The Vienna Conference - Political dialogue

1998, October 12th, in the morning: Participants of the conference on "European - Southern African cooperation in a globalizing world" gathered in the Plenary Hall of the historic Austrian Parliament building in Vienna. Three weeks ahead of the Third Ministerial Conference of the European Union/Southern African Development Community in November this conference provided a platform for parliamentarians as well as representatives of non-governmental organisations both from SADC and from the EU to discuss relations between these two regions in the context of a changing global political and economic environment. What the Preparatory Committee had put onto the agenda of the three-day conference were subjects of crucial importance for the economic but also political development of the SADC region. Current trade negotiations between the EU and South Africa, debt management initiatives, structural adjustment programmes, conflict prevention as well as democratisation were among the topics addressed. As agreed upon in advance, conclusions of the conference on these issues were presented to and discussed by the meeting of Ministers three weeks later.
This Vienna Conference of parliamentarians and NGOs' representatives was aimed at reviving the spirit of the largely defunct North/South dialogue and at broadening the EU/SADC political dialogue. It tried to do that mainly in two directions: by encouraging dialogue - and even cooperation - between politicians and NGO activists and by assessing the state of dialogue between the EU and the SADC governments.
It had indeed been the intention of the organisers of the conference - the European Network of Information and Action on Southern Africa (ENIASA) and the Austrian Parliament - to bring together different constituencies in order to jointly address key questions of development. In their welcoming addresses, both the President of the Austrian Parliament, Heinz Fischer and the Austrian State Secretary responsible for development cooperation, Benita Ferrero-Waldner, reminded participants that EU and SADC governments had stressed their will to broaden the so-called "Berlin Initiative" in order to foster a spirit of friendship, solidarity and understanding that would facilitate cultural exchanges at all levels at their second meeting in Windhoek 1996. Implementing this suggestion and involving elected representatives of the people as well as the people themselves in this exercise constituted the motivation not only for this well-attended conference, but also for a wide variety of meetings of artists and cultural representatives from Southern Africa and the Austrian public which took place in the time between the conference and the upcoming ministerial meeting.
Albeit under different circumstances, many participants had experienced similar set-ups of cross-institutional and cross-regional cooperation before, during the anti-colonial and anti-Apartheid struggle when a lot of cooperation and partnership between liberation movements and solidarity groups had been in existence worldwide. Explicitly, this tradition was recognized by the Speaker of the South African National Assembly, Frene Ginwala, who in her keynote address paid tribute to all the individuals and organisations from Europe (many of them present) who had opposed slavery, promoted concepts of equality, supported the anti-colonial struggle, mobilised support for those engaged in liberation struggles - often against their own governments -, gave political and material support to the liberation movements, and, in more recent times, had been advocates for support for development in Africa. Similarly, the Executive Director of the South African National NGO Coalition, Kumi Naidoo, congratulated the European Network of Information and Action in Southern Africa on their work and complimented them on having survived the transitional period in South Africa. Under new circumstances, he said, people in Southern Africa expected the solidarity movement to play a new role now in order to help securing the gains that had been won as a result of democratisation in South Africa.
For many other participants, however, it was a new experience to share a joint platform of members both of non-governmental organisations and of parliaments, and both from the Southern African as well as the European Union regions, to discuss economic and political issues of high importance on equal footing. It did not often happen to him, said the Speaker of the National Assembly of Mauritius, Ramesh Jeewoolall, jokingly to be given the floor by somebody who was not a speaker himself or not even an MP. On the other hand, Japhet Moonde, Secretary General of the Public Servants Union of Zambia, expressed his feelings that he had often been addressed by politicians, but now had a chance for the first time to stand himself in front of politicians including honourable speakers and to address them as a trade unionist. It actually took some time for participants to get used to that kind of open and frank dialogue between people of such different backgrounds and political ranking, but in the end most of them found it a fascinating experience.
A lot of criticism was raised - not only by the representatives of European NGOs - against the way the European Commission was shaping its relationship with Southern African countries. That point was also emphasized, for example, by the South African parliamentarian, Professor Ben Turok. Europe was amorphous and showed little transparency, he said, and it was therefore difficult to dialogue with all these EU bodies such as the Commission, the Parliament or the Council of Minsters, let alone the national parliaments. On this last point, even Speaker Ginwala questioned the role and powers of parliaments in EU member countries. Did it really make a difference if there was a dialogue not only between governments, but on the level of parliamentarians or of civil society as well? As it was not the purpose of dialogue to just come together and have a chat, the point was: Were these chats going to make a difference?
European parliamentarians in general were of the opinion that they did make a difference. Both, the Finnish MP Arja Alho and Per Granstedt from European Parliamentarians for Africa (AWEPA) strongly underlined the influence national parliaments were able to exert regarding the European institutions in general and the EU and SADC dialogue in particular. NGO representatives and Southern African parliamentarians, however, thought differently. One strong statement came from Willbrod P. Slaa, member of the National Assembly of Tanzania and of the Joint Assembly of the European Union and the African, Carribean and Pacific (ACP) countries which exists in the framework of the Lomé system. Their experience over the last years, he said, had been neither one of partnership nor of dialogue, but of a one-sided talk with developing countries always being on the receiving end. There was no recognition of ACP countries as equals and sovereigns by the EU, and there was no reciprocityy of responsibilities. To some extent, there had been confrontation instead of partnership, and this was the case because there was no spirit of understanding, of cooperation, of talking and listening to one another.
Willbrod P. Slaa's comment was even taken further by his South African colleague Rob Davies. A central element of the EU's cooperation with the ACP countries were the principles of democracy and good governance, he said. In his view, nobody could really object to that as a basis for cooperation. The question arose, however, how departures from these principles were to be determined and by whom? Mr Davies didn't think that at this moment there were structures in place to adequatly address those issues. On the contrary, straight unilateral political conditionalities were attached rather than an equivocal process of political dialogue undertaken to solve such disputes. At the Joint Assembly meetings, there was always a series of complaints and criticism of the political situation and departures from democracy and good governance in a number of ACP countries. Seldom, however, political problems and lacks of or departures from good governance and democracy in Europe were discussed, even when this directly affected ACP-EU relations. These were issues concerning racism in Europe, immigration policy in Europe and the impact which it might have on business travels by ACP people, the treatment of ACP nationals in Europe, the arms trade of EU member states or interventions of particular EU countries in conflict situations such as in the Great Lakes and Central African regions. Therefore, in his view, more equality in the political dialogue was necessary to be promoted.
In her opening statement, the President of ENIASA and Co-Chair of the conference, Prof. Paulette Pierson-Mathy, had demanded exactly this. The solidarity movement, she said, and ENIASA in particular, were attending the conference with a sense of urgency, confronted with the necessity as active citizens, researchers and social actors to reinforce their contributions to the ongoing struggle against the current trend of the neo-liberal deregulated globalisation. That had led, as the recent Non-Aligned Conference in Durban had stressed, to an increase in the gap between North and South, to the marginalisation of the poorest countries and the exclusion or delinking of individuals and groups in both regions. One of the messages coming from this conference and addressed to the forthcoming Third SADC/EU Ministerial meeting in Vienna could therefore be a pressing call for the inclusion of a much greater socio-economic, cultural and democratic dimension in the EU-SADC partnership, a partnership which should become based on mutual respect.

(Extract from the Conference Report)