From August 24 – September 4, tens of thousands of official delegates, business people, and civil society groups descended upon the smog-laden city of Johannesburg, South Africa for the World Summit on Sustainable Development (also known as “Rio+10” since it took place ten years after the 1992 “Earth Summit” in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil).

The elite Johannesburg suburb of Sandton served as the base for the official meetings, with fancy hotels and restaurants jammed with globe-trotting government delegates, corporate representatives, and staff of the IMF, World Bank, WTO and dozens of UN agencies. The contrast between the glitz of Sandton and the daily struggles waged by people just across the highway in sprawling Alexandra (or “Alex” as it is locally known) township was stark.

But as the global elite gathered to attend a two-week long talking shop on the global environmental crisis, thousands from social movements in the townships around Johannesburg and from around the world came together to take action – many to expose the corporate takeover of the WSSD process.

The ‘Long March to A Better World’

The week’s events culminated on August 31, as about 20,000 people from South Africa’s vibrant urban and rural social movements joined with hundreds of international activists in a march from Alex to Sandton. The Johannesburg-based Sunday Independent newspaper called it a “long march to better world” and at 6 miles, it was no easy walk. But the length of the march was easily mitigated by the high energy and spirit of the march, so much so that it seemed that a better world could not be very far off.

The march was organized by an alliance of social movements in South Africa called Social Movements Indaba (“United”), which included the Landless Peoples’ Movement, the Anti-Privatization Forum, the Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee, the Environmental Justice Networking Forum, and Jubilee South Africa, to name just a few. As participants “toyi-toyed” through the streets of Alex, chants of “Land! Food! Jobs!” and “Phansi (Down) World Bank Phansi” rang out through the urban landscape.

The contrasts along the march route could not have been sharper: the march began in Alexandra township, where poverty, joblessness, and pollution abound. We crossed polluted streams and passed by shacks that could hardly pass for adequate shelter, much less dignified housing. As soon as we went under the M1 super-highway, which serves as a buffer between Alex and the rich white suburb of Sandton, urban squalor changed over to a neighborhood of walls and electric fences, perfectly manicured lawns, and houses for the super-rich.

The march culminated in a rally outside the Sandton convention center which featured speeches by leaders of the emergent South African independent left such as MP Giyose, Trevor Ngwane, Virginia Setshedi, and Dennis Brutus. When Virginia called out across razor wire at the convention building, "Hello Sandton!...It's a pity you're barricaded, preventing us from coming in and showing you the real world!", she was expressing the sentiment of most of the march. The messages from the stage were angry denunciations of the ANC government’s decision to ally with the IMF and World Bank by promoting policies of privatization, cut-offs of water and electricity, home evictions, and refusing to redistribute land in a fair equitable manner.

A Week of Events: August 24 – August 31

Leading up to the march on Saturday, August 31st, a series of events occurred parallel to the official sessions of the WSSD which highlighted the vibrancy of the global justice movement. Throughout the week, there were multiple venues across Johannesburg where people from all walks of life and all sorts of places were organizing, networking, strategizing, educating one another, and plotting to create a sustainable world.

There were conferences and teach-ins at various venues around Johannesburg: the Convergence of Small-Scale Farmers at Shaft 17, an abandoned miners’ camp that was built where Mining Shaft Number 17 used to be. The Convergence of Small Scale Farmers included farmers from all over the world, among them a delegation of 32 Kenyans who flew from Nairobi to Lusaka, Zambia and traveled to Johannesburg by bus stopping to visit with small-scale farmers in Zambia and Zimbabwe. Njoki’s mother, who was at the 1992 Rio Summit, was part of the Kenyan delegation.

Long before U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell arrived in Johannesburg and told Africans that they should accept and eat genetically modified corn because Americans have been eating GMO corn since 1995, the Convergence of Small-Scale Farmers had already rejected all GMOs. (This rejection of GMO food aid by Africans and especially those who are starving should give Secretary Powell and the proponents of GMOs pause.)

There was “Share World”, an abandoned amusement park of sorts where over 2,000 participants from the Landless Peoples Movements were camping. On August 27, we attended a remarkable teach-in event organized at Share World by Mohau Pheko and the Gender and Trade Network in Africa. We sat in a tent which in half an hour was filled to capacity by mothers with babies on their backs, uniformed school children, teenagers from the townships, old men and women, as well as participants from other events like the World Forum of Fisher Folk.

There was NasRec, one of the official WSSD summit sites, which cost 600 rand (US$60) for the duration and 150 Rand (US$15) for a day pass, making it inaccessible for most South Africans. Njoki visited NasRec on Tuesday afternoon for a presentation at the Women’s Action Tent: it was cold and unwelcoming, complete with metal detectors, rather like a desolate maze, too far from the official conference. NasRec is another abandoned amusement park, owned by the same company that owns Share World.

There was Ubuntu Village, another official site, which we did not visit, but which reportedly had lots of vendors and highlighted African culture and South African culture specifically. At one of the Jubilee South Africa events at Shaft 17, a South African colleague expressed his disgust and outrage at the suggestion that the concept of Ubuntu (human connectedness, humanity) could be packaged or taught. In the ensuing discussion, it was agreed that this was a corruption and appropriation of African culture, something people felt the WSSD was doing quite a lot of.

There was the Water Dome, which represented the Who’s Who of water privatization. The Water Dome along with the full page ads and the billboards along all the highways, was another testimony to the huge presence, high profile, and influence of corporations at the WSSD (or, as people began to refer to it, the W$$D). To many people’s great disappointment, the Water Dome was officially opened by Nelson Mandela! Groups working against water privatization held a protest there on the morning of August 29.

