Not so civil, please!

When did we become such compliant people?
One of the most striking aspects of COP17 in Durban early this month was the relative tameness of the protests. Altjhough I was told by one policeman at the Global Day of Action that “these people can be dangerous, you know”, little sign of that was seen. And on the night of 9 December, when a number of people seemed keen to occupy the precinct to make their voices heard by the negotiators, the protest seems to have been rather peacefully organised and negotiated away.
Meanwhile, here in Johannesburg, citizens are enraged that we’ve had a road tolling system imposed on us without consultation, which will become active in February. This will significantly increase commuting costs. (Under other circumstances, I’d be in favour of something like this – it’s one of a number of tactics necessary to reduce the number of cars on the road and boost use of public transport. But because, a) public transport is poor, with trains and buses only on limited routes, and minibus taxis notoriously unsafe and driven by badly trained drivers and b) there’s been a huge lack of transparency in the process, it makes me as angry as the next resident.)
It’s a situation that screams for civil disobedience. If even ten percent of vehicles refuse to install the new ‘e-tag’ licence plates necessary for smooth processing, and then refuse to pay fines, the entire system would freeze within a month or two. Yet I have heard many people discussing this, on talk radio and in public spaces, wondering if it’s okay to do something illegal. Does civil disobedience not have to be “within the law”, I heard one person ask.
Good grief, and you live in South Africa, where we have a splendid record of civil disobedience! That’s what civil disobedience IS: a campaign in which numbers of people state that they will disobey laws or regulations with a certain end in mind – usually it’s getting those laws off the statute books. When people burnt their passes, it was an act of civil disobedience, and very much illegal, with the aim of getting the laws about the dompas wiped out.
The roots of a police state are not the apparatus thereof, it’s the willingness of the people to ‘go along’, to accept, to be policed. That, in my view, was the mindset shown on 9 December: security says we must get out of the building, so let’s negotiate the best way to do this. (To be fair, though, I wasn’t there, not being accredited to the UN precinct, so there may have been circumstances I’m not aware of.)
It’s not the negotiators who get us places, in my experience. They’re very useful once the wall has been partially smashed, once the square has been occupied… but action is necessary to shift the blockages. If we want to change the world, we need to grow some more spine!
“Civil disobedience is the active, professed refusal to obey certain laws, demands, and commands of a government, or of an occupying international power. Civil disobedience is commonly, though not always, defined as being nonviolent resistance. It is one form of civil resistance.” (Wikipedia)
“…the refusal to obey certain laws or governmental demands for the purpose of influencing legislation or government policy, characterized by the employment of such nonviolent techniques as boycotting, picketing, and nonpayment of taxes.” (dictoionary.com)

Whose process is this?

Captions: Bobby Peek of groundWork addresses the last remaining activists on 9 December; Africa will be hardest hit; some youngsters joined the all-night vigil, under tarpaulin due to the rain.



The Conference of the Parties is winding to a close. We've seen a document which suggests that the result will be the launching of "a process in order to develop a legal framework applicable to all" (this, of course, means developed and developing countries), a framework agreement committing countries to new targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions, "after 2020". Yippee. This puts us on course to (at least) hit a global increase of 4 degrees, which means 8 for us in southern Africa.
As one woman said at the traditional all-night vigil which started at 7:00 pm (she's been to three COPs and attended vigils at each one), "If this isn't working" - as plainly, after 17 years, it isn't - "then what do we do?"
I doffed my journalist's hat and made an activist's plea. Let's take it away from them, I said. Let's mobilise people to put pressure on them - the governments and corporates inside the UN precinct. They live, breathe and make money off us, so we do have power over them. Civil disobedience campaigns, boycotts, persistent picketting, we've used them before with success. "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." (Margaret Mead)
We just have to get the message through to people that this is not a political cause, this is about things that do and will matter to them where they live: food, water, air, health, life. Understand that, and massive mobilisation is possible. It's time to tell those who are delaying and backing and filling that we have withdrawn their permits, their rights to act against our common interests. Panzi! Vamos!
Siyaya!

