Author: George Kebasso, Kenya Times
Date: January 20, 2007
Source: Kenya Times http://www.timesnews.co.ke/20jan07/nwsstory/news3.html

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Developed democracies will readily describe the World Social Forum (WSF) as the inverse of the World Economic Forum (WEF), which is popular for imposing the capitalist will of the world’s economic tigers on smaller economies and emerging ones.

Socialists define WSF as an open platform for discussing strategies of resistance to neo-liberal globalisation, and alternative paths to sustainable development. It is an open meeting place of minds for reflective thinking, democratic debate of ideas, formulation of proposals, free exchange of experiences and inter-linking for effective action, by groups and movements of civil society that are opposed to neo-liberalism and to domination of the world by capital and other forms of imperialism.

Beginning today, Nairobi will be host to a week-long meeting of the world’s social thinkers where tens of thousands are expected to converge under the spirit that underlies the forum. This meeting, is however, coming at a very trying moment for most developing economies and Kenya for that matter, is not an exception.

Whereas Kenya is home to many social activists acting under the aegis of numerous Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs), the timing of the forum although good, seems to have been downplayed and priorities misplaced. To many Kenyans who have fallen victim to the pangs of a liberalised economy that has sought to swerve the majority of the population to the periphery, it is not clear the forum’s relevance at this point in time when democracy has been forced to play a distant second fiddle to capitalist interests.

The forum is coming to the country at a time when the public stake in ownership of essential services in health, education, water and sanitation among others, is increasingly losing meaning and going to private entrepreneurs. But lobbyists seem to have taken a back seat even as the government continues to give out the running of crucial services to investors.

Delegates from Europe, Asia and America will be looking up to drawing examples from the Kenyan style, especially on its case with regard to what privatisation portends for the labour movement and the country’s rich human resource base. However, the big question is whether there would be examples worth carrying home when the curtain falls on the meet next Friday.

The worker representative, the Central Organisation of Trade Union (COTU), will be expected to live up to the billing by representing the country’s labour movement in the alarming light of privatisation of crucial sectors of the country’s economy. Whether COTU will be able to present positions that are in tandem with the ideology of the WSF, however, draws bountiful skepticism especially on its “unknown” position on the events that will generate global debate from the heart of Kenya in weeks to come.

Over the last two years, the Local Government through local authorities across the country has embarked on partial privatisation of the water sector, which has seen the prices of the commodity assume a steady rise. Most municipalities currently, have their water and sewerage services run by contracted companies that also manage the former employees seconded from the respective councils. This is what has put the Kenya Local Government Workers Union (KLGWU) and the authorities on the warpath.

This morning, the union led by its national general secretary Boniface Munyao will stage a peaceful protest from its Nairobi headquarters to the forum venue at the Moi International Sports Centre, Kasarani. According to Munyao, the union will be sharing its dissent with the rest of the world over unwarranted privatisation of services run by local authorities.