towards their own decrepit mill. At least if they couldn’t control the conventions and counter-summits, they wouldn’t have the same problems with a conclave such as the WSF. In Porto Alegre, the methods of the PT (Partido dos Trabalhadores, Lula’s ruling party in Brasil) to assume protagonism of the event left no doubt that the WSF would be an arena in order to see which leftwing tendency would control proceedings. And sooner rather than later, this ‘other world is possible’ was colonized by the world of the dogmatic and authoritarian parliamentary left. No-one was surprised that the expensive stalls at Porto Alegre were selling Stalin t-shirts, or that the ‘leftist’ governments had the largest exhibits or that the NGO’s with greater economic capacity were the ones that monopolized the discussion forums. On a micro level, the WSF reproduced all the perversions that it, in theory, questioned.

During those days in Nairobi, the locals remembered the tribal struggles as something distant, and tried to take the first steps towards a western style democracy, that being their point of reference. However, it as if, after the events at the WSF in Caracas, in which the WSF accentuated the polarization that fragmented the grass roots movements in Venezuela (see www.fsa.contrapoder.org.ve/english.htm), the event has been put under a curse. Thus after the WSF visited Kenya, the African country’s sleeping demons awoke, while the politburo of the new international of progressive bureaucracy looks the other way.

There are those who participate in the WSF who genuinely want change, but the crisis that the conclave is experiencing is related to this throng of functionaries and minor bureaucrats of the left who perceive the event as a platform to in their words, “…accumulate forces and change their correlation…” They are same people who demand in shouting voices that the WSF should have a program for assuming power, and that they crave it because amongst the invited are strongmen and authoritarian prophets of every variety.

But I can save myself the effort of making all the explications. The silence of the WSF in the face of the unfolding crisis in Kenya, the most recent country to have served it as an Amphitryon, says it all.

Rafael Uzcategui

Trans.  Markos@riseup.net

Rafael Uzcategui
- e-mail: ellibertario@nodo50.org
- Homepage: http://www.nodo50.org/ellibertario

Upcoming Coverage
View and post events
Upcoming Events UK
24th October, London: 2015 London Anarchist Bookfair
2nd - 8th November: Wrexham, Wales, UK & Everywhere: Week of Action Against the North Wales Prison & the Prison Industrial Complex. Cymraeg: Wythnos o Weithredu yn Erbyn Carchar Gogledd Cymru

Ongoing UK
Every Tuesday 6pm-8pm, Yorkshire: Demo/vigil at NSA/NRO Menwith Hill US Spy Base More info: CAAB.

Every Tuesday, UK & worldwide: Counter Terror Tuesdays. Call the US Embassy nearest to you to protest Obama's Terror Tuesdays. More info here

Every day, London: Vigil for Julian Assange outside Ecuadorian Embassy

Parliament Sq Protest: see topic page
Ongoing Global
Rossport, Ireland: see topic page
Israel-Palestine: Israel Indymedia | Palestine Indymedia
Oaxaca: Chiapas Indymedia
Regions
All Regions
Birmingham
Cambridge
Liverpool
London
Oxford
Sheffield
South Coast
Wales
World
Other Local IMCs
Bristol/South West
Nottingham
Scotland
Social Media
You can follow @ukindymedia on indy.im and Twitter. We are working on a Twitter policy. We do not use Facebook, and advise you not to either.
Support Us
We need help paying the bills for hosting this site, please consider supporting us financially.
Other Media Projects
Schnews
Dissident Island Radio
Corporate Watch
Media Lens
VisionOnTV
Earth First! Action Update
Earth First! Action Reports
Topics
All Topics
Afghanistan
Analysis
Animal Liberation
Anti-Nuclear
Anti-militarism
Anti-racism
Bio-technology
Climate Chaos
Culture
Ecology
Education
Energy Crisis
Fracking
Free Spaces
Gender
Globalisation
Health
History
Indymedia
Iraq
Migration
Ocean Defence
Other Press
Palestine
Policing
Public sector cuts
Repression
Social Struggles
Technology
Terror War
Workers' Movements
Zapatista
Major Reports
NATO 2014
G8 2013
Workfare
2011 Census Resistance
Occupy Everywhere
August Riots
Dale Farm
J30 Strike
Flotilla to Gaza
Mayday 2010
Tar Sands
G20 London Summit
University Occupations for Gaza
Guantanamo
Indymedia Server Seizure
COP15 Climate Summit 2009
Carmel Agrexco
G8 Japan 2008
SHAC
Stop Sequani
Stop RWB
Climate Camp 2008
Oaxaca Uprising
Rossport Solidarity
Smash EDO
SOCPA
Past Major Reports
Encrypted Page
You are viewing this page using an encrypted connection. If you bookmark this page or send its address in an email you might want to use the un-encrypted address of this page.
If you recieved a warning about an untrusted root certificate please install the CAcert root certificate, for more information see the security page.

Global IMC Network


www.indymedia.org

Projects
print
radio
satellite tv
video

Africa

Europe
antwerpen
armenia
athens
austria
barcelona
belarus
belgium
belgrade
brussels
bulgaria
calabria
croatia
cyprus
emilia-romagna
estrecho / madiaq
galiza
germany
grenoble
hungary
ireland
istanbul
italy
la plana
liege
liguria
lille
linksunten
lombardia
madrid
malta
marseille
nantes
napoli
netherlands
northern england
nottingham imc
paris/île-de-france
patras
piemonte
poland
portugal
roma
romania
russia
sardegna
scotland
sverige
switzerland
torun
toscana
ukraine
united kingdom
valencia

Latin America
argentina
bolivia
chiapas
chile
chile sur
cmi brasil
cmi sucre
colombia
ecuador
mexico
peru
puerto rico
qollasuyu
rosario
santiago
tijuana
uruguay
valparaiso
venezuela

Oceania
aotearoa
brisbane
burma
darwin
jakarta
manila
melbourne
perth
qc
sydney

South Asia
india


United States
arizona
arkansas
asheville
atlanta
Austin
binghamton
boston
buffalo
chicago
cleveland
colorado
columbus
dc
hawaii
houston
hudson mohawk
kansas city
la
madison
maine
miami
michigan
milwaukee
minneapolis/st. paul
new hampshire
new jersey
new mexico
new orleans
north carolina
north texas
nyc
oklahoma
philadelphia
pittsburgh
portland
richmond
rochester
rogue valley
saint louis
san diego
san francisco
san francisco bay area
santa barbara
santa cruz, ca
sarasota
seattle
tampa bay
united states
urbana-champaign
vermont
western mass
worcester

West Asia
Armenia
Beirut
Israel
Palestine

Topics
biotech

Process
fbi/legal updates
mailing lists
process & imc docs
tech