Green Shoots: Remembering Durban and the stubbornness of racism - IOL

The World Conference Against Racism was an important moment in the seemingly endless fight against discrimination. It also proved to be a significant moment in my own evolution as an activist-type person.

It was during the one year I spent working at the national NGO coalition. We were hosting civil society organisations from the globe to deliberate on the sidelines of the formal United Nations process that involved governments.  Many of my colleagues were engaged in the boardrooms pushing for greater commitment to eradicating racism in the formal statements, declarations, and diplomatic tools that guide state action.

I, together with mostly local activists, spent the week putting together a civil society march through the streets of Durban. I hardly slept, and the effort of all of us was rewarded with a pretty impressive march that really ticked off our governing party at the time. The march was bigger than all the others that week, and some high ranking comrades were decidedly unhappy with us. The stories of that day would rattle your teeth at how close we came to misadventure while marshalling upwards of thirty thousand people.

This year marks 25 years of the Durban Declaration, described as “one of the most comprehensive frameworks to combat racial discrimination and inequality globally.”

The 153-page document was adopted by member states, and deals with racism, xenophobia, and the oppression of Indigenous people around the world. Then South African President Thabo Mbeki would have been in his element in the midst of hosting this event, and remarked that it heralded a new internationalism that would be defined by a determination to “unite in action to repair the gross damage that was caused in the past.”

The commemoration speeches these past weeks recalled the noble intentions of the Declaration. The UN Office on Human Rights hailed it as an important framework that is at once "a record of what States promised, and a call to deliver on those promises: to acknowledge historical injustices, dismantle structural inequalities, protect those who experience racial discrimination, and build societies grounded in dignity, equality and justice for all.” 

As is the nature of global agreements, it’s difficult to make any definitive pronouncements on their efficacy in achieving their objectives. There have been actions by different governments to embed some of the measures to combat racism in their policies and in their institutional set up, South Africa included.

But you don’t have to be an expert in current affairs to know that the structures that allow for racism and discrimination to thrive are alive and well, aided and abetted by rich, mostly white, and mostly male politicians and billionaires who benefit from maintaining the division and exclusion that is such a major part of our society. It doesn’t help either that the Declaration, unlike a treaty, is not legally binding on member states, meaning that its opponents in 2001 (think orange ogre and his sidekick) continue today to make a mockery of global consensus.

The efforts of those of us who were outside the negotiating room then don’t seem to have had the desired impact either. Communities in different parts of the world have been resisting their marginalisation ever since, and activists and rights organisations have used a variety of strategies to push back against racism and related injustices, winning some significant victories along the way. The reality, though, is that racism persists, and you’d need to be living under a rock to not see that. 

The 2001 Durban conference had to happen in South Africa. The symbolic importance of the world gathering to tackle racism in a country that not long before was apartheid incarnate cannot be overstated.

Sadly, the nefarious racists in our midst today threaten whatever progress may have been made in the past 25 years. Our struggle has to be multi-faceted. The multilateral institutions like the UN have to find a way to remain relevant, and the march organisers and activists have to be creative in their resistance.

Otherwise, the words of Ethiopian Emperor Haille Selassie to the League of Nations ninety years ago will continue to haunt us, that "until the philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned,” there will be no peace.