September 2, 2001

Mass March in South Africa Against the WCAR

By Lorenzo Komboa Ervin <komboa@...>

DURBAN, SOUTH AFRICA (August 31) -- 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 for 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
umbrella 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 other 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
march 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
any discussions 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 delegates 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 I'd 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 shantytowns and settlements in the months
preceding 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.

Copyright (c) 2001 Lorenzo Ervin. All Rights Reserved.


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