'Crazies' hold sway in racism conference wrecked by posturing and poisoning

THE contradictions apparent at the United Nations World Conference Against Racism were neatly, if tragically, summed up by the fate of Suhir Mostafa, a Moroccan delegate.

Throughout the week the conference echoed with panegyrics about the sufferings of the Palestinians, the wickedness of the Israelis and the grave sin of "Islamophobia". But some delegates from strictly observant Muslim states were tempted by Durban's raunchy night life.

Mostafa, staying at the same hotel as Mary Robinson, the UN high commissioner for human rights and conference patron, chatted up an attractive young black woman in the bar and invited her back to his room for a beer. Other women followed.

In the morning Mostafa's body was found stuffed under the bed. He had been poisoned.

By Thursday no fewer than eight women had been charged in connection with Mostafa's death. They admitted stealing his belongings after one of them had put "sleeping tablets" in his drink, but said murder had not been in their thoughts.

Back at the conference, countless resolutions were adopted on the sexual harassment of racial minorities and the ways colonialism had forced women into prostitution. It all seemed far removed from the reality of Mostafa's death. This was a conference rich in posturing and rhetoric but woefully short on realism.

As it lurched towards its almost meaningless conclusion yesterday, Robinson warned delegates: "We must not fail; remember the press wants us to fail." But hers was one voice in a tower of babel.

Around her swirled angry Dalits (untouchables) and Roma (gypsies), indignant Polynesians, self-righteous Africans in traditional dress, angry Palestinians, native Americans in flowing headdresses and all manner of other minorities.

The slogans on the T-shirts varied from "Muslim lesbians against discrimination" to "The blacker the college, the sweeter the knowledge".

"One of the problems," said a Canadian delegate, "is that the crazies who were fighting in the streets in Genoa [during the G8 conference] are inside the hall here and doing a lot of the talking."

Perhaps the strongest intellectual influence on the conference was exercised by black Americans. Manning Marable, professor of history and political science at Columbia Universiy, New York, put forward the notion that whiteness was a form of property. He then quoted Proudhon's dictum that "all property is theft", leading to the inevitable conclusion that "whiteness is theft".

One European Union delegate called the behaviour of some African delegates debating slavery and colonialism as "irrational, deranged, verging on psychosis" while the intensity of Arab and Muslim animosity towards Israel often crossed the line into outright racism.

Delegates finally agreed to recognise the injustice of slavery and colonialism, but not that any reparations should be paid; and to acknowledge the plight of the Palestinians, but not to criticise Israel directly.

It was clear that nobody regarded the event as a success. Its failure had several causes. The Muslim and African blocs agreed to support one another on the Middle East and reparations in the apparent belief that they could then steamroller the conference by majority voting.

The same belief lay behind Third World demands to "democratise" the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, which would mean both institutions being controlled by their debtors. Western countries simply refused to be steamrollered.

Realising that the western powers feared an apology for slavery would open the legal floodgates to demands for compensation, South Africa, the host, was willing to drop the notion provided the West signed up behind President Thabo Mbeki's development plan, the New Africa Initiative.

However, when others insisted on a western apology, South Africa quickly began to demand one. The only dissident African voice was that of President Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal, who termed the whole notion of reparations as "an insult to Africans".

The fatal blow to the conference was struck by the South African Communist party (SACP) and its partner, the Congress of South African Trade Unions, which are determined to push Mbeki's government leftwards. They staged a general strike against privatisation and organised mass demonstrations calling for hard lines to be adopted in Durban.

They also controlled Sangoco, the South African non-governmental organisation coalition which played a dominant role in the NGO forum before the conference proper. "Sangoco members were ruthless in their use of Soviet-style tactics," said an angry Congolese delegate. "They just steamrollered their agenda through."

Others concurred: speakers were cut off without explanation, amendments conceded in debate vanished in the final draft because "the disk had been lost", 20 pages went missing, and the final draft adopted by the steering committee was not the same as the one agreed by the drafting committee. The resulting declaration of the forum was strongly anti-American and took the hardest of hard lines on every issue. Israel was repeatedly branded as an apartheid state guilty of ethnic cleansing and genocide, and both Israeli and Jewish delegates were subjected to racial abuse and physical harassment.

"Sangoco really did its job," said a German delegate. "By the time they'd pushed that declaration through they'd inflamed the atmosphere on all the key issues."

Indeed, the SACP may now succeed in its aim. With the gap between the Third World and the West wider than ever, Mbeki secured only token support for his initiative and openly lost his temper with the United States for withdrawing. He made no attempt to apologise to the Jewish delegates.The markets responded by hammering the rand, which fell by nearly 3%.

Mbeki is also left with a bill of £10m for the event. South Africa had hoped to raise two-thirds of the costs from western donors but nobody wanted to fund a rancorous flop.

Columbia University must be so proud! < / SARCASM >

Sounds like a good time was had by all.

And I'm supposed to believe that this is the same U.N. that is going to take over the world???

Again, the journalist in me emerges. I haven't read everything in the American press about this confab, but I think I should have seen or heard this story somewhere. I've certainly read a couple of NY Times stories about the conference, and recall seeing nothing about the murder of this Moroccan man. It took a conservative British paper to write about it. And I think it's the "British" part that matters, not the "conservative" part. I don't think this is a case of media bias, not in the least. I think American reporters are too darn lazy to sniff out a truly interesting story. When I think of the pious dreck the Times has written about this conference...why wasn't their correspondent tracking down this fascinating slice of life?

Say what?

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