ow interesting that the culture of the protest march has made such a spectacular comeback. Just when we all thought mind-numbing mediocrity had taken over from rolling mass action, the forgotten activists popped up in the unlikely location of Seattle, in the United States, and set the barricades ablaze once more.
The pressure has scarcely let up. No sooner had they got the fat cats of the World Trade Organisation on the run (including a few fat cats of our own, who had themselves been frolicking on the barricades not so long before, if you can believe it) than the hippy pack was descending on Washington DC, headquarters of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and raising even more merry hell.
On the rainy spring morning of April 15, a small group of protesters marched to the home of World Bank president James Wolfensohn "to give him and his institution a wake-up call".
"In the half-light of dawn," reports one of the marchers, "we began our slow walk through [Washington's] elite Embassy Row neighbourhood. Four-fifths of the group hailed from South America, Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean. They included workers, students, economists, a Soweto councilman, an international lawyer, a rural doctor, and a feminist leader. Carrying signs which said, 'Wake up, World Bank' and 'Wake up, Wolfensohn', we quietly sang protest songs in Zulu, Urdu, and Creole as we made our way past the mansions."
The multicultural morning chorus eventually proved irresistible, for the World Bank president himself appeared at his front door, after trying to resist the serenade for half an hour. He stepped into the street to meet the protesters.
"I understand you have a letter for me," said the busy Wizard of Oz. "I'm in a hurry now; I have to go to a meeting. Give it to me and I'll read it later." "Actually, we'd like to read it to you now," retorted Dr Vineeta Gupta, one of the protest leaders. And she proceeded to do just that. One can imagine what was going on in the clock-watching banker's mind as the determined woman from the Punjab proceeded to read him the riot act about the effect of his structural adjustment policies on real people like herself and serve him notice that real people like herself were no longer hypnotised by the power of his mighty institution. On the contrary, she read on, ordinary people now understood the workings of the World Bank, and were initiating an international boycott action through the bond markets, an action that would eventually bring the monolith to its knees. David was giving notice to Goliath.
The Wizard Wolfensohn must have had quite a lot to think about as he was finally allowed to hurry off to his urgent meeting across town. And by giving him food for thought in such a rudely public manner, under the glare of the television cameras and the popping eyes of the paparazzi, Gupta and her friends made sure that the rest of us began to get the message as well. Mass action can only be effective if the masses get the message, too, not just Goliath.
Unfortunately, as with any struggle, there are the masses and then there are the masses. An ocean away from Washington DC, in Douala, Cameroon, a small clique was hearing the message in a rather different way.
A local businessman was approached a few weeks ago by a group of young men (thought to be from neighbouring Nigeria) who struck up a conversation. "You've heard about the World Bank?" the young men said. "Of course," said the businessman. "It's in the news all the time. What about it?"
"Well," said the young men, "obviously the World Bank is the biggest bank in the world."
"Obviously," replied the businessman, not really clear where this was all going.
"In fact," the young men continued, "the World Bank is where they make all the money that goes to all the other banks in the world."
"I hadn't thought of it like that," replied the businessman, "but I suppose you're right."
"Well," the young men continued, "we, through our associates in the US, have managed to break into the World Bank and steal about $100-million in almost completed bank notes."
"What's the use of almost completed bank notes?" the businessman wondered, although the sound of that amount of money, even if it was only almost-money, was beginning to prick his professional curiosity.
By the end of the evening, the young men had persuaded the businessman that the almost-money could be turned into money-money by simply completing the necessary chemical processes. They further persuaded him that they knew what these processes were, that the chemicals were available in Cameroon, and all they needed was the wherewithal to purchase those chemicals. He, being a man of substance, was being asked to supply the wherewithal, in exchange for a cut of the loot when the process was complete.
The businessman was hooked. He sold off some of his assets, borrowed an additional amount from his brother and handed it all over to the bright young men.
After some weeks, with not a trace of the young men to be seen around Douala, the businessman went to the police. The police arrested him for allowing himself to be sucked into fraud. They also managed to catch a couple of the young men. The rest got away.
Is there a moral to this story? Not a new one, if any. But it's interesting to observe that, while the majority of us wait for rolling mass action in America to liberate us from the World Bank/IMF dragon, others down here on the ground feel they might as well try and milk a little something from the beast's copious breasts just as long as it's still around. I guess that's only human nature.
-- The Mail&Guardian, 28 July 2000.
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