-Caveat Lector-
Date: Tue, 3 Sep 2002
From: earth shimmer
Subject: Fighting for Dignity
This is the second in a series of articles by independent media writer
Rodney Vlais, concerning non-corporatised perspectives on events stemming
from the World Summit for Sustainable Development. The third article, to
come out over the next two days, will briefly summarise the outcomes of
the summit, and then outline alternative visions towards a better world
made by the diversity of people and communities who have gathered in
Johannesburg to breathe life into the sustainability debate. Rodney can
be contacted at [EMAIL PROTECTED]
FIGHTING FOR DIGNITY DESPITE THE WORLD SUMMIT FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
Rodney Vlais, 3rd September, 2002
It was a massive, pulsing sea of red. Red headbands highlighted by
“Phanzsi NEPAD, phanzsi!” (“down to the New Partnerships for Africa’s
Development” – a neoliberal plan to entrench Africa more deeply in the
corporate-led global economy). Red t-shirts by the Anti-Privatisation
Forum (APF), symbolised with a fist for justice emerging from the
continent of Africa. Red t-shirts by the Landless Peoples Movement (LPM)
calling for land, food and jobs for the roughly one-half of South Africa’s
population who are landless.
The march, by far the larger and more radical of the two on August 31,
opposed the World Summit for Sustainable Development rather than trying to
influence it. It lasted four hours in a winding route from the
impoverished township of Alexandra to Sandton where the summit is taking
place.
The contrast between the two areas makes it seem as though they belong to
separate universes, rather than being part of the same quadrant of
Johannesburg. One dominated by tiny tin shacks separated by laneways only
a metre or two wide … the other with plush shopping malls, towering hotels
and luxury cars. Despite its simplicity, this contrast made it difficult
not to join in on the shout “stop the war on the poor, make the rich pay!”
A collective of grass-roots movements organised the rally under the
umbrella of the Social Movements Indaba (SMI). Including the APF, LPM,
Jubilee South Africa, the Rural Development Services Network and the
Environmental Justice Networking Forum, the collective split off from more
mainstream non-government organisations earlier this year in the process
of organizing the civil society presence at the WSSD (named the Global
Forum). The SMI believed that the Global Forum was being co-opted by the
South African government, deciding to take a stance against the WSSD
rather than legitimizing what was seen as a means to only further
impoverish the poor to corporate rule. As in Durban last year in
KwaZulu-Natal Province, when 20,000 protestors marched to delegitimise the
farce of the World Conference Against Racism, the rally demonstrated the
rising anger in South Africa that the end of apartheid has not seen better
conditions for the poor.
The rally was joined by hundreds of overseas activists representing a
diverse range of issues, from the protection of the rights of small-scale
fisherfolk to the survival of indigenous cultures. Numerous banners
expressed disgust with corporate-led globalisation and with Washington’s
arrogance and imperialist outreach throughout the world.
While this international solidarity threaded through the long march that
stretched for at least a kilometre from front to end, it was largely a
rally for basic justice in South Africa. Thousands of South Africans came
from numerous impoverished townships, complete with large banners against
water privatization, forced evictions, electricity cut-offs and
capitalism. Young socialists danced and sung alongside grandmothers and
old men. Cries of “Amandla!” (“power”) were belched over the
speakerphones from the two leading trucks, from which participants roared
in reply “Ngawethu!” (“to the people!”).
Despite being flanked by dozens of tanks, armoured personnel carriers and
thousands of rifle-carrying police, and buzzed by helicopters overhead,
the march saw no repeat of the police violence of the week before … where
candle-holding, singing demonstrators were met with concussion grenades
that injured three people. Fortunately, the government reversed its
decision to refuse permission for the march, under pressure that such
refusal would resemble the apartheid era crackdowns on any signs of
dissent.
