Name given to exellent hash from the reigon.Following is a description of ...well just read the thing,Its by lorenzo so you know its 'dope'
MASS MARCH IN SOUTH AFRICA AGAINST WCAR
by Lorenzo Komboa Ervin, special correspondent
Friday, August 31, 2001 DURBAN, SOUTH AFRICA
On the opening day of the United Nations' sponsored World
Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa, almost
20,000 persons marched in an anti-government
demonstration to protest the failure of the South African
government's land reform policy for the poor, and its
anticipated sale of the telecommunications industry, electrical
utilities and other state-owned properties to private
entrepreneurs. According to March organizers they also
wanted to let the world know about "this fraud of a conference
fof the corporate rich, while the poor suffer", as one marcher
put it on his picket sign. Myself and a small group of
Americans, Asians, Europeans and others left the
Non-Government Organization portion of the conference to
march in solidarity.
This march was organized by the Durban Social Form, an
umberella group of the Landless People's Movement, the
National Land Committee, COSATU, the largest labor union in
the country and numerous other social and community
groups. The demonstration took place as part of a 2-day
general strike called for by COSATU, which involved millions
of South African workers, and crippled the transport,
construction, and other industries, and snarled traffic all over
the city of Durban and othere parts of South Africa.
Protesters carried picket signs calling President Thabo Mbeki
"a liar", "bully", and warning that the government will face even
more disruptions, which would threaten the power of the
African National Congress government and "their rich friends
backing them." Many described the conflict between
COSATU, the DSF, and the ANC government as a "class
war", which they saw as resulting one day into a "coup of the
poor" to throw the rich and their ANC politicians out of power.
All day long, the marchers angrily spoke about the "treachery"
of the ANC, whom they said had "sold out" the poor of the
country. Some even said that President Mbeki "shamed" his
father, Govan Mbeki, who had died earlier that day, and whom
was generally respected as a champion of the poor. Because
of Mbeki and the ANC, they said, millions had neither land nor
jobs, that over 3 million were homeless, 3.5 million
unemployed, and millions of others without farms or land to
sustain themselves.
Thousands of us assembled at the Natal Technical College,
and marched all the way through Central Durban, picking up
thousands of people along the way, until finally we came to the
International Convention Center in the business district, where
the main conference was being held. When the marhed
ended, a rally was held, where speaker after speakers
condemned the United States and Israel as "evil twins"
sanctioning and carrying out genocide in the Middle East.
President George W. Bush ("that racist cowpoke") and the
USA was especially condemned for "arrogantly thumbing their
noses" at the conference and attempting to dominate the
conference agenda, when Bush called for the elimination of
anydiscussions around reparations for slavery and any
designation of Israel as a "racist Zionist" state.
Because Israel had chosen the week of the conference to
attack a Palestinian city in the West Bank earlier in the week,
there had been serious tensions between the Israeli
"peaceniks" and Palestinian deloegates to the NGO
conference. In fact, there were daily militant demonstrations
and counter-demonstrations, which quickly became
confrontations that had to be separated by the United Nations
security police and Metro Durban officers assigned to the
NGO conference (which preceded the meeting of heads of
state). This also inflamed the Arab and Asian communities in
Durban and other cities. Large numbers of muslim
pro-Palestinian demonstrators poured into Durban for the
protest on Friday, and played a major role in the march. In
fact, there seemed to be more support from both the Africans
and Asians at this demonstration than at any other iId seen
since I'd arrived in South Africa, even more than at the NGO
conference itself.
The march included a number of urban homeless, rural
landless (so called 'squatters") and other desperately poor
whom the ANC government had recently used police forces to
drive out of shantyowns and settlements in the months
preceeding the conference. (In video that was shown all over
the world, the police brutally destroyed hamlets, personal
property, and used excessive force), according to protesters.
At a press conference earlier in the week, leaders of the
landless movement, said that the ANC land policies were a
failure, a "tragedy", and that the poor were being crushed.
They said that landlessness itself was a symptom of racist and
economic domination, a carryover from the racist apartheid
regime, but was not being made a priority by the ANC ruling
party. The demonstration was called for to unite all their
forces, and to show that they would not passively accept the
government's anti-poor economic policies.
I have never been in a protest march like this one, though I
had been to a lifetime of protests all over the world. Elders and
the youth alike sprang into action, literally jumping and running
many parts of the route, while screaming slogans. The march
itself lased almost 3 1/2 hours, over a course of about 5 miles.
Thousands of ordinary working class and poor people came
out of their houses, churches, stores, and other places to join
in, and thousands of others stood on the sidewalks to spur us
on. It literally stopped all action in Durban, a city of 3.2 million
people. I know I will never forget this march, and felt that I was
part of a great historical happening. Most felt that this was the
start of a new movement, a poor peoples movement which
would not be denied or ignored, and that the poor population
would begin to speak with a loud voice. They were insistent
that neither ANC government bureaucrats, heads of state, or
anybody else would speak for them anymore. They would not
be victims in a country they had fought to create in the battle to
overturn apartheid, and they forcefully said that they would
take control of their own destiny.
The real story in South Africa is not what is happening at the
World Conference Against Racism, whether with statesmen
mildly "debating" over racism or lawyers at the NGO arguing
over fine details of resolutions and political statements on
reparations or United Nations procedure, the real story is what
is happening in the streets with the poor and working class
people of South African developing a new social revolutionary
movement. That's where I always want to be: on the streets
with the common people while they make revolution
Original: Durban poison