Green Bombers

Ever since Saturday’s Global Day of Action at COP17, it’s been apparent that there are some people wearing the green uniforms of Host City Volunteers who are not quite the innocent volunteers they seem. Activists have taken to calling them the Green Bombers, and I had a taste of them today at Durban’s City Hall.
I’d joined a very small group of angry people who were staging a spur-of-the-moment protest outside City Hall, where President Jacob Zuma was addressing a meeting. There’d been talk that the Kyoto Protocol was dead, and the so-called Durban Mandate would take its place, which activists feel is a very unsatisfactory result. When we arrived, the two people carrying banners reading ‘Africa will burn’ and ‘Blood on your hands’ were immediately accosted by the Green Bombers and told “You can’t be here”. A journalist from Montreal came to their rescue, getting indignant about the infringement on people’s rights.
In addition to the small group I’d linked up with, there were a number of people from the South Durban Community Environmental Alliance, and the contingent of aggressive Green Bombers got to work, trying to clear them from the public space as well. (I asked one to tell me what regulations he was operating under. His response was, “Lady, I don’t know, I’m just following orders from security.” Cops in riot gear were spread out across the entrance to City Hall, and the police and Green Bombers communicated with each other frequently.
‘My’ banner holders painted their palms with red paint to symbolise the ‘blood on our hands’, and the fashion soon spread across the square. To our amazement, the Green Bombers refused to let anyone with painted hands into the City Hall to attend the meeting. It would, explained one man to me, “make people excitable” inside.
As I listened in on one woman argue with the Bombers, I heard him say that he was with intelligence. Naturally, I trotted over and asked him to repeat this and explain. He said, “Of what value would it be to you to know?”
“I think it would be of great interest to the citizens of South Africa to know that their intelligence officers were dressing up in UN Host City Volunteer outfits.”
At that, I was subjected to a tirade about “you journalists”; that wonderful pejorative, ‘opportunistic’ was used, as I began to walk away. I turned and charged back, asking the user to explain exactly what ‘opportunistic’ means. Apparently it means people like me, who listen for something they can use that’s sensational, “even a joke like this”, and then write “stories without content”.
“Why don’t you simply tell the media the truth?” I asked. “When I asked about the comment, why did you not just say it was a joke?”
“You, you represent a noble profession which has lost all its morals,” I was told, along with much more about how I write such stories simply to make lots of money and the like. All the time, the aggression was palpable and the sense that one wrong move would provoke some kind of threat, at the least.
Shortly after this, a very angry man burst out of City Hall, waving a small poster. He and the young woman who followed him out were enraged that they had been thrown out of the meeting for silently and peacefully holding up posters. They melded with the protesters outside, and some very loud and angry chants of Panzi followed (Panzi means ‘Down with’ and is always repeated, as in “Panzi Canada, panzi!”). We had Panzi Zuma, Panzi the USA and EU, Panzi COP17 – and, from the angry young woman, “Panzi people who dress up in uniforms and pretend to be volunteers, but are getting paid by who knows who, panzi!” (That’s a loose translation given to me by a fellow journalist.)
After two hours at the protest, I moved on to the exhibition next to the UN precinct for an interview with singer-songwriter Robby Romero, United Nations Ambassador of Youth for the Environment (more on that later – but to hear some of his music, go to http://eaglethunder.com , it’s good stuff). It was quite a bizarre contrast to move from a group of people so impassioned, so engaged and angry to the smooth, slick environs of what is, really, a sophisticated trade show showcasing mining houses, petrochemical companies and a certain famous soft drink… “Civil society has bought into the life of convenience,” said Romero. “While we don’t hgave to give up everything, the Age of Convenience has to be checked. We need to follow ‘No Harm’ policies.” Once, he said, humans were caretakers of the earth, and they have to become caretakers again, caretakers who are connected to each other and the planet.
Looking around at the ‘business-as-usual’ expo, he said, “As the climate changes, we need to change, too.”
9 December: Update
Since writing this, I've discovered that my sense of physical threat from the Green Bombers was accurate. Inside the hall, activists were slapped, punched, kocked down and kicked by them.
Timeslive, 8 Dcember:
''Volunteers'' employed by the city of Durban at COP17 yesterday slapped and kicked environmental activists who confronted President Jacob Zuma for not standing up for Africa at the climate change talks.