For the thousands of poor who took to the streets, little has indeed
changed since the 1994 elections that swept the ANC into power. For part
of the long march I had the privilege to stride along aside Joyce, one of
many elderly women who participated. Joyce ran out of food three days
ago, and survives on assistance from a non-government organization. Her
son died of AIDS at the age of eight, when she was unable to afford the
anti-retroviral medication that could have prolonged his life.
“I’m here fighting for freedom. We have no freedom now. Things have
gotten worse since 1994, at least back then we had clinics and my stomach
wasn’t as empty as it is now. I can’t afford bread for my family.”
Joyce’s determination, and laughter from some of the other women marching
with her, helped her through the four-hour trek to the plush Sandton
towers. The lines on her face expressed the layers of a life filled with
suffering, then hope with the end of the apartheid regime, and finally
betrayal with the neoliberal policies of the ANC government. Like so many
women and men on this ancient land, she is fighting again for basic
justice denied by the sweeping effects of global capitalism … my heart
breaks at the thought that she may endure yet another year based on a life
of struggle.
Another woman slightly younger than Joyce expressed “I am here to fight
for housing and jobs for my community. With the end of apartheid I did
not demand these things. But we were promised them and nothing has
happened. This is why I am here today.”
These feelings express the sentiments of many impoverished South Africans.
Despite the massive injustices and oppression under the apartheid regime,
black South Africans did not experience electricity and water cut-offs at
that time as they are now under privatisation. The former regime was
hesitant to evict or disconnect people who could not afford their bills,
for fear of stimulating riots.
Not all or even most of the 20,000 or so who marched were there on an
explicit anti-capitalist paradigm. The most basic needs of a dignified
life were their main focus, though the younger participants were more
likely to link this with the neoliberal political economy. While a focus
on the WSSD was not widespread, many knew that the wealthy were gathering
at Sandton … men in suits who had never been to their townships and who
were seemingly doing nothing to address their concerns. They were
marching to make their voices heard.
Women, men and youths from numerous townships rallied with their local
concerns of how the government that they had pinned their hopes on had
betrayed their basic rights. Several were protesting against forced
evictions from their homes that they claim were timed to get them out of
the way before the delegates arrived for the WSSD.
The story of forced evictions from Mandela Village exemplifies how those
without access to capital have been forgotten by the neoliberal
government. On January 7th this year, the township was forcibly and
violently relocated to a discarded mining compound. Their homes at
Mandela Village were trashed and residents were not able to defend
themselves to stave off the evictions … as they have successfully done at
Thembelhile, where a blockade held against the dreaded “red ants” (private
security police who are hired to carry out evictions).
Residents were moved to the most awful conditions possible. In an
isolated setting that can be reached by only one road, children have just
one school located far away over a small mountain ridge. With no
sanitation systems in place, sewerage washes out into the open grounds
from the few communal toilets. Electricity supply has been cut off to the
compound and there is neither medical clinic nor shops.
Residents live in one of two types of ‘houses’. Whole families of five or
more people live in single rooms within the dilapidated mine compound
buildings, only slightly larger than the average sized living room of a
middle class suburban home. The rooms are filled with gas from the
paraffin stoves, the one window insufficient to restore a clean flow of
oxygen. Teenage pregnancies – as young as 12 years of age – are common as
children observe the sexual behaviour of their parents from sleeping in
the same room.
The other type of residence is commonly referred to as “shacks”, but they
are little more than chicken pens. Hardly larger than the mine compound
rooms, these consist of discarded pieces of rusted iron joined together at
somewhat square angles, with a sheet held on top by rocks. Many do not
have a single window, and suffer extreme temperatures as the winter cold
comes in through the numerous gaps, and as the iron and tin smelts during
summer. While these shacks are common throughout the townships, in some
locations there are at least some homes that offer more dignity. At the
‘relocated’ Mandela Village, there are none.
An elderly women who showed us her passport to signify her age of 70
expressed that things are worse now since the forced evictions.
Unfortunately her story is not unique, as millions are suffering from the
insane distribution of basic resources based on who has the capital to
obtain property rights over the fundamentals of life.
