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Life Onboard |
LAST UPDATE
July 12, 2005
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| January 31, 2004 |
Globalization and Logal Struggles – Nqaba Bucwa |
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| Mr. Nqaba Bucwa |
Mr. Nqaba Bucwa, a conflict resolution practitioner who works for a South Africa-based NGO, Center for Conflict Resolution, joined Peace Boat from Kenya to South Africa. Onboard, he facilitated a series of workshops to explain the process of conflict resolution step-by-step. The participants, many new to the subject of conflict resolution, learned how to understand, analyze, and resolve daily conflicts through interactions and activities in the workshops. On January 31, in his lecture "Globalization and Local Struggles," Mr. Bucwa spoke about how profit-oriented globalization can have negative impacts on the life of ordinary citizens and what civil society has done in the past and can do to guide the process of globalization toward a more positive future.
"In the world, there is presently a battle for the soul of globalization. On the one side, there are the global conglomerates and their interests to penetrate every market in the world, to sell their products, and maximize profit. Governments, particularly those of rich countries, have acted as agents of global conglomerates, seeing their role as that of creating an environment for these companies to do business anywhere in the world. On the other side there are local, regional, and international civil society movements through which ordinary people are raising their voices, speaking for a more humane world that is not hostage to the profit motive." |
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As seen in the World Social Forum, a global view has taken form to suggest that the free market economic system, with its emphasis on the profit motive, cannot be trusted to look after the interests of the world's poor. Ordinary people today are realizing that they cannot rely on their elected governments to do what is humane, fair, and right all the time. Hence global civil society movements are in the process of being mobilized to challenge the dominance of state and market power in a struggle to ensure that we are the agents of change in the struggle to create another world - a sustainable world that cares equally for all its people and is sensitive to its natural resources and the environment.
Mr. Bucwa introduced the audience several to successful examples of actions by ordinary citizens of countries in the world. "In the past decade we have seen many successful examples of transformative and even revolutionary actions by ordinary citizens of countries in the world. We have seen how the Berlin wall was brought down, and the dictatorships of countries such Czechoslovakia and other former east-bloc countries have been toppled by the power of civil-society based direct action. We have witnessed the prominent role played by organized civilian action in the anti-apartheid struggle for democracy in South Africa and the impact of a mass civilian uprising in Venezuela in protecting their democracy when the government of their elected president, Hugo Chavez was threatened by a CIA engineered coup d'etat, using conservative elements of Venezuelan society."
These examples of civilian action for change have encouraged ordinary people from all over the world to take their fate into their own hands whenever their human dignity and rights are not respected or met. In many cases, the struggle is ongoing such as in the case of local communities fighting against the negative effects of farm subsidies in developing countries. The European Union and the US have a policy of offering subsidies to commercial farmers worth billions of dollars and euros. This enables US and EU farmers to export their produce at prices that are below production cost. The governments of the US and the EU then go further to demand through the World trade Organization that developing countries be forced to open their economies to these heavily subsidized products. The effect of what amounts to dumping these products in developing markets is to create conditions of unfair trade and leads to the destruction of local agricultural economies in developing countries. The result is that many local farmers become unable to compete and ending up losing their farms and livelihood. |
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Farmers in developing countries have responded by lobbying their governments to oppose demands by the EU and the US to remove trade barriers for their products. The recent collapse of the WTO round of talks in Cancun is testimony of the success that local farmers had in insisting that the unfair practice of farm subsidies be done away with before further talks of opening markets to free trade could progress any further.
The destruction of farming economies in the developing world has the associated effect of impoverishing whole rural communities that are dependent of the farms for jobs, trade and food. Failure of the rural economy to support local communities has in Africa and South America has been the driving force behind an exodus of people from rural areas to the cities. This massive movement of people to the urban areas has created a high demand for houses and employment, a demand which the urban economies are unable to meet. This has created a problem of slum formations in major African and South American cities.
In South Africa slum communities have responded to the challenges of homelessness by establishing organizations for the homeless and initiating community self building housing projects. The Landless People's Movement has played a vocal role in highlighting the need for land reform in South Africa. This organization has managed to pressure the government to transfer land to communities who were deprived of such land under apartheid laws. The newly acquired land has been made available for building new housing project and for farming collectives.
The South African National Civics' Congress has been instrumental in galvanizing the energies and resources of homeless people to build their own houses. SANCO has collaborated with city governments throughout the country to convert slum areas into formal housing settlements. |
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In other areas, civil society movements have made great strides in the struggle to put need before greed. One example is the movement by Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) in Bucwa's home country, South Africa. TAC emerged as a voice for people who live with HIV/AIDS. Their campaign for public access to anti-retroviral drugs has been the biggest and most successful example of civil society mobilization in post-Apartheid South Africa. TAC was one of five NGOs in South Africa (Love Life, Wola Nani, Rosie's Kitchen, Treatment Action Campaign, Lindiwe)that were selected to be recipients of US$2800 that was raised through the Red Ribbon Campaign onboard Peace Boat.
In conclusion, Mr. Bucwa argued that globalization must not be driven by fear and insecurity, defense concerns or the self interests of a handful of rich countries and multi-national corporations. Rules of fair trade have to apply to and benefit all countries in the world equally. Globalization needs to be about freedoms for the people of the world to relate with one another, travel and exchange. In order to achieve this while protecting the fundamental rights of all, there is a need to strengthen international organizations like the United Nations so that short-term profiteering is not allowed to dominate the global agenda at the expense of the lives and livelihoods of current and future generations.
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