The heavy-handed actions of the "green bombers" - so called by activists because of their green uniforms and aggression - and of unionists, who kicked an activist, were in full view of the world's media.
After Zuma had told the activists at a report-back session in the Durban City Hall that he felt that it was necessary for him to interact with civil society, pandemonium broke out when placards calling on him to "ditch Europe and the US" and not "let Africa fry" were held up.
The volunteers and Zuma's bodyguards pulled the placards from the activists and tore them up.
When the activists demanded that they be allowed to hold up their placards as part of their interaction with Zuma, the volunteers pushed and slapped them while trying to throw them out of the hall. A group of people, wearing SA Municipal Workers' Union T-shirts, then started singing in support of Zuma.
Zuma did not intervene in the scuffle but had a clear view of the assault on local climate activist Rehad Desai, who was slapped by a volunteer and then pushed to the ground when he called for the president to stand up for Africa.
After Desai fell, the unionists formed a ring around him and kicked him as they sang.
Moe Shaik, the head of the Secret Service, and Cosatu's KwaZulu-Natal secretary, Zet Luzipho, tried to stop the chaos by pushing the volunteers away but the group continued to kick Desai.
After KwaZulu-Natal Premier Zweli Mkhize, the programme director, repeatedly called for calm police broke up the scuffles.
Desai and several other activists were thrown out but the volunteers, who started the trouble, remained. No arrests were made.
The meeting continued with Zuma denouncing the chaos as "uncalled for".
"I don't agree with people who disrupt and loot in the name of democracy," he said. "We must tolerate other people's views."
But the activists slammed Zuma, saying he did nothing to protect their rights.
"He just sat there and did nothing. It happened right in front of him," Siziwe Khanyile, of South African environmental group Groundwork, said.
Desai said he was kicked for raising his concerns about speculation that Zuma was planning to side with the EU during the climate negotiations.
He said he had it on good authority that the ''green bombers'' were members of the ANC Youth League, employed by outgoing Durban city manager Mike Sutcliffe to intimidate activists at COP17.
eThekwini municipal spokesman Thabo Mofokeng confirmed that COP17 volunteers were hired and paid by the city, but he rubbished claims that they were told to intimidate activists.
Sutcliffe said the volunteers did not initiate the scuffle.
"The meeting, which was progressing positively, was interrupted by a small group of protestors who chose the opportunity to attempt to disrupt proceedings by raising posters while their own representatives were engaging with the president.
"After a few minutes of disruption, members of the audience tried to get the protestors to take down their posters and allow the proceedings to continue. The situation escalated and a scuffle broke out between protestors and the audience. Security, both SAPS and municipal, became involved and then a few COP17 volunteers, who were standing close by, were drawn into the fray," he said.
The secretary of the ANC Youth League's eThekwini region, Vukani Ndlovu, dismissed the suggestion that the volunteers were recruited from the league, saying they were "just youth".
***

CIty Press
Activists claim Zuma supporters attacked them
2011-12-08 16:

Yolandi Groenewald
Tensions between local left activists at COP17 in Durban and the government exploded again today with activists claiming they were assaulted by “a group of pro-Zuma supporters” at a meeting with President Jacob Zuma.

“In a meeting designed for engagement between President Zuma and communities and civil society, violence broke out when peaceful civil society demonstrators silently held up signs asking ‘Zuma to stand with Africa,’” said Tristen Taylor from Earthlife Africa.

He said the “pro-Zuma supporters”, many wearing the uniforms of COP17 volunteers then attacked the demonstrators “in an act of mob violence”.

“Demonstrators were roughed up and some had to flee the hall,” he said. “While all of this went on, President Zuma sat up on the podium and remained quiet. Furthermore, it took nearly ten minutes before police entered the hall to restore order.”

Greenpeace activists were also caught in the fistfight. Greenpeace activist Melita Steele was injured. She tweeted: People attacked in the meeting for protesting. I ended up getting punched and other people were kicked.

Her colleague, Ferial Adams, told Eyewitness News that youths started singing and toyi-toying before they were joined by a group of ANC supporters, dressed as COP17 marshals, who then attacked the activists.

Adams was also punched and kicked by the crowd.

Siziwe Khanyile of groundWork said: “This was our event, organised to communicate with President Zuma. We were then abused, kicked out, robbed, and manhandled by Zuma supporters disguised as COP17 volunteers.”