In the face of these and other massive injustices, South Africans are
fighting back, re-igniting their apartheid-era spirit and defiance.
Previous hesitancy to criticise the ANC that helped bring an end to
apartheid – borne out of hope that at last justice would be restored to
their lives – is giving way to deep grass-roots resistance. In this
context new and rapidly growing networks such as the APF and the LPM are
providing spaces for dissent to emerge.
This dissent does not solely come out of protest, however. The singing,
pulsing cores of the August 31st march came from communities mobilising in
their townships to use their autonomy and creativity to provide the basic
essentials of life. Despite a socialist thread running through some
sections of the march, particularly among the young men, the mass
mobilisation was focused less on ideology and more on a culture of
community-based doing. This doing ran on the assumption that if
governments won’t provide basic services, and if corporations will but
only at an unaffordable price, then communities can show that they need
neither.
One of the most powerful examples of communities re-connecting their
members to basic dignity is the Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee
(SECC). Under privatisation electricity costs have increased by up to
four times for some Sowetan residents. The parastatal (semi-privatised)
power corporation Eskom has cut off approximately 20,000 Sowetan homes per
month from electricity. Indeed, the majority in the township of 1.5
million have had their electricity disconnected at least for some period
of time.
While the World Bank, the ANC government and private power corporations
stress the “user pays principle”, the subsidies going to wealthy
electricity users are obscene. Sowetans pay over a quarter more for their
electricity per kilowatt hour than residents in the wealthy suburbs of
northern Johannesburg, and ten times more than large industrial users.
In response to this, the SECC has mobilised teams to illegally reconnect
residences to the electricity supply. They receive hundreds of calls each
week from Sowetans desperate for reconnection.
The provision of this service by the community is resulting in a major
community-building platform from which challenges to privatisation are
emerging. It is contributing to two mutually reinforcing processes that
form the backbone of resistance and renewal … the courage to protest and
the taking of direct autonomous responsibility to provide for one’s own
community. As will be written in a later article, the fusion of these two
processes is where protest passion meets the reweaving of community rights
concerning the commons … where another world is not only possible, but is
happening now.
Indeed, it is the opinion of this author that the nodes and leaders in the
growing movement for global justice should not be the large NGOs that
mobilise people to advocate for change … but should rather come from the
more grounded groups that ARE changing, by providing basic services and
dignity for themselves without reliance on either the state or the
corporate world. Groups such as the SECC, Ontario Coalition Against
Poverty, the Coordination for the Defense of Water and Life (a Bolivian
network) and the eco-autonomous collectives in Western Australia have the
deepest integrity in living alternatives from which to come together to
discuss how, in Colin Hines’ terms, we can protect the local, globally.
THE STRUGGLE FOR ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE
“I think the economic logic behind dumping toxic waste in low wage
countries is impeccable … Africa is underpolluted.” (1992 World Bank chief
economist Lawrence Summers in a leaked memo)
Although some of the largest South African NGOs, and the Council of South
African Trade Unions, participated only in the considerably smaller and
‘more official’ march, some South African NGOs operated on an amazingly
grass-roots level. The Environmental Justice Networking Forum (EJNF), for
example, brought together young and not-so-young environmentalists from
the nine provinces of South Africa to share information and strategies on
their various concerns.
EJNF was a model example of how environment groups can connect
environmental and social justice issues, in a way that links local
struggles with global trends. Delegates outlined how, in their respective
provinces, environmental destruction affected the lives of the
impoverished by far the most, exemplified by how toxic waste dumps and
polluting industries are predominantly located in close proximity to the
poor.
Issues of environmental racism were explored through solidarity with
environmental justice networks in the U.S., where it is not so much class
that determines how likely one lives in the vicinity of a toxic waste dump
or polluting plant … but rather one’s colour. Predominantly black
communities are three to five times more likely to be living near sites of
hazardous wastes. Furthermore, ten times as much money is spent on
cleaning environmental hazards if they are near predominantly white
communities.
