10. Back to the African Seminar
Reports on the final day of the African seminar in Mumbai were meant to reflect on social forum experiences of Southern Africa, Niger, Morocco, Cameroon, Zimbabwe, Guinea Conakry, Kenya, Mozambique, Mauritius, Senegal, Sudan and Egypt.
The session was intended to get a sense of how Africa was organising its social forces, relating with the African Social Forum Secretariat processes, mobilisation strategies, and framework of ideas versus those in the World Social Forum charter.
These issues were all going to dovetail into matters related to organisational space and lessons learnt.
Not everybody managed to present.
Realising that time was not on his side, the chair Prof. Edward Oyugi from Kenya, sought guidance from the floor on how best the programme could be changed in order to accommodate guest speakers from India and Brazil who could not stay for long as they had commitments elsewhere.
The good intention backfired.
Others wanted all reports to be made first while others felt that a pattern had emerged from earlier interventions and any other reporting was not going to change the issues, a situation that created chaos.
Finally, the chair managed to create space for the guests to speak.
It was at this point that Grzybowski dropped the bombshell for Africa "Are you ready to host the WSF in 2006?"
After his departure, the subsequent debate on process issues pitted the "South African voice" and their allies against a visibly defined West Africa, but predominantly Francophone bloc.
They accused the Secretariat of being undemocratic and alleged that its programme for Mumbai had veered from the positions and recommendations developed during a consultative process that was held during December in Maputo, Mozambique.
An intervention on the Maputo issues by Thomas Deve helped chart a way forward as he noted that the Maputo process had deliberated on strengthening the African Social Forum and recommended that a post-Mumbai meeting be held specifically for the steering committee, strategic partners and any other stakeholder in the forum process. This is where issues of ASF frequency, Secretariat and other processes were to be scrutinized.
Dubbed the Africa-wide consultation meeting, the proceedings in Maputo covered "The African Social Forum in the context of Mumbai", Country and Regional Social Forum Reports (Mozambique, Southern Africa, East Africa, West Africa, North Africa, Central Africa), "Challenges of organising social movements, CSOs and social mobilisation within the African Social Forum", review of the Bamako Declaration by Charles Mutasa, Addis Ababa Consensus Document by Trevor Ngwane and "Life after Cancun" with special reference to issues arising from the Africa Trade Network 6th Annual Review and Strategy meeting held in Accra, Ghana; Views from India by Pik Murthy,
"Collaborative Framework for African CSOs, Social Movements and cooperating partners in Mumbai" and finally, Logistics for the World Social Forum.
Some semblance of order emerged when it was announced that the ASF Secretariat will organise a special meeting in Africa to address these issues some time in April. On a related note, a Mozambique-based association of farmers, UNAC offered to host a southern-Africa review meeting to deal with the same issues in early March.
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