At the opening ceremonies of the forum on Saturday in Uhuru Park, a man showed up with the sign:

Who decided to punish Kenya’s poor with a 500/= registration fee? Are there capitalists in the World Social Forum??????

If we define capitalism as the greedy and irrational exploitation of resources (since it is hard to find anything compassionate or rational about the current dominant economic order), then we would have to reply to the man’s second question with a resounding YES.

For me, it started with attempting to line up accommodations. One option was apparent fly-by-nite operations that were booking up cheap $10 a nite hotel rooms, and then reselling them to unwary attendees for about four times that amount. Three of us were then offered a room in a private house for $70 per person, which works out to about the same as we would have paid in Nairobi’s most expensive 5-star hotels. Additional searching found another place that was charging $100 a nite. So much for solidarity accommodations.

A group of people are walking around with yellow t-shirts and hand-written signs that say “official WSF transport.” They are selling bus rides from Nairobi to the stadium in Kasarani where the forum is being held for $7 USD, but public transit will get one there for 20 KSH (less than 20 cents USD).

A major theme that runs through the WSF and the broader social justice movement is a concern for the commodification of water. In Mumbai, water ran free and plentiful from taps. Here, informal vendors sell water in half liter bottles for up to 100 KSH, more than a dollar and double of the normal price. Empty plastic bottles become littered all over the place. I’m going broke just trying to keep myself hydrated.

Mumbai also added an element of a solidarity economy where local cooperatives and activist organizations set up food stalls that provided a stunning array of delicious, nutritious, and inexpensive meals. Although my map of the stadium in Nairobi shows food stalls off on the margins on the other side of the fence without clear directions how to get there, right by the main entrance the Windsor Golf Hotel and Country Club set up what appears to be the main concession with corresponding prices (water, again, is 100 KSH).

Registration fees for the WSF have always been nominal. In Mumbai, for example, they were so insignificant that local people flooded into the forum just out of curiosity. Charging almost $10 USD in Nairobi prices it out of the range of most Kenyans. Northern internationals are charged an outrageous $110 USD, assuring that only the more affluent activists can attend. This has been a growing concern that rather than an expression of civil society, the forum will become an increasingly exclusive event–limited not only to those who can afford the transportation and visa fees, but now also those who can pay abusively high hotel rates and registration fees.

The result of all this is a notable shift in the face of the forum. In previous years, the overwhelming number of a participants have been from the host country and that has helped define the look and feel of the forum. For the first time, this appears to be predominantly a western European and North American event. Mumbai energized Indian civil society. Nairobi has failed to do the same for Africa. Local papers provide almost no coverage of the forum. Many Kenyans remain in the dark what the WSF means. For example, a security guard asked us how he could join the US army because he wanted to go fight in Iraq where he could be a real soldier. There is a rumor that Kenyans will storm the gates of the forum this morning, demanding free admittance.

This is in marked contrast to last year’s polycentric forum in Caracas. When a bridge from the airport to Caracas was on the point of collapse, Chavez responded with free transportation on the dangerous and slow back roads. The government provided free transportation to events. If this is “civil” society, than give me the state with all of its dangerous coercive apparatuses.

The result is a bonanza for certain people, but certainly not those who believe that another world is possible and are striving to make that a reality.

(Coda: issue of attendance was discussed this morning at a press briefing. See my notes at http://www.wsflibrary.org/index.php/Press_Briefing_January_22.)