Steve O'Brien, Durban
Organisers are expecting 100,000 people to attend the Nairobi World Social Forum next January in Kenya. While some smaller regional meetings have been held, this will be the first time that the WSF has come to Africa in such a big way, participants at a July 21-22 workshop were told.
The workshop was organised by the Centre for Civic Society and Focus on the Global South, an Asian-based progressive "think-tank".
The event brought together more than 200 academics and activists from around the region and the world. There was also a strong and vocal presence of representatives of the many vibrant radical civic movements and residents' struggles around Durban.
Although originally conceived as a chance to debate the future of the WSF, the presence of many regional activists meant that the focus shifted to informal preparing for Nairobi, discussing issues such as translating African languages, catering, accommodation and security.
Transport is a big issue. It takes at least six days to drive from most parts of southern Africa to Kenya. Nevertheless, plans are underway for cavalcades of buses and kombis to converge on Kenya, campaigning on the road and at border crossings, and then reporting back on the return journey.
There was general agreement on the need to get grassroots, community and civic-movement activists, in preference to relatively privileged functionaries from non-government organisations, along to Nairobi. This is part of aiming to create the broadest possible "open meeting place", to facilitate exchanges and alliance building among anti-neoliberal and anti-capitalist activists and movements.
However, the concept of an "open meeting place" led to different interpretations about the best way forward for the WSF. Some participants tended to regard the idea of a space for movements and individuals as an end in itself. Others thought that the WSF needed to more precisely define itself and become more action-focused so as to avoid becoming irrelevant or even co-opted.
One focus for the international debate on this issue was the Bamako Appeal, issued just before the Bamako, Mali, WSF in January. The appeal outlines long-term objectives and proposals for immediate action and this point of view was defended on one of the panels by Samir Amin, the director of the Third World Forum in Senegal and an initiator of the appeal.
Amin summarised his own personal position as advocating "nationalism, development, and socialism". In response, autonomist activists advocated that any "encounter" should emerge from the struggle rather than be "imposed". They argued that anything else represented "creeping vanguardism", a 20th century leftist hangover from which the movement needed to be "liberated".
Another issue flagged as needing more discussion and debate was the WSF charter of principles. As one South African activist pointed out to me, by excluding "party representation", the charter has meant that the radical left, and prominent leaders such as Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, were unable to participate fully in the WSF, while right-wing social-democratic parties participated fully via the NGOs they fund.
The spirit of the workshop was inclusive, pro-feminist, militant and at times angry at the injustices underway, especially at the Israeli slaughter in Lebanon. Anti-apartheid veteran, sociologist and poet Dennis Brutus eloquently summed up the overall purpose of the debate and discussion: "We must oppose the hypnotic mantra that this is how the world must be."