It was also impressive how EJNF was able to link these environmental
justice concerns to tube big picture issues of NEPAD, transnational
institutions such as the World Trade Organisation and multinational
corporations, and to capitalism. The challenge is for the more
conservative environment (and development) organisations originating from
overdeveloped nations to take a leaf from EJNF’s practice, in weaving
together the local and global, and issues concerning the environment,
social justice and anti-racism in a practical consideration of basic
rights and political economy.
A range of other NGOs also used various alternative forums to the WSSD to
highlight environment issues in ways that have direct impact on people’s
lives. Earthlife Africa, for example, focused attention on plans for a
Pebble Bed Nuclear Reactor in South Africa, that uses graphite pebbles
rather than fuel rods, and which would have neither a concrete protective
casing nor a back-up water cooling system. The enormous electricity
parastatal Eskom is quashing any debate on the potential hazards of this
nuclear technology and refuses to provide grid access for companies
wishing to provide renewable sources of energy.
Meanwhile SAFeAGE is sustaining the gaze on South Africa’s rapid
dependence on genetically engineered (GE) food. South Africa is the
location for the first mass commercialisation of a GE staple – white
maize, the basic grain that is made into the local food called pap.
While GE yellow maize has been mass produced for animal feed (with U.S. GE
yellow maize affecting the previously GE-free croplands in several parts
of Mexico, threatening the home of diversity of maize crops), white maize
comprises over 50% of the basic diet of millions of South Africans.
Again, the environmental injustice is stunning. Whereas white consumers
in wealthy nations may eat foods with only a small percentage of GE
material (many contain 1% or less), black South Africans reliant on pap
are being used as guinea pigs in terms of eating the first wholesale GE
diet. What is even more incredible is that despite GE white maize
entering the shelves in late September this year, the vast majority will
not be aware that they are eating GE produce.
The grass roots, alternative forums to the WSSD have demonstrated a true
solidarity between the basic rights of the environment, and the injustices
and racism faced by impoverished people of colour. While the official
summit shuns any concerted attempts to address the environmental crisis in
anywhere near its full magnitude – preferring to promote corporatised
solutions to sustainably indebt the world’s poor to capitalism – people on
the ground are showing how ecological sustainability, poverty alleviation
and anti-racism are intimately connected in our common future.
LIVING DEMOCRACIES
The Indian physicist Vandana Shiva has noted that states and corporations
cannot deny the existence of rights inherent to life in the form of
people’s access to water, land and cultural and biological diversity. As
Australia’s High Court Mabo decision ruled almost ten years ago, they can
only fail to recognise them. Indeed, the capitalist system is based on
denying recognition of the intrinsic, lifeful value of the sacred
elements, and how they weave together to create diversity both
biologically and culturally. Rather, it ascribes value only once the
‘resource’ is extracted from the ground, the biological material is mass
produced for commercial markets, and the localised cultural knowledge
regarding these elements – refined over centuries – is appropriated for
making profit.
There is a growing call for the recognition of earth rights, earth justice
and earth democracy. Summed up by Thomas Berry, this movement stresses
that the Earth’s component sub-systems and species (including humans) have
intrinsic rights to exist, to have a sustainable habitat, and to inter-be
through fulfilling their niche in the process of continual renewal and
evolution …and that human property rights expressed through the capitalist
system have no rights to supersede these.
Vandana Shiva was one of several activists in alternative forums to the
WSSD who passionately spoke of the principles of an Earth democracy,
including:
** that all species, human cultures and localized knowledge systems cannot
be owned by other humans through patents and intellectual property rights
** that all members of the Earth community have basic rights to clean air
and water, safe habitats and nurturing food … and that these are best
sustained as commons nurtured by systems of community rights rather than
by commodified ownership
** that resilient localized economies are best placed to create
sustainable livelihoods based on cooperation, compassion and creativity,
with national and global economies performing relatively smaller roles
Civilisations the world over have fallen by falling asleep to these basic
earth rights. Africa has not been immune to this trend, exemplified by
the ancient civilization of Meroe of the upper Nile region, which
collapsed after massive deforestation caused by the relentless demand for
charcoal to fuel its iron smelters.
