As Nelson Mandela pointed out, as long as there is someone out there who is oppressed, none of us can truly claim our freedom, Nelson Mandela Foundation CE Sello Hatang said on Monday, at the opening of the first Oslo Freedom Forum (OFF) to be held in South Africa.
The OFF is an international conference that brings together leaders in academia, advocacy, business, the media, policy and technology groups to discuss how to make the world more peaceful, prosperous and free. The first OFF in South Africa was held in Bryanston, Johannesburg, a collaboration between the Human Rights Foundation and the Nelson Mandela Foundation.
South Africa’s democracy was not just for South Africa, the country had a responsibility to the rest of the African continent, Hatang said. Dictators in Africa, and everywhere, had to be held accountable for their actions.
Hatang said the Nelson Mandela Foundation was using the centenary of Mandela’s 1918 birth to promote the ideal of a values-based society. Democracy needed to be delivered to everyone in a society, including the poor and vulnerable.
“The poorer you are, the more democracies ignore you,” Hatang said.
OFF founder Thor Halvorssen, a Venezuelan human rights activist and film producer, said authoritarianism, whether from the left or the right of the political spectrum, was at the root of all war and unrest across the world. Also, there would be no refugee crises without authoritarian governments.
“There will only be freedom for all when there is solidarity across the world. Authoritarians love to split communities ... We will only be able to stop authoritarianism when we can all stand together for freedom,” he said.
Democracies worldwide had failed to uphold the rights of people who did not live in free societies, Halvorssen said. Instead, it was up to civil society to ensure freedom.
“We are the people we have been waiting for,” said Palestinian writer and activist Iyad el-Baghdadi. “It is up to us to put pressure on our elected governments.
El-Baghdadi pointed out that as a Palestinian he was stateless and had never personally had an elected representative. “If you have a vote in a democracy you are already very privileged,” he said.
“Governments are not in the business of social justice,” said Evan Mawarire, a Zimbabwean civil rights activist and religious leader. “They are in the business of retaining power.
Mawarire was jailed for attempting to overthrow Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwean government after he gained social media attention for the #ThisFlag movement. This came after he posted a video in April 2016 expressing frustration with the state of Zimbabwe, and calling for peaceful protest against the status quo and Mugabe’s government.
He said he was pleased to see signs of positive change in Southern Africa, but questioned whether the new Zimbabwean government, led by President Emmerson Mnangagwa, was “open for freedom” as much as Mnangagwa said it was “open for business”.
Halvorssen said civil society everywhere had a responsibility to stand up for freedom. “Sometimes I hear Europeans speak of their freedoms as if they are permanent, and I remind them that 80 years ago they were subject to fascism, Nazism. This continent [Africa] is full of dictatorships and that is an outrage … Civil and political rights are the rights on which every other right rests.”
Speakers at the conference also included Memory Banda, a Malawian activist focused on banning child marriage in Malawi, Zineb El Rhazoui, a Moroccan-born French human rights activist and former Charlie Hebdo columnist, Meron Estefanos, an Eritrean journalist and human rights activist, Leyla Hussein, a British-Somali psychotherapist and activist focused on eradicating female circumcision, Anastasia Lin, a Chinese-Canadian human rights activist especially focused on religious freedom, Rafael Marques de Morais, an award-winning Angolan investigative journalist and activist, and Omar Sharif Jnr, an Egyptian activist focused on LBGTQ rights.