April 2011 - Centre for Civil Society - University of KwaZulu-Natal

must also shoulder blame. In December 2009 in Copenhagen, South Africa’s
negotiators were already criticized by G77 climate leader Lumumba
Di-Aping for having ‘actively sought to disrupt the unity of the Africa
bloc.’
One SA official, Joanne Yawitch, then forced a humiliating apology from
Di-Aping for his frank talk (to an African civil society caucus), as
reported by Noseweek blogger Adam Welz.
Yet by joining the presidents of the US, China, Brazil and India to sign
the 2009 Copenhagen Accord, Zuma did exactly what Yawitch had denied
was
underway: destroyed the unity of Africa and the G77 in a secret,
widely-condemned side-room deal.
US President Barack Obama’s Kenyan family and Zuma’s Zulu compatriots
would be amongst those most adversely affected by climate chaos, as
suggested by recent KwaZulu flooding. Di-Aping asked, poignantly, ‘What
is Obama going to tell his daughters? That their relatives’ lives are
not worth anything?’ Di-Aping quite accurately described the Copenhagen
Accord as ‘an incineration pact in order to maintain the economic
dependence of a few countries.’
In Copenhagen and Cancun, the main diversionary tactic used by Pretoria
negotiators was a claim to willingly cut 34 percent of 2020 emissions
below ‘business as usual’. However, Tristen Taylor of Earthlife Africa
begged Pretoria for details about the 34 percent pledge, and after two
weeks of delays in December 2009, learned Yawitch’s estimates were from
a ‘Growth Without Constraint’ (GWC) scenario used by government
negotiators as a bargaining chip, and was quite divorced from the
reality of the industrially stagnant SA economy.
According to Taylor, ‘GWC is fantasy, essentially an academic exercise
to see how much carbon South Africa would produce given unlimited
resources and cheap energy prices.’ Officials had already conceded GWC
was ‘neither robust nor plausible’ eighteen months ago, leading Taylor
to conclude, ‘The SA government has pulled a public relations stunt.’
And again at the 2010 COP 16 in Cancún, the new Minister for Water and
Environmental Affairs, Edna Molewa, played the ‘development’ card
against urgent binding emissions cuts: ‘We believe that it is quite
important that as developing countries we also get an opportunity to
allow development to happen because of poverty.’
Molewa implies that SA’s extremely high emissions contribute to
poverty-reduction, when in fact the opposite is more truthful. Eskom’s
supply of the cheapest electricity in the world to two of the biggest
mining/metals companies in the world (BHP Billiton and Anglo American
Corporation) requires a 127 percent price increase for ordinary
households from 2009-12 to pay for new capacity. This is leading to mass
electricity disconnections.
Did Zuma know what he was doing, authorizing a climate policy that
serves major corporations instead of his mass base? Do these firms keep
SA’s ruling party lubricated with cash, Black Economic Empowerment deals
and jobs for cronies? Do they need higher SA carbon emissions so as to
continue receiving ultra-cheap coal-fired electricity, and then export
their profits to London and Melbourne?
Perhaps the answers are affirmative, but on the other hand, two other