Lectures 10 & 11 (2009)
In the ‘Fourth World War’ we get a glimpse into the alter-globalisation movement, a movement in which there is the belief that there are different ways of understanding and approaching globalisation, not from the interests of global corporations but from the interests of ordinary people. Today, we are going to look at some of these different understandings of alternatives that exist within this very diverse movement or ‘movement of movements’.
We have seen in previous lectures how dominant discourses of globalisation produce the belief that There Is No Alternative (TINA) to corporate globalisation or neoliberalism. Activists from within the alter-globalisation movement have in response argued that There Must Be An Alternative (THEMBA), and have proceeded to enact and/or fight for alternatives to various processes of neoliberalisation.
While these alternatives have been pursued along the different lines outlined in the last lecture in which the different traditions of struggle were categorised, certain new forms of politics have emerged and begun to characterise the ways in which alternatives have come to be pursued in and by new social movements. In particular, direct action, referring to forms of political action in which people (bodies) directly take on representatives or symbols of the enemy and Power, has come to characterise resistance at both a local and a global level. Resistance has also increasingly come to take on a global character, and linkages, primarily through networks, have grown between different locally organised groups of activists.
Different instances of localised resistance – gave birth to new forms of organising and thinking about politics – e.g. Zapatistas (last lecture); Argentina – in 2001 people from all classes said ‘Let them all go’, that is, ‘Let all the politicians go’, and began experimenting with different forms of self-organisation – neighbourhood assemblies; movements of the unemployed taking occupation of unused factories; movements of the landless occupying unused land; blockades of highways; non-hierarchical forms of organising – also in the US and Canada (affinity groups); non-representational forms of collective organisation – critiques of electoral democracy and the party form.
At a global level, direct action and other forms of protests were also taking the form of more frequent mass convergences of activists from around the world around major meetings of the world’s political and economic superpowers e.g. the IMF, World Bank, G8 and UN gatherings. Seattle, Washington, Genoa, Quebec. Again, putting the body in the path of Power, refusing to accept control, demanding that there is an alternative. Again, diversity of tactics.
2001 – World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting in Davos, Switzerland – parts of the alter-globalisation movement (in particular those from that category called ‘old left’) began to talk with the Workers’ Party in Brazil, which had just won the national elections with Lula as President, about hosting an alternative gathering of all those forces struggling against neoliberalism in the world. The World Social Forum (WSF) was born. In 2001, over 100 000 activists from all over the world converged on the city of Porto Alegre, Brazil for the first WSF. With the slogan ‘Another world is possible’, the WSF brought together a number of diverse political traditions and different groups of people fighting very different effects of neoliberalism to discuss ‘alternatives’, to share experiences, strategies, tactics – proactive, creative. In the WSF we find represented all the different categories of movements we have spoken about before. It is therefore a very contested space in which a number of different imaginings of alternatives to neoliberalism exist side by side. Most recently there has been heated debate between anarchist and autonomist groupings, and ‘the old left’ about whether the WSF should be moving towards the production of a single alternative around which struggles can orientate. It has, however, been a space in and through which different networks and campaigns have coalesced e.g. the anti-war campaigns.
The WSF was represented as the polar opposite to the WEF in 2001, with President Lula boycotting Davos and participating in sessions in Porto Alegre. Since 2001, the WSF has continued, taking place in Brazil again, India and Kenya (2007). It has, however, changed over the years. It remains, however, a contested and diverse space. While we are unable in this course to go into much detail about the WSF, it is important to understand it as a space in which alternatives to neoliberalism are imagined, struggled for, and made. It is also a space in and through which the global interconnectedness between groups resisting the effects of neoliberalism has happened and continued to happen. It is one example of the network form that comes to characterise this period of globalisation.
How does South Africa fit into this global movement? Since 1999, we have already seen the emergence of new social movements in South Africa:
- Concerned Citizens’ Forum (CCF) – Durban
- Anti-Privatisation Forum (APF) – Gauteng
- Anti-Eviction Campaign (AEC) – Cape Town
- Landless People’s Movement (LPM)
- Treatment Action Campaign (TAC)
Expand on histories of each.
Exhibiting new forms of organising (direct action e.g. reconnections; outside of the party form; critical of the state form) – in resistance against effects of neoliberal policies – expand through examples – willing buyer, willing seller in land reform; cost recovery in basic service delivery. Except for TAC, critical of and antagonistic to the ANC Alliance.
Also, resistance and critiques grew from within the Alliance (SACP and COSATU and its affiliates), and from within organised civil society i.e. non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and community based organisations, generally under the umbrella of the South African National NGO Coalition (SANGOCO).
In August 2001, the South African government hosted its first international UN conference, the World Conference Against Racism (WCAR), in Durban. Movements and NGOs came together under the banner of the Durban Social Forum (DSF), proclaimed to protest the celebration of the South African government’s neoliberal policies in the form of GEAR as the continuation of racism and to draw attention to the unequal nature of the UN system. One of the slogans of the DSF was ‘GEAR=racism’. On 31 August 2001 over 20 000 people came out into the streets in a DSF march in which SANGOCO and new social movements spoke outside of the ANC Alliance against the neoliberal path adopted by it.
In 2002, another international UN conference, the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) would be hosted by the South African government, in Sandton, Johannesburg. Again, civil society would get organised. But, between the WCAR and WSSD many divisions emerged between SANGOCO and new social movements, and an independent formation, the Social Movements Indaba (SMI) would emerge as a space through which new social movements would organise a march of over 20 000 from Alexandra township to Sandton on 31 August 2002, to once again protest the continued imposition of unequal and unsustainable development produced by neoliberalism or corporate globalisation. It is also significant that the South African state increased its security functions in the run-up to the WSSD, wanting to prevent the kind of shame brought to it in Durban in 2001. In the weeks before the summit, movements in Johannesburg, in particular the APF and LPM, had undertaken various marches against forced removals, evictions and cut offs. Marches had been declared illegal and people had been arrested, leading to further protests and further arrests. A candlelight march from Wits on one of the evenings, led by prominent figures in the global movement, such as Naomi Klein, to protest the repression, was teargassed and firebombed by police just five metres off the campus. South Africa instantly became a site in the emerging narratives about globalisation and resistance to it.
During both the WCAR and WSSD, global networks were drawn on and built. Indymedia is again an example of how linkages within the movement have been built. Indymedia South Africa was set up during the WCAR and subsequently continued after the WSSD. During both conferences it provided an independent space for the production of media from within movements and the meeting of activists from all over the world.
There have also been other experiences of global linkages and connections through connections that have been made along lines of similar political influence e.g. activists from the AEC in Cape Town were able to set up an exchange of activists with activists from a neighbourhood assembly in Buenos Argentina through meetings that happened in the WSF in Porto Alegre in 2003. Other networks have provided support during times of repression e.g. bail for activists facing charges for illegal reconnections.
We can see, then, that South Africa reflects all the diversity of the growing global movement, and contributes to this diversity.
We have looked at a particular period in the evolution of the alter-globalisation movement and new social movements in South Africa, a period in which much was celebrated and written about them, as we have already discussed. However, the many movements making up the global movement have undergone various changes and experienced changes with regard to the contexts in and from which they fight. Some of the South African movements no longer exist e.g. the CCF, and the LPM (exists only in Gauteng now, not nationally), while others have changed in form and in terms of the issues they address e.g. the APF. While we do not have the time in this course to pursue this discussion in any detail, it is important to acknowledge here that the process of globalisation is an ongoing, contested and changing one, in which struggle both changes the course of events and is changed by them.
