Anger and recrimination as UN tackles slavery

Bite into a British chocolate bar and you could be, indirectly, endorsing the trade in child slaves on West African cocoa plantations. Go on an African safari and you may see antelope gambolling on land from which people were forcibly removed. Go to Liverpool, Seville, the American South or Antwerp's diamond centre ­ they were all built on the trade in men and women who collected no wage.

Under the benign gaze of Mary Robinson, high commissioner for human rights, a guilt-ridden industrialised world will confront an increasingly angry African continent tomorrow over the issues of "racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance" ­ the full title of a week-long United Nations conference. Outside the South African conference hall, pressure groups will be marching with placards equating globalisation with racism.

The Durban conference ­ the first of its kind for 17 years ­ is already in disarray. The Zionists won't be there; neither will Colin Powell, the American Secretary of State, who claims the event is already far too pro-Palestinian. However, the Indian government has decided to turn up, despite the presence of Dalits, campaigners for the "untouchables" caste.

Countries that believe they have something to gain, chiefly African ones, will send high-level delegations. Countries with something to lose, such as former colonial powers, will send low-ranking representatives. Britain is offering Baroness Amos, a parliamentary secretary at the Foreign Office.

Months of tortuous and inconclusive discussions have preceded the Durban conference, at which 15,000 people are expected. Despite Mrs Robinson's "breakthroughs" and her talk of a global "coming together", on the eve of the conference there is neither an agreed agenda nor a draft final declaration.

To African-American groups, Washington's insistence on avoiding a debate over whether Zionism is racism is simply a tactic to divert attention from calls for an apology for slavery and colonialism. Adjoa Aiyetoro, of the US National Coalition for Reparations, said: "The US does not want to take responsibility for its conduct in enslaving our ancestors and engaging in the tragic transatlantic slave trade. It's a way of avoiding a full democratic discussion of the issues."

Former colonial powers fear that an apology would open the floodgates to reparations claims from the descendants of black Africans ­ estimated by some historians to have numbered 22 million ­ who were taken by force from their continent between 1500 and 1890. Slave exports organised by Britain between 1701 and 1808 are put by some historians at 3.7 million people.

Ironically, Africans themselves are not lining up expectantly for reparations, at least not of an immediately palpable variety. Leaders such as Thabo Mbeki of South Africa – whose government still has not paid compensation promised to victims of apartheid – accept that the issue is complex.

The export slave trade began in the 9th century when Africans were sent to the Mediterranean basin and the Middle East. But long before then men, women and especially children were kept as chattels on the continent. Today, slavery is still practised in many parts of Africa, not because it is culturally acceptable but because parents find in the sale of their children a desperate solution to their own grinding poverty.

That is why President Mbeki, who has a powerful Francophone ally in President Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal, argues that the solution is not emotional but economic. He wants Third World debt relief and a revised world trade order in which farmers in poor countries do not, as now, face insurmountable tariffs when they want to sell produce to the protectionist European Union.

Last week, President Wade said he would use Durban to make a case against financial compensation for slavery. "Demanding billions of dollars in reparations is an insult to our dead, to our race. It is absurd that you could pay up a certain number of dollars and then slavery ceases to exist, and there would be a receipt to prove it," he said.

He is supported by President Mbeki, who on Tuesday called for "a measurable commitment among all nations that practical steps will be taken and resources allocated to eradicate the legacy of slavery, colonialism and racism that condemns billions across the globe to poverty and despair". Even African pressure groups are not calling for compensation from the rich world, though they do want an explicit apology and measures to include the slave trade in school history books throughout the world. "We cannot envisage an international community built on justice, equality and universality of human rights without those states which engaged in the slave trade asking for forgiveness in an explicit way," said Alouine Tine, co-ordinator of African non-governmental organisations at the conference. But Mr Tine added: "The financial aspect is of less importance than the recognition of the crime. The enslavement of blacks and colonialism played a major role in reinforcing discrimination against African people."

With the slavery issue unresolved, the conference is likely to be as inconclusive as its predecessors in 1978 and 1983.

But a surprise element may yet come into play ­ the Genoa factor. Today marks the second day of a general strike in South Africa against the government's extensive privatisation programme and, thus, its alleged complicity with the world trade order. Tomorrow, South African trade unionists will join campaigners protesting in Durban against globalisation. It will be the first such march in Africa ­ a continent in which most people's worries centre on getting enough food for the day, not on whether it has been genetically modified.

They will be joined by campaigners proclaiming "landless=racism" and others demanding affordable Aids drugs and an end to the intellectual property rights enjoyed by the multinational pharmaceutical companies.

Durban's anti-globalisation marches are likely to be peaceful, say the protesters, who are contemptuous of "indignant European liberals with nothing better to do than smash up historic cities". Mazibuko K Jara, of the South African Communist Party, said: "The African working class is the true victim of neo-liberalism. But we do not see the point of destroying our surroundings."

Mark Weinberg, spokesman for Sangoco, an umbrella organisation for 4,000 South African grassroots groups, said campaigners for the poor and racially oppressed were natural bedfellows of the unionists campaigning against privatisation. "This is a defining moment and represents South Africa's first post-apartheid struggle," he said. "The South African government made a hasty pro-capitalist choice in the early 1990s when that system was robust. We want people-driven development, not business-driven development."