Introduction
Navigating around a previous ban by the Zimbabwe police the Zimbabwe Social Forum (ZSF) converged in the Sheraton Gardens from the 28th to the 30th of October. This reflects a spirited commitment by the Zimbabwean social movements, activists and progressive NGOs to establish and expand the forum as an ‘annual’ space and platform to deepen solidarity and move the Zimbabwean social movements towards a move definitive anti-capitalist struggle. Indeed the organizers and comrades who worked to hold the forum deserve to be congratulated in sustaining the commitment to establish the forum in a country wrecked by a dictatorship and where meetings and gatherings of this nature are always targets by the ruling regime. Definitely not holding the social forum would have set back the momentum and expansion of the social forum space as an open platform for building ‘Africa’s next liberation’ and enhancing solidarity that began building up in 2003 in the first edition of the forum.
The forum was held at an interesting time. At an international level it was days before the US Election (Bush has won; damn Ohio!) and it was just two weeks after a massive 75 000 ‘rabble’ gathered at the European Social Forum which ended in a massive rally denouncing war in Iraq and interesting debates around the reason why despite the millions that marched Iraq was attacked and occupied. At a local level the social forum was held against an increased attack on progressive NGOs by the ruling regime evidenced in the NGO Bill and increased attacks on civil and political rights witnessed by the illegal and inhuman deportation of the COSATU delegation and the imprisonment of the MDC MP Roy Bennet. On the economic front more banks are being closed and workers salaries and meager savings –did I say savings -held up in banks whose owners are rent payers to the ruling elites. The ‘slow’ down in the rate of inflation is yet to translate into concrete gains by the working class, in a word, the social conditions of the Zimbabwean working class are brutal. Add the HIV & AIDS scourge that has ravaged families and one has a desperate situation for the working class in Zimbabwe. It was therefore an historic moment when the ‘space’ was claimed by the people living with HIV & AIDS, the increased participation of AIDS service organizations is a welcome development that will push forward the struggle for cheaper drugs and stopping the big pharmaceutical companies from saying ‘your money or your life’.
‘Newly resettled’ farmers are now being evicted because they have outlived their usefulness of window dressing an ‘agrarian revolution’ that was meant to entrench a ruling elite accumulation and parcel out land to the rent payers. One remembers fully well the chilling story of the homeless people who were massacred by the ruling party police. Thus the challenges that the social forum had to deal with are gross and present such a ‘grotesque’ picture that one feels compelled to -humbly- congratulate the Zimbabwe Social Forum in keeping ‘reality of the impossible possible’ Having said this, it is only progressive that I contribute to the debates around the history, future and possibilities made inevitable by this space. Is it not only fair that, one driven by the reality of the impossible, throws from time to time ‘anathema’ so that empires and tyranny may be broken?
This article intends therefore to modestly contribute -in some certain sections excite- debate on the future of the social forum space as it becomes more and more ‘nationalized’ (localized). How encouraged I was when I heard and read that the comrades in Tanzania are working on the Tanzania Social Forum, a process that needs to be strengthened to meet the agenda that the social movements set when they met in Addis and in Bamako. Back to the reflections on the ZSF, first is the debate around the form, structure and direction of the social forum as a ‘space’, the important questions being that as the social forum is nationalized (localized) what are the important issues to be considered and sharpened at the organizational level? To what extend possible can the nationalized social forum remain only a space meeting once a year and only ‘recalling’ its structures when the next date approaches? Secondly what are the lessons that can be drawn around the need of expanding participation? And what are some of the important ‘classes’ of activists and organizations that need to claim this space? In this regard emphasis-not to the exclusion of others-is discussed around the participation and engagement of the intellectual class, the youth movement and the ‘informal’ sector.
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