CETRI
Introduction : ‘Foreign Policy Bottom Up’
In South Africa, the merits of the World Social Forum (WSF) have been
the subject of fierce debate. Th e difficulty experienced in establishing a
national affiliated social forum is just one reflection of ongoing strategic
conflict. Th e ‘Social Movements Indaba’ network, established in 2002, is the
closest to a gathering of independent left organizations approximating the
WSF, and meets annually. Unfortunately, several logical constituencies –
organized labor, churches and health activists (in the Treatment Action
Campaign) – have not been attracted to joining the Indaba, because its
leading groups explicitly reject work within the ruling African National
Congress and its Alliance with the Congress of SA Trade Unions and the
SA Communist Party. Such division may be healed in 2008, depending
upon the outcome of the political struggle over ANC succession. Further
ANC hostility to labor may generate the long-awaited Alliance breakup.
Meanwhile a few South African scholars are actively involved in WSF
monitoring (most notably University of the Witwatersrand sociologist
Jackie Cock.) Th ere are also several popular education institutes for progressive
internationalist politics that contribute to the WSF, including
Khanya College in Johannesburg, the Alternative Information and Development
Centre and the International Labor Research and Information
Group in Cape Town and in Durban, the Centre for Civil Society (CCS)
at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. To elaborate on the latter (which I
direct), CCS was established in mid-2001 with a primarily national focus.
But from the outset, that mandate changed. Global networks are now crucial
to CCS work, mainly because progressive actors in South African civil
society themselves began not just thinking globally and acting locally, but
also acting globally.
