‘Voices of Liberation: Albert Luthuli’

One of my bigger jobs last year was to prepare a revised edition of the HSRC Press’s book, Voices of Liberation: Albert Luthuli, originally edited by Gerald Pillay in 1993. The biggest part of that work was researching and writing a section on Luthuli’s legacy. In pursuit of a more intimate understanding of one of South Africa’s greatest leaders, and the continent’s first Nobel Peace Prize winner, I interviewed some of those who still remember him in person: Ben Turok, one of the last Treason Trialists still in Parliament; Pallo Jordan, a former ANC exile, cabinet minister and renowned historian; and Ela Gandhi, grand-daughter of Mahatma Gandhi, and daughter to Manilal Gandhi, who was a close associate of Luthuli.

It was amazing to meet and talk to these three veterans of South African struggle history, and to build up through their eyes, an image of a truly remarkable man. Though Mandela’s legacy perhaps now outshines Luthuli in popular memory, the latter was certainly no less remarkable.

One of the key questions about the life of Luthuli is the extent to which he did, or didn’t, support the beginning of the armed struggle against apartheid, led by Mandela. It is clear that while a deep commitment to non-violence was more than just a strategic principle for Luthuli, a man of profound Christian faith who was inspired by Gandhi, it seems it also became impossible for him to stand against the pressure of oppression and hatred of oppression that eventually precipitated the armed struggle.

The wonder and hope of planetary ecological restoration

Replacing a sea front that used to be concrete, restored dunes now protect the shore at Durban's North Beach.

How do we heal the planet, Mother Earth? Not with technology, but with people.

Dealing with the issue of climate change demands acknowledging that humanity is racing headlong towards destroying the world as we know it. Which can make keeping one’s psychological moorings intact quite difficult (something under-estimated, I suspect, by most employers in the environmental sector). I often seek mental anchorage in the growing movement for ecological restoration, which the eco-technocrats sometimes call ecosystems-based adaptation, and permaculture – “you can solve all the world’s problems in a garden”, says one of its leading lights. Well, the milieu demands we all become gardeners.

Ecological restoration is the art

For more sustainability, add democracy

Democracy leaders: Norwegians gathered in Oslo in July 2011, following a horrific mass shooting, calling for more democracy to meet terror. Pic: Escribanas

Over the last year, I have become increasingly convinced that a key solution to dealing with our global lack of action on climate change lies in building democracies. That’s not easy, nor is it a very heartening conclusion when democracies are sliding backwards everywhere, as the Economist Intelligence Unit concluded in 2010 in a report entitled ‘Democracy index 2010: Democracy in retreat’. I certainly think democracy is currently retreating in the United States and South Africa.

At dinner this evening, I found myself engaged in a somewhat passionate conversation with a friend and colleague who works in corporate sustainability, and who was arguing, if I do him justice, that we cannot rely on democracies to steer us in the right direction on climate change, and that we need ‘philosopher kings’, enlightened people of great power and influence to steer us through the climate crisis.

Is he right?

If my argument is good, then the world’s most democratic countries should also be its most sustainable countries.

Let’s take a look. The table below ranks the top ten democracies according to

The indigenous forester of Smutsville

While I was staying in Wilderness over the holidays, a friend took me to meet William Pedro of Smutsville township, Sedgefield, who has for the last 15 years been running a successful indigenous tree nursery tucked away in the forest at the foot of a coastal dune.

Sedgefield is a largely white community with a great many retired people, notorious for petty complaints to the local authorities. Smutsville, the impoverished township that supplies Sedgefield’s labour and soaks up its poverty, is hidden away out of sight in the coastal dunes, and Pedro’s nursery is hidden away in thickets at the foot of one of these dunes. You’d not know it’s there, looking from the cluttered streets of the townships, where the presence of two white men in my friend’s bakkie (small pickup) provokes sarcastic and, um, colourful comments from some locals as we drive by.

Speaking in Afrikaans, Pedro tells us about the droughts he has seen in this region, particularly around 1960, when rivers that usually flow strongly dried up completely.

“The earth has its own cycles; when it must, it reduces the human population with sickness or disaster. I have learned these things over 50 years of observation.”

“When the Department of Land Affairs pulled out from this venture, I had to make this nursery work myself.”

Now he supplies trees to numerous other local retail nurseries – which probably sell them for four times what he charges. He is highly critical of the dependence of many in his community on government and white people for money and work.

On a sweltering day, his nursery was a small, cool paradise beneath the trees, where he is now in the midst of planting a million new seedlings that hopefully will end up around the much-deforested southern Cape to slow climate change and species loss.

South Africa slowly shredding democracy, in line with international best practice

Following yesterday’s passage by the National Assembly of the Protection of State Information Bill, and the Black Tuesday campaign’s comparison with the days of apartheid, there’s been a lot of discussion about whether ‘this takes us back to the dark days of apartheid’. And a lot of anger from those, including the government, who says it’s ridiculous to make that comparison.

