'Ideas, energy and a few material resources' is actually, all we need
Caught between the need to dismiss the Global Call to Action Against Poverty and remind us of the valuable and important actions of social movements, Bond, Brutus and Setshedi's article in the last issue of Pambazuka News almost missed a great opportunity to create a bridge for dialogue.
The characterization of the GCAP's leadership as naive about the global political economy, the importance of social movements and the interests that control trans-national capital and international finance and trade organizations is misplaced. Many of us in the alliance would agree with the structural analysis in the article. We would find common ground (perhaps) in the analysis that the crushing reality of power inequalities, absolute poverty, conflict and human rights denial combine to produce gross injustices globally.
Less agreeable may be, is that a confluence of global policy processes over 2005 combine with high policy rhetoric and mass expectation to provide the conditions for a mass global constituency for change. 2005 is simply, a moment for broad based mobilization.
GCAP is organized around four core pillars; 100% debt cancellation, increased and better quality aid, trade justice and democratic and responsive domestic governance. The article singled out only some of GCAP demands linking them with some fairly eclectic and "out of context" references over the last 5 years. It would be important to note also that GCAP has called explicitly against imposed conditionality and for the realization of fundamental entitlements and basic rights as a way of eradicating absolute poverty. This framework resonates with the positions of many of the movements, organizations and networks named in the article. Nevertheless, it is true that GCAP does not call for the abolition of global capitalism or global institutions of finance and trade.
GCAP is a broad platform and includes many shades of opinion. For this reason, criticisms from within (and without) that strengthen our theory-action (praxis) can only be welcome. However, divisive and paternalistic language ("many excellent African organisations have joined the campaign, but have they fully applied their minds, and social-change instincts?") will defeat the objective of criticism - to improve, to strengthen. The analogy of white-bands as a "symbol of collaborators to apartheid" was tenuous but deliberately destructive, particularly to the colleagues in South Africa. Lastly, I resist the temptation to parry the allegations leveled against Oxfam as we have done this elsewhere (see www.oxfam.org for a response to the New Stateman article).
Yet, important and strategic questions are provoked by Bond etal's article. Have the campaigns started to make life better for poor people in Africa, Asia and Latin America? What strategies can keep the campaign rooted in real ground level struggles and ensure the involvement of people living in poverty in our campaigns?
Since September 2004, this Alliance has grown from the original 50 organisations that came together in Johannesburg to over a hundred national coalitions of over 1000 organizations and networks across the world. GCAP members co-organized two weeks in April on trade and education (this included members of Another World is for Sale and Global Campaign for Education). With a base among trade unions, NGOs, youth and women's networks it has been able to mobilize thousands of people through simultaneous events, influence public opinion through mass media and project the symbol of the white-band.
African organizations not mainstream NGOs are in the forefront of the work in Africa. On June 16th, mobilization of children and youth took place in countries as far as Zambia, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, South Africa and Kenya among others. While northern attention has been on live8, over one hundred African musicians, sportspeople and celebrities (Lucky Dube, Salif Keita, Baaba Maal, Oumou Sangare among others) have endorsed the campaign. Thousands of ordinary men, women and children wore white-bands and declared their commitment to GCAP positions. July 2nd looks set to see this impact multiplied by a factor of ten.
Yet it is clear in June, that effective outreach among the productive classes in our societies is still but an aspiration. We need to accelerate the involvement of teachers and health-workers unions to demand changes in the light of the debt cancellation victories and farmers to challenge the inadequacy of state protection from rice, sugar and cotton dumping and lack of effective public support for agriculture among others. What about the unemployed, pastoralists, women, youth? Sweet will be the victory when at this level, we can see growing confidence, organisation and self-representation in the corridors of power and policy by some of these groups. Sweet also, will be the moment when GCAP can look back and identify 100 new leaders that emerged from our work. It is only this context that will safeguard the gains of the recent victories around debt cancellation and aid. In the next few weeks, we must consciously develop strategies to nurture this.
Thousands of kilometers in any direction from Edinborough on July 2nd, millions of people will demonstrate for set of global policy and practise changes. If your conscience does not allow you to go to Gleneagles, I invite you to join us in any of the cities and rural settlements around Dhaka, New Delhi, Tripoli, Johannesburg, Maputo, Dar es Salaam, Lusaka and Montevideo with or without a white band. There is space for us all.
Njooni pamoja Patrick, Dennis and Virginia!
Irungu Houghton is a Kenyan working as Pan Africa Policy Advisor for Oxfam GB.
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