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

explanations – ignorance and cowardice – were, eight years earlier,
Zuma’s plausible defenses for promoting AIDS denialism. He helped
President Thabo Mbeki during the period in which 330,000 South Africans
died due to Pretoria’s refusal to supply anti-retroviral medicines, as a
Harvard Public Health School study showed.
To his credit, Zuma reversed course by 2003 (rather late in the day) and
endorsed public supply of AIDS medicines, as public pressure arose from
the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) and its international allies. TAC
continued to condemn Zuma, in part because of misogyny during his 2006
rape trial.
It is that sort of intensive pressure that local activists in Climate
Justice Now! SA are aiming to repeat, at the risk of otherwise allowing
Zuma to remain a signatory to a far greater genocide.
The COP 17 in Durban’s International Convention Centre, from November
28-December 9, is a chance for civil society to hold Pretoria to
account. The last such opportunity was in 2001 when the World Conference
Against Racism attracted more than 10,000 protesters angry that Mbeki
had agreed with Washington, to remove from the UN’s agenda their
demands for apartheid reparations and for a halt to Israeli apartheid
against Palestine.
This year, as in previous COPs, civil society will demand that political
elites cut emissions 50 percent by 2020 (as science requires),
decommission the dysfunctional carbon markets, pay the North-South (and
SA-African) ‘climate debt’ and transform to a post-carbon economy.
The negotiators from Pretoria, along with those from Washington,
Brussels and Beijing, will not stand up to the challenge, as they’ve
proven again and again. As in earlier conflicts, then, the spirit of
anti-apartheid resistance and lessons of AIDS medicines access are
amongst the weaponry civil society will need, in order to save the
species’ and the planet itself. The strategies and tactics they will
deploy are already being hotly debated.
ININGIZIMU AFRIKA ilungiselela “Ingqungquthela yabangcolisi bomoya
olawula isimo sezulu”
NguPatrick Bond
Yahunyushwa nguFaith ka-Manzi
Ezingqungqutheleni ezimbili ezedlule zeNhlangano yaMazwe Ezizwe
(United Nations) iKtoyo Protocol mayelana nesimo sezulu, eCopenhagen
ngo2009 kanye neCancun ngo2010, kanye nemimnye imihlangano esike
yabanjwa ngaphambili njengaseNairobi, ngabe abaholi baseNingizimu
Afrika kanye nabakhulumela lelizwe badlala yiphi indima bona?
Okudabukisa kakhulu, bajwayele ukwenzela phansi izakhamuzi kanye
nabavoti balelizwe, ozakwabo baseAfrika kanye nesimo sezemvelo
somhlaba wonke.
Okwenza kakhulu amahloni, uma siyangaya phambili kwingqungquthela
ezoba seThekwini ngomhlaka 17 kuNovemba kulonyaka iGreen Paper
ngesimo sezulu lapho kuzoba nenkulumo mpikiswano nomphakathi
kulenyaka kugqugquzela izimo ezimbili eziyingozi – amandla enuclear
kanye nokudayiswa kwesisisi esingcolisa umkhathi – lokhu kuzoholela
ekutheni kuphume ngokwethusayo ukukhiqizeka kwesisisi esingcolisa isisisi