[Imc-africa] Re: SA Delegate to Dakar Conference
Glenda Loebell
glloebell at yahoo.com
Fri Mar 5 06:55:12 PST 2004
Dear South Africa IMC
I am South African now living in Switzerland, have
been a long time activist with the long apartheid
struggle(1 of the founder members of the SA NGO
coalition with Shirley Walters -Western Cape-Gen. Sec)
and now continue in Switzerland with the Debt and
Reparation Campaign in Switzerland-The role of the
Swiss banks and apartheid, racism and people without
papers.
Just background.
For just under 10 months the idea was booted in Berlin
by a small group of non indymedia activist who at an
external conference held at the Berlin university-who
later in the year launched a BOUNDRIES TO BRIDGES TOUR
- Depart Berlin October 2003 6-March 2004 Dakar. They
constituted a loose group, who called the conference
Nomantology, more or less around August/September
2003
Here people from the Ayslum Seeking organisations
were invited to take part on a panel discussion.
This included someone from VOICE and KARAVAN - Shyinx
being one of them.
Shyinx, a member of Ambozonia/English speaking
Cameroon IMC network-living in Germany, who is also in
contact with the German indymedia network agreed to
post the topic on the site and to open it for
discussion. He took over the tasks to moderate the
input from the Boundries to Bridges tour.
The Boundries to Bridges tour has at its main focus
the question of boarder control of people moving from
the north of Africa and Europe and its implications.
I know this as I was at the conference and in much of
the conference discussions directly with Shyinx.
The whole issue of conflict seemed to have arose from
my perspective from the time a proposal was put
forward for finance.
As Shyinx has taken on the role of co-ordinatation he
put together a budget that in my opinion was far to
unrealistic and not suffiencantly clearly detailed.
But we all have our individual styles, experiences or
lack of it.
To have an idea is one thing but bringing it to
fruitation is another.
The idea as I understand it, within the indymedia
context is a collective sharing and division of
labour.
Shyinx in reality has slogged for months on
maintaining this discussion and often found himself in
rather frustrating situations and his responses are
indicitive of this.
I think this occurred because many people were and are
busy and did not have the same amount of time to
invest in reading all the emails flying to and fro.
The other truth, to be said about this whole project
is that the proper organising both at a conceptual and
practical level was often confused and not seperated
and so there always remained murky areas-which were
sometimes concerved as lack of transparency.
IMC hedged on the funding, a few people contributed by
having parties and making small donations but not
anywhere near enough to cover the cost of the proposed
African delegates who indicated their willingness to
attend.
At first the African country's responses were
enthusiastic but later the discussion did come up of
just one delegate per country based on finance
So Shyinx and or others sought other funder/s for the
flights, accommodation, transport in Dakar and meals
for the African delegation. How much?
(Unverteilung-Berlin-Germany)with what conditions.
I in Switzerland raised Sfr.4000-00 (comedia) with
clear conditions- part resourses and conference
logistics.
The details being:
* To contact the host of the conference- University
Cheikh Anta Diop-our contact was Prof Aly Mbaye.
He has provided the following:
* To provide the official letter of invitation for
the African delegates for visa purposes
* Link to the appropiate department for official
hosting
* Hall for workshops with out computers-Introduction
and socialising
* Computer room with internet access for 30 -50
people at a cost per hour per computer.
* Access to all departments students,student bodies
and academic staff
(full list with emails available on request)
* Our accomadation while we set up the logistics at a
cost
External:
* Meetings with NGO's(to include the NGO coalition)
working in the field-access to assess the alternative
media and communication, as well as access to
alternative resourses including community base groups
both urban and rural
(full list with emails available on request)
* Meetings with international NGO's in the field of
communication to access information of the position of
the experience and condition as it stands in
Dakar-Senegal (alternative media)
(full list with emails available on request)
* Meetings to co-ordinating the local contacts that
were made and of people who expressed an interest
(full list with emails available on request)
* Meetings to co-ordinate the arriving European
people indymedia and non indymedia-Boundries to
Bridges core group,Stuttgart,Dusseldorf,Lausanne and
Caneries-Spain
(full list with emails available on request)
* Devise and distribute flyer on campus and via
email
(full list with emails available on request)
* Devise programme from the original posted on the
site and its distribution English and French
The postion of the confernce to date is as follows:
SEE OFFICIALLY POSTED PROGRAMME IN ENGLISH AND FRENCH
Two sessions run per day:
10:00 to 12:00
and
15:00 to 17:00(a repeat of the morning)
Conference started inofficially on the 4 and 5th March
with introduction and socialising. Attended by 40
people
Run by Glenda,Maureen, Michaela with introduction of
Andrea, Chrissi and Julien (non indymedia except for
Glenda and Julien Indy CH) at first session
At afternoon session Iken, Fabian and Sabina of
Boundries to Bridges participated at introduction
level.(they had just arrived)
5th March 2004
Introduction of INDYMEDIA -History, principals and
booklet-summary
repeat sessions
Fabian and Julien
7th March Boundries to Bridges tour film
8-14th March Full content programme see programme
Devised from the orginal posted onto site
Inclusion and regrouping for programme with African
delegates on their arrival
Close of conference with indy party
Details of logistics outside of the conference:
Chrissi who has the funds from Shyinx for the
following, for the African delegating
Accom finance ?
