WSF Update

Sometimes a little action can go a long away. The youth groups’ protest to the WSF Organising Committee has generated a positive change in policy. Yesterday, the gates were open to Kenyans for free. As the word had not spread not too many people took advantage of the offer. However the youth groups came with their members/friends/neighbours and all got in for free. The gates were also opened for vendors selling food at reasonable prices, a plate of food for KSH 50.00 as opposed to the KSH 500.00 charged by the Windsor Group.

All’s well that ends well?

Not quite.

According to the East African Standard

Earlier, there was commotion at the World Social Forum in Kasarani when delegates from South African, mainly slum dwellers, stormed the venue demanding either the scrapping of entry fee.

The more than 300 demonstrators converged at the stadium’s main gate at 9am demanding that the gate fee be waived. Police manning the gate tried to block them, but were overwhelmed as the mob forced its way inside.

Carrying placards and chanting “free entry”, the demonatrators proceeded to the secretariat, where they dismantled computers and shredded official documents.

I didn’t witness that protest as I was busy playing the daily game called sitting in the Nairobi traffic jam.

Yesterday the protest gained momentum, and while there are many issues being raised the catalyst seems to be very presence of the Windsor Group, through their expensive food tent, at the World Social Forum. The protest on Tuesday were lead by various Kenyan human rights and social awareness organisations such as Release Political Prisoners, Name and Shame Corruption Network (an umbrella organisation of the 76 groups), The Kenyan Anti Corruption Network, The Truth and Justice Commission. The Peoples’ Parliament, Kabita Mpya and many more.

Apart from the prices they are charging the main piece of contention about the Windsor Group’s presence at the WSF is their proprietor. The Windsor Group, which owns the exclusive Windsor Golf & Country Club on the outskirts of Nairobi, is owned by John Njoroge Michuki, the Minister of State for Provincial Administration and National Security. Michuki has raised the wrath of many Kenyans in the past couple of years. From ordering police to shoot to kill during the riots in Mathere when protestors claim that agents working for the government sparked the riots, to protecting the Artur brothers foreign mercenaries operating in Kenya, to ordering the raid on the East African Standard newspaper and then implying that he would not tolerate media criticism of the government by issues his infamous, “when you rattle a snake you must be prepared to be bitten by it” statement. This list can go on and on.

In what the protestors called the prefect example of the world going upside down, food vendors and hawkers from slums adjacent to the Kasarani stadium where the WSF is taking place are not allowed to sell their wares within the stadium while across town in the city centre a group of hawkers were arrested at a WSF meeting at Freedom Corner in Uhuru Park as the police said they did not have a license despite WSF officials claiming they did, meanwhile Muchuki is making money selling expensive food at the forum. As they asked those sitting and eating inside the Windsor tent, “Are you tourists or are you socialists?”

The Windsor Group’s presence at the WSF is a massive tactical blunder by the WSF organising committee, especially since it is obvious to anyone who follows Kenyan politics that it was bound to raise tensions. What is even more amazing is that the Peoples’ Parliament tent, where all these human rights organisations are based, is directly opposite the Windsor tent!

On Wednesday there are plans by the human rights organisations, joined by various international socialists and workers’ rights group, to hold meetings in the Windsor tent the whole day in order to stop any business being done. Let us hope the protest and the response to the protest remain peaceful.

I written a lot about the protests and problems at the WSF as this reflects what is happening. However there is a lot of good and positive energy here. It is sad that such an unnecessary blunder, letting the Windsor Group in while keeping hawkers and food vendors out, is starting to overshadow the whole proceeding.

Again once I get the dvd recordings I took of the protests yesterday converted I will upload them online.

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wsf | world social forum | wsf2007