13 - 19 September 2001
Issue No.551
|
Al-Ahram Weekly Online 13 - 19 September 2001 Issue No.551 |
||
| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Current issue | Previous issue | Site map | ||
Reflections
Beyond the seventh veil
The Sunday Times wrap-up story of the World Conference Against Racism (WCAR), which concluded 10 days of heated debate and deliberations in South Africa, on Saturday, was titled: "'Crazies' hold sway in racism conference wrecked by posturing and poisoning." The British newspaper's man in Durban (a certain R W Johnson) had a unique take on the event. The conference's contradictions, he proposed, were "neatly, if tragically, summed up" by the poisoning of a Moroccan delegate ("from a strictly observant Muslim state") by no less than eight prostitutes, one of whom (Johnson reported) the Muslim delegate had been chatting up in the hotel bar, later taking her up to his room. So thrilled, it seems, were the Murdoch newspaper's editors by the poisoning angle that they stuck it, fantastically, into the story's headline, giving the impression they were reporting a massive disaster in the conference's kitchen.
I missed that bit of news while in Durban, I must confess. But then, I felt there were more important things to do there than to go rummaging through the garbage bins of the delegates' hotels.
The conclusion the Sunday Times would like its readers to draw from its summing up of the anti-racism conference is rather obvious, however: observant Muslims are both sexually depraved and hypocritical. These qualities, moreover, are a metaphor for the hosts of other non-whites at the conference, from African Americans to Asian Dalits. Surrounded by so many non-white faces ("blacks in the wide sense of the word," to use South African President Thabo Mbeiki's designation), the Sunday Times correspondent seems to have been hurled into a time warp -- straight back to the 19th century. He does not write of "chattering natives," but for him the conference was "a Tower of Babel," where the voice of reason, in the form of (plainly white) UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and WCAR secretary-general, Mary Robinson, was drowned out. "Around her swirled angry Dalits (untouchables) and Roma (gypsies), indignant Polynesians, self-righteous Africans in traditional dress, angry Palestinians, native Americans in flowing headdresses and all manner of other minorities," wrote Johnson, whose sources at the conference seemed to share his mindset. He quotes an EU delegate as describing the behaviour of some African delegates debating slavery and colonialism as "irrational, deranged, verging on the psychosis."
During the past two weeks, many newspapers and news agencies would use the shorthand "racism conference" in headlining their stories about the WCAR. The Sunday Times sent an expert.
As it happens, in Durban, as in the world outside it, non-whites are not "all manner of minorities," but constitute the great majority of the host country, South Africa, and of the rest of the world's countries and peoples. The Dalits alone, of whom the Sunday Times reporter speaks so irritably and dismissively, number some 200 million people (many times his country's population), and suffer from extreme forms of discrimination and oppression.
Herein lay the real contradiction of the WCAR. And, interestingly, it is a very old contradiction -- as old as the 500-year-old world capitalist system. Plus ça change... Debating colonialism and the racism that inevitably underlies it, the whole world seemed in a time warp. At the beginning of the 21st century, Durban uncovered just how ephemeral the "post" in post-colonialism really is. Racism lives; and it is not confined to swastika-tattooed skinheads and beer-gutted football thugs.
If Durban showed anything, it was that racism is not just a mindset or an extreme and outdated ideological tendency. It is above all a structure of dominance and, whatever outward form it takes, its true basis lies in the deep contempt the powerful and dominant must harbour for those they lord it over.
And in Durban, this structure of power, in which a largely "white" minority of the globe holds a monopoly on almost all its power and wealth, was put to the challenge: shyly and modestly at the government conference (ruling elites in the South are, after all, torn between the often warring considerations of wanting a marginally bigger share of the pie, and keeping the share they already have), and radically at the NGO Forum.
"All manner of minorities" went into a frenzy -- from Zionist GONGOs (government- organised NGOs) to UN officials, EU diplomats and US congressmen. Good resolutions and noble sentiments were thrown out the window, and, Salome-like, the veils of political correctness and democracy -- empowering the powerless, giving a voice to the voiceless, global civil society and human rights -- were shed one by one before our eyes. Only power remained standing, naked.
When they are given a voice, the "voiceless" should speak in moderate dulcet tones, the parameters of which are to be determined by the glib and voluble. The forbearance and magnanimity of those who hold the reins of power and wealth in the world should not be tested too far. This was the thrust of the message delivered from on high in Durban.
But at the Kingsmead cricket stadium and on the streets, the message from below seemed to indicate that Durban was a milestone rather than a one-off fracas. A battle is being joined; and there is something very new about it. For decades, the rights and democracy discourse was firmly appropriated and monopolised by Western liberalism and vigorously promoted -- especially during the '90s -- by the UN and countless Western development agencies and rights groups. It was perhaps natural to expect that the NGO Forum of the WCAR would be defined and limited by the boundaries established through this process -- very strict boundaries, as Durban itself revealed.
It was not.
Mounting anti-globalisation activism, expressed mostly on the streets, from Seattle to Genoa, has been providing evidence of a counter process. Increasingly, the discourse of democracy and human rights is being reappropriated and transformed into one of resistance to capitalist globalisation; its instruments, no longer "vanguard" political parties, but a stunningly diverse rainbow of grass-roots movements. What was truly significant about Durban was precisely that it was not a Tower of Babel; Dalits, indigenous peoples (so-called aborigines), African Americans and Palestinians not only found common cause, but spoke in one tongue. Their battle cry: Amandla Intifada!
© Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly. All rights reserved
 |
|
|||||||||||||||||
| ARCHIVES Letter from the Editor Editorial Board Subscription Advertise! |
WEEKLY ONLINE: www.ahram.org.eg/weekly Updated every Saturday at 11.00 GMT, 2pm local time weeklyweb@ahram.org.eg |
 Al-Ahram Organisation |
Recommend this page