Summit focus on South Africa's neo-liberal line
With the eyes of the world’s media focused on the Johannesburg summit, the brutal contrast between the plush suburb of Sandton and the poverty in which most South Africans continue to live has become visible to more people than at any time since the end of apartheid.
What has received less attention is the fact that the current South African government is trying to impose the same neo-liberal policies as their friends in the rest of the world. The struggle against the proposed privatisation of electricity and the fight for land are two of the key demands that have animated protests over recent months.
The South African electricity company ESKOM is a major sponsor of the WSSD, and has worked diligently with the ANC government to increase corporate influence in the meetings, while portraying itself as responsible in its growing African business. It is linked to the recently established South African Business Co-ordination Forum (BCF), a business body that is working in the preparations for the summit.
Record of abuse
ESKOM also has an increasingly negative record of abusing poor electricity users across South Africa. Campaigns against this and the proposed privatisation of the company have been growing. Eight years after the first democratic elections, the government has failed to deliver free basic services as promised.
Living conditions have worsened as water and electricity cut-offs now occur on a regular basis. With an unemployment rate of 75%, households are not in a position to purchase pre-paid electricity cards and many have resorted to bridging electricity boxes
Most recently, anger and determination to act is growing among the residents of Orange Farm, a poor community on the outskirts of Johannesburg, as members of the ANC Youth League and Sanco, subcontracted by ESKOM, continue to spy on their neighbours, seize electricity boxes, and extort bribes from their fellow community members in the case of "illegal" consumption.
Landless struggles
The Landless Peoples’ Movement (LPM) is one of the other major organisations that has animated activity at the summit and linked up with international protestors including on one of the 2 big marches held on August 31. The demands of this march included an end to forced removals in urban areas, an end to the market-led approach to land reform, and a land summit with government where the landless will be given an opportunity to discuss and decide on their own future.
"The agenda of Sandton is the agenda of the multinational corporations, that land must be sold as a commodity, that water and energy must be privatised," says LPM leader Andile Mngxitama. "They have been losing legitimacy, and now they are trying to get new legitimacy through the United Nations
The protests in South Africa during the summit itself have followed the pattern of mobilisations at other international summits – most of the protestors are local and the key issues are those that concern their daily battle for survival. Counter-summit events and international participation in the actions build solidarity with these campaigns which have a life beyond the media glare.
While the summit itself seems extremely unlikely to have any positive results, the protests have recorded victories. The original stance of the South Africa government was to ban the main demonstrations of August 31, due to march from Alexandria township to Sandton, as well as to mete out repression to protests taking place earlier.
Demonstrators were only to be permitted in one small – 1.8 metre – area, named a "struggle pen" in which demonstrators could be easily controlled.
In this, the ANC seem not only to want to establish themselves as "safe hands for business" in the eyes of the rest of the capitalist club, but also as just as intolerant of dissent as the US or Italian states.
Repression had any rate been building up against the most effective opponents of the government – for example 50 anti-electricity privatisation activists in Soweto were jailed in April following a march they organised. While bail was granted one week later following massive protests, these campaigners together with 36 others are still facing charges arising out of these events.
Arrests
This wave of arrests began before the summit itself, with around 100 veterans of the ANC being arrested in advance of a planned march in Cape Town on August 16 and two days of mass arrests greeting mobilisations from the Landless Peoples movement on August 21 and 22 in which hundreds were jailed.
All in all, in the 2 months leading up to the summit more than 500 protestors were imprisoned. The Anti-Privatisation Forum also came under the spotlight when its Johannesburg office was visited by the head of the South African National Intelligence Agency.
On Sunday 25 , the police fired stun grenades on a peaceful demonstration by candlelight outside Wits University, sending four people to hospital, and leaving children traumatised on the scene. The march was itself calling for the right to protest and the end of censorship.
This act of vicious repression was conducted despite the presence of noted international NGO activists and intellectuals and the global media coverage. The day after there was widespread condemnation of the police behaviour.
As well as using the heavy hand of police batons, the South African government was happy to enlist the support of the local media. Anti-globalisation activists were dismayed that papers like The Sowetan seemed to be swallowing the government’s line. On August 27, the front page of the paper carried the banner headline "Government warns marchers" and a photograph carried the caption "militant groups" that will "stop at nothing to disrupt the WSSD".
Violent police
As a reply written by Indymedia South Africa pointed out, the only people who had shown themselves prepared to stop at nothing were the South African police in their violent attacks on demonstrators. The South African government followed in the footsteps of previous hosts of these international junkets in spreading ridiculous rumours as to what was being planned by protestors to justify their own actions.
They attempted to suggest that the protestors were mainly white middle class international summit hoppers – an only slightly new twist on the misinformation spread at other international protests.
But all these attempts at intimidation were clearly targeted at silencing voices opposing the government’s policies and practices. In fact they awakened still louder protests, not only in South Africa but across the world.
Actions took place demanding the release of the prisoners and supporting their demands in Britain, Argentina, Mauritius, Canada, Germany and elsewhere. As a result the government was forced to release the detainees and allow the A31 marches to go ahead as planned.