[Imc-africa] re: imc africa, meeting... caravana?

["françois.l'écuyer"]

-- 
hi everybody

apologies for not getting on the imc-africa list yet. A few of us at 
Indymedia South Africa have access to internet on a regular basis, 
then have to follow many different imc lists after the web work is 
done - which, at the end, take us away from our main focus, struggles 
happening on the ground. IMC South Africa activists are not "imc 
activists": we are activists in different movements. Some of us, 
already busy with media within our respective groups, saw IMC as an 
important way to strengthen,  diffuse and promote our struggles. Also 
as a way to unite several radical movements who, amid a certain 
degree of disagreement, have similar political perspectives and are 
using similar strategies of direct action. This perhaps distorts or 
contradicts the original vision of IMC in 1999 north america. But we 
also believe that it was a relatively successful adaptation of what 
IMC could be in Africa or anywhere else, in terms of media 
production, involvement *within* social movements, networking with 
activists groups around the world and revolutionary ways of doing 
media to support social struggles.

We are also concerned about IMC developments around us. I wanted to 
raise some questions in november after Petros (IMC Greece) email on, 
which I prefered not to after winters bitterly read it as "tagging 
some IMC BAD". Our collective largely agreed with the issues raised 
by Petros regarding the lack of media production in Nigeria (two 
paragraphs over the lasts six month, same for Zimbabwe) and the fact 
that money should not be seen as the main recourse. So, please guys, 
lets discuss seriously these problems, lets not hide behind the 
eternal excuse of 'being in the south' to justify a lack of 
production, a separation between African IMCs and African social 
movements and, in certain cases, sectarianism or monopole of IMC by 
one political organization.

- Making social movements part of imc

What is IMC without social struggles? What are we without the people 
taking up these struggles? Obviously nothing. I see quite a big 
difference between an 'alternative journalist' and a 'media 
activist'. Could IMC people be journalists who, after complaining 
against the political and oppressive role played by the 'rule of 
objectivity', reproduce the separation of the journalist and the 
activist? Or couldn't IMC be a media network owned and used directly 
by the people in struggle?

I certainly agree with the later. So then, the question of diffusing 
IMC in africa becomes one of networking movements around the powerful 
use of media through imc. Who really need to be empowered? Who needs 
IMC to spread the struggle? The community movements themselves, not 
some high-tech kids with free time. To the extreme, who should 
receive 250 computers? African IMC who could hardly use productively 
so many toys (and I do include south africa here), or community 
groups already busy with a revolutionary small-media production, 
whose news, articles and statements are not even caught by our 
african imc collectives?

The question of diffusing IMC in africa will not be solved with money 
or computers. It will be solved the day our current imc activists 
will reach community movements and tell them "we exist, please 
publish and get involved in our meetings, we'll then do our best for 
you".

re: imc africa meeting
After saying this and realising serious problems with our IMCs, I'm 
not sure at all if a meeting for african IMCs is really needed at 
this stage, i'm not sure who could represent local IMCs, or if any 
form of representation could be acceptable understanding the 
weaknesses and the small size of our collectives. I would rather 
suggest a kind of regional cooperation between different IMCs in the 
same region, and if some money comes through it should be use to 
organize short-distance visits between experienced imc activists. 
Technical training could be needed, but I think the main priority 
must be about political dialogue between us, in order for us to 
understand what have been our successes and failures.

and honestly, how can we talk about putting resources and energy on 
an imc africa meeting while we are unable, on one side, to sread IMC 
in our respective countries, and, on the other, to engage among us on 
critical issues regarding the sustainability and democracy of our 
IMCs.

re: african caravan
I'm a bit surprised the idea is still coming up. Around june last 
year, IMC South Africa took the decision not to support (but rather 
to fight against) the request of 20 000$ from the global funds by IMC 
Nigeria to organize a caravan across the continent. For many people 
who took part in the previous caravan in latin american, it was 
relatively a failure: lack of preparation, lack of understanding of 
social dynamics, lack of knowledge about social movements in the 
visited countries.

I don't think that the 'getting everywhere' is the best way to help 
the creation of IMCs in africa or elsewhere, and this feeling is 
largely shared by IMC-SA activists. The previous proposal of a 
caravan in africa, as planned apparently by IMC-UK nessuno (marcus 
sky) with the (obscure) support of IMC Nigeria, was proposing to 
create imc collectives everywhere they would have gone to, from 
Nigeria to Ghana, and then down to South Africa - in less than three 
months. I am concerned that the very principle of a caravan - getting 
to as many places as possible in a short period of time - carries a 
great risk of creating unlegitimate and weak collectives because of 
the small amount of groups/people involved, reached or targeted. Even 
if the 'new-imc' process is supposed to make sure questions of 
democracy/openness are respected, i fear that the establishment of a 
monopolistic or sectarian imc becomes a long-term obstacle to the 
emergence of a wealthy, open and democratic IMC (as it happen to be 
the case, unfortunately, in Zimbabwe, their IMC being monopolised 
largely, if not exclusively, by the International Socialist 
Organisation (ISO-ZIM), their accreditation still pending)

[[[ honestly, some of us were quite disgusted and pissed off when we 
realised, in september during WSSD, that ISO-ZIM asked us to borrow a 
room (which we agreed to) at the IMC Centre for their meeting with 
Keep Left (their south african counterpart) without even approaching 
us as IMC. What a missed opportunity... :( ]]]

Again, to reply to the idea of a caravan, I would strongly rather 
recommand a closer relationship between IMCs in the same region as a 
first step to strengthen - whether IMCs are interested in this still 
remain a question for our closest neighbour...

I think we have enough serious issues to deal with before talking 
about 'imc africa', a caravan or a continental meeting. Sorry for 
criticizing particular IMCs, but the problematic examples are so 
obvious that it would hypocritical not to mention them. But I truly 
hope we can address these problems without taking the critique as a 
personal attack.

solidarity,
francois