“The only result this unfortunate comparison and the planned campaign, in which people are urged to dress in black, will achieve is to dilute the real history of the Black Wednesday and insult the victims of apartheid’s barbaric laws,” said ANC Chief Whip Mathole Motshekga in a statement.

Of course, it would be quite wrong to suggest that we are now back in the darkest days of apartheid. But Motshekga’s statement ignores the trend. And the trend is away from freedom. His argument that “the rejection of a public interest defence is in line with international best practice on security in the US, Canada and the UK” is chilling, and not only because he is factually incorrect, as Pierre de Vos has pointed out (there is a public interest defence in Canada).

Because what passes for democracy

‘Climate justice for sustainable peace in Africa’

African faith leaders gathered to discuss climate change at UNEP in Nairobi. Not yet panicking.

[I was part of the team that drafted this statement.]

A message from African faith leaders to the 17th Conference of the Parties (COP17) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), from 29 November – 9 December 2011 in Durban, South Africa. 

You must treat the earth well. It was not given to you by your parents. It is loaned to you by your children. – Kikuyu proverb

1. Introduction 

Africa is a continent of the faithful. We gathered as African faith leaders at UNEP in Nairobi, Kenya on 7^th and 8^th June 2011, to discuss climate change and how it will be addressed at COP17.

Scientific reports indicate that climate change may well be the greatest threat that humanity has ever faced, with, on current targets,

‘Climate change and Southern Africa’

Report (link to pdf) written for the Economic Justice Network

Summary

Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, measured at Cape Point

At the moment, failing a dramatic increase in political commitment from world leaders, the world’s current and likely future carbon emissions will create at least three degrees of warming. Scientists believe this warming is likely to cause the final disappearance of the Arctic icecap by 2030, severe droughts, heat waves and wildfires in Southern Africa, the possible disappearance of much of the Amazon rainforest, and acidification of oceans, in turn likely destroying much marine life.

These consequences would have dramatic effects on human well-being, and in Southern Africa are likely to lead to increased food insecurity, droughts, an increased number of extreme weather events, increased disease burdens and probable increases in migration and conflicts, not to mention complex economic knock-on effects as climate change and sharply increasing energy costs force dramatic change in the world economy.

Southern African countries can prepare themselves for the consequences of climate change by developing human capital, reducing dependence on fossil fuels, increasing energy efficiency and renewable energy use. It will be vital to make agriculture more sustainable: less water and energy intensive. The region should simultaneously fight in international negotiations for emissions cuts by both rich and developing countries that match what is required by science to stop dangerous climate change.

‘Thesaurus publishers salute Zuma cabinet restructuring’

A contribution to Hayibo.com, republished in The Argus

JOHANNESBURG. Thesaurus publishers at the World Congress of Lists in Johannesburg have welcomed the Zuma cabinet portfolio renamings, saying that while the mean-spirited may have condemned it as a largely meaningless reshuffling of language, in fact it represents an excellent redeployment of linguistic resources and an occasional rehabilitation of neglected words.

“We particularly like the way some portfolio names have been simplified, and others lengthened,” said local publisher Everett Roget-Websters, also known as Roget Everett-Websters, Webster Roget-Everett, and Bob.

“For example, the restoration of the word ‘police’ for the Safety and Security portfolio perfectly captures the solidity the average citizen likes to see in a policeman, even if solidity sometimes verges on morbid obesity.”

He said that for years there had been complaints that police, confused about their proper roles, answered emergency calls by passing on the number for ADT.

“Now the average cop, assisted by weekly compulsory viewing of old Hill Street Blues tapes, should be in no doubt as to his or her role,” explained Roget-Websters.

But the new designations have not met with universal acclaim. Academics, particularly those working in the humanities, have expressed concern that the new president has missed an opportunity to make portfolio names even longer and more complicated than they need to be.

Professor Laboratus Derrida-Lickspittle of the Department of Comparative Disdain at the University of the South West said that while ‘Sport and Recreation’ was undoubtedly an improvement on ‘Sport’, a golden opportunity to rename it ‘Ministry of Sport, Accusations of Racism over the Perpetual Non-transformation of Rugby, the Protearisation of Springboks and Tracksuit Design Approval with Some Recreation Thrown In’ had been missed.

Similarly, he argued, ‘Human Settlements’ could have been called ‘Human Settlements, Tuscan Settlements and Inhumane Settlements so Abysmal as to Warrant Targeted Government Inaction’.

A three-way spat has also broken out over the new Ministry of Women, Youth, Children and People with Disabilities, with the poetess Melancholia Angstus breaking a 15-year silence to express her disappointment that the new ministry was not named ‘Ministry of the Damned, the Lonely and Forever Silent’.

Gender activists argue the new ministry should be of ‘Women, Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, Transgendered and Intersex People, Youth, Children and People with Disabilities, Not To Mention People With Disabilities Who Include Themselves Amongst the Aforementioned Groups’.

However activists for niche lifestyle choices are unsatisfied, saying that people who like to have sex while sucking on dummies and pouring milk on themselves have now been institutionally marginalized.