In many situations, however, the diverse array of African societies over
the past fifteen millennia have fallen due to changes in climate that have
dramatically affected local ecologies, or to the unsettling affects of
European slave trading and colonisation. More recently with the mostly
European invention of the tribe as a means of colonial domination, warfare
has taken its toll.
Outside of these circumstances, Africans have maintained some of the most
stable lifeways found in human societies. The harsh necessities of
unforgiving landscapes and destructive pests and diseases have meant that
consistent relationships with land and water have been a lifeline for
dozens of generations.
The corporate media images of Africa in ‘tribal warfare’ would have us
believe that Africans are the task masters in disrespecting life.
Admittedly, life has become cheap in some parts … violence that in
evolutionary terms has arrived much later in Africa than in most other
parts of the world. Rather, Africa’s history presents some of the
earliest and most numerous examples of stable cities without centralised
political hierarchies, and societies based on small inter-related
autonomous bands, than perhaps on any continent. Numerous civilisations
throughout the continent’s history have merged ecological sustainability
with people’s needs for dignity, in ways that have stood the test of time
outside of major climatic changes and the havoc wreaked by colonialism and
neocolonialism.
For if one defines civilisation as the extent to which life isn’t taken
for granted, Africa has a crucial role in helping to civilise the
non-indigenous cultures of the overdeveloped nations. We in the
overdeveloped world commodify the basic essentials of life and let the
market distribute them (making excuses when this distribution works
unevenly) so that we can get on with the ‘unmarketables’ of love and
meaning - closing our eyes to how commodified even these ‘higher’ goals
have become. Africans struggling for the basic dignities of life, and our
indigenous sisters and brothers throughout the world, are less likely to
forget what we can’t keep forgetting if we wish for our ‘higher’ goals to
be fundamental to love, life and a meaningful role as part of the Earth
community,
This is not to say that we should work in solidarity with African
communities because we need their cultures to survive in order to teach us
about Earth democracy and dignity. This would be to place yet one more
burden on those who we have, at various times, pitied, romanticised and
forgotten. Such an abusive stance – to treat their cultures as objects
for our needs – would also deflect attention from the basic requirements
of the impoverished … a vastly different distribution of economic and
political power, expressed in land, housing, food and right livelihood,
that challenges the status quo enjoyed by the owners of capital (including
you and me).
Nor, in my opinion, should we talk in the totalizing language that we are
all fighting the same fight. I have never been forcibly removed from my
place of living, have generally found work when I’ve needed to and have
never lacked food. Although my predicaments share common roots with those
suffering for the right to exist, in one sense it is insulting to the
suffering of others to make direct comparisons. I can choose to be an
activist, and the issues that I wish to focus upon … many here don’t have
that luxury of choice.
Yet we do have much to learn from those who we can act in solidarity with.
The conditions of racism will only cease once, as a set of white, middle
class cultures, we can self-reflect on the beauty and poverties of our
lifeways, emotional landscapes and worldviews, and look to others for
guidance in what we are blind to and have forgotten.
The shades of solidarity can run very deep … we have an opportunity to
find the character and courage, in supportive communities, to let go of
the multiple layers of our consent in prioritizing property rights over
earth democracy and basic dignity. By doing so we can both reclaim and
create a diversity of civilized lifeways that will help humanity to
survive and thrive at its current crossroads.
Joyce, your suffering will not be forgotten, it cannot … we will listen
and act with dignity in the face of the psychotic denial of earth
democracy. May the future of civilizations rest in co-creating the
conditions for you to feed your family, and so that you never again have
to watch one of your children die.
May we not only devote our love to the vision that another world is
possible, but let us also act together towards making another life
possible for both you and me.
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... let the beauty we love be what we do {Rumi} ... and let our sacred
spaces and mental environments be free from intrusive advertising that
diverts us from earthened enLivedness
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