Drama at the WSF

Walking around Kasarani today the World Social Forum did not feel any different from the hundreds of conferences held in Nairobi each year. Many stalls organised side by side, lots of curios for sale, the occasional traditional dances, and people generally milling around killing time. For a conference that was meant to be shaking the world things were pretty ordinary and normal. In fact it reminded me a lot of the Nairobi ASK Show (minus the cows, camels, and goats). Unlike the ASK show however this WSF lacks one thing. KENYANS. There are people for all over the world here and it is clear they are passionate about this forum, but most of the Kenyans here are probably staff or volunteers. I’ve blogged before about the almost total information blackout within Kenya on this event. Now I am not going to get draw into who is to blame for that. But today at lunch time Kenyans struck back.

The catering at the WSF is done by Windsor Country Club and The Norfolk Hotel. Cheapest plate of food is around KSH 400/-. Sodas are 100/- and water is 100/-. Check out the price list for yourself

There is a “food court” further outside but the prices there are also around 400/-. Volunteers are paid KSH 500/- per day. Kasarani is miles outside city centre. A return trip costs around KSH 120/- which leaves them with KSH 380/-. How can you have a situation where even your own volunteers can not afford to buy food? And then of course there are the ordinary wanainchi, the Kenyan public, who do not even get that daily KSH 500/- that volunteers get. How are they meant to eat? Remember that Kenyans are meant to pay a registration fee of KSH 450/- to enter the forum. That might be fine for any other conference but for the World Social Forum it felt like “the masses” were being locked out systematically. Today at lunch time they struck back.

The poster says, “Reduce food prices in the WSF.” A demonstration organised by a youth group from Korogocho started a loud vocal protest outside the Windsor catering tent. Korogocho is the third largest slum area in Nairobi after Kibera and Mathare. The demonstarters called for a reduction in food prices and informed everyone buying from Windsor to remember what they had gathered in Nairobi for. To battle inequality. How can you have a conference where most of the participants if they could get in, would not be able to afford the food and call that same conference social?

The demonstration moved from the food tent to outside the building holding the WSF secretariat. After giving the organising committee the traditional ten second count to show themselves, the group (this time joined by many non Kenyan delegates as well as journalists happy that finally some action was going down) stormed the offices. We climbed all the way to the top floor where the secretariat is housed and these guys demanded to see Professor Oyugi who is the head of the organising committee so they could prevent their grievances. There was no way the Professor could refuse and he agreed to come out, sit with the youth, listen to their grievances and respond. The grievances were as follows (I am working from memory here so forgive me.)

• Food prices to be lowered dramatically or “ordinary” food vendors to be allowed in to sell food at reasonable prices.
• The Youth claimed that a group from Korogocho had helped designed the WSF 2007 logo and that that logo had been sold to Celtel for KSH 20 million of which the youth had not received a cent.
• Why had Celtel been given a communication monopoly? Why wasn’t Safaricom involved when it has more Kenyan subscribers?
• The registration fee of KSH 450/- was way to high and should be abolished immediately. Where was the money going?
• Selection of volunteers was done in a way in which those without internet access were effectively locked out.
• Some volunteers were getting preferential treatment in that they were getting three meals a day while most of the volunteers were suffering as they could not even afford the food.

Professor Oyugi to his credit came out and engaged directly with the group.

He explained that the WSF organisning committee is made up of about 8 sub committees with 10 members each so he does not have the mandate or authority to deal with all the issues but he would address those which he could. According to Professor Oyugi:

• Food: from tomorrow tents will be provided for “Mama Mandazis” and the like to sell food at reasonable prices.
• A decision on the admission price would be made by noon tomorrow. The registration fees were used to pay the cost of hiring Kasarani which is KSH 13 million. The Professor offered to lower the price to KSH 50/- to which the group informed him that KSH 50/- is one weeks rent for many of them. Does he think they can afford not to pay rent? Oyugi stated that if the fee was dropped completely the stadium would be overrun, which all the youth said would be a brilliant thing. Oyugi remarked that the stadium may not survive the onslaught at which the youth replied that they were not all thugs and anyway the thugs would not be interested in the WSF. We shall wait and see.
• No logo was sold to Celtel for any price. The WSF approached Safaricom and asked them to partner with the conference. Safaricom declined saying the event was, “too political” for them to be associated with. Celtel provided communication equipment as well as WSF publicity banners in exchange for being the communication partner.
• Volunteer issues were addressed by a guy called Alvin/Alfred who is the head of volunteers. He said he will look into them and report tomorrow.

Let me say at this juncture that this is as accurate a description as I can remember. I recorded the whole exchange on a camcorder which I will upload once I figure out the most efficient way to share a 1 hour long 1 GB DVD recording online without access to Bit Torrent. Any ideas on that anybody?

All in all the demonstration was carried out peacefully. The youth went to great pains to show they were not a disorganised rabble looking for trouble but respectable men and women with legitimate grievances. The Professor engaged with them respectfully. Tomorrow we will see if he is a man of his word. Let us have a conference for the masses.

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