Anti-Globalisation Protest Planned At Race Conference

From The Sowetan (Johannesburg)
August 28, 2001

This emerged yesterday in Durban where civil society organisations met under the aegis of the Durban Social Forum - a movement led by African National Congress stalwart Dr Fatima Meer and renowned anti-globalisation activist Denis Brutus.

The organisations have organised an anti-globalisation march on Friday.

There was a strong feeling that the issue of reparations should feature high on the agenda of the conference at yesterday's meeting held at Kingsmead Stadium.

Speaking to Sowetan Brian Ashely of Jubilee South Africa said the issue of reparations must be seen in the context of continuing economic inequalities between the countries that were colonised and their colonisers.

Ashley said as part of reparations, debt that the developing world owed the International Monetary Fund should be cancelled.

"The form of reparation that we are calling for includes economic, ecological and historical reparation," he said.

"It is not the south that owes the north, it is the other way round," Ashely said.

Ecological reparations entailed addressing the theft of land from indigenous people by their colonisers and the abuse of the land for financial gain at the expense of sustainable development, Ashley said.

The National Land Committee's Andile Mngxitana said the issue of the landless could not be divorced from racism.

In South Africa, for example, through colonialism and apartheid, the indigenous people were robbed of their land and the legacy remained today when the landless were mainly black.