The latest incident follows violence over the weekend where activists were attacked by a group of COP17 volunteers, also dressed in their bright green uniform.

The “green bombers” as they were dubbed by the activists roughed up the green activists and pelted them with stones over the weekend at the Day of Global Action march.

Before COP17 the leftist activists also complained that they were closely being watched by both National Intelligence and the police’s crime intelligence.

Zuma’s office would not say how the president reacted during the scuffle, reports Sabelo Ndlangisa.

In a statement, Zuma’s spokesperson, Mac Maharaj, said there had been “an unfortunate scuffle at the beginning of the meeting” with groups jostling to be heard.

“The Presidency acknowledges the intervention of the police who did their jobs to restore order in the Durban City Hall. The meeting continued successfully and constructively with civil society afterwards,” Maharaj said.

Spokesperson for the police, General Vish Naidoo, confirmed the altercation, but denied that it took place directly in front of Zuma.

"There was a difference of opinion and police intervened," he said. "The situation was resolved and normalised immediately."

He said he was informed the fight was between COP17 volunteers and NGOs. No one was arrested.

***

Give the earth her due

Captions: Energy is the key to South African protests; the thick blue line;
Natlie greene's impassioned plea; the Engen oil refinery with houses in the background.

The sharp end of fossil fuel use is felt in the South Durban Basin, nicknamed ‘cancer valley’. This is not just one of the most polluted places in South Africa, it’s one of the worst in the world – and it’s just a twenty minute drive from where the so-called Conference of Polluters (COP17, the 17^th Conference of the Parties) is taking place.

South Durban is where 80% of the imported crude oil in South Africa is refined, at Sapref (jointly owned by Shell and BP) and the Engen refinery which has had a number of fires, the latest in October 2011.

More than a quarter of a million people (mostly blue-collar) live all around these refineries and other polluting industries, including a paper mill – 150 smoke stack industries in all. About 15 years ago, locals started to campaign around the issue of the health impacts they were experiencing – more than half the children in local schools suffer from asthma, for example, while cancer is far too common. (Bobby Peek, one of the founding fathers of activism in this region, grew up playing rugby on a field close to the Engen refinery. Four of his team-mates have since died of cancer. If you live here, research has shown, you are 250 times more likely than residents elsewhere to get cancer.)

The South Durban Community Environmental Alliance (SDCEA) won some notable victories, pressurising the authorities to create a local system monitoring and regulating air quality – sadly, this year the staff complement was cut by half, so the activist now use the ‘Bucket Brigade’, a cost-effective system which enables them to sample the air themselves (it gets sent to California for independent testing – the results show massive readings of nasties like benzene, methanol, sulphides and jujst about every chemical you can think of, some of which can readily be smelt in the air). Today, under the guidance of another long-term local activist, Desmond D’Sa, a group of COP17 visitors took what the SDCEA calls ‘the Toxic Tour’ to see houses cheek-by-jowl with massive refineries and stacks belching smoke. We can smell rich whiffs of pungent stuff, and Desmond tells us it’s worse at night.

The tour was followed the whole way by police who, tellingly, conferred with members of the refineries’ security staff. We ended up at the front gate of the Engen refinery, where, it turned out, we had a welcoming committee. Dozens of police, many in full riot gear, were lined up at the gates.

A protest had been planned, and activists whipped out a slew of banners to line the road.

I stepped across the road to get a picture, but was ordered back:

“Get back!”

“But I’m a journalist, I just want to get a picture…”

“Get back, that was NOT in your permit!”

Turns out he took the blue cap I and many others were wearing, with the simple slogan, ‘Unite against climate change’, to mean I was a protestor too. Which made me one of those alien creatures the police have been warmed against. At Saturday’s march, a policeman told me, “These people can be dangerous, you know,” which did seem odd at a moment when a trio of dancing, half-naked women happened to be passing… Yesterday, the waste pickers were protesting – in accordance with their permit – outside the ICC, but when they held up banners and posters, they were apparently ordered to desist – the banners and posters were ‘not in your permit’. (Surely banners and protesters are as natural a combination as love and marriage, beans and samp or cops and guns?) Control of the aliens from NGOs and civil society – fatherly but firm – has been the name of the game.

