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<\/a><\/p>\nMike Loewe<\/p>\n
3 December 2011<\/p>\n
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Do more! This is what world leaders were told by Africa’s largest gathering of anti-climate change marchers.<\/p>\n
Waves of groups and movements moved slowly down Durban’s Dr Pixley Kasema Street carrying or waving banners and posters of many sizes this morning – all headed to the United Nations climate change conference, or COP17.<\/p>\n
There were posters printed and hand-drawn, slogan-emblazoned T-shirts, enormous balloons, effigies of starving farmers, an activist wearing an large polar bear mask, a clown on a uni-cycle, Americans carrying the “coffin of coal”, and finally three topless painted women protesting the “intergenerational tyranny” of nuclear power.<\/p>\n
Police kept up a large and close presence, lining both the pavements and occasionally cordoning off sections of the road.<\/p>\n
At one point the blue-clad cops kept 300 pro-Zuma ANC Youth League members, who marched in their brand-new, shiny green COP17 volunteer tracksuits, from getting to close to South Africa’s New Left Front, which is opposed to the ruling ANC. But there were no incidents of violence, nor any hint of animosity in the crowd which took over two hours to wend its way to COP17.<\/p>\n
March leaders used a large, four-speaker sound system mounted on the back of a bakkie (one-ton farmer’s truck) to keep up booming stream of vibrant and, at times, strict communication.<\/p>\n
Each group of activists shouted their own slogans and sang songs unique to their issue, such as a small group from Taiwan who sweetly sang: “One degree we can live, two degree and where are we?”<\/p>\n
March organisers proclaimed their joy at seeing different groups around the world all uniting under the banner of climate change activism. It was hot, and police officers sweated it out in riot helmets and bullet-proof vests.<\/p>\n
The mood among the marchers was a mix jubilant militancy. One common theme was how climate change ravaging rural women was caused by polluters, who were generally portrayed as greedy multinational corporations.<\/p>\n
Many shouts were leveled at the nations taking part in the COP17 talks who were accused of bending towards fulfilling the desires “the polluters” at the conference. But the main theme was for COP17 to “hear” the voices of the movements.<\/p>\n
Interviewed as he walked almost incognito among the crowd or posed for a picture with international activists, Zwelinzima Vavi, secretary general of South Africa’s trade union, Cosatu, said: “I am seeing unity in diversity.”<\/p>\n
World leaders needed to “listen and take action to save our earth”.<\/p>\n
Cosatu members turned out numbers, thanks in part he said to media coverage given to green issues.<\/p>\n
“South Africa is traditionally self-centered” but “suddenly you see how much harm is being caused to the environment”.<\/p>\n
It was up to people to take on corporations who were “blocking” the negotiations at COP17 and “locking emissions” into the atmosphere.<\/p>\n
Speaking to the crowd outside the conference, Vavi said: “Durban, South Africa, Africa, the world is a “crime scene” ravaged by polluters who were also “here at COP filibustering”, while nearby in the Durban south basin “children die from asthma” caused by pollution in the streets coming from multi-national oil company, Engen.<\/p>\n
In KwaZulu-Natal people were dying every week from lightening.<\/p>\n
“We cannot see our stars. There is a dark cloud hanging over our communities.”<\/p>\n
In the Johannesburg area, mining companies who made “billions and billions” abandoned the area when there was no more to exploit, leaving people who lived there to face the destruction of their environment.<\/p>\n
In Kenya people were dying every day from droughts caused by emissions from the world’s worst polluter, the USA. Ironically, President Barack Obama had family roots in Kenya.<\/p>\n
“Shame on you Barack Obama!” he shouted.<\/p>\n
While people died in their masses, at COP17 the US and Canada “sabotaged every effort to reach a sensible agreement”.<\/p>\n
Cosatu was demanding a “just decision” from COP17, which would “save Africa”.<\/p>\n
He called for a carbon tax so that “those who pollute the world must pay our governments so that we can save ourselves.”<\/p>\n
“You must continue to mobilise and demand action and agreement (from COP17). You must save our world from the reckless and irresponsible action of the polluters.”<\/p>\n
COP President and SA International Relations Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane promised to take the collection of proposals handed to her by the movements into the COP17 process, and agreed with Vavi on the question of African women being hurt by climate-change induced drouhgts.<\/p>\n
She said 80% of Africa’s food producers were women and they needed to be supported with adaptation measures arising out of COP17. She called for the Global Climate Fund and a second period of commitment to the Kyoto Protocol to be implemented “now!”<\/p>\n
UNFCCC executive secretary Christiana Figueres said millions of people around the world were looking to the Durban conference to live up to its “responsibilities”.<\/p>\n
“We are working tirelessly.” She appealed to the crowd to adopt the line she heard in a children’s play – “Do something, and when you have done as much as you possibly can, do more.”<\/p>\n
This evoked the response from a march leader: “She must do more.” The same leader also called COP17 “the Conference of Polluters”.<\/p>\n
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