And there was Sandton with its imposing and glistening skyline, which was built with the white capital that fled downtown Johannesburg in the 1990s at the dawn of a new South Africa. Sandton, the site of the official conference, is an exclusive almost totally lily white suburb which is unaffordable for most South Africans, inaccessible, and easy to barricade from the rest of the world and certainly from Alexandra. In May 2002, before Sandton became the virtual “No Go Zone” it was for the W$$D, Njoki along with other participants of the “Services for All?” conference of the Municipal Services Project had received a tour of Sandton. It was an eye-opening experience of the continuing apartheid in the New South Africa. The only Black people that she observed were either in uniform or wearing ID badges; during the W$$D, she only got into Sandton for media events and interviews and for the August 31st Social Movements March & Rally: access this time was tightly controlled using riot police, armored vehicles, military forces, and barbed wire!

Our time in Johannesburg began with a teach-in at Witswatersrand (Wits) University organized by the International Forum on Globalization with a number of local groups and institutions, including the Anti Privatization Forum (APF). The Teach-In put many issues on the table, not least of them GMOs, corporate rule & greed, privatization, peoples’ struggles and resistance, and spotlighted a number of key campaigns around the world. The Teach-In was attended by dozens of APF activists who were bused in every day and stayed late on both days; their presence was highly visible, especially the many songs of struggle that they used to welcome presenters and as commentary or response to presentations.

The Festivities Begin . . .

On the first day of the teach-in, Saturday, August 24, the participants, led by APF activists and joined by key allies, organized a march intending to go to John Vorster Square, the site of the Johannesburg city prison, to protest the detention of more than 70 of APF’s members. Nearly 700 people from dozens of countries left the teach-in at around 6 pm on Saturday, in a festive mood and bearing candles, with APF members leading the way with the “toyi-toyi” dance and chants and songs in a number of languages.

The scene changed quickly as only one block off of the grounds of Wits campus the police clamped down. They fired at least 6 concussion grenades into the candle-holding crowd and stopped the march dead in its tracks. A Canadian activist was badly injured and rushed to the hospital after a grenade canister landed on her leg and left burns. A South African journalist was arrested. Despite the brutal police crackdown, hundreds stayed on the block with the police barricade and sang, danced, and made sure the police knew that “the whole world is watching.”

Demonstrators were treated to rousing speeches by representatives of some of the leading global justice movements around the world, including Trevor Ngwane and Virginia Setshedi of Soweto, Oscar Olivera of La Coordinadora in Bolivia, MP Giyose of Jubilee South Africa, Maude Barlow and Tony Clarke from Canada, as well as Njoki. For two hours, the dark Johannesburg street was transformed into a global street festival of resistance. The show of force on Saturday was clearly intended to discourage participation in large marches being organized by the social movements for the August 31 march. Less than a week later, South Africa’s Mail and Guardian newspaper would print a partial apology for police “overreaction” from the South African National Intelligence Agency. Nevertheless, the damage was done and many believe, the incident served to frighten many people from participating in the Social Movements Indaba march and rally on August 31st.

We also participated in the Jubilee South Africa-organized forum on debt and reparations held at Shaft 17. And in the former Women’s Prison, now converted into a sort of women’s resource center, over 50 representatives of social movements and NGOs from Swaziland, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Kenya, the United Kingdom, South Africa, Canada, the United States, and Lesotho met to discuss and strategize on the World Bank Bonds Boycott campaign. In the morning session of the meeting, a small group met to share experiences of harmful World Bank policies. Meeting participants also focused on developing ways to more strongly link the boycott with global South-based struggles against the Bank.

In the afternoon session of the meeting, about 50 people participated in a vibrant public workshop and strategy session titled “Global Struggles Against the World Bank.” Many people from across Southern Africa testified how the World Bank had caused damage to their countries. The session ended with a discussion of strategies to call the World Bank to account for its many injustices, including ideas to spread the World Bank Bonds Boycott to countries in sub-Saharan Africa (initially by targeting African universities and worker pension funds to join the boycott); calling for reparations; and using public tribunals to educate and mobilize people.

In the meantime, as social movements, women’s groups, landless people, youth, and other groupings of those in Johannesburg were charting a new agenda of South-South exchanges, of technical support, and resource sharing, the official summit negotiations process was in a deadlock. One of the key obstacles to any kind of progressive advance has been, not surprisingly, the U.S. government, which is blocking real action to stop climate change, while pushing the same, failed neo-liberal medicine promoted by the IMF, World Bank, and WTO as the solution to global poverty. There was also great resentment and outcry over the heavy presence of multinational corporations.

However, as Njoki observed in her address to debt campaigners at the Jubilee South Africa forum, the story and emphasis was on the people gathered in Johannesburg – not for the official talk-fest – to learn from each other, to share battle stories, and most importantly to chart a common future of interdependency and international solidarity. The billions in advertising worldwide and perhaps millions at the W$$D did not work. The people are not fooled; indeed, they have never been fooled. It was heartening to hear young students discuss the issues connected to the land issues in Zimbabwe in a sophisticated and well thought out manner, making connections to land issues world wide (in Brazil, in South Africa, and in the Americas for indigenous and First Nations peoples) and without sounding like apologists for President Mugabe of Zimbabwe. It was encouraging to hear small-scale farmers articulate why they do not consider GMOs the answer to Africa’s food needs. It was inspiring to hear ordinary and extraordinary South Africans articulate why and how NEPAD (the New Partnership for African Development) was another ruse to distract poor and working Africans, especially South Africans, from their ever-growing demands for every day basics and for justice.

We are encouraged, heartened, and inspired to continue the struggles for global justice. And we were challenged to remember the special culpability and responsibility borne by those of us who live in the United States and who benefit from the ravages of economic globalization – or capitalism as they would charge in Southern Africa.