CIVIL SOCIETY IN SOUTHERN AFRICA ON THE WAY TO CANCÚN: INTERESTS, PROBLEMS, AND STRATEGIES PIA EBERHARDT th Just a few months prior to the 5 WTO Ministe ­rial Conference in Cancun, Mexico, southern Af­rica's civil society sees itself confronted with sev­eral dilemmas: since it has only recently begun to concern itself with trade issues, it lacks the capac­ity it needs to accompany developments in the WTO and the growing number of regional and bilateral free-trade initiatives on the African conti­nent. Moreover, in most African countries the responsibilities for defining national positions are not clearly assigned, a factor which additionally hampers the participation of civil-society groups. In this sense we can speak of a lack of coherence in decision-making processes at the national level. This fragmentation is mirrored at the regional and the continental level. And thus the interests of African countries diverge so sharply in impor­tant areas such as agricultural trade as to prevent them from speaking with one voice in the on­going WTO negotiations. Nor is southern Africa's civil society in a position, at present, to come up with any regionally coordinated strategies. Yet, in the opinion of African ambassadors to the WTO, it is precisely such strategies that are urgently called for if African countries are to succeed in overcoming their conflicts of interests and ma­king headway in presenting common positions in the WTO negotiations. Only in this way will Afri­can countries have any chance to decisively in­fluence the course of these negotiations. Fundamental reservations on trade liberalization Despite this lack of regional strategies on the part of civil-society groups in southern Africa, their issue-focused work is based on a certain measure of shared skepticism concerning any further liberalization of trade and the tendency toward privatization it entails. This skepticism is rooted in the experiences that have been made thus far with the impacts of liberalization and privatiza­tion processes: deteriorating working conditions and mounting unemployment, rising prices, decli­ning quality of and restricted access to essential goods like water, reduced scopes of political ac­tion in social and environmental policy, and a blatant lack of democracy in decision-making processes. Moreover, liberalization processes have lead in most cases to further degradation of economically weak regions and deterioration of the situation of already disadvantaged population groups, like women, in this way exacerbating existing economic and social inequalities. In the view of labor-union representatives from