The protest was used as an occasion to publicise, on a world stage, the campaign to recognise the Rights of Mother Earth. Last year, on Earth Day, a group of 35,000 people adopted a Universal Declaration on the Rights of Mother Earth in Cochabamba, Bolivia. This records that Mother Earth has:

The right to live and to exist;

The right to be respected;

The right to regenerate its bio-capacity and to continue it’s vital cycles and processes free of human alteration;

The right to maintain their identity and integrity as differentiated beings, self-regulated and interrelated;

The right to water as the source of life;

The right to clean air;

The right to comprehensive health;

The right to be free of contamination and pollution, free of toxic and radioactive waste;

The right to be free of alterations or modifications of it’s genetic structure in a manner that threatens it’s integrity or vital and healthy functioning;

The right to prompt and full restoration for violations to the rights acknowledged in this Declaration caused by human activities.

This legal route, says Cormac Cullinan, a South African lawyer who helped draft the Declaration, may be the best to take to protect the environment – give Earth legal rights which can contested and enforced through the courts.

This has already happened in Ecuador, the first country in the world to enshrine these natural rights in law, says Natalie Greene, another speaker at the protest. Greene is an environmental activist with Fundación Pachamama, a group which helped rewrite that country’s constitution in 2008. A recent case in Ecuador offers an example of how such ‘Wild Law’, as Cullinan calls it, could work: “the Provincial court of Loja granted an injunction against the Provincial Government of Loja to stop dumping excavation material into the Vilcabamba river, because it violated the constitutional rights of the river to exist and maintain its vital cycles, structure, functions, and evolutionary processes” (www.uncsd2012.org/rio20/).

By EarthSummit 2012/Rio+20 in June 2012, the aim is to present a petition containing one million signatures calling for the universal acceptance of the rights of nature. Go to www.rightsofmotherearth.com to find out how to add your name.

Third post for 3 December march

I had to include a pic of the Godiva trio, of course - and of the activists at the beach, which was the terminus of the march.

Second post on 3 Dec march

There were some brave Canadians present, giving some civil society balance to their government's position!
Don't you love the school kids rushing to join the march?
Click on my other 3 December posts (at right) for more.

Long walk to climate justice

"At last, something real," I heard one activist say. 'Something real' was the Global Day of Action, which drew, what, 8,000 protestors? (The police told me 5,000, an activist leader said 8,000 - you pays yer money and you takes yer choice.)
It took more than two and half hours to march from an area known as the Warwick Triangle to the International Convention Centre - with a pause en route outside the USA Consulate. At the ICC, the crowd met Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC, and the COP17 president, Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane (who graciously acknowledged that civil society was an 'important component' of the COP - and advised the activists to support the local economy by visiting the beachfront and the shopping malls). Veteran activist Tom Goldtooth (Indigenous Environmental Network) joined African leaders like trade unionist Zwelinzima Vavi in making speeches.
Some colourful characters had flown in long-haul, including a trio of women whom I'm sure every camera snapped - they marched bare-breasted (but painted) against nuclear power. Every kind of local activist was present, from the subsistence fisherfolk of Durban to rural women to an LBGT contingent and many unionists.
I found the two key songs of the march rather amusing in counterpoint: a favourite of march leader Virginia Magwaza-Setshediwas a song which runs: "My mother was a kitchen girl/my father was a garden boy/That's why I'm a socialist, I'm a socialist, I'm a socialist..." A male march leader whom I never managed to identify, on the other hand, opted for Umshini wami (Bring me my machine gun), SA President Jacob Zuma's theme song.
I'm going to post three times today, to get enough pics in!

You have struck the women, you have struck a rock...

Today, the Rural Women's Movement turned up en masse at Speaker's Corner opposite the UN precinct in Durban, South Africa, where COP17 is being held. They are concerned about the very real impact of climate change which is already affecting their smallholder and subsistence farms.
Dancing, singing and speeches in one spot were not enough for them, so they set off on an impromptu march. Then the men and women of the One Million Climate Jobs campaign arrived in their gorgeous red T-shirts, and off we went! (Contrary to appearances, the police were quite calm, just concerned to contain the march within certain streets and not let it spread.)
Thirsty work protesting, so the Occupy people offered returning marchers water. (It's great exercise, too: one zaftig young woman yelled to me, "After tomorrow's march, I will wear a size 36!")