Southern Africa Social Forum
From Freepedia
Image:SASF logo.png The Southern African Social Forum(SASF) is a Social Forum left-wing conference held in Zimbabwe.
The SASF is an annual confernce held in a differnt Southern Africa county each year.
It is organised in the spirt of the World Social Forum but is not organized by the WSF Secretariat or the International Council [1]
The SASF emerged out of the Africa Social Forum (ASF) which was held in Mali in 2001 and Ethiopia in 2002. At the Ethiopia ASF it was agreed in Forums needed to be organised on a more local level. Amoungst other things this was to overcome problems of prohibative transport costs.
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2003
The 2003 SASF was held on the 9-12 November 2003 in Lusaka Zambia under the banner “Another Southern Africa is Possible”. Approximatly 400 people participated.
At the forum motions were passed stateing that The Forum "the globalisation process, dominated by the giant transnational corporations from the North, is impacting negatively on the people [of Southern Africa]" and that the New Economic Plan for African Development (NEPAD) should be rejected "as an expression of support by certain leaders of our continent for the world’s elite at the expense of the majority".
2004
2005
The 2005 SASF took place in Harare Zimbabwe. It it had the largest partisipation so far with around 4,000 people taking part. Participants came from South Africa, Botswana, Mozambique, Malawi, Lesotho, Swaziland and Zimbabwe
The event organisers had been put under pressure from the Zimbarbwe police who warned speakers that any criticism of Robert Mugabewould lead to the event being closed down. But by the end of the meeting, boyed by the sixe of the participation speakers were denonsing Mugabe. Accordeing to Charie Kimber writing in the Socialist Worker "Half of the watching police were nodding along in agreement".
The speakers at the event were critical of Capitalism itself as well as of the region’s governments. One popular chant was "phansi capitalism" (downwith capitalism) and "viva socialism".
Referances
- ANOTHER SOUTHERN AFRICA IS POSSIBLE!, Globalise Resistance article on 2003 SASF
- Trumpet of liberation sounds out in Africa, Socialist Worker article on 2005 SASF.
