Officials and ministers are expected to make last-ditch efforts on Sunday to resolve outstanding issues in a global anti-poverty plan that is meant to be adopted at the conclusion of the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) next week.
A committee of ministers took over responsibility to forge agreement on seven of the remaining 14 sticking points. These include delivery targets on sanitation and renewable energy, and references to ”common but differentiated responsibility” in the draft Johannesburg Declaration.
The other deadlocked sections related to a ten-year work programme on sustainable production; the wording of the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change; paragraphs regarding the depletion of natural resources; and bio-diversity.
United Nations special adviser Lowell Flanders said the remaining outstanding issues, including the developing world’s call for commitments on the phasing out of trade-distorting agricultural subsidies in Europe and the United States, would remain up for debate in the contact group of officials.
He was cautiously optimistic that differences on all these issues would be resolved before the Heads of State section of the summit begins on Monday.
Some of the 109 heads of state and government expected to take part in the conference arrived in the country on Saturday, but the lion’s share should touch down during the course of Sunday.
United Nations secretary-general Kofi Annan will visit the Sterkfontein Caves near Krugersdorp with President Thabo Mbeki before addressing a business lekgotla with international and local companies in Sandton.
Meanwhile, the media had a field day during the Social Movement Indaba march from Alexandra to Sandton on Saturday.
Some took the easy way out and drove along by car, others used motorbikes to capture the action. For many of those who braved the 8km or so on foot it might not have been a walk in the park, even though the leafy surrounds of Sandton might have created a different impression.
From early morning in Alexandra the cameras feasted on a multitude of banners and posters, ranging from ”Hands off Iraq” to ”Gobble Ya Own GMOs Dubya” to ”Mugabe, Stop Privatisation”.
TV cameras also zoomed in from the back of the flat-bed truck used to lead the march, but ”comrades journalists” were soon requested to get off, and then threatened with eviction if they did not do so.
Photographers jumped onto every available wall to immortalise the colourful throng of people snaking through the township.
Microphones gobbled up slogans like ”Viva Saddam Hussein, Viva” and ”Who let the bombs out? Bush, Blair, Chretien!”
Some marchers took a unique take on being visible, like eco-activist Choi Byung Soo from South Korea who wore a mask of the face of former United States President George Bush, sipping blood dripping from the earth into a campari glass.
Asked why it was that Bush, and not George W, Choi’s spokesman Hanghyun Jo told Sapa: ”He was busy, so his father came instead.”
A big effigy of a shark swam along over the head of Anti-Privatisation Forum member Tshepo Mulaudzi. She said it represented President Thabo Mbeki.
”He doesn’t deliver to the people.”
Foreigners must have thought they had left the squalor behind when Alex turned into Sandton, but a sign in three languages at a stream in the posh suburb provided a welcome irony for many eager cameras.
It said: ”Warning, Danger, Polluted Water” with signs showing that people should not drink the water, swim in it or even use it to wash their hands.
So some marchers used it to relieve themselves instead. – Sapa