One of the reasons why Zimbabwe had been chosen to host the SASF was that so much focus was placed on the country, and activists wanted to come here to see with their own eyes what is happening, organisers of the Forum explained to Indymedia/South Africa. While it was a challenge to organise the logistics of the Forum, especially since the lack of fuel in the country made transportation of delegates difficult, Zimbabwe is a key country in the struggle against imperialist oppression causing poverty and social under-development, as well as the struggle against internal repression and lack of democratic rights. As such, the SASF was held in the midst of a place where all the reasons for struggle exist too obviously.

Delegates from around southern Africa pledged solidarity with Zimbabwe and acknowledged the poverty and oppression to its people. The speakers from Zimbabwe held loud and clear inputs and did not spare any words to describe the situation. Briggs Bomba, a representative of the parallel Uhuru Youth Forum of the SASF, said that Zimbabwe faces its worst economic crisis ever. The hospitals are no longer hospitals but ‘death cells’ and it is a struggle only to live until the next day. The Structural Adjustment Policies (SAPs) imposed on Zimbabwe by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank has created an enormous social disaster, which, compounded with a ‘democratic deficit’, put Zimbabwe in a ‘state of emergency’. Briggs Bomba considered the SASF a place where both the IMF/World Bank and the Mugabe dictatorship could be rejected, and where there is an opportunity to create a United Democratic Front - ‘South African style’ - to solve the crisis of Zimbabwe. The vision the Uhuru Youth Forum had of a future Zimbabwe included political freedom and freedom of expression and identity, community-based participation, international solidarity, free public quality education for all and education for liberation, an economy with communal control of all resources, and a nation free from debt.

Munyaradzi Gwisai, part of the national organising committee of the SASF, commented that despite the fact that Zimbabwe is ‘on the verge of collapse’, the SASF managed to gather in Harare because activists do believe that ‘another Zimbabwe is possible!’. Munyaradzi Gwisai also criticised both the Mugabe government as well as the economic system of Zimbabwe, which ‘has failed completely’. Mugabe’s regime is guilty of ‘genocide’ in the form of Operation Murambatsvina (where tens of thousands of people were brutally evicted from their homes in informal settlements and their goods and furniture destroyed or confiscated by the state’s representatives), said Gwisai. All in all, the brutal Mugabe regime is a ‘puppet’ of the IMF and the World Bank and has deliberately entered an agreement to pay back a huge amount of debt to the institutions instead of directing money to the starving population. The urgency of the struggle for a free and living Zimbabwe could not be emphasised enough: ‘If we have to fight, we have to fight now!’ Munyaradzi Gwisai concluded to storming applauds.

The end of the Forum pulled together all the topical workshops that had been held over the previous two days. Recommendations, statements and programmes of action had been debated and adopted in smaller groups. Discussions had been held on the topics of HIV/AIDS and gender, housing and evictions, labour issues trade justice and poverty, economic alternatives constitutions and governance, as well as a broad range of issues taken up in the Uhuru Youth Camp. Many of the recommendations included demands for more democratic participation and a people-driven economy and political process.

Some recommendations were detailed and direct to the point, others more general: No to privatisation of basic services; no to trade barriers that discriminate against southern Africa; an immediate an unconditional cancellation of all debt; reparations for the damages caused by debt; against the IMF and the World Bank; end neo-liberalism; yes to civic education and participatory democracy; for a common front between social movements, NGOs and trade unions to advance the rights of workers; build militant, well-resourced and radical trade unions; mainstream sensitivity for gender, disability and other categories of discriminated people; development and training of all but especially women and youth; create friendly courts for rape victims.

These were but a few ideas that came out of the SASF and its more or less 3000 participants. Concrete activities included the launch of the Uhuru Arts Collective in the Youth Forum, which is a regional network of conscious, radical artists. Action plans include regional days of action in solidarity with workers and marginalised people in Zimbabwe, and a week of action against capitalism in the whole region, starting on 1 December this year.

The SASF attracted a wide variety of participants. NGOs, social movements, trade unions, informal traders’ associations, and more took part. As such, widely differing views were present, and some very conservative and even reactionary voices were heard. However, it was the calls for regional solidarity and unity, and end to neo-liberalism and capitalism, including demands for the creation of socialism, that took centre stage. The SASF 2005 provided a platform for networking against the world capitalist system that destroys lives for the sake of profits, and activists made sure that proposals were made to map out real alternatives. In the middle of extreme poverty and repression, thousands of southern Africans still claimed that ‘Another southern Africa is possible’.