Republican News · Thursday 11 October 2001

It was all about power and control

Republican former prisoner ELLA O'DWYER travelled on behalf of Coiste na nIarchimÌ to Durban, South Africa, for the recent World Conference on Racism. Here, she gives her impressions.

Governments attended the conference supposedly to address the issue of slavery. In fact, they went to bargain over the currency of power, and control that has been the apparatus of oppression for epochs. No advice or warning regarding likely reaction, militant response or of continued human casualty mattered in the bargaining ground of Durban. Each global body fretted about the task of returning home with the 'declaration', a document that cleared the particular Civil Service involved, though it might condemn the enslaved constituency to terrible bitterness and war.

I met just about every politico-cultural body that there is to meet in Africa and in the world. Mostly, they asked me how our political leadership conducted themselves since the onset of the Peace Process, since this has to be the question for those witnessing disappointment in South Africa and serious problems in Zimbabwe. Everyone - black or white - respects Mandela.

Genuine respect and trust exists between the grassroots ANC and ourselves. In response to their queries, it was important that I could tell them our leadership have the qualities of Mandela. Africa is going through its own growing pains and the ANC still have a mammoth task ahead if they are to build a society that meets their own constitutional objectives. This is a challenge that we too will face, though without the exceptional baggage of poverty and AIDS visited upon South Africa.

The conference was powerful for those who will learn from and build upon it. For others it amounted to the battleground between the exploiter and the exploited - the story of Empire all over again.

Two issues had particular resonance for me. We, the NGO representatives, were asked for our comments regarding the Palestinians' description of Zionist apartheid. I expressed the view that considering our history; we must be seen to help the Palestinians to express their grievances.

Along with some other NGO groups, I also said that we must support the Dalits of India in their transparently credible argument. The Dalits, or the so-called 'Untouchables', are those condemned to manual scavenging from birth to death.

The speakers at the Caste presentation explained that the meaning of Dalits is 'Non Being', a term very reminiscent of the Palestinian speaker's description of the word Native - without land therefore without history and simply part of the landscape. The institutional form of discrimination reduced the Dalits to state of lesser being, non-being, existing only to serve the dominant castes and class".

The Dalit representative pointed up the hypocrisy whereby the Indian Constitution speaks of Equality and Freedom while the government applies a policy of institutionalised discrimination. As the story unfolds in so many regions and chapters of world history, the Constitutional challenge has never been met.

He described the journey from birth to death where his people are discriminated. Enforced sterilisation, through to restricted association through childhood with other children of upper Castes, take the subject to the point of death, where even their burial ground is dictated by Caste.

The Untouchable Dalits are commonly described as the Manual Scavengers - those whose occupation it is to clean toilets and deal with human waste.