Issue No. 602
International
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5 - 11 September 2002 Issue No. 602 International |
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Recommend this page | ||
The fat cats' summit
While delegates at the Earth Summit haggled over poverty alleviation schemes, the poor people's anti-summit formulated their own agenda. Faiza Rady writes
On the surface of things, it looks like international delegates at the UN-sponsored Earth Summit for Sustainable Development in Johannesburg failed to act as an environmentally-conscious bunch. While delegates engaged in academic debates on how to save global resources, their ten- day stay in Standton generated an estimated 400 tonnes of trash -- only 20 per cent of which was recyclable.
However, moralising is besides the point. Conspicuous consumption came with the chic uptown conference venue and location. The Johannesburg neighbourhood of Standton stands out as the most expensive square mile of real estate in Africa. A fitting choice of venue for a summit ostensibly addressing the ills of global poverty, some may argue.
Conference organisers worked hard to provide the best for the international conference-hopping elite. In this particular case, penny pinching did not figure into the budget. Besides, some may ask, what is a trifling $100 million spent on conference fees when global poverty and the survival of the planet are at stake? High-powered workshops on big projects need big money.
Prior to the conference, Sandton had to be swept clean of its poor. "They, the black poor, make the place untidy," said a black policeman as he clamped down handcuffs on a scrawny unwashed beggar, who had surprisingly managed to break through the high-security cordon. Exerting much effort to keep the great unwashed from polluting the summit grounds, the Johannesburg police remained on high alert -- buttressed by a fleet of helicopters, dogs and water cannons.
Although summit officials lauded the security measures, others disagreed. To former anti-apartheid activists and the anti-globalisation crowd the scene was reminiscent of the heydays of white minority rule in South Africa.
"President Mbeki and his police have built elaborate fortresses to keep their own people out," said prominent Canadian writer and anti-globalisation activist Naomi Klein. She claimed the South African president was using the summit as a platform to attract foreign tourists and much- coveted foreign direct investment capital. "They attempted to create the vision of the sensational city, cleaning out the poverty stricken, sweeping away dissent."
Despite the government's efforts, dissent would not go away. Organised by the Landless People's Movement and the Anti-Privatisation Forum, an alternative people's summit took place in Soweto, the black township famous for its militancy during the anti-apartheid struggle. Attended by thousands of defiant landless farmers, squatters and protesters, the anti-summit was worlds away from its counterpart in Sandton.
"I am here because the African needs to be able to use the land," explained Dorothy Mambanga. "Our government and the people with the United Nations need to know this. They want to buy our water and our electricity and everything we own and then make us buy it back from them. Development should be about Africans owning Africa."
In South Africa, like in other neighbouring southern African countries, the most crucial issue is land. Eight years after South African people of colour went to the polls for the first time and ousted the apartheid government, 80 per cent of all fertile farmland in South Africa is still owned by some 600,000 white farmers, representing about two per cent of the country's population.
Although the ruling African National Congress (ANC) included land reforms as an integral part of its 1994 campaign platform, pledging to redistribute one third of white- owned land to destitute black farmers, the government has so far only redistributed two per cent of that land.
Given this context, activists from the Landless People's Movement and the Anti-Privatisation Forum dismissed the Earth Summit as yet another academic political talk-fest. "What is the summit doing for us?" asked Mathius Ledwaba, "It is providing for the rich, not the poor."
On Saturday, the Johannesburg poor and the anti- globalisation protesters came out in force. Singing apartheid-era songs and dancing to their beat, a crowd of more than 20,000 people marched the eight kilometres from the shanty township of Alexandra -- an impoverished black section of Johannesburg with open sewage and crumbling shacks -- to white, rich and glitzy Sandton.
Carrying banners with slogans such "Bush you belong in the bush", "factory gasses and wastes are killing", "globalise the Intifada" and "hands off Iraq", the marchers clearly expressed the globalisation of the movement with their message of international solidarity.
At the anti-summit's workshops, the Landless People's Movement and the Anti-Privatisation Forum formulated their own definition of "sustainable development".
"The Earth Summit is for all the fat cats, here (at the anti-summit) you will find people who have no hope of ever being fat cats but just want clean water, a safe home, food and land. Here you will find Africa," said activist Patricia Mdanza.
Mdanza's definition of "sustainable development" goes right to the heart of the problem. She summarises essential human needs that remain unfulfilled as a result of abject poverty. "Our bag of crises is overflowing," warned Indian development worker Rashmi Mayur in reference to the sweeping pauparisation afflicting the more than two billion people living on less than two dollars a day.
Subtly manipulated by politicians for public relations glitz at posh international development summits and brandished by activists at every counter summit, gobal poverty figures have become hauntingly familiar. In the South, 2.2 million people die every year because of poor sanitation. Nearly one in five people, or 1.1 billion of the world's population, have no access to potable water. In India, a country with a population of more than one billion, one out of four people do not have access to safe and clean water and 90 per cent of water sources are contaminated. To add insult to injury, 20 per cent of the country's richest people consume 73 per cent of available water resources.
Meanwhile things are getting worse rather than better, courtesy of the Northern-driven global liberalisation and privatisation drive. Privatisation of national water companies from Bolivia to the Philippines have resulted in soaring water prices, drying up poor farmers' irrigation taps in the process and taking potable water from the mouths of the needy. "Drinking water is an issue that's been hijacked for profit," editorialised The Earth Times.
Notwithstanding the politicians' resounding pledges to work hard to alleviate global poverty, the decimation of the poor is continuing. In Johannesburg, the neo-liberal impetus retained its full swing. Flanked by the World Bank (WB), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the UN, transnationals were out in force, busily strategising on ways to convince attending NGOs to join their drive to turn water into a commodity in the South. Seven hundred corporations and 50 CEOs attended the summit to engage the NGO community in "partnership initiatives".
"A deadly combination is emerging in the summit -- a combination of big business lobbying for more water for industry and agriculture with the World Bank and other international organisations providing the much needed support twisting the arms of NGOs to fall in line," commented The Earth Times.
If this is achieved, the "corporatisation" of the Earth Summit will have been complete.
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