Food?
Transport to and from airport?
Material?
(printing of booklet and other) the booklet is on CD
in both French and English- 90 pages
(in my opinion far to bulky for people to read and
especially cumbersome for beginners -actually
intimidating)
We have secured two houses-(Aziz) alongside each other
one for the African delegation and one for the other
group as we have agreed that it would be cheaper to
share.
We could mix ourselves up a bit on their arrival
The group consists of the following:
Fabian,Iken,Sabina-Berlin-Germany Boundries to Bridges
Group (non indy)
Andrea and Chrissi-Dusseldorf/Stuttgart-Germany(non
indy)
Julien,Maureen,Michaela
Glenda-Lausanne,Genf+Zurich-Switzerland(indy and non
indy)
Rafel-IMC Caneries + Elena-Friend -Spain
Azis-Journalist, Dapina-Video documentation -Dakar
(non indy)
Plus an extensive email network
(list available on request)
Expected African delegates:
(what selection criterea was used,we have no idea)
Frank,Ofega-Cameroon-English(indymedia status?)
Floriebert-Congo-forming
Gilbert-Angola forming
John,Grace-Kenya IMC?
Jean Ntela Nkanga- Congo?
THIS IS FOR IMC FINANCE
PLEASE GIVE US DETAILS SO THAT WE CAN TALK
* We have been informed that IMC Finance has made
money available and I have been mandated by the group
to get into contact with them to establish the
position and how we can access some of it as the money
here is very tight.
* I have the mandate to establish a small working
group linking all the relevant alternative media(ngo's
and other) people in Senegal to the indymedia network
to start the volcano while the small bush fire is
started on the campus and in pockets outside......
will keep you posted
* we have also mooted the idea of a
www.africa.indymedia.org...... website open for
discussion
We are all excited and await the arrival and
interaction with the others.
Glenda/NeBe
--- Peter van Heusden <pvh at wfeet.za.net> wrote:
> Date sent: Wed, 3 Mar 2004 20:05:52 +0000
> From: sphinx <sphinx at indymedia.org>
> To: imc-africa at lists.indymedia.org,
> pvh at wfeet.za.net
> Copies to: nicolas dieltiens
> <nicolas at red.org.za>,
> southafrica at indymedia.org,
> imc-sa at lists.indymedia.org
> Subject: SA Delegate to Dakar Conference
>
> > Dear pvh and imc-Southafrica! As you probably know
> from all the mails I
> > send to your lists, before for close to 8months
> we've been involved in
> > preparing for an indymeedia regional meeting in
> Africa, Dakar-Senegal from
> > the 1st to the 14th March2004.
>
> Hello Sphinx
>
> I have seen emails about this conference on and off
> (the IndyMedia
> mailing list manager keeps throwing my email off its
> mailing lists,
> because of my over-eager spam filter). I have now
> read up the recent
> posts via the WWW archive, so I think I am up to
> date.
>
> As I understand it, the current situation is that
> funding has been
> secured for delegates from various places in Africa,
> and that a group
> (Michaela, Maureen and NeBe/Glenda) from Switzerland
> are currently in
> Dakar, with the Department of Economics at the
> University there, doing
> initial preparations for this meeting.
>
> I haven't had a chance to talk to the other members
> of the Cape Town
> collective yet, I'll do that tomorrow.
>
> However, I would like to state that we in Cape Town
> know Nicolas - he is
> a good comrade from the Johannesburg IndyMedia
> collective. I have read
> the exchange between yourself and him and think that
> you are doing him a
> great injustice by the way that you describe his
> emails... I can
> personally hear Nic's voice when reading those
> texts, his slightly ironic
> tone, etc. The issues he raises are not personal
> issues but come out of
> our experience as IMC-SAers.
>
> IMC-SA is weak compared to other IMCs worldwide in
> terms of financial
> resources (organising meetings in both Johannesburg
> and Cape Town is very
> tough because the average South African cannot even
> afford to move around
> their own city at will), but it is strong in terms
> of its members'
> embeddedness in social movements. We draw our
> membership from people
> engaged in broad struggles in post-Apartheid South
> Africa. As I said, the
> points Nic raise, about organising IndyMedia being
> something political,
> something not just technical, is 100%. This Senegal
> thing has been
> discussed sporadically for months, yes. But surely
> the low volume of
> emails should have said something? Clearly something
> is happening in
> Senegal, but to what purpose - us IMC-SAers remain
> confused.
>
> Anyway, I'll email more in the morning after
> discussing with other IMC-
> SAers.
>
> Peter
> --
> Peter van Heusden
> pvh at wfeet.za.net
> Tel: +27 (0)83 256 0457
>
> _______________________________________________
> Imc-africa mailing list
> Imc-africa at lists.indymedia.org
>
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