"Africa didn't really shine here," South African finance minister Trevor Manuel told a press conference in snowy Davos, Switzerland, at the World Economic Forum last week. "There is a complete dearth of panels on Africa."

Nevertheless, in any five-star hotel gathering of powerbrokers, backslapping is crucial, no matter how artificial the camaraderie. Here is how former Johannesburg Star newspaper editor Peter Sullivan witlessly described the Davos experience for Sunday Independent readers this week:

"The SA contingent worked hard to get investment but partied equally hard: a real 'jol' was had by all with great jiving from Kader Asmal, Trevor Manuel and Alec Irwin (sic), while Bertie Lubner and his wife boogied the night away. We also drank a few bottles of KWV's best red." (Too many, apparently, to subsequently spell trade minister Erwin's name correctly.)

Sullivan regaled with stories of meeting "the beautiful Queen Rania of Jordan", Bill Gates and Bill Clinton. But as one shrewd journalist - not the social-climber Sullivan - reported on January 28, "Among the many snubs Africa received here was the decision by former US president Bill Clinton to cancel his presence at a press conference on Africa today to discuss the New Partnership for Africa's Development. Forum officials said Clinton did not give reasons for not attending."

The ingratitude!

Recall that over the previous eighteen months, Thabo Mbeki, Manuel and Erwin had either hosted, chaired or played a crucial backroom role on globalisation's equivalent of a big-five hunting safari - mainly for the benefit of the Davos club:

* At the World Conference Against Racism in Durban, Mbeki shot down NGOs and African leaders who argued in favour of reparations for slavery/colonialism/apartheid.

* Ten weeks later at the World Trade Organisation's Doha ministerial summit, Erwin split his continent's delegation to prevent a Seattle-style denial of consensus by African trade ministers, in the process promoting multinational corporate interests.

* Then, at the UN's Financing for Development conference in Monterrey, Mexico last March, Manuel was summit co-chair and endorsed the World Bank and IMF "Washington Consensus", relegating debt relief to the status of a dead duck.

* A few months later, at the Kananaskis, Canada Summit of the G8 powers, a grovelling Mbeki departed with a handful of peanuts for his hungry and now badly wounded African elephant - and yet, against all evidence to the contrary, declared that the meeting "signifies the end of the epoch of colonialism and neo-colonialism".

* Finally, at Johannesburg's World Summit on Sustainable Development, Mbeki undermined standard UN democratic procedure, advanced the privatisation of nature, and did virtually nothing to genuinely address the plight of the world's majority.

A little sympathy from the world's ruling class for Pretoria's men in kneepads would surely have been in order - even if just the face-saving sort, for the cameras, as is normally the case.

So let's leave the grey-monied set in favour of a hot, sunny, colourful place crowded with ordinary grassroots activists who took the world's problems rather more seriously last week. In Porto Alegre, Brazil, the World Social Forum attracted 100,000 leftist delegates from across the globe who insisted, "Another World is Possible!"

Here at least, South Africa - especially Soweto campaigners for free electricity, water, medicines, education and housing - shone as brightly as a house reconnected late at night thanks to Operation Khanyisa.

Several times in Porto Alegre, I witnessed the passion with which former Soweto city councillor Trevor Ngwane addressed the crowds, moving the agenda from basic human rights, to continent-wide organising in the year-old Africa Social Forum, to his widely-applauded declaration that the World Bank must now be defunded and decommissioned.

"Weakening the power of Washington is our main challenge," Ngwane announced, "especially now that Bush is in heat after Middle Eastern oil, and because the IMF and World Bank show they will not reform."

Moreover, the World Social Forum has spawned a variety of localised social forums of labour, women, environmentalists, community militants, church activists, and youth. In conjunction with the African Social Forum which met last month in Addis Ababa, Ngwane has been mandated to help get a Southern African Social Forum off the ground.

Decentralisation will help avoid, as Canadian author Naomi Klein warns, domination by the new "big men" of the left: Brazilian president Lula Inacio da Silva and embattled Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. Crucial for a coming generation of bottom-up social forums, says Klein, is the chance to replant Porto Alegre's most radical seeds: "The ideas flying around included neighbourhood councils, participatory budgets, stronger city governments, land reform and co-operative farming - a vision of politicised communities that could be networked internationally to resist further assaults from the IMF, the World Bank and World Trade Organisation."

Icy Davos and friendly Porto Alegre will clash again - as elites marginalise Africa through intensified globalisation and as social forums break out across Africa uniting to demand, as Asian intellectual Walden Bello suggests, economic "deglobalisation". Which forum philosophy will prevail?

On two previous occasions, South Africa's famous two Trevors - Manuel and Ngwane - have seen their respective teams square off. Once, during an April 2000 clash covered by SABC's Special Assignment ("Two Trevors go to Washington"), Manuel chaired the World Bank board of governors for two days while Ngwane taught 30,000 protesters outside to toyi-toyi.

And again last August, when Manuel was negotiating some meaningless treaty or other at the Sandton Convention Centre, Ngwane and 20,000+ demonstrators marched over from Alexandra to demand that the elites pack up and end their charade.

With the world's environmental and developmental crises worsening ever more rapidly, lubricated by petro-warrior George Bush, can any conclusion be reached about the latest confrontation? Perhaps only this: one Trevor was cold and lonely fighting a battle he can never win; the other was flush with the warmth of solidarity, basking in the resurgence of a humanistic but uncompromising international left.

* Patrick Bond teaches at Wits University and recently authored ‘Unsustainable South Africa: Environment, Development and Social Protest’, published by University of Natal Press. This article was due to appear in the Sowetan newspaper on February 7.

* Send comments on this editorial for publication in the Letters and Comments section